Welcome to Urban Ecology
Urban Ecology is dedicated to developing harmony with urban planning and nature.
This site highlights all that Urban Ecology has accomplished over the years. We hope these archives inspire you to continue the pursuit of harmony between urban planning and the natural world around us.
Urban Ecology is published to provide information and encourage dialogue on issues related to the urban environment, city and regional planning, and metropolitan affairs.
Urban Ecology gives voice to an ecological urbanism. It encourages readers engaged in urban design, governance, and activism to incorporate ecological sensitivity into their work and to understand the links between the built and natural environments and the many-layered concerns and needs of the people who live in urban settings around the world.
Success Stories!
Below are just a few of our success stories. You can find more details of some of these success stories under our Community Design Consulting section.
Urban Promise Academy Campus Improvement Plan
Green Business Certification
Summary The San Francisco Green Business Team includes Urban Ecology, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SF.DPH), San Francisco Department of the Environment (SFE), and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SF.PUC). This team provides free...
read moreVisitacion Valley
San Francisco, California Challenge Visitacion Valley in San Francisco, California, has been changing steadily as immigrants from Asia have added to the community’s diversity, and as mounting real estate prices in other parts of San Francisco have driven...
read more16th Street BART Plazas
Active and Healthy Parks and Schoolyards
Oakland, California Challenge Residents of Oakland’s Eastlake, Lower San Antonio, and Fruitvale neighborhoods suffer disproportionately from illnesses such as heart disease, hypertension, and asthma. A range of factors contribute to the prevalence of these illnesses...
read moreManzanita Community / SEED Schoolyard Redesign
Community Design Consulting Services
Some of our past projects.
Visitacion Valley Community Vision
Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization
Weeks Neighborhood Plan
Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan
Telegraph-Northgate Neighborhood Plan
Just north of downtown Oakland, the Telegraph-Northgate neighborhood displays familiar signs of disinvestment: the major retail corridors are lined with vacant storefronts; the older houses are crumbling; and the parks are filled with graffiti and shards of glass. But...
read more24 th Street BART Plazas Community Design Plan
Past Articles from Our Journal
You can visit our contact page to submit your own article! Find all our past journal articles here.
Fighting Urban Poverty Around the World
Alleys and Backyard Housing
By David Winslow Nestled among the back alleys of many existing neighborhoods is a large, fallow urban resource. Alleys and backyards, if reclaimed as sites for secondary dwellings, could sustain unobtrusive and affordable new housing with only modest increases in...
read moreSigns of Hope: Bay Area Success Stories
Edited by Stephen Wheeler Although the Bay Area is moving away from sustainability in many ways -- in terms of automobile use, resource consumption, suburban sprawl, affordable housing and equity, for example -- it is making progress in other areas. Following...
read moreRestoring the Bronx Coastline
Paul Mankiewicz Today's urban estuaries are lined with miles of linear bulkhead and seawall. But just a century ago, they had a highly varied coastline of beaches, marshes, rocky outcrops, bays, cliffs and creek mouths. Where could the immense amount of materials...
read moreMalawi Graduates Turn Street People
A Brief Reading List On Urban Sustainability
We are often asked by those new to the subject to recommend some initial readings on urban sustainability. Following is a brief listing of some recent works. Many of these books have been reviewed in past issues of The Urban Ecologist, and several are available...
read moreSaving Durban’s Medicinal Plants
Rebecca Koffman Every day at the Durban Station Market, street vendors do a booming trade selling plant muti (medicine) to the thousands of commuters who pour into the city-center. In this port city, in South Africa's Eastern Province of Kwazulu-Natal, over 700...
read moreA Letter from the President
I thought I'd take this opportunity to report to you from the front lines of sustainable development. Since September 1996 I've been working with Van der Ryn Architects and the Ecological Design Institute, where we get many opportunities to plan and design using the...
read moreArizona Voters Face Growth Choices
Regional Polarization and Tax Sharing
by Myron Orfield The forces of polarization — the push of concentrated poverty and the pull of concentrated resources — operate throughout metropolitan regions. Because the dynamics are regional, only a regional approach can change them. There is little that...
read moreCuritiba: A Visit to an Ecological City
by Tim Alley Brazil is a country of many big cities, and most of them have their share of urban problems -- poverty, overcrowding, sanitation. The city of Curitiba is an exception. In fact, Curitiba is known as "The Ecological Capital of Brazil." I went there...
read moreGlobal Urban Poverty Action Guide
Contact
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