凯特·奥尔夫是SCAPE景观设计公司的创办者和美国哥伦比亚大学城市设计项目的主任。她积极地致力于应对气候变化等设计实践中，其作品被多家艺术机构，政府部门，学界，科学界和社区部门共享和采纳。她在2012年被获得美国艺术家称谓（United States Artist）等。

Kate Orff is the founder of SCAPE and Director of the Urban Design Program at Columbia University. Her activist and visionary work on design for climate dynamics has been shared and developed in collaboration with arts institutions, government agencies, and scholars worldwide, bridging design, science, and community participation to redefine the role of the landscape architect in the age of climate change. She is the co-author, with photographer Richard Misrach, of Petrochemical America. She was named a United States Artist in 2012.

对于我们的世界，凯特·奥尔夫有着乐观和变化的启示：我们能够将社会和生态系统联结在一起从而可持续地再造我们的城市和景观。《面向都市生态》的内容包括学术探讨，专业指南和宣言。书本重新构思了都市景观设计作为行动主义的一种形式，来证明如何超越于我们熟悉的，日渐过时的环境、都市和社会问题分离的思考模式；并且倡议通过实践的综合性来创造真实的都市生态。

在纯粹的实践中，SCAPE已经革新了许多工具和技术，使得设计师，政策制定者和社区参与者能够运用于此来解决当代最迫切的问题：生物多样性的丧失， 社会凝聚力的丧失以及生态退化。《面向都市生态》选取了SCAPE的多个代表性项目和研究，传达了一系列的策略来创造一个更加弹性和包容的人居环境。

Kate Orff has an optimistic and transformative message about our world: we can bring together social and ecological systems to sustainably remake our cities and landscapes. Part monograph, part manual, part manife¬sto, Toward an Urban Ecology reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology.

In purely practical terms, SCAPE has already generated numerous tools and techniques that designers, policy makers, and communities can use to address some of the most pressing issues of our time, including the loss of biodiversity, the loss of social cohesion, and ecological degradation. Toward an Urban Ecology features numerous projects and select research from SCAPE, and conveys a range of strategies to engender a more resilient and inclusive built environment.