Nature, urban development and sustainability – What new elements are needed for a more comprehensive understanding?

With the rise of interest in urban sustainability, the question of nature is front and center. This review suggests bridging between three distinct research paths concerned with urban areas and nature: urban ecosystem services, urban metabolism and urban political ecology to forge new thinking to transition from the sanitary city of the twentieth century to the sustainable city of the twenty-first. Cities are anthropogenic creations, sourcing their materials from nearby and far-off places, transforming those materials into products, goods and the physical infrastructure of cities. Tracking that flow of nature into the built environment, and the other flows such as water, needs to be accounted for as part of nature in the city. Cities – having entirely transformed the place they are located through building – have a unique nature, a nature planted by people, and made up of plants and animals that are often different than what had existed in the first place. The services of this new assemblage of species in the city, need to be studied critically. But ultimately, cities are the product of human volition, driven by economics, culture, politics and history. Understanding those drivers – the political ecology of place – provides an interpretive framework for reconsidering the nature of cities and its place in moving from a modernist sanitary city to a gray/green sustainable city.

► We propose an new approach to conducting urban metabolism analysis.
► These will strengthen its utility for policy makers.
► Data remain difficult to obtain and synthesize, but new approaches are emerging.