HOW CAN WE HELP ANIMALS ADAPT TO URBAN ENVIRONMENT USING ARCHITECTURE

   It plans to develop parks that include suitable green areas with small trees and shrubs, or to turn rooftops green by incorporating gravel or soil. In addition to attracting animals, such sites offer other advantages that will help to attract both developers and planners, Snep insists. “We've also seen that if more attention is paid to the green design of business sites, people like it and employees are happier.”

   These principles are not confined solely to business sites. Green roofs have been catching on quickly in several European cities, particularly in Germany and the UK. A British study of London rooftops (Grant, 2006) found a large collection of spiders, beetles, wasps, ants and bees, 10% of which were designated as rare by the UK agency Natural England (Sheffield, UK).

Retail sedum roof, Canary Wharf, London, UK. Reproduced with permission from Kadas, 2006.

   Green roofs and other green spaces form ecological networks within cities that provide birds and insects, as well as some plants, with a flexible ecosystem on a relatively modest total surface area. Green buildings can also be important outside cities by mitigating the impact of barriers, such as roads and railways, to the movement of animals and plants. “We have come up with a kind of building across a highway, as an ecological corridor across a road,” said Snep, whose team is now working with architects to design green buildings.

   However, such work needs a detailed understanding of how animals and plants respond to artificial environments. Although this is a relatively young field of research, it is making significant progress and is moving beyond mere description to prediction, according to John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). Bird species are the most studied in an effort to gain insight into the abilities of animals to adapt to urban habitats. Urban settings have different selective pressures from those on wild habitats: they impose close proximity to humans as well as to rivals, predators and prey, but can also reduce threats and create benign conditions including ready access to food, and insulation or shelter from seasonal variations and adverse weather conditions. The role of the city as a moderator of natural forces is reflected, for example, in the discovery that the abundance of birds in urban environments does not decrease as one moves northwards in Europe, as it does in wild environments.