Green spaces and ecology in urban area

Elenie Beyene and Yasmin Eivazi

We will in this blogpost bring up some of the thigs professor Jari Niemelä is discussing in the scientific paper called “Ecology of urban green spaces: The way forward in answering major research questions. Firstly, in the article Niemelä discusses how to plan and manage urban green spaces for the benefit of urban dwellers and biodiversity this by bring up research framework. A framework for studying issues such as ecosystem services, urban resilience, human health and planning, management, and governance of urban green spaces. Secondly, we bring in this blogpost some challenges for urban ecological research and mention a develop approaches for it. 

Human activities are as we know having enormous effects on the nature and the environment. Urbanization is one of our biggest challenges, we need to build and expand cities to make room for the growing population. Cities containing houses, industries, other buildings, roads, railway etc. has a big impacting on the climate and the nature around it. The effects are big under the constriction prosses but also after they are completed, during the rest of their lifetime. Therefore, it's important that our city plans are well thought through to make them as sustainable as possible. However, it can be difficult to know what kind of frameworks to follow to reach sustainability. 

Urban ecology is gaining importance as a discipline way to integrating natural and social science to address environmental issues. To develop approaches for urban ecological research we could follow general frameworks for the study of social-ecological systems (e.g. Collins et al.,2011). We can identify two interconnected grand challenges for urban ecological research; first one is ‘How urban green spaces will be affected by socio demographic, technological and environmental drives and changes’ and ‘how to plan and manage urban green spaces for the benefit of urban dwellers and biodiversity in the face of these changes. To find a solution to these challenges we need a transdisciplinary research agenda and an improved scientific basis for urban ecology. In the scientific journal by professor Niemaelä, interesting and important points about ecology and greening urban areas are brought up. Niemaelä talks about the future challenges that green space ecology is facing. “A theory or a framework of urban ecology should integrate human-social systems with ecological systems, use the landscape approach and have the ecosystem services concept as a core.” 

The interest towards build environment is fairly recent. Ecologists ignored urban areas largely in the first half of the twentieth century. They mostly focused on wilderness environments. Since WWII urban ecology has made progress both in terms of empirical work and conceptual maturation, but the ecological research in cities is still not at par with the long traditions of research on more pristine environments. It is important to identify the main research challenges for the scientific advancement and practical use of urban ecology. And the theoretical development of urban ecology in the future. 

Profesor Niemaelä suggests that the urban design model “safe to fail” by Ahern et al. (2013) is used to create and plan a sustainable city. He explains that this method which allows collaboration between different actresses should be combined with a planning that takes ecosystem services into consideration when designing urban spaces. The model considers that there can be uncertainty and incomplete knowledge. This model is supposed to give different examples and models, different proposals can then be analyzed to minimize uncertainty. This experiment can involve scientists and city planners and create a collaboration between different actors and stakeholders. This experiment applies a design guideline that involves urban ecosystem services when planning urban development. The professor says in his conclusion that the challenge for urban ecologies is to find a framework that can be seen as comprehensive. He also explains that we need to combine science and questions that are meaningful for society to reach sustainable planning for the city. 

In conclusion, the situation the world is in today forces us to challenge our previous ways and expand research questions about urban ecology. Urban planning and land use need to be well thought through where different aspects are included. Once again to achieve sustainable development of cities need to have ecosystem service into consideration. Collaboration between different actors and stakeholders are necessary when plans are being made. Lastly, we want to enlighten the framework “Safe to fail” proposed by Ahern. Professor Niemaelä believes this should be used as a concrete approach and one of the aims in this model is to have uncertainty in consideration planning urban spaces. This framework gives design, model in the form of experiments. With help of this, different hypotheses can be tested before they are applied in real life. I think this framework can make it easier for city planners and other stakeholders to further develop our future cities. 

Source Jari Niemelä; 

Ecology of urban green spaces: The way forward in answering major research questions, 2013. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169204614000413 [2022-04-30]