Welcome to Urban Ecology
Urban Ecology is dedicated to developing harmony with urban planning and nature.
This site highlights all that Urban Ecology has accomplished over the years. We hope these archives inspire you to continue the pursuit of harmony between urban planning and the natural world around us.
Urban Ecology is published to provide information and encourage dialogue on issues related to the urban environment, city and regional planning, and metropolitan affairs.
Urban Ecology gives voice to an ecological urbanism. It encourages readers engaged in urban design, governance, and activism to incorporate ecological sensitivity into their work and to understand the links between the built and natural environments and the many-layered concerns and needs of the people who live in urban settings around the world.
Success Stories!
Below are just a few of our success stories. You can find more details of some of these success stories under our Community Design Consulting section.
Roosevelt Schoolyard Redesign
Manzanita Community / SEED Schoolyard Redesign
Garfield Elementary Schoolyard Redesign
Clinton Park
Oakland, California Challenge The Eastlake neighborhood in Oakland, California, is one of the most diverse communities in that city. It is home to African Americans, Latinos, Southeast Asian immigrants, and Native Americans. Yet Eastlake’s main open space—Clinton...
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East Bay Greenway
The East Bay Greenway Concept Plan details a bicycle and pedestrian pathway that extends from Oakland to Hayward underneath the elevated BART tracks. This twelve mile long greenway runs through some of the poorest neighborhoods in the East Bay, neighborhoods without...
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Nevin Park Re-Design Project
Richmond, CA Background Nevin Park sits at the center of Richmond’s Iron Triangle, an inner city neighborhood that is an historic hub of the City’s African-American community. The Nevin Community Center and the Richmond Museum of History, housed in a landmarked...
read moreCommunity Design Consulting Services
Some of our past projects.
16th Street BART Community Design Plan
The 16th Street BART Community Design Plan is the result of a nine-month community planning process organized to address neighborhood concerns about the 16th Street BART station area in San Francisco. The Community Design Plan provides both general guidelines and...
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Weeks Neighborhood Plan
Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan
Telegraph-Northgate Neighborhood Plan
Just north of downtown Oakland, the Telegraph-Northgate neighborhood displays familiar signs of disinvestment: the major retail corridors are lined with vacant storefronts; the older houses are crumbling; and the parks are filled with graffiti and shards of glass. But...
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Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization
The Clinton Park Plan
Past Articles from Our Journal
You can visit our contact page to submit your own article! Find all our past journal articles here.
Havana’s Self-Provision Gardens
By Angela Moskow Urban agriculture is actively promoted in Havana, Cuba as a means of addressing the acute food scarcity problems of the "Special Period in Peacetime," which developed when Soviet aid and trade were drastically curtailed starting in 1989. During...
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Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York’s World Trade Center
The Habitat II Conference: Moving Slowly Toward Sustainable Cities
by Stephen Wheeler During the first two weeks of June 1996 more than 12,000 urban planners, government officials and activists converged on Istanbul for the United Nation's Conference on Human Settlements, also known as Habitat II or the "City Summit." This...
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Habitat II Conference Tidbits
Participants at the Habitat II City Summit were snowed under by an avalanche of information describing urban development around the world. Following are a few tidbits and gleanings from the conference: The world's urban population will rise from 1.54 billion in 1975...
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Alleys and Backyard Housing
By David Winslow Nestled among the back alleys of many existing neighborhoods is a large, fallow urban resource. Alleys and backyards, if reclaimed as sites for secondary dwellings, could sustain unobtrusive and affordable new housing with only modest increases in...
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City Front Shorts
Ecological Development In The United States
Santa Monica Sustainable Building Guidelines As part of its Sustainable City Program, adopted by the City Council in September 1994, Santa Monica is developing "Sustainable Building Development Guidelines" which may prove a useful model for other cities. A draft...
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Fighting Urban Poverty Around the World
Wilderness in South Central Los Angeles?
Randy Hester Despite its well-deserved bashing for being utterly car-dependent, water-irresponsible and unsustainable, Los Angeles has borne some valuable precedents for keeping and recreating nature in the city. The No Oil fight to save the Santa Monica Bay, the Los...
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Bangkok’s Motorcycle Taxis
Sustainable Development in the United States
Investment Firm Backs New Urbanism Columbus Realty Trust, one of the nation's leading real estate investment firms, is backing "new urbanist"-style housing development. Stating that "Columbus is a proponent of 'New Urbanism'," the firm is seeking to invest in...
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Living in Metro Toronto
by Monika Jaeggi Known for years as one of the most narrow-minded and uncosmopolitan of the British colonial cities, Toronto has become the most culturally diverse city in the world since the 1960s as a result of rapid immigration. International surveys also...
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