Description and Justification:

Cities and towns around the world continue to grow in area and population putting significant stress on local and regional resources while affecting the safety, health and wellbeing of city dwellers of all kinds. This is especially true in the rapidly urbanizing areas of Asia, especially China. Today more than ever in human history there is an urgent need to enhance our understanding of human settlements and to develop appropriate planning and management tools for building and maintaining sustainable cities and towns in the future.

The integrative science of urban ecology and sustainability is at the forefront of developing the knowledge base, conceptual frameworks and tools required to create sustainable, green, and livable human settlements. Historically, much of our understanding of the ecology of urban areas has come from Europe and North America. Over the past few decades significant advances have been made by researchers in Asia as well as in other parts of the world in the study of the multiple dimensions of urban ecosystems and in developing effective planning and management strategies to build and manage sustainable cities. Most significant are the realizations that an urban area is a spatially heterogeneous ecosystem of humans and their “natural” and built environments; and as the study of such an integrated system, urban ecology should include the ecology of cities focusing on the interactions between humans and their environments as well as the sustainability of cities which necessitates the integration between the ecology and planning/design of the urban landscape.

The purpose of this invitation-only workshop is bringing together about 20 scholars from around the world to discuss the key research topics, challenges, opportunities, and solutions in the ecology and sustainability of urban landscapes and regions.  Specifically, the workshop will