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Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design pp 211–229Cite as

Ecological Resilience as a Foundation for Urban Design and Sustainability

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Part of the book series: Future City ((FUCI,volume 3))

Abstract

Cities are prototypical complex adaptive systems that are faced with a myriad of disturbances, most of which are unforeseen and unpredictable. Urban design principles are increasingly influenced by ecological ideas of heterogeneity, non-linearity, hierarchy, and multiple stable states. Ecological resilience has emerged as a major approach to understanding and managing social-ecological systems, including urban design. This theory suggests that, to design sustainable cities, our emphasis should be on creating and maintaining urban resilience – the ability of a city to persist without changing its basic structure, function, and identity. What underlies a truly resilient city is not how stable it has appeared, but whether it can withstand an unforeseen shock that would fundamentally alter or erase the city’s identity. For cities to be sustainable, urban design must explicitly account for the influence of both internal and external changes now and in the future.

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Acknowledgements

JW’s research in urban ecology and sustainability science has been ­supported in part by National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-0508002 (Biocomplexity/CNH) and DEB 9714833 (CAP-LTER).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences and Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Jianguo Wu

  2. Center for Forestry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Tong Wu

Authors
  1. Jianguo Wu
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  2. Tong Wu
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Correspondence to Jianguo Wu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Sharon Turnpike 2801, Millbrook, 12545-0129, New York, USA

    S.T.A. Pickett

  2. , Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Shields Avenue 1, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    M.L. Cadenasso

  3. , Sch Constructed Environments, Parsons the New School for Design, East 13th Street 25, New York, 10011, New York, USA

    Brian McGrath

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Wu, J., Wu, T. (2013). Ecological Resilience as a Foundation for Urban Design and Sustainability. In: Pickett, S., Cadenasso, M., McGrath, B. (eds) Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design. Future City, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5341-9_10

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