ABSTRACT
Consideration of urban ecosystems and their ecology in urban planning and design is important for ensuring that urban regions maintain as high an environmental quality as possible. This in turn means that they may be more sustainable, with an enhanced capacity to provide ecosystem services, as well as making them more pleasurable environments in which to reside. There has always been an element of integrating nature into urbanisation, but as both urbanisation and ecological awareness have increased in recent decades, the objectives, principles and techniques applied to urban planning and design have changed. Urban planning usually relates to longer-term strategies and policies relating to land-use change across broad spatial areas, while design is short-term, fine-scale implementation of land-use change or modification, though the two are clearly interrelated and in many cases the terms are used somewhat interchangeably. Both are considered in this chapter.
