This lavishly illustrated book surveys connections between ecology and urban planning and design from theoretical, literary, and historic perspectives. Academics, students, and practitioners of urban planning and design will see how ecological thinking has evolved since the fifth century BCE and how it can be used to create sustainable, resilient, and beautiful places today. Succinct chapter summaries help readers track this progression. Ecology in Urban Design and Planning: The Evolution of an Idea demonstrates the increasingly urgent need to balance human use with ecological concerns in our built environments. Places that support life systems for people and other organisms, rural and urban landscapes are degrading in the face of extreme climate change, rising sea levels, resource depletion, species extinction, accelerated consumption, and increased urbanization. This decline persists despite worldwide laws protecting the environment and natural resources, and progress in scientific knowledge and technology. Human impacts on landscapes are now more profound and complex, making solutions increasingly difficult to achieve. Forster Ndubisi maintains that we can learn from history, reinterpreted within the context of changing societal concerns, as guidance for the future.

The book concludes with a framework for increasing sustainability and resilience despite unprecedented challenges, proposing place-based ecological urbanism as a way to synthesize ecological thinking into design and planning practice in the Anthropocene era.