Landscape Corridors in Shanghai and Their Importance in Urban Forest Planning

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In the past century people have witnessed rapid rates of urbanization throughout the world. By 2030 it is projected that more than 60% of the world’s population will live in cities (United Nations, 1999). Since the environment of many urban areas is becoming increasingly deteriorated, more attention is being given to making cities healthier, safer, and more sustainable. The role of green space, and urban forests in particular, in achieving these goals is acknowledged by urban planners, managers, and policy makers. Urban forests provide recreational and wildlife habitat and are appreciated for their aesthetic and architectural value. However, they also provide many ecological services to society by reducing the urban heat island, air pollution, noise, energy costs for buildings, and soil erosion. They also store and sequester carbon and perform hydrological functions such as flood control (Miller, 1997). In recent decades, concern about the environmental quality and long-term livability of urban areas has been a driving paradigm for planning professionals (Flores et al., 1998). Recently, the science of green-space planning has conceptually adopted an ecological framework, one that promotes a biologically rich urban environment and interactions among sites across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Ecological principles such as content, context, temporal dynamics, heterogeneity, and hierarchy have been suggested as factors that should be considered in urban green-space planning (Flores et al., 1998). Urban forests are increasingly viewed as living, integral components of urban infrastructure and not simply aesthetic “window dressing” (Miller, 1997; Jim, 1999). This change in appreciation is due to the recognition that trees and other vegetation play important roles in improving conditions in urban environments. While urban forests have many social, ecological, and economic effects, how best to optimize these benefits are among the critical questions that ecologists, planners, decision makers, and practitioners encounter. For instance, when developing new cities, where and how is it best to construct urban forests? To answer these questions is a great challenge and involves integrated study of applied and basic scientific disciplines. The science of landscape ecology has much to offer applied fields such as land-use management, urban planning, and biodiversity conservation, since it deals explicitly with questions of how landscape pattern affects environmental and social processes (Wu, 2001; see also Chapter 2).