Tropical cities are diverse and deserve more social-ecological attention

When I visit cities in the tropics, I am always fascinated by their diversity, not only their cultural diversity but also the diversity of vegetation and cityscapes. While New York City has a constructed Central Park, Belem in Brazil has the Jardim Botânico da Amazonia Bosque Rodrigues Alves, a 16-ha patch of natural lowland rain forest. My hometown of San Juan has scattered natural patches of novel moist forests with unique combinations of native and introduced tree species. From high-rise downtown buildings in Kingston, Jamaica; San Juan, Puerto Rico; or Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, one can appreciate the diverse tree cover of Caribbean cities. In these cities as well as others such as Georgetown, Guyana; Caracas, Venezuela; BasseTerre, Guadeloupe; or Roseau, Dominica, human activity takes place at a torrid clip and provides multiple rewards to visiting tourists and those who enjoy watching people in action. However, the combined effects of tropical conditions and overuse usually strain the gray infrastructure of tropical cities. It is common to see declining neighborhoods, crowded conditions, and eutrophic waters, all of which can endanger human health and create social and ecological vulnerabilities for tropical cities. Both social and ecological systems of cities adapt to the rapidly changing conditions within tropical cities and in the process generate novelty and functioning that somehow sustain the cities temporally and spatially

Amazon rainforest · Downtown · Geography · Urbanization · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology · Ecology