Abstract
To benefit from the analogies with ecosystems and organisms, which have been rigorously studied by researchers, it is first necessary to understand the relationship between the two. On the one hand, a city resembles an ecosystem because it is composed of multiple components (e.g., sectors such as the manufacturing industry and agriculture) that resemble living organisms because they exchange materials, energy, and information both with each other and with their environment. Ecosystems don’t really have a metabolism, but do have flows of materials and energy that resemble the metabolic flows in an organism. On the other hand, cities are not living bodies with a beating heart, bones, muscles, and nerves, and they don’t have a simple metabolism that provides materials and energy to different parts of the body.
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Zhang, Y. (2023). Connotations of Urban Metabolism. In: Urban Metabolism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9123-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9123-3_1
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