A Background Reading for the June 2015 Quarterly Project Meeting

Several of us have been working on an essay to describe more fully than an earlier post here, a theory of urban heterogeneity.  That essay is not complete yet, but it is mature enough to share with the BES community for purposed of this meeting.

It is entitled "Dynamic Heterogeneity as a Framework to Promote Ecological Integration and Hypothesis Generation in Urban Systems."  It is not ready for reposting or citation, so just use it for internal BES purposes now.

You can find it on Dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ur7tynfh8aljtai/A%20Theory%20of%20Urban%20Heterogeneity%20Text%20V12.docx?dl=0

The Evolution of Urban Heterogeneity Thinking

The heterogeneity of cities has been acknowledged as one of their most striking features for a very long time.  Spatial heterogeneity characterized the ancient, cosmologically oriented cities of the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas (Lynch 1960; e.g. Fig. 1).  Social heterogeneity of cities, compared to rural village life, was recognized by the founders of modern sociology (Wirth 1945).  Urbanists, including urban designers, planners, community organizers, architects, among others, continue to be impressed with, engaged by, and responsive to the heterogeneity of cities and urban regions (Lefebvre 2003). 

Figure 1: The ancient Aztec city of

Tenochtitlan, a cosmological, 

political city.  Heterogeneity appears

as water, land, made land, ceremonial

and residential structures, and

agricultural areas. 

Although ecologists are admittedly relatively new comers to the city and the urban region as a subject of study, they come with a significant toolkit to deal with heterogeneity (Tischendorf and Fahrig 2000).  There is also a rich conceptual foundation for understanding heterogeneity within ecology (Wiens 1995, Pickett et al. 2001, Wu and David 2002).  In particular, a recent treatise on the theory of ecology illustrates the conceptual drawer of this toolkit (Scheiner and Willig 2011).  They summarize the most inclusive foundations of ecology in eight principles (Box 1).  Fully five of these principles mention heterogeneity by name or embed the core concept of heterogeneity within their scope.  These fundamentals are operationalized with such more specific disciplines within ecology as landscape ecology, metapopulation and metacommunitiy theories, succession, biogeography, evolutionary ecology, and ecosystem ecology.  

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Box 1.  Principles of General Ecological Theory, from Scheiner and Willig (2011: 13).  Quoting [With some explanations inserted in brackets, and the term heterogeneity or conceptual equivalents italicized]:

1. Organisms are distributed in space and time in a heterogeneous manner.

2. Organisms interact with their abiotic and biotic environments.

3. Variation in the characteristics of organisms results in heterogeneity of ecological patterns and processes.

4. The distribution of organisms and their interactions depend on contingencies. [Contingencies may be defined as heterogeneities in events, processes, resources, and stresses.]

5. Environmental conditions as perceived by organisms are heterogeneous in space and time.

6. Resources as perceived by organisms are finite and heterogeneous in space and time.

7. Birth rates and death rates are a consequence of interactions with the abiotic and biotic environment.

8. The ecological properties of species are the result of evolution. [N.B. Evolution by natural selection rests on the heritable heterogeneity or variation in organisms, and the degree to which it matches the prevailing, heterogeneous environment.]

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The practical tools of ecology also address heterogeneity, and do so increasingly.  Most conspicuous among these tools are those supporting landscape ecology.  In this genus of ecology, the concern is with the reciprocal relationship of pattern and process.  Consequently, ways to measure spatial differentiation are central to the discipline.  Gradients, patches, and patch mosaics are measured via field study, remote sensing, and statistical modeling.  Parameters such as patch size, patch shape, boundary thickness and porosity, nearest neighbor features, and so on, suggest and are applied to spatially-oriented questions.  Heterogeneity can be assessed in genetic, behavioral, and communication activities in populations, or in the distribution of competitive and facilitative interactions among species.  Changes in spatial heterogeneity over time is measured when concern is with such phenomena as succession, disturbance, migration, and ecosystem process rates, for example.  There is, simply, no facet of contemporary ecology that does not address and profit from understanding spatial and temporal heterogeneity (Tilman and Kareiva 1997, Lovett et al. 2005, Leibold 2011).

Fig. 2. Heterogeneity as cause and
consequence, or driver and outcome.

The urban realm – cities, suburbs, exurbs (CSE), and the urbanized regions they constitute – presents both the need and the opportunity to meld the heterogeneities recognized by the social sciences with that recognized by biophysical sciences (McGrath and Pickett 2011).  Thus sociology, economics, political ecology (a social science), diffusion of innovation, social network theory, and governance theory among others, and the various flavors of biophysical sciences, such as soil science, hydrology, biogeochemistry, plant and animal community ecology, biotic population ecology, microbial ecology, and others, must be in dialog.  And that dialog must address a variety of heterogeneities.  Not all heterogeneities must appear in all interdisciplinary models, but hypotheses about particular couplings will guide which heterogeneities are relevant over the long term.

The joint concern with heterogeneity by the social and the biophysical sciences in urban areas suggests a large hypothesis:  Spatial heterogeneity acts as a driver and an outcome that affect ecological processes in cities, suburbs, and exurbs (Figure 2).

Spiral Causality in Heterogeneity

This feedback model (Figure 2) may seem at first glance to be hopelessly circular.  But pull the circle apart, like a mental slinky, and a spiral form of hypothetical argumentation appears.  The spiral plays out over time.  The abstract spiral model of heterogeneity as driver-outcome-driver-outcome, etc., would need to be filled in by particular features and moved forward by particular ecological or social events.  This is how that might look (Figure 3):

Fig. 3. Converting apparently circular causality to spiral causality in which the action of different kinds of heterogeneity

can be understood and studied as linked outcomes and drivers.  The spiral begins with a set of boundary conditions or

initial heterogeneity.  Human or natural events convert that heterogeneity into a driver for further interaction.

Heterogeneity as Driver and Outcome: A Baltimore Scenario

A hypothetical example, likely to soon to be a testable reality in Baltimore and many other American cities located in the Eastern Deciduous Forest Biome, is the interaction of the invading emerald ash borer with the distribution of planted and volunteer ash trees (Fraxinus spp.).  Ash trees are not uniformly distributed across CSE space.  Nor are the invading beetles.  This suggests the first link in a spiral of causation involving spatial heterogeneity (Figure 4).  It is based on the interaction between the initial heterogeneous distribution of ash trees, the presumably patchy invasion of the emerald ash borer, AND the patchy management by people of both the ash population and the insect.  These interventions and events result in a second kind of heterogeneity, the spatially distributed mortality (including preemptive removal) of ash trees. The initial condition is labeled an outcome, the events of invasion or management act on that outcome to produce a new spatial pattern – ash mortality, that then becomes a driver for further spatially explicit outcomes and the interventions or events they stimulate in nature or in society.  This same logic is played out in the remainder of the cascade involving patchy altered thermal environments, human risk of heat stress, and social and individual responses to heat stress in the altered environment (Figure 4). 

Fig. 4. A hypothetical model of the relationship of different kinds of heterogeneity that might exist and be causally linked following the invasion of the emerald ash borer in Baltimore or other cities.  The boxes attached to the event arrows can be
both biophysical and human generated.

Heterogeneity and the Urban Ecosystem

This is the kind of logic we wish to explore to generate specific testable hypotheses about 1) heterogeneity as both a driver and an outcome affecting ecological processes in the urban system of Baltimore, 2) the integration of human and natural processes in the urban ecosystem, and 3) the intersection of two of ecology’s fundamental concepts: heterogeneity and the ecosystem as it is manifested in urban areas.  BES IV will investigate the role of spatial heterogeneity as a driver and outcome as it underlies and affects the basic structures and interactions in the urban ecosystem (Figure 5).

Fig. 5. The human ecosystem, consisting of biotic, physical,

social, and built components, all interacting within the

context of spatial various kinds of heterogeneity that

affect the interactions among components, and therefore

the structure and function of the components.

References

Lefebvre, H. 2003. The urban revolution. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Leibold, M. A. 2011. The metacommunity concept and its theoretical underpinnings. Pages 163-183 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lovett, G. M., C. G. Jones, M. G. Turner, and K. C. Weathers, editors. 2005. Ecosystem function in heterogeneous landscapes. Springer, New York.

Lynch, K. 1960. The image of the city. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

McGrath, B. and S. T. A. Pickett. 2011. The metacity: a conceptual framework for integrating ecology and urban design. Challenges 2011:55-72.

Pickett, S. T. A., M. L. Cadenasso, and C. G. Jones. 2001. Generation of heterogeneity by organisms: creation, maintenance, and transformation.in M. L. Hutchings, E. A. John, and A. J. A. Stewart, editors. Ecological consequences of habitat heterogeneity, the annual symposium of the British Ecological Society. Blackwell, London.

Scheiner, S. M. and M. R. Willig. 2011. A general theory of ecology. Pages 3-18 in S. M. Scheiner and M. R. Willig, editors. The theory of ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Tilman, D. and P. Kareiva, editors. 1997. Spatial ecology: the role of space in population dynamics and interspecific interactions. Princeton University Press, Princeton 

Tischendorf, L. and L. Fahrig. 2000. On the usage and measurement of landscape heterogeneity. Oikos 90:7-19.

Wiens, J. A. 1995. Landscape mosaics and ecological theory. Pages 1-26 in L. Hansson, L. Fahrig, and G. Merriam, editors. Mosaic landscapes and ecological processes. Chapman and Hall, New York.

Wirth, L. 1945. Human ecology. American Journal of Sociology 50:483-488.

Wu, J. G. and J. L. David. 2002. A spatially explicit hierarchical approach to modeling complex ecological systems: theory and applications. Ecological Modelling 153:7-26.

Theory of Urban Heterogeneity

In order to plan for the next phase of BES, we are beginning to consider theoretical frameworks.  Here is the current status of that search.

A Multitude of Urban Theories.  There are many theories relevant to urban ecosystems.  These theories differ in their focus on specific facets of urban structure, function, or dynamics, and in their focus on one or several scales.  Broad urban theories address topics as diverse as the ancient development of cities, the scaling law of benefits and burdens of urban size, urban gradients in megaregional context, urban metabolism and footprint, urban biodiversity, species homogenization and adaptation, political ecology, industrial modernization, and many others.  Urban theories have emerged from disciplines as diverse as sociology, architecture, urban planning, and economics.  This document introduces a candidate theory for BES: a theory of urban heterogeneity.

Jobs of Theory.  There are two main jobs for BES theory: 1) Motivating the hypotheses behind specific research projects within BES; and 2) Clearly linking the diverse specialized activities in BES to a multidisciplinary framework.  In addition, our theory should help organize research and education in the context of Baltimore’s metropolitan shift from a sanitary to a sustainable city and help meet the challenges of climate change.  What theory might the Baltimore Ecosystem Study use to move forward? 

A Candidate Framework.  BES has helped pioneer the social-ecological approach to metropolitan ecosystems and of urban regions consisting of cities, suburbs, exurbs, and rural lands.  This approach recognizes spatial heterogeneity at various scales, ranging from individual parcels to the entire urban region.  Although we have used this perspective, in the form of patch dynamics, from the beginning of BES, important improvements in the understanding of urban systems suggest that we should attempt to articulate a new, inclusive theory of urban spatial heterogeneity.  Advances in understanding the spatial dimensions of biogeophysical and social sciences must be accommodated.  

A newly articulated theory for BES could emerge from an overarching hypothesis: spatial heterogeneity at various scales, and reflecting the key structures and processes in the metropolis, drives social-ecological interactions and dynamics. 

Nested within the overarching hypothesis would be specific subtheories or model domains that specify the different, key structures and processes we deem important in the Baltimore ecosystem.  The choice of the subtheories should build on empirical experience in Baltimore as well as on the broader social and biogeophysical theories our team brings to the table.

The subtheories of urban heterogeneity match the fundamental structure of ecosystems.  We focus on 1) the flux of materials across heterogeneous space, 2) the biotic potential of different patches, with its implications for nutrient retention and ecosystem production in the urban mosaic, and 3) the design and management decisions by human institutional.  These three subtheories can help connect the overarching hypothesis to our specific long-term data, experiments, and syntheses.

The discussions at the steering committee meeting on September 21 should identify key model types, data streams, and the organizing hypotheses in each of these three major urban ecosystem realms.

Baltimore and Beijing: A Learning Expedition to China

Famously Rampant Urbanization

This last summer, I had the pleasure of being hosted as a Visiting International Professor by the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences in Beijing.  This center is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is the home of the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology.  My goal in spending three months in China was to learn about its form, magnitude, and rate of urbanization. The speed and novelty of urban growth in China are exceptional.  Although some countries have faster annual percent rates of conversion of population from rural to urban, none has a greater absolute number of participants in the process.  Nor do other countries rival China in the extent of the creation of new cities virtually from scratch across broad regions.  It is a perfect place to help put our work in Baltimore in a larger perspective.  In addition, researchers in China are excited and very well prepared to share their new knowledge about urbanization with the rest of the world.

China has for thousands of years been a largely agricultural

country.  The establishment of the People’s Republic saw the proportion of rural residents in the solid majority.  Although Chinese cities boast histories reaching back thousands of years, they were mostly distinct settlements, often retaining ancient defensive walls and sharing key aspects of their city plans.  However, starting from the late 1970s, with the establishment of new policies, the growth of its cities, and the transformation of its population from predominantly rural to mainly city-dwelling, took off.

Chinese urbanization is more than simply the growth of established cities, however.  The idea of urban agglomerations, more recently conceptually deepened in terms of urban megaregions, was one that originated to capture the extraordinary spatial scope of urban change in China and elsewhere in Asia.  There are 23 planned megaregions or urban agglomerations in China (Fang 2011).

Twenty-three existing and planned urban megaregions in China (Fang 2011)

Urban megaregions require understanding urban change in an inclusive way, as something that embraces old city cores, new neighborhoods, novel extensions within large urban administrative units, the engulfing of ancient villages by dense and often high-rise urban fabric, the replacement of agricultural villages by mixed industrial settlements, the demolition of villages and their replacement by superblocks of gated high-rise condos or apartment buildings, and even some modest development of villas, or what we in the U.S. would call single-family houses with yards. 

The richness of the kinds of change and the spatial mosaics produced are novel and not well researched at this time.  Chinese urban ecologists recognize a pressing need to understand the environmental implications of this long list of transformations.

Shifting Policy Landscape

Coming from the United States, I had the impression that China’s strong central government would make urban policy easy to understand, and would also make rational urban plans the norm.  What I learned however, was the existence of a complex, multi-level and multi-sector process of urban change.  In addition, I learned of a fluid policy landscape.  For example, until late July of this year, urban residents had to be registered.  This excluded many people who wished to migrate from the countryside from full participation in urban life and its amenities.  Children of unregistered residents were not permitted to attend public schools. Furthermore, unregistered rural migrants were often crowded into less-than ideal rental units. 

In July 2014 the central government announcemed that this policy, labeled hukou, would apply differently depending on the size cities.  Although the intent is to more evenly spread urbanization across the spectrum of cities, there may well be an pulse in migration to cities as a result.  The social and ecological consequences will be not only interesting, but very likely potent.

The revision of the hukou policy is situated within a larger trajectory of policy evolution in China.  The previous central government policy prioritized industrial development.  The term “development” is used all over the world and is the stuff of headlines and political slogans.  However, it strikes me that most uses in the public discourse in China and elsewhere are rather vague and loaded.  In the past, given the evidence on the ground (and in the heavy, polluted air!) development in China suggested an industrial pathway, and China’s prowess as a maker for the world has been rightly recognized as a result.  But the term development, again based on my personal observations of the culture of consumption that has saturated the big cities with global brands, automobiles with foreign name plates, familiar fast food restaurants, and multi-story shopping malls, also implies a growing emphasis on the provision and acquisition of luxury goods.  The urbanization policy now driving demographic and spatial change in cities, suburbs, with its implications for villages and rural life, shifts emphasis to domestic consumption as a driver for development.

Of course industrially based economic activities and infrastructure will continue to be built and operated in China.  But the new emphasis on urbanization intertwines with a new national policy on the environment.  How these two strands will be reconciled and whether there are the desired environmental – and human well being – outcomes, remains to be seen. 

Chinese urban ecologists are concerned to be part of the dialogue, and many ecological leaders are well placed to help urban planners and municipal authorities to improve the ecological processes and services within their jurisdictions.  I did, however, see evidence of some shortfalls in linking ecological and urbanization processes.

Shortcomings in Contemporary Urbanization

One problem is the sheer speed of urban development.  An interesting and salubrious institution in many large Chinese cities is the city planning museum or planning exhibition hall.  I visited three of these: Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai.  In some cases, a glance at the current iteration of the city regional plan was jarring in its dissonance with the facts on the ground.  Much of the greenspace promised by the current plan for Beijing had already disappeared under roads and buildings.  An aspect of the plan that was clearly successful was the protection of the mountain districts in the extensive megacity administrative boundaries of Beijing. These lands were well preserved under the rubric of protecting the air and watersheds on which the city depends, although as a plant ecologist I was interested to know how much impact the transplantation of large, mature trees from the forests into new city and urban developments affected the source stands. 

Tianjin’s urban plan seemed to have clearer bioecological content, and establishing boundaries to protect sensitive forests, lakes, seacoast, and rivers was a part of the plan.  Lands were set aside for parks for urban residents as well, and restoration of wetlands formerly devoted to agriculture in the city boundaries was called for.  The ecological rationale for such conservation and restoration was well laid out in Tianjin’s exhibition hall.

Another issue is the predominance of an economically driven real estate industry, a social institution not unknown in the capitalist west, of course.  My naïve view of the communitarian nature of the Chinese state did not prepare me for the news about the power and efficiency of the private real estate juggernaut in China.

The final shortcoming was the nature of many eco-cities.  As an ecologist and an urbanist who thinks that sustainability is a reasonable strategy for visualizing multi-dimensional improvements in urban social-ecological systems, I had high hopes for the eco-city idea.  However, eco-city developments seem to emphasize a rather narrow suite of strategies, such as engineering efficiencies, multimodal transportation and density, improved onsite stormwater management structures, supplementation of energy sources with renewables, such as wind.  They also have generous street tree plantings and green courtyards in the high-rise residential blocks.  However, the eco-city developments, which were conspicuous in the impressive city models in the planning exhibitions, and evident on the ground in many places, had significant lapses in my view.  I highlight several below.

The rich diversity of commercial opportunities scattered throughout the older urban neighborhoods and even in larger villages, were relegated to centralized shopping malls in the eco-cities.  Three was little to invite residents to interact on the street, and although the individual residential clusters apparently provide recreational amenities behinds their gates, the life on the street seemed depauperate.  This seems to violate one of the tenets of functional urbanism, and was a great disappointment to see so often.  Altogether, the utility of the sustainability concept, which calls for the joint attention to ecological integrity, social functionality and equity, and economic vitality, seems to be poorly realized in much of the urban growth that I saw in China.

Visualizing Urbanization: Opportunities for Enhancement

China also offers insights into the visualization of urban change, a problem that is widely shared.  The process of land conversion and of remaking existing cities is so striking that it is frequently and compellingly represented by a few contrasting colors on GIS maps.  Derived from aerial imagery, such maps represent core urban zones in red, agricultural areas in yellow, and forest and grassland in shades of green.  Because the shifts over five or ten years are so great, such color contrasts over time tell a powerful story.  

Change of land covers in Beijing from 1984 through 2010. Red is
developed urban land.  Copyright
Prof. Weiqi Zhou.  Do not duplicate without permission. 

  

But such coarse classification of urban lands – red blob mapping -- neglects much of the subtlety of urban form.  This is due to both the frequent use of coarse spatial resolutions on the order of 10s of meters, as well as to the fact that these classifications are blind to the rich array of ways in which people actually use different patches.  And here I do not mean use in the sense of simple zones like commercial, industrial, or transportation areas.  Nor does even recognizing the height of buildings reveal key social and ecological relationships that different spatially recognized patches might possess.  There is a great opportunity in China to break down the land covers within urban and urbanizing areas into more specific categories, while recognizing the three dimensional structures of patches.  This approach is one that was pioneered in Baltimore, and I look forward to exploring it with Prof. Weiqi Zhou and other colleagues in China.  The detailed spatial heterogeneity of city regions is a key dimension along which ecological and social understanding have been demonstrated to advance. 

This sort of theoretical perspective on cities also matches very well with the concerns and practices of urban designers, including architects, landscape architects, planners, as well as sociologists concerned with the patchiness of human institutions and social arrangements.  Once more subtle land cover maps are available for Chinese urban regions, the opportunity will arise to understand the social structures, norms and policies, governance arrangements, and of course, the bioecological patterns and processes that exist in those heterogeneous structural mosaics.  The power of fine scale, highly conceptually resolved land classifications in Chinese cities and their rampantly changing urban regions has hardly been tapped.

The Reach of Urbanization

The impact of urbanization in China – or anywhere for that matter -- is not something that is confined to cities and their expanding fringes.  Rather, the growth of cities in China touches even distant villages and rural areas.  Indeed, the national urbanization policies mentioned earlier in this essay guarantee that the link between urban and rural changes will be strong. 

One thing that I explored with Prof Weiqi Zhou and members of his laboratory, was how the continuum of urbanity can be used to advance the understanding of the regional nature of China’s urbanization. 

The continuum of urbanity identifies four dimensions along which the structures and processes of urban change play out: Livelihood, lifestyle, spatial connections including local, regional, and global, and the social and biophysical nature of specific places.  The continuum of urbanity is a conceptual ordering of the shift between urban and rural influences and processes (Boone et al. 2014).  It is not necessarily a literal transect on the ground, but rather the idea applies to various scales and can be used to understand the effects of urbanization at local, regional, and global spatial scales.

The four components of the continuum of urbanity examine 1) how people support themselves and whether and how they participate in formal and informal economies, 2) the nature and expression of their social identities and the implications of social identity for consumption and symbolic decisions, 3) the spatial scope of influences and material connections, including long-distance linkages or tele-connections, and finally 4) the interaction of the other three dimensions with the biological, physical, cultural, and social environments of specific places.  Such specificity of place can apply to very local or to broader areas.  In describing the interaction with place, it is important that sometimes features of the bio-geo-cultural environment act as constraints on the other three dimensions of the continuum of urbanity, and sometimes the environment is in fact changed by the processes represented by the other dimensions.

Urban district rising on recently converted agricultural land
between Beijing and Tianjin.

It is clear that the continuum of urbanity plays out in China in many ways.  The connections between cities and villages are diverse and impactful.  Some villages are swallowed up into expanding cities, with consequent changes in livelihood and lifestyle.  Some villages continue to exist, but become sites of industrial production as factories excluded from polluted cities relocate to rural areas, while some are converted to tourist economies, for example.  In other cases, villages are bought out and the land converted to high-rise, gated apartment blocks with the associated transportation infrastructure.  

And the continuum of urbanity does not stop at China’s borders.  As the official policies to generate a more urban, domestic consumer-based society move forward, a rising middle class demands more meat, for example, which alters land use and livelihoods as far away as Australia and the Americas.  Pig farming, migration of fruit bats to cities, and shifts in bat-borne disease risk are outcomes of the continuum of urbanity that spans from China to Australia. 

The continuum of urbanity represents a useful way to organize research on the extensive effects of urban development in China.  It can focus on fine scale heterogeneity within cities, as called for above, or it can expose the continental and global effects of urbanization.  The mutual relationships of urban regions linked in a global system are eliciting greater attention in the world of economics, and ecology will change at both ends of any urban teleconnections.

An Urban Ecological Future

The changes in China’s urban realm, and its megaregional, continental, and global reach are vast research frontiers.  To summarize what I learned in China:

1. There is great need for describing, modeling, and working with spatial heterogeneity at refined conceptual resolutions and at various spatial grains.

2. Social phenomena and dynamics need to be better connected with ecological and physical data and representations of urban change.

3. The connections between both former and persistent-but-altered rural zones and villages with cities are an open research task.

4. Addressing the shortcomings of some “eco-city” approaches, and applying sustainability as a linked set of social, environmental, and economic goals are important challenges.

The richness, speed, and nature of Chinese urbanization are a useful intellectual foil to the specific history and trajectory of urban change in Baltimore.  China defines at least one extreme of the conceptual space that all urban social-ecological research and application occupy.  Opportunities for comparison and for collaboration are great.

Acknowledgments.

My trip to China was supported by an International Visiting

Professorship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  My hosts were Prof. Weiqi Zhou and Prof. Zhiyun Ouyang of the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences.  The graduate students and faculty in Prof. Zhou’s lab were indispensable guides and warm friends, and I am indebted to them all for many kindnesses, including compensating for my attempts to apply New York rules for jaywalking in an inappropriate cultural context.  I know a lot more about urbanism and urban ecology now than I did when I landed in Beijing.  They also taught me how to make dumplings.

Bibliography

Bai, X., P. Shi, and Y. Liu. 2014. Realizing China's urban dream. Nature 509:158-160.

Boone, C. G., C. L. Redman, H. Blanco, D. Haase, J. Koch, S. Lwasa, H. Nagendra, S. Pauleit, S. T. A. Pickett, K. C. Seto, and M. Yokohari. 2014. Reconceptualizing land for sustainable urbanity. Pages 313-330 in K. C. Seto and A. Reenberg, editors. Rethinking urban land use in a global era. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Fang C. 2011. New structure and new trend of formation and development of urban agglomeration in China, Scientia Geographica Sinica, 31, 1025-1034 (In Chinese with abstract in English).

Hall, P. 2009. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: The City Region of the Mid-21st Century. Regional Studies 43:803-817.

Plowright, R. K., H. E. Field, C. Smith, A. Divljan, C. Palmer, G. Tabor, P. Daszak, and J. E. Foley. 2008. Reproduction and nutritional stress are risk factors for Hendra virus infection in little red flying foxes (Pteropus scapulatus). Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 275:861-869.

Plowright, R. K., P. Foley, H. E. Field, A. P. Dobson, J. E. Foley, P. Eby, and P. Daszak. 2011. Urban habituation, ecological connectivity and epidemic dampening: the emergence of Hendra virus from flying foxes (Pteropus spp.). Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 278:3703-3712.

Preparing for the BES Year of Theory

As the New Year rings in, it is time to prepare for 2014 as the BES Year of Theory.  This designation highlights our concerted efforts to improve our ability to integrate across different scales of theory, from the most general and abstract, down through mid-level theories, and ultimately to specific models and hypotheses.  Further, we hope to improve our ability to integrate across our various social and biophysical research realms. 

To begin this effort it is important to understand the largest context of BES III research – the understanding of social-ecological heterogeneity over the long term.  Although BES III addresses the transformation of the sanitary to the sustainable city, the still larger theoretical context that is not flagged in the title of our current proposal.  There are many large theories of urban systems, but the one that we have followed from the very beginning is a theory of social-ecological heterogeneity.  That is, we have adopted a theory of the nature and effects of spatial pattern and the relationships across space of the components of human ecosystems.  The theory emphasizes the feedbacks between the social and the biophysical components of the human ecosystems of cities, and invites us to hypothesize and examine the interactions between these two components.

In order to navigate from the general theory to operational models and testable hypotheses, we have chosen three conceptual lenses: the theory of locational choice, the theory of urban metacommunities, and the theory of the urban stream dis/continuum.  These are three lenses to focus some of the immense detail of factors that affect – and are affected by – social-ecological heterogeneity. 

These three areas are not arbitrary, but they represent three necessary, general components of heterogeneity in urban systems: social differentiation; biotic potential; and flow of materials.  The interactions of these three very general features are sufficient to explain heterogeneity of structure and processes in both the social and biophysical realms of urban systems. 

The details of how these three processes work can be further understood by employing the five core research areas of the LTER Network: 1) productivity; 2) the movement of inorganic matter; 3) the movement of organic matter; 4) populations; and 5) disturbance.  The urban LTERs were additionally required to address two additional conceptual areas: 6) human effects on land cover change and their reciprocal relationships with ecosystem processes; and 7) social-ecological data and analysis.  These seven conceptual areas indicate the breadth of long-term data that must be linked to the theoretical structures.

The presentation is intentionally general and abstract.  The abstract diagrams and sketches of our general theory, its division into three major areas, each represented by more operational models, are intended to guide our statement of hypotheses and integrative activities.  This structure may also provide a “strategy screen” for evaluating new initiatives and the proposed continuation of existing activities.  The structure is a framework to be filled in through our meetings and activities over the next two years. 

Quarterly Project Meetings

Our Quarterly Project Meetings will promote theoretical clarification and intellectual integration.  Here are the general topics for the first three meetings of 2014

January 2014: Use of stormwater detention basins for integrated social-ecological research and application.  Meeting will include introduction and needs for intellectual integration.

·        April 2014: Clarification of the three theoretical lenses and hypotheses for integration.

·        June 2014: Assessment of existing and potential data streams relative to 7 LTER core areas and theoretical areas.

An Introductory Presentation

As an introduction to the work we will be doing the overview presentation is available in several places:

The BES Website.  This link will download the PowerPoint presentation directly to your computer.  Start the slideshow and the narration will run and the slides will advance automatically.  http://beslter.org/docdrop/BES-III-Theories-Format-2-Narrated.pptx

Google Drive.  On this platform, you can preview the slides.  The recorded narration does not appear on the Google preview app.  However, you can download the file to your computer, and play it in Microsoft’s PowerPoint. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx-QKDoShVRkMGdUdFlwUTJzMnM/edit?usp=sharing

If you want a non-narrated form, but with notes embedded on the notes pane for each slide in Powerpoint, go here: https://drive.google.com/a/caryinstitute.org/file/d/0Bx-QKDoShVRkTXFkQ3lOLVFabUU/edit?usp=sharing

Also see the November 2013 post on the Year of Theory in general.