Urban Ecology

Urban ecology, as a natural science, emerged as a subdiscipline of ecology in the late twentieth century. However, the term itself was employed first by sociologists of the Chicago School a half century earlier. Urban ecology, in its earlier manifestation, was the application of theoretical insights and terminology from the emerging discipline of ecology to an understanding of urban social dynamics. In more recent developments, urban ecology is both an extension of ecology to examine urban ecological patterns but also interdisciplinary blending of social as well as ecological analysis to understand contemporary urban phenomena.