Scholars argue that because cities are heterotrophs, they are not. What about solar energy generation? Can that be considered an autotroph process? How can anything be autotroph if the 2nd law applies to all? The second law of thermodynamics according to which ALL systems eventually dissipate, also natural ecosystems. Why are humans not just another species on earth and the cities they are building "urban ecosystems"?
An autotroph is an organism that can produce its own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals. II law of thermodynamics can be applied here. We can not convert heat into work completely and invariably there are losses in the system (givien to sink which is absorbed by atmosphere) and only useful energy we are getting from sun.
Urban Ecosystems introduces some of the principles of ecology, or an ecosystem is a community of living organisms interacting with its non-living environment.
think of a termite mound. Certainly a microecosystem in itself! And note that there cities built by humans without exploiting fossil energy, just human (albeit often slave...) labour. and there are a lot more builders in the animal kingdom, think of corals...
The termites probably would argue similarly, from a termite point of view... wouldyou agree that termite mounds are small ecosystems with their specific characteristics (temperature staibility etc)?
Concentrations of species can become a burden for the environment, there is no unlimited growth in nature. - Plagues of locusts are a classical example, eliminated now by man with chemicals.
The concentration in megacities and slums requires huge transport of goods in and out with heavy losses and increasing dammage.
This is just my personal view.
Philosophically i am not sure a human artefact can be properly considered an ecosystem, so it may be wrong to suggest a city is an ecosystem if you define 'city' as a human artefact. Perhaps better to replace 'city' with 'urban environment' in this case.
Cities CAN accommodate ecosystems but they are not 'natural' ones. Such an ecosystem would be more or less 'managed' (i.e., analogously to a garden, a game preserve, a fallow field, a horse paddock, or an artificial reservoir) with the object of having certain outcomes in mind, and/or taking on an autonomous ecological structure in the absence thereof.
A combination of both exists defacto in all cities. With sufficient analysis they can probably be found to have determinate laws as are known for ecosystems in more pristine environments, except that urban environmental conditions are subject to rapid physical change which would make such laws harder to formulate and verify empirically in context.
Urban metabolism is a field of research sometimes having ecological methods of systems analysis, which would imply a position that the city IS the ecosystem.
Finally, as you are no doubt aware, there is new thinking about cities among landscape specialists and urban designers (urban ecology) which proposes that cities may be made or formed to accommodate specifically designed ecosystems.
Of course this practice itself is hardly new; ancient Greek cities included forests and orchards within walls, and Angkorean cities incorporated extensive provisions of highly sophisticated design for hydrology and aquaculture within big scale artificial structures. Contemporary theory simply puts the practice in a more scientifically determined technical context.
Perhaps this suggests the city HAS the ecosystem.
In this case, whether the city IS the ecosystem, or HAS the ecosystem, depends again on your philosophical position.
Entropy: A concept that is not a physical quantity
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230554936_Entropy_A_concept_that_is_not_a_physical_quantity
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