Patch Atlas: Integrating Design Practices and Ecological Knowledge for Cities as Complex Systems

A new tool for analyzing urban land cover that integrates design practices and ecological knowledge for understanding cities as complex, patchy, and dynamic systems

This atlas is a unique conceptual tool to describe and analyze cities as complex systems, using a new, hybrid approach to urban land cover classification. As an impetus to bring ecologists and urban designers together, it builds on over a decade of shared knowledge from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study to inspire ecologically motivated design practice.

Rather than separating human-constructed environments from predominantly biological and geological ones, this book integrates built and ecological structures and shows how this integration can contribute to the scholarship of ecology and the practice of design. The atlas displays maps and tables depicting these hybrid land cover classes and the relationships between them; information on how the specific patch arrangements evolved over time; and speculations on how cover might change through design, disturbance, or succession. Interdisciplinary and strikingly illustrated, the atlas is a new way to study, measure, and view cities with a more effective interaction of scientific understanding and design practice.

Selected, related publications:

Grove, J. M., Cadenasso, M. L., Pickett, S., Machlis, G. E., & Burch, W. R. (2015). The Baltimore School of Urban Ecology: Space, scale, and time for the study of cities. Yale University Press.

Hindes, C., & Raxworthy, J. (2021). Patch Atlas: Integrating design practices and ecological knowledge for cities as complex systems. Journal of Landscape Architecture, 16(1), 90–91.

Marshall, V., Cadenasso, M. L., McGrath, B., & Pickett, S. T. A. (2022). Patch Atlas. In G. Bruyns, H. Wei, K. Lee, & Y. Lou (Eds.), Reinventing Design Modes—Proceedings of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) Conference 2021. Springer.

McGrath, B. (2018). Intersecting disciplinary frameworks: The architecture and ecology of the city. Ecosystem Health and Sustainability, 4(6), 148–159.

McGrath, B., Marshall, V., Cadenasso, M., Grove, J., Pickett, S., Plunz, R., & Towers, J. (2007). Designing patch dynamics. Columbia University, GSAPP.

McGrath, B., Marshall, V., Pickett, S. T. A., Cadenasso, M. L., & Grove, J. M. (2019). Ecological Urban Design: Theory, research and praxis. In S. T. A.

Pickett, M. L. Cadenasso, & J. M. Grove (Eds.), Science for the Sustainable City: Empirical insights from the Baltimore school of urban ecology (pp. 307–338). Yale University Press.

M’Closky, K., & VanDerSys, K. (2025). Media Matters in Landscape Architecture. ORO Editions.

Pickett, S. T. A., Cadenasso, M. L., Grove, M. L., Boone, C. G., Groffman, P. M., Irwin, E., Kaushal, S. S., Marshall, V., McGrath, B. P., Nilon, C. H., Pouyat, R. V., Szlavecz, K., Troy, A., & Warren, P. (2011). Urban Ecological Systems: Scientific foundations and a decade of progress. Journal of Environmental Management, 92(3), Article 3.