asu in the news 02-06-08 to - ASU News - Arizona State University

ASU in the News
nearby and distant cities,’ Redman said. ’We need to understand the complexity of impacts that rapid
global urbanization has--both within urban boundaries and across landscapes farther away.’ How can
multiple environmental changes be considered in a unified way? One recent approach has been to
view urban systems as organic units: organisms that take up resources and produce wastes.
Such an integrated perspective can be useful for interpreting biogeochemical cycles in cities, and
analyzing their regional and global effects. For example, cities are sources of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases, and human-caused nutrient deposition.
Grimm and colleagues’ article points out that, worldwide, cities alter the behaviors, physiologies,
disease patterns, population densities, morphologies and genetics of city-dwelling organisms. ’Cities
create novel biological communities,’ said Faeth, ’and these communities, no matter how ’unnatural’
they are, are the ones that most humans now, and in the future, will experience.’ Studies of urban
ecology offer critical insights into how we might best reach a sustainable urban future, said Grimm.
’The field of urban ecology has demonstrated that well-designed cities can have less overall impact
on the environment than equivalent rural populations,’ said Jonathan Fink, director of ASU’s Global
Institute of Sustainability. ’The research results in this paper show that an ecological perspective can
help urban planners and engineers find ways for society to live more harmoniously with nature.’
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