Modern American urban ecology can be said to have come to
fruition to a large extent in Baltimore.
Of course there are other cities where parallel, reinforcing, or
complementary research and engagement activities are taking place, and all
contribute to the emerging edifice of contemporary urban ecology. But the
work in Baltimore has a distinct flavor that helps understand what is novel
about today’s urban ecological science.
Much of this is summarized in the book by Grove et al. (Grove
et al. 2015).
The Relationship of the Baltimore School to the Baltimore Ecosystem Study
A good way to describe the Baltimore Ecosystem Study is to
examine its mission statement. Briefly,
the mission of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study is to:
- Pursue excellence in social-ecological research in an urban system;
- Maintain positive engagement with communities, environmental institutions, and government agencies;
- Educate and inform the public, students, and organizations that have need of scientific knowledge; and
- Assemble and nurture a diverse and inclusive community of researchers, educators, and participants.
What is a School of Thought?
It turns out that this multifaceted mission can be said to
suggest the existence of a school of thought and practice (Cadenasso
and Pickett 2013).
A school comprises a set of related and reinforcing components (Morris
2015 p. 201).
Schools consist of 1) theories, concepts, and models; 2) linked research
approaches, 3) a network of student and professional training; 4) modes of
application to practical issues, and 5) a community that shares and advances
goals unifying the other components. Schools are often invisible, and
their basic assumptions and approaches are rarely stated and even less rarely
evaluated. And of course, schools may differ from one another. We
believe that as a mode of thought and practice, the Baltimore School represents
a scientific culture that actually extends well beyond the confines of the
Baltimore Ecosystem Study and its study region.
One reason that we articulate a Baltimore School is to
contrast it with the classical Chicago School of Urban Ecology (Cadenasso
and Pickett 2013).
This school was developed in the opening decades of the 20th century in
the department of sociology at the University of Chicago. This was the
founding department of American sociology, and its members were anxious to
codify a novel approach to studying the social structure and dynamics of
cities. Although such a study would be important in an of itself, because
Chicago was the fastest growing city in the world -- ever -- at that time, there
was the added urgency of developing a sociology adequate to the task of
understanding a new kind of city.
The Chicago School was clearly a sociological invention.
Yet, it has been called a school of urban ecology. This labeling
has persisted or re-appeared ever since Park and Burgess's pioneering book on The City (Park
and Burgess 1925). Some sociology textbooks of the last few
decades even explain the long-standing critiques that led to the demise of the
Chicago School in the 1930s in terms of ecological flaws (Gottdiener
and Hutchison 2000).
So several of us (Cadenasso
and Pickett 2013, Grove et al. 2015) thought it wise to reinforce
knowledge that 1) the Chicago School was not
the contemporary representation of ecological understanding of urban systems,
and 2) that there were new approaches, intellectual tools, and integrated
networks that were worthy replacements. Hence, we articulated the tenets
of a school of social-ecological science that could be labeled a school. We have been heartened that Sharon Kingsland,
a leading historian of science at Johns Hopkins University specializing in
ecology, agreed with the use of the term school for this effort.
The positive aspects of the Chicago School include 1) its
focus on urban rather than rural settlements, 2) the use of the case history
approach, 3) empirical techniques such as interviews and field surveys, 4) the
use of a clear theoretical framework motivated by competition among different
uses and community types within the city, and 5) a recognition of cities as
dynamic and mutable. Many of these features are conspicuous advances over
the urbanism that preceded the Chicago approach, which employed a more physical
or formal, and a more static view of cities.
 | ||
| The Chicago School - first wave of US urban ecology. |
But the Chicago School ultimately declined for many reasons. The social shortcomings of the Chicago School have been well known for a
long time (Hawley
1986).
It took rural and small settlement life as a desirable norm, and cast
many urban phenomena in terms of pathologies. It explained changes in
neighborhoods and districts as interactions of unitary human communities.
It idealized spatial interactions and assumed sequential replacement of
different residential and commercial zones. It neglected individual or
household behaviors. It adopted explanatory models from plant ecology via
analogy, but without recognizing that some of these, such as succession, were
being challenged and refined in their home discipline even at the time (Light
2009).
Furthermore, because they adopted competition among communities as the
predominant mechanism of urban change, they neglected positive social
interactions. It is also notable that they based many of their social
assumptions on what are now seen as fixed, social-Darwinist view of races and
immigrant groups. Their distress at the massive arrivals of new immigrant groups
-- African Americans from the South, and Europeans from southern and eastern
countries -- is palpable in the 1925 book (Park
and Burgess 1925).
Notable in this regard is their apparently willful ignorance of the more
dynamic and empirically open approach to social science pioneered by W.E.B
Dubois 20 years prior to the height of the the Chicago ascendancy (Morris
2015).
Contemporary Urban Ecology as a School of Thought and Practice
First, the Baltimore Ecosystem Study focused on an extensive
metropolitan area as a social-ecological system. Urban ecology must now
extend well beyond “the city” (Boone
et al. 2014).
Furthermore, the social and the biological are given equal intellectual
weight, and the ultimate goal is to understand the urban system -- city,
suburbs, and exurbs -- as an integrated social-ecological system. This
has required consistant interaction across a long list of disciplines. Sociology, demography, geography,
anthropology, economics, and history have melded their voices with plant
ecology, wildlife ecology, remote sensing, hydrology, soil science, atmospheric
science, geomorphology, metacommunity ecology, and stream ecology. Within the social features of the system a
vast array of power, technological, cultural, and political processes must be
explicitly recognized. We have found the human ecosystem framework to be
a useful tool to enhance integration (Machlis
et al. 1997, Pickett et al. 1997).
Second, the Baltimore School does not assume that cities and
urban systems are pathological. This is not to say that urban areas do not
have environmental or social problems. However, the goal of urban ecology
is fundamentally to understand the structure and function of integrated
social-ecological systems in all their spatial, temporal, and organizational
complexity (Cadenasso
et al. 2006b).
Urban ecology can and does often turn its attention to research questions
that address important concerns of communities, managers, and policy makers.
But drivers and interactions that have positive, negative, and
unintentional effects are all investigated without prejudice in contemporary
urban ecology.
The phrase “spatial, temporal, and organizational
complexity” used above is key to the Baltimore School. Urban ecology must
investigate complex spatial mosaics of regional extent. Investigations focus on local to regional
scales, and even extend to understanding the global influences on local and
regional urban processes. Thus, spatial scale is a key concern of contemporary
urban ecology.
Temporal complexity sets urban ecology in a deep historical
perspective, acknowledging that past decisions and the social and structural
legacies they engender are important determinants of current system processes.
Furthermore, temporal change is ongoing in cities, and the dynamic models
of particular times and places may not apply to other locations or trajectories
of change. Shrinking, post-industrial,
sprawl, ghost, and shanty cities or districts are examples of the variety of
dynamics urban areas are now experiencing (McHale
et al. 2015).
Organizational complexity introduces another important
dimension of scale. It indicates that decisions and behaviors can originate
at individual, household, community, governance, and jurisdictional levels, for
example. Given that the institutions that exist on different
organizational levels have different spatial extents and different longevities,
the opportunity for complex, non-linear effects is great.
Go Where the Data Lead You
One facet of the Baltimore School is to not be bound either
by vernacular "urban legends" or by preconceptions. Urban areas are already the home of more than
80% of residents in wealthy nations, and globally, the urban population stands
at greater than 50%. This means that
some manner of urban settlement -- whether dense city, compact suburb, suburban
sprawl or exurban retreat -- is a matter of deep personal experience of most of
humanity. In other words, we all
"know what a city is" and have personal opinions about the benefits,
frustrations, or vulnerabilities of our urban (sensu latu) homes and
workplaces. But personal experience can
be misleading and must be questioned when we enter the realm of urban
ecological science. We have debunked
urban legends elsewhere (Pickett
et al. 2008),
and myths about trees and crime, misunderstanding the relationship of mosquitoes
breeding and trees, the low biodiversity of vacant lots, are among
"legends" currently being clarified.
The key is to follow the scientific approach of going where the data
lead us, and to examine assumptions about social-ecological pathologies,
ecosystem services, and structure-function relationships (Pataki
2013). While these assumptions may reflect
legitimate human values, and thus are quite legitimate motivators for research.
The conclusions must arise from the data and not from the assumptions.
The relationship of data to decision making brings with it
an obligation for contemporary urban science to engage in the civic dialogs
shaping and managing urban systems.
Science cannot ethically impose its wishes on urban systems, but it must
legitimately share and explain its conclusions in the civic dialog, and engage
with urban designers, planners, managers, and policy makers in their quest to
improve the sustainability of urban systems and city life (Childers
et al. 2014).
Where is the Baltimore School?
 | |||
| Baltimore PS 103, Attended by Thurgood Marshall |
This essay has sought to explain what a school is, and how
the Baltimore School differs from and supersedes the long-discredited Chicago
School. The essay has not touched on
other schools of urbanism, each of which has value. The Los Angeles School (Dear
and Dahmann 2008)
for example, is helpful in advancing a regional understanding of urban
systems. Many of the other schools are predominantly
motivated by urban design or planning concerns, or remain thoroughly rooted in
social science traditions. One of our goals in the Baltimore School is to suggest the importance of including
ecological science perspectives and approaches in the study of urbanization,
city/suburban/exurban mosaics, and in designing and managing for sustainability
(McGrath
2013, Pickett et al. 2013). The functional connections required to work with both ecological and social connectivities is the Continuum of Urbanity (Boone
et al. 2014). This emerging theory
highlights the kinds of exchanges, influences, and effects that spread
throughout and between urban megaregions even at the global scale.
I close with a plea to see the Baltimore School as an
expression of a broader and inclusive approach to incorporating ecological
knowledge into understanding, envisioning, and managing the changing urban
realm wherever it exists (McHale et al. 2015).
The Baltimore School isn't a little red schoolhouse at any particular
crossroads, and it isn't just in or about Baltimore. It is an invisible college
and framework for an inclusive ecological-social approach to the emerging and ongoing complexities of urban systems worldwide.
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Image Credits:
Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura (神奈川沖浪裏), literally, Under a wave off Kanagawa, woodcut print after Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) from the series 36 Views of Mount Fuji, created in the late 1820's, and first published 1832. This version is an undated modern reprint. From Library of Congress
"PS 103 Old W Balt HD T Marshall" by Smallbones - Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PS_103_Old_W_Balt_HD_T_Marshall.JPG#/media/File:PS_103_Old_W_Balt_HD_T_Marshall.JPG
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