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Abstract
With the increasing impact of urbanization in the natural ecosystems, urban areas have a key role in the preservation and enhancement of biodiversity. A multidisciplinary review, crossing various approaches to urban biodiversity has been carried out, focusing both on the concepts (fragmentation, species richness, habitat structure, pattern analyses) and the research methods used and their outputs. This opens a discussion in which variables are believed to have a direct influence both on the ecological function of the city and on social aspects such as quality of life and human well-being. This review contributes to a better understanding and promotion of the relationship between biodiversity, spatial form, sustainable design and management within the urban realm, particularly for the academic disciplines involved in such areas of knowledge, planners, designers, managers and decision-makers. This will promote the development of integrated planning and design approaches that promote green structures in the urban realm, according to contemporary social needs and grounded on a deep understanding of urban ecosystems.
Acknowledgements
We thank the investigators who led each of the studies we reviewed. We would also like to thank to the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions that contributed significantly toimproving this paper. This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under the research project by the PTDC/AUR-URB/104044/2008 “Urban Green Structure: Study of the relation between public space morphology and flora and fauna diversity in the city of Porto”.