Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design, 2013 Linking Theory and Practice for Sustainable Cities Future City Series, Vol. 3

The contributors to this volume propose strategies of urgent and vital importance that aim to make today?s urban environments more resilient. Resilience, the ability of complex systems to adapt to changing conditions, is a key frontier in ecological research and is especially relevant in creative urban design, as urban areas exemplify complex systems. With something approaching half of the world?s population now residing in coastal urban zones, many of which are vulnerable both to floods originating inland and rising sea levels, making urban areas more robust in the face of environmental threats must be a policy ambition of the highest priority.

The complexity of urban areas results from their spatial heterogeneity, their intertwined material and energy fluxes, and the integration of social and natural processes. All of these features can be altered by intentional planning and design. The complex, integrated suite of urban structures and processes together affect the adaptive resilience of urban systems, but also presupposes that planners can intervene in positive ways. As examples accumulate of linkage between sustainability and building/landscape design, such as the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park and Toronto?s Lower Don River area, this book unites the ideas, data, and insights of ecologists and related scientists with those of urban designers. It aims to integrate a formerly atomized dialog to help both disciplines promote urban resilience.

1. Ecology of the City as a Bridge to Urban Design.- 2. Three Tides: The Development and State of the Art of Urban Ecological Science.- 3. Social Dynamics and Sustainable Urban Design.- 4. Integral Urbanism: A Context for Urban Design.- 5. Landscape as Method and Medium for the Ecological Design of Cities.- 6. Ecological Heterogeneity in Urban Ecosystems: Reconceptualized Land Cover Models as a Bridge to Urban Design.- 7. Urban Patch Dynamics and Resilience: Three London Urban Design Ecologies.- 8. Eco-engineering for Water: From Soft to Hard & Back.- 9. Beyond Restoration and into Design: Hydrologic Alterations in Aridland Cities.- 10. Ecological Resilience as a Foundation for Urban Design and Sustainability.- 11. Slow, Moderate, Fast: Urban Adaptation and Change.- 12. Anchoring a Terrain: Landscapes beyond Urbanism.- 13. Storyline and Design: How Civic Stewardship Shapes Urban Design in New York City.- 14. Eco-cities without Ecology: Constructing Ideologies, Valuing Nature.- 15. Sponge City.- 16. Civic Space in Regional Frameworks: Resilient Approaches to Urban Design.- 17. Aesthetic Resilience.- 18. Anchoring Philadelphia.- 19. Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park Treatment Wetland: Integrated Strategies in Natural Treatment System Design.- 20. Just Ground: A Social Infrastructure for Urban Landscape Regeneration.- 21. Ecological and Social Linkages in Urban Design Projects: A Synthesis.- 22. The Design Process as a Framework for Collaboration between Ecologists and Designers.- 23. Remixing Messages: A Call for Collaboration between Artists and Scientists.- 24. Landscape Urbanism: A North American Perspective.- 25. Urbanism and Ecological Rationality.- 26. Bangkok: The Ecology and Design of an Aqua-City.- 27. Disturbanism in the South Pacific: Disturbance Ecology as a Basis for Urban Resilience in Small Island States.- 28. The Ecology of the Metacity: Shaping the Dynamic, Patchy, Networked, and Adaptive Cities of the Future.