Introduction

In Sweden, the political ambition is to integrate the convention on biological diversity (UNCED, 1992) into physical planning and monitoring of urban areas. These ambitions are, however, hampered by a lack of significant information on the ecological landscape context. The responsibility for implementation lies with the local municipalities, through physical planning of land and water uses, and development. According to the Planning and Building Act every municipality shall have a comprehensive up-to-date plan for its geographical area and the local government should develop the plan in co-operation with inhabitants and other interested stakeholders. The expectations on planning as an arena for discussions and implementation of environmental issues and sustainable development have increased in international and Swedish national politics. In this context it is important for the different players to bring forth the best possible grounds for making decisions on future planning and building.

To increase the comprehensive understanding of urban ecosystems, new theoretical frameworks are needed (Pickett et al., 2001 and Chapter 3). The study I describe in this chapter stresses the importance of including spatio-temporal aspects in this work. It focuses on how urban monitoring procedures can be designed on the local level to provide complementary spatial and temporal information on biodiversity that supports assessments in physical planning. By addressing questions considering biotope (i.e. habitat) fragmentation, this enables comparisons to be made at the scale of the entire municipality.