ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the benefits of green infrastructure networks for biodiversity, and suggests strategies for increasing the extent, performance, and connectivity of these networks to promote urban habitats and native species. The value of parks and preserves for urban biodiversity conservation has been written about extensively elsewhere. Planting lower-maintenance trees or flowers in these spaces could reduce the economic and ecological costs of mowing, while increasing air quality and providing habitat for local species of wildlife to traverse the urban matrix. Urban agriculture is a rapidly expanding source of green space in many cities. Future improvements to urban agriculture that benefit biodiversity can come from both top-down and bottom-up sources. In some cities, cemeteries are among the oldest and most established components of urban green infrastructure. Ecological land-use complementation is the idea that land uses in urban areas could synergistically interact to support biodiversity and realize emergent ecological functions when clustered together in different combinations.
