Urban Nature and Urban Ecosystem Services
Worldwide more and more people live and work in cities, where urban nature and their ecosystem services are the basis for economic development and social wellbeing. Therefore, how to ensure that cities in the present and future can provide a whole range o
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Urban Nature and Urban Ecosystem Services Wendy Y. Chen
Abstract Worldwide more and more people live and work in cities, where urban nature and their ecosystem services are the basis for economic development and social wellbeing. Therefore, how to ensure that cities in the present and future can provide a whole range of ecosystem services to meet urban dwellers’ needs become a front and center issue in urban resilience and sustainability on the global agenda. This article presents a literature review that explores our understanding about various natural elements in cities (including urban green and blue spaces) and their diverse ecosystem services and some disservices. While the importance of urban nature and urban ecosystem services has been increasingly recognized, the integration of ecological, social and economic understanding of urban ecosystem services into relevant policy making processes is still at an embryonic stage. Some pertinent challenges are highlighted for the theorization and governance of urban ecosystem services.
Keywords Ecosystem services Urban nature green spaces Urban disservices Review
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Urban sustainability
Urban
Diverse Nature in Cities
As a human invention of more recent origin, modern cities are usually stacked with paved streets, concrete buildings, and other man-made structures for residential, commercial, industrial and infrastructural purposes. Over the course of their development throughout the world, much pristine natural features have been removed or replaced (Lundholm and Richardson 2010). For example, original soils are moved and reconfigured and usually the vertical stratification of A and B horizons (where most flora and fauna live) becomes nonexistent (Schaefer 2009). Plants and animals are directly or indirectly extirpated (Pincetl 2012). Thus, cities W.Y. Chen (&) University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 P.Y. Tan and C.Y. Jim (eds.), Greening Cities: Forms and Functions, Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4113-6_9
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are often thought to be separate from nature, a word calling to mind open spaces with lush vegetation, wild animals, or bodies of water. However, even though they frequently escape our notice cities present a mosaic of fragmented habitats and harbour diverse ecological niches ranging from remnant natural, modified natural, semi-natural, emulated natural or entirely human-created habitats with different conditions and resources (Kowarik 2011; Vilisics and Hornung 2009). They retain a surprisingly large amount of species of different taxa (Meffert and Dziock 2013), and sometimes serve as refuges for many endangered species, and thus play significant role in biodiversity conservation (Vilisics and Hornung 2009). Although urbanization has notable effect on biotic homogenization (McKinney 2006), flora in cities has long been recognized as considerably rich in species (Breuste et al. 2008; Kowarik 2011). For example, it has been f
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