DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/ehs2.1255

Summary
The ecological concept of disturbance has scarcely been applied in urban systems except in the erroneous but commonplace assumption that urbanization itself is a disturbance and cities are therefore perennially disturbed systems. We evaluate the usefulness of the concept in urban ecology by exploring how a recent conceptual framework for disturbance (Peters et al. 2011, Ecosphere, 2, art 81) applies to these social–ecological–technological systems (). Case studies, especially from the Long‐Term Ecological Research sites of Baltimore and Phoenix, are presented to show the applicability of the framework for disturbances to different elements of these systems at different scales. We find that the framework is easily adapted to urban and that incorporating social and technological drivers and responders can contribute additional insights to disturbance research beyond urban systems.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This article provides two important insight to the deiscussion on Social-ecological-technological systems, SETS. First it introduces a framework of the urban SETS with components pertaining to the Biotic complex, the hysical complex, the built complex and the social complex. It shows how these may be interlinked throught the study of possible disturbances to the composite system of the four complexes. Second it disaggregates the concept of disturbances from various points of view: what the disturbance impacts (the complexes), its extension and magnitude in space an time .Through the framework and the studied examples it gives a better and less biased understanding of what a distrubnace may mean in an urban system.

Point of Strength
This article would be very useful in a course discussin coupled systems, the relations and mechanisms within.