Ecomelancholia in the city: affects and memory in late industrial urban India.

The expansion, densification and proliferation of urban areas around the world is currently occurring at a rate that is unprecedented in human history. It is predicted that global urban land cover will triple between 2000 and 2030, with some regions (including biodiversity hotspots) experiencing a ninefold increase in urban land cover over the same time period (Seto, G€ uneralp & Hutyra 2012). Accompanying the expansion of urban landscapes, it is anticipated that the human population living in cities and towns globally will increase from 3 5 to 5 billion people within the next 20 years (Fragkias et al. 2013). Thus, the demands of an expanding and urbanizing human population are one of the pressing ecological problems our world is facing (Sanderson et al. 2002), alongside, and in combination with, global climate change and changes to biodiversity at local and global scales (Pimm et al. 2014). Yet, urban environments also present a unique opportunity to expand our fundamental knowledge related to ecology and evolution due to the presence of intense and often novel selection pressures. In the inaugural issue of this journal, Calow (1987) defined functional ecology as the sum of three interactive processes: (i) those occurring between organisms and their environment, (ii) biotic interactions between organisms and (iii) adaptive processes driven by natural selection. The same three processes were highlighted 1 year earlier by Jared Diamond in Nature, when he called for biologists to pay more attention to the potential of using the unprecedented environmental conditions that exist within towns and cities to develop and test evolutionary and ecological theory (Diamond 1986). There is thus a natural synergy between functional ecology and urban ecology, as exemplified by some of the classic papers that have appeared in this journal, such as Rydell (1992) who demonstrated that the form of echolocation system determined the impact of light pollution on bat foraging behaviour. The potential of combining functional ecological research with urban ecology is, however, a long way from being fully realized. This is in part explained by the youth of urban ecology as a discipline. Scientific enquiry into the ecological consequences of urban environments has been underway for over half a century, although most of the momentum emerged after the mid 1990s (McDonnell 2011; Wu 2014). Thus, the focus of much urban research to date has involved describing patterns along environmental gradients (Gagn e 2013; McDonnell & Hahs 2013) rather than investigating the mechanistic processes that lie at the heart of functional ecology. To be effective in addressing the global challenges of urbanization, a much better understanding of how the urban environment affects the ecology and evolution of organisms needs to be developed (Grimm et al. 2008; Marzluff 2012; Gil & Brumm 2014; McDonnell & Hahs 2015). The purpose of this special feature is to draw attention to the plethora of opportunities that await researchers investigating the ecology and evolution of organisms in urban environments. The combination of environmental stressors and conditions within urban areas provides a novel opportunity to test and expand our theories related to ecology and evolution of organisms, and some intriguing insights are already beginning to emerge. For example, the detailed understanding of the molecular, genetic and developmental mechanisms of beak evolution that has arisen from studying Galapagos finches has been significantly advanced by studying beak evolution in the house finch Carpodacus mexicanus in response to novel urban food sources and its consequences for acoustic communication (Badyaev 2010, 2014). Thus, urban ecology has the potential to extend our understanding of extremely well-studied ecological and evolutionary problems.

Urban forests globally face severe degradation due to human activities and natural disasters, making deforestation an urgent environmental challenge. Remote sensing technology and very-high-resolution (VHR) bitemporal satellite imagery enable change detection (CD) for monitoring forest changes. However, deep learning techniques for forest CD concatenate bitemporal images into a single input, limiting the extraction of informative deep features from individual raw images. Furthermore, they are developed for middle to low-resolution images focused on specific forests such as the Amazon or a single element in the urban environment. Therefore, in this study, we propose deep learning-based urban forest CD along with overall changes in the urban environment by using VHR bitemporal images. Two networks are used independently: DeepLabv3+ for generating binary forest cover masks, and a deeply supervised image fusion network (DSIFN) for the generation of a binary change mask. The results are concatenated for semantic CD focusing on forest cover changes. To carry out the experiments, full scene tests were performed using the VHR bitemporal imagery of three urban cities acquired via three different satellites. The findings reveal significant changes in forest covers alongside urban environmental changes. Based on the accuracy assessment, the networks used in the proposed study achieved the highest F1-score, kappa, IoU, and accuracy values compared with those using other techniques. This study contributes to monitoring the impacts of climate change, rapid urbanization, and natural disasters on urban environments especially urban forests, as well as relations between changes in urban environment and urban forests.

Urban environments can be deemed 'harsh' for some wildlife species, but individuals frequently show behavioural flexibility to cope with challenges and demands posed by life in the city. For example, urban animals often show better performance in solving novel problems than rural conspecifics, which helps when using novel resources under human-modified environments. However, which characteristics of urban environments fine-tune novel problem-solving performance, and their relative importance, remain unclear. Here, we examined how four urban environmental characteristics (direct human disturbance, indirect human disturbance, size of green coverage and squirrel population size) may potentially influence novel problem-solving performance of a successful 'urban dweller', the Eurasian red squirrel, by presenting them with a novel food-extraction problem. We found that increased direct human disturbance, indirect human disturbance and a higher squirrel population size decreased the proportion of solving success at the population level. At the individual level, an increase in squirrel population size decreased the latency to successfully solve the novel problem the first time. More importantly, increased direct human disturbance, squirrel population size and experience with the novel problem decreased problem-solving time over time. These findings highlight that some urban environmental characteristics shape two phenotypic extremes in the behaviour-flexibility spectrum: individuals either demonstrated enhanced learning or they failed to solve the novel problem.

Urban planning and design action in the face of rapid global urbanization and attendant changes in the urban environment urgently needs holistic indices of environmental quality. The use of vegetation changes to monitor urban environmental quality appears promising, thanks to recent advances in the remote sensing of greenery. The utility of remotely sensed vegetation data to monitor the urban physical environment is well known. Recently, Emmanuel (1997) demonstrated that such data could also mirror the social and demographic trends in cities. This paper explores the urban design/planning implications of using vegetation change as indicator of urban environmental trends. The case study is based on research work carried out in Detroit, USA, where urban decay in recent years has lead to significant greening in the heart of the city. A hypothesis of urban environmental transition is proposed.

In China, with the acceleration of urbanization, people pay more attention to the quality of urban environment. Air pollution, vegetation destruction, water waste and pollution, and waste sorting have restricted the sustainable development of urban environment. It is important to evaluate the impact of these environmental concerns as a prerequisite to implement an effective urban environmental sustainability policy. The aim of this paper is to establish a system for evaluating sustainable urban environmental quality in China. We extracted six dimensions and 29 criteria for assessing urban sustainable environment. Then, a fuzzy technique and the best worst method were applied to obtain the weights for the dimensions and criteria. Next, grey possibility values were applied to evaluate the sustainable environmental quality of five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou in China. A sensitivity analysis was performed to identify how the ranking of these five cities changed when varying the weights of each criterion. The results show that pollution control, the natural environment, and water management are the three most important dimensions for urban environmental quality evaluation. We suggest that controlling pollutant emissions, strengthening food waste management, improving clean production processes, and utilizing heat energy are the effective measures to improve the urban environment and achieve sustainable urban environmental development.

Cities impact nature often resulting in the ecological integrity of the environment being compromised or ignored. Effective and sustainable management of urban environments requires long-term, spatially explicit monitoring of urban expansion and vegetation dynamics. However, spatially consistent temporal information is difficult to access and utilize across different urban environments. Remote sensing based datasets such as Landsat imagery offers an exceptional source of data and an unique perspective for chronicling urban environmental changes due to its consistent and ubiquitous nature. In this paper, we examine changes in the urban environment and vegetation cover of three contrasting cities Manila (Philippines), Las Vegas (USA), and Vancouver (Canada) from 1984 to 2012 using a pixel-based image composite technique. The Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) was calculated using annual cloud-free Landsat composites to represent urban vegetation dynamics. Combined with a hexagon-based concentric ring model, the three urban environments demonstrate contrasting spatial and temporal vegetation patterns. We found a marked decrease in greenness in Manila likely caused by urban growth. Vancouver, however, showed only a minimal changes in EVI over the study period. Las Vegas in contrast experienced an overall vegetation increment. This research demonstrates the potential of using annual Landsat time series for assessing urbanization and urban vegetation dynamics, offering in-depth spatio-temporal information for sustainable urban planning, urban resources allocation, and policy drafting etc.

The urban thermal environment is affected by multiple urban form and natural environment factors; research on the accurate prediction of the urban thermal environment, considering the interaction among different urban environmental factors, is still lacking. The development of a machine learning model provides a good means of solving complex problems. This study aims to clarify the relationship between urban environmental variables and the urban thermal environment through high-precision machine learning models as well as provide scenarios of future urban thermal environment developments. We defined an urban thermal environment index (UTEI), considering twelve urban form and natural indicators sourced from the remote sensing data of 150 cities in the Jing-Jin-Ji region from 2000 to 2015. We achieved accurate predictions of UTEI through training a gradient-boosted regression trees model. By unpacking the model, we found that the contribution rate of elevation (ELEV) was the highest. Among all the urban form indicators, the elongation index (ELONG), urban population (POP), nighttime light intensity (NLI), urban area size (AREA), and urban shape index (SHAPE) also had high contributions. We set up five scenarios to simulate the possible impact of different urban form factors on the overall urban thermal environment quality in the region. Under extremely deteriorated patterns that do not control urban expansion and vegetation reduction, the average UTEI could be as high as 0.55–0.76 °C in summer and 0.24–0.29 °C in winter, yet in the extremely optimized situation, UTEI decreased by 0.69 °C in summer and 0.56 °C in winter. Results showed that better urban form improves the quality of urban environments and can provide important insights for urban planners to mitigate urban heat island problems.

Remote sensing imagery has been widely used in urban growth and environment analysis with many effective and advanced strategies being developed. However, most of these approaches are separated from each other. There is an urgent need to combine different modules into some practical processing chains. Firstly, we present a comprehensive analysis of key processing chains in applying remote sensing images to urban environment analysis from such aspects as Land Use/Land Cover (LULC), urban landscape ecology, Urban Heat Islands (UHIs), vegetation and water monitoring, change detection, urban ecological security assessment and urban environmental mapping. Secondly, an integrated system, namely Urban Environment Analysis System (UEAS), is implemented based on the aforementioned processing chains to analyze urban environment using multi-temporal and multi-source remotely sensed data. Several case studies are demonstrated to confirm the effectiveness of the integrated system and the combined processing chains. The contributions of this paper lie in introducing ensemble learning to urban environment remote sensing, combining remote sensing derived information with thematic models for urban environment assessment, and developing an integrated system for urban environment analysis.

Objective: This research aims to analyze and assess the legal and regulatory system for urban environmental management in Algeria and the penalty for violating it, with a particular focus on the various factors and challenges affecting the urban environment, and explore the mechanisms and tools of environmental management. Theoretical Framework: The study encompasses various concepts and principles related to urban environmental management, legal frameworks, and governance. It provides a foundation for understanding the relationship between urban development, environmental issues, and the legal and regulatory mechanisms in Algeria. Methodology: Descriptive and analytical approaches will be adopted. The descriptive approach focuses on the laws that address the issue, while the analytical one clarifies the role of relevant laws in defining the administrative management of cities. In this context, we will limit the scope of the study to highlighting the factors and tools of environmental management and highlighting the key issues affecting the urban environment, as well as examining the development of legal, protective and regulatory systems for urban environmental management in. Results and Discussion: Despite the existence of an advanced legal system, shortcomings in its implementation have resulted in genuine obstacles to creating urban settlements or developing old ones. This situation is attributed to political, social, and economic factors, as well as weak oversight and lax enforcement of laws related to urban planning. Consequently, this has resulted in cities that fail to meet citizens' service needs, highlighting the urgent need to reassess the regulations governing the urban environment and the methods of their implementation. Research Implications: Environmental studies of urban settlements (architecture and cities) and the legal system regulating them are of great importance, especially since the efforts of the Algerian state in this field are evident. However, the real issue often arises in the implementation of the law, leading to actual crises in the demographic growth of cities in relation to a clean and healthy urban environment. Therefore, this study aims to outline the legal and regulatory framework for managing the urban environment in Algeria, the penalties for violations, and to describe and evaluate it. Originality/Value: The study of the urban environment from a legal and regulatory perspective is limited, which has prompted us to examine this topic to demonstrate the legal and regulatory framework for managing the urban environment in Algeria and the penalties for its violations. Consequently, this research is considered new in its field.

Over half of the world's population (3 billon people) now lives in urban environments. The combination of people, industry, and commerce enmeshed in environments over-determined by plans, designs, and configurations that continue to emphasize ease, efficiency, and spatial sprawl over ecological constraints and sustainability help to make urban environments the primary contributors to multiple types of ecological degradation. With this in mind, urban environments demand greater sustained theoretical and practical attention than has been and is the norm under status quo approaches to urbanism that pay little regard to ecological constraints and under traditional models of environmentalism informed by an anti-urban bias. Fortunately, an emerging form of urban environmentalism exists that recognizes the central ecological role of urban environments. This emerging form of urban environmentalism also recognizes urban environments to be the places where environmental problems are often most severe and where environmental solutions are in most need of immediate implementation. The upshot of this dual recognition is that it is accompanied by a growing dual awareness of urban environmental problems and solutions. In this paper I argue that despite this dual recognition and awareness, a paradoxical form of inaction is the norm when it comes to implementing urban environmental solutions. I explain why this is the case by outlining what I call the paradox of urban environmentalism. I explain why the paradox should be considered one of the most significant problems of this new environmental century as well as that frame which opens the door to a new sense of what is possible in urban environments. In the process of considering what is possible, I arrive at some preliminary conclusions about a possible methodological role philosophers can play in helping to address this paradoxical inaction in the hopes of bringing about more sustainable urban environments.

As an important part of urban environment, urban traffic environment is one of the key factors that cause urban environment pollution. This kind of pollution is comprehensive and involves natural environment, ecological environment, social environment and humanistic landscape, even people's mentality, etc. So it is a complicated system engineering to solve the urban traffic environmental problems, and traffic environment improvement is crucial for the urban environmental management. In this paper, the author illustrates the opinion of considering policy, regulation, management, technology and culture in urban environmental management, meanwhile, we should advocate green traffic, cultivate noble urban traffic culture, make the urban traffic convenient for people's living and working, so it can maintain the harmonious environment and realize the harmonious development between human and nature. As an important part of social economic activities, urban traffic imposes a significant influence on the overall image of the city and plays an important role in urban development. Therefore, urban traffic environment is one of the key resources that cause urban environment pollution. This kind of influence is all-around related to natural environment, ecological environment, social environment, humanistic landscape, and people's mentality. It is common knowledge that the performance of traffic in urban should be within the state of balance, coordination and order, just as the blood in human body. Otherwise the road of city will be chaotic and the other functions of the city can be restricted.

Green spaces offer valuable and essential services to the urban population, ranging from leisure to environmental benefits. The differences in knowledge, attitude, and perception towards urban green spaces vary from one gender to another, and they have the potential to influence the urban environmental discourse. Previous studies and scholarly works have indicated that women tend to be more active and closely associated with urban green spaces and the environment compared to men. This study aims to investigate the disparities in knowledge and attitude towards urban green spaces between men and women in Chennai. This perpetual knowledge gap between these genders could provide ramifications for urban environmental discussions based on gender. This study employs a cross-sectional quantitative methodology, utilizing a structured questionnaire and a convenience sampling technique to collect data from 438 participants from the proximities of urban green spaces in Chennai. Data analysis was conducted through descriptive statistics using SPSS version 21, and a 5-point Likert scale was employed to comprehend their perceptions. Findings revealed that there is no significant difference in the knowledge about urban green spaces between men and women; however, their attitudes towards urban green spaces exhibit variations among them. Despite men’s greater engagement in urban environments, their attitude towards the appropriate usage of this urban environment lags behind that of women. These findings imply the intersection of gender and urban environments, highlighting the gender-based disparities in urban environmental engagement. Furthermore, this study underscores the need for sustainable and gender-inclusive urban planning to foster the urban environment.

Dhaka City, the capital of Bangladesh, has experienced rapid and unplanned urbanization over the past few decades. This process has brought significant challenges to public health as the urban environment has become a breeding ground for various health risks. Understanding the associations between unplanned urbanization, the urban environment, and public health in Dhaka City is crucial for developing effective interventions and policies. This review paper aims to uncover the associations between unplanned urbanization and health risks in Dhaka City, with a specific focus on the urban environment and its impact on public health. The objectives of this study are to examine the health challenges faced by the city's population, explore the specific urban environmental factors contributing to health risks, analyze the socioeconomic determinants of health in unplanned urban areas, evaluate existing policies and governance structures, identify research and data gaps, and provide recommendations for future interventions. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to gather relevant studies, articles, reports, and policy documents related to unplanned urbanization, the urban environment, and public health in Dhaka City. Various databases and online resources were searched, and the selected literature was critically analyzed to extract key findings and insights. The findings reveal that unplanned urbanization in Dhaka City has led to a range of public health risks, including air pollution, inadequate water and sanitation, poor waste management, overcrowding, slums, and substandard housing conditions. These environmental factors are strongly associated with respiratory diseases, waterborne illnesses, and other adverse health outcomes. Socioeconomic determinants such as poverty, income inequality, and limited access to healthcare further exacerbate the health risks faced by the urban population. Unplanned urbanization in Dhaka City has significant implications for public health. Addressing the associations between unplanned urbanization, the urban environment, and public health requires comprehensive policies and interventions. Improved urban planning, enhanced infrastructure, and better policy governance are essential for mitigating health risks. Furthermore, addressing socioeconomic disparities and ensuring equitable access to healthcare services are crucial components of effective interventions.

Urbanization drastically transforms landscapes, resulting in fragmentation, degradation, and the loss of local biodiversity. Yet, urban environments also offer opportunities to observe rapid evolutionary change in wild populations that survive and even thrive in these novel habitats. In many ways, cities represent replicated "natural experiments" in which geographically separated populations adaptively respond to similar selection pressures over rapid evolutionary timescales. Little is known, however, about the genetic basis of adaptive phenotypic differentiation in urban populations nor the extent to which phenotypic parallelism is reflected at the genomic level with signatures of parallel selection. Here, we analyzed the genomic underpinnings of parallel urban-associated phenotypic change in Anolis cristatellus, a small-bodied neotropical lizard found abundantly in both urbanized and forested environments. We show that phenotypic parallelism in response to parallel urban environmental change is underlain by genomic parallelism and identify candidate loci across the Anolis genome associated with this adaptive morphological divergence. Our findings point to polygenic selection on standing genetic variation as a key process to effectuate rapid morphological adaptation. Identified candidate loci represent several functions associated with skeletomuscular development, morphology, and human disease. Taken together, these results shed light on the genomic basis of complex morphological adaptations, provide insight into the role of contingency and determinism in adaptation to novel environments, and underscore the value of urban environments to address fundamental evolutionary questions.

Environmental degradation in the urban areas of China: Evidence from multi-source remote sensing data