urban ecological engineering
Introduction
Urban ecology is a discipline whose object of study is the interrelationships between the inhabitants of an urban agglomeration and their multiple interactions with the environment. It is a discipline with a theoretical field in formation that applies concepts and theories of traditional ecology, but that is nourished by dialogue with other disciplines (urban planning, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, engineering, law and history). It arises, without a doubt, as a reaction against the excessive specialization of each of the areas of knowledge.
Some of its most relevant objectives are the analysis of the urban structure, the quantification of the flows of matter and energy that interrelate the city with its environment and allow its continuity, the study of the impacts produced by different human activities on the environment and the search for multifaceted criteria for the management of cities.
Many lines of work are known, comprising a wide variety of approaches and methods. Different authors have contributed to the significance of urban ecology:
• - Montenegro[1] speaks of urban ecology as consumer systems (homologating the term consumer of traditional ecology, which consumes energy produced by producers, in general vegetation).
• - Bettini[2] also refers to urban ecology, linking it to the notions of functioning, metabolism or energy flow.
• - Di Pace[3] proposes considering the city as an ecosystem - taking up the definition of the ecologist Eugene Odum[4] -. The concept of ecosystem applied to the city allows access to a globalizing approach that makes it easier to think about the structure of a city - and fundamentally to think about its functioning - through ecosystem processes that involve different aspects related to the exchange of matter and the flow of energy.
• - García[5] proposes analyzing the city as a complex system that functions as an organized totality in which the physical-biological environment, production, technology, social organization and the economy are involved.
History
Urban ecology is a relatively young field that studies the interactions between living organisms and their urban environments, but the number of research centers on this topic is growing. The first two urban ecology laboratories in the world were the Urban Ecology Research Laboratory (UERL) at the University of Washington (founded in 2001) and the Urban Ecology Laboratory (LEU) at the Distance University of Costa Rica (founded in 2008). The Washington lab studies urban landscape patterns, ecosystem functions, modeling land cover change, and scenario planning for urban adaptation in Washington state. The Urban Ecology Laboratory in Costa Rica was established in 2008. It is recognized as the first research center dedicated exclusively to the study of tropical urban ecosystems. The Costa Rican laboratory focuses on various aspects of urban ecology, including biodiversity, the impacts of climate change on cities and areas affected by cities (especially tropical highlands), and the interaction between human activities and urban environments.[6].