ABSTRACT
Urban areas are recognizable as dense settlements where specialized, non-rural activities are taking place. Urban areas are seen as functional ecosystems with inputs and outputs of energy and matter. Throughout the world, human societies are becoming more and more urbanized. Urbanization is the process of making a landscape more built-up, industrialized and dominated by close human settlement. The most rapid urbanization is now occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries like South Africa are undergoing many forms of land use and land cover change that are beginning to challenge general perceptions of rural-urban contrasts and the ways in which their socio-ecological systems interact. Thus there is no single ecology of towns and cities, but a transitional ecological gradient from the urbanized countryside to the totally built centres of urban areas. Urban ecology is the branch of ecology dealing with the environment and its organisms specifically in the context of built-up areas dominated by human settlement and human activities.
