Chris Ives has just  essay posted on The Nature of Cities website:

“Start with people. Adopting a values-based approach to understanding urban ecological systems will challenge how land use and environmental management decisions are typically made. Rather than fitting the importance of urban nature into current paradigms of decision-making (often based on economic values and balancing fiscal budgets), public values can be used as a way of engaging people in the decision-making process of our cities. Beginning with an understanding of what people value and why, urban nature can be embedded more closely into the life of a city, rather than being presented as an alternative issue that only resonates with the environmentally conscious few.”

The full article can be found at
http://www.thenatureofcities.com/?p=6238