New event: SURE Summer School “URBAN + COAST”, from  2 to 8 September 2024 in Istanbul (Türkiye)

SURE warmly invites you to participate in the International SURE Summer School “URBAN + COAST” that will take place from  2 to 8 September 2024 in Istanbul (Türkiye). The summer school is organized by the Yildiz Technical University (Istanbul-Türkiye) and the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE) in cooperation with Turk and international partners. It aims at exploring human and environmental challenges and finding solutions for these. Istanbul, Europe’s most populous city, serves as the perfect study area for this purpose. The school will include training on research methodology and group work on various research projects. Field studies that will focus on urban ecological areas of Istanbul will be carried out as part of the summer school.

Registration is already open. To register, please submit a short CV and motivation letter to Res. Asst. Tuğçe CÖMERT before 31 January 2024. More details about the summer school can be found HERE.

New event: SURE International Conference “Environment at CrossrOads: SMART approaches for a sustainable future – ECOSMART” from 17 to 18 November in Bucharest (Romania)

SURE extends a warm invitation to the International Conference “Environment at CrossrOads: SMART approaches for a sustainable future – ECOSMART”, which will take place in November 17-18 2023 in Bucharest. During the Conference the SURE South-East Europe Chapter is organizing the SURE Workshop –  Paradigm shift in urban ecology. The event is organized by the University of Bucharest (Faculty of Geography, Department of Regional Geography and Environment) with the support of our partners. It will cover a wide variety of topics from the field of Geography and Environmental sciences. The organizers of the ECOSMART conference aim at encouraging a high number of scholars to attend and debate on various research topics – therefore there is no conference fee for SURE members. The registration deadline is October 15^th 2023. You can register using the REGISTRATION FORM.

You can find more details about the International Conference HERE and on the OFFICIAL WEBSITE.

Release of the 2^nd edition of the SURE book “Making Green Cities – Concepts, Challenges and Practice”

SURE is very happy to announce that the 2^nd edition of the SURE book “Making Green Cities – Concepts, Challenges and Practice” has now been released. We thank all authors and colleagues that contributed to making the production of the book a big success. A big THANK YOU to you all! Without you, this would not have been possible. The electronic version of the book and more information can be found HERE.

Breuste J (ed), Artmann M, Ioja C, Qureshi S (co-eds.) (2023) Making Green Cities – Concepts, Challenges and Practice. Springer, Cham, Switzerland. ISBN 978-3-030-73089-5 (Cities and Nature Series)

SURE board meeting and symposium in Izmir (Türkiye)

Under the organization of Prof. Dr. Cigdem Coskun Hepcan (Ege University, Izmir), the SURE Executive Committee (EC) met 10^th – 12^th May 2023 in Izmir, Türkiye. During the board meeting, Prof. Coskun Hepcan´s great efforts to foster SURE activities through research and the upcoming SURE World Congress 2025 in Istanbul (Türkiye) have been honored by her co-optation to the SURE EC.

The board meeting was connected with the international symposium “Urban ecology and urban ecosystem management” in which pressing challenges and promising solutions for sustainable urban development have been discussed with an interdisciplinary field of speakers. The talks covered examples from Iran, Türkiye, Romania, India or Germany showing the global importance of urban ecological research and its implementation in practice. During the two-day event, an excursion to Cesme Peninsula showed urban and rural ecology interactions in practice and provided space to deepen the lively discussions during the previous symposium among the participants.

You can find the slides of some of the participants in the symposium below:

• Arife KARADAĞ – “Geographical approach in urban ecology and sustainable studies: Case of Türkiye”
• Cristian IOJA – “Challenges in planning and designing climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in urban areas of Romania”
• Akbar RAHIMI et al. – “Gender justice in green space use in relation to different socio-economic conditions”
• Héctor Tecumshé MOJICA-ZÁRATE – “The importance of pollinating gardens on the periphery of urban areas in the Sonoran Desert, Mexico”
• Meryem HAYIR KANAT and Mitra KHODAYAR – “Using urban green spaces as an extracurricular educational activities: Sample of Yıldız Technical University Davutpaşa Campus”
• Prakash C. Tiwari – “Environmental and socio-economic Implications of high mountain urbanization under climate change: An illustration of the Indian Himalayan region”

The SURE board and participants of the SURE symposium in Izmir (Türkiye)

Webinar “Opportunities for scientific collaboration within SURE”, 30 March 2023, online

Organizer: SURE Central Europe Chapter

The webinar “Opportunities for scientific collaboration within SURE” gathered 19 participants from 6 counties interested in strengthening collaboration within the worldwide SURE community.

During the webinar representatives of the Polish National Agency of Academic Exchange presented funding opportunities available to scientists interested to come to Polish academic institutions together with programs for those who are interested in hosting Polish scientists.

Opportunities for incoming scientists were presented by SURE members from the University of Bucharest, Romania; Ege University, Izmir, Turkey; Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China.

Scientific and collaboration ideas of SURE members were presented by 9 participants from 6 countries: Iwona Zwierzchowska, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland; Cristian Ioja, University of Bucharest, Romania; Mihai-Razvan Nita, University of Bucharest, Romania; Cigdem Coskun Hepcan, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey; Yanxia Qiu, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland; Mohammad Nemati, University of Tabriz, Iran; Mohammad Ali Koushesh Vatan, University of Tabriz, Iran; Shuang Chen, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, China.

Thank you to all participants for making the event a lively and dynamic platform for discussion, and we look forward to fruitful cooperation!

In case of questions concerning the webinar, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Dr. Iwona Zwierzchowska.

The 8^th SURE Summer School was successfully held in Shanghai, China

The 8^th SURE summer school on urban ecology, which was co-organized by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), SURE, SURE-China chapter, and the University of Melbourne, and hosted by School of Design at SJTU, has been successfully held at Shanghai, from 8 to 12 August, 2022. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the 8^th SURE-SJTU summer school was held online. The 2022 international summer school is themed on Urban Biodiversity and Conservation: Global Perspectives and Comparisons. It focuses on hotpots of urban biodiversity, and the nexus of human activities and human habitats, and urban ecology.

Obituary for Jari Kalevi Niemelä

Founding of the Iran Research Centre for Urban Ecology

The SURE Iran chapter is founding the Iran Research Centre for Urban Ecology for advancing the goals of the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE).

The overarching targets of the Iran Research Centre are:

• International, national, and regional cooperation and networking between Iran and the SURE
• Cooperation with public and private organizations and institutions
• Holding training courses, workshops, conferences, symposiums, etc.
• Educational and scientific support of Iranian students, experts and institutions

Successful publication – Man-made natural disaster of lake Urmia (Iran)

Publication in Frontiers in Environmental Sciences based on SURE cooperation (Akbar Rahimi, Iran, and Jürgen Breuste, Austria) on Lake Urmia in Iran gets great public and political interest in Iran and among scientists worldwide:

Rahimi, A, J. Breuste (2021): Why Urmia Lake is Drying up? Prognostic Modeling with Land Use Data and Artificial Neural Network. Frontiers in Environmental Science, Volume 9 | Article 603916, 11 pages, doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2021.603916

IOER-Forum and SURE EC meeting: “Urban transformation – SURE meets SURE-institutional members”

Under the organisation of Dr. Martina Artmann (SURE-Secretary General), the SURE Executive Committee visited between 17^th – 18^th May 2022 the SURE institutional member Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden, Germany. Under the IOER´s research focus on sustainable spatial socio-ecological transformations, the SURE board members discussed challenges and chances for urban transformations.

During the two-day event, Prof. Jürgen Breuste (SURE-President) led an excursion around the Dresden urban agglomerations visiting historical sites, urban protection areas and the city´s blue infrastructure. Another excursion was offered by Dr. Ralf-Uwe Syrbe and Dr. Henriette John (IOER) exploring urban ecosystem services provided in the city of Dresden. In the course of the IOER-Forum, Prof. Jürgen Breuste gave a lecture about “Dare Urban Wilderness – Preserve, Use and Manage!”. The IOER co-presentation on “Wilderness on urban wastelands – an annoyance or a paradise for biodiversity?” was given by Dr. Juliane Mathey. The lecture can be found online.

An overall aim of this event was the annual SURE board meeting reflecting on past and future activities as well as strategic orientation of the society. During the meeting, all agreed that after the restrictions due to the COVID-19-pandemic, a major aim of SURE will be to foster again SURE summer schools to provide young researchers the chance to network and deepen their knowledge and international experiences in the field of urban ecology. Dates about upcoming summer schools can be found at the SURE webpage.

The SURE board with IOER director Prof. Marc Wolfram (From left to right: I. Zwierzchowska, C. Ioja, M. Artmann, M. Wolfram, J. Breuste, C. Coskun Hepcan, A. Mizgajski, M. Hayir Kanat)

SURE at the Dresden Nexus Conference

From 23-25 May 2022, the Dresden Nexus Conference (DNC 2022) took part as an online conference focusing on “Biodiversity – Stewardship for vital resources”. Dr. Alina Hossu (SURE Chapter South-East Europe) and Dr. Martina Artmann (SURE-Secretary General) hosted a session on “Relational Values and Planning of Urban Nature and Biodiversity” with speakers from Romania, Turkey, and Japan. Main conclusions from the session are:

Symposium Urban Ecosystem Management held by SURE Iran on 22 February 2022 at Tabriz University

Under the leadership of Prof. Akbar Rahimi, SURE Iran Chapter held a one-day symposium on Urban Ecosystem Management at Tabriz University, Iran, on 22 February.

More than 45 students of different departments and faculties participated and actively discussed the subjects presented by Prof. Cristian Ioja, University of Bucharest, Romania (SURE treasurer), and Prof. Jürgen Breuste, University of Salzburg, Austria (SURE president). The symposium took place in the Shahid Bakeri Hall of Tabriz University and included a site visit to El Goli Park, the largest inner-city green space in city of Tabriz.

The presented and discussed subjects were: urban wildlife, management of biodiversity, and urban tree and green space management. The symposium is already the fourth that is organized since 2019 by SURE Iran at Tabriz University on the subject of urban ecosystem management. These symposia are of constant and rising interest among students and practitioners. Supported by an ERASMUS + cooperation, there is an intensive exchange of students from Tabriz University with University of Bucharest, Romania, and University of Salzburg, Austria.

Symposium participants

Field discussion with Prof. Cristian Ioja and Prof. Akbar Rahimi

Three new SURE honorary members

SURE is very pleased to award Prof. Andrzej Mizgajski and Prof. Ingo Kowarik an honorary membership in the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE), and to issue an honorary certificate to Katarzyna Fagiewicz for the organisation of the 3^rd SURE World Congress in Poznan, Poland. To all of them, thanks a lot!

Certificate honorary membership Prof. Andrzej Mizgajski

Certificate honorary membership Prof. Ingo Kowarik

Honorary certificate Katarzyna Fagiewicz

Statement of the SURE President

Jürgen Breuste

Global ecological challenges on the way to Green Cities

New books are available, good ideas need to be implemented!

Cities are the most attractive place to live for people worldwide. They offer the hope of a better life than in the countryside and what is often lacking or less available there: jobs with a secure income, health care, education, entertainment and social advancement. For many, however, this remains just an unrealized hope, which does not diminish the attractiveness of cities. … READ MORE

Breuste, J. (2022):  The Green City. Urban Nature as an Ideal, Provider of Services and Conceptual Urban Design Approach. Springer Spektrum, Berlin Heidelberg

Breuste, J.; S. Pauleit; D. Haase; M. Sauerwein (2021):  Urban Ecosystems. Functions, Management, Development. Springer Spektrum, Berlin Heidelberg

Breuste J (ed), Artmann M, Ioja C, Qureshi S (co-eds.) (2020) Making Green Cities – Concepts, Challenges and Practice. Springer, Cham, Switzerland. ISBN 978-3-030-37716-8 (Cities and Nature Series)

Online SURE lecture by SURE President

Prof. Breuste, SURE president, gave on 7 December 2021 in the course Sustainable Tourism Development of Human and Social Development Program of Graduate School of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand an online SURE lecture, invited by Assoc.Prof.Dr. Narumon Arunotai, Assoc.Prof.Dr. Suwattana, on Urban Protected Areas and Recreation – Challenges and European perspectives as activity of the SURE International Center Urban Ecology. More than twenty students joint the lecture, followed by a vital discussion on the subject.

The course targets on Domestic and regional tourism development, relationship between tourism and development policies and practices implemented by the government, the local and the private sector; impact of tourism on communities and society; principles and forms of sustainable tourism; study of tourism resources in terms of environment, natural resources, and social and cultural resources and roles of different sectors in sustainable tourism development.

Activity of the SURE International Center Urban Ecoloy in Beijing, China

Prof. Breuste, SURE president, gave on 16 November 2021 in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China an online SURE lecture, invited by Prof. Fei Xue, on

Urban Biodiversity – What it is and how we can target it in design and planning

as activity of the SURE International Center Urban Ecology. More than hundred students joint the lecture, followed by a vital discussion on the subject.

The lecture was following up the first part of UN Conference on Biodiversity COP 15 in October in Kunming, China. It was showed that the transformation in society’s relationship with biodiversity cannot exclude urban areas as main living sphere of human on earth and cannot wait until 2050 to reach a living in harmony with nature. Now it is time to develop our cities by improvement of urban biodiversity in contact to urban dwellers.

Urban biodiversity and its management – SURE Iran symposium

SURE Chapter Iran organized under the leadership of Prof. Akbar Rahimi, University Tabriz, on Tuesday 19th October 2021 in Tabriz, 2021 a national symposium with international guests.

READ MORE

Statement of SURE President on

UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP 15) in October 2021 in Kunming (China)

More efforts of urban biodiversity are urgently needed – SURE asks to present good examples worldwide

The UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP 15) in October 2021 in Kunming (China) stated despite on-going efforts, biodiversity is deteriorating worldwide and this decline is projected to worsen with business-as- usual scenarios. A new set of goals for nature over the next decade through the Convention on Biological Diversity post 2020 framework process will be necessary. This needs ambitious plans to implement broad-based actions to bring about a transformation in society’s relationship with biodiversity and to ensure that, by 2050, the shared vision of living in harmony with nature. This is urgently necessary in the humans living sphere – the cities. We need a New Deal for nature in cities – urban biodiversity.

READ MORE

Society for Urban Ecology supported FIMA 2021

FIMA 2021 closed successfully and will continue to promote the country’s sustainability.

The academic agenda was developed and supervised by Dr. Henry Garay Sarasty, CAEM, Bogotá, Colombia, SURE Session leader Latin America.
SURE president Prof. Dr. Jürgen Breuste and representatives from SURE Session Central Europe (Dr. Luis Inostroza) and SURE Session South East Europe (Prof. Dr. Cristian Ioja, head of session) participated with presentations and in panel discussion. SURE contributed to the success of the event.

READ MORE

The 3^rd SURE World Conference a Great Success

Between 7 and 9 July 2021, the 3^rd SURE World Conference under the topic “Cities as Socio-Ecological Systems” took place in Poznan, Poland. Organized as a hybrid event due to the current pandemic restrictions, over 300 participants online and onsite from 36 countries and 6 continents participated at the conference. …READ MORE

SURE General Assembly and Election of the SURE Executive Committee took place during the 3^rd SURE World Congress

The SURE General Assembly elected a new SURE Executive Committee on 9th of July 2021 during the 3rd SURE World Congress in Poznan, Poland. The General Assembly unanimously accepted the list of the Executive Committee where Jürgen Breuste, Austria, was elected as President, Martina Artmann, Germany, as Secretary General and Cristian Ioja, Romania, as Treasurer. Salman Qureshi, Germany, Pakistan, Junxiang Li, China, and Henry Garay-Sarasti, Colombia, were elected as Supplementary Executive Committee members.

The SURE Executive Committee has appointed the new Advisory Board for the period 2021 – 2025:

– Chapter Central Europe: Andrzej Mizgajski and Mrs. Iwona Zwierzchowska

– Chapter South-East Europe: Mihai Razvan Nita and Mrs. Constantina Alina Hossu

– Chapter Latin America: Mrs. Ana Faggi and Mrs. Cecilia Herzog

– Chapter Iran: Akbar Rahimi

– Chapter China: Zhiyun Ouyang, Mrs. Prof. Shuang

– New conference organizers: Cigdem Hepcan and Meryem Hayir Kanat

– Further members: Sarel Cilliers, South Africa; Charles Nilon, USA; Janmaimool Piyapong, Thailand; Chris Ives, UK; Lalitha Dissanayake , Sri Lanka; Prakash Tiwari, India; Maria Ignatieva, Australia

The proposal for next SURE Congress 2025 in Istanbul/Izmir, Turkey organized by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cigdem COSKUN HEPCAN and Prof. Dr. Meryem HAIR KANAT was approved by the General Assembly as well.

During the SURE General Assembly, SURE honorary memberships have been awarded to Prof. Ingo Kowarik and Prof. Andrzej Mizgajski. Katarzyna Fagiewicz received a SURE award of honor for her great support of the 3^rd SURE World Congress.

The SURE Executive Committee would like to express their sincere gratitude to all SURE members for their trust and support to lead the SURE for the next election period.

Last but not least, the SURE Executive Committee would like to thank Andrzej Mizgajski and Iwona Zwierzchowska for their great efforts to realize the 3^rd SURE World Congress in Poznan, Poland. Despite the constraints due to the current pandemic situation, this event was a great success bringing leading researchers and practitioners, senior and young researchers together to discuss and exchange how to connect cities with nature.

Special Issue of Sustainability now published:

“A Systemic Perspective on Urban Food Supply: Assessing Different Types of Urban Agriculture“

edited by Martina Artmann, Kathrin Specht, Jan Vávra and Marius Rommel,

This Special Issue was initiated in the course of various sessions organized by the guest editors in the course of the ESP Europe conference 2018 in San Sebastian (Spain), the IALE World Congress 2019 in Milan (Italy) and the Dresden Nexus Conference 2020 (Germany). …READ MORE

SURE participated at the „The Nature of Cities Festival“

The Nature of Cities Festival is an online event and took place between 22-26 February. The festival offered a range of interesting inter- and transdisciplinary plenary talks, seed sessions and digital excursions. You can find the full program here

Please feel also warmly invited to take a look at our seed session hosted by SURE members:

Tuesday, Feb 23, 14:45 EST (20:45 pm Berlin time): Revitalizing urban rivers (Spanish & English) (Ana Faggi, Juergen Breuste, Circe Monteiro, Diana Wiesner, Iturriaga Sandra)
Short Presentation of revitalization projects (Bogota-Colombia, Mapocho-Chile,Piracicaba- Brasil and Isar Germany) with following discussion addressing SWOT analysis, what have we learned and the role of the community participation

Wednesday, Feb 24, 10:15 am EST (16:15 pm Berlin time): Soul in the city – connecting our inner and external nature (Martina Artmann, Katharina Artmann)
We explored through a short presentation, meditation and interactive breakout rooms how to overcome the human/nature dichotomy. We discussed what it means to be a human being in cities and how we can experience urban nature as an sentient, soulful member of our kin.

SURE Christmas Greetings 2020

Dear colleagues and friends of the SURE,

We hope you are doing well and that the current pandemic is not affecting you too much.

Towards the end of an astonishing year 2020 that has clearly illustrated the value of urban nature such as accessible urban green spaces fostering human resilience in times of stress, we see the crucial role of urban ecology research supporting sustainable development more than ever before.

By the end of this special year, the SURE board would like to thank you for supporting the urban ecology community and our chapters. Unfortunately, also SURE was effected by the pandemic situation and we had to postpone the 3rd SURE World Congress in Poznan (Poland) to      7-9 July 2021. However, we are delighted to announce that the SURE 2020/21 Conference is once again open for registration and abstract submission. …READ MORE

SURE Executive Committee Meeting 2020

On October 26^th 2020, the SURE Executive Committee (EC) met virtually to discuss in particular next SURE events. For 2021 several SURE summer schools are planned:

–SURE Summer School Shanghai, organized by Junxiang Li together with Amy Haze (University Melbourne) and Jürgen Breuste is planned to take place in the second half of August 2021.

–SURE Summer School Bucharest, organized by Cristian Ioja together with Jürgen Breuste is planned to take place in the second half of July 2021.

–SURE Summer School Berlin, organized by Salman Qureshi is planned to take place before the SURE conference in July 2021

More information about the Summer School will be provided by the end of 2020.

The SURE EC hopes that the SURE World Congress and SURE Summer School can take place as planned and to meet old and new SURE members there. The SURE EC will decide in spring, if the SURE activities can take place as attended events or as online formats. For any updates, please visit our SURE webpage.

There you will also soon find new SURE activities connected with SURE teaching and research activities.

New publication available:

First SURE book is published by Springer: J.H. Breuste, M. Artmann, C. Ioja, S. Qureshi (Eds.): Making Green Cities. Concepts, Challenges and Practice.

– Provides an interdisciplinary overview of best practices and challenges
– Includes structured international case studies
– Provides an introduction on culture, preexisting nature conditions, existing
urban surrounding, history, design and planning

1st ed. 2020, X, 215 p. 200 illus. in color.

Printed book
Hardcover
Ca. 139,99 € | Ca. £119.99 | Ca.
$169.99
eBook
Available from your library or springer.com/shop
MyCopy
Printed eBook for just
€ | $ 24.99
springer.com/mycopy

…READ MORE