Sustainable Urban Ecosystems in China

The goals of this Pursuit are to establish a knowledge base and related investigator network for co-development of research questions and applications of urban ecology to metropolitan design and planning in China. This Pursuit will synthesize current knowledge in urban ecology related to the sustainability of cities with knowledge of ecological functions and patterns, and human population distributions and trends in China.

This synthesis will allow project participants to:

• characterize and summarize the relevance of existing knowledge about urban ecology and the sustainability of cities for metropolitan design and planning in China;
• anticipate key challenges to ecological wealth related to the urbanization of China;
• anticipate the efficacy of knowledge of urban ecology and sustainability for managing and building ecological wealth in China;
• identify research methods and questions that could be pursued iteratively through international collaboration in concert with ongoing metropolitan planning, design, development, and management applications in China;
• provoke innovation in metropolitan design and planning policy and applications; and
• contribute knowledge of urban ecology and sustainability to affect ecological design and planning of cities globally with special relevance to the developing world.

Urban ecologists, landscape ecologists, geographers, and ecological designers and planners who work in China, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Australia will collaborate in this Pursuit, which will alternate meetings at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) with a key workshop in Shanghai, sponsored by Shanghai Key Lab for Urban Ecological Processes and Eco-Restoration (SHUES).