Urban Ecology - Ecological Systems - page 290

patches that hosted biodiversity or complex bioecological structure, were
incorporated into plans to meet aesthetic or functional needs the patches were
perceived to satisfy. In the realm of greenfield development, McHarg [ 51 ] famously
introduced a multilayered strategy to analyze ecological, physical, historical, and
cultural features of an area to be developed. The site design was spatially arranged
to optimize the joint benefits and reduce the hazards associated with the layers
representing different features of the landscape. Spirn [ 32 ] applied a careful ana-
lytic approach to established urban areas in her work in Boston and west
Philadelphia. She used an understanding of watershed dynamics to explain where
disempowered communities faced risks due to design in their neighborhood that
had been insensitive to ecological processes. This information then informed
appropriate neighborhood redevelopment and plans for renewed green space in
these old city neighborhoods. This evolving tradition is notable for taking account
of both bioecological processes and social concerns. Other designers and planners
are promoting the integration of ecological substance with their professional theory
and practice [ 52 ]. Shared work between designers and ecologists has several
advantages. One advantage to working with designers is the entry they provide
into the intricacies of development and construction in urban environments, thus
making new sites available to their ecological research partners [ 31 ]. A second
advantage of the increasing interaction between ecologists and designers is to treat
constructed design projects as experimental venues [ 30 ]. Indeed, because designs
provide alternative arrangements of various kinds of surfaces, vegetation, and
slopes, for example, they may yield important and novel information on the
relationship between urban form and its ecological function [ 53 ]. Scaling these
relationships from individual small sites to large developments provides another
dimension of experimental comparison. Measurements taken in contrasting built
projects and landscapes provide an essentially untapped resource for increasing the
ecological understanding of urban systems [ 54 ].
Environmental Justice
Environmental justice refers to the concern about equal access of all persons
to environmental goods and services, and equal avoidance of or capacity to respond
to environmental hazards. As a social movement, it emerged from communities of
color and from communities with poor access to resources and power, in which
people noted an unusual association with toxic sites or other serious environmental
disamenities. As a result of this origin, environmental justice has an activist
dimension and a scholarly dimension. Ecology can contribute to the scholarship
of environmental justice by enhancing the understanding of environmental benefits
and environmental hazards. Traditionally, environmental justice has focused on
environmental negatives or disamenities. In cities, ecologists and related scientists
are increasing the stock of knowledge about not only the disamenities, but increas-
ingly about the benefits that emerge from the biotic components of human
ecosystems. This focus on benefits is part of the study of ecosystem services [ 55 ].