NATURE L3- Urban Ecology

Question 1

United Nations (2014)

Answer 1

“As the world continues to urbanize, sustainable development challenges will be increasingly concentrated in cities”

Question 2

Goddard et al. (2010)

Answer 2

Gardens are the most biodiverse habitat in the UK.

They account for 20% of land area in UK cities.

Question 3

Harvey (1996)

Answer 3

“There is nothing particularly unnatural about NYC”

Question 4

Cronon (1991)

Answer 4

There is a relationship between rural and urban areas.
Cities draw upon the resources of rural hinterlands.

BUT the production of the urban relies on the rural (or visa versa).

Question 5

Gandy (2014)

Answer 5

“Cities are just a particular form of urbanization”

Question 6

Brenner (2014)

Answer 6

Cities are produced by the process of urbanization- this produces particular geographies and socio-environmental forms.

This urbanization process is happening on a planetary scale.

Question 7

Engels (1844)

Answer 7

Considered one of the first urban ecologists.

He identified poor housing conditions and environmental quality of industrialising cities as a direct outcome of social inequalities.

The quality of environment simple reflected and re-enforced such inequalities.

Question 8

Swyngedouw and Heynen (2003)

Answer 8

“Cities are dense networks of inter-woven socio-spatial processes that are simultaneously local and global, human and physical, cultural and organic”

Question 9

Heynen (2006)

Answer 9

Has 3 propositions about cities:

1) Social and physical processes of urbanization co-determine each other
2) Social and natural environments combine to produce uneven urban landscapes
3) Achieving sustainable urbanization is about politics and choice

Question 10

Gregory (2009)

Answer 10

1) CITY
Refers to an urban demographic- an economic/politcal unit.
Usually trading centres and market places (linked to the historic separation of non-agricultural work).

2) URBAN ECOLOGY
Treats urban land use patterns as outcomes of social processes (competition, segregation and succession).

Question 11

Barry and Kasarda (1977)

Answer 11

Social processes in urban areas result in a ‘natural’ spatial order- despite the constant mobility and expansion of such systems.

Question 12

Heynen (2014)

Answer 12

A key idea in UPE is the idea of a metabolism.
This is not a repetitive process of circulation through established pathways.

Instead, it should be understood as the dynamic transfer of creativity- resulting in new socio-spatial formations. Such transfers are simultaneously created through human labour and non-human processes

These circulations are inherently uneven.

Breaking down the dualism between urban/rural reveals socio-natural power relations in the process of urbanization. Metabolisms highlight these (in the motivations behind them AND when/where there is political intervention)

Question 13

Zimmer (2010)

Answer 13

Problems with UPE:

1) A clear focus on industrialised cities, not those in developing countries
2) Not all actors can mobilize metabolisms in the same way