This column originally appeared in the May 27, 2007 issue of the Poughkeepsie Journal.

As the world becomes more urbanized, and cities grow in size and number, it becomes increasingly important urban areas are built in a way that preserves the environment they overlap. Last month, the Institute of Ecosystem Studies held an international conference exploring how ecology can inform urban design. A group of 64 distinguished ecologists, social scientists, and urban designers convened at our Millbrook campus to help foster connections between ecological thinking and the way cities are constructed.

You might be wondering, what is urban design? This field encompasses the professions that help determine how our cities, towns and suburbs look and function.

Urban designers include town planners, architects, engineers and landscape architects. They influence the structure and environment of the places where we live, work and commute. Some things in their purview include: how buildings are designed, the arrangement of streets and utilities, and the use of lawns, trees and green spaces.

For some time, urban designers have been interested in making their work more ecological. When urban design is infused with ecological insight, benefits can be two-fold. From a functional perspective, when compared to designs that are engineered without nature in mind, ecologically informed designs draw on the environment's ability to help with heating and cooling, resource delivery and pollution reduction. By making ecological features and processes an obvious part of urban areas, these designs also educate residents about nature's services and beauty.

There is tremendous potential for ecology to improve the way we develop the cities of the future, but this will depend, in part, on ecologists having an open dialogue with the urban design community. By bringing together ecologists and urban design professionals, the Institute's conference sought to improve communication between two disciplines that rarely get the opportunity to interact.

Ecologists learned a great deal from the urban designers, including the history of how cities have been built and the myriad obstacles new designs face. Most designs fall to the wayside on the path to construction. Only a select few are able to navigate the varied preferences of real estate developers and planning boards, as well as shifting regulations on zoning and land development. To be effective, urban design needs to work in a democratic and open way, not following the "top down" planning of the past. Conference participants pointed out that ecology is sometimes used only as a metaphor in design, rather than as a source of concrete scientific information. For urban design to truly embrace ecology, we need to move past metaphor and into understanding.

Ecologically-minded designs should strive to minimize impact on important environmental resources, such as clean air and water. For instance, by paying attention to topography, wetland location, and the movement of run-off water, urban designers can develop the landscape so it preserves important water resources.

Urban designers and ecologists are both grappling with how to insert science into a discipline where success relies on a complicated public approval process. To date, there have been no easy answers. But given the realities of urbanization, we need to pioneer solutions. Most of the additional 3 billion people added to the world's population in the next few years will reside in urban areas. If we are to preserve the ecological services we depend on, such as potable water, future urban development needs to acknowledge and protect the natural environment.

Dr. Steward T.A. Pickett is a Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies and the director of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study.