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Our planet is urbanizing rapidly and Belgium (Flanders in particular) is characterized by a high degree of urbanization. Among biologists there is a growing interest to study the ecological and evolutionary consequences of urbanization since urban areas differ in multiple ways from the environments surrounding cities. During six years a consortium of Belgian biologists and their international network combined their efforts to study these impacts in a wide range of organisms, including both aquatic and terrestrial species and communities (e.g. bacteria, zooplankton, snails, butterflies and moths, grasshoppers, damselflies, fish, birds, etc.). This paper introduces the field of urban ecology and explores why evolutionary approaches are essential to unravel how organisms deal with these anthropogenic environmental conditions. We review in a highly selective way the ecological and evolutionary consequences of urbanization and introduce the aims and methods of the so called SPEEDY-project. More detailed case-studies from the project are presented in the other articles of this special volume on biodiversity and urbanization.