Emulating and replicating ecosystems ability to provide ‘ecosystem services’ by the built environment

Abstract

Why dense and green? The rationale is to make the built environment able to provide ecosystem services within our human settlements, cities, towns and urban areas. Ecology tells us that nature provides ecosystem services to sustain the planet without human intervention. These ecosystem services are invisible to the human eye, such as the production of oxygen or sequestration and detoxification of wastes. Humanity is unable to provide these services by technology alone and the existing built environment is dependent upon its adjacent ecosystem from its hinterland and the biosphere’s biogeochemical cycles to provide these services. But what if we supplement and augment the built environment with sufficient and appropriate biotic constituents to provide these ecosystem services within itself? The chapter discusses the possible means to achieve this biointegration of the human-made with the natural.