Urban Ecosystems

Identification

• Urban ecosystems comprise parks, ponds, tree-lined streets, animal sanctuaries and other man-made structures that bring the natural world into an urban environment. As more people move into cities, more of these spaces are built. This makes urban ecosystems increase annually while so many other natural ecosystems decrease due to involvement by humans, such as logging and suburban expansion.

Benefits

• Urban ecosystems offer cities many benefits. City plants, for example, are highly effective at helping remove pollutants in the air as well as reducing noise in the surrounding area. The shade provided by trees can also help cool cities, which reach higher temperatures than rural areas because of heat-absorbing buildings. Other benefits from urban ecosystems include food production from urban farms, recreational activities in city parks and storm water control when urban forests or wetlands act as buffers during periods of high rain activity.

Warning

• Urban population growth is a major problem facing urban ecosystems. Future estimates predict major growth in cities due to population increases and people moving from rural to urban areas. As such, buildings will increase and cities will grow, impacting current urban ecosystems. To prevent these systems from falling apart, cities will need to put a higher budget into place to care for and expand urban ecosystems along with the growth of residential and commercial buildings.

Potential

• Many theorists feel that future cities can benefit from melding urban structures with urban ecosystems. John T. Lyle, a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, for example, states that future cities can benefit from urban ecosystems by allowing them to help produce natural energy, more food through urban agriculture programs and blend with urban structures to create more harmonic neighborhoods.