Welcome to Urban Ecology

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...

Lisa Gartland Scientific data show temperatures in cities all over the world, from Baltimore and Phoenix to Shanghai and Tokyo, are steadily increasing by one half to one degree Fahrenheit every ten years, and the primary cause isn't global warming. Cities -- urban...

Note: With this issue, we return to a seasonal designation. The first issue of each year will be called Spring, followed by Summer, Fall, and Winter. Visit our contact form to submit articles! Back Issues 2000 Spring -- Designing for Transit and Community Tales from...

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...

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...

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...

by Myron Orfield The forces of polarization — the push of concentrated poverty and the pull of concentrated resources — operate throughout metropolitan regions. Because the dynamics are regional, only a regional approach can change them. There is little that...