Urban Sustainability
Urban Sustainability
Urban Sustainability
DOI 10.1007/s10980-009-9444-7
EDITORIAL
J. Wu (&)
School of Life Sciences and Global Institute of
Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
85287, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Wu
Sino-US Center for Conservation, Energy, and
Sustainability Science (SUCCESS), Inner Mongolia
University, Hohhot, China
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ecologists may choose certain aspects of the landscape to study, but the field as a whole has to answer
the call of our time. Indeed, perspectives that
emphasize the relevance and importance of landscape
ecology to sustainability in general and urban development in particular have increasingly been advocated by landscape ecologists (e.g., Potschin and
Haines-Young 2006; Wu 2006, 2008b; Iverson 2007;
Naveh 2007; Opdam 2007; Nassauer and Opdam
2008; Pickett and Cadenasso 2008; Barrett et al.
2009; Musacchio 2009a; Termorshuizen and Opdam
2009; Pijanowski et al. 2010). Several recent special
issues of this journal, Landscape Ecology, have
focused on the ecology and sustainability of urban
areas, including:
While landscape ecology is increasingly considered relevant to sustainability, its contribution to the
science and practice of sustainability is rather limited
up to date. To move forward, a number of research
questions may be addressed:
What theories, principles, and methods of landscape ecology are pertinent to urban sustainability? How do we operationalize them?
How does landscape pattern or spatial heterogeneity affect urban sustainability?
How do ecological, economic, and social patterns
and processes in urban landscapes change with
scale and interact to influence sustainability?
How do we measure urban landscape sustainability? Are there landscape metrics that can be used
as urban sustainability indicators?
How do we develop landscape models that capture
the essential components and processes of urbanization, so that they can be used to project sustainability trajectories in response to environmental,
economic, social, and institutional changes?
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