Welcome to Urban Ecology

Summary The San Francisco Green Business Team includes Urban Ecology, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SF.DPH), San Francisco Department of the Environment (SFE), and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SF.PUC). This team provides free...

The Living Classroom

San Francisco, California Urban Ecology is partnering with Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) to provide a participatory design process involving four LEJ youth Community Geographers. Urban Ecology will introduce the youth to the concepts involved in site...

Manzanita Community / SEED Schoolyard Redesign

Manzanita Community / SEED Schoolyard Redesign read more

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...

Active and Healthy Parks and Schoolyards

Oakland, California Challenge Residents of Oakland’s Eastlake, Lower San Antonio, and Fruitvale neighborhoods suffer disproportionately from illnesses such as heart disease, hypertension, and asthma. A range of factors contribute to the prevalence of these illnesses...

Visitacion Valley

San Francisco, California Challenge Visitacion Valley in San Francisco, California, has been changing steadily as immigrants from Asia have added to the community’s diversity, and as mounting real estate prices in other parts of San Francisco have driven...

Community Design Consulting Services

Some of our past projects.

The Clinton Park Plan

The Clinton Park Plan read more

Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan

Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan read more

24 th Street BART Plazas Community Design Plan

24 th Street BART Plazas Community Design Plan read more

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...

Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization

Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization read more

Introduction to our Community Design Consulting Program

Urban Ecology's Community Design Program is a cutting-edge example of how a sustainable vision embraces both social justice and environmental health in our cities. In collaboration with grassroots groups in low-income neighborhoods, Urban Ecology creates plans that...

Past Articles from Our Journal

You can visit our contact page to submit your own article! Find all our past journal articles here.

Venice Confronts Population Loss, Environmental Problems

Venice Confronts Population Loss, Environmental Problems read more

Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design

by Douglas Kelbaugh reviewed by Stephen Wheeler One the most important challenges facing urban ecologists currently is to develop a language of urban design that integrates different scales -- the building, site, neighborhood, city and region -- in ways that further...

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...

Texas’ Colonias: Squatter Settlements Become Affordable Housing

by Rachel Peterson Texas has witnessed an unusual pattern of development along its 2,000 mile border with Mexico. Colonias are unincorporated, "informal" rural subdivisions that usually lack water, wastewater service, and paved roads. There are an estimated 1,436 such...

A Letter from the President

I thought I'd take this opportunity to report to you from the front lines of sustainable development. Since September 1996 I've been working with Van der Ryn Architects and the Ecological Design Institute, where we get many opportunities to plan and design using the...

Car Sharing Takes Off in Europe

by Conrad Wagner and Richard Katzev Car sharing is becoming popular in Europe, especially in Switzerland and Germany. In Switzerland a car sharing company, Auto Teilet Genossenschaft (ATG), already has more than 6,000 members, while a similar organization in Germany,...

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...

Signs of Hope: Bay Area Success Stories

Edited by Stephen Wheeler Although the Bay Area is moving away from sustainability in many ways -- in terms of automobile use, resource consumption, suburban sprawl, affordable housing and equity, for example -- it is making progress in other areas. Following...

San Diego Canyons Mix Coyotes and House Cats

Kevin Crooks A century of intensive urban development has destroyed most of the native sage scrub and chaparral habitat in Southern California -- helping to create one of the world's largest epicenters of extinction. Indeed, San Diego has more threatened species of...

Bangkok’s Motorcycle Taxis

Bangkok's Motorcycle Taxis read more

A Brief Reading List On Urban Sustainability

We are often asked by those new to the subject to recommend some initial readings on urban sustainability. Following is a brief listing of some recent works. Many of these books have been reviewed in past issues of The Urban Ecologist, and several are available...

Living in Metro Toronto