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.
Manzanita Community / SEED Schoolyard Redesign
East Bay Greenway
The East Bay Greenway Concept Plan details a bicycle and pedestrian pathway that extends from Oakland to Hayward underneath the elevated BART tracks. This twelve mile long greenway runs through some of the poorest neighborhoods in the East Bay, neighborhoods without...
read moreGreen 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 more16th Street BART Plazas
The Living Classroom
San Francisco, California Urban Ecology is partnering with Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) to provide a participatory design process involving four LEJ youth Community Geographers. Urban Ecology will introduce the youth to the concepts involved in site...
read moreNoe Valley Streetscape
San Francisco , California Background The Noe Valley Community Benefits District on 24th Street in Noe Valley is a busy commercial street running for six city blocks in the heart of San Francisco. It is filled with popular coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, and...
read moreCommunity Design Consulting Services
Some of our past projects.
16th Street BART Community Design Plan
The 16th Street BART Community Design Plan is the result of a nine-month community planning process organized to address neighborhood concerns about the 16th Street BART station area in San Francisco. The Community Design Plan provides both general guidelines and...
read moreVisitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan
The Clinton Park Plan
Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization
24 th Street BART Plazas Community Design Plan
Visitacion Valley Community Vision
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
Havana’s Self-Provision Gardens
By Angela Moskow Urban agriculture is actively promoted in Havana, Cuba as a means of addressing the acute food scarcity problems of the "Special Period in Peacetime," which developed when Soviet aid and trade were drastically curtailed starting in 1989. During...
read moreCreating the Blueprint: A Participatory Process
by Wood Turner Urban Ecology's Blueprint for a Sustainable Bay Area spells out the organization's vision of how the San Francisco Bay Area can become a better place to live for all its residents. It is the result of a thoughtful and tireless process intended to...
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 moreSustainable Development in the United States
Investment Firm Backs New Urbanism Columbus Realty Trust, one of the nation's leading real estate investment firms, is backing "new urbanist"-style housing development. Stating that "Columbus is a proponent of 'New Urbanism'," the firm is seeking to invest in...
read moreThe Urban Ecology Journal Back Issues
Note: With this issue, we return to a seasonal designation. The first issue of each year will be called Spring, followed by Summer, Fall, and Winter. Visit our contact form to submit articles! Back Issues 2000 Spring -- Designing for Transit and Community Tales from...
read moreHabitat II Conference Tidbits
Participants at the Habitat II City Summit were snowed under by an avalanche of information describing urban development around the world. Following are a few tidbits and gleanings from the conference: The world's urban population will rise from 1.54 billion in 1975...
read moreMalawi Graduates Turn Street People
Texas’ Colonias: Squatter Settlements Become Affordable Housing
by Rachel Peterson Texas has witnessed an unusual pattern of development along its 2,000 mile border with Mexico. Colonias are unincorporated, "informal" rural subdivisions that usually lack water, wastewater service, and paved roads. There are an estimated 1,436 such...
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 moreA 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 moreCommunities Making Themselves Heard: Environmental Justice as a Means to Equity
by Enrique Gallardo Since the 1970s, groups of concerned citizens have mobilized in response to environmental degradation in their neighborhoods. The concept of environmental justice originally denoted a negative freedom: the right to live free of environmental harm....
read moreContact
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