Abstract
Promising conceptual and procedural theoretical frameworks have been proposed for sustainably balancing human use with ecological concerns. In the first reading, “Ecological Footprints for Beginners,” published in Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees offer a useful accounting tool and form of impact capacity analysis. The ecological footprint is useful for estimating the resource consumption of an urban landscape and the capacity to absorb the corresponding waste generated by the residents, compared with a similar landscape. The authors introduce a preliminary framework for estimating the “ecological bottom line of sustainability” and conclude that we tend to underestimate the ecosystem services or benefits we receive from nature.
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Notes
- 1.
Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, “Ecological Footprints for Beginners,” in Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1996).
- 2.
Ibid., 57.
- 3.
Peter Calthorpe, “The Region,” in The New Urbanism: Toward Architecture of Community, Peter Katz (ed.) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994).
- 4.
Anthony Downs, “Smart Growth: Why We Discuss It More Than We Do It,” Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no. 4 (2005), 367–378.
- 5.
Frederick Steiner, “Landscape Ecological Urbanism: Origins and Trajectories,” Landscape and Urban Planning 100, no. 4 (2011), 333–337.
- 6.
Crawford S. Holling, “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4 (1973), 41–42. In 1973, ecologist Holling at the University of British Columbia published his pioneering article, “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems,” in which he introduced a new perspective on understanding the behavior of ecological systems. He proposed that their performance could be established by two distinct properties: resilience and stability. Resilience “determines the persistence of relationships within a system and is a measure of the ability of these systems to absorb changes of state variables, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist. In this definition, resilience is a property of the system and persistence or probability of extinction is the result. Stability, on the other hand, is the ability of a system to return to an equilibrium state after a temporary disturbance. The more rapidly it returns, and with the least fluctuation the more stable it is. In this definition stability is the property of the system and the degree of fluctuation around specific states the result.”
Since Holling’s publication, new thinking has emerged about how we grasp the behavior of ecosystems. Holling revealed that the stability and resilience perspectives on the behavior of ecological systems might produce very different approaches to the management of landscape resources (Holling, 1993). A management strategy based on the stability viewpoint emphasizes the equilibrium and maintenance of the structure and function of the ecosystems. On the other hand, the resilience viewpoint stresses the need for their persistence by keeping options open and recognizing that ecosystems comprise interacting heterogeneous elements connected by the flows of energy, materials, and species. Resilience theory is becoming very appealing to the disciplines of ecology and planning.
- 7.
Jianguo Wu and Tong Wu, “Ecological Resilience as a Foundation for Urban Design and Sustainability,” in Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design: Linking Theory and Practice for Sustainable Cities (New York: Springer, 2013), 211–229.
- 8.
Anne Whiston Spirn, “Ecological Urbanism: A Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities,” working paper (Cambridge: MIT, 2013).
- 9.
Anne Whiston Spirn, The Granite Garden, Urban Nature and Human Design (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
- 10.
Forster Ndubisi, “Sustainable Regionalism: Evolutionary Framework and Prospects for Managing Metropolitan Landscapes,” Landscape Journal 27, no. 1 (2008), 51–68.
- 11.
Anne Spirn, “Ecological Urbanism: A Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities,” 4.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Steiner, “Landscape Ecological Urbanism: Origins and Trajectories,” 333–337.
- 14.
Meg Calkins, The Sustainable Sites Handbook: A Complete Guide to the Principles, Strategies, and Best Practices for Sustainable Landscapes (New Jersey: Wiley, 2012).
- 15.
Wackernagel and Rees, “Ecological Footprints for Beginners,” 56.
- 16.
Ewing, B., D. Moore, S. Goldfinger, A. Oursler, A. Reed, and M. Wackernagel, The Ecological Footprint Atlas 2010 (Oakland, CA: Global Footprint Network, 2010).
- 17.
Steiner, “Landscape Ecological Urbanism: Origins and Trajectories,” 333–337.
- 18.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, “The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,” (2005), accessed June 19, 2013, http://www.unep.org/maweb/en/index.aspx.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
David C. Rouse and Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa, Green Infrastructure: A Landscape Approach (Chicago, IL: APA Planning Advisory Service, 2013), 1.
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Ndubisi, F.O. (2014). Introduction to Part Seven. In: Ndubisi, F.O. (eds) The Ecological Design and Planning Reader. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-491-8_44
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