
     
   


  
The objective of the course is to enhance the understanding of:
The urban environment as an ecosystem; the urban ecosystem ecological
processes; the influence of human social and economic preferences, needs,
and values on urban ecological processes and functions; human perception of the
urban ecosystems and the impact of humans on the urban environmental problems;
the skills for ecologically-based urban planning; the role of urban ecology, and community
participation in policy studies and urban decision making

 This course is designed to assess the human role in urban ecosystems.
- It examines the impacts of urbanization/urban patterns on the biophysical
 environment and the resulting effects on the urban ecosystem dynamics
(changing in the natural habitats, species composition, hydrological systems, etc).
- The important relationships between urban patterns and ecological processes in studying
the dynamics of urban ecosystems.
- How human action (i.e., changing spatial patterns) influences the urban ecology in urbanizing
environments.
- Ecological theory and the concept of the urban ecosystem as well as the existing approaches
of integrating human and ecological systems

A mix of lecture, class room discussion, group exercise and field visit will be employed.
  Case studies from Ethiopian cities and other cities will be used to support the teaching.
  
   • Class attendance and participation in discussions: 10%
  
 • Quiz / Mid Exam: 20%
• Group Task 25%
• Field Visit and Report Presentation: 15%
• Final Exam 30%

  Minimum of 85% during lecture.

- M.C Molles (2005). Ecology: Concepts and applications. McGraw-Hill
 
   - P. Stiling (2001). Ecology: Theories and applications, 4th Edition. Prentice Hall
- M. Begon., J.L. Harper and C.R. Townsend (1996). Ecology: Individuals, Populations and
Communities, 3rd Edition. Blackwell Science.
- J.L. Chapman, and M.J. Reiss (2004). Ecology: Principles and Applications. Cambridge University Press
- R.E. Ricklefs & G.L. Miller (2000). Ecology, 4th Edition. W.H. Freeman Co.
- R.L. Smith (1992). Elements of Ecology, 3rd Edition. HarperCollins publishers.
- E.J. Kormondy (2001). Concepts of Ecology, 4 th Edition. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Prepared By: Inst. Demelash G. Nov - 2022 /23

 Urban Ecology
The role of urban ecology in future cities
Mainly Focus:-
-The urban environment as an ecosystem; Urban ecology examines all forms of life, their associations with
-The urban ecosystem ecological processes;
each other and people, in built-up areas dominated by human
-The influence of human social and economic preferences, needs, and values on urban
ecological processes and functions; settlement and human activities. It recognizes the ecosystem
-Human perception of the urban ecosystems and the impact of humans on the urban impacts of urban metabolism at the local, regional, national and
environmental problems; global scales. Examining towns and cities as ecosystems helps to explain
-The skills for ecologically-based urban planning; how the three pillars of sustainability, environmental, economic and
-The role of urban ecology, and cultural, work together in both the ecosystem approach and in
-Community participation in policy studies and urban decision making complex urban adaptive socio-ecological systems. Urban
ecology also explores biodiversity within the city and the
Introduction
interdependence between urban built forms, natural
regeneration and human activities that together create particular
Urban ecology is a response to the combined pressures of population
habitat niches to which organisms can adapt. Urban ecology thus
growth rapidly expanding urbanization and global environmental change
embraces the relationships between ecology in cities, ecology of
to understand how to manage ecosystem sustainably we need to really
cities and socio-ecological systems in terms of the roles of the
understand the dynamic feedbacks between humans and other
urbs, the civitas and the polis, recognizing that the ideals of
components within urbanized systems. Now urban ecology is a field is
public participation, sustainability and environmental security are
relatively young it's grown out of a hundred and fifty years of traditional
sometimes irreconcilable in the face of socio-political pressures
ecology. The ecology discipline as a scientific discipline has really taken an
and economic and commercial realities.
approach that has historically focused on pristine natural environments
where humans were viewed as outside the system. So, if this circle
Furthermore, good quality greenspace plays a vital role in
describes the boundaries of an ecosystem then humans were here not
enhancing the quality of urban life. In many cities the quality of
part of internal dynamics of the system. Urban ecology and contrast focus
greenspace declined during the second half of the twentieth
explicitly on human dominated landscapes and in urbanized regions and
century. After 2000, greater emphasis on the role of open air
in urban ecology we intentionally focus on humans as fundamental
recreation in improving health and the role of green areas in
elements within the system so we move humans here inside the system.
adapting to climate change led to signs of improvement in some
We intentionally include humans as fundamental components and
countries. The emphasis on biodiversity in urban areas, green
interacting elements within the system and in this way we can study them
infrastructure and blue-green corridors are changing the faces of
the same way we would any other kind of component like plants animals
cities. Urban greening is a vibrant reality, but there remains a
fungi or abiotic elements of systems.
great deal to be done to make that urban greening accessible to
The discipline of urban ecology arose in the 1990s, primarily motivated by all city dwellers. Urban greening: In the sense of urban ecology
a widespread interest in documenting the distribution and abundance of generally, urban greening is an integrated approach to the
animals and plants in cities. Today, urbanecologists have greatly expanded planting, care and management of all vegetation in cities, towns,
their scope ofstudy to include ecological and socioeconomicprocesses, townships and informal settlements in urban and peri-urban
urban management, planning, and design, with the goal of addressing areas.
issues ofsustainability, environmental quality, and human well-being within
cities and towns. As theglobal pace of urbanization continues to intensify,
urban ecology provides the ecological andsocial data, as well as the
principles, concepts and tools, to create livable cities

urban ecology is the scientific study of the relation of living organisms with
each other and their surroundings in the context of an urban environment.
The urban environment refers to environments dominated by high density
residential and commercial buildings paved surfaces and other urban
related factors that create a unique landscape dissimilar to most
previously studied environments in the field of ecology. Urban ecology is
a recent field of study compared to ecology as a whole. The methods and
studies of urban ecology are similar to and comprise a subset of ecology.
The study of urban ecology carries increasing important, because more
than 50% of the world's population today is living in urban areas at the
same time it is estimated that within the next 40 years two-thirds of the
world's population will be living in expanding urban centers. The
ecological processes in the urban environment are comparable to those
outside the urban context however the types of urban habitats and the
species that inhabit them are poorly documented often explanations for
phenomena examined in the urban setting as well as predicting changes
because of urbanization are the center for scientific research urbanization
results in a series of both local and far-reaching effects on biodiversity,
biogeochemical cycles, hydrology and climate among many other
stresses. Many of these effects are not fully understood as urban ecology
has only recently emerged as a scientific discipline and much more
research remains to be done. research on cities remains limited
observations on the impact of urbanization on biodiversity and species
interactions are consistent across many studies but definitive mechanisms
have yet to be established urban ecology constitutes an important and
highly relevant subfield of ecology and further study must be pursued to
more fully understand the effects of human urban areas on the
environment.
Urban areas are recognizable as dense settlements where specialized,
non-rural activities are taking place. Urban areas are seen as functional
ecosystems with inputs and outputs of energy and matter. Throughout the
world, human societies are becoming more and more urbanized.
Urbanization is the process of making a landscape more built-up,
industrialized and dominated by close human settlement. undergoing
many forms of land use and land cover change that are beginning to
challenge general perceptions of rural-urban contrasts and the ways in
which their socio-ecological systems interact. Thus there is no single
ecology of towns and cities, but a transitional ecological gradient from the
urbanized countryside to the totally built centres of urban areas.
Living in cities, naturally
Natural features, settings, and processes in urban areas can help
to reduce stress associated with urban life. In this and other ways,
public health benefits from, street trees,green roofs, community
gardens, parks and open spaces, and extensive connectivepath-
ways for walking and biking. Such urban design provisions can
also yield ecologicalbenefits, not only directly but also through
the role they play in shaping attitudes toward theenvironment
and environmental protection. Knowledge of the psychological
benefits ofnature experience supports efforts to better integrate
nature into the architecture,infrastructure, and public spaces of
urban areas.
Urban Ecology as a course
The course seeks to open the student’s mind and eyes to the way
in which nature permeates everyday urban living, and how it has
to be understood, cared for and managed in order to make our
towns and cities healthier places to visit and in which to live and
work. It examines how nature can improve our physical and
mental health, the air we breathe and the water we use, as well
as boosting our enjoyment of parks and gardens. Urban Ecology
sets out the science that underlies the changing natural scene
and the tools used to ensure that cities become both capable of
adapting to climate change and more beautiful and resilient.
Therefore, its found to be very crucial to discus and Understand
the nature of urban places and the role of nature in towns and
cities.

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 The nature of urban places and
nature in urban places
• What happens to the rain that falls on the building roof or ground?
• How does our environment affect us?
• What biological factors in cities are impacted by the presence
humans?
• What physical factors in cities are impacted by the presence
humans?
• What social factors in cities are impacted by the presence or
absence humans?
• What chemical factors in cities are impacted by the presence
humans?
• What is ecosystem.
• What is Urban Metabolism (the analogy of considering Cities as an
organisms which consuming vast quantities of materials for other
places and spewing out gaseous, liquid and solid wastes) ?
• Does Urban Environment (City) be considered as an Ecosystem?
• What do we mean by functioning ecosystem and ecosystem
services?
• What are Biogeochemical cycles?
Urban settings are novel in terms of the 150,000-year history of
humankind (modern Homo-sapiens). At some point in our history, during
the New Stone age (the Neolithic era), probably around 10,000 years ago,
one of our distant relatives did something quite extraordinary. What they
did changed the course of human development forever. This relative of
ours was a hunter-gatherer, hunting animals and collecting edible seeds,
fruits, leaves and even roots from plants. The extraordinary event
happened when our ancestor, having gathered some seeds, put some of
them back into the ground, watched the seedlings grow and harvested
the resultant crop. We can only imagine what went through this person’s
mind and how he or she recognized that by doing this, they did not need
to keep walking searching constantly for food. They could stay where
they were and grow food. As other hunter-gatherers passed by, they saw
that those people who were growing the crops had a relative abundance
of food. These passers-by took up the idea and some stayed while others
moved on taking the new idea with them. As more people came, they
took up agriculture and settled. At every locality where this happened a
small community developed. A few people started to carry things to
exchange, such as precious stones, from one settlement to another,
initiating trade.
Over time some of these communities grew. Defensive structures were
built by those living in these communities as protection from other
groups. An excess of food permitted trade to develop and for some to
have free time from obtaining food and preparing meals during which to
exploit the resources around them in new ways. Over the centuries some
settlements became larger, produced greater excesses of food, surpluses
of other raw materials and had small workshops manufacturing luxury
items and household goods that could be traded. The most successful of
these also often had administrative, cultural and religious functions and
grew, in many cases, into large trading cities, such as the mediaeval cities
of Europe.
The shift to the factory system, beginning in textile mills powered by
water and subsequently by coal, gradually led to mass manufacturing
industry bringing a great increase in demand for labour, a demand that
has moved around and has been seen recently in parts of Asia with tens
of millions of people moving from rural areas to urban settlements to
work in factories. The products of the Industrial Revolution, particularly
steam trains and steamships, revolutionized the transport of people and
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goods enabling towns and cities to become much larger and facilitating
inter-continental trade and migration on far greater scales than ever
before. They also caused movement of plants and animals and the arrival
of invasive species in new places. This great industrial upsurge brought
enormous changes to conditions and biodiversity in urban areas. It
changed the character of urban ecosystems, both through degradation
and pollution, but also through the public and private expenditure on
parks and gardens and the conservation of key areas of natural
vegetation. The new urban greenspaces often differed in their climate,
soils, and geochemistry and biodiversity from the surrounding rural
areas. In this way, novel ecological situations were created, allowing a
special urban ecology to evolve.
Urban ecology is the scientific study of the relationships of living
organisms with each other and with their surroundings in areas
dominated by high-density residential and commercial development and
by paved or otherwise sealed areas. They are influenced by the presence
of large numbers of people in diverse ways. Natural sciences (biology,
ecology, geography), physical sciences (physics and chemistry), and the
social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics) all contribute towards
urban ecology. The techniques employed to study urban ecology include
environmental remote sensing, chemical and biochemical analysis,
genetics, the recording of physical parameters such as temperature and
water flows, as well as studying plants, animals and microbes. Studies
examine both the effects of urbanization on these biophysiochemical
parameters, and the effects of plants, animals and microbes on the built
environment.
Investigations of urbanization gradients, often articulated as rural-
urban gradients, determines the effects of urban and rural land uses
on interactions between humans, flora and fauna. Such studies are
helping to position urban ecology in a key position among those
creating the conceptual frameworks, models, knowledge base and
tools required for building resilient and sustainable futures.
The context of Urban Ecology
Urban life is the human future. Making it better is a challenge for us all.
The urban environment is a dynamic interaction between the natural
environment and human culture. The goal of urban ecology is to
understand the complex relationships between and within biological
communities in the urban environment. From this understanding it
provides the evidence for informed discussions that enhance the quality
of urban life.
The human habitat of the twenty-first century is vastly different from the
grassland and forests in which most humans evolved and subsequently
lived over the last 100,000 years. The growing urban population is
accelerating the rate of environmental change in a manner that may
persist well beyond the time at which the total world population growth
rate begins to stabilize after 2050. Understanding and managing the
ecology of the urban habitat are thus fundamental for human well-being.
However, the urban habitat is probably the most diverse and internally
variegated landscape in which any species lives. It has a whole series of
niches, within, beneath, between and above the complex buildings and
other structures that make up urban areas. The nature of these structures
is constantly changing, as new buildings and new infrastructures replace
the old. This does not usually happen in a systematic manner but is driven
by complex economic, social and political factors, from the desire to build
the highest building, the longest bridge and the fastest railway to the
basic need to build a simple shelter in an informal settlement from
whatever cardboard, wood and corrugated iron can be salvaged or
bought.
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 Today towns and cities are seen as complex, dynamic
biological-physical-social entities, in which spatial
heterogeneity and spatially localized feedbacks play a large
role. Modern urban ecology thus looks at cities in at least
three ways:
i. In terms of the ecology in cities;
ii. In terms of the ecology of cities; and
iii. In terms of the ecology for cities.
While the ecology in cities is often intensely biological, the ecology of
cities links the dynamics of nature to the dynamics of human behavior,
city building and management, while the ecology for cities involves
examining how the demands of all forms of life in urban ecosystems drive
change and adaptation in the modern urban context, with their
differences and similarities linked to environment and culture.
Cities and ecology
• Discuss meanings of the word urban.
• Discuss the differences between urban form and function.
• Describe an urban to rural ecological transition.
• Describe and discuss global trends in urbanization.
• Define ecology.
• Explain the similarities and differences between human ecology,
industrial ecology, landscape ecology and urban ecology
• Why study ecology in urban areas?
KEY TERMS
Anthropogenic biome: A global ecosystem unit defined by global
patterns of sustained direct human interaction with ecosystems,
such as a dense settlement, village or cropland biome.
City: An urban settlement, popularly seen as larger than a town, but also
a term used interchangeably with the term 'town', particularly in
the USA. In some cases, it legally applies to towns which have been
created cities by government charter, including urban places of
widely varying size in Europe and Australasia that contain
cathedrals.
Ecology: Simply, the scientific study of the interactions between
organisms and their environment. More profoundly, with an
evolutionary organic perspective, the scientific study of the
processes influencing the distribution and abundance of
organisms, the interactions among organisms, and the interactions
between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy,
matter and information (Pickett 2012)
Ecosystem: A dynamic complex of plant, animal and microorganism
communities and their nonliving environment interacting as a
functional unit that includes all of the organisms in a given area
interacting with the physical environment such that a flow of
energy leads to exchange of materials between living and non-
living parts of the system. Individuals aggregate into populations,
populations come together in communities, and a community plus
its physical environment comprise an ecosystem. The ecosystem
concept can be applied to large human-directed activities such as
agriculture, fisheries, forestry and cities. In the latter case, urban
areas are seen as functional ecosystems with inputs and outputs
of energy and matter
Human ecology: In one sense of the use of the term, the study of how
human health is affected by urban living conditions. In another
usage, it is employed as an umbrella term for all the fields of study
related to looking after people in their living environment, and in a
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third sense, relevant to towns and cities, as a study of how human
beings live sustainably within the limits of the their immediate and
their global environment.
Industrial ecology: The study of the flows of material energy in industrial
and consumer activities, of the effects of those flows on the
environment, and of the influence of economic, political, regulatory
and social factors on the flow, use and transformation of resources.
Landscape Ecology: The science of studying and improving
relationships between ecological processes in the environment and
particular ecosystems, in particular, emphasizing spatial patterns, or
patterns over an expanse of land and the role of human use of the
land through forestry, agriculture and urban development.
Nature: The whole system of the existence, evolution and events
affecting living organisms and the Earth as distinct from humans
and their activities.
Resilience: The capacity of a system (a city) to deal with change and
continue to develop. Resilience thinking is based on the belief that
humans and nature are strongly coupled and should be conceived
as one socioecological system.
Town: An urban settlement with specialized human occupations; may in
some jurisdictions have a legal connotation related to its form of
local government.
Urban ecology: The study of urban areas as a series of habitats for
human beings and other organisms; the relationships among all
those organisms under changing urban environmental conditions;
and the interactions of living things with natural and people-made
flows of energy, water and materials, both deliberate and accidental,
in the varied and diverse conditions of the world's towns and cities.
Urbanization: The process of making a landscape more built-up,
industrialized and dominated by close human settlement.
Urban settlement/urban area: A dense assemblage of buildings and
people located close together for residential, cultural, productive,
trade and social purposes.
The Urban Phenomenon
When does a cluster of buildings become an urban settlement? To
answer this requires an examination of the characteristics of cities, of
urbanity and of places where manufacturing, commerce and trade occur.
Then to understand cities as places where people, other animals, plants
and other organisms live, the ecology of and in urban areas has to be
examined which allows us to organize our knowledge of life in urban
settlements.
Definition of urban area
• A city area considered as the inner city plus built-up environs,
irrespective of local body administrative boundaries. (Sinclair,
20000.)
• A settlement with a population over 10.000 (United Kingdom
.
Office of National Statistics 2004)
• All places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board
or notified town area committee, etc.
All other places which satisfied the following criteria:
i. A minimum population of 5,000.
ii. At least 75% of the men main working population
engaged in non-agricultural pursuits.
iii. density of population of at least 400 persons per km2
(Office of the Registrar General and Census
Commissioner. India. 2013)
Is there an urban-rural divide?
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 Towns and cities are recognizable from a distance or from
the air or a satellite image as clusters of many buildings.
While the number, size and density of the buildings
indicate something of whether the settlement is a town or
a village, it is the activity within the buildings that distinguishes a rural
village from an urban town. In a town, people specialize in their work,
they may teach, administer welfare, make things, trade local products for
goods from distant places or be entertained. There is no longer a direct
involvement, day to day, with rural pursuits: growing, harvesting,
collecting food and herding domesticated animals. There are thus two
general attributes of an urban area: a dense settlement urban form and
a specialized set of human occupations serving a broad set of urban
functions.
The fundamental character of urban areas
All urban areas possess the characteristics of form and function. The
form relates to the natural world: the atmosphere, biosphere,
hydrosphere, lithosphere and pedosphere. From the processes within
these spheres come all the materials and substances that create the built
form and sustain life within the urban area. The functioning is what
humans do in the urban area, what makes it the anthroposphere of
markets, financial exchanges, politics and governance, administrative and
cultural systems, education, religion, planning and social welfare and
health care.
and gardens, we also enjoy the sound of birds, delight at seeing deer or
foxes in the urban environment, and may even gain nourishment from
home grown vegetables or fruit. The same plants help to reduce urban
temperatures and absorb some of the gaseous emissions from our
machinery. Urban ecology helps us to understand and care for our living
environment and part of our life-support system in a better manner.
WHAT IS URBAN ECOLOGY?
Urban ecology is the branch of ecology dealing with the environment
and its organisms specifically in the context of built-up areas dominated
by human settlement and human activities. In one sense, urban ecology
examines the way this environment, greatly modified by people, affects
plant and animal communities; in another, it considers the urban area as
a habitat for all life forms, including people and how other species affect
humans. In the latter sense, 'urban ecology integrates both basic (i.c.
fundamental) and applied (i.e., problem-oriented) natural and social
science to explore and elucidate the multiple dimensions of urban
ecosystems’ (McDonnell 2011, p. 9). Many definitions of urban ecology
have been suggested, but essentially it is about plants and animals in
urban areas

The form is associated with the classic idea of the urbs, a physical entity:
a place in which human activities occur. This contrasts with the sense of
community and way of life inherent in the term civitas which relates to
collective social involvement in the affairs and institutions of the city, in
public participation and grassroots activities.

What Is Ecology?
Ecology is usually defined as the branch of biology that deals with the
relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.
A stronger definition emphasizes the natural processes on which all life
depends: ‘the scientific study of the processes influencing the
distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among
organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the
transformation and flux of energy and matter’ (Cary Institute of
Ecosystem Studies 2013). Ecology thus examines interactions between
the biosphere. It is essentially examining organisms in terms of their
dependence on each other and on their environments. This includes all
their involvement in using earth materials, air and water.

Ecology is an interdisciplinary science that requires the integration of the

biological, earth and social sciences. Ecologists seek to explain:

▪ life processes, interactions and adaptations;

▪ the distribution of organisms;
▪ the successional development of ecosystems; and
▪ the movement of materials and energy through ecosystems.

Ecosystems sustain life-supporting functions and produce natural capital

like biomass production ( food, fuel, fibre and medicine), the regulation
of climate, global biogeochemical cycles, water filtration, soil formation,
erosion control, flood protection and many other natural features of
scientific, historical, economic or intrinsic value.

Why study ecology in urban areas?

There are many good reasons for understanding the relationships

between the urban biosphere (the ecosystems that make up an
environment) and the urban anthroposphere (the part of the
environment that is made or modified for use in human activities).We
benefit not only from well vegetated open spaces and attractive parks

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