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
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
The Science of Connection in a Disconnected Place
The news from Baltimore has been sad and disturbing over the
past few weeks. Urban ecologists, like
all ecologists, I think, love the places where they work. So I must remark on what is happening in Baltimore
and what it means to me, as a scientist who has committed more than two decades
to research on the ecology of metropolitan Baltimore.
But this post is not the usual kind of thing for this web
log, which typically intends to note conceptual issues for the BES community,
or provide alerts and background for important project activities, or stimulate
interactions of BES with other projects conducting urban ecology research,
education and community engagement. This
post is more like an editorial, in which I explore my own reactions as a
scientist and as an African American to the troubling recent events in
Baltimore. Like the playwright Eugene
Ionesco, I write here “to find out what I think.” These opinions are my own and do not reflect
those of other researchers, educators, or funders of BES. Here goes.
The Science of Connection
Ecology can be thought of as a science of connections. In fact connections, in the form of interactions,
are enshrined in the early definition of the science: The study of interactions
between organisms and their environment.
A more fleshed out version expands this, but keeps interaction and
processes as key: The scientific study of the processes influencing the
distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among organisms, and
the interactions between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy
and matter.
This fundamental interest is sometimes trivially reduced to
the idea that everything is connected to everything else. But what makes the ecological world work is
not that everything is connected, but that things – organisms, processes,
places – are differentially connected.
That is, some connections are strong, others are weak, and some don’t
exist. Some connections are brief, some
persistent, and some change strength over time. Some connections happen through close
contact while others are transmitted by signals, materials, or cascades of
effects over great distances.
It is the job of ecological science to understand the nature
and effect of such differential connectivity and exchanges in the systems it
studies. The connectivity principles of
ecology might be better summarized like this: 1) everything is connected to
something else; 2) connections change over space; 3) connections change over
time including being created anew and disappearing; 4) connections are the glue
in ecosystems, linking organisms, biological processes, and physical
structures. In urban ecosystems, social
structures and processes, and infrastructures are included as nodes of
connection.
Baltimore as a Differentially Connected Mosaic
Baltimore, including the chartered city and several nearby
counties of equivalent jurisdictional level, is a hugely heterogeneous, patchy
ecosystem. The patchiness reflects the
underlying geology and soils, the vegetation types, and the contrasts between
wet and dry places. It reflects where
buildings and infrastructure have been installed, and where they have been
replaced or abandoned. It reflects the
things that people plant for agriculture or for decoration, as well as plants
that disperse, establish, and grow spontaneously. It reflects how and where all these plants
are managed – or not. Patchiness
reflects the habitats that people intentionally or accidentally make for
animals, and the fact that people move animals around. It reflects where people choose to settle and
live, and where firms locate or leave from, and where people with different
resources and social characteristics have access. It reflects policy that govern zoning, transportation,
financial investment, taxation, and public versus private expenditure.
Many more sources of spatial differentiation could be
mentioned. But key is the idea that such
patchiness sets up a field of differentials for connectedness in the Baltimore
region and in its subsystems. Like all
American urban regions, Baltimore’s heterogeneity appears in the form of contrasting
neighborhoods, social relations, wealth, and ecology. BES has spent 18 years applying interdisciplinary
methods to understand how this complex, differentially connected system works.
Disconnection in Baltimore
The sad fact and circumstances of the death of Mr. Freddie
Gray point to some of the deep and persistent disconnections that exist in parts
of Baltimore. Certainly, the kinds of
disconnection in evidence here are shared with many American urban systems –
old and new, majority African American or not.
And certainly, not all neighborhoods in Baltimore are disconnected.
Sandtown,the neighborhood where Mr. Gray was born and in
which he apparently suffered the wounds that led to his death a week later, is
one in which we work. It is a part of
Watershed 263, a watershed defined by a stormwater drainage catchment. Mr. Gray’s Sandtown is at the northern
headwaters of this drainage catchment.
We use the drainage network – the watershed – as a tool to study
connections between built infrastructure, household and institutional decision
making, community activities aimed at environmental quality, and the amount and
quality of the water draining different parts of the larger Watershed 263. We use the same concept of watershed throughout
the Baltimore region to understand how the rich diversity of patch types and
their social, built, and biological conditions affect the water quality and
flow across the entire Baltimore region.
Social Disconnection
While our watershed ecology research uses a conceptual tool
emphasizing connection via water, it has become clear that Sandtown is a place
of profound social disconnection. There
are many people within Sandtown and the 10 other neighborhoods of Watershed 263
that are deeply committed to improving people’s lives, through access to
knowledge, gainful employment, healthy food, and a clean, stimulating, and
comfortable green environment. Seeing
these dedicated people at work, and being able to support them through
partnerships, including those with city agencies, public schools, private institutions,
community groups, and NGO’s such as the Parks & People Foundation, has been
one of the unalloyed pleasures of ecological research in Baltimore.
All these worthy activities and hard work can be seen as
antidotes to the profound disconnectedness that many of these neighborhoods
experience. I draw my roster of
disconnections from the writings of social researchers and journalists who have
summarized these especially forcefully in recent days. People in many old city neighborhoods, and in
older suburbs, are disconnected from jobs.
Baltimore was a magnet for unskilled but willing workers in its
industrial heyday. Such jobs are largely
gone. Families are disconnected due to
laws that stipulate incarceration for even some non-violent crimes. Students are disconnected from effective
learning by the social demands placed on public schools, and by the funding of
public schools by the local property tax base.
Homeowners and would-be homeowners are disconnected from access to capital
at reasonable rates by predatory lending and by the legacy of early 20th century mortgage restrictions. Lack of
capital or property-based profits affects ownership, repair and maintenance by
occupants, and the willingness of absentee landlords to invest in their
properties.
Of particular relevance to the situation in which Mr. Gray
found himself is a disconnection from the police. Other events over the past few years may have
left people with the idea that disconnections between the police and communities
is a matter of race. Clearly that is not
the case in Baltimore, given the demographics of the city’s population and its
police department. However, there is
disconnection nonetheless. Ta-Nehesi
Coates, Baltimore native, memoirist, and social critic, calls out the
difference between policing based on authority versus that based purely on
power. Authority would arise from mutual
respect and engagement (a rather Lincolnian – of, by, and for). Power, in contrast, resides in distance and
force. This is not to deny that
legitimate authority must sometimes draw upon force. Others, better suited than I, should be
consulted for the nature and significance of this kind of disconnection, which
is coming to wider attention these days due to a well publicized litany of harm
and mortality arising in the gap between power and authority. But it is the disconnection currently most
obvious on the nightly news beamed from Baltimore at convenient helicopter
height.
The Deep Roots of Disconnection
As researchers of the long-term, the deep history of
disconnection
.JPG) |
| An abandoned rowhouse in Sandtown. The graffito reads "Sadtown." |
First, of
course, is the long fact and persistent shadow of slavery. The period of slavery in the United States is
much longer than the period of emancipation.
The commodification and capitalization of individual humans of African
or mixed African and other descent, was simply the largest single source of wealth
in the Antebellum United States. The
brief hope of Reconstruction after the Civil War gave way to a retaking of
power (yes, power, as defined above), by those whose economic interests and
social status had been damaged by the Civil War and its outcome. The terrorism, legal exclusion, and absence
of opportunity in the South in part fueled the Great Migration, the largest
movement of people in the history of the United States. Lasting, according to some scholars, from the
1880s through the 1960s, the Great Migration saw the exodus of African
Americans from the South to cities to the north and west. Washington DC, and Baltimore, although thought
of as southern cities, were destinations in the Great Migration.
The resulting changes in urban demography,
employment patterns, and settlement patterns were major and sometimes long
lasting events in the receiving cities.
For example, the creation of American sociology at the University of
Chicago had as one of its foci the mechanisms and patterns of change occasioned
by the migration of new residents from the American South and Eastern and
Southern Europe. The previous experience
of cities and urbanists with such change had been with the relatively more
homogeneous and familiar immigrations from Northern and Western Europe. The unfamiliar arrivals, who were not
schooled in urban living, seemed to discomfit the Chicago scholars, whose early
writing embodied, to my reading a kind of racist reaction.
In Baltimore at the beginning of the Great Migration, the
city was, at the coarse scale, relatively integrated. African Americans did experience fine scale
segregation, being housed in meager alley houses, while their employers lived
in more capacious and well appointed dwellings fronting larger streets. The arrival of new migrants from the South
caused a disruption of Baltimore’s racial patterns. A series of policies and practices were put
in place to purposefully segregate the growing African American population. First, was the ordinance forbidding integration
at the city block level. Although the
ordinance was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court a few years after
it was established, the replacement activities were harder to dismantle. Among these was exclusionary zoning, in which
industrial zoning was concentrated in areas from which the removal of African
Americans or other recent immigrants was desired. Also in the tool kit were deed covenants
which forbade selling to African Americans or Jews. Neighborhood Associations were established to
help prevent “incursions” of African Americans.
And perhaps most notorious of these prejudicial tools was the Federal
Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) rating of neighborhoods by credit
worthiness. Mortgages were not encouraged
in areas receiving low ratings. Low
grades were bestowed, by definition, on the presence or risk of incursion by
African Americans. Age and size of
housing stock were also included. Even
after World War II, with its segregation of the Armed Forces, the benefits of
service were effectively preferentially available to white veterans. The GI Bill, and access to mortgage tax
credits are two such benefits, and these benefits opened the suburbs with their
subsidized expressways, to those who qualified demographically.
The neighborhoods in Baltimore city clustered near downtown
are some of the most conspicuous loci of the disconnections sketched
above. I think it is legitimate to call
all of this the long shadow of slavery – the originally constitutional commodification
of most African Americans, and the purposeful and continual disconnection of
this group of persons from access to the organs of state, of policy, of
capital, and of mobility.
Seeing Connection
As desperate as the need for multifaceted connection in
Sandtown and other neighborhoods continues to be, what does ecology have to
contribute? Little on the list of
disconnection is under our control. But,
perhaps part of what ecology can do is honor the residents of all neighborhoods
in Baltimore with knowledge and experience in the kinds of connection that we
study and understand. This may seem like Gahndian idealism, and count for
little in the face of accumulated anger and fear, sudden death and riot. But perhaps the science of connection can
help people to envision change, to see how they are linked to a larger and
longer world, in which their future matters.
 |
| Analysis of potential areas available to plant trees (left panel), a scenario for increasing tree cover (right panel). |
Part of that larger world is the unseen urban ecology, that
is the underappreciated role of water, air, organisms, substrates – and differential
connections – in the urban matrix. Part
of that larger world is social and historical.
We have shared findings that can help people move beyond myths that
trees are associated with crime, and have documented how environmental
inequities were created by the zoning process when Baltimore city was majority
white, and have shown how amenities and hazards are currently differentially
distributed in Baltimore’s underserved white and African American neighborhoods. We have helped people understand the buried
streams in their neighborhoods, and the relationship of what they plant to a
milder local climate and the quality of water flowing toward their beloved bay
– and crabs.
Our contributions may help people whose horizons are
painfully close, to see some connections to the larger world. Maybe that’s a step in empowering people to
claim more of the roster of connections that can overcome the long shadow of
exclusion that falls so oppressively on people and places we love in Baltimore.
Some Background Sources
Boone, Christopher
G. 2002. An assessment and explanation of environmental inequity in Baltimore.
Urban Geography 23 581-595.
Coates, Ta-Nehesi. 2015. “The Myth of Police Reform”
Coates, Ta-Nehesi. 2009. The Beautiful Struggle: A Father,
Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. Spiegel &
Grau.
Coates, Ta-Nehesi. 2014. “The Case for Reparations”
Friedersdorf, Connor. 2015. “Two States of Emergency in
Baltimore”
Geldenhuys,
Odette. 1995. “Housing Segregation:
Apartheid in Baltimore.” Baltimore Sun. Tribunedigital-Baltimoresun, March 17,
1995. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-03-17/news/1995076191_1_racial-segregation-zoning-ordinance-apartheid.
Graham, David.
2015. “The Paradox at the Heart of
Police Brutality Protests”
New York
Times. 2015. “The Timeline of Freddie Gray’s Arrest and the Charges Filed”
Home to ‘Lot of Fries’
New York Times. 2015. “Hard but
Hopeful Home to ‘Lot of Freddies’”
Olson, Karen.
1991. Old west Baltimore: segregation, African-American culture, and the
struggle for equality. Pages 57-80 in
E. Fee, editor. The Baltimore book: new views on local history. Temple
University Press, Philadelphia.
Olson, Sherry H.
1997. Baltimore: the building of an American city. The Johns Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore.
Reid, Ira De A.
1935. The Negro Community of Baltimore:
A Summary Report of a Socal Study conducted for the Baltimore Urban League,
Baltimore.
Troy, Austin, J.
M. Grove, and J. O'Neil-Dunne. 2012. The relationship between tree canopy and
crime rates across an urban-rural gradient in the greater Baltimore region.
Landscape and Urban Planning 106:262-270.
Wilkerson, Isabel. 2011. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of
America’s Great Migration. Vintage
Books, New York.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
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.
--------------------------------------------------------
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.]
-------------------------------------------------------
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 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.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
The 2015 BES Data Jam: A Contest of Science, Creativity, and Communication
The idea of data jamming, exploring openly available data in
a collaborative way, sounds a lot like jazz.
A data jam is an event that brings people together to explore data that intrigue
them, either for some practical or basic scientific reason. Because problem solving and new analyses are
stimulated by an open-ended, creative approach, the idea of improvising
together on a theme is an appropriate one.
One of the most important ways to work with data and to
share its importance is working toward some “story” that the data tell. This is also parallel with jazz in that a jam
explores some rhythmic and thematic foundation, and spins out a musical story
based on those core elements.
 |
| Participants and judges at the 2014 BES Data Jam. |
Of course, a story should be shared, for the delight of an
audience or for the lesson it imparts to life as it is lived.
So put all these elements together and you have a sense of
the BES Data Jam to be held this Spring.
Students – either individuals or teams -- are challenged to use BES data
and to present them in engaging, novel ways.
Each Data Jam participant or team will produce a poster summarizing
the project and its findings. But the presentation will also include some other,
more artistic display – such as a video, song, photograph(s), drawings, poem, or
any creative product that embodies something about the insights from the data
analysis. The winning projects will be
judged by scientists and communicators for scientific soundness and creativity
of the presentation. The idea is to do
things that engage the creativity and collaborative spirit of the student
researchers and teams, but which also engage people beyond the sciences.
The details about registering for and participating in the
Data Jam are here http://beslter.org/frame5-stuff.html. Students and their teachers should have a
look at the materials describing the Data Jam and get their scientific and
artistic creative juices flowing.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Urban Ecology: Knowing or Making?
Our friend and colleague, Alex Felson, of the Yale School of
Architecture and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies has a unusual
perspective on what urban ecology is and does.
Trained as a landscape architect, urban designer and as an ecological
scientist, his perspective is quite unusual among urbanists. You can find information about his work and
laboratory here: http://uedlab.yale.edu/
He often argues that urban ecological science is about
understanding the city, suburbs and exurbs, as a given. Science seeks to determine the patterns,
mechanisms, processes and dynamics that characterize existing urban
ecosystems. In contrast architects,
planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and engineers intend to make
the city-suburb-exurban system, in part or in whole, de novo or repurposed. The big contrast is between knowing and
making.
Such a contrast is useful in highlighting the range of
stances about the city as a subject.
Alex emphasizes that working with designers – that inclusive community
of people who design or change urban systems – forces ecologists to engage in
the process of city making. Bridging the
difference between knowing and making is a significant opportunity for
ecological scientists. But there is a
variety of ways to accomplish such bridging.
Individual people can be trained and practiced in both
ecological research and the theory and practice of urban design (in the
broadest sense – architecture, landscape architecture, engineering). Currently, that is the rare bird. There are not many people who are trained
like that.
Alternatively, people who are trained as designers – the makers
-- and those trained in ecological research – can interact through the design
process as practiced in architectural firms, municipal planning departments,
and sustainability offices. Ideally,
engagement of makers and researchers should be constant through the entire
design process, from inception through construction, through assessment of
performance of the built project.
Feedbacks between knowing and making should be a constant spiral of interaction
and reflection.
Thinking about designs as experiments, as both envisioned
and built projects and as assessments of the performance of the projects, is a
real advance (Felson and Pickett 2005, Felson et al. 2013). This is a method and philosophy that Alex has
promoted for a long time. Makers and
knowers can share hats. Makers must know
(as they do via site analysis and observing urbanistic successes and failures),
and knowers can be a part of making. The
dichotomy is ultimately a false one. In
addition, monitoring should not be an optional after-the-fact activity, rarely
funded or contracted, and thus rarely done.
Rather, knowing and making can be combined in an ongoing, seamless
process.
Urban ecology and urban design can both be improved by the
union of knowing and making. Many
ecologists have always been interested in making – conservation, restoration, and
management were passions of many of the founders of modern ecology. For example, Frederic Clements (Clements 1935), the pioneering theorist of
plant community dynamics, was deeply exercised by wanting to restore damaged
prairie lands. Other members of the
first generation of American ecologists, such as Victor Shelford, were the instigators
of such practically motivated organizations as The Nature Conservancy. Contemporary expressions of the marriage of
knowing and making are found in the Ecological Society’s Earth Stewardship
Initiative, which calls ecologists to be engaged – along with other disciplines
and making professions – in helping to shape sustainable futures (Chapin et al. 2010).
Urban ecology has much to gain from an smoother connection between
knowing and making. It may be time to
retire the contrast, at least as a community, if not as individual renaissance-style
polymaths. As the world becomes
increasingly urban, making and knowing can’t remain far apart.
Bibliography
Chapin, F. S., S. R. Carpenter, G. P. Kofinas, C. Folke, N. Abel, W. C.
Clark, P. Olsson, D. M. S. Smith, B. Walker, O. R. Young, F. Berkes, R. Biggs,
J. M. Grove, R. L. Naylor, E. Pinkerton, W. Steffen, and F. J. Swanson. 2010.
Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution 25:241-249.
Clements, F. E.
1935. Experimental ecology in the public service. Ecology 16:342-363.
Felson, A. J.,
M. A. Bradford, and T. M. Terway. 2013. Promoting Earth Stewardship through
urban design experiments. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11:362-367.
Felson, A. J.
and S. T. A. Pickett. 2005. Designed experiments: new approaches to studying
urban ecosystems. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 3 549-556.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
The Human Ecosystem: What's Missing?
The human ecosystem concept is one of the most common tools
used in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER.
Adopted from a team of social ecologists and sociologists who were
involved in community forestry in the Himalayas, the application of such
approaches to underserved areas in American cities, and the conservation and
management of US National Parks, the concept is remarkably broad and
adaptive. The human ecosystem is not
necessarily tuned to emphasizing the intellectual flavor of the week or most
current headline issue for cities, urbanization, sustainability, or development. However, its inclusiveness, nested hierarchical
nature, and adaptability makes it well suited to dealing with shifting or even
new emphases in social-ecological systems research and application (Figure 1).
 |
| Figure 1. The Human Ecosystem Framework (Adapted from Machlis et al. 1997) |
What are some of the hot topics that might seem to be missed
in our discussions or presentations, but which in fact have a home in the human
ecosystem framework?
Political ecology.
This is at once a scholarly area and a
subject of activist attention. As a
scholarly field, it examines the relationships of politics, economics, and
environment. As a social movement, it
focuses on the inequitable distribution of benefits and costs of environmental
decisions. The social movement can be
seen as a part of a larger social or environmental justice agenda.
The multidimensional relationships with which political
economy is concerned exercise several components of the human ecosystem
framework. Among the bioecological features,
catalogued in the “ecosystems pattern and process foundations” component of the
framework, many are relevant, including the distribution of energy, water,
nutrient, and biomass resources, the kinds and levels of contaminants and
pollution of air, water, and soil, and the heterogeneous or mosaic distribution
of all of these factors. Heterogeneity
is important because control of access to resources, exposure to hazards, or
distribution of benefits is subject to social – that is power and political –
control. Not all persons, groups, or institutions
may be uniformly represented across a spatial mosaic. The social control of access, exposure, and
benefit engages many of the components of the human ecosystem framework. The social ordering by factors of identity, rank
hierarchies, and norms are key to the differential power relationships in human
ecosystems. Social rank hierarchy can further be
broken down into ranks based on wealth, control of territory, social status,
knowledge as a kind of capital, and, tellingly, power. Among the social and cultural foundations,
the distribution of populations, including by race, class, gender, or
ethnicity, and the distribution of information by various institutions may
reflect power relationships. Of course
the access to or participation in the institutions of sustenance, health,
justice, education, etc. are also dependent on power relationships. Other aspects of the human ecosystem
framework (Figure 1) can also be used to investigate and explain, and therefore
intervene in, power relationships in the urban social-ecological systems.
Technology.
Recently, our colleague N.B. Grimm has
emphasized the fact that social-ecological systems have significant
technological content. Grimm at the 2013
Congress of Urban Ecology, the first such international meeting of the Society
of Urban Ecology (SURE), introduced the term Social-Ecological Technical
System, or SETS to emphasize the role of technology in how people think about
urban ecosystems.
This healthy reminder and highlight does no violence to the
human ecosystem framework. A classical
representation of the significance of technology in human environment
relationships is the POET model. Under
this general model, environmental change is said to be a function of human
population, the way that humans are organized, and the technology
available. Explicit recognition of the
role of technology in urban systems appears in the classical work of Borchert (1967),
who notes that urban form in the United States shifted with the
introduction of new technologies.
Emphasizing transportation technology, Borchert proposed five epochs of
American urban change: 1) sail and wagon (1790-1830), 2) steam powered ships
and initial rail roads (1830-1870), 3) national steam rail network (1870-1920),
4) interstates and propeller air transport, and finally 5) satellites and jet propulsion. American urban transformation continues, with
other epochs hypothesized to represent the “slow growth” proposed in the 1970s
of the oil embargo (Phillips and Brun 1978), or perhaps an epoch defined by the
technology integrating global finance, manufacturing, and consumption. In any event, the significance of
technological innovation, change, and even retrenchment are clearly major
components and drivers of urban change. These latter technologies have a great deal to do with the current global teleconnections of urban systems with each other and with more rural and wild lands (Boone et al 2014).
Baltimore is a prime example of the role of shifting
technologies. For instance, the urban
fabric of Baltimore, as described in Hayward and Belfoure (1999), shifted markedly
with each transition -- from the walking city, through the city of horsedrawn
trolleys, through the electric commuter rail, through the automobile era. The industrial power of Baltimore similarly
reflects major technological shifts, from the water power of the “fall line”
through wood fueled steam, through coal powered manufacturing and steel
production. Other overlapping shifts,
such as the opening up of the American South and Southwest with the
availability of air conditioning technology there, and government policy for
the location of defense industries away from the vulnerability of the east
coast so feared during World War II, played a role in Baltimore’s
post-industrial shift to a joint service, tourism, and knowledge footing.
In the Human Ecosystem Framework, technology appears
foundationally in such things as the source of energy (e.g. water power, vs.
wood, vs. coal), or the path of water flow (the location at the fall line
between the Piedmont and the Coastal Plain).
Technology also is reflected in the amassing and deployment of labor, as
in the contrast between slavery and voluntary immigration as sources, and the
shift in capital investment in water-mill industry and canals versus the
creation of America’s first long haul railroad – the Baltimore and Ohio.
The technologies available and the pursuits
different technologies make available have powerful influence on social
identity, demographic structure, community and neighborhood cohesion and the
like. For example Baltimore still
embraces a historical identity as a seafaring town. This is shown by the fact that a waterfront
neighborhood is still referred to as Canton, in honor of Baltimore’s fast
clipper ships that cemented trade between China and the U.S. East Coast. Or the fact that Fells Point, the location of
Baltimore’s first deep water port, still retains the ameities and reputation as a
freewheeling entertainment district reflecting its early tradition of hosting
sailors on leave. The coal-fired
industrial era is honored in the Middle Class Mythology of Baltimore and its
blue collar ethos. These things are all
features that find a home in the human ecosystem framework, for example in
cultural myths, social identity, and temporal cycles of change in demography
and institutional and organizational structures.
Infrastructure.
Another hot topic these days is
infrastructure. Strictly speaking,
infrastructure is what undergirds the various components of a system. Infra means below. It is the supporting structure, linkages,
flows in any system. The human ecosystem
may seem to be blind to the built and engineered components of urban
ecosystems. This is because the human
ecosystem framework assumes those physical foundations. In 1997, we worked to refine understanding of
the bioecological foundations of the human ecosystem. The original discussions by Machlis and
colleagues certainly included the bioecological and biophysical aspects of
human ecosystems in the “resource system” component. Perhaps because buildings, streets, supply
pipes, electrical wires, railroads, sewers, storm drains, and so on are such
conspicuous parts of urban ecosystems, we hardly felt the need to call
attention to them. Cities are so often
defined based on density of built structures and of human inhabitants that
pointing toward buildings and infrastructure could be tacitly assumed.
However, a later description of the human ecosystem as a
model template showing major kinds of components and their connections
attempted to make this assumption clear.
Cadenasso et al. (2006) is a good example of this integration of built –
and hence infrastructural – components into general interactive and
classificatory models of urban ecosystems (Figure 2).
There is nothing wrong with pointing to the various components of
systems as infrastructure, but in a sense, that seems redundant with saying
that an urban place is a human ecosystem comprising social, biotic, built, and
physical (e.g. soil, topography, climate) components. Infrastructure is just another word for
components, really. The big idea is that
cities, suburbs, and exurbs are systems that contain many specific features and
connections, and that those span and connect biology, physical environment,
buildings, social processes and the myriad feedbacks among components.
 |
| Figure 2. A process model template of the human ecosystem. |
A healthy outcome of the infrastructure label may be helping
people to remember the often invisible biological components of cities,
suburbs, and towns. Infrastructure is
now often spoken of as gray, blue, and green.
This division suggests that the complex system of the city or more
broadly, the urban region, depends on services and structures provided by
plants, animals, and microbes, and that these services emerge not only from
partly or (almost) entirely engineered features, but also from parks, yards,
street plantings, derelict field and lots, open streams, wetlands, and
freeflowing atmosphere. Planning,
design, management, policy, and education will be better served, and will
better serve the human population when the contributions of biological
infrastructures and their components are understood and effectively employed.
Conclusion
The message here is that the human ecosystem framework
(Figure 1), a hierarchical enumeration of the kinds of biophysical and social
structures, resources, processes, and outcomes that make up not only cities and
towns, but also wilderness and production landscapes, is adequate to include contemporary and important concerns of power, justice, technology, and infrastructure. The human ecosystem framework can be considered a causal hierarchy, in
which general causes or factors are broken down into more specific mechanisms
and interactions. Specific models of
human (in general) and urban (in particular) ecosystem structure, function, and
dynamics will draw upon several to many of the ideas and features included in
the human ecosystem framework.
The framework is complemented by a process model template
(Figure 2). This process model template
emphasizes that urban systems are composed of biological components and their
interactions, physical environments and their links, social structures and
interactions, and built components and the interactions among them. This model template emphasizes the
comprehensiveness of kinds of components of cities, suburbs, and exurbs, as
well as the interactions among the various components.
Thus, rather than neglecting important contemporary topics in
social, engineering, historical, and political realms, urban ecology has
frameworks and model templates that in fact can easily accommodate these
features. Technology is a part of the
built environment, Power is an aspect of the social structures, and
infrastructure is a way to group various built components, networks, and
interactions.
References
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.
Borchert, J. R. 1967. American metropolitan evolution.
Geographical Review 57:301-332.
Cadenasso, M. L., S. T. A. Pickett, and J. M. Grove. 2006.
Dimensions of ecosystem complexity: heterogeneity, connectivity, and history.
Ecological Complexity 3:1-12.
Hayward, M. E. and C. Belfoure. 1999. The Baltimore
rowhouse. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
Machlis, G. E., J. E. Force, and W. R. Burch. 1997. The human ecosystem. 1. The human ecosystem as an organizing concept in ecosystem manageme
Phillips, P. D., and S. D. Brunn. 1978. Slow Growth: A New Epoch of American Metropolitan Evolution. Geographical Review 68:274–292.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
The Kind of Solution A City Is
A while ago I wrote about Jane Jacobs’ insight that cities
were complex systems[i]. The stone that she dropped in the urban pond
in 1961 has rippled widely, and the ideas of cities as complex adaptive
systems, with emergent properties, good and bad resilience, and non-linear
dynamics now guide much cutting edge urban research.
Of course, when Jacobs used the word problem, she meant an
intellectual problem to be solved, and her answer suggested complex systems
theory as an approach to understanding cities.
But the word “problem” also calls to mind an antonym. To every problem there might be considered to
be a solution. In this spirit, with
apologies to Jane Jacobs, I ask what kind of a solution a city is.
To get to my answer, I do have to admit that some urbanists
have interpreted cities as literal problems, in the negative sense. For example, members of the Chicago School of
Urban Sociology in the 1920s emphasized urban pathologies. They contrasted the issues that existed in
cities with the ideal of village and rural life as they experienced it in turn
of the 20th century America.
They studied such things as competition among immigrant communities and the
distribution and behavior of gangs. Of
course, there are real negatives associated with cities, including pollution,
disease contagion, crowding and stress, for example. Recent research by Bettencourt and West
(2010) has pointed out several negative factors, such as crime, that increase
at greater than linear rates with city size.
The Lure of the City
 |
| A design for urban farming in vacant lands in West Baltimore. From an urban design studio supervised by Brian McGrath and Victoria Marshall. |
In spite of the negatives of urban living, cities continue to draw humanity to them. Urban areas
are seen as a solution by societies, governments, individuals, and households
who vote with their feet or with their policies. Edward Glaeser (2011) has discussed at length
the draws that urban areas clearly hold for people and institutions. For instance, cities in the broadest sense,
are a prime locus of innovation. The
serendipitous interactions of knowledge workers in cafes, bars, restaurants,
and informal gatherings are important sources of new ideas and approaches. Interestingly, the well known power of social
media, which can theoretically operate at a global scale in service of
creativity, have not replaced the sparks of face-to-face interaction among diverse
people. Institutions such as businesses
and universities clearly recognize the power of the city as a source of
creative interaction.
But individuals also yearn for the city for their own
reasons. People seek access to health
care, education, jobs, consumer goods, and excitement. In particular, some urban migrants seek
release from the strictures of tradition, the anonymity to pursue a lifestyle
not sanctioned in a less urban setting, or to replace a livelihood taken away
by industrial agriculture or resource exhaustion in the countryside. These lures, presented briefly in narrative
form can be considered the services or opportunities provided by urban areas.
Economies of scale are another way to address the lures of
the city. Again, Bettencourt and West
(2010) provide statistical meat on the narrative bones. They show over a range of city sizes a clear
savings in terms of per capita infrastructure, resource use, creative products,
and so on. There is roughly a 15%
savings in many areas of urban structure and process compared to urban
population size. In a sense, cities and
larger urban areas exist to provide these solutions, these lures.
The Contexts for Solutions: Four Dimensions
“The” city is not just one kind of solution, however. McHale and colleagues (submitted) identify
four dimensions of contemporary urbanization: Diversity, Complexity, Diffuseness,
and Connectivity. These four
characteristics are intertwined and interacting. Together they describe what is new and
exciting about cities for an urban ecologist.
The conceptual space identifies the realms in which new solutions for
sustainability and resilience can be sought in urban social-ecological systems.
Diversity. Looking at
urbanization and urban change around the world reveals a vast diversity of
forms. The wealthy urban cores of Europe
surrounded by less well off or segregated suburbs; the Post-World War II sprawl
of the United States with thinning and sometimes even shrinking cores; the
megacities or Asia; the metropolises of India and Latin America dotted with
favelas and shantytowns; the urbanizing former rural “homelands” of South
Africa are a part of the great global diversity of urban settlements. No single simple model describes all the
urban systems around the world, or even in a single country any more.
Complexity. The early
history of cities was marked by compactness and often clear differentiation of
districts of cosmological significance, trade, residence, and so on. Cities have always been characterized by
heterogeneity of social groups and social standing. Today, urban areas are marked by great
heterogeneity within their perceptual or legal boundaries. Neighborhoods occupied by different ethnic
groups are cheek by jowl, formal and informal institutions divide up the space
of service or influence, networks of transportation span walking, public
modalities, private vehicles, and opportunistic sharing. Such networks are layered and changing, and
intersect with the patchiness of economic, social, biological, political, and
governance features. Urbanists continue
to remark on the stark heterogeneity of urban areas – cities, suburbs, and
exurbs – even as the grain size and patch configuration shift with time and
use.
Diffuseness. Hand in
hand with complexity is diffuseness. The
boundaries within urban areas are often porous and functionally indistinct in
contemporary urban mosaics. Commuters
move great distances, and the direction of travel is often not in a peripheral
to central direction. Many places that
had been considered peripheral under older conceptions of single metropolitan
cores are now destinations for travel that avoids such cores. Diffuseness also extends to governance and
institutional arrangements. The issues
and solutions for environmental and social problems are managed by collections
of governments, non-governmental organizations that operate at various scales,
and linked civil society activities.
Likewise investments and disinvestment span neighborhoods, districts,
municipalities, and different kinds of lands in extensive urban-rural agglomerations.
Connectivity. Closely
linked to diffuseness is connectivity.
The porosity of official and vernacular boundaries within urban regions
means that connections between the different areas and included ecosystem types
can be extensive. But this connectivity
now goes well and commonly beyond any particular urban node or region. Global connections of finance, resources,
wastes, cultural influences, talent, and livelihood are rife. Consequently, teleconnections or connections
at a distance are now contribute much to the form and functioning of urban
regional landscapes. These connections
affect farms, rangelands, forest lands, marine and coastal fisheries, for
example, as well as more obviously urban places.
Implications for City as Solutions
 |
| A typology of water management designs based on how they use vegetated and non-vegetated components. Figure by Brian McGrath, Urban Interface. |
The global and regional “facts on the ground” of diversity
of type, spatial complexity of mosaics, diffuseness of various boundaries in
urban territories, and the connectivity at local, regional, and global scales,
must be accounted for in solving urban problems. Indeed, how to exploit these facts is an open
question for improving urban sustainability.
The diversity of urban forms means that there is the
opportunity for trying different solutions in different kinds and contexts of
urban systems. It also means that
solutions must be locally tuned and evaluated.
Complexity means that solutions are likely to be
heterogeneous even in a single urban region.
Adaptive approaches to governance, including that by formal and by informal
institutions, are likely to be required across complex urban regions.
Diffuseness means that solutions – and problems – will sometimes
not respect formal boundaries. Highly
localized control and decision making cannot succeed without at least
accounting for the positive and negative effects on adjoining patches or
ecosystem types, neighborhoods and districts. In fact, governance in both its formal and
informal manifestations can take advantage of positive outcomes of diffuseness
of solutions.
Finally, connectedness means that problems and processes at
great distances may have profound effects on any given urban ecosystem. The accessibility of global markets to global
factories and the length of global supply chains means that cities are at the
whim of corporate decisions and lifestyle changes in countries and continents
distant from their local control.
Solutions must be sensitive to such global connectivity. Chasing investment that may itself be ephemeral
in its geographic focus is a significant challenge. Environmentally sensitive attempts to buffer
a system from capricious decisions elsewhere are certainly called for, but
planning for adaptive resilience rather than relying only on the rigidity of
hard buffers is a major opportunity.
The Inclusive Sustainability of the Urban
A final opportunity for solution exists. As the world population becomes increasingly urban,
there may be a tendency to forget about the needs, wellbeing, and influences of
those who still live in areas designated as rural. Some nation’s policies are intensely urban
focused, such as in China. Other
countries, such as those in Africa, face projected increases in populations
such that the urban tide cannot help but rise.
Rural invisibility is a danger in such situations. Not only must new and existing urban
residents be protected from the vulnerabilities of rapid or ill-placed urban
development, and exclusion from decision making processes about social and
environmental services, but rural residents are at risk as well in this
transition. The connectivity of the
urban and the rural in rapidly urbanizing countries is extraordinary. In Asia and in Africa, for example, “circular
migration” for work and in cities and the resultant disruptions of social
capital in both city and countryside are existing or emerging issues. In China, for example, the problem is
recognized in policies of “urban-rural integration” which aim to narrow the gap
in wealth and services between village and city residents.
The diversity, complexity, diffuseness, and connectivity of urban
settlements and rural and wild lands around the world, in specific municipalities,
and in urban megaregions means that sustainability itself becomes a spatially
and conceptually complicated set of goals and trajectories. The kind of solution a city is likewise becomes
a multi-dimensional, spatially extensive approach to sustainability.
Bibliography
Bettencourt, L. and G. West. 2010. A unified theory of urban
living. Nature 467:912-913.
Glaeser, E. 2011. Triumph of the city: how our greatest
invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier. Penguin
Press, New York.
McHale, Melissa R., STA Pickett, Olga Barbosa, David N Bunn,
Mary L Cadenasso, Dan L Childers, Meredith Gartin, George Hess, David M Iwaniec, Timon McPhearson, M Nils Peterson,
Alexandria K Poole, Louie Rivers III,
Shade T Shutters, and Weiqi Zhou. A New
Global Urban Realm: Complex, Connected,
Diffuse, and Diverse Socio-Ecological Systems. Sustainability, submitted.
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