Urban ecosystems are now recognized as critical components of landscape ecological health. Designing and managing urban areas to reduce their negative impacts on regional and global ecosystems, and, in the process, to create benefits for both human and non-human residents is rapidly taking its place as one of the fundamental concerns of urban design.
Concerns include creating green infrastructure through public open space systems that serve recreational, habitat and hydrological functions; in-stream and riparian restoration, stormwater mitigation for water quality and water flow regimes, brownfield remediation, energy conservation and emissions reductions through building efficiency and creating walkable/bikeable cities, and the conservation and restoration of regionally important ecosystems.
The amount of land in urban uses and the percentage of humans that live in urban areas are both continuing to grow. In 1950, less than a third of the world's human population live in urban areas. In 2000, it had risen to nearly 50%. The United Nations predicts the percentage will rise to over 60% by 2030. Global climate change is likely to have profound effects on urban life and in turn, how we design, plan and live in urban areas can have large effects on the human contribution to climate change.
From 2002-2005, five University of Oregon faculty from Landscape Architecture, Geography, Physics and Biology participated in a six-university U.S.-European consortium for urban ecology education. The other five partner institutions were the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Pennsylvania, University of Amsterdam, Technical University of Berlin and the Polytechnical University of Cartagena. The project, "Urban Ecology: Educating for the Management of Cultural Landscapes", served as a trans-Atlantic consortium dedicated to interactive distance learning, field training and education.
In the second and third years of the project, four students from the University of Oregon traveled to Europe to take classes at a host university, and to work on field internship projects in urban ecology at local governmental and non-governmental agencies. Three European students came to UO for reciprocal exchanges. A two-week intensive field course was held in Amsterdam and Berlin in 2005 as a capstone event for both students and faculty.
While the core focus for the project was to develop joint knowledge of urban ecology on both sides of the Atlantic, it also served a broader goal of fostering cross-cultural understanding for both students and faculty. The $248,000 project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE); and The European Community-United States of America Cooperation Program in Higher Education and Vocational Education and Training. Bart Johnson was the director for the UO project component.
UO faculty collaborators: Liska Chan (Landscape Architecture), Patricia McDowell (Geography), Greg Bothun (Physics) and Michelle Wood (Biology).
Although the project is officially completed, you can learn more about it
at:
http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/old/international/urban/
Department of Landscape ArchitectureEnvironmental Studies ProgramUniversity of Oregon