ABSTRACT
A key task for urban ecology is to work with natural processes to prepare towns and cities for the future. Urban ecology emerges from these chapters as a dynamic, wide field of inquiry that has to encompass fundamental ecological study, but also great social, political, and economic awareness and a sense of landscape and built environment dynamics. To adapt to different conditions of varying levels of urban socio-economic conditions, from less developed, fast transition to highly developed, ecopolis development involves focusing on some or all of a set of evolutionary goals: ecological sanitation; ecological security; ecological industry; ecological landscape; and eco-culture. The European Union has encouraged green infrastructure planning. United Nation-Habitat is stressing the importance of accessible good quality greenspaces in urban areas. Urban ecology has to be at the heart of planning transport based metropolitan regions and mega urban complexes, such as those of the Pearl River Delta or the Valley of Mexico.
