Humanity is facing a series of important challenges, global warming being one of the most important. Consequently, sustainability and resilience have become key elements in providing a better response to the crisis and in maintaining an equilibrium between ecology, economics, and various social domains. The design and use of urban land should consider the inclusion of a multi-functional green infrastructure to obtain different benefits, from ecosystem services to value creation. Additionally, the urban land-use planning system contributes to economic growth, social development, and environmental sustainability, while biodiversity is able to provide renewal and reorganization capacities for changes in social-ecosystems. All these elements bring forth a different paradigm for the future decisions of communities.
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Human development has had a profound imprint on nature and co-evolving ecosystems. This has resulted in complex, economic-socio-ecological challenges for sustainability and future development. Human activity alters the dynamics of ecosystems with its important impact on the atmosphere, climate, land surface, forest, sea, and waters. Cities have been portrayed as predominantly monumental static and architectural structures of ever evolving and increasing ecological complexity. Disturbances change the resilient capacity of nature to supply ecosystem services, they can degrade socio-ecological systems and lead to social and economic vulnerability. Urban dwellers pose a high impact on ecosystem services with their habits in trade and consumption, claiming support in waste absorption, carbon emissions, residential water use and wood for industrial purposes (Folke et al., 1997, Grimm et al., 2008).
According to Levin (1999), humans depend on fragile ecosystem services. A global health control of the ecosystems, published in 2005 by The United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) observed that the technological advancement is the main cause of degradation of the Earth’s ecosystem services, which are being used unsustainably. The growing eco-deterioration also impedes in the battle against poverty (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), 2005). The ecosystem and natural resources are controlled by a few people who do it for short-term economic gain.
The survival of humankind is also dependent on healthy and resilient social-ecological systems and sustainable environments. Meanwhile, human well-being, economic growth and social development are dependent on the interrelationships between and within regions and environmental sustainability (Arrow et al., 1995; Folke et.al., 1998). Uncertainty, diversity and variability of social-ecosystems are all factors that contribute to their diminishing capacity to cope with disturbance and change within functional groups in the adaptive capacity of ecosystems (Folke et al. 2002; Jackson et al. 2001; Scheffer et al. 2001).
In order to conserve ecological resources, it is essential to promote sustainable and resilient lifestyles in sustainable urban social-ecosystems. This can be done with various activities that range from the construction of green spaces, sustainable architecture, green housing, eco-villages, green business and green economic sectors, sustainable urban agriculture and farming, green technologies, renewable energies and designing reversible and flexible systems (Zhang and Babovic, 2012). Sustainable architecture or ecological economics, sustainable technology, and agriculture (Costanza and Patten, 1995) stand out as specific types of sustainable and resilient urban development. Thus, sustainable, environmental and ecological systems are being identified within resilient social-ecosystems as the elements that have the capacity to continue functioning despite being confronted with natural and anthropogenic disturbances, anticipating and preparing ahead for them.
The resilience approach provides a conceptual and theoretical framework for interdisciplinary collaboration with ecological economics, sustainable development and governance (Lambin, 2005). Contextual and conceptual factors of urban change can be assembled into a framework of ecological urban design. Adverse human impacts on the social-ecosystem and the biosphere can be minimized through the use of resilient and sustainable environmental approaches such as environmental resource management, conservation biology, environmental and ecological economics, bio economics, green technology, etc.
On the other hand, ecology refers to the paradigm, knowledge, methods and procedures of contemporary ecological science (Kolasa & Pickett, 2005), and is a multidimensional and complex concept that requires an interdisciplinary framework of analysis for its application in urban spaces (Pickett & Cadenasso, 2002). The dimensions of ecology are the notion, the models and the metaphors used to communicate assumptions, values and experiences (Cadenasso et al., 2006a)