Philip Silva
New York
TreeKit, Cornell University Ithaca, NY USA Philip Silva is a Ph.D. student in Natural Resources at Cornell University. His work focuses on informal adult learning and participatory action research in social-ecological systems. For the past four years, Silva taught courses in urban forestry, environmental history, and design at The New School. In 2011, Silva was one of 25 national leaders convened by the US Forest Service to participate in the “Vibrant Cities and Urban Forests” task force. He has worked with some of NYC’s leading environmental organizations, including Sustainable South Bronx, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Just Food, and the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. Philip is a recipient of the 2010 iLAB Residency of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance (“iLAND”) and a 2009 Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. He currently serves as co-founder and co-director of TreeKIT, an initiative to measure, map, and collaboratively manage urban forests. A native of Newark, NJ with a graduate degree in urban policy analysis, Silva is dedicated to exploring nature in all of its urban expressions.
More by this author at The Nature of Cities
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What prevents us from creating cities that are better for people and nature? It doesn’t seem like a lack of knowledge—don’t we have enough research knowledge to act on better policy? So, what is the impediment?
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What is one thing every ecologist should know about urban ecology?
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To whom does a city’s nature belong? Is it a common pool resource, or a public good? And who decides?
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It Takes a Village to Green an Alley
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How Did Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon River Restoration Get Its Start? TNOC Podcast Episode 10
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Some Birds Love Cities—Can Cities Love them Back? TNOC Podcast Episode 9
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What Should We Make of Jane Jacobs’ Critique of Parks in The Death and Life of Great American Cities?—TNOC Podcast Episode 8
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Look Who’s Coming to Dinner…Bacteria that Eat the Gowanus Sludge—TNOC Podcast Episode 7
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The Flint Water Crisis Illuminated by Citizen Science—TNOC Podcast Episode 6
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Sustainable Cities Don’t Need Nature—They Need Good Design
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Mapping the Forest for the Trees: A Census Grows in the Five Boroughs
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10 scientists and 10 practitioners walk into a bar…what would they talk about? How can research and knowledge generation be co-created to better support practitioners and evidence-based decision making?
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Nature, New York, and the Practice of Paying Attention
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Making the Measure: A Toolkit for Tracking the Outcomes of Community Gardens and Urban Farms
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How can different ways of knowing—and of producing knowledge—be useful for understanding and managing urban ecosystems?
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Environmental education in cities focuses on youth and community development, restoring ecosystems, building green infrastructure, and more. But is urban environmental education really anything new? What should its goals and practices look like?
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Three M’s for Empowering Volunteer Urban Foresters: Mobilizing, Mapping, and Monitoring
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Street Art, Slow Work, and Stories: Three Values for Civic Ecology Practices in Cities
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From Banlieue to Biophilia: Thinking About Nature as a Basis for Urban Design
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Cyborgs, Sewers, and the Sensing City
