Welcome to Urban Ecology

16th Street BART Plazas read more

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...

EastSide Community Cultural Center

Oakland, California Challenge A thriving population of homegrown neighborhood artists has emerged in Oakland’s San Antonio, encouraging community participation in the arts through after-school training programs, events for young adults, street banners and murals,...

Commercial Center Revitalization

Oakland, California Challenge Once home to two movie theaters and a trolley line, Oakland’s 23rd Avenue today has boarded-up storefronts, traffic that speeds by too quickly, and vacant lots that invite criminal activity. Though community members are sometimes divided...

24th Street BART Plazas

24th Street BART Plazas read more

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...

Community Design Consulting Services

Some of our past projects.

Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan

Visitacion Valley Neighborhood Center Plan 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...

Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization

Mission Corridor Plan Commercial Revitalization 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...

The Clinton Park Plan

The Clinton Park Plan read more

Visitacion Valley Community Vision

Visitacion Valley Community Vision read more

Past Articles from Our Journal

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

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...

Combating Supermarket Flight In Los Angeles

By Michelle Mascarenhas Over the past 30 years, supermarket chains in Los Angeles have closed older, less profitable urban stores to build bigger and more modern markets in the suburbs. This trend follows the out-migration of middle-class households from the city....

Communities Making Themselves Heard: Environmental Justice as a Means to Equity

by Enrique Gallardo Since the 1970s, groups of concerned citizens have mobilized in response to environmental degradation in their neighborhoods. The concept of environmental justice originally denoted a negative freedom: the right to live free of environmental harm....

Jobs and Environmental Stewardship in Taiwan

by Randy Hester The waters of Tsengwen River and Chi Ku Lagoon along Taiwan’s southwest coast are the scene of a controversy that is increasingly familiar around the world. Taiwan’s President Lee Tung Hui and many land speculators support a 7000-acre development...

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...

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...

Global Urban Poverty Action Guide

Global Urban Poverty Action Guide read more

Saving Durban’s Medicinal Plants

Rebecca Koffman Every day at the Durban Station Market, street vendors do a booming trade selling plant muti (medicine) to the thousands of commuters who pour into the city-center. In this port city, in South Africa's Eastern Province of Kwazulu-Natal, over 700...

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...

Restoring the Bronx Coastline

Paul Mankiewicz Today's urban estuaries are lined with miles of linear bulkhead and seawall. But just a century ago, they had a highly varied coastline of beaches, marshes, rocky outcrops, bays, cliffs and creek mouths. Where could the immense amount of materials...

Arizona Voters Face Growth Choices

Arizona Voters Face Growth Choices read more

Angola Project Wins Planning, Architecture Contest