<p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Europe is a highly urbanised continent<strong>; 80% of the population</strong> is expected to live in <strong>European cities</strong> <strong>by 2020</strong> (EEA, 2009). With the settelements of human beings new habitats were created. Their characteristics manifest in increasingly extremes from farmbuildings and villages, suburban areas to urban centres.</p> <p>The <strong>value of wildlife</strong> in cities is often <strong>underestimated</strong>. Nature in cities is not only a matter of cultivated and managed biodiversity such as urban parks, gardens, and lawns. Nowadays, urban wetlands, abandoned industrial sites, roadside verges, vacant lots and derelict lands, ruins, allotment gardens, cemeteries, are increasingly recognised as potential reservoirs of urban biodiversity together with arboreta, residential gardens and villas, botanic gardens, and individual balconies (Heywood, 1996).</p> <p>As created ecosystems, cities have their own wildlife of particular urban species; species that occur also in the wider countryside, but in different numbers and composition than in urban areas, and with differing genetic diversity. This is a result of the complexity of urban ecosystems (Gilbert, 1989; Sukopp and Wittig, 1998; Sukopp, 2003; Lizet et al., 1999).</p> <p><strong>Urban sprawl</strong>, the urbanisation trend of expanding growth of cities into the wider countryside, is a major threat to biodiversity of the last decades in Europe. Urban sprawl is driven by a variety of interacting factors. This includes an increasing demand for building grounds due to demographic changes such as smaller households, new life styles of single family houses, segregation of income classes, inner city densification or abandonment as a consequence, and weak implementation of landscape planning (EEA, 2006).</p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/10-messages-for-2010/message-6-urban-ecosystems">Read EEAs message on urban ecosystems</a></p> </li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><em>Selected links</em></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://ec.europa.eu/environment/urban/home_en.htm">EC: Urban Environment</a></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/urban/">EEA Urban Environment homepage</a></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.eea.europa.eu//themes/urban/dc">EEA Urban Environment data service</a><br /></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></p> 2012-01-26T16:57:54Z tag:biodiversity.europa.eu,2012-01-26:/topics/ecosystems-and-habitats/urban http://biodiversity.europa.eu/misc_/CHM2/Site.gif Biodiversity Information System for Europe