Urban Ecology &

Environmental
Planning (AR 605)

Instructor: Abhinandan Bera

Assistant Professor
Department of Architecture and Planning
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra
Contact: abera@bitmesra.ac.in /
+917595957828
Challenges in urban ecology
Complexity
Heterogeneity
Dynamic nature
Complexity &
predictability
What is complexity?
Connectivity among multiple
elements where change in one
affects the others.
Predictability: what kind of
uncertainties do we face?
Instant: disasters.
Long-haul: water shortage.

Source: Alberti (2008) Advances in Urban Ecology. p. 44

What is our goal?
Resilience
Ecosystem services
Robustness
Dynamic nature of complex systems
Imagine the Kaziranga National
Park in Assam with its physical
features – soil, vegetation,
animals, and microorganisms.
Is it in a stable state?
Then, there is the first flood.
Animals move to higher ground
and survive.
Is it still in a stable state?
Can a landscape move back and
forth between two stable states?

Source: The Quint (2019, Aug 2) Why Assam Floods Every Year: Of Brahmaputra, Climate Change & More
Resilience
(what is) Resilience?
It is the amount of change
required to change the state of a
landscape from ONE set of
mutually reinforcing processes to
ANOTHER.
Thus, a landscape can travel
between two stable state and be
resilient.

Source: The Quint (2019, Aug 2) Why Assam Floods Every Year: Of Brahmaputra, Climate Change & More
Why bother?
Increasing urbanization has resulted in
rising demands of food, energy, and water,
especially in developing nations (Defries &
Nagendra, 2017).

The history of urbanization is intimately

associated with that of degradation of
natural resources such as forests and
water (Robbins, 2011).

Long-term impacts of our actions are

neglected over short-term goals (Ostrom, The social ecological systems (SES) framework by Elinor Ostrom (2007; 2009).
2009).

How are these decisions made? Take the

example of ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) defines

ecological functions as those that provide “services” that
moderate climatic extremes, cycle nutrients, detoxify
wastes, control pests, maintain biodiversity and purify air
and water (among other services) (ESA, 2006).

Shall we break it down to scales?

Ecosystem services
Ecosystem services refer to the wide
range of goods and services
generated from ecological processes.
These services are beneficial to
humans at different temporal scales –
daily, monthly, yearly.
And across spatial scales – local,
neighborhood, regional, within or
across national boundaries, and
global (Berkes & Folke, 2002; Cash et
al., 2006; Gunderson & Holling, 2002;
Holling & Gunderson, 2002).
Robustness
Can the landscape function as
desired despite external and
internal disturbances?
The ability of a landscape to
continue to do so is called
robustness.
To study robustness, we see
landscapes as hybrid entities Diagram showing interactions between social and ecological drivers –
composed of human-made and nested within larger systems – adapted from Folke (2006) Pg. 261.

naturally-occurring elements.
e.g.: Does a fishery continue its
production despite mild to
medium intensity flooding?
How do we collect data and
analyze them?
Layers of information
What kind of information do spatial planners need?
Designers and planners work on
urban processes which invariably
have a spatial footprint.
This spatial signature associated
with the processes demand
geographic information for
analysis.
Geographic information can be
location, relative distance,
proximity, connectivity, etc.
Source: Miller (2012) Introducing Geodesign, pg. 3.
How do we analyze data?
We lay information beside
and on top of each other
and look at them
simultaneously.

Source: Miller (2012) Introducing Geodesign, pg. 11.

Design With Nature (1969) by Ian McHarg.
Design With Nature (1969) by Ian McHarg. Source: Miller (2012) Introducing Geodesign, pg. 9.
How do we analyze data?
We lay information beside
and on top of each other
and look at them
simultaneously.

What do we look for?

We look for proximity,
connectivity, lack of it, and
changes in landscape
structure.

Source: Miller (2012) Introducing Geodesign, pg. 11.

 Next class
How are vulnerabilities identified?