Urban Ecology, Ecological Footprint And Eco-City

Cities are currently home to fifty per cent of the world’s population and use over 75 per cent of the world’s resources, figures that are expected to increase over the next fifty years, and consequently cities play a major role in the environmental impacts people have on the planet. As Blutstein puts it, “If we are going to succeed in sustainability it is going to live or die in the cities” (Blutstein, 2005). For this reason the environmental impact cities have on the planet has become a major topic for discussion over the past thirty years with multiple ways of measuring their environmental impacts surfacing. Three of the more effective and well-known measures include urban ecology, ecological footprint and eco-city indicators. These measures

Urban Ecology is a measure used to determine and analyze the ‘inputs’, ‘practices’ and ‘outputs’ of a city in relation to their impacts on the environment. Urban Ecology covers the broadest range of factors, from the three measures, although this does not mean the information gathered is useless, far from it. ‘Inputs’ looks at the impacts, on a regional and global scale, that the resources required to keep a city running have on the environment. ‘Practices’ analyzes what humans do with those resources and how activities within the city impact upon the environment, in a local context. ‘Outputs’, similar to ‘inputs’, is concerned with the issue on a regional and global scale, and examines the waste that is produced by cities e.g. solid waste, liquid waste, hazardous waste and air pollution, and its subsequent impact on the environment. Urban Ecology research is particularly concerned with ecology in urban contexts and energy flows throughout a city (Marzulff, 2008). ‘Inputs’, in this context, is usually concerned with resource extraction, production and

These reports provide a snapshot of environmental indicators at regular intervals and allows governments to build a picture regarding a certain topic or area over time, which allows them to evaluate the success of plans. In the State of Australian City reporting, up to 2012, the reports focused on three indicators water, energy and waste to determine problems in Australian sustainability and implement plans to combat them (Jacobs et al. 2014). This style of environmental measurement is on a very small scale and consequently allows for in depth analysis of a specific local topic, which may not have been combatted anywhere else before. This is the narrowing of both previous measures as it allows for focus on a specific topic[s] and for obvious gaps in the current system to be easily identified and addressed. This is not possible with the other two measures, although they provide a broader scope.

In conclusion, all three of the measures have their strengths and weaknesses with Eco-City indicators analyzing smaller scale issues, ecological footprint providing a snapshot of cities sustainability, and urban ecology examining the broader issue at large. The most effective measure would be all three, used in conjunction, with an ecological footprint providing a snapshot of the state of sustainability for a city, urban ecology determining