Blackwell Reference Online

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Urban ecology is the study of community structure and organization as manifest in cities and other relatively dense human settlements. Among its major topics, urban ecology is concerned with the patterns of urban community sorting and change by socioeconomic status, life cycle, and ethnicity, and with patterns of relations across systems of cities. Of particular concern is the dynamic evolution of cities and contrast in urban structure across time periods, societies, and urban scale. The notion of community is central to urban ecology; a premise of the ecological approach is that the aggregation of persons into communities has important implications for their life chances, for the behavior of groups, and for aggregate outcomes. A further aspect of community organization lies in its geographic manifestation, although a mere geographic reductionism would not accurately capture the theoretical or empirical approach of the ecological perspective. A sub-area of human ecology – a social science paradigm that seeks to understand the relationship between human organization and its environment, both in terms of physical setting and sustenance – the study of urban ecology has been interdisciplinary. Work in ecology has touched on sociology, demography, geography, economics, and anthropology, usually emphasizing the urban sectors of those disciplines. And at various times, human urban ecology ... log in or subscribe to read full text