Ecology of city : levels and components

Abstract

Currently, more than half of the world‘s population live in urban areas and thus cities have become areas of intensive intersections of interests. As a major place for business, living and gathering cities (via citizens) create great pressure on nature; thus, cities can be treated as “battlefields” particularly considering citizens needs and environment. The article discusses current conception of “ecology of a city” at different scales while highlighting the need of a comprehensive approach. A two layer method is proposed, i. e., 1) global and 2) local stages according to which cities can be regarded as: 1) exporters of ecological burden and 2) internal producers of pollution. Although both processes are interrelated and intertwined separate responsible components of each layer are extracted: at a global level the main input from cities comes from energy and waste management sectors while at a local level the key problems are air pollution and noise. The article argues that ecological assessment necessary in urban planning should be done based on aforementioned scheme and calls for the development of it.