Socially Distant Summer: Stewarding Nature and Community to Meet Basic Needs during a Pandemic

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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This essay is part two in a series. Since 13 March 2020, our team of social science researchers has been keeping a collective journal of our experiences of our New York City neighborhoods and public spaces during COVID-19. Read the first essay from spring here.
SUMMER

We started to settle into our “new normal”, with the pace of our journal entries significantly slowing down. Social distancing didn’t feel as novel any more, we weren’t noticing the shifts and changes as much. Or perhaps we were worn down with mental fatigue and journaling didn’t feel therapeutic, it felt frankly depressing. Even the daily, spontaneous 7pm cheer  for frontline workers from city rooftops and apartment windows had faded over time in our corners of the city. At the same time, our worlds were also expanding — ever so slightly. As we went from a complete shutdown through the stages of reopening, we found new and creative ways to socialize: in parks, on rooftops, with outdoor dining in the streets across the city. All of this had to be navigated through our personal understandings and comfort with the risk involved in doing so. We were all trying to think like amateur epidemiologists.

We found that civic groups and public agencies are stewarding nature so that it is providing some of our most basic needs during the pandemic — food, respite, and safety.
Some of us were able to find respite from the monotony and the heat in short trips outside the city, others had not left their neighborhood since March. We are cognizant that we have an enormous amount of privilege to have this mobility — access to private or rental cars, families with homes outside the city, the ability to pay for vacations. For many in the city, the heat of July combined with lack of access to public cooling centers under social distancing presented a deadly threat above and beyond the virus. In response, the city government aimed to distribute thousands of free air conditioners to vulnerable residents and opened up fire hydrants in some of the Open Streets, as part of the Cool It! program.

Research team members meet for a socially distant walk in Brooklyn. From left: Michelle Johnson, Erika Svendsen and Lindsay Campbell. Photo: Lindsay Campbell
Street dining in Brooklyn in the shade of a street tree. Photo: Erika Svendsen

Starting in June we began to conduct interviews with local civic environmental stewardship groups and public agency natural resource managers at city, state, and federal levels as part of our STEW-MAP research effort, to understand how they were adapting to and impacted by COVID-19. All of this trained our eye in new ways to attune to the ongoing changes around us — the radical and subtle shifts in how we are relating to our neighbors and the nearby nature around us. As such, this essay draws on both our personal observations of our neighborhoods as well as some of the emerging themes from interviews with dozens of civic stewards and public land managers. We found that civic groups and public agencies are stewarding nature so that it is providing some of our most basic needs during the pandemic — food, respite, and safety.

FOOD

As the pandemic unfolded and many lost their jobs, struggled to make ends meet, and needed to find a way to pay rent, food insecurity emerged as a growing problem. Recent data from Feeding America suggests that the pandemic could force an additional 17 million Americans into food insecurity, bringing totals from the current 37 million food insecure to a projected 54 million food insecure people nationwide. Mutual aid groups focused on purchasing and distributing groceries to neighbors in need, and the community fridge movement grew. While these grassroots efforts multiplied, many civic environmental stewardship groups asked themselves how they could flex and adapt their missions and programs in order to help.

LEFT: Astoria Community Fridge. Photo: Michelle Johnson
RIGHT: Food distribution project at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Children’s Garden. Photo: Lindsay Campbell

Some of these stewardship groups already worked in urban agriculture and saw an opportunity to redistribute the produce they grew to community members that need it most. One group, an education program that installs and builds curricula around hydroponic rooftop farms in school buildings, was already working with community partners to distribute produce grown in the classrooms. They use their gardens to teach lessons about the food chain, including food access. COVID has further revealed food insecurity within school communities as well, and moving forward they hope to redistribute the produce to school families in need. Another stewardship group that manages an on-site demonstration garden for school groups recently started distributing their produce to community partners. Prior to COVID, the produce they grew would be sent home with students or employees, but staff realized that the 100lbs of produce they grow each week could have an even bigger impact. Now, they are donating at least 20lbs a week to five different local organizations to subsidize fresh produce.

Many community gardens across the city are well set up to grow and distribute produce, but not all of them have the resources to do so. One citywide organization decided to focus their efforts on a new community farm hub program that supports groups looking to get involved in food production. They have made introductions between civic groups that hadn’t previously partnered, distributed seed packets, and conducted online trainings to help kickstart community farming. A few participating gardens have even collaborated to start local farmer’s markets. Another urban farm partnered with existing organizations and emergent mutual aid networks to purchase and distribute free farm boxes to residents who were struggling as a result of the pandemic. In the early days of lockdown, they called neighbors to identify those who didn’t have enough food to get through the week. At the peak, they were giving out roughly 450 boxes weekly, with pick up locations in multiple spots in the neighborhood and a delivery system for seniors and those unable to pick up in person.

Groups with gardens and farms aren’t the only ones pivoting to address food insecurity. One social weaver who founded a stewardship group to address community needs after Hurricane Sandy used her contact list to start a meal distribution program in the neighborhood back in April. At first, she partnered with a food pantry to deliver ready-to-eat meals to neighbors in need, but they weren’t very popular because they didn’t always match the cultural tastes of her diverse community. Now, she is distributing boxes of groceries that allow community members to prepare their own meals. She described packing up her car multiple times a day and driving around asking people if they’d like some food. She shared a story of one particular instance when she saw a mother and child in need, did a U-turn thinking “just maybe they need something,” and the food she offered was gratefully accepted.

In addition to these and many other efforts by civic groups, the NYC Department of Education gave all NYC public schools students a $420 voucher for food as part of the federal Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program. The voucher could only be spent by the bearer and not donated. There was an effort by City Council member Brad Lander and others to encourage those with means to spend the voucher and donate the same amount used to food pantries.

These and many other efforts to address food insecurity have helped sustain many New Yorkers through an unbelievably challenging time. And yet, as people return to work and emergency relief slows, it is becoming evident that not all of these responses are sustainable in the long term. Many of the stewards and activists we spoke to shared visions and dreams of moving away from a charity model of distributing free food, and towards true food sovereignty. What would it look like for vulnerable communities to control their own food system?

TRASH 

Throughout shelter-in-place orders and ongoing social distancing rules, parks remained open, accessible, and vital to community health and well-being. While playgrounds, courts, ballfields, and community gardens in NYC were temporarily closed to ensure public health, many of our interviewees steward larger parks that include forested natural areas that provided access for nature recreation and respite throughout the pandemic. Land managers at all levels — federal, state, and local — and civic stewards reflected on how parks, forests, and open spaces were experiencing record levels of use and influxes of visitors. Our interviewees — as well as public health experts, elected officials, and the media — asserted the renewed and vital importance of open green spaces for fresh air, exercise, socialization, and connection to nature during these incredibly difficult times.

At the same time, with this increase in use, there has been an increase in trash left behind from these visits, including both overflowing garbage cans and litter on the ground. The trash issue is exacerbated by the fact that many parks are operating with cuts to budget and staff. According to New York Times reporting, NYC Parks has received an $84 million budget cut. Additionally, a report by New Yorkers for Parks found that the non-profit organizations that provide maintenance, operations and other services for city-owned land anticipate a 60% decrease in revenue for 2020, which will translate into a loss of 40,000 hours of park maintenance and 110,000 lost hours of horticultural care city-wide. Public land managers are highly aware of these visitor impacts — and are redoubling their efforts to stay apace with trash pickup and other crucial maintenance tasks. Many public land managers expressed disappointment that at the time when there is such an influx of new visitors, they are struggling to provide the level or service or high quality experience. New visitation has also resulted in a new influx of volunteers. Public land managers are working to focus this energy on litter-pickup rather than horticultural activities.

Public agencies are not alone in responding to this challenge; individuals and civic groups are also involved in clean-ups and trash prevention. Some excerpts from Lindsay’s journal track individual and community-organized cleanups around Brooklyn:

8 May 2020

I don’t usually like to go to the beach at Valentino Pier after a rainy day (because of all the trash on the beach), but my daughter was asking repeatedly to go. I saw my neighbor and his toddler with a full bag of trash and a trash picker. He had completely cleaned the beach of all its debris. He is the primary caretaker of his toddler, as he lost his job during COVID. On the walk back, I saw him across the street continuing to pick up trash — so not just the beach, but strewn gloves and masks from the sidewalk.

10 August 2020

On Saturday morning, my family and I went to Prospect Park for the first time since the lockdown and met up with friends and their dog for a distanced hello. I was really surprised by the amount of trash — not just cans overflowing, but cups and cans and things just loose on the ground under trees. It was 11am and the park was already quite full and we had to walk a ways to find a shady, safely distanced spot. Then, what should I see, but a parent and 2 kids with trash pickers and bags going around picking up trash. And they weren’t the last — I saw about 6-8 people doing the same thing throughout the park. Call it “COVID plogging,” but people are definitely helping to maintain the “loved to death park.”

A neighborhood Red Hook mom I know organized a trash pickup on Valentino Pier at the beach for this Monday, 10am. The beach seems like a special issue though, because most of the trash is tidal, not litter.

27 August 2020

A South Brooklyn mom is organizing folks to adopt their blocks to pick up trash — started a google map — and following a model she read about from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Reminds me of the way that the rainbow scavenger hunt map started and went viral.

LEFT: Screenshot of community beach cleanup flyer posted to neighborhood Facebook group
RIGHT: Volunteer participant at a Monday morning community cleanup with Prospect Park Alliance. Photo courtesy of Janeen Potts.

These community-led clean-up efforts are being encouraged and nurtured by public agencies (e.g. community cleanup tool lending from the Department of Sanitation) and elected officials (e.g. Bronx Borough President Reuben Diaz’s “Meaningful Mondays”). From our interviews, we found that civic stewardship groups are helping to address this gap by creating campaigns encouraging users to pick up their trash and some are even handing out trash bags as visitors enter parks. Park conservancies and other partners to the city are sounding the alarm about park budget cuts and making efforts to restore budget for these crucial services in future budget years. Park advocates have formed coalitions and are calling for city budget increases to maintain parks as well as writing opinion pieces calling for the creation of new parks in areas where they are most needed, to address disparities in park access that have been magnified under coronavirus.

Tropical Storm Isaias tree damage on an Astoria street. Photo: Michelle Johnson

STORMS 

The impacts of the COVID-19 crisis intersect with pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities across our population. One horrifying, but incredibly plausible scenario that city officials had to prepare for was the possibility of pandemic, heat wave, and hurricane co-occurring.

As tropical storm Isaias barreled toward the city, residents — particularly those in coastal communities–found themselves bracing for impact. Fortunately, New Yorkers were spared from experiencing flooding because of its trajectory, timing, and alignment with the tides — if these had been different, coastal neighborhoods could have experienced the sort of storm surge that occurred during Sandy. However, the storm’s high winds had an incredible impact on the city’s urban forest — leading to over 3,300 downed trees and over 32,000 tree-related public service requests sent into 311, the city’s customer service line, in five days (data provided by NYC Parks as of 28 August 2020). This is the largest number of public service requests since storm event record keeping began in 1997 and more than a third of what is typically received in a year. These downed trees damaged property and created power outages, some of which stretched on for a week, during summer daytime heat in the 90s. Residents in New Jersey, Westchester County, and Connecticut experienced extensive power outages as well. New York City Parks responded by mobilizing its workforce to respond rapidly in real time to these resident calls, to ensure that streets and sidewalks were safely cleared.

We are reminded that in addition to the first responders who stabilize life and property after a disaster, those we call “green responders” work to restore communities and landscapes by caring for the natural world. These green responders include both public land managers and civic stewards, and disturbances can be acute (storm, tornado, hurricane) or more slow moving (food insecurity, economic disinvestment) — and their actions are a crucial part of long-term recovery and preparedness cycles.

The residents of the waterfront community of Red Hook, Brooklyn — particularly low income, often people of color living in NYCHA’s public housing–understand firsthand what it is to experience multiple vulnerabilities. In 2013, Hurricane Sandy devastated the neighborhood with flooding, power outages, and sustained damages to infrastructure and the built environment. After seven years, major retrofits to the NYCHA buildings and grounds are finally being made this summer to improve flood resilience. Yet, according to interviews with neighborhood activists, this construction is occurring at a large-scale across the entire campus all at once — cutting off residents from vitally needed local open spaces during the pandemic, removing over 450 mature trees, and leaving piles of construction debris and soil uncovered and exposed to air. These unintended side effects of much-needed capital improvements reflect the complex realities of and dire need for retrofitting our infrastructure and landscapes to be resilient to multiple disturbances, while working closely with and listening to local residents. On several instances, water mains had to be shut off to allow for construction, which simultaneously cut off access to fresh water for drinking and hand washing for residents. Local activists, nonprofits, and mutual aid groups stepped in to ensure that water was provided to residents — along with the already existing food distributions that were occurring. Going further, they organized advocacy efforts, including a public rally on 28 July, to target elected officials and the media to ensure that residents’ concerns were heard and addressed (see also #LetRedHookBreathe and #FullyFundRedHookHouses). Local leaders continue to educate the public, the media, and elected officials on the ways in which threats like climate change intersect with social justice and inequality to affect people’s lived experiences, particularly for public housing residents (e.g. see upcoming webinar).

We are cognizant that we are writing these reflections on storms and COVID-19 from the Eastern United States, while huge portions of the west coast are ablaze with unprecedented wildfires. How can we best protect, prepare, and adapt our communities–particularly the most vulnerable among us — to sustain in the context of extreme weather and climate change occurring alongside a public health crisis and massive social upheavals?  How can caring for the land–as both a profession and as an avocation — play a part in making us more resilient?

POWER OF PUBLIC LANDS

Reflecting back on this summer, it has been a stark reminder of what food, shelter, and safety means to different groups of people. For some it is the continuance of good food while supporting one’s local restaurant and for others it is the basic need for food. Safety may mean public recreation free from debris and for others it may be access to clean water or safe streets. Shelter for so many this summer has also been about finding a respite in our public lands as a walk in the woods or neighborhood park can offer relief from this time of stress and uncertainty.

Of course, our public lands — wherever they may be — do more than offer temporary relief. As we enter these spaces, we are in the company of others — past, present, and future humans. In these spaces, we are, perhaps, reminded of a shared humanity and of natural forces that are great and alive, redemptive and destructive. As summer comes to a close, we prepare again for a season like none other. Many teachers will be in the classroom while their students are at home, on-line or struggling just to stay connected. Families and friends will find new ways to mark the fall and winter holidays and remembrances that often accompany the year’s end. And we know that public lands will continue to play an abiding role in our daily lives, as public space has always been a stage for the performance of everyday life. An excerpt from Erika’s journal:

1 September

I was reluctant to go to the park this evening with so much weighing on my mind. What would school be like this year for my kids? Will they fall behind? How will they stay safe but still be with their friends? Will they still feel part of a community? Eventually, I grabbed my mask, a blanket and a few snacks to share for an impromptu, socially-distanced picnic in Prospect Park. There I joined other mothers, fathers, and friends as we talked about our hopes and fears for the coming academic year. We shared stories of the summer that made us laugh. And we shared moments where one of us might have cried out if our kids hadn’t been within hearing distance. Our talk went on as the moon rose over the trees. A man on a bike approached our group. He stopped and shared a song with us. Soon we were encompassed by the music of Earth, Wind and Fire’s, No. 1 hit from the 1970s, September. Suddenly, we forgot our train of thought and leapt to our feet to dance under the moonlight. Wild, crazy dancing. For a moment, our children stared back at us in mild shock. Eventually, everyone joined the needed revelry on this first night of September.

Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away

Our hearts were ringing
In the key that our souls were singing
As we danced in the night
Remember how the stars stole the night away

Hey hey hey,  say do you remember?
Dancing in September
Never was a cloudy day

— Excerpt from “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire

Lindsay Campbell, Michelle Johnson, Laura Landau, Sophie Plitt, and Erika Svendsen
New York

On The Nature of Cities

Michelle Johnson

about the writer
Michelle Johnson

Michelle Johnson is a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service at the NYC Urban Field Station.

Laura Landau

about the writer
Laura Landau

Laura is currently pursuing a PhD in geography at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the civic groups that care for the local environment, and on the potential for urban environmental stewardship to strengthen communities and make them more resilient to disaster and disturbance.

Sophie Plitt

about the writer
Sophie Plitt

Sophie Plitt is National Partnership Manager the the Natural Areas Conservancy. Sophie works to engage national partners in a workshop to improve the management of urban forested natural areas.

Erika Svendsen

about the writer
Erika Svendsen

Dr. Erika Svendsen is a social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station and is based in New York City. Erika studies environmental stewardship and issues related to hybrid governance, collective resilience and human well-being.

 

A Walk Along the Bièvre River

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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On our way, we came across a very interesting monument, the artesian well of the Butte Aux Cailles. Only three such wells exist in Paris, and they connect us to very profound waters, those of the aquifer that lies beneath the urban landscape. One can drink spring water in the middle of the city.
Since 1912 in Paris, the river Bièvre, once the city’s second-largest river, has disappeared from our landscape. It used to cross the whole left bank from south to north, flowing through the 13th and 5th arrondissements before reaching the Seine between “Le Jardin des Plantes”, our historical botanical garden, and the Austerlitz train station. Today, this 36 km long river that originates near Versailles, has only 20 km of its length in the open air, 11 km channeled underground, and for its last stretch (when it reaches Paris), the Bièvre river joins the city’s general sewage system. For many years, projects to restore its ancient path, even partially inside Paris, have been proposed.

On the occasion of The Nature of Cities Summit, which happened in Paris in early June 2019, I had the opportunity to organize a creative walk along the ancient path of this mythical and often forgotten river. We were to uncover the history of this river, the lost sister of the Seine, and softly dive into Parisians relationships to water in its various ways: river, spring, aquifer, fountain, rain… With a group of about fifteen Summit participants, we met up on a Friday afternoon at Jussieu University where the Summit was happening. From this meeting point, we headed south with the subway, to the “doors” of Paris, where the Bièvre used to enter the capital city and to where we were to begin our walk.

What we first saw while looking at the southeastern part of the Paris subway map is that many stop names referred to the times where the Bièvre river flowed through those neighborhoods. One stop named “Les Gobelins”, directly cites the ancient name of the river: “rivière des Gobelins”. A name that doesn’t refer to the fantastic creatures we call goblins but to the name of a famous manufacturer—Jehan Gobelin—who had established his dye shop along the river Bièvre in the 15th century. This factory was famous for its red colors soon created the reputation that the Bièvre was a bloody river. But that’s another story.

Still looking at the subway map, I pointed out the stop called “Glacière”, or icehouse. There the waters from the river Bièvre created wetlands that froze in winter and became an ice reservoir for the city (and an ice skating attraction). Examining the map we could also see a stop called “Poterne des Peupliers” (poplar postern, or « side entrance » through poplars) just at the very limit of the peripheral highway that encircles the old Paris. That’s where we were heading and the poplar trees, longtime companions of waterways, were showing us the way! Interestingly enough, Lindsay Campbell noticed on the new interactive subway map we were navigating on for this introduction, that the whole path of Bièvre was marked, even when flowing under Paris! Perhaps a preview of its future revitalization in the Parisian landscape.

The walk started at the Parc Kellerman, literally located inside the ancient Bièvre river bed, where it once entered the city. The park had been designed as a celebration of water. With its narrow channels, iconic waterfall, and small wetland. For the first time of my life as a native Parisian, I saw a heron inside the city. He flew in front of our group to catch a fish in the water. It was a good sign for the beginning of our day. Guided by the wonderful choreographer Nadia Vadori-Gauthier, we embodied the fluid energy of the lost river and of the park’s ecosystem that is softly calling it back. A video of our dance as part of the One minute of dance everyday project by Nadia Vadori-Gauthier.

A heron on our walk at Parc Kellerman, Paris 13th arrondissement. Photo: Paul Currie (see his website).

The rain started and suddenly water was everywhere. We crossed the small streams running through the park. Local water hens and ducks started to show up among the cord grasses. The heron was still there, proudly standing in the middle of the pond. Soon we could read, engraved on the ground “Parcours symbolique de la Bièvre” (« the symbolic course of the Bièvre »). We were on the right path. Leaving the garden, heading north into the city, we took a large street framed by tall poplar trees singing in the wind. We were to enter a neighborhood where the names of those riverside giants were to be found everywhere, in the name of the hospital “des peupliers”, of the coffee shop, the pharmacy, and of the street we were walking on. We started to cross streets with names referring to water mills: Moulin des Prés”, “Moulin de la Pointe”. Designed to grind grain, they once flourished along the active branch of the river Bièvre. Heavily industrialized with mills, but also tanneries, butcher shops, and dye-makers, the river got more and more channelized over time. Home to those many local industries, each using its waters and flow for their own purpose, it became dramatically polluted and gradually was forced underground.

As we kept walking the rain stopped. We started noticing the many medallions placed on the sidewalk by the urban architect Benoît Jullien, each marking where the Bièvre used to flow. Those marked paths would separate into two routes, the active branch (“bras vif”) of the Bièvre that was artificialized stay active at all times, and the inactive branch (“bras mort”) of the Bièvre, its natural path, that would dry up for parts of the year.

A medallion on the sidewalk indicating where the Bièvre used to flow, Paris, 13th arrondissement. Photograph by Paul Currie. (see his website)

On our way, we came across a very interesting monument, the artesian well of the Butte Aux Cailles. Only three such wells exist in Paris, and they connect us to very profound waters, those of the aquifer that lies beneath the urban landscape. These are precious places for people wishing to drink spring water in the middle of the city. Indeed, as we tasted this water collected at a depth of about 600 meters, we could see neighborhood inhabitants coming on bikes with jerry cans to stock up water for their homes. After drinking this water, we stopped at a nearby park. We took a break to read out loud some of the poems and texts that were written about the Bièvre river. Many of those texts were extracts from the collection of poems Teint: for the Bièvre / Pour la Bièvre, written by the British poet Zoë Skoulding in 2014, to mourn and pay homage to the lost river.

Not a river but its
                                     shadow harmonics hidden
level in the glass note
                                     glissando between a
movement and a sound
                                    half in the performance
where I ran to you I
                                    an as tainted water

while tarmac shines in rain
                                    the channels you don’t touch
well up on tomorrow’s
                                    tongue to flower there don’t
leave or was it this way
                                    that now I’ll run from you

— Excerpt from Zoë Skoulding’s Teint

As she researched its history, she made it into a symbol of the domination over nature and destruction caused by industrial culture, and even by patriarchy. “The Bièvre is today the most perfect symbol of female misery exploited by a great city,” wrote Huysmans a century earlier in 1914. A feminist symbol claimed by some, the Bièvre comes to represent the rawness of Paris’ nature that has been tamed by violent exploitation but hopes to reclaim its rights to live in its full power. As we walked the streets, graffiti and collages caught our eyes, some representing a Super Woman, others a crying teenage girl. More thought-provoking graffitis appear on our path, many made signed by the famous local street artists collective called Lézarts de la Bièvre (the arts of the Bièvre). Through poetic urban art, they help passers-by remember the vanished river and tying its memory to the social justice issues of today.

The group stopped for lunch in a strange park, the square René-Le Gall, which used to be a very small island on the Bièvre. At the time when the river was flowing, this place was called l’île aux singes (the monkeys’ island). Some say this name comes from boatmen who came accompanied by their monkeys that they left free on the islet, and others say it was a slang name given by its workers to the owners of the nearing tannery. Indeed the island was the former kitchen garden of the upholsterers of the famous Manufacture des Gobelins. As we walked up the curvy street leaving the garden we could soon see its luxurious buildings, the only lasting factory from the time of the river’s industrial bloom. Still famous today for its tapestries, this institution has survived and flourished through the centuries. In this place, famous artists like Louise Bourgeois, Jean Arp, Fernand Léger, Alexandre Calder, Sonia Delaunay, and many more have collaborated with artisans perpetuating four hundred years of knowledge. On the facade of the building bas-reliefs representing the different steps necessary to make and prepare the wool for the textile artisans, illustrating for us the practices one could have seen happening by the river for centuries.

But the tragic reality of the Bièvre surfaces again as we walk through an area near Censier, described in Victor Hugo’s famous novel and call for social justice Les Miserables (literally « the wretched people »). Indeed, in the 19th century, the waters and banks of the Bièvre had been so extremely polluted by various industries that putrid smells would escape from the river and make entire neighborhoods unliveable and home to misery. This reality slowly led in 1912 to the covering of the river for sanitary and social reasons. Today, the advocates for the revitalization of the river argue that we have now mastered those sources of pollution and it is time to bring the river back to life.

Now walking downhill, we could slowly sense the Seine river approaching and imagine the past reunion of the two rivers. The medaillons on the ground kept guiding us and assured us that we were following the right path. At times, we saw again names of streets referring to mills or even sculptures of millers and bread bakers at work.

Our last stop was by a typical Parisian fountain, called “Fontaine Wallace”. Now iconic of the city, those green fountains were introduced at the end of the 19th century by a British philanthropist who believed Parisians (who had just suffered the siege de Paris by Prussian forces and civil war) should all have access to free water. Those “fountains for the people” were designed in the style of the time, with four caryatids adorning them, each representing qualities associated with the four seasons: Simplicity for Spring, Charity for Summer, Sobriety for Autumn, and Kindness for Winter. An interesting detail that can be found on each of those fountains is a small metal plate indicating from where this specific fountain water comes from. And it can change from one street to the next. In our case, the plate said that the water was coming from the filtered waters of the Seine and the springs of the Vanne river. With the water, we cleaned delicious cherries that we shared and replenished our bottles. It was time for a group photo.

The group standing by a typical Parisian fountain, 5th arrondissement. Photograph by Paul Currie. (see his website)

Softly, with water in our backpacks, we finally arrived by the Seine at the spot were the Bièvre would have reached this larger stream. At the Pont d’Austerlitz, looking at the strong flow of the Seine, we smiled and decided that we would each write a few sentences for the Bièvre river in a Dadaist style, meaning however we want.

As we invite you to recall that river, here is a collective collage of our words:

Not forgotten but recalled / a lost body found

The river laps

            across generations

across geographies

cutting new ground,

the river laps.

River of the depths, I honor you wherever you go. Vine path, path of hearts. Sister of the Seine.

Dappled drops as light reflects where water was. Step step splash puddle muddled river mort. Follow the live arm.

We start dreaming about the past, about what these banks were, we look for the signs of the presence of water, we find them.

We connect to this underground flow that passes south of Paris, at Gentilly, and runs to the Seine.

We look at photographs of a Paris of the past that we had no idea about, we dream of a future where water would reappear from the walls where it is enclosed. We tell ourselves that this world is crazy.

Searching for traces, memories in the landscape – a word, a puddle, a slope, a sign – les peupliers.

Many thanks to all those who participated in the walk and to The Nature of Cities who connected us across disciplines and ways of life in our love for urban nature. I am looking forward to many more.

Carmen Bouyer
Paris

On The Nature of Cities

 

 

Nature in Cities in a Post-Covid-19 World: Don’t Blame Urban Density in a Pandemic

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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If a post-COVID world can move towards more people-centered social infrastructure investment, with ambitious goals for nature in cities and Biophilic design, then our financial investments in nature will be rewarded with less crowded and more resilient cities, which will hopefully also lead to a more equitable and healthy country.

As a city and regional planner by training, I have been alarmed at the tendency to blame urban density (defined as people per square mile) as a primary culprit for New York City’s relatively severe initial COVID-19 outbreak. An epidemiologist from Stanford, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, and a professor of computational medicine from UCLA all identified density as the enemy in a pandemic in the US by making disputable comparisons between COVID-19 statistics in New York and Los Angeles. However, statistical analysis does not show a consistent connection between big-city density and COVID-19 impacts. One only needs to look at cities like Hong Kong, Seoul, and Singapore to see that New York’s predicament is the result of many more significant factors than urban density. Those other factors, such as inequality and lack of public health infrastructure, have been well documented elsewhere.

Density is not the problem, as L.V. Anderson points out when discussing the resilience of cities in a post-COVID-19 world. Crowding is the problem, and “reallocating outdoor space is the city planner’s secret weapon.” Bruce Schaller, a New York City transportation consultant, distills this same argument very eloquently in his essay entitled Density Isn’t Easy. But It’s a Necessity: “The question is not whether we need cities and density. The question is whether we have the vision, commitment, and fortitude to make our cities equitable, affordable, and sustainable as well as dense, creative, and diverse.”

Urban density, of course, has merit. It’s the key to being able to offer access to shared amenities, including parks, trails, and other recreational open spaces. Cities are by far the most efficient and effective forms of human settlements, including energy efficiency, economic activity per capita, and as centers of creativity and innovation.

In facing a pandemic like COVID-19, the lesson here should not be becoming anti-density, but instead re-learning the lessons of the public park movement of the late 19th century. The parks of this era were specifically designed to avoid crowding and were intended to foster “a temperate, good-natured, and healthy state of mind.” Parks are a fundamental part of the city’s social infrastructure, which also includes community centers, libraries, and hospitals. As Samuel Kling, Global Cities and ACLS/Mellon Public Fellow at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, correctly states: “Cities are vulnerable amid [a] pandemic, but they are not the problem.”

So, while there are many dimensions to making cities better in a post-COVID-19 world, here are four salient action items we can take to promote nature in cities, reduce crowding, and improve urban density’s natural advantages to foster economic resilience and efficiency.

  1. Transfer Land Use from Cars to People
  2. Set Goals for Nature
  3. Take a Biophilic Approach
  4. Invest in Nature 

1. Transfer Land Use from Cars to People

This is an easy one in concept and is already happening in many cities around the country by converting car lanes to pedestrian and bicycle lanes and creating “parklets” out of under-utilized parking spaces and other impervious surfaces. Allocating less space to cars and more space to functional open space will ease crowding and make cities more vibrant economically.

Not incidentally, by using natural elements such as tree boxes and pervious paving, reducing the amount of impervious concrete and asphalt roadway for these new people-centric uses will also help reduce urban flooding and stormwater pollution and lightening the cooling load for adjacent buildings in this era of climate change), which are some of the key objectives of Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters Plan.

In 2001, The Conservation Fund and the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) launched a pioneering flood management program, Greenseams. Greenseams purchases land and conservation easements from willing landowners in the Milwaukee, Menomonee, Oak Creek and Root River watersheds, where major suburban growth is expected to occur. Photos taken in September 2019 by Ivan LaBianca.

2. Set Goals for Nature

It is incredibly important to undertake strategic analysis for identifying what is important to protect that keeps natural systems and human communities thriving. As density is a measure of people per square mile, it is appropriate and essential to set targets for what level of functional open space a particular city should have on a per capita basis and ensure that this open space is equitably distributed across demographic and economic categories. Metropolitan areas, such as Portland, Oregon, have developed regional conservation plans that help them protect strategically important areas and help them spend available money wisely. These types of approaches can be applied in dense urban settlements to help protect and restore natural systems and provide open space opportunities for more urban dwellers. Natural areas and features are essential to green civic infrastructure.

3. Take a Biophilic Approach

The Biophilic Cities movement highlights the importance of daily contact with nature as an element of urban life and a public health necessity, in addition to the ethical responsibility that cities have to conserve global biodiversity and to foster shared habitat for non-human life and people. Although a global movement, local action following Biophilic principles is happening in the United States, with Washington, D.C.’s 11thStreet Bridge Park and Lindsay Street Park in Atlanta as signature examples of expanding access to nature in cities while intentionally mitigating the potential for displacing lower-income residents that often accompanies environmental investments in cities. Green should be for all, not just the wealthy if we want healthy and economically viable cities.

Caption: Lindsey Street Park took six vacant and blighted lots in a poor and high crime area of Atlanta with fewer acres of green space than anywhere else in the city, renovated the site, planted local pollinator species, recreated the historical streambed and incorporated a job training program for residents. Photo: Whitney Flanagan

4. Invest in Nature

Most advocacy for nature in cities includes an argument for more money, and this article is no exception. The good news is that, in the U.S., we now have full and permanent funding for the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund. With the annual appropriation around US$900 million, this will provide an opportunity for urban areas (and rural areas) to have a more appropriate level of investment that gets closer to meeting the needs for parks and open space for current and future generations.

In conclusion, if a post-COVID world can move towards more people-centered social infrastructure investment, with ambitious goals for nature in cities and Biophilic design, then our financial investments in nature will be rewarded with less crowded and more resilient cities, which will hopefully also lead to a more equitable and healthy country.

Will Allen
Chapel Hill

On The Nature of Cities

Adapted from an article originally published by The Conservation Fund

Family Tree

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I kneeled in the moisture of life giving birth to more life, still insecure of my newly won freedom to roam after Covid lockdown. I thought of a friend’s phrase from years ago: “The soul is a plant”. Yes, and maybe the plant is a soul, too.
Linden

In early summer, after the crest of the first wave of the pandemics had broken and kids resumed to go to school and street cafés had opened again, I spent days alone writing on the balcony of a flat in a somewhat sketchy Berlin neighbourhood. Down in the street, two storeys below, groups of young guys drove their BMWs on extra broad tires in search for a place to park, sending bass heavy music pulsing through the stone valley between the old city blocks. Elderly women chatted underneath, ambulances howled past on the main street, and the occasional drunk yelled out in front of the house.

This essay is a companion to the virtual art show by Emilio Fantin. See the show here.
I was sitting suspended amid the noises and the lifelines they connected to one another. And at the same time I was galaxies away, englobed by the green light of the linden tree which grows in front of the house. The stem rises up directly opposite of the balcony, so that in summer it becomes a tree house sunk into the moist twilight of the canopy. Writing, I only needed to stretch out my hands in order to touch the fresh twigs, the leaves and the fine fur on their surface. And the blossoms.

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Oh yes, it was the linden blossoms which made my home for these days of writing in the city summer. Tens of thousands of tiny yellow-greenish petals had unfolded and opened the gates of scent, of that sweet honey-scent which has become my instinctive idea of summer in the city. Linden trees are a rare paradox, as they are strong as an oak, and sweet as a rose. Botanically, they belong into the family of the mallows.

The tall tree which at the same time is a flower provides a glimpse into the depths of the ongoing creation of the world. We see—we smell—that in these depths tenderness and power, endurance, and fragility are not separated. This understanding is provided by the linden’s scent. I can’t help but understand when I am in the linden’s proximity, although I might never be able to consciously express the full scope of this understanding. I am sucked into it; I am called to partake in it; I am fed by it.

So, I passed the early summer writing, and being part of the tree. I was part of what it breathed out, sweet scent, and provided what it breathed in, carbon dioxide from my lungs, and, ultimately, my flesh. I was part of the bees’ hum, and the bugs’ flicker, and the wind’s dance in the branches, which, when I allowed my gaze to lose itself among the ten thousand gazes of the open blossoms, unveiled itself as a huge body breathing, and breathing myself with it.

Trees and their irresistible ways of expressing their lives and what is important to them are not only providing evidence that the plant kingdom is full of feeling like ours. They are not only supporting the intuition that the world in its inner core is sensible and experiencing: A huge consciousness-in-the-flesh. Trees are the proof that the world’s consciousness is accessible to us. They are the embodiment of us accessing it all the time, of us being in the midst of it, through every breath we take, which in truth is an act of sharing our being with the plants, giving them the substance of our bodies (the CO2 we exhale) and drawing in theirs (the oxygen they provide).

It is the most simple and most mystical process imaginable, because it describes how the total of the world, split up into individuals who yearn for life, meets and becomes whole again through the exchange of bodies, through the exchange of breath – being knotted together in an inseparable something which the cultural ecologist David Abram has referred to as the “Commonwealth of Breath”. The breath we create all together, we breathe out together, which nourishes us because of our togetherness.

Sitting in the dim globe of the linden tree, breathing its breath and realizing that its breath is fragrance, and becoming fragrance myself, I understood that there is no “nature” there, with trees and bugs and snails and water and mountains, and humans here, but that there is only mutual transformation in the desire to exist.

Trees are our mirror neurons by which we can probe into the vast world of this mutuality, which ultimately is the labyrinth of our own body, the root of our own psyche wandering through the soil of the world in the same way the root hairs of the linden tree incessantly move about, in the dark soil beneath the Berlin city street, under the growl of broad tires, sheltered from the sun and the nightly light of the stars, sending water and food up to the innumerable tiny blossoms gazing into space, breathing out the perfume of life.

Aspen. Photo: Andreas Weber.

Aspen

When the aspen’s life ends, another one is just beginning. It is a life not of whispering leaves in a southern summer breeze, but rather as massive white bones blocking the course of the mountain stream. When you scramble down into the river valley, you don’t immediately recognize the uprooted trees among the round stones bleached by the sun. The white waters of winter have peeled away the bark and washed the timber clean, so that it shines like a bone, a huge remnant of lived life, white as the sun at noon. The logs are twisted and bent, flashes of negative images of their eager growth along the stony banks of the Appenine stream.

The splintered trees in the river bed echo the wind that once rushed through their twigs and bent their stems. Now they don’t stand anymore. They lie down. The river water splashes over them, after a strong rain has filled the empty gravel bed with restless power. The logs are pulled away by the water, crash into boulders, are pushed on, then become stuck again, heaping up mounds of stones along their white bones. The pebbles rattle and rush, slash and gush. They make the air brim with the echo of fluttering leaves.

Among the stones of the river bed, the aspens answer the sun’s gift of power with their contorted bodies reaching towards the sky. They have become toys of the water. When the waves rip away parts of the dry earth of the shores, the huge trees are pulled down and away. They become the water’s instruments, its willing helpers. As long as they are rooted in the soil, they serve the sun, are a condensed form of its energy and feed it to the other beings. Now the stems have become crystallized water. They trace its forces, become their dancing partners, become crest of the wave and thundering liquid. The wood is reborn as bleached wave and rounded pebble. First it was light, then it becomes liquid, until it finds its last shape as mineral.

The splintered, withered trunks lie still in the hot riverbed, crackling in the sun, half buried by stones. Every aspen tree follows the trajectory of the universe being born from light and then condensing into the patient sleep of matter. It starts as radiation, builds itself up as organism, and ends as body which glistens in the sun, which itself becomes a source of light. “I am river from river”, says the water in a poem by the Italian poet Mario Luzi. “I am light from light”, says the bleached wood on its course. “I am self from self”, say I.

Alder. Photo: Alessandra Weber

Alder

There is a tiny hollow on the western slope of the Italian Appenine mountains I often return to. It is just a small depression in the hills between steep walls formed from boulders, moss and stones. On its floor a silent creek runs over pebbles and rocks. Every twenty feet or so there is a gentle cascade, a big block stopping the straight flow of the brook, broadening it into a little pond. On its bottom the water is clear, freckled by the sun which shines through the leaves overhead and throws bright spots on the sandy ground. It lightens up the occasional tadpole and glistens in the quick movements of water skeeters. These insects glide over the current, unmoved by the water’s force and by my playful attempts to catch them.

The boulders at the sides of the brook are held in place by alder trees. The alder fruits from last year lie at the bottom of the water—little dark cylinders with deep, regular clefts. The skeeters cast fleeting shadows over them, when they pass without noise overhead. The little hollow is silent, sheltered against the rumour of the outside world, remote even from the benign chatter of the Italian summer.

I hear the low gurgle of the water on the stones and the slight rustling of the alder leaves. They expand their waxy surfaces above the creek and protect it from the sun. The leaves grow from slender stems, flecked by spots of white and grey lichens, a sign of the clean air in these hills, of time causing no pain.

Whenever I can, I return to this quiet place, this magical well of silence springing forth among the boulders and the alders. There is an old folktale it reminds me of, a tale about a spring in the woods with alders around it. I remember that the hero of this tale listened to their whisper and learned something important.

I feel called by this little hollow, sheltered by the alders. Their leaves mutter something to me my mind does not decipher, but my body still understands, by the same magic as the hero in the folk tale understands the nonhuman creatures. I feel drawn to this place, and I have started to think that this pull is its love for me. I am welcomed by it. It is calling me.

Deep down I know that my need to return to this place is my own way of understanding the trees. It is my manner of heeding their call to be a conscious part of the huge exchange of bodies and breath which creates what our scientifically informed minds have come to call the “biosphere”.

The alders’ call pulls me with a force which we have learned to view as the experience of “beauty”. But beauty is not a viewpoint, it is a power. I do not look at the alders, they look at me. I do not listen to them, but am addressed by their whisper. The encounter with an “aesthetic object” (or the “creation of it” through our culturally informed, language-based mind)—in truth is the experience to be welcomed into the family of life.

I have no real language for this, and indeed not even an experiential concept. Our culture doesn’t. I only know that the alders draw me towards them, and that the world feels right in their dim light, under the speckles their whispering leaves cast on the movements of the clear, nourishing water. The alders whisper to me, as they whispered in the folktale with the magical spring.

Their message now is as simple as it was in the tale. It says: “You have the power. You have the life. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be stingy. You don’t need to. You are provided all you need. You’re welcomed. You are here. You are.”

Olive. Photo: Vanni Savazzi

Olive

When I went to Italy this year to spend my summer in the coastal Appenine mountains, my mother-in-law refused to meet us at close distance. She was still shocked by the tens of thousands of deaths in the Lombardy region where she and her husband live. When we arrived at her place, halfway to the mountains, she had prepared the flat in the other house for us. It was the place her father had built in the 1960s and where he had lived all his life. Now we used it when we paused on our way into the mountains with their wild streams and growling pebbles and stranded logs. Normally there was a big family dinner every time we arrived. This time it was only us, me and my wife, in the other house.

My mother-in-law’s father had worked the garden and provided the family with food all his life: tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, aubergines, beans, potatoes, onions, carrots. There was a sense of bounty in the house which did not go away with his death. After we had arrived this evening we sat alone in the grandpa’s kitchen. The table was set with wine and fruit, with parmesan and salami, fish and cake. And the refrigerator held more. When we had just started eating, the old interphone to the inlaws’ adjacent house rang. “Is there really enough food for you?” my mother-in-law anxiously asked.

When her father had died, she planted an olive tree. She did not grow vegetables anymore. So, the garden was empty until they sat the olive tree in its middle. I went to see it the next morning, in the rose-coloured early light, in the soft air of the summer of the Italian plain. The first cicadas had already started to shrill. The pale underside of the olive leaves glittered slowly in a faint breeze. I touched them. Their surface, leathery, elastic, strong, seemed to me like muscular tissue, well trained to relentlessly work in the heat, ready to harvest sunlight, to make a generous home from the gift of the sun.

Touching the leaves, I felt a sort of consolation, the promise of always being part of a generous family. The bark on the stem, still youthfully smooth, started to become coarse, and mature, and timeless. I looked south and could see the Appenines as a blue veil over the horizon, behind the straight rows of poplars, softly swaying on the neighbour’s land. The olive tree just stood there, its muscular leaves harvesting light, its swelling fruits concentrating the sun into golden liquid, the stem promising that rather time would stand still than generosity end.

Almond. Photo: Andreas Weber

Almond

The sun is setting above the western slope of the hill. Its last rays infuse the landscape with warmth, add orange and gold to the predominantly yellow and red colors of the dry August evening. The long grass is mostly thin and yellow. The tired blades are interspersed with white umbrellas, the blossoms of wild carrots on slender stalks. No peasant has made hay here for the last decade.

The hill is becoming a prairie again. In another ten years, it will be a young forest. The thick yellow grass covers the edges of the old terraces and blurs their contours. This slope has been shaped by generations of peasants. They have leveled the terrain, sorted out the stones and heaped them up in order to strengthen the walls that hold the terraces.

The peasants also planted the fruit trees. A handful of them stand still in the midday heat. They are not much taller than ten feet, skinny and old, thirsty, with many yellow leaves among the green ones. Dead twigs form nest-like bundles in the canopy. I count two plum-trees, three apricots, and an almond tree. On each of them, only a few fruits are dangling in the heat, echoing the sun’s late fire with yellow, orange and red hues.

The almond carries but one fruit. The green layer around it has already dried and given way to the hard shell with its lines and crevasses. When I touch the almond fruit slightly, it falls into my hand. I weigh it on my palm, put my nose to it and sniff. The fruit smells slightly bitter and sweet, although the edible kernel is still protected by the tight case.

I watch the pattern on the shell. I sink my gaze into it, into the little oval-shaped cosmos with the seed of life inside, a little universe in itself. I watch the lines on the shell-like frozen trajectories of long lost stars. I think: The lines in the almond shell are traces the developing fruit has left in matter. The lights of the celestial bodies are traces the developing universe has carved into space.

I think: We can witness the Big Bang everywhere. Indeed, we can understand that everything we encounter actually is the Big Bang, which is still diversifying into innumerable lifelines and encounters. It explodes through the fine traces which the long grass blades at the foot of the Almond tree leave on the bare skin of my legs as I pass. It unfolds with the flickering routes of the fireflies when the evening settles over barren trees on the terraces of these hills. It expands with raindrops rolling through the dust, leaving fragile trails. It unfolds in the minute tubing within the almond leaves, desperately sucking up water from the dry ground. It is there in the microscopic tunnels the root hairs are digging through the gravelly soil in search for liquid.

I think: The world is born in every moment. What we perceive of it are the traces of this birth, traces of force meeting force and igniting stars on its way, of desire meeting desire and letting flesh growing forth. We look at a cracked rock in the riverbed, the black lines on its neat halves flying through the white flesh of its inside, and we realize that the birth inside of it has been happening for billions of years. We inhale the air around us and within an eyelid’s flutter are we amidst the Big Bang. We are birthing being all the time. This is what is going on here, this is what we are about.

The almond looked at me, an eye full of knowledge that I had always known. The setting sun above the horizon was about to melt into the hilltop. From this act of fusion it would bring back a fresh new day.

Oak. Photo: Andreas Weber

Oak

It was a bright and dry early autumn evening, and I decided that I would set out into the forest and offer the little oak some water. It had been a long and exceedingly dry summer, and the forest floor was burned yellow. All flowers and most of the undergrowth had withered away, leaving only discolored straw  under the pines, oaks, lindens, and maples. Also, some of the younger trees had given up the struggle. They had turned pale overnight, like somebody suddenly loosening the grip of his hand keeping him above an abyss.

The little oak had survived because I had constantly watered it. I had visited it nearly every evening. I had come to celebrate these short journeys into the forests as meditative time-outs, as attempts to become somebody who was not only taking from the forest (the experience of beauty, the experience of being welcomed), but who tried to give something back.

I had dug a little pit around the thumb-thick stem of the oak where I poured the water I brought in bottles and canisters. Sometimes I carried more than ten gallons into the forest and spend an hour in the company of the tree baby, waiting until the water had sunk into the dry and dusty ground sparsely covered with faded St. John’s Wort, and then pouring more, pouring life into the oak.

Lost Oak. Photo: Andreas Weber

This afternoon, when I arrived on the clearing where we had planted the sapling, at first I could not find it. My wife had given it to me for my birthday shortly after we met, and it had sat a while on her balcony, until we planted it into the forest one rainy day in March, illegally adding our little oak to the other oak trees, carrying owls to Athens. It had grown astonishingly for two years. I remember the happy disbelief when the little oak pushed out its first leaves that spring two years ago.

The year after planting our tree baby into the forest soil, in the high summer of last year, we had celebrated our wedding on the clearing, with a few chosen friends, and bound ourselves to one another, and to the earth. I had thrown a water canister on the trolley a friend pulled through the forest to the ceremony site, heaped with crushed ice and champagne. We had closed the ritual by watering the little oak.

Now it seemed to be gone. Nothing of its about five foot-high foliage, grey-green and leathery, was to be seen. I slowly realized that it had been broken at the stem, ten inches above the soil. Only a stub, obliquely fractured, rose forth from the earth, helplessly pointing to the sky. I blinked and hoped the image would fade and the living tree would appear again. I sat down with a weak feeling. Then I began to pour my gallon of water around the stub. I had no idea who had broken it, or what, and why.

Oaks are very tough trees which can thrive with little water, weather storms, survive lighting and moulds, and grow really old. But they are not good at pushing out a mass of new green after being cut. They are not as regenerative as linden trees, or olives, or alders, or aspens. They break, and then aristocratically die.

The little oak did not stir for the rest of the year. Then autumn came, and rain, and winter, and more rains, and cold temperatures. The oak did not move. On a wet day in March, just before lockdown struck, I noticed that the colour of the stem had changed. It had taken on a distinctively green hue, as if under the thin bark the tree prepared to act.

Goethe was the first to observe, in his “Metamorphosis of the Plant”, that all plant parts are functionally equal, that the blossom is a transformation of the stem, or rather of the stems potential to split and morph into leaves. So it seemed to be here. A tree, a young one at least, was able to behave as one giant leaf. I left the clearing in the wet and barren forest with my heart pounding.

And then corona came, and we all stayed indoors as much as we could, and I didn’t travel to our secret forest spot for weeks. I only went back in May. Two transparent leaves had unfolded, like light green bat wings, from a spot that had broken open in the stem. I realized that more of these spots had started to swell. The bark, which protected the tree as a wall and closed it onto itself, had started to do the opposite. It became a door, through which life could unfold into the world.

I kneeled there in the moisture of life giving birth to more life, still a bit insecure of my newly won freedom to roam after lockdown had been lifted. I thought of a phrase a friend had told me many years ago. “The soul is a plant”, it went. Yes, I thought, and maybe the plant is a soul, too.

Andreas Weber
Berlin

On The Nature of Cities

To Live in Companionship with Trees, Plants, Rivers, and Mountains

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Where once it was the shaman who took flight, who inhabited the mind of the animal or plant and who transmuted this knowing to the tribe, it is now the artist, the poet, the musician, the mystic, or the first nations’ people who enliven or sensitise our imaginary capacity; who draw our attention back towards what we have left behind, towards the animacy of all things.
We are gardening. Feeding our trees. We decide to cut the deadwood off the Fejoa tree. Afterwards it’s considerably squat and oddly shaped, but we agree it looks better. Or it feels better. Or it seems to us that it, the tree, feels better. It has just been liberated of its dead ends. Does it feel lighter and renewed like I sometimes do when I have cut my hair? If trees can count days till the arrival of spring, pass warnings and share nutrient, can they also feel better or lighter? The question is loosely aimed at the invisible life of a tree, at what animates it. What is it to be a tree? This question draws me towards the tree.

Join Emilio Fantin, Andreas Weber, and Martine Murray for a webinar conversation on  3 September.
It appears that not only our language, but our institutions and economic systems, have imposed on us, as we have reciprocally imposed on them, an ontology that relates less to being than it does to having. What was once exigent—what our survival asked of us and what the comforts of modernity has enabled to atrophy, i.e., an imagination and instinct that inextricably embedded us in the interdependent web of life, as it embedded in us, a reverence for its aliveness—has been largely lost to us. The art of being has been squandered by the taste for having. Rather than artefact, can we retrieve from our primitive ancestors an existential mode, given the civilising project of modernity has been to progress us away from our magical thinking, our instinct, intuition, dreams and gods, towards the rational, the scientific, the industrial and the technological. Flung so far forward on modernity’s path, we’ve created a juggernaut, whose momentum and exponential wake of destruction, is larger than our capacity to stop it. How do we re-member what once rooted us in our own being and in the mutual being of the world around us?

This essay is a companion to the virtual art show by Emilio Fantin. See the show here.
Where once it was the shaman who took flight, who inhabited the mind of the animal or plant, and who transmuted this knowing to the tribe, it is now the artist, the poet, the musician, the mystic, or the first nations’ people who enliven or sensitise our imaginary capacity and reach, who draw our attention back towards what we have left behind, towards the animacy of all things. Not only the tree, but the stone, the storm, the sea, the sound of the wind and even the force that it takes for a mushroom to push through the earth over night. I recently learned that a Native American language has a word not only for this, but words like “to be a hill,”  “to be a bay,” “to be a sandy beach.”i Hills, trees, beaches, bays, were not things to them, but beings. Language inscribes in us and reveals to us the limits of our ways of knowing. Can we know a tree as long as we see it as a noun, as a thing and not a being? In Australia, indigenous knowledge shows us that the land is alive with stories. There are laws and knowledge, for example, in stones and a belief that all law breaking comes from the sin of putting yourself above the land or the other people. For Australian Indigenous people, stones hold knowledge that comes from deep time.ii

Photo: Martine Murray

I have reached for language that has been given to us by the natural world. To take flight and to root, both of which a tree attests to in the upward reach and rootedness of its form. What if we could experience our own rootedness in place or in ground, in its nourishing, moral, communal, generative and/or ancestral aspect, through our relatedness to and experience of the tree and of the forest? Would we continue to be so instrumental in our conceptions if we felt ourselves formed and informed by the tree, the bird, the rock, the river? To imagine the dream of the Almond tree or feel the growth of the Olive tree is to enter the beingness of the tree, to rescue it from its assignation as resource. And if we can imagine the trees’ cries of anguish as fire takes it, or the yearning of its branches towards the light, can we also feel the anguish of the earth, as its forests are felled, its ocean and sky polluted, its depths cut open and mined, its mountains fracked, its soils poisoned and depleted, its rivers dammed. To embrace the mythopoetic as an other lost way of knowing, would it be better to say of the earth, her forests, her ocean, her sky? Could we have given flight to our dreams, imaginations, and ideas, if flight had not been imaged for us by birds? Would we know what it is to endure if we could not feel it in a tree’s standing, in its magnitude and sturdiness? Would we understand how to dance if we did not feel the rise and extenuation of branches, the lightness of leaves as they outpour from their own rootedness below? Could we wing our arms, twist around our own stems? Would we know stillness if it were not for the mountain? Would we have a sense of deep time if it were not for rocks, the movement of water on stone? Would we know mystery if it were not for the night? What should we learn from the small persistent, togetherness of moss? What if we were again to live in companionship with trees, plants, rivers, and mountains?

Martine Murray
Melbourne

On The Nature of Cities

Notes:

i  Braiding Sweetgrass.  Robin Wall Kimmerer. 2013, Milkweed Editions

ii  Sand talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.  Tyson Yunkaporta. 2019. Text Publishing Company

Gifting a White Elephant, In the Form of Green Infrastructure

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White Elephant: 2. figurative. A burdensome or costly objective, enterprise, or possession, esp. one that appears magnificent; a financial liability.

With reference to the story that the kings of Siam (now Thailand)
would make a present of a white elephant to courtiers who had displeased them,
in order to ruin the recipient by the cost of its maintenance.[i]

I.

Often when I write or speak about Baltimore, I begin by contextualizing the city as divided. I refer to Dr. Lawrence Brown’s conceptualization of the “White L and the Black Butterfly” to describe the deep racial segregation that has been meticulously crafted for decades.[ii] In other cases, I use a 1.32 mile stretch of abandoned interstate that bisects west Baltimore as an example of the many deliberate steps made by the city and federal government to fracture black neighborhoods.[iii] Indeed, Donald Trump’s 2019 summertime screed riffed on this familiar narrative when he declared the city filthy, rat infested, and dangerous.[iv]

The history of green infrastructure implementation in Baltimore shows that what communities care about and care for has been co-opted into practices of maintenance for others. The current state of many facilities demonstrates this approach is not effective. It is time to experiment with a new way forward.
Even in a city that prides itself on its rough-around-the-edges-charm, the tweet resurfaced an uncomfortable truth. Division and violence appear as natural facts attached to the city. Those of us who call Baltimore home are simultaneously victims of, and complicit in, the continued maintenance of its bifurcation. This experience is not evenly felt. The injustices of redlining, public schools scaffolded by lead lined pipes, and racist policing practices disproportionately cause harm to residents who are black, poor, or otherwise pushed to the margins.

Yet, the lived experience of trauma and civic disregard are a near universal for all of Baltimore’s residents. To live in the city and pretend that its ills are concentrated in specific geographies, cultures, and people, demonstrates a willful choice to disregard the moral obligations of civic participation. This choice also makes the social and material systems of division durable, ensuring that the spatial racism of segregation continues to define the environment.[v] Thus, it seems necessary to work towards a different narrative of a divided Baltimore. This alternative telling will refuse to naturalize deliberate practices of exclusion and racism as a matter of fact, and instead considers the perpetuation of these systems as matters of maintenance—that is, they are actively maintained by governance practices.[vi]

II.

When I arrived in Baltimore two years ago as a postdoctoral researcher assigned to study residential perceptions of green infrastructure, I was repeatedly told that the problem with these technologies was a lack of regular maintenance. The story goes something like this: For the past 15 years, the city of Baltimore and a variety of environmentally focused non-profit organizations have built landscaped facilities, such as bio-swales or raingardens, to counter the environmental impacts of urban stormwater runoff.

When it rains, water flows over impervious surfaces before reaching a storm sewer. In a separated sewer system like Baltimore’s where runoff remains separate from household wastewater and effluent, the discharge flows directly into receiving water bodies. Impervious surfaces, such as roads, sidewalks, and buildings, house a number of nutrients—nitrogen and phosphorus- as well as other chemicals, oils, and microscopic refuse. When it rains, those pollutants travel into the storm sewer where these particles eventually find a home, past the outfall pipes to our lakes, rivers, and bays.

A project that was intended to be a park with stormwater management features, but which was never opened to the public. Photo: Amanda K. Phillips de Lucas.

Green stormwater infrastructure slows or stops the quick conveyance of nutrients during rain events and helps to achieve larger environmental regulatory goals. To this day, Maryland stands at forefront of enacting strong, statewide, environmental regulations. Popularly, this history traces back to the state’s reliance on the Chesapeake Bay for both commerce and recreation. The state was an original signatory of the landmark 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreement, which set actionable benchmarks to restore the ecological function of the watershed.[vii]

Maryland’s first regulations addressing stormwater quality came in the mid 1980s. This led to the widespread adoption of stormwater ponds, broadly referred to as “best management practices” or BMP’s. These installations might be considered the first generation of green infrastructure. Generally, a grass swale or pond would be built to retain or detain stormwater. Facilities were often quite large but required minimal maintenance through mowing and clearing of drains.[viii]

Subsequent regulations moved away from the large-scale management practices and instead mandated environmental site design, or smaller, discrete installations that mimic the natural, pre-development characteristics of a site. Environmental site design came with new maintenance burdens including plant and filter media replacement, cleaning of inlets, and regular trash removal.

If one constant persistently emerges in the history of stormwater infrastructure, as John William Knapp dryly put it in his 1965 report “Economic Study of Urban and Highway Drainage Systems”, it is that storm sewers are not “self-liquidating”. Knapp, ever the engineer, used this phrase to signify that storm sewers will never produce value or provide any direct return on investment.[ix] Indeed, the outcry in Maryland around the passage of a “stormwater management fee”, publicly rebranded the “rain tax”, demonstrates the durability of Knapp’s words. Not only is the value of stormwater management only vaguely perceptible or indirectly valuable, paying for the function provokes widespread public outrage.[x]

So, on one side, we might isolate the problem of green infrastructure in a general trend of neglect, disinvestment, or at the very, least minimal investment, associated with the long-term maintenance of the storm sewer system. On the other side, the State of Maryland requires all municipalities to comply with environmental regulations to improve water quality through the mitigation of nonpoint source runoff. The admixture of these two factors means that environmental solutions to urban stormwater runoff are both mandatory and financially challenged from the start.

III.

Complicating matters further in the city of Baltimore is that a number of non-profit organizations regularly construct and implement green infrastructure in collaboration with community groups, churches, or neighborhood associations. These projects are often done with the overall well-meaning impulse and justification of restoring environmental and neighborhood health through community greening.

The multitude of implementers has produced a secondary problem of illegibility. No single agency or institution knows where all of the facilities in the city are located. This is a nightmare for those looking to meet regulatory requirements, as well as those hoping to track the beneficial impacts of a facility within a neighborhood.

While some of Baltimore’s green stormwater infrastructure currently sits in good condition, other sites are functionally abandoned. The reasons given for this bifurcation of technological failure are plentiful. The Department of Public Works struggles to train workers to tend to the plantings.[xi] Non-profit organizations who build facilities rely on community maintenance agreements that lack binding enforcement mechanisms.[xii] Residents complain to 311 (the government’s complaint line) that facilities are unkempt and suddenly a site is mowed down overnight.[xiii]

Despite the multitude of breakdowns, engineers, project managers, landscape architects, and city planners all remark that once the problems of maintenance are solved, the number of facilities will expand, providing residents with a variety of loosely defined ecosystem services. The technology is inevitable, or at the very least desirable. Some stakeholders express that more robust and resilient social systems are needed. These systems might look like incentives or disincentives to encourage regular upkeep, or they might take the form of work force development geared at training workers for the green jobs economy.

I’ve come to understand through my conversations and interviews with residents, city officials, and other stakeholders that the problem of facility maintenance serves as a red herring. A lack of maintenance, the trash littered swales, and the browning vegetation signal a more devastating absence. Focusing so narrowly on technological function has neglected the system, or more appropriately, systems, at work within urban space.

The failure to care for facilities and make them persist into the future is in itself a form of systemic maintenance that perpetuates environmental segregation into the future. By failing to develop a system to adequately keep track of, monitor, and maintain green infrastructure as a public asset, the green visionaries of years past demonstrated that project completion mattered more than future durability. In the process of trying to create a more sustainable city, institutional stakeholders effectively created an unsustainable system.

My critique should be countered with the recognition that structural hurdles stand in the way of planning for maintenance. For instance, The Chesapeake Bay Trust, who gives money for green infrastructure projects does not provide funding for maintenance because they cannot commit project “funding in perpetuity”.[xiv] Still, millions of dollars from the state and federal government have been paid out to support these projects with the promise that residents and community groups will take care of facility maintenance.[xv]

I need to highlight the absurdity of this logic for a moment. The obligation to maintain some public assets falls not on hired work crews or trained professionals, but on residents who supposedly have the time to pick up trash, remove weeds, and clear sediment. What makes this irony even more perverse is the near constant mention of “planning for equity” in relation to green infrastructure projects. How can city greening be equitable when the ability to devote time and bodily labor is itself a marker of relative privilege and physical capacity?

Recognizing this, I became interested in how residents understand their civic obligation to care for and maintain urban space when the state has a history of neglect and private capital steps back once the ribbon cutting concludes. Specifically, how do residents describe their experience of providing maintenance to public spaces and facilities in the face of these obstacles?

IV.

During process of interviewing residents about their perceptions of green infrastructure, I learned about their relationship to the urban environment in Baltimore. Those I interviewed for this project have predominantly been women, many of whom profess to possessing a strong “environmental ethic”. In addition to these similarities many, although not all, participants live in neighborhoods in the upper categories of the City’s housing market typology.[xvi] These neighborhoods are generally well established, relatively affluent, and have fewer vacant properties. I draw attention to this to mark that the experiences I am about to discuss are not representative of the city at-large, but do point to the emergence of shared challenges that residents face when implementing green infrastructure projects.

A small neighborhood in East Baltimore occupies three squared city blocks. Within these blocks are three rain gardens. Each facility is primarily maintained by Dana (all names in this essay are changed), a long-time neighborhood resident. When she talks about her experience with the rain gardens she emphasizes how proud she is of her work and how she feels that the gardens are “an advantage to the neighborhood”.[xvii] For Dana, her investment in the maintenance and care of the rain gardens is an extension of what she calls her “personal ethos”. She told me, “I believe… that it’s my responsibility to make the city the best that it can be, it’s my responsibility to make our neighborhood the best that it can be.”

Still, she harbors frustration about the lack of support she receives from the city to continue the upkeep. To keep a rain garden functional, plants need to be replaced, trash disposed of, blockages cleared, and weeds removed. All of these activities produce yard waste. Dana has called the city to try and arrange a bulk trash pick-up to no avail. Instead, she carts the waste in a wheelbarrow to her house and hopes she doesn’t exceed her weekly allotment for trash pick-up.

In other interviews, respondents tended to view the work of the environmental non-profits as generally positive, with a few reservations. Some described how organizations became very hands off once a project was over, making communication about continuing maintenance challenging. Still, in face of these challenges, respondents placed blame on the city, rather than the implementing organization, for failing to adequately respond to instances of curb breakage or filter-material failure.

Others mentioned the “whiteness” of environmental nonprofits and a broader failure, I quote, “to engage people of color, despite their best and most sincere efforts.” Additionally, it is difficult for community members to obtain information for why a project might be canceled or failed to materialize. At least two people mentioned a citywide project to repave alleyways with permeable surfaces. Despite community interest, the project never got off the ground, leading residents to speculate as to the reasons for the cancellation.

These multiple perspectives from respondents describe how the institutions operating in Baltimore have failed to consider the systems needed to keep green infrastructure functional. The problem is not as simple as an organization coming into a neighborhood, building a facility, and leaving the community to continue its upkeep. Instead, once built, green infrastructure occupies a public space and intersects with other urban systems and struggles including trash pick-up, community and individual capacity, and ill-defined institutional roles. Figuring out how to bring these systems, experiences, and institutions in line with one another needs to be discussed at the genesis of green infrastructure projects; not haphazardly arranged once the project is already in the ground, enthusiasm has waned, and the project leaders have moved on.

V.

While the responses above generally emerge from respondents who live in upper categories of the housing market typology, Jenna, a community leader, resides in a neighborhood firmly in the middle of this classification. Over the course of our conversation, she described her involvement in her community as catalyzed by neighborhood change. When Baltimore City closed the recreation center, long-time residents sold their homes, and many properties transitioned into rentals or low income units. The change provoked by this shift led to Jenna’s increasing engagement in the neighborhood—she regularly organizes with community members to pick up trash, clear clogged storm drains, and mentor young residents.

At the conclusion of my interviews, I ask all respondents to describe how they care for and maintain their community, and whether they feel they have a responsibility to engage in these efforts. Jenna’s answer began with a story:

Every August we repaint our crosswalks, so that kids can safely go back to school. We do this because we care about the children, we care about our community looking nice, and honestly, we have a good time. We buy tarmac paint, we have a couple glasses of wine, and we get out there with giant paint rollers. We paint crosswalks because we care about the community.

She then continued on to say:

If we rephrased that and say; “This is a maintenance job that was requested five years ago, it should be paid for by our tax dollars and it should be handled by someone on city payroll,” I think that we would begin to see the balance shift between neighbors coming together to care for their community and individuals feeling as if they are being burdened with the responsibility to maintain their community. I think that we have been very intentionally making our actions come from a position of compassion and caring even though the actual actions that we do in many instances are those of maintaining a community.

I quote Jenna at length to capture a tension worth dwelling on. Providing maintenance to a neighborhood or a public space signals an absence or larger pattern of neglect. Maintenance evokes a quantifiable and necessary labor to keep a given space functional as designed. Caring, as an act of compassion, as a civic virtue, captures an action both personally satisfying and collectively fulfilling. To care does not require the perpetuation of a specific function, nor does it seek to sustain the environment as it is currently arranged. Care in this configuration acts as a radical intervention that produces changes outside of technological, administrative, or governmental legibility.

The divide Jenna signals between care and maintenance was not shared by all participants. Another woman, when asked about the relationship between maintenance and care, saw the two as the same. She used the metaphor of taking care of a baby to illustrate the similarity—you care for a baby, but that care requires repetitive tasks so that the child can remain healthy and happy. She told me, “Maintenance is an expression of caring.

Another, a recent city resident who does not consider herself particularly involved or well versed on local environmental issues, demarcated care as a public activity and maintenance as an activity she conducts in her home. Plant watering in the house was described as activity of maintenance, while the choices she makes through her work in social justice spaces comes from a place of care.

The wide variation of personal definitions and understandings of “care” and “maintenance” cut to the core of what I believe to be a significant, if not the most significant issue related to green infrastructure adoption, acceptance, and perpetuation in Baltimore City. Practices of care have been co-opted into public maintenance regimes. By relying on the assumption that residents are able and willing to provide care to the local environment, the deployment of green infrastructure has neglected to develop system-spanning governance practices to support facilities into the future.

Thus, when I suggested earlier to conceptualize the problem of green infrastructure as a matter of maintenance, I aimed to move beyond the focus on cultivating individual efforts or obligations. Instead, green infrastructure needs to be designed to rely less on the individual ability of community members and more on the supportive capacity of existing institutions within those spaces. Let community members continue to care, to provide care, and choose where that care is placed. Resist the temptation to rely on such care as the primary source of functional maintenance.

Vacant lot planting, beautification, and Rain Garden in the McElderry Park. Photo: Joanna Solins and Logan Brissette.

VI.

What has surprised me most in conducting interviews is how strongly some residents describe a moral obligation to care for their neighborhoods, and the ways that maintaining green infrastructure allows them to act as stewards of urban space. Despite the systemic entanglements, and occasional failures, many describe a feeling as if they are working towards achieving a common good. But, cities cannot rely on the labor and passion of a few as justification for a system that affects many.

The failure to plan for the contingencies of green infrastructure presents a small, but meaningful example of how divisions are maintained. Institutional actors assume green infrastructure will be beneficial for all, without considering the intersecting and uneven challenges residents may face when welcoming a project to their neighborhood.

Often in academic literature, green infrastructure is understood as a universal good that provides a suite of apparent benefits including lessening the effects of urban heat island, reducing crime, producing better mental health outcomes, and achieving pollution reduction.[xviii] As it was recently described in a public meeting, “green infrastructure is the answer to many, many questions”.[xix] In Baltimore, it appears that this universal good comes to mean that residents should care universally.

The deterministic good of green infrastructure quickly falls apart upon examination. The health and social benefits cited by supporters are often far more qualified when traced back to the originating source. For instance, a 2007 review article on health and green infrastructure states that “Green areas in one’s living environment may ameliorate air pollution, and the urban heat island effect”.[xx] This statement points to an article that concludes that indicators of ecological performance improve in proportion to green space and tree cover.[xxi] To put it another way, areas with more tree cover and more green space have a higher ecological function than spaces with less tree cover and less green space.

This observation has practical consequences for planning decisions that can target canopy increase or green space expansion, but the cited article does not explicitly make the case that green areas, let alone green infrastructure, ameliorates environmental harm. Harm is not the absence of a function, it is the product of the intertwined social, ecological, technical, and political systems that perpetuate the function as normal.

Adding green infrastructure to a neighborhood will not magically act as a salve. Indeed, the current logic of green infrastructure construction is deeply intertwined in the continued perpetuation of harm by a refusal to recognize that greening is not always, and in all contexts, a benefit.

To be clear, I am not arguing against urban greening or efforts that promote environmental change. Nor am I calling into question the validity of the sciences that demonstrate ecological function within urban environments. What I am saying is that a troubling logic of technological and environmental determinism underlies the drive for green infrastructure development. This focus universalizes the effects of targeted environmental change with little attention to how shifts within public space are actually experienced individually and collectively.

To overcome the fractures in Baltimore, the first step must be a sustained commitment to evaluate the many systems that maintain segregation of all forms. It must be recognized that green infrastructure cannot stand outside of these forces. But perhaps we can design, implement, and plan these facilities in a way that changes the course of how we choose to maintain the fabric of urban life.

VII.

This essay’s title refers to the idea of a “White Elephant”. Some may be familiar with that term from the popular holiday game where the gift received is left up to chance, and in some cases thievery. The term’s origins are more literal, pronouncing an actual white elephant as a burdensome and financially ruining gift.

To play devil’s advocate momentarily, the white elephant might not be equally burdensome to all. Suppose the recipient owns an elephant sanctuary or otherwise possesses the existing infrastructure to embrace the gift. The recipient would probably need to acquire other elephants just to make sure the animal is happy in his new environment. And, I’m speculating here, but there also might be some need to invest in industrial strength sunblock to protect the delicate skin of the pale creature. From my perspective, this seems like a lot of work. But for someone, the burden of labor, cost, and care, might be perceived as a benefit. Whether the white elephant is burdensome or not depends on the context into which it is placed. The same is true for green infrastructure.

The past era of infrastructural construction led to the perception of systems within the built environment as invisible and functionally homogenous.[xxii] Sewers carried away refuse and electrical lines delivered energy. Yet, in the contemporary era we’ve witnessed a fracturing of infrastructural function, often along clear sociodemographic lines. Lead pipes still remain in Flint, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey and vacancy rates increase in neighborhoods previously redlined. Simply, infrastructure provision and improvement has never been equitable, and in many cases this has actively produced harm.

But, a history of harm does not portend a future of the same. What I have called attention to in this essay are the multiple institutions and individuals who are ostensibly working to better the city, to create a healthier space to live, and to improve the environmental condition of the larger region. These are noble and necessary pursuits and should be treated as such.

Funds need to be dedicated to creating collaborative governing institutions that can address this issue. This suggestion is not even remotely novel. Multi-jurisdictional agencies, such as Maryland’s Regional Planning Council have been at the forefront of developing collaborative environmental remediation projects since the 1970s. What needs to change is who is included and recognition of the capacities of participants involved.

I’m thinking here of Sandra Harding’s concept of “strong objectivity” where voices from below, such as women and marginalized populations, “demand[s] interrogation of just which cultural commitments can advance growth of the kinds of knowledge a particular community desires”.[xxiii] Harding is speaking here specifically about objectivity in scientific research, but there is overlap to technological adoption. For green infrastructure to not be burdensome, projects must begin with community desire, which can be served and made material by trained experts.

This inversion of power in public projects will undoubtedly challenge and change institutional structures. Struggles over meeting regulatory requirements, achieving larger restoration goals, and ensuring that systems are adequately and properly maintained are components of this shift, but not entirely constitutive of the governing effort. By using community desire as a guide, cities can refocus civic relationships to better embrace the capacity that communities possess in bounds, a public ethic of care.

The history of green infrastructure implementation in Baltimore shows that what communities care about and care for has been co-opted into requirements of maintenance that can become burdens for those same communities. The current state of many facilities demonstrates this approach is not effective. It is time to experiment with a new way forward.

Amanda Phillips de Lucas
Baltimore

On The Nature of Cities

Notes:

i — “white elephant, n.”. OED Online. September 2019. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/view/Entry/399143?redirectedFrom=White+Elephant (accessed November 05, 2019).

ii — Brown, Lawrence. ‘Two Baltimores: The White L vs. the Black Butterfly.’ 28 June 2016. Baltimore City Paper. https://www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcpnews-two-baltimores-the-white-l-vs-the-black-butterfly-20160628-htmlstory.html

iii — Phillips de Lucas, Amanda. ‘Producing the Highway to Nowhere: Social Understandings of Space in Baltimore 1944-1974.’ [In Review].

iv — @realDonaldTrump. “….As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.” Twitter, 29 July 2019, 7:14 a.m. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155073965880172544?s=20

v — My thinking in this essay is indebted to Steward Pickett’s observations that racial segregation is a near universal in the landscape, that segregation is spatialized racism, and that segregation is in itself a system that impacts the environment. These observations suggest that ecologists and environmental scientists need to work to both theorize and study the ‘ecology of segregation’. Pickett’s work, along with substantive contributions from J. Morgan Grove, Billy Hall, Dexter Locke, Laura Ogden and others are beginning to the establish the empirical and historical insights overlooked by this disciplinary omission.

vi — This turn of phrase comes from Bruno Latour’s mea culpa, Why has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. To quote Latour, “The mistake I made, was to believe that there was no efficient way to criticize matters of fact except by moving away from them and directing one’s attention toward the conditions that made them possible (231). His intervention here, referencing Donna Haraway, advocates for a form of radical constructivism oriented toward the laudable goal of care. I need to emphasize, that the reference to Latour does not mean that I am advocating for a similar turn. Indeed, this article takes critique as its primary mode of address to reveal how facts are constructed within different modes of professional expertise and personal experience. Turning to the question of what I am calling matters of maintenance begins to address how systems of neglect are made to persist into the future, into different spaces, and laden with diverse meanings.

vii —“The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure and a resource of worldwide significance. It’s ecological, economic, and cultural importance are felt far beyond its waters and the communities that line its shores. Man’s use and abuse of its bounty, however, together with the continued growth and development of population in its watershed have taken a toll on the bay system.” https://www.chesapeakebay.net/content/publications/cbp_12510.pdf

viii — Interview with Tom Schueler, Center for Watershed Protection, 2018.

ix — “No ready market exists in which to establish the value of these savings, and the beneficiaries, who receive the benefits without voluntary purchase, are only vaguely aware of the values involved”. Knapp, John William. ‘An Economic Study of Urban and Highway Drainage Systems.’ June 1965. Progress Report of the Storm Drainage Project. Johns Hopkins University, Department of Sanitary Engineering and Water Resources. Johns Hopkins Libraries. TD7 .J6 no.1 c.1.

x — Current Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, campaigned using the platform of ‘repealing the rain tax’ complete the high political theater of handing out branded umbrellas. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/maryland-lawmakers-defeat-hogan-proposal-to-eliminate-rain-tax/2015/03/06/df2a3cfc-c45d-11e4-9271-610273846239_story.html

xi — Interview with Author, Kim Grove, Baltimore City Department of Public Works, 2018.

xii — Interview with Author, Steve Preston and Laura Connelly, Parks and People Foundation, 2018.

xiii — Interview with Author, Kim Grove, Baltimore City Department of Public Works, 2018.

[xiv] Interview with Author, Jana Davis, Chesapeake Bay Trust, 2018.

[xv] One example of this is the Maryland Trust Fund, run through Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

[xvi] https://planning.baltimorecity.gov/maps-data/housing-market-typology

xviii — Center for Neighborhood Technology. “The Value of Green Infrastructure: A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Environmental and Social Benefits.” Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation, 2010, 1–76. https://doi.org/10.2175/193864711802639741.

[xix] Author Fieldnotes

[xx] Tzoulas, Konstantinos, Kalevi Korpela, Stephen Venn, Vesa Yli-Pelkonen, Aleksandra Kaźmierczak, Jari Niemela, and Philip James. “Promoting Ecosystem and Human Health in Urban Areas Using Green Infrastructure: A Literature Review.” Landscape and Urban Planning 81, no. 3 (2007): 167–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2007.02.001.

[xxi] Whitford, V., A. R. Ennos, and J. F. Handley. “‘City Form and Natural Process’ – Indicators for the Ecological Performance of Urban Areas and Their Application to Merseyside, UK.” Landscape and Urban Planning 57, no. 2 (2001): 91–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-2046(01)00192-X.

xxii —  Star, S. L. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 3 (November 1, 1999): 377–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.

[xxiii] Harding, Sandra. Objectivity and Diversity. University of Chicago Press. 36.

The Value of Green Urban Assets and the True Costs of Development

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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How do we “value” open space in policy and urban development in relation to other land uses? Seattle is trying to take a lead in natural capital accounting, and create change in how North American cities regard nature, an un-accounted for asset.
The building boom that’s driving up real estate prices and jamming Seattle with housing and high-rises is also squeezing out and devaluing the city’s green and open spaces. That “progress” presents paradoxes: “Hard assets” provide value temporarily, as they are amortized over their “useful lives”; green, or “soft,” assets are never amortized, and provide value forever. And “progress” has now created a city with one of America’s ten worst heat islands, America’s 6th worst traffic congestion, and some of America’s worst air pollution.

But while Seattle is noisily progressing—driving, building, and working—the city’s under appreciated green assets are quietly making oxygen, absorbing pollutants, sponging up storm water and controlling erosion.  They’re also enhancing property values, supporting urban fisheries, agriculture and recreation, and providing animal habitats and pollinator corridors.  And they’re helping improve mental health and longevity.  About 30 years ago, economists realized those benefits and savings – “ecosystem services” are worth big money – more than $33 trillion a year (Robert Costanza et al. estimate of the planet’s biosphere value).  That’s nearly $54 trillion in 2020 dollars.

The Seattle Green Spaces Coalition (SGSC) reckons that, within Seattle’s 142.5 square mile area alone, our “natural capital” provides more than $3 billion a year in benefits and savings. While city government doesn’t treat that as an asset, some of its departments and the surrounding county have.  In 2000, King County used ecosystem service values (ESV – the worth to cities and towns of fisheries, habitats, agriculture, recreation space, etc.) to design its WRIA9 Duwamish River salmon protection plan.  In 2001, Seattle Public Utilities used ESV in restoring Thornton Creek.  In 2008, the Urban Forestry Commission set a goal of covering 35% of Seattle with trees by 2035 (since revised downward to 30% by 2037), and drafted guidelines for an updated tree protection ordinance.  Despite widespread public support, the City Council still has not passed one,

In 2010, visionary Seattle Parks & Recreation Dept. (SPR) director Tim Gallagher hired the Trust For Public Lands to assess the natural capital value of Seattle’s parks.  It found their land and water resources provided nearly $500 million a year worth of benefits and savings, dwarfing the $30,000 a year Parks was making in fees and rentals.  When Gallagher presented the surprising report to Seattle’s City Council, members marveled, had no idea how to integrate those dollars into city accounting, and cut SPR’s budget.

Seattle Parks occupy barely 11% of Seattle’s land and water area.  Multiplying their $500 million value by 9 for the rest of Seattle’s area, including carbon-absorbent water, and knowing that nearly 70% of Seattle’s trees and other flora grow on private and other properties, SGSC reckoned, conservatively, that our natural capital is worth about $3 billion a year to the city.

Why, one may ask, don’t cities value the benefits and services Nature provides, and treat them as assets to account for, report on, and use in cost-benefit analyses, policy making, and project implementation?  The answer is that they still can’t conceive of how to account for green infrastructure.  The following sums up their attitudes:

  • Seattle’s Development and Inspections Department informed attendees at the U. of Washington’s May 27, 2010 Urban Forestry Conference that “Exceptional trees must be retained unless doing so would prohibit meeting the zone potential of the site.”
  • The Master Builders Association opposes building setbacks that make room for trees and landscapes, unless they contribute to views and property value Developers see bio-swales (street-side rainwater catchment corrals) as “green spaces,”
  • after the Seattle City Council’s unanimous 2015 vote to study natural capital, former Deputy Mayor Steve Lee fretted, “There could be policy implications here.”

In 2014, a group of West Seattle neighbors founded SGSC, to keep public lands in public hands for public benefit. The City of Seattle owns hundreds of acres of non-park land—from hillsides to street ends and parking strips, to Seattle City Light (SCL) substations.  When departments have no further use for property they own, they declare it “excess,” and/or “surplus,” offer it to other departments, and if there are no takers, the City Council approves it for sale at fair market value.

Seattle recognizes only one way to value land: real estate appraisal. Residential and commercial developments grow its tax base. Attitudes of Seattle and every other North American city date from the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherer humans began settling down, and claiming spaces to grow food and herd livestock. Before that, humans had lived in the environment. Afterward, they lived on it—except when natural disasters reminded them otherwise. Today, all Seattle land is owned.  Wherever development occurs, Nature is elbowed aside, into parks, building landscapes, and places where nothing can be built.

SGSC asserts that where the city owns green space, it should keep it, not sell it. It’s cheaper than having to buy it back at higher future prices to replace it. So SGSC has supported community group and organizations throughout the urban area in purchasing and transforming surplus properties into parks, land banks, and education centers for schools.  Nearly 40 acres of urban land have now been retained for public benefit.

At SGSC’s urging, ecosystem economist David Batker, testified September 28, 2015, to the Seattle City Council in support of valuing ecosystem services. Batker worked on WRIA9, Thornton Creek, and state, national and international projects.

The economist cited the Cedar River Watershed, which Seattle’s 1891 City Council bought. Its 91,000 forested acres have supplied trillions of gallons of fresh water to millions of Seattle area residents for more than 120 years. It’s a priceless asset that’s given us vast public health, recreational, environmental and livability benefits. But if it were declared surplus, it would be sold at “fair market value” as raw land. “There’s something wrong with the accounting here,” said Batker.

Fossil-fuel industries can report the value of gas, oil and coal assets sitting in the ground, but public utilities cannot account for water in the ground—it counts for zero. While the watershed is a more resilient, less risky asset than water filtration facilities, lenders and bonding agencies look more favorably on financing a potential grey asset than on letting Seattle’s water utility to take on debt for financing the real green asset.

The nine City Council members were convinced, and in November 2015, unanimously approved a Statement of Legislative Intent (SLI) to study how natural capital value could be assessed and used for the city’s benefit.  No SLI is binding, but a project scope was outlined, and a consultant designated.  City Council and department staffs wrote response papers, and the Mayor weighed in.

Some environmentalists resisted valuing the environment, fearing it would (1) commodify Nature, (2) undercut the compelling intrinsic value argument for it, and (3) make property rights an issue.  Actually, the natural world has been commodified for 12,000 years (why not use this fact to protect nature?), the intrinsic value argument hasn’t stopped species extinctions or forest depletion, and property rights help people pretend that a fence around a parcel means it’s no longer part of Earth’s biosphere.  Environmentalists also preferred land-swapping buildable urban property for unbuildable rural land – an exchange that perpetuates depletion of urban natural capital.

Housing advocates said green space and housing couldn’t coexist, though they do across Seattle. Private interests worried if natural capital were valued beyond the costs of landscape plants, or the price boost that views give real estate, it would hamper development, increase project costs, and cause enforcement headaches. And in 2015, standard accounting structures—GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and GASB (Government Accounting Standards Board)—had no rules for valuing and accounting for natural capital.  Today, both GAAP and GASB are developing those rules.

In SGSC’s view, every built structure subtracts from green space value. The city should account for that in the true cost of new infrastructure. Cities and developers use the rationale that, “This land was already developed, so we’re just continuing that use.” But green space predated all development, and any building represents a subtraction of it. In effect, they all make withdrawals from our “natural capital bank.” Those withdrawals should be repaid with interest—in the forms of green roofs and/or walls, intensely cultivated green areas, or purchases of new urban green space.

From 2016 on, SGSC strongly advocated for the City Council to fund a natural capital consultant who would explore with city departments how they could use natural capital as an asset in their analyses and operations. The Council preferred selling surplus land for housing development, not using it as green space. They also were not open to stating in any legislation and ordinance, that Seattle values its ecosystem. We proposed: “Whereas, Seattle’s open and green spaces are a tangible asset essential to public health, urban resilience, equity and sustainability, Therefore the City of Seattle will integrate development within this context, to meet the needs of communities, neighborhoods, and the entire city.”  The Council rejected this, too.

By 2019, dozens of public organization, private enterprise and tribal allies had come forward to join SGSC in urging the Council to fund a natural capital consultant. And in its FY2020 budget, the City Council approved $35,000 for a consultant.

SGSC intends for natural capital accounting to create policy implications. It may add a layer of complexity to land appraisal, but it would stop city agencies and developers from treating every parcel as separate and ecologically insignificant, and instead require them to treat natural capital in the aggregate, as integral to the significant sum of individual parts. Policy-wise, this could also improve Seattle’s patterns of urban design and development. It would create a “soft asset” value system to offset the “hard asset” one, and enforce a more balanced approach to Seattle’s growth.

We are clear that creating innovation in Seattle’s entrenched government will pose significant challenges. But SGSC is optimistic that these challenges can be met with bold action, and provide great rewards for current and future generations.

Seattle has often been bold. It led North America with its green waste and recycling programs in 1988. Its 2005 Mayor’s Climate Protection Initiative has now been co-signed by 1066 mayors representing more than 65% of the U.S. population. By taking the lead now, Seattle can show cities and towns across North America how to improve livability, sustainability, resilience and equity, if they treat our priceless, yet un-accounted for capital as an asset.

Martin Westerman
Seattle

On The Nature of Cities

Banner image: Trees in Seattle

The Shape of Water, the Sight of Air, and Our Emergence from Covid

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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“Absences should not cause us to look elsewhere, but to look closer.” i

When commuters once again gather at the metro station, they will join the sound of fauna and the fragrance of flora in an atmosphere of palpable connections. Perhaps we may insist on sharing that space with a revived sense of the need for a radical redistribution of resources and care.
I have been working on a mind map of emptiness, inspired by an old Wiccan meditation practice of gazing into a bowl of water and trying to see the middle of the water.ii In the middle of a large sheet of newsprint, I encircled the word “emptiness” and build outwards with interlocking shapes. This is the experiment design phase of my practice, so it is yet to be seen if it will become a work of art, writing, or exhibition.

Like any research project, this began with a question. I was struck by how conversations about the ocean describe the ocean in terms of the material in it. The salt, the warmth, the life, the boundaries. I thought about the tremendous verticality of the water cycle and wondered if there was a way to share the awe of that zone without resorting to giant squid, rims and trenches, or garbage patches. The ocean is mostly de/void space, so we are unable to gain any focus on it—like looking into a bowl of water. Can we talk about the emptiness—which is surely integral to the fullness by virtue of the fact that it exists? Can we talk about the emptiness in its own terms?iii At this stage of mapping, three quadrants are revealing themselves: air, ocean, and emotion.

I’m drawing this map in my home office, which has a window and a small balcony that looks from one story up onto a three-lane road. I can see an autoshop, a gym, a dive bar, and a pizza place as well. It is not highly trafficked, but it is a route for big rigs, and has a few bus lines that stop at the metro station, where I can see commuters move in and out of the building’s bright, brutalist entrance.

Saint-Henri, June 2020. Lucie Lederhendler (2020) Acrylic, gouache, and graphite on paper. 20″ x 16″.

This is to give you an idea of how what I can see from my office is a good indicator of human behaviour. The view doesn’t change much when the weather is nice (like it would if the street were lined with terraces), or on a first Friday (like a street lined with galleries). What I overlook is the movement of the every-day. These days, I bear witness to the quarantine with a view that overlooks the emptying of a nondescript corridor.

Empty can speak to a present nothing, but mostly it means that something that ought to be there is not there. Empty does not mean unexplored. If something ought to be somewhere, if somewhere ought to have something in it, then we, humans, have always found a way to fill it: dark matter, sea monsters, commodities.

When you try to focus on the water and not the bowl, you realize it’s not empty—emptiness is not a state, it’s a metaphor. The state that emptiness is often trying to describe is merely homogeneity. What it is, is substrate without any noticeable change within it. A substrate that can accommodate something other than itself, be divided, be combined, be contained—even, in some cases, be released.

Photo: Lucie Lederhendler 

The air is a substrate. If I try to look at the air between my office and the metro station without looking at the things that are not air, it is hard to see.

Funny thing, though: wouldn’t you agree that wind is not air? In motion, air becomes a force of nature, its effects perceptible in myriad ways, while still air somehow ceases to exist.

In the quiet of a deserted urban corridor, bird song, insect buzz, the scent of lilacs, catalpa, and a distant radio rush in to fill the air like a vacuum-sealed container popped open. And now, on this street, even air is not air because lingering in the space between my body and yours is our respiration, our habits, our households, and, perhaps most densely, a microscopic, sun-shaped enemy. Suddenly we can bring the emptiness between us into focus.

I wanted to think about the emptiness of the ocean because emptiness is political. Colonialism requires a perception of emptiness in order to occur. To consider the Atlantic Ocean empty is to actively deny that it is also a graveyard for enslaved people—a place of mourning and culturicide.iv Twentieth-century British marketing understated the vastness of the spaces between their colonies and thus implied dominion over them,v and Victorian cartographers depopulated South Eastern Africa all together in order to prove its readiness for European settlement.vi The scene from my office window is a direct descendent of the earliest alterations committed on the land by French colonists who did not see that Turtle Island was replete with people and landscape because their eyes could gain no focus on that which was not domesticated in their terms.vii The systems that care for certain human lives more than others do so because they can’t fix their vision on the life contained in the body—these eyes have learned to see some bodies as empty, not necessarily articulated as void space, but in the othering language of exoticism and wilderness.

If I can find a way to describe the homogeneous substrate of the open ocean without recourse to life, boundaries, or change, then I may be able to address the lack of care that so profoundly affects it by giving it its own form on which to focus. Language comes into play here, if metaphor is allowed into the discourse: not, “There’s nothing here,” but rather, “This place is filled with material that is unconcerned with how it will accommodate our bodies.”

Emanuele Coccia speaks about immersion in his 2017 Life of Plants (tr. 2019), saying: “Plants…allow us to understand that immersion is not a simple spatial determination…[it] is an action of copenetration between subject and environment, body and space, life and medium…otherwise one would speak simply of juxtaposition or contiguity between two bodies touching at their extremities”.viii Human bodies, he says, feel this most acutely when they swim, as water acts upon them and they act upon the water in equal, indistinguishable, measure. I think of the work of Agnes Martin, who, according to Olivia Laing, hoped that her monotonous, haunting paintings would “have an emotional impact on you that was like walking up to the ocean, that flooded you with a kind of feeling of happiness,” ix as well John Cage’s 4’33”, which, in its silence, reifies all sound to the status of music.x Works like these have the effect of inverting the primacy of the world and the atmosphere; the universe of things and the universe-as-thing.

This is all to say that there is no such thing as emptiness, only substrate, and that there is no such thing as empty, only more and less full of that which we acknowledge and value. In quarantine, we can feel the fullness of our environment pressing on us with force. It is filled with anger and anxiety, gratitude and hope. It is less filled with friends and family, museums and movie theatres.

I’m looking at my map of emptiness, and about what compelled me to take this tangent from the open ocean—arguably the least urban place on the planet—to my asphalt landscape. This week, the air was filled with willow pollen, reminding me of marine snow or microplastics caught up in currents. They make wind visible to me and remind me that the air is teeming even if I can’t see it. To me, this responds to Bruno Latour’s call for reflection on what habits we may wish to reconstruct or to interrupt completely.xi In our eagerness to rush back to the exterior, the status quo will latch on to us when the seal of quarantine is broken, as though the street were an empty stage, waiting docilely for players to return and perform the every-day upon it. To prevent this, we may use our apparati of perception to fill the space—to understand that it is not a vacuum.

When commuters once again gather at the metro station, they will join the sound of fauna and the fragrance of flora in an atmosphere of palpable connections. In the same way that finding focus in the deep open ocean may give us the motivation to attend to it, now that we can see the air in between my face and yours, we may insist on sharing that space with a revived sense of the need for a radical redistribution of resources and care.

Lucie Lederhendler
Montreal

On The Nature of Cities

Notes:

[i] Courtney J. Campbell, Allergra Giovine, & Jennifer Keating, “Introduction: Confronting Emptiness in History,”  Empty Spaces: Perspectives on Emptiness in Modern History (London: University of London Press, 2019), p.13.

[ii] Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow (Marlborough: The Crowood Press, 1978). Valiente describes this procedure as a divination technique, but I find it easily translatable to a meditation practice without ulterior motive.

[iii] For example, Philip E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); “Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation” TBA21-Academy. https://www.tba21.org/#item–oit–2042; Campbell, Giovine, & Keating, eds. Empty Spaces: Perspectives on Emptiness in Modern History. Acknowledgement is also due to earlier phenomenological thinking about place, such as Michel Foucault, “Des espaces autres. Hétérotopies,” originally published in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 5 (October 1984): 46-49; Henri Lefebvre, La production de l’espace. (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1984); and Christopher Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape (Oxford / Providence: Berg Publishers, 1997).

[iv] Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery (Cambridge / London: Harvard University Press, 2007). Smallwood describes the standards by which enslaved people who had experienced the middle passage were thought of as inferior to enslaved people who did not, reflected in the denigrating implication that the salt water of that journey could never leave their bodies.  Charmaine Nelson, “Buried in a Watery Grave: Art, Commemoration and Racial Trauma,” The Black Body: Imagining, Writing, and (Re)reading. Michelle Goodwin, Sandra Jackson, & Fassil Demisse, eds. (University of South Africa Press, 2009), pp. 134-46. Nelson considers the Atlantic as a memorial site through a lens of visual culture.

[v] Tricia Cusak, “Looking Over the Ship Railings: The Colonial Voyage and the Empty Ocean in Empire Marketing Board Posters,” Empty Spaces: Perspectives on emptiness in modern history. Courtney J. Campbell, Allegra Giovine, & Jennifer Keating, eds. (London: University of London Press, 2019) pp. 87-110.

[vi] Norman Etherington, “A False Emptiness: How Historians May Have Been Misled by Early Nineteenth Century Maps of South‐eastern Africa,” Imago Mundi, 2004 (56:1) pp. 67-86.

[vii] This is no exaggeration—the street I describe opened in 1672, a mere 30 years after the landing of the city’s first French-Catholic settlers.

[viii] Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture. Translated by Dylan J. Montanari (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019), p. 37.

[ix] Jennifer Higgie, host, “Olivia Laing on Agnes Martin.” Bow Down: Women in Art (podcast), November 11, 2019, http://frieze.libsyn.com/olivia-laing-on-agnes-martin.

[x] Alex Ross, “Searching for Silence: John Cage’s art of Noise,” The New Yorker, October 4, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/searching-for-silence. Ross attributes Cage’s inspiration to his friendship with musician Gita Sarabhai, who said that music should “sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences.”

[xi] Bruno Latour, “Imaginer les gestes-barrières contre le retour à la production,” AOC, March 30, 2020. Republished on http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/P-202-AOC-03-20.pdf. Original: “…les chaines que nous sommes prêts à reconstituer et celles que, par notre comportement, nous sommes décidés à interrompre.”

The Place of Nature in Cities: Taking Inspiration from Singapore

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What is the place of nature in cities? As the COVID-19 pandemic challenged societal norms, this question took a new turn for professionals and the public alike. Having recently moved to Singapore I’m sharing here a few thoughts as I’m learning how the city-state designs our relationship with nature.

Taking lessons from Singapore seems difficult as cities in each have their own strengths and legacies. What seems safer to say, however, is that Singapore’s long history of urban ecological experiment can inspire others in the region and around the world.
Singapore is often praised for its forward-looking approach to greenery planning. The “city in a garden” and aspiring “city in nature” can pride itself with a number of world-acclaimed initiatives, from designing buildings with nature to pioneering a biodiversity management index and educating the public and professionals at home and abroad. Does that mean the island is a model of for other cities regionally and globally?

Planning for people and nature

Greening efforts in Singapore date back to the 1960s and are still going strong today. An integral part of the city’s branding, recent “biophilic projects” illustrate how Singaporeans can enjoy the benefits of nature in multiple ways. Beyond the highly-publicised Jewel Changi Airport and Gardens by the Bay, recent noteworthy achievements include Kampung Admiralty (a mixed-use apartment complex with multiple green terraces provide shade and comfort to its elderly residents); the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (which was designed to maximize beneficial interactions between patients and nature); and the Oasia Hotel Downtown, an example of vertical landscaping that opens new horizons for reconciling compacity and greenery.

Gardens by the Bay, one of the most well-known symbols of Singapore’s greening efforts. Credit:https://pixabay.com/photos/singapore-gardens-by-the-bay-4482158/

The private sector significantly contributes to the impression of greenery, but government planning should get much of the credit for the place of nature in the city. From high-level visions for the future of Singapore to the minutiae of roadside design, government agencies spearhead and oversee much of the efforts to protect or restore nature in the city. Singapore does not have much more total green space than other major high-density cities, but each amount of greenery seems to be designed to count—both in terms of human perception and biodiversity.

And it’s not only manicured parks and green roofs. The story of hornbills, birds once extirpated in Singapore, certainly demonstrates that careful planning and design can successfully support urban biodiversity. At the city scale, several plans guide conservation and restoration activities, including the Nature Conservation Masterplan and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. These plans effectively guide action on the ground, such as the recent creation of a nature park (Thomson NP), or the extension of the Park Connector Network. With Singapore’s determination to become “smarter” through technology, these plans can be effectively integrated in nation-wide planning (for example in digital twin models) to optimize outcomes for both urban nature and other services.

Biophilic planning does not stop at infrastructure and some initiatives engaging Singaporeans should also be highlighted. Therapeutic gardens, designed to heal visitors, are great examples given their relative low cost and the increased attention paid to the connection between nature and mental health. There are also new ways government agencies start engaging a dialogue with residents, reflected in the “Build a playground” initiatives or the creation of community gardens throughout the island.

Khoo Teck Puat hospital in Singapore. Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jui-media/6701507463

An increasing need to plan with people and nature

The trend to engage the public in the design phase is relatively recent in Singapore. It is reflected in the recent aspiration to shift from a “whole of government” to a “whole of nation” approach to governance. As observers have noted, this shift will be critical to negotiate as the social and political landscape is changing [1] . Singapore’s demography is evolving and challenges of the 21st century do not resemble the threats that the nation faced in its first 50 years.

One major dimension of this change is the rising inequalities in Singapore. The spectacular economic growth over the last decades has benefited the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans—in part due to unique policies to promote access to housing. Yet recent years have seen the gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the population increase, and the expected increase in highly educated foreigners over the next few decades does little to ease concerns from the Singaporean middle class [1].

The spike in the number of COVID cases in Singapore has shed a particular light on the issue of inequalities by drawing due attention to an important part of Singapore’s migrant workforce. Not only the workers’ living conditions makes them more vulnerable during the crisis, but they face injustices in access to some public spaces as their needs are scarcely acknowledged in planning. Therefore, while top-down planning has generally preserved Singapore from gentrification, inequalities in access and benefits of public goods do exist, and there is certainly room for improvement in how lower-income populations are considered—not only in times of crisis.

Another dimension of the recent socio-political change is the active demands to take part in shaping Singapore. The young generation, in particular, increasingly requests to be heard, which may impact the way planning is conducted. The Singaporean General Elections earlier this month confirmed a mounting questioning of the ruling party, which has held power since independence in 1965 with a broad popular support. An example of how this rising contestation may affect nature planning is that of Bukit Brown, where plans for development of the cemetery in the early 2010s met with unprecedented resistance from the local population. More recently, the development of the Tengah Forest was criticised for an insufficiently considering the value of biodiversity. Perhaps the best sign of success for a city-state that promotes education as a key value, these examples illustrate that the public can become the most effective safeguard and steward of urban nature—and why not help bring back some wilderness.

Hornbills. Photo: Perrine Hamel.

Singapore’s experiment as an inspiration

Overall, there is no denying that Singapore’s greening efforts are a great source of inspiration. They demonstrate that with ambitious top-down policies and a vision that incorporates urban nature, substantial outcomes can be reached: the examples above, among many others, can certainly inspire cities around the planet.

Yet three important points should be kept in mind before elevating Singapore as a model. First, the top-down approach that was possible in the first 50 years may not be sustainable in the future, as society in Singapore and beyond changes. The examples of democratic demand and inequality concerns presented above suggest that a more balanced, less top-down governance approach, will be essential to push urban developments that benefit both people and nature.

Second, building Singapore does not come without its environmental impacts. Direct impacts include the continuing development on high-biodiversity areas, such as the aforementioned Tengah secondary forest.  In addition to the large carbon footprint, especially compared to its neighbours, indirect impacts of sand mining driven by Singapore are also an increasing area of concern. Not every city faces the island’s land scarcity challenges, which have led to important land reclamations, but the high demand for sand from current construction practices does question the sustainability of the model.

Finally, considering Singapore as a model may have unintended consequences, as the cities’ fight to be on the world scene may lead to net negative social and environmental impacts. This is perhaps the most dangerous part of elevating Singapore as a model for others: that the philosophy behind (some of) the current greening efforts is lost in translation. Green buildings that only “look” green do little to advance urban sustainability, and careful consideration of the context and local strengths should prevail when considering the place of urban nature. With now over two decades of experience, urban biodiversity and ecosystem services scientists, who study the ecological and social benefits of urban nature, will be well positioned to facilitate this conversation.

Thus taking lessons from Singapore seems difficult as cities in each have their own strengths and legacies. No one knows if the Singapore approach to urban greening will be optimal in the future, nor if other cities should or could take lessons from Singapore. What seems safer to say, however, is that Singapore’s long history of urban ecological experimentation can inspireothers in the region and around the world. I certainly feel inspired as, in writing these last lines, a couple of hornbills gracefully land on my windowsill.

Perrine Hamel
Singapore

On The Nature of Cities

Note:

[1] To read more on this topic, see the Chapter: Re-Examining Singapore’s Urban Planning and Governance Framework, by Tan Shin Bin and Donald Low) In Planning Singapore: The Experimental City, Hamnett, S. and Yuen, B. (Eds) https://www.routledge.com/Planning-Singapore-The-Experimental-City/Hamnett-Yuen/p/book/9781138482340

Crisis Reveals the Fault Lines of Gender in Environmentalism—How Do We Value Everyday Environments?

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Neglecting gender and the unequal dimension of access and decision-making rights would doom environmental movements to failure. Let us be imaginative. What does it mean to revisit what the promise of equality means in terms of integrating the importance of gender in socio-environmental inequalities?
These are times of crisis. One might even think that the COVID-19 crisis looks like a an alternative expression of crises that are already building, especially ecological ones. Harald Welzer in The Climate Wars shows that the feeling of crisis as well as fear is born in the face of the unpredictability of the times to come. However, it is not a question of following the idea of a generalized repetition of the collapse in the face of the crisis. No, our idea here is to explore the importance of women’s contributions to environmental crisis, a category understood here as gender and socio-biologically constructed, both in the current crisis and in the consideration of future ecosystem crises and their accompaniment.

It is generally accepted that the bulk of the ecological crisis is associated with lifestyles that over-consume resources and natural environments. Thus, the 1972 Club of Rome report obserserved that, at a time when it appears difficult to reform lifestyles or to go back on the idea of progress or growth, the first measures to protect nature should concern extraordinary species and spaces (whether wild, rare, endangered or victims of traffickers, etc).

This paper is part of the TNOC Francophone project, and was first published in French.
A consequence of this observation is that the ordinary environment is disqualified in the field of environment protection or conservation, on the pretext that this everyday environment is often urban, or devoid of “environmental” qualities, as city and nature are often seen as opposites. As early as the 2000s (with the European Landscape Convention integrating ordinary landscapes), environmental concerns linked to the protection of everyday environments became less visible. The reason for this is that women, who make a massive contribution to the reproduction of the human species in all the activities linked to the upbringing of children, domestic work and personal care, occupy a central place in this ecology of everyday life[1].

Ordinary, grassroots environmentalism, composed of lifestyles and individual and collective mobilizations that structure the production of the environment, is first and foremost the work of women, whose role is crucial in this domestic sphere extended to the environment[2]. Moreover, at present, as in the past, the formal and informal collectives involved in local environmental protection, particularly in movements against major urban projects, are largely feminized and—which goes hand in hand—invisibilized.

On the contrary, the rescue of extraordinary biodiversity, rare species, and spaces offers new fields of adventure to a predominantly male population that is not bogged down in the maintenance of everyday living conditions. The media is immediately interested in such extraordinary behaviours, providing key support for the creation of sustained international networks for the safeguard of the planet[3].

It can be concluded that the present discrediting of the everyday living environment as a banal and difficult to mediate is linked to the undervaluation of the feminine. Women pay a high price for this undervaluation of the feminine and of the work women do to support the everyday environment. We already know that environmental changes have a greater impact on women than men. In recent years, many reports have focused on the importance of giving due consideration to socio-environmental inequalities, particularly gender inequalities[4]. Public policies and mobilizations have been proposed to promote equal access rights and the sharing of benefits and uses of ecosystems and natural resources. In this sense, the “capability approach”[5] aims to integrate discriminated populations, particularly women, linking individual and collective capabilities and access opportunities (for example, rights of access to land and natural resource ownership, to education)[6].

A shared garden lot in Kazan (Russia). Photo: Nathalie Blanc

The COVID-19 crisis highlights the importance of women’s work in times of disaster[7]. The professions or skills that are essential in the fight against COVID-19 and the support of daily life are those of care assistants, nurses or cashiers, and activities providing care in society or security of supply. The proportion of women is still rising among employees in retirement homes, home care workers, and day-care centres. Women are in the majority at checkouts in stores and pharmacies. Numerous women’s collectives have developed to provide for the artisanal manufacture of masks, as evidenced by the recent article in Entre les lignes, Entre les mots[8]. These women are relatively visible and taken into consideration, especially in the media, but they are often desribed in terms of the value placed on the work of caring: always described anecdotally, in the social facts sections of the bmedia, and secondary to the struggles of doctors and policy arbitrations, which mainly represented by male experts. (A distinction should be made here between reports in hospital wards, which may occasionally follow women, doctors, interns or nurses, and the staging of the “medical expert” on the television set, locked down in his or her home or filmed in her or his office, and represented outside and above the hands-on action.)

Homemade masks or meals delivered by chefs are indicative of a capacity shared in the ordinary world to quickly grasp what matters in the present situation and to mobilize one’s skills in the service of others. Yet, on a daily basis, the “experts” in the heroic fight against the pandemic and the little hands that humanize the conditions of the pandemic and try to make the world livable are seen as opposed and hierarchical. The providers of everyday capacity their contributions are considered as “care” and and thus are considered less important[9]. The media, including television, which has regained all its persuasive and ideological power, are thus creating, to the benefit of the dominant powers, a narrative of the crisis that firmly maintains the old categories of power.

Meanwhile, women are being massively impacted by the financial consequences of the COVID-19 crisis, an epidemic emerging from an environmental crisis and significant erosion of biodiversity. While 8% of men work part-time, 31% of women do, which means lower than average incomes. Regardless of their status as workers, 75% of women have to take full material and mental responsibility (“the mental load”) for domestic chores for about 3 hours a day. The gender wage gap for comparable jobs in France is, depending on the wage level, between 10% and 25%[10]. Jobs held by women continue to be undervalued and underpaid.

On the other hand, as Marlene Schiappa’s request for a report on gender bias among experts in the media shows[11], women have little presence in the public arena of the media and politics. While many male experts and men speak on radio and television, female experts and doctors, let alone nurses or nursing auxiliaries, are not questioned. This omnipresent male voice is a reminder of male domination, which is all the more evident in times of crisis. It is also a patriarchal reminder of the monopoly of expertise.

Let us say then—and this is the counterpart of our first hypothesis—that if women’s work, inventions, and intelligence play a crucial role in the production of a domestic sphere extended to everyday environments, they play, it seems, a supplementary and accompanying role in times of crisis, worthy of a reserve army that can be mobilised in times of war, if we adopt the rhetoric deployed in the early days of the COVID epidemic-19 by French President Macron. It is true that in times of war, particularly during the two World Wars, women worked in arms factories or were seamstresses, nurses, caretakers[12]. However, this rhetoric of war is also a way of consolidating gender inequality: care activities are in the “third line”. They maintain the thread of ordinary life, but are devalued and invisible in the same way as the “ordinary”. Is it not the permanent invisibilisation of women’s living and working conditions one major element that keeps an unsustainable socio-environmental system going at the price of growing socio-environmental inequalities?

Women, disasters and resilience

The essential work of women in maintaining everyday life forms has long been analysed in terms of environmental production. One can draw on the seminal text of the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, who, in a short essay in 1986 titled “The Carrier-Bag Theory of Fiction”, wrote :

Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier. So says Elizabeth Fisher says in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. … for what’s the use of digging up a lot ofpotatoes if you have nothing to lug the ones you can’t eat home in—with or before the tool that forces energy outward,we made the tool that brings energy home. It makes sense to me. I am an adherent of what Fisher calls the “CarrierBag Theory” of human evolution.

Hence, according to Le Guin, it is necessary to think first of all of the contribution of women to the resource in terms of collecting and relating. The interesting aspects of the metaphor of the container is twofold; on the one hand, it reminds us how much we need containers as much as contents to make society; and on the other hand, it emphasizes the importance of understanding things as symbols of what makes society. For example, looking at the spear rather than the basket has hitherto been synonymous with the power granted to the hunter and the lack of interest in women who cultivated. This also leads to elevating in the public space the heroes who occasionally hunt over the heroines who constantly cultivate, harvest, and clean. In short, without pushing the metaphor beyond its limits, it allows us to think about the relationship between women and resources, as well as the division of material and symbolic labour, but also between what is offered to be seen (and considered) and what is largely invisible.

Moreover, if we believe the IPCC, and if we look at socio-environmental inequalities, women are the ones who will pay a great deal in terms of adaptation to climate change. On 8 August 2019, the IPCC has published a Special Report on “Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Flows in Terrestrial Ecosystems”[13]. Even if there are very great uncertainties in terms of adaptation, largely dependent on political choices, Asia and Africa are projected to have the greatest number of people likely to be dispossessed by desertification and environmental change ; women are the ones on whom this everyday disaster will weigh the heaviest. It is in for this reason that international agencies are constantly advocating for policies to empower women, given their importance in the resilience of local environments and communities[14]. Indeed, the effectiveness of the policies carried out will directly depend on the involvement of those in charge in these communities, especially women.

The loss of livelihoods can also be synonymous with an increase in gender-based violence. Women often face domestic violence and sexual abuse in times of disaster. First, for COVID-19, although it is a little early to draw conclusions about the impact of this epidemic, it is apparent that lockdown exacerbates domestic tensions and violence. Calls to domestic violence hotlines have increased by 30 percent[15]. Second, women often have limited access to the means of alerting or even repressing such violence, which is culturally entrenched and considered of secondary importance in times of disaster[16]. Finally, women as representatives in decision-making bodies at all levels on natural disaster risk reduction is particularly low and representation of women’s interests  is rarely properly identified[17]. Numerous reports and works point to the following facts. Women are often poorer and therefore more vulnerable in times of crisis. For example, Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans (USA) in 2005, affected African-American women and their children more than other groups. In Sri Lanka, it was easier for men to survive the 2004 tsunami because they had the advantage of knowing how to swim and climb trees, skills that are only taught to boys.

With regard to adaptation to climate change, as the same IPCC report points out, increased droughts and water shortages will mainly affect women, who are the main collectors, users and managers of water in poor countries. Water scarcity may increase their workload and reduce their ability to devote their time to other tasks, such as education. The increase in climate-related epidemics, with COVID-19 being only one of many that will inevitably follow, will mainly impact women, who, as we can see today, spend much of their time caring for the sick and raising children. Finally, the erosion of biodiversity has an impact on women’s work, which depends on crop diversity and the proximity of food resources to adapt to climate variability. Women farmers are responsible for half of the world’s food production and produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries[18].

Similarly, women are essential in supporting households and communities and in implementing mechanisms for adaptation and resilience, as the drafters of the report on climate change and gender equality write[19]. In countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Vietnam, Indonesia and India, women are responsible for crop breeding, improving the quality and storage of seeds, and managing small livestock. In addition to knowledge, men and women have different natural resource management practices, all of which are necessary and transferable from one gender to the other for sustainable use and biodiversity conservation[20].

Eco-feminism and environmental care

It is not coincidence that an essential and seminal work on this subject is the work of a woman, namely Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. As early as 1962, Ms. Carson highlighted the deleterious effects of pesticides on the environment, natural life and bird noise—that is, its aesthetic and sensitive dimension—calling for immediate political responses. It was as a result of such work that DDT was banned in 1972 in the United States. The 1970s saw the emergence of important ecofeminist movements and works in different countries that highlighted the importance of the environment. In this sense, the environment has been an important cause and a triggering process for many feminist struggles. It is ecofeminists in the South who have revived environmental thinking, showing in a radical way how, in countries that suffer from the legacy of colonial domination that has powered their economic potential but degraded their environment, the environmental consequences of development have affected women more heavily.

In India, the Chipko movement in 1973 against deforestation and Vandana Shiva’s work on food and agricultural work is widely acclaimed[21]. One of the conclusions that may be drawn from these different works is the need to review environmental justice movements in terms of gender, especially in light of future disasters. A better understanding of the changing relationships between women and environments, and an analysis of the ways in which women contribute to relational approaches to environmental management, is essential for the future.

Neglecting gender and the unequal dimension of access and decision-making rights would doom environmental conservation to failure[22]. Indeed, according to the OECD (Social Institutions and Gender Index, SIGI), only 37 percent of the 160 countries studied give women and men equal access to land ownership and use. It is therefore important to develop a reflection on all future risks: the inequalities before the crisis (epidemic or other), during the crisis, the impact of these inequalities on the management of the crisis, and the consequences of the crisis on these inequalities. Post-disaster management must inevitably include the issues related to the existence of patriarchal systems.

Invisibilisation and domestication

It is critical to appreciate what we make visible and what we leave in the shadows, or make invisible. Should women choose to remain in the shadows, or do we demand recognition? Which, and how? If the place of women and their words is reduced, or even often attacked, it is because of their structural invisibility. It is then a question, beyond deploring them, to ask ourselves: what place is given to invisibility on the symbolic level and in the distribution of values? That the invisible does not translate so easily into the register of the visible, we sense it in the embarrassment we may feel at the discourse of heroisation of the ordinary providers of care, and not just for its hypocrisy. It is the whole difficulty of the ethics of care and of valuing the ordinary, the discreet, the “low”. It is all very well to accept to be invisible on condition that one is not devalued by the condition, and have the choice of being or not being. It’s also about having the choice of forms in which to make oneself visible, forms that are often narratives, narratives that go into detail, into the flesh of the ordinary world, that leave room for unforeseen bifurcations, reversals and the uncertainty of feelings, their inevitable ambiguity. Valuing the shadow in which women are held would mean changing an entire system of values so as to no longer make it the double darkness of the light. Therefore, sublimating (or aestheticizing) the ordinary does not always mean challenging the implicit hierarchy of what matters.

A key to resolving this fundamental theoretical difficulty lies in ordinary environmentalism. While the environmentalist movement has focused primarily on emblematic spaces and species, women around the world are confronted with the protection of this ordinary environment, in its everydayness, resourcefulness, both material and symbolic. The preceding analyses make it possible to distinguish between a “mainstream” environmentalism, that of the protection of natural spaces, characteristic of the Western white elites, and an “environmentalism of the poor”, which is concerned with pollution, environmental inequalities, vulnerable populations, rooted in the underprivileged countries, and the underprivileged spaces of our privileged societies[23]. This ordinary environmentalism is that of the least privileged social strata, including care workers. Two ideas of nature correspond to this social, cultural and gendered divide: one is that of “wild” nature, outside ordinary society, which must be protected as such, sheltered from human intervention; the other is that of a nature of which we are part, where we have relations of interdependence and responsibility. To put it another way, to ignore the fact that today we live in places where socio-environmental relationships need to be transformed is to forget what makes up the substratum of future disasters and to neglect the possibilities, in a changing environment, of profound cultural transformation of relationships with ecologies.

On the road to ordinary environmentalism

The development of the material wealth of societies has only been possible at the cost of the exploitation and enslavement of a large part of the planet, both human and non-human. Therefore, making an unjust system sustainable will not be enough to transform the symbolic and material values at the origin of this development. As regards the protection and productivity of ordinary environments, contempt for care activities has led to an incomplete the liberal conception of morality and justice; it poses a problematic conflict between society’s moral dimension and the actions perpetuates the society in its current forms (daily and invisible care, the production of the daily environment). Thus, the invisibility of care in moral theory condemns a society to disregard the source of its own conservation as a moral society. It reinforces or justifies ordinary indifference to care work in societies[24].

Environmental care, finally, is not a subspecies or extension of care to the non-human. Care for the environment (in both senses: attention to the ordinary environment and the well-being that this environment provides to individuals) is emblematic of the work of care : attention to what makes our lives possible, and which for that very reason we deliberately do not see and neglect. A radical vision of care forces us to see the whole form of life of the privileged as maintained by a caring activity produced by the dominated, but also by the siphoning off of the resources of the South that ensure the maintenance of life and the standard of living of the rich people of societies. The debates on climate change and the nations and cultures that are primarily and historically responsible for it are often characteristic of an ethico-political conception that is indifferent to care, and therefore fundamentally unjust. These are the same nations and cultures that make all the populations of the world bear the weight and responsibility for the transformations brought about by their own development. It is with environmental care that the nonsense of the opposition between care and justice appears, since it appears that only in the ethics of care can we take into account the issues of global justice. Research on the role of women in agricultural work, in resource or biodiversity management, in the preservation of daily lives are all ways to clarify the issues of justice associated with socio-ecological, technical and economic transitions. Research is therefore needed to perceive the limits of a development essentially oriented towards the preservation of lifestyles based on the over-exploitation of natural environments.

Let us be imaginative. What does it mean to revisit what the promise of equality means in terms of integrating the importance of gender in socio-environmental inequalities?

The following proposals are suggestions. Capabilities are defined here summarily as the capacities of citizens to mobilize their experiences and relationships with their environments, with a view to enriching their opportunities to be and act by becoming aware of the various factors that affect their living conditions[25]. They are central to an understanding of environmental justice “based on the interaction between social systems and long-term environmental change” known as transformational[26]. These capabilities also require us to think about co-producing risk adaptation policies with the actors concerned, that are contextualized and socially situated, and therefore take into account the gender issue[27]. In doing so, we embrace a conception of socio-environmental justice that links forms of political participation, the recognition of links to the environment and integrates distributive justice[28]. It is also about valuing the ability to interact with other components of the surrounding environment and to create value, be it social, cultural or environmental[29]. For women, it is also a question of being able to value the components of their living environment, whether it be water quality, social relations or local facilities. They must be able to choose to define together the choices to be made, in short to create or contribute to collective action, in order to produce this ordinary environment.

Transforming collective and public action means building on the differentiated relationships, particularly between women and men, to the symbolic and concrete environments and resources present in these environments. The main challenges are to generate situations of socio-ecological innovation, where social innovation depends on taking into account the ordinary environment. We define socio-ecological innovation as social innovation that builds on and enriches living environments to meet the challenges of local and global change[30]. The aim is thus to develop collective and public action to respond to the plural and evolving situations of the inhabitants and by highlighting the presence of women in these systems (for example, with regard to the food supply for solidarity, culinary practices, urban agriculture).

The debate on climate change and its trail of disasters as a challenge for living and living together at the level of families, buildings, neighbourhoods and regions is now necessary in a way that is open to a plurality of voices. The co-production of more transversal and diverse, and therefore less technocratic, visions of adaptation requires starting from the practices and feelings of the inhabitants to co-construct arguments by giving them a translation of public policy, for example with regard to the projects and associative initiatives included in the policies. The notion of care—in the active sense, of taking care of, caring for—can thus be applied to various everyday attitudes and practices of taking the environment into account: individual or collective behaviours that are concerned about the environment (sorting, calculating and limiting one’s carbon footprint, consumption of energy, materials, etc.).

It is therefore necessary to link ecology and sociality more closely by taking advantage of women’s practical, moral and aesthetic resources and skills: through restaurants stocked with unsold food, shared gardens in shelters, an awareness of the convivial and cultural aspect of the environments in which we live, etc. In short, we must pay attention to the mechanisms and approaches that can make it possible to articulate social and environmental justice and give women the opportunity to use their inventive capacities to transform daily life: ecological development taxation to support participatory adaptation projects based on living, living and living together, support for initiatives to organize local meals, childcare, gardening and support for the elderly. Making room for women’s power to act is a condition for democracy to take root on the ground and for the development of our collective capacity to live better and to resist in the disasters to come.

The current crisis is therefore finally raising awareness of the essential role of women in the production of the everyday environment everywhere in the world, but also of the risks to which all humans are exposed by the invisibility of women’s contribution and by the present disregard for all the tasks of care and maintenance of daily life.

Nathalie Blanc, Sandra Laugier, Pascale Molinier, Anne Querrien
Paris

On The Nature of Cities

Notes:

[1] Seager, J. (2016). Gender Global Environmental Outlook. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme.

[2]  Blanc, N. et Paddeu, F. (2018) L’environnementalisme ordinaire. Transformer l’espace public métropolitain à bas bruit », EspacesTemps.net, Association Espaces Temps.net, titre du fascicule : Travaux, p. 16. URL : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02185381. Consulté le 19 mars 2020.

[3] The focus of the scientific literature on the Greens, Friends of the Earth or the consideration of the environment in public administrations has contributed to reduce the environmental movement to its national actors and its contribution to public policies through its electoral successes and failures. This national prism is found in the United States where Kenneth Andrews and Bob Edwards note that the multiplication of national environmental organizations in the United States is very well documented, in contrast to that of local organizations, even though the latter help to define priorities and guide public debate at the national level. Based on a questionnaire survey of environmental organizations in North Carolina, they conclude that the more local the spatial listing of environmental organizations is, the less they mobilize expertise and institutional advocacy among their repertoires of action and the more likely they are to engage in radical discourse and partisan campaigning (Andrews and Edwards 2005). Thus, the image of an institutionalized environmental movement, versed in expertise, that has become cautious about radical social transformation corresponds in France essentially to the 1980s and is disproportionately important at the national level.

[4] Seager, J. (2014). Disasters are gendered: What’s new? In Zinta Zommers & Ashbindu Singh (Eds.), Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change. New York: Springer ; Seager, J. (2019). New visions for nature and nature’s contributions to people for the 21st century. New visions for nature and nature’s contributions to people for the 21st century. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Leach M, Scoones I, Stirling A, 2010, Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice, Earthscan.

[5] The capability approach was developed by Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum : Sen, A., 1979, Equality of What ?, The Tanner lecture on human values, Stanford University ; Sen, A., 2010, The idea of justice, London, Penguin books ; Nussbaum M. (2000). Women and human development.The capability approach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

[6] We believe that this capability approach to disaster makes it possible to respond to the suspension of rights resulting from the emergency by evaluating concrete rights, which “ensures a normative resource” (Chavel, S. (2019) Le paradigme des capabilités face aux situations de désastre, raison-publique.fr, https://www.raison-publique.fr/article773.html), but also to relate subjective expectations to the possibilities of rights.

[7] Caroline Criado Perez in Invisible Women : Exposing Data Bias in a World Designer for Men (2019) explains than 29 millions articles have been published on Zika and Ebola, but less than 1% of publications was about gender issues. See : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30526-2/fulltext

[8] https://entreleslignesentrelesmots.blog/2020/04/08/lutte-contre-le-coronavirus-si-les-femmes-sarretent-les-masques-tombent-et-autres-textes.

[9] Laugier S., Molinier P., Paperman P. Nous défendre – face au discours politique sur le Covid-19 AOC. Analyse Opinion critique, 7 avril 2019. On care Ethics Paperman P., Laugier S. (eds.) Le souci des autres, éthique et politique du care (2005) éditions de l’EHESS.

[10] https://www.inegalites.fr/Les-inegalites-de-salaires-entre-les-femmes-et-les-hommes-etat-des-lieux.

[11] Marlène Schiappa, in charge of Equality between Women and Men and the Fight against Discrimination, sent a mission letter to Céline Calvez, Member of Parliament for Hauts-de-Seine, to analyse the place of women experts in the media at large in this period of containment and crisis of COVID-19.

[12] https://entreleslignesentrelesmots.blog/2020/04/08/lutte-contre-le-coronavirus-si-les-femmes-sarretent-les-masques-tombent-et-autres-textes.

[13] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/srccl

[14] However, critical attention must be paid to the risks of exploitation of rural women in the South, in particular through NGOs, and to their acculturation.

[15] https://www.un.org/fr/covid-19-riposte-globale/covid-19-lonu-alarm%C3%A9e-par-la-%C2%AB-flamb%C3%A9e-%C2%BB-des-violences-domestiques  ; https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/COVID-19_A_Gender_Lens_Guidance_Note.pdf.

[16] Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Rome, 2016, Gender-responsivedisaster risk reduction in the agriculture sector, Guidance for policy-makers and practitioners.

[17] Cf. http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/natural-sciences/priority-areas/gender-and-science/cross-cutting-issues/gender-equality-and-disaster-risk-reduction.

[18] Aguilar Revelo, L., (2009), Manuel de formation sur le genre et le changement climatique, San José (Costa Rica) : Absoluto, https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/9395.

[19] http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/natural-sciences/priority-areas/gender-and-science/cross-cutting-issues/climate-change-and-gender-equality/

[20] Aguilar, L., Mata, G. et Quesada-Aguilar, A.,  (2010), Gender and biodiversity, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

[21] Hache, E.  (2016) Reclaim, recueil de textes écoféministes, textes choisis et présentés par Émilie Hache, postface de Catherine Larrère, éditions Cambourakis,  Larrère, C. (2012): Féminisme écologique ou écologie féministe Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines.

[22] The issue of equity is consubstantially associated with that of sustainable development, as Gupta et al. (2019) show.

[23] Sandra Laugier (2016) Politics of Vulnerability and Responsibility for Ordinary Others, Critical Horizons, 17:2, 207-223, DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2016.1153891

[24] The philosopher Annette Baier reports on this in her article What do Women Want in Moral Theory? See also Laugier S. (ed.), Tous Vulnerables? Payot, 2012.

[25] Sen, A., 2010, The idea of justice, London, Penguin books .

[26] Blanc N., Laigle L, 2018. Narratives, capabilities and climate change : towards a sustainable culture, in Birkeland I., Burton R., Parra C., Siivonen K. (Eds), Cultural sustainability and the nature-culture interface. Livelihoods, policies, and methodologies. New York, Routledge, Chapter 13.

[27] Gupta, J., Seager, J. (2019). Re imagining the driver-pressure-state-impact-response framework from an equity and inclusive development perspective. Sustainability Science (2020) 15:503-520.

[28] Schlosberg, D. (2004) Reconceiving environmental justice: global movements and political theories. Environ Politics 13(3):517–540.

[29] The avenues discussed in this article take up the conclusions of the report of the CAPADAPT project funded under the GICC programme by ADEME (2017/2020), adaptation of cities to climate change and “capabilities”: towards an approach in terms of human development.

[30] This definition is the result of  the CAPADAPT project in collaboration with L. Laigle.

Sandra Laugier

about the writer
Sandra Laugier

Sandra Laugier is Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, France, and Senior Fellow of Institut Universitaire de France. She has extensively published on ordinary language philosophy , moral philosophy, and classic American philosophy.

Pascale Molinier

about the writer
Pascale Molinier

Pascale Molinier is professor of social psychology at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and director of Les cahiers du genre. Her research themes are gendered division of labour, relationship between mental health and work, care ethics, feminist epistemology .

Anne Querrien

about the writer
Anne Querrien

Anne Querrien, sociologist and political scientist, has been from 1985 to 2010 the editor of the main urban research journal in France Les Annales de la Recherche Urbaine. She is involved in urban farming experiments in Paris Region with the Atelier d’architecture autogérée. Since 2008 she is co-director of the editorial board of the French journal Multitudes.

Getting to Know You: The Under-Appreciated Art (Science) of Slow Research and Arts-Led Community Engagement

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Through teams of researchers and students working collaboratively with community arts we accentuated the connection between the university and the local community, galvanised mutual learning and the value of slow research.
Know the feeling when every project seems to require a huge amount of work in a short amount of time, for very little reward??

This seems to be the way of the world, whether you’re a practitioner, a researcher, or a community activist (or all three).

I was prompted to reflect on this when I (guiltily) turned down a request to collaborate on a project which involved working in an area I didn’t know, to produce desk research and broad community and stakeholder engagement including with “hard-to-reach” communities, and based on those two elements to deliver regeneration recommendations—all with minimally funded contact time.

The more I thought about this, the crazier it seemed and the less guilty I felt—an impossible task to do well, with huge responsibility invested in the output. How could I go into an unknown area, build relationships of trust with all of the businesses, communities, and hard-to-reach residents, understand the existing networks, relationships, assess the place, the physical and socio-economic realities, the scope of the proposed regeneration … and recommend how that regeneration should unfold over the course of a generation just by walking around for a few days, collecting some surveys and 30 minute interviews.

This made me reflect in a positive light on how my work has unfolded over several years in one of the most deprived parts of London, on its eastern edge: Thames Ward in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Alongside colleagues and partners from a range of backgrounds, University of East London Sustainability Research Institute has developed incremental projects and relationships that together build a more substantive contribution to our local communities and places over time. Situated to the east of the city, adjacent to the Thames, it is an area that has experienced industrial decline over a long period but is now one of the most dramatically changing areas of the city. We have been working in Thames Ward for almost 20 years, with businesses, regeneration agencies, the local authority and residents and community groups on a range of research projects, large and small.

Thames Ward is home to 1950s council estates as well as low-tech industry, and it has a network of neglected green and blue spaces as well as a 2.5 km stretch of the river Thames. It is also the site of one of Europe’s largest regeneration projects, Barking Riverside, with 10,800 homes and infrastructure being built over a 30-year period, adjacent to the existing communities. The development has been designed with Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems at its heart, giving a distinctive appearance to the new neighbourhood in terms of an inter-connected network of retention ponds, swales, green roofs and rain gardens.

Barking Riverside, Sustainability Research Institute, UEL. Photo: Lisa Peachey
Barking Riverside, Sustainability Research Institute, UEL. Photo: Lisa Peachey

When I started working there in 2013, I soon found that—although the area looked lovely to my eyes—most residents had no idea why their green spaces were so unusually designed, for example so that grass areas were not flat and mown to enable children to kick a football. Or why there was so much water around, breeding mosquitoes. One residents’ association member said the ponds should be drained and concreted over. Others thought that the fact the place looks nice did not make up for the fact there were no shops or community facilities, and public transport links were so poor. This was all rather salutary feedback to someone passionate about sustainable urban design and nature in cities!

My learning experiences have grown exponentially over the years as I get to know more residents and communities across Thames Ward, in the old and new housing areas. This learning has been fundamental in shaping the form and scope of our interventions. I have become much more aware of the need to co-create research and intervention design, and to be flexible to follow rather than lead the direction of research and practice if I want to truly “engage with” and have meaningful impact for residents. Perhaps the most important lesson has been to listen and observe—and that we often learn much more when we do that rather than when we conduct surveys. (Aside: we’ve also learnt that residents get fed up of endless surveys!)

What have been the results of this “listening and following” research and practice? We’ve learnt that local residents do not know about their local environment, even that they are close to the River Thames, but they would like to know more. We’ve learnt that people in both the older and newer communities each think the other area has “all the good stuff”—and indeed at the start of our engagement that these two distinct communities did not consider themselves part of a coherent place, and—despite the regeneration “pitch” that existing neighbourhoods would benefit—there appeared to be little attention for the older estates. This led to us playing a more pro-active role in partnering with others to help shape the social development and local associations with nature.

For example, we mobilised student power to develop two projects with Thames View Infants school—increasing the landscape value and interest for part of the playing fields and designing and building an outdoor shelter for the pupils. You can read more about that project here.

UEL architecture masters students designed and built an outside shelter at Thames View Infants School.. Photo: © Sustainability Research Institute, UEL / Lisa Peachey

As part of the NHS England Healthy New Town programme, we worked on a cycling project and a Blue Spaces project in Thames Ward. The latter involved developing a map of the whole of Thames Ward, showing the green and blue spaces, community assets and social infrastructure and walking routes and times, in partnership with Living Streets, a walking charity. We used the map as a process for engaging with residents and stakeholders: a series of led walks, taking the map to various community groups and community events, and we had drop in sessions to share the evolving map and get feedback for the final version over the course of several months.

As part of the Barking Healthy New Town Blue Spaces project, UEL SRI developed a map of Thames Ward showing all the blue and green spaces, sharing it with residents and getting their inputs. Photo: © Sustainability Research Institute, UEL / Lisa Peachey

During this work, I met Susie Miller Oduniyi, a community arts practitioner and this led to further in-depth work in the area, we became involved in a new piece of work, the making of a local film by ‘New View Arts’. We were able to support  this community-led project, which utilised a blend of local history, ecology and art. It enabled us to mobilise interdisciplinary teams and students to become actively involved in community development, recognising the value of building community relationships through a slow and consistent community engagement process.

I’ll pass the story over to Susie now, who will explain how we slotted in our expertise and student-power to their community arts projects.

Susie Miller Oduniyi—New View Arts

As an artist, I have been creating arts-led engagement projects on Thames View Estate for many years, building opportunities for local people to tell their stories. The initial idea to create an arts project that engaged local young people and children came from residents and members of the local tenants association, many of whom have been residents of the Thames View Estate for over 50 years. They were concerned about the lack of activities for local teenagers, residents Joyce Cracknell and Pam Dumbleton named the project New View Arts and actively supported and encouraged my Arts Council Application. I wanted to create a film that captured the unique local history of past Creekmouth Villagers while providing volunteering opportunities for young people who were not engaging with education or training, developing their skills while providing much needed arts provision for local children. New View Arts aims to inspire local residents to connect to their history through the arts, in a an area that has a constantly evolving demographic and where levels of arts engagement are low, only 25% of people in Barking and Dagenham spend time doing a creative, artistic, theatrical, or music activity or a craft according to The Active Lives Survey 2015-2017.

In March 2019 two artists carried out street-based engagement in Thames Ward to advertise the project to children and parents and engage young people who were not in education and training. We engaged 10 of these young people; four volunteered consistently throughout the project and six were involved in a lesser capacity, attending screenings and other community events throughout the project.

We ran six Saturday workshops from March to April with the four young volunteers (14-24 years old) and 28 local children (8-13 years old). The volunteers took on administrative and monitoring responsibilities, filming and photography, leading activities/games and facilitating exercises with the children. We invited members of The Creekmouth Preservation Society (CPS) to the sessions to be interviewed by the children and young people and share stories of living in Creekmouth Village, which was washed away in the great flood of 1953.

 

In April the four young volunteers took part in an intergenerational Ecology Course ran by the Sustainability Research Institute, University of East London (UEL). The course ran for 2.5 days and included classroom-based workshops, exploring the history of London’s water systems, walking in Thames Ward blue spaces and local wildlife and a day out to Walthamstow Wetlands. The volunteers supported the workshops and developed their camera and sound skills. Each of the young volunteers received a certificate from University of East London for completing the course.

Members of the Creekmouth Preservation Society engage with the New View Arts project children. Photo: © Susie Miller Oduniyi
Young volunteers learn filming skills. Photo: © Susie Miller Oduniyi

In August we held a summer programme of six workshops for 8 children, supported by the four volunteers, this included trips to Creekmouth Open Space to photograph, explore and film the area. We worked with Andrew Brown a photographer involved in documenting the local area as part of his MA in Photography, the children and young volunteers had the use of cameras to take their own photographs.

As part of New View Arts project, local photographer Andrew Brown works with the children to capture the Creekmouth Open Space. Photo: © Susie Miller Oduniyi
The children visited a local artwork depicting the old Creekmouth Village. Photo: © Susie Miller Oduniyi

We held our first screening on the 31 October 2019 at the Sue Bramley Centre; we also held a screening for the CPS and their family and friends. Our final screening was held at The Sue Bramley Centre/ Thames View Library in December and was part of a wider Christmas celebration and included an exhibition by Andrew Brown of photographs of the project including ones taken by the children and young people. You can watch the 11-minute film on YouTube here:

Through our evaluation process with the young people, they cited that they felt that they had the opportunity to lead the project and gain experience and skills in an environment that they felt safe. Underpinning my engagement process is the principle of “Starting where people are at”, this ensures that the work highlights where the participants are starting from, in terms of their personal experience and skills and therefore produces a process that is engaging and relevant.

Building trust with the young people through consistent contact was important to keeping the young people engaged, finding opportunities and events that that artists and young people could attend together created contact time outside the workshops. This gave the young people the opportunity to meet local residents and other organisations, professionals working locally.

Through the creative workshop, the filming and making process allowed the children to immerse themselves into the narrative and really bring local history to life and build genuine intergenerational relationships with the members of Creekmouth Preservation Society. The film has also ensured that local older residents and past residents of Creekmouth Village have preserved their story on film, which we are continuing to share locally and wider afield.

Pam (local resident and founder of Shed Life) and Sam (Sustainability Research Institute, UEL) in the sunshine watching the site survey take place. Photo: © Susie Miller Oduniyi

Shed Life

A linked project we have developed is called Shed Life. The project began in October 2018 initiated by local resident Pam Dumbleton and myself (Susie); we initially received £5k from Healthy New Towns (Barking Riverside) to deliver Phase 1 of the project (October2018-March 2019), which included the engagement of local men and the community within a regular weekly drop-in workshop to form a Steering Group. There is a real opportunity for local residents to be central to the development of our estate and small grass roots projects like ours really can make a difference to people who are at risk of being left behind.

Different generations came together to take part in a short ecology course run by UEL’s Sustainability Research Institute in collaboration with New View Arts, funded by the Barking Healthy New Town. Photo: © Sustainability Research Institute, UEL / Paula Vandergert
Each of the four New View Arts volunteers received a certificate from the University of East London for completing the ecology course. Photo: © Susie Miller Oduniyi

According to Public Health England Barking and Dagenham has the lowest life expectancy rate for men in the London Region, we want to provide local health related activities for men to make positive changes to their own health. A local space for men to find friendship, will support their physical and mental health and directly improve men’s lives and opportunities and contribute to our fantastic community here on the Thames View Estate.

We want to make a community space for men to connect, converse, and create. Providing activities chosen by the men to enjoy together. The purpose is to help reduce loneliness and isolation, to utilise the skills and talents that men can share with each other and create a project that is ultimately led by local men themselves. We have integrated the project with the four young people who volunteered on the New View Arts Project. The young volunteers are involved in developing the Shed with the men and are part of the steering group. We envisage that once the “shed” has been created the Shed Life Steering Group will manage the space with support from the TTRA and the Sue Bramley Centre, the local community hub.

We have a regular group of 10 local men (aged 37 – 75) and the four New View Arts volunteers and other local residents pop in as it is a regular point of contact each week to share information or just have a cup of tea. We have had a very positive response from local people and organisations to the idea of a “shed” and the men have enjoyed meeting new people especially the young people, who they have formed very strong bonds with. The group provides regular peer support for the men, young people and families. This has become an important local support network where the group feels safe to bring issues and get support. The majority of the men and young people have complex health and social issues including: mental health (depression and schizophrenia), learning needs, long-term sickness, mobility issues, bullying, domestic violence and isolation. The men have enjoyed being at the centre of the community and finding a space where they can share their problems and get safe advice and support. We have a robust Safeguarding policy and experienced project leaders and we link in with the staff at the Sue Bramley Centre who supports us with referrals to other agencies.

The group have discussed their ideas for the shed and were very keen that they wanted to create a space for the whole community to use, they have enjoyed being at the heart of the community and came up with a list of project aspirations and drew sketches of their ideas and named the project “Shed Life” The majority of the men have a number of health & mobility issues so the core activities they have identified at this stage are “soft”, including photography, model making, gardening and bird watching. This has all fed into the Stage 1 designs by the architect Sarah Bland, Studio Wic.

In March we held an event to celebrate the end of Phase 1 of the project, with a film screening of “A Northern Soul” with a Q&A with the Director Sean McAlister. The event included an exhibition of portraits of the group by photographer Andrew Brown and was well attended, allowing us to publicise the project further to local people and galvanise support. In April the men with the New View Arts young volunteers enjoyed taking part in the Blue Spaces course ran by the UEL Sustainability Research Institute exploring the local ecology and waterways. The course was funded by Healthy New Towns and allowed us to offer enriching activities to learn about our local environment and discuss our plans for “Shed Life” moving forward.

The group have been collaborating with the architecture department masters students at the University of East London (UEL) to design the shed guided by Alan Chandler Head of Architecture and we have gathered some amazing support from local companies who are providing pro bono support with surveying the land and laying the concrete foundations. Thanks to Sarah McCready, Barking Riverside London, we have made links with amazing companies working locally in Thames Ward. Thanks to Chris Dransfield and Johanna Ahlstrom at Barking Riverside Extension project (Morgan Sindall VolkerFitzpatrick Joint Venture)and Keith Brennan and Denis Cormican, PLS Civil Engineering, we have had a site survey, which has contributed to our planning application for the Shed. We were also lucky to have the Master Architecture students from University of East London help us with the planning application process as part of their course, supported and advised – again pro bono – by Ed Hanson at Barton Willmore.

The University of East London Masters Architecture Students made a wonderful ‘to-scale’ model of the Shed. Together with the students we discussed the access, windows and floor plan to make sure that the final model and design meets all of our needs. Thanks to Alan Chandler Head of Architecture at UEL. Photo: © Andrew Brown

We have successfully raised some funds from the National Lottery for materials to build the shed, which the men will do with support from volunteers, and we generated extra funding for decking and ramps to make sure the shed is wheelchair accessible through a crowd-funding campaign. We are now planning for the shed to be constructed in Spring 2020. I am now fundraising to deliver training with the steering group to develop their leadership skills to manage the space for local people.

Back to Paula …

Through the Sustainability Research Institute team of researchers and students working collaboratively with New View Arts and Shed Life we accentuated the connection between the university and the local community, galvanised mutual learning and the value of slow research. We have built a mutual respect and opened many opportunities for further community development and most importantly demystified further education for local young people.

Paula Vandergert and Susie Miller Oduniyi
London

On The Nature of Cities

Susie Miller Oduniyi

about the writer
Susie Miller Oduniyi

Susie Miller Oduniyi is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Humourisk, a Community Interest Company that create performance and art that redefines perceptions, co-creating work with communities and artists through creative exchange. Shed Life and New View Arts are current projects that have been co-created with the communities of Thames View Estate in Barking.

My Past, Present, and Future: A Review of Ecological Mediations

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A review of Ecological Mediations, by Dr. Karan R Aggarwala, Xlibris, 2010.
The sciences meet the arts in the poetic renderings of Dr. Karan Aggarwala’s 2010 collection, Ecological Mediations(Xlibris). An optometrist by training, Dr. Aggarwala’s poetic view of the world reflects years of science met with a holistic ecological view of the mechanisms of our world. His inspiration draws clearly from personal experiences and stories of his family. He writes his heart on the page, without frivolous language or construction. This clear-cut style serves as the connecting force for the wide-reaching themes of the collection.

I am a man the day I feel
responsible for my thoughts, feelings, and actions;
my past, present and future.
(excerpt from “Twenty-one”, pg. 169)
One of the interesting highlights from this collection is the way that Aggarwala views humanity and the human experience as not only a connection between family, friends, and other physical beings, but also as an ephemeral experience that questions the role of spirituality and religion in the position of humans in the natural environment. Aggarwala’s style does not lean toward pushing religious agenda but gives pause and consideration to the way that spirituality can connect people with their purpose, their family, and their environment. Each poem in the collection holds its weight as a stand-alone story that paints a picture of moments in a person’s life. They don’t have to be connected, or even feel related, but Aggarwala’s words paint the picture of a whole, holistic life through unrelated experiences that continue to build a full picture of what it means to be human in an ecological environment that calls for cooperation and coexistence that is constantly taken for granted. This collection does not take that connection lightly and works to build moments into the collection that remind the audience of a forgotten connection to their peaceful and tenuous world.

Given was I instead,
a universe of inter-related cells and tissues,
that work in harmony only so long
as I want them to.
(excerpt from “My territory”, pg. 28)
Aggarwala’s medical background shines through as a new view on a very essential connection between the human experience and the natural world. The structure of the poems in this collection highlight the harmony of the human body in a world that can be affected by beauty, disease, climate, and physical breakdown. Poems such as “Confused with” and “My territory” connect the ideas of the ethereal found in religion with the relation of cells and physical beings. The medical technicality of Aggarwala’s clear knowledge does not weigh the piece down and instead builds an interesting view into physical action and movement that could easily be missed by everyday readers. Highlighting these biological moments adds another layer to the hope and the connectivity that holds the collection together as a body of work.

Ecological Mediations is a conglomeration of many themes and feelings that ring true for our current world that thrives on corrupting our ecological beauty and resources. Aggarwala is able to commiserate with and appreciate the natural world, both for the way that it truly is and for the way that humans sometimes trick themselves into believing it is.

The style of these works, as a whole, plays with the line between attract and destruction as humans interact with their surroundings in a way that creates ecological and emotional drain. Each poem creates an individualized space to question what it means to be human, to interact with the natural world, and to search for meaning through interpersonal relationships and connections to a feeling of world religion.

Good things there are
many more to do;
for some of these callings
we are relying on you.
(excerpt from “Message for Jyoti”, pg. 132)
With the state of the world as it is, I find comfort in reading the original spaces that Aggarwala has created as a selection of independently impactful poems. The collection does not feel like it is meant to be read from start to finish as a narrative parade of poems. Instead, Aggarwala’s attention to sculpting individual spaces serves as a reflection of the way humans feel multiplicity, always searching for a new way to see, imagine, and connect.

Malerie Lovejoy
Oxford

On The Nature of Cities

How is COVID-19 affecting caring for and researching urban ecology?

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Regularly, we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
show/hide list of writers
Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Camilo Ordóñez Barona, Melbourne As people’s use of parks and greenspaces with trees changed due to physical distancing measures, we are adapting our research to consider previously unexpected changes in people’s behaviour in these spaces.
Joy Clancy, Twente We need to know how previously existing gender inequities are influencing energy poverty and whether the measures taken to address the effects of the virus also are biased against people experiencing (enhanced) energy poverty.
Christina Breed, Pretoria As parks remain closed after three months and will most likely remain so all winter, it would be interesting to hear if people’s general appreciation of access to urban green open space increase as a consequence.
Mark Champion,Wigan Community work has been severely reduced and there is little formal consultation and capacity development. Arts projects have been curtailed. Citizen Science recording has been suspended.
Ian Douglas, Manchester I have helped in the setting-up of a small pilot project in Uganda to help young unmarried mothers train to become beekeepers and entrepreneur honey producers, but this work is suspended due to lockdowns.
Pete Frost, Wales The new All Wales Green Space Data Set is likely to become even more important to help show where green space can be used to take healthy recreation during times of social distancing.
Lincoln Garland, Bath Globally the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to notably increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings.
David Haley, London Adopting a whole systems approach, the project will conduct workshops and interviews with each community of stakeholders to learn, analyse, and assess their present state of confidence, vulnerability, resilience and futures prospects.
Yun Hye Hwang, Singapore The pandemic opens new opportunities for landscape architects to care about resource optimization as a core strategy in the design and management of urban green spaces.
Jane Houghton, York To address the inequalities in access to greenspace highlighted by Covid-19, we are developing additional maps to show where high numbers of homes that do not have access to private gardens are located in areas of greenspace deficiency, and areas of health inequalities.
Christian Isendahl, Gothenburg The main messages of my research—how urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solution—has become even more urgent in the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.
Philip James, Salford IGNTION includes establishing a Living Laboratory at the University of Salford monitoring and demonstrating the performance of Nature Based Solutions designed to combat climate change. But all data collection is delayed.
Sarah Lindley, Manchester Many more people now appreciate just how important local urban green and blue spaces are for the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Indeed, the importance of those spaces has itself increased. However, not everyone can benefit.
Patrick M. Lydon, Osaka The Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities is making a commitment to bring to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current transdiciplinary exhibitions on urban ecological themes, that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities.
Nancy E. McIntyre, Lubbock  My university placed some restrictions on research expenditures and travel, initially delaying our project; some of our study sites remained closed to access.
Stephan Pauleit, Munich What does Covid mean for green space standards which? How can they better take on board extreme events and resilience thinking?
Joe Ravetz, Manchester PERI-CENE is a pilot project aiming to set new agendas for peri-urban and climate change, in theory and practice, at local and global levels.
Graham A.W. Rook, London It will be important to learn how immune repertoire, immunoregulation and gut microbiota relate to resistance versus susceptibility to the virus, and the possible relevance of microbial inputs to urban versus rural susceptibility.
Richard Salisbury, Manchester  In the short term, due to the social distancing measures, all practical volunteering has come to a halt. This is having an impact on conservation and some areas are becoming undermanaged.
Alan Scott, London The lockdown has stopped all our work and all staff are furloughed. While this can be endured in the near term, longer restrictions will be a problem.
Richard Scott, Liverpool We must be bold and imaginative and use inclusive language in a world desperate for positive futures right now.
Monica L. Smith, Los Angeles There are anecdotal media reports of wild animals re-integrating into city margins, which seemingly demonstrates resilience and niche-construction although this remains to be studied in more detail.
Marcelo Lopes de Souza, Rio de Janeiro Our research has changed because the interface between environmental injustice and public health becomes even more evident, so that we will surely give it more emphasis.
Miriam Stark, Honolulu Our planned 2020 archaeological fieldwork was cancelled, which gives us time to explore and write about resilience strategies in historical responses to climate change in Southeast Asia .
Katalin Szlavecz, Baltimore Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all field work has been suspended (at least in Baltimore).
Joanne Tippett, Manchester The pandemic has shown that rapid change is possible, and opened a space of opportunity to reimagine our urban spaces and relationship with the natural world. The need for meaningful engagement has never been more important.
Piotr Tryjanowski, Poznań I measure sounds level in the city—in the same places since 2017—and it looks as if there is a big change.
Tim Webb, London The explosion of mutual aid groups witnessed during the COVID-19 outbreak is evidence of strong community spirit. Encouraging that spirit will speed our economic recovery and make cities more resilient against biological, ecological, meteorological, economic, civil or political strife.
Mike Wells, Bath Globally the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to notably increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings.
Phil Wheater, Manchester The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the flow of the work in two main ways: through social distancing preventing planned face-face meetings; and because the Public Health staff involved in the project have other priorities at present.
Ian Douglas

about the writer
Ian Douglas

Ian is Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester. His works take an integrated of urban ecology and environment. He is lead editor of the "Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology" and has produced a textbook, "Urban Ecology: an Introduction", with Philip James.

Introduction

Covid demonstrates again the importance of urban green and open spaces. But what of the work required to care for and understand such spaces? This is significantly impeded by the pandemic.
COVID-19 presents challenges to society in every direction. Urban nature and greenspaces are suddenly being used more intensively by people who cannot exercise in indoor gyms and swimming pools and by others who just want to escape from the confines of their apartments or houses for an hour or so.  Many are engaging in wild swimming in local lakes, while considerably more are exercising in local parks and woodlands.  Images and videos are circulating of animals that have ventured into quiet city streets, from penguin in South African towns to wild goats in Llandudno, north Wales and elephants in Thai cities. Reduced traffic means that many urbanites can hear and see more birds and become generally aware of the nature on their doorsteps.

However, the people who manage and care for urban nature and community access to, and engagement with, the urban blue and green spaces; those who develop policies for urban greening; and those carrying out research into urban ecology are themselves affected in their work and activities by COVID-19 lockdowns and related impacts. This Global Roundtable permits a range of these people to give their personal views of how COVID-19 has affected what they do in relation to urban nature.

At its April 2020 meeting the UK Urban Ecology Forum decided to compile a list of reactions to COVID-19 from its members and from the contributors to the Second Edition of the Routledge Handbook on Urban Ecology, the Forum’s major publication. The Forum asked people to provide a brief report on current urban ecology/ urban parks/ green infrastructure activity and present and future impacts and opportunities for that work arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents were asked to provide 100-150 words describing their current work, research or project and a further 100-150 words describing how this activity is changing, or will change, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and any links to the desperate need for action to the climate emergency and the extinction crisis, with comments on any new opportunities that were likely to open up.

The UK Urban Ecology Forum is a network of people, including ecologists, artists, managers, planners and researchers, involved with the environment and nature conservation in urban areas. It seeks to: raise awareness; stimulate research; influence policy; improve the design and management of urban systems; and push urban nature conservation up the social and political agenda. It was established to provide advice to the nature conservation bodies of the four countries of the United Kingdom under the leadership of the late George Barker, formerly the Urban Nature advisor to English Nature (Natural England). It has produced influential guidance on urban greenspace policies and practices, particularly on standards for accessible natural greenspace in town and cities and on the need for standards that can help  to achieve high quality adapted and attractive green spaces that people will want to use and will therefore help them get to know their neighbours and build stronger communities.

Many of the Forum’s members are also contributors to the Handbook of Urban Ecology The other contributors to the Handbook of Urban Ecology also come from a wide range of backgrounds and from countries in all continents. The editors had a deliberate policy to try to achieve a nationality and gender balance. Their experiences are governed by the particular expertise on aspects of the urban environment and by the cultures and practices of the places where they live and work. Several work outside their countries of residence and have been particularly constrained in what they can do by lockdown regulations in more than one country

Those managing urban greenspaces note that while volunteer work has virtually ceased and no one is available to deal with invasive species such as Himalayan balsam, some important major projects can be finalised (Mark Champion; Richard Salisbury UK). In London (UK) Tim Webb sees that society has cleverly transformed parks into a crucial element of our lives as places where we can both distance ourselves from others, while simultaneously coming together as communities. Patrick Lydon (Japan) shows how the pandemic has led to new types of virtual art exhibitions on urban ecological themes.

For many engaged in interaction with the community, project progress is hampered by not being able to hold face-to-face meetings (Phil Wheater and Pete Frost, Wales, UK). However, plans are being made elsewhere for workshops and interviews with communities of stakeholders to learn, analyse and assess their present state of confidence after the pandemic, and their future vulnerability, resilience and prospects (David Haley, UK). Natural England’s People and Nature Public Survey will endeavour to capture visiting and engagement with greenspaces and nature in response the COVID-19 measures (Jane Houghton, UK).

The Lee Valley Regional Park, London, UK. Photo: Tim Webb

For the future, the hardship of confinement to apartments or houses without gardens may, according to Mike Wells (UK), increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings. Alan Scott (UK) sees the challenge facing nature conservation being to take this increase in interest and turn it into long term support. Stephan Pauleit (Germany) stresses that changes in public behaviour in response to crises will have to be more thoroughly considered in future planning. Richard Scott (UK) argues that new international urban accessible natural greenspace standards should combine carbon capture, and biodiversity, and creative conservation delivery, and make urban greening a transformative global movement.

Some researchers are asking questions on how the influence of COVID 19 on demographic and income factors (preferential deaths of old men, significance of deprivation, ill-health and ethnicity in vulnerability to the pandemic) may aggravate inequality and energy and food poverty (Joy Clancy, Netherlands; Manuel Lopez de Souza, Brazil). Others have messages for the future such as how urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solution (Christian Isendahl, Sweden). There are also questions about how efforts to shield older people may inadvertently make them more exposed to very high temperatures (Sarah Lindley (UK). Fundamental questions remain about how microbiota in human immune systems relate to urban environment and to human resistance or susceptibility to COVID-19 (Graham Rook, UK).

For academic researchers the chief issue is being unable to carry out field work: Ida Breed (South Africa; Philip James (UK); Nancy McIntyre, Miriam Smith, and Katalin Szlavecz (USA), However, some recognise fascinating new questions, such as how does COVID-19 affect the behaviour of urban birds and their predators? (Piotr Tryjanowski, Poland).

Camilo Ordóñez

about the writer
Camilo Ordóñez

Camilo is a research associate at the University of Toronto. His interdisciplinary research is about the social and ecological issues of nature in cities. He works in Canada, Latin America, and Australia.

Camilo Ordóñez Barona

As people’s use of parks and greenspaces with trees changed due to physical distancing measures, we are adapting our research to consider previously unexpected changes in people’s behaviour in these spaces.
Current work: Despite annually planting many small trees, Australian cities remove thousands of large trees every year. While the environmental benefits of having abundant trees are known, the ecological and social consequences of removing trees are not. Removing trees from parks or streets may have important effects on wildlife and people who use or inhabit these spaces, but we do not know how. This project will fill these gaps and evaluate the effects of tree removal on wildlife density and behaviour, and on social behaviour and psychological states using an experimental before-after, control-impact design. The knowledge emanating from this project will help city councils and other stakeholders quantify the ecological and social benefits of trees so they can more effectively account for these in the decisions they make.

Possible Future Changes: During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures, people had limited access to parks and greenspaces with trees. As people’s use of parks and greenspaces with trees changed due to physical distancing measures, we are adapting our research to consider previously unexpected changes in people’s behaviour in these spaces. Nevertheless, our research generates knowledge that will help improve the cities we live in by enhancing the social and biodiversity benefits that urban greenspaces with trees provide. This is increasingly important in a post-COVID19 world, as people try to recover, or find new ways to enhance, their social and psychological resources through increased contact with urban nature.

Marcelo Lopes de Souza

about the writer
Marcelo Lopes de Souza

Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor of socio-spatial development and urban studies at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.He has published ten books and more than 100 papers and book chapters in 6 languages

Marcelo Lopes de Souza

Our research has changed because the interface between environmental injustice and public health becomes even more evident, so that we will surely give it more emphasis.
Social Struggles and Environment: Environmental Protection, Right to Adequate Housing and Land Use Conflicts in Brazilian Cities

The research project corresponds to the analysis of the conflicts around environmental justice that have emerged in several Brazilian cities during the last twenty years as a result of incompatible land uses and goals: more specifically, as a result of the clash between popular demands for adequate housing and a humane quality of life, on the one side, and some particular capitalist interests or government projects (related to the location of polluting industries or waste incinerators close to working-class residential areas, or as a result of ‘green evictions’), on the other side.

Marcelo on fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro

The research project’s coordination has been affected in two different ways by the current COVID-19 pandemic: first of all, because fieldwork has become impossible due to social isolation measures and self-quarantine; secondly, because the interface between environmental injustice and public health becomes even more evident, so that it will be surely more emphasised.

Stephan Pauleit

about the writer
Stephan Pauleit

Stephan is an academic landscape planner at the Technical University of Munich where he currently directs the Centre for Urban Ecology. He has a strong interest in urban green infrastructure planning and research on the growth and functioning of urban trees deeply fascinates him.

Stephan Pauleit

What does Covid mean for green space standards? How can they better take on board extreme events and resilience thinking?
Green City of the Future

The project explores ways to better integrate green infrastructure for climate change mitigation and adaptation into the current planning processes for urban densification. Munich, capital of Bavaria, which experiences strong growth, is chosen for this transdisciplinary project where academics from landscape planning, architecture, social sciences and economics collaborate with planners and environmental experts from the city administration.

This research is about promoting resilience to cope with extreme climatic events. In line with this, I think COVID 19 highlights the need to consider that human behaviour may rapidly change in times of crisis and that the value of green spaces may increase a lot. Or similar. I just thought that it is not about behavioural change alone (i.e. needing more space around you) but also that value of green open spaces where you can walk freely and meet if allowed became so obvious during this epidemic.

For instance, people suddenly need more open space to keep at a distance. What does this mean for green space standards which, I guess, are based in a rather static view on what people need in terms of green space provision? How can they better take on board extreme events and resilience thinking?

Patrick M. Lydon

about the writer
Patrick M. Lydon

Patrick M. Lydon is an American ecological writer and artist based in Korea whose seeks to re-connect cities and their inhabitants with nature. He is an Arts Editor here at The Nature of Cities.

Patrick M. Lydon

The Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities is making a commitment to bring to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current transdiciplinary exhibitions on urban ecological themes, that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities.
City as Nature produces art and media projects that re-connect humans and our cities with the environment. One current project, the Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities, partners with an interdisciplinary cast of experts to produce experiential, transdisciplinary events, stories, films, and exhibitions. These projects use the arts and storytelling in local cultural contexts, with participants from varied background, to broaden our social views and understandings of how cities, humans, and our ecosystems are interdependent, with the aim of growing resilient roots for social and ecological wellness.

Our ecological art exhibitions with the “Typhoon Queens” in Kyoto was canceled just days before we were set to open, due to COVID-19. We went ahead virtually instead, building a new virtual platform within a matter of days. The artists installed the show and substituted an in-person audience for an “online” audience, thanks to The Nature of Cities’ new virtual galleries at the Urban Ecological Arts Forum. Over 700 people attended the virtual opening, far more than would have fit within the physical gallery space itself.

The Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities is making a commitment to bring to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current transdiciplinary exhibitions on urban ecological themes, that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities. We are expanding this work to support more spaces in more countries.

Joy Clancy

about the writer
Joy Clancy

Joy has a PhD in Engineering (alternative fuels for small stationary engines). She joined the University of Twente in 1989. Joy’s research has focused, for more than 30 years, on the social dimension of small scale energy systems for developing countries. Gender and energy has been an important factor addressed in this research.

Joy Clancy

We need to know how previously existing gender inequities are influencing energy poverty and whether the measures taken to address the effects of the virus also are biased against people experiencing (enhanced) energy poverty.
Gender and Energy Poverty

My current work is applying learning from the Global South about gender and energy poverty in the context of the North with the intention of drawing policy makers attention to issues they appear not to recognise by providing evidence and policy recommendations. Encouraging women’s participation in the energy transition in diverse roles as entrepreneurs, employees, policy makers is also a field of interest. Within a community of gender researchers we are examining how we do gender and energy research, for example what we count and how we count it.

COVID-19 has an influence on demographics and on income which both are factors in energy poverty. Women in the retirement age group in Europe, due to a gender earnings gap at an earlier stage in the life cycle, are more like to live in income poverty than men. This situation is exacerbated by women’s longer life expectancy than men. Male mortality as a consequence of viral infection seems to be significantly higher than for women. Age also is a factor. The increased viral mortality of older men leaves a larger group of women without sufficient income to pay energy utility bills. In terms of those in employment, women dominate the service and retail industries in which job losses been high. We need to know how these effects are influencing energy poverty and whether the measures taken to address the effects of the virus are also biased against people experiencing (enhanced) energy poverty.

Piotr Tryjanowski

about the writer
Piotr Tryjanowski

Piotr Tryjanowski is a full professor at Poznan University of Life Sciences; his research focus on ecology, One Health concept, climate and urbanization processes.

Piotr Tryjanowski

I measure sounds level in the city, in the same places since 2017, and it looks as if there is a big change.
Birds in urban areas (density and flight initiation distance)

For 10 years (or more) I have studied bird communities in Poznán (Poland), focused on differences according to urbanization gradient (from rural places, to glass-plastic city centres). I study mainly birds, but also collected data on some mammals, not only on densities, and species behaviour, but also on changes in behaviour. It was funded by several national and international grants.

I see a lot of potential opportunities. The lockdowns have affected people, but how affected are birds? There are two possibly different scenarios: back to wild, or a second, lack of habituation, because less people. I also measure sounds level in the city—in the same places since 2017—and it looks as if there is a big change. How COVID-19 may also affect not just small birds and people, but also predators (hawks, cats)? Another fascinating story.

What are our “desperate needs”? We need really good research.

Yun Hye HWANG

about the writer
Yun Hye HWANG

Yun Hye Hwang is an accredited landscape architect in Singapore, an Associate Professor in MLA and currently serves as the Programme Director for BLA. Her research speculates on emerging demands of landscapes in the Asian equatorial urban context by exploring sustainable landscape management, the multifunctional role of urban landscapes, and ecological design strategies for high-density Asian cities.

Yun Hye Hwang

The pandemic opens new opportunities for landscape architects to care about resource optimization as a core strategy in the design and management of urban green spaces.
A cost and ecological benefit of less-manicured greenery

This research aims to develop landscape management strategies to reconcile the discrepancies between the economic and biodiversity values of less-manicured urban greenery. Specifically, this research engenders the following research questions: What are the relationships between the various types of landscapes and resource consumption/maintenance intensity? What landscape interventions attain the greatest resource savings at a minimum cost while contributing to urban biodiversity?

The research objectives are: to quantify required resources of various types of maintenances from initialization, installation to operation and maintenance; to analyse/compare the cost benefits of less-manicured landscapes vs resource intensive maintenance; to estimate cost and ecological benefits of multiple landscape scenarios.

Ecological and economic benefits of a more naturalized maintenance regime could not only provide benefits to the urban nature and national economy, but also to the human health and energy efficiency. This regime could result in ecological resilience and resource independence of cities through the reduction of labour intensive and non-essential inputs, as well as less carbon emissions on the long run. The pandemic opens new opportunities for landscape architects to care about resource optimization as a core strategy in the design and management of urban green spaces.

A migrant worker, a newcomer to Bukit Timah area of Singapore, gives back by trimming grass in neighbourhood. Source: www.straitstimes.com
Christina Breed

about the writer
Christina Breed

Christina (Ida) Breed is a senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture in the University of Pretoria. Her research is concerned with open space design and how it relates to natural and cultural contextual issues and identity. Her research demonstrates the importance of the landscape design as part of green infrastructure, urban ecology and social-ecological resilience. She is trained in urban ethnography and makes use of qualitative research methods.

Christina Breed

As parks remain closed after three months and will most likely remain so all winter, it would be interesting to hear if people’s general appreciation of access to urban green open space increase as a consequence.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services for Tshwane

The research project consists of small patches of native grassland plant assemblages implemented as a design experiment in two urban areas in the City of Tshwane. The aim of the project is to monitor the comparative effect of native versus non-native grassland species on providing urban ecosystem services (ES) and functions, and support for biodiversity. This has not been previously tested in urban areas in South Africa and can assist landscape architects and designers in providing ES through urban green space implementation.

Current research activities include the monitoring of arthropod activity (biodiversity), plant cover (functions) and stress (tolerance), and visitors’ perceptions (sense of place).

Lockdown restrictions have influenced access to the premises of the gardens which affected the seasonal monitoring periods that were predetermined. Some studies on pollinator movement between patches and microclimatic effects on arthropod activity were completely cancelled for 2020. Insect monitoring scheduled for July can proceed.

Interviews scheduled for April/ May when vegetation cover is usually at its maximum, could not take place, because no visitors have been freely allowed on the premises since lockdown started on 26 March. Telephonic interviews are not considered as a viable alternative, because the physical experience of the gardens on visitors is considered important. Interviews will be rescheduled for November, if visitors are again moving freely by then. As parks remain closed after three months and will most likely remain so all winter, it would be interesting to hear if people’s general appreciation of access to urban green open space increase as a consequence.

Native grassland assemblages as part of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Tshwane (BEST) project, South Africa. Photo: Christina Breed.
Christian Isendahl

about the writer
Christian Isendahl

Christian is Professor of Archaeology, Dept of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg. His main research specialization is the prehistory of the Lowland Maya of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

Christian Isendahl

The main messages of my research—how urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solution—has become even more urgent in the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.
Ongoing research on urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global South, with particular reference to urban food commons

My research can be broadly characterized as an integration of applied archaeology and historical ecology that ultimately aims to generate practical insights for addressing contemporary challenges, particularly urban food security and sustainability. The geographical focus is Latin America, over the last decade particularly in the Maya Lowlands, in the Amazon, and in Cuba. My research is interdisciplinary, and providing the long-term and comparative perspective of archaeology I work together with urban scholars, geographers, soil scientists, agronomists, etc in integrated past–future research.

I think that the main messages of the research I am doing—how urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solution—has become even more urgent and evident in the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic. I find that the archaeological record lends support to the idea of urban food commons as well as the need to safeguard local food systems.

Mark Champion

about the writer
Mark Champion

Mark has 35 years’ experience of Nature Reserve management, 15 with the RSPB and 20 with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust where his main concern is managing and designing wetland on post-industrial sites.

Mark Champion

Community work has been severely reduced and there is little formal consultation and capacity development. Arts projects have been curtailed. Citizen Science recording has been suspended.
Maintaining and enhancing the environmental and conservation interest of the Greenspace of Wigan. This includes 1500ha of “nature reserve”, including 4 SSSIs 1 SAC and approximately 80 locally designated sites. Our work also involves community liaison and developing links with these communities. Work is mainly within the wetland context on the restored post-industrial land.

Much of our recent work has been multiple benefits work on reducing flood risk within the urban landscape by using the wetlands to provide ecosystem services.

Community work has been severely reduced and there is little formal consultation and capacity development. Arts projects have been curtailed. Citizen Science recording has been suspended, as have training courses for our volunteers. However conservation work is continuing and has included finishing some funded capital projects. Staff led surveying has been modified to fit the criteria set out by the UK government.

Westwood Flash, on of the Wigan flashes: wetlands on areas of coal mining subsidence
Ian Douglas

about the writer
Ian Douglas

Ian is Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester. His works take an integrated of urban ecology and environment. He is lead editor of the "Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology" and has produced a textbook, "Urban Ecology: an Introduction", with Philip James.

Ian Douglas

I have helped in the setting-up of a small pilot project in Uganda to help young unmarried mothers train to become beekeepers and entrepreneur honey producers, but this work is suspended due to lockdowns.
Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology (Second Edition)

Since 2016 I have been the lead editor of the Handbook of Urban Ecology initiated by the UK Urban Ecology Forum. The work has been done in my retirement, from my home. However, it has involved fantastic collaboration with contributors from 37 different countries. Through the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, I have helped in the setting-up of a small pilot project in Uganda to help young unmarried mothers train to become beekeepers and entrepreneur honey producers. As Chairman of the Human Ecology Foundation, I helped to secure some funding for the project.

My house from the woodland garden

For the Manchester Geographical Society, my wife and I help to write guides for local excursions for the Exploring Greater Manchester series. We have recently completed guides to West Didsbury and Chorlton. I am due to revise the excursion entitled: “Urban floodplains and slopes: the human impact on the environment in the built-up area” which was last revised in 2006.

My wife and I decided to self-isolate on 14 March and we have not left our house and garden since then. While it is annoying not to be able to revisit the floodplains and slopes areas, particularly to check in river channel changes and newly designed multi-functional flood basins with considerable urban ecology benefit, our large garden with part of the remains of a 200-year old woodlands, gives us plenty to do and inspiration for thinking about wider urban ecology issues.

However, the young women beekeepers have had their training interrupted. Their project supervisor and local expert appraiser are unable to travel from Kampala to the project location in eastern Uganda. We have had to find some extra funds to meet the costs of assistance from other apiarists who live closer to the women in eastern Uganda.

Changes in the meandering channel of the River Mersey at Urmston, Greater Manchester between 1984 (left) and 2000 (right). Photos: Ian Douglas
Pete Frost

about the writer
Pete Frost

Pete Frost is Natural Resources Wales Urban Green Infrastructure Advisor. His work is to find ways to ensure there are enough green spaces of the right kinds in the right places to make Wales’ towns and cities better places for people and nature.

Pete Frost

The new All Wales Green Space Data Set is likely to become even more important to help show where green space can be used to take healthy recreation during times of social distancing.
All Wales Green Space Data Set

Natural Resources Wales is building a Geographic Information System (GIS) data set to show all green space in Wales. When complete, it will show where green space exists in urban areas, if it is likely to be natural and whether people are likely to be able to get into it. It is based on mapping done by the Ordnance Survey and includes data from local authority surveys. The data set will only be available to public bodies until its contents have been checked by the local authorities who contributed to it.

The blend of accurate base mapping from the Ordnance Survey and local intelligence from local authorities should enable public bodies to get a more detailed picture of where people can actually go to experience nature near to where they live.

The All Wales Green Space Data Set is likely to become even more important to help show where green space can be used to take healthy recreation during times of social distancing, which may last until the discovery of an effective treatment for Covid-19 or the eventual development of a vaccine. The data set will also inform Welsh Planning Policy, and in particular the statutory Green Infrastructure Plans which all local authorities must produce. The data set will enable local authorities to identify opportunities to improve green space quality or provision to ameliorate the effects of climate change and provide habitats for biodiversity.

The Dingle, Llangefni. A local nature reserve in the heart of the town of Llangefni, Anglesey, Wales. Photo: Pete Frost.
David Haley

about the writer
David Haley

David makes art with ecology, to inquire and learn. He researches, publishes, and works internationally with ecosystems and their inhabitants, using images, poetic texts, walking and sculptural installations to generate dialogues that question climate change, species extinction, urban development, the nature of water transdisciplinarity and ecopedagogy for ‘capable futures’.

David Haley

Adopting a whole systems approach, the project will conduct workshops and interviews with each community of stakeholders to learn, analyse, and assess their present state of confidence, vulnerability, resilience and futures prospects.
Crisis = Danger + Opportunity: Cultures of critical recovery

This research focuses on critical recovery through “ecopedagogy”. It emerged from questioning the effects of long-term trauma on communities experiencing peristaltic coastal and riverine flood disasters, and includes species and cultural extinction. In other words, considering recovery as a complex evolutionary dynamic of destruction and creation. Through critical dialogues the intention is to enable people to learn for themselves how to move from being victims to survivors and from survivors to proactive, self-determined, ecologically resilient societies. These issues have become starkly in focus as we consider the new normal of post-Covid-19.

Flooding in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England, 2009

Adopting a whole systems approach, the project will conduct workshops and interviews with each community of stakeholders to learn, analyse, and assess their present state of confidence, vulnerability, resilience and futures prospects. The workshops will incorporate creative arts processes to disrupt people’s “normal” perception and cognition and thereby transform their perspectives and narratives of how they live with the world.

In addition to creative trauma and bereavement therapy, the sample communities will engage in initiating their own emancipatory economic, life support systems through full community participation across business and the third sector. As disasters bring opportunities as well as danger, this paradox may enable communities to become self-determined by generating their creative cultures of resilience. Integral to the whole systems approach for addressing the climate emergency and extinction crisis, each urban terrain, their human and other than human communities will be considered as distinct ecosystems.

Jane Houghton

about the writer
Jane Houghton

Jane is now Project Manager at Natural England for the development of a new National Green Infrastructure Standards Framework which is a commitment in the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan to green our towns and cities to deliver multiple benefits for health and wellbeing, climate resilience and prosperity. She has wide experience of advising on and managing green infrastructure in central and local government.

Jane Houghton

To address the inequalities in access to greenspace highlighted by Covid-19, we are developing additional maps to show where high numbers of homes that do not have access to private gardens are located in areas of greenspace deficiency, and areas of health inequalities.
Green Infrastructure Standards Project

Natural England and Defra are developing a national Framework of Green Infrastructure Standards, which is a commitment in the Government’s 25-year Environment Plan. It aims to deliver more good quality, interconnected GI, at a local and landscape scale, and
mainstream GI as essential infrastructure in place-making and in associated planning and land use decisions:

• provide the multiple benefits communities need and want, consistently across England, and in particular for disadvantaged urban populations;
• help the country recover from Covid-19 by ensuring good quality green infrastructure is available to all.

Londoners are planting on their streets, gardens, and balconies, Photo: Tim Webb

The Framework of Green Infrastructure Standards comprises principles of good GI, benchmarks, guidance and mapping of GI across England, to be made available through a web- portal, and for incorporation into national planning guidance, initially, with a longer-term aim for it to be incorporated into the National Planning Policy Framework. Natural England is leading a project to develop, test and refine the Standards and Guidance for soft launch in 2021.

We are looking at opportunities to work in collaboration with local authorities and others for urban nature recovery, green streets, and addressing inequalities in access and health. To address the inequalities in access to greenspace highlighted by Covid-19, we are developing additional maps to show where high numbers of homes that do not have access to private gardens are located in areas of greenspace deficiency, and areas of health inequalities. This will enable greenspace providers to identify and plan how to address the inequalities in access. In terms of evidence, we have added questions to our ongoing People and Nature Public Survey to capture visiting / engagement with greenspaces and with nature in response to Covid-19 measures. We are also in discussion with several universities about research to understand the role of nature during Covid-19 measures, its impact on health and wellbeing, and analysis in relation to inequalities in health and inequalities in access to greenspace.

Philip James

about the writer
Philip James

Philip leads the Ecosystems and Environment Research Centre within the School of Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Salford, UK. Researchers in this centre investigate how the processes of natural variability and man-made change work.

Philip James

IGNTION includes establishing a Living Laboratory at the University of Salford monitoring and demonstrating the performance of Nature Based Solutions designed to combat climate change. But all data collection is delayed.
IGNITION

Ignition to develop innovative financing solutions for investment in Greater Manchester’s natural environment. This investment will help to build the city region’s ability to adapt to the increasingly extreme impacts of climate change.

Working with nature, solutions such as rain gardens, street trees, green roofs and walls, and development of green spaces can help tackle socio-environmental challenges including increases in flooding events, water security, air quality, biodiversity and human health and wellbeing.

River Irwell near the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, England

IGNTION includes establishing a Living Laboratory at the University of Salford monitoring and demonstrating the performance of Nature Based Solutions designed to combat climate change.

All construction work on the University Campus has been halted and as a result the installation of the nature-based solutions has fallen behind the planned schedule. Tenders have been let for the installation of the green wall, green roof, street trees and rain garden. Construction work will commence after the re-opening of the campus.

The impact is a delay of collecting data.

Sarah Lindley

about the writer
Sarah Lindley

Sarah is a quantitative geographer specializing in the use of geospatial analysis to understand the outcomes of human-environment interactions. Her main research interests are urban air pollution, climate adaptation and urban ecosystem services and are motivated by the need to develop sustainable responses to current and future environmental challenges.

Sarah Lindley

Many more people now appreciate just how important local urban green and blue spaces are for the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Indeed, the importance of those spaces has itself increased. However, not everyone can benefit.
The main focus of my current research is the influence of the urban environment on human health and wellbeing, with a particular emphasis on the natural environment. Particular specialisms include air pollution, environmental risk, urban climate, climate adaptation and the regulating ecosystem functions of urban green infrastructure. My mode of working is collaborative and multi-disciplinary, though with a strong emphasis on geographical information science. I have worked with researchers from various branches of environmental science, ecology, engineering, arts and heritage, planning, philosophy and public health. I carry out my work in the UK and also overseas, for example in Africa and Asia. Much of my work has relevance for practice and policy, leading to work as a UK government advisor and a lead authorship role for the Inter-governmental Platform for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services. Recent work includes www.ghia.org.uk and www.climatejust.org.uk. Also see https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/sarah.lindley.html

Green Structure Map for Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

In the wake of the response to COVID-19 and restrictions on movement, many more people now appreciate just how important local urban green and blue spaces are for the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Indeed, the importance of those spaces has itself increased. However, not everyone can benefit. There are marked differences in neighbourhood provision of green and blue space according to age and income, and people’s local health status is clearly linked to the quantity, quality and proximity of green and blue spaces (Dennis et al., 2020). It is not only the amount of cover which is important but also its quality (e.g. characteristics like structural diversity which influence the effectiveness of local environmental regulation such as air quality, temperature and noise).

Although the current the current pandemic has led to a reduction in some urban environmental hazards, we must also think about climate-related events like heat waves might increase risks for people living in highly built up areas, with no private garden space and fewer opportunities to access good quality spaces. We must consider how our efforts. My work will be continuing to explore these issues, helping to understand how biodiversity, climate and urban environments are central to health and wellbeing, especially in the context of our ageing population.

Joe Ravetz

about the writer
Joe Ravetz

Joe is the Co-Director of the Collaboratory for Urban Resilience & Energy at the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester, UK. He has pioneered the art of strategic thinking for sustainable cities and regions, which brings together environment-climate policy, urban planning and design, new economics and governance, innovation and futures studies, systems thinking and complexity science.

Joe Ravetz

PERI-CENE is a pilot project aiming to set new agendas for peri-urban and climate change, in theory and practice, at local and global levels.
Peri-cene (Peri-urbanization and climate-environment)

The impact of climate change on cities is well known —but the “peri-urban” hinterland, the areas between and around cities, is often overlooked. Yet the peri-urban contains most urban growth, and also the greatest impact on local and global environments. The peri-urban also is a resource for climate adaptation & ecosystem services.

Early stage of a SuDS scheme in peri-urban Sinderland Brook, Greater Manchester, 2008

The PERI-CENE project will provide the first ever comprehensive assessment of global peri-urbanisation, with its climate impacts, risks and vulnerabilities. It will host the co-creation of forward pathways, in a Policy Lab of 21 city-regions from around the world, along with in-depth case studies in Chennai (India), and Manchester (UK).

PERI-CENE is a pilot project, paving the way for more detailed follow up. It builds on recent EU projects and data resources, and on existing clusters of expertise in Chennai, Manchester and Stockholm. We aim to set new agendas for peri-urban and climate change, in theory and practice, at local and global levels

Graham Rook

about the writer
Graham Rook

Graham Rook is an immunologist and emeritus professor of medical microbiology at UCL (University college London). He is interested in the role of contact with the microorganisms from the natural environment in educating and regulating the immune system.

Graham A.W. Rook

It will be important to learn how immune repertoire, immunoregulation and gut microbiota relate to resistance versus susceptibility to the virus, and the possible relevance of microbial inputs to urban versus rural susceptibility.
The Old Friends Hypothesis; using an evolutionary framework to define the microbial inputs that are essential to the developing immune system

The repertoire and regulatory settings of the immune system of each new individual are set up in early life using information from the environment into which the individual is born and will therefore need to confront. Thus, in early life the immune system requires inputs of data and signals from the microbiota of the natural environment as well as from the organisms that colonise the gut and other tissues. Lack of these inputs compromises the efficacy, and above all, the regulation of the immune system, leading to an increased prevalence of immunoregulatory disorders such as allergies and autoimmunity, as well as to long-term consequences of chronic background inflammation such as metabolic, vascular and psychiatric disorders. My current efforts are aimed at understanding within a Darwinian and urban/rural framework, the molecular nature of the microbial signals that we require, and their precise mechanisms of action.

Illustration of SARS-CoV-2 virus

The microbiota of the modern home bears little resemblance to that of the shelters of our evolutionary past, or of homes built until recently with natural products (timber, thatch, mud, dung-based render). Moreover, the microbiota of the natural environment is increasingly distorted by industrial and agrochemical pollution, monoculture and climate change. The resulting species losses and distortions lead to ecosystem instabilities. Meanwhile the creation of large unnatural animal communities by industrial farming and “wet” markets encourages the evolution of novel pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2. We are then obliged to confront these pathogens with immune systems that have not received, in early life, the inputs that are required to optimise the immune system’s repertoire and regulatory mechanisms. It will be important to learn how immune repertoire, immunoregulation and gut microbiota relate to resistance versus susceptibility to the virus, and the possible relevance of microbial inputs to urban versus rural susceptibility.

Richard Salisbury

about the writer
Richard Salisbury

Richard is the neighbourhood engagement officer for Manchester City Council at the Chorlton Water Park in the Mersey Valley.

Richard Salisbury

In the short term, due to the social distancing measures, all practical volunteering has come to a halt. This is having an impact on conservation and some areas are becoming undermanaged.
I work for the parks service and oversee the management and maintenance of parks and greenspaces in my designated area. A large proportion of my role is to engage with local community groups and lead practical conservation and maintenance volunteer tasks in parks and greenspace. We also work with partners to ensure a variety of events and activities are taking place in our parks.

My work also involves a lot of public meetings with our “friends of the park” group to discuss issues as site improvements. I am also required to regularly meet on site with contractors to discuss on site operations and infrastructure improvements.

In the short term, due to the social distancing measures, all practical volunteering has come to a halt. This is having an impact on conservation and some areas are becoming undermanaged. The adverse impacts if this continues would involve scrub taking over sensitive areas of reed beds and grasslands. Also, invasive species such as Himalayan Balsam which we usually remove could get a foot hold in new areas. I am hopeful that volunteering will resume eventually but with social distancing measures in place. There may also be some benefits to wildlife. For example, currently mowing of football pitches and amenity grasslands has been halted in certain areas. This could lead to greater biodiversity

All events and activities in parks are currently cancelled. I imagine these will be gradually be brought back but with some social distancing in place. All community meetings are also cancelled but there is a possibility these could be conducted through video meetings in the short term. Essential contractor works are currently continuing but with social distancing.

Waterfowl on the frozen lake surface at Chorlton Water Park, Manchester, January 2011
Alan Scott

about the writer
Alan Scott

Alan has been active in the urban ecology movement in the UK for over 35 years. For the last 24 years he has had his own company (Complete Ecology) which specializes in management plans for wildlife sites and practical conservation management, particularly in urban areas.

Alan Scottt

The lockdown has stopped all our work and all staff are furloughed. While this can be endured in the near term, longer restrictions will be a problem.
Complete Ecology Limited (the company I set up in 1996) carries out practical nature conservation on sites of ecological importance, mostly in and around London. Our work covers habitat management (grasslands, woodlands, etc), site maintenance (litter, repairs), habitat creation, access improvements (footpaths, boardwalks), installing site furniture (benches, bins), interpretation (information boards, signs), species protection (e.g. reptiles/amphibians fencing and translocation) and many other tasks. I also carry out consultancy work including site/ecological surveys, management plans, design and planning advice. Our clients are mostly in the voluntary and local authority sectors, but we have also work for schools, developers and statutory agencies. We have worked in every London borough and in some cases have been involved on the same sites for over 20 years. This gives us a good knowledge of conservation issues affecting the entire capital which we are able to use in advising and managing a huge variety of sites and habitats.

From http://www.completeecology.com/nature-gardens

The lockdown has stopped all our work and all staff are furloughed. Fortunately, it is our quiet time of year (bird breeding, etc) and most work can be postponed. The challenge will be to work and travel whilst maintaining social distancing. Suitable risk assessment and safety precautions will hopefully overcome this. The longer term however is more of a problem as many of our clients will be short of funds and may see other issues as a higher priority.

On the plus side many people have been using open spaces and have started to value them more highly, especially the more natural elements. The challenge facing nature conservation will be to take this increase in interest and turn it into long term support. I feel that we need to emphasis the value of natural ecosystems to combat global warming and the health benefits of natural greenspaces in all our work. It is also useful to look at how changes in management could save costs in what will be very cash strapped times.

Richard Scott

about the writer
Richard Scott

Richard Scott is Director of the National Wildflower Centre at the Eden Project, and delivers creative conservation project work nationally. He is also Chair of the UK Urban Ecology Forum. Richard was chosen as one of 20 individuals for the San Miguel Rich List in 2018, highlighting those who pursue alternative forms of wealth.

Richard Scott

We must be bold and imaginative and use inclusive language in a world desperate for positive futures right now.
Bringing wildflowers to towns and cities

Nature is about opportunity. We are in a game changing moment in history. We need a changing of the guard, and the application of solutions we already know about, and those yet to be discovered, practical solutions that show love and respect for nature in building sustainable futures, and work with culture and social need.

It is about habitat—our own household—75% of humanity is likely to be urban by 2050. At this moment, we must reach to our strengths and experience. Society must not slip back to old ways, and habits. We must reflect a joy for life, showing how to forge real pathways for a “habitat” and a home we are proud of living in. We must reflect biodiversity and the reality of the climate emergency and extinction crisis, and the critical resources of Air, Land and Water, and the biodiversity and culture this brings together.

Right now it is important to demonstrate the carbon capture ability of all habitats, it is not just planting trees, it must be mosaics of habitats, which respect soil, both as a resource for food production, but also recycling unproductive urban substrates, for biodiversity and creative conservation. New international standards should combine carbon capture, and biodiversity, and creative conservation delivery, and make it a transformative global movement.

Bringing wildflowers back home, is a simple way to begin new conversations, applying the potential of seed and the purpose of the sower, delivering this joyously with people.

We must be bold and imaginative and use inclusive language in a world desperate for positive futures right now. As David Attenborough said recently to the Landscape Institute (November 2019).

“People have to realise, the world is on our doorstep… we are part of natural systems, and if we wish to to save ourselves we have to save these natural systems”…

“To do his we need to bring people face to face with the beauty and complexity and importance of the natural world …and to bring the realities of the natural world to the understanding and the love of human beings worldwide”.

Tim Webb

about the writer
Tim Webb

Tim Webb grew-up working on small farms before turning to environmental journalism and activism. Now Secretary of the UK Urban Ecology Forum and a founder of the National Park City Foundation, he’s worked on coastal realignment projects, species relocations and habitat management.

Tim Webb

The explosion of mutual aid groups witnessed during the COVID-19 outbreak is evidence of strong community spirit. Encouraging that spirit will speed our economic recovery and make cities more resilient against biological, ecological, meteorological, economic, civil or political strife.
London National Park City

After five years of campaigning and endless meetings with ward councillors, community groups, activists and London Mayoral candidates, in July 2019, the capital was declared the world’s first National Park City. Unlike a National Park, it has no planning powers or funding benefits. It is a roots-up movement, a vision and a place to explore. The ambition is to make London, and other cities, greener, healthier and wilder.

Simple, low-cost ways of helping local people engage with nature in their streets. Photo: Tim Webb

Our growth plan was to celebrate the first anniversary with a series of public events and the launch of a new volunteer force called our Rangers. We’d already secured funding from the outdoor clothing and kit company Timberland, and recruited two volunteer coordinators to deliver our Rangers programme. COVID-19 has made a planned
summer festival of events across the capital impossible. We’d already started our Ranger programme and didn’t want to lose momentum, so decided to push on but with a new twist. Our Rangers are not like traditional rangers, having been recruited for their community engagement skills, whether that was as a rapper, an artist, food grower, bee keeper, teacher or academic. The one common thread is a desire to make society better than it is.

Our coordinators found themselves operating in novel ways. The first full meeting of the fifty plus Rangers was virtual. Everyone contributed. There were some presentations and some obligatory instruction regarding expenses, insurance, health and safety. Everyone got talk about themselves and how they envisioned their inputs contributing to the shared goals of making London greener, healthier and wilder.

The COVID-19 lockdown meant parks had taken on a new importance in society, which should help us in the long term. Somehow.

In mid-May 2020, our Rangers were planning a series of interventions, using digital technology, word of mouth, music and art to engage Londoners in new ways with life in a National Park City. We are rewilding Londoners, re-wiring brains to perceive our built environment as an enhanced natural landscape of mosaic habitats, all interlinked and waiting to be explored on foot, by bicycle and, at some point in the future, by public transport.

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, signing the London National Park City Declaration in 2019. Photo: Tim Webb

We have mapped the cities’ green and public spaces, adding walks, history, culture and encouragement. A city full of active citizens would be a powerhouse for new green technologies of clean energy, food production, transport, waste management and physically active people. This is becoming reality in London and other urban centres. We’ve even partnered with the official National Parks to ensure connectivity with the wider environment beyond urban fringes.

Our active Schools arm and new Development Forum draw upon expertise from across the built environment. This combination of community, expert and civil input will inform a route map for others, enabling us to fulfil our International goal of having a family of at least 25 National Park Cities by 2025.

The explosion of mutual aid groups witnessed during the COVID-19 outbreak is evidence of strong community spirit. Encouraging that spirit will speed our economic recovery and make cities more resilient against biological, ecological, meteorological, economic, civil or political strife.

Mike Wells

about the writer
Mike Wells

Dr Mike Wells FCIEEM is a published ecological consultant ecologist, ecourbanist and green infrastructure specialist with a global outlook and portfolio of projects.

Mike Wells and Lincoln Garland

Globally, the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly for those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to notably increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings.
Much of our work is currently overseas in large habitat restoration projects as well as urban ecological design and Ecomasterplanning. Some of this—in the Middle East—is proceeding but other elements have been (we hope temporarily) curtailed. In the UK we continue with ecological monitoring at some project sites and to undertake and ecological surveys in relation to planning applications in both the urban and rural environments.

Temporarily, the ability to cover all taxa in necessary baseline surveys is being compromised in some instances (e.g. bats in buildings). Some clients have closed down the majority of their construction/onsite operations and progress on planning and design is less rapid because the response time of some Local Authorities and regulators has notably increased.

Berewood: a new housing and landscape initiative for 2,550 homes in the West of Waterlooville Major Development Area.

Several of the wealthier, but still developing, countries are employing overseas expertise in the progressing of a new sustainable and greener urban agenda and are referencing climate change more often in this endeavour.

The to which extent there will be greater tolerance of working remotely on overseas contracts remains to be seen. Many overseas cultures are still deeply-rooted in face-to-face meetings culture.

Globally the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly for those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats both in the public and semi-private realm, including on buildings.

The tolerance of the illicit exploitation of wild animals, and purveying of related items alive and dead, both in cities in the developing world and within certain cultures where such practices are currently prevalent, may reduce as a result of both internal and international pressure.

Lincoln Garland

about the writer
Lincoln Garland

Lincoln is Associate Director at Biodiversity by Design, an environmental consultancy in the UK. Lincoln has been working as an ecologist and eco-urbanist in consultancy, academia and for wildlife NGOs for more than 25 years. He has a particular interest in developing sustainable ecologically informed landscape-scale approaches to development and land management, with a particular emphasis on the urban realm and ecotourism. Contact Lincoln by email: [email protected]

Phil Wheater

about the writer
Phil Wheater

Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, Philip is a leading urban ecologist in the UK. Philip has had a major impact on teaching and research on the environment, particularly with reference to urban areas.

Phil Wheater

The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the flow of the work in two main ways: through social distancing preventing planned face-face meetings; and because the Public Health staff involved in the project have other priorities at present.
I am currently working with Public Health Wales as an advisor on their forthcoming Health Impact Assessment of Climate Change across Wales. This project was planned to last about one year and involve a literature review, stakeholder workshops, specialist participant interviews, case studies and a series of appraisals. This assessment covers effects of climate change on human health in urban areas as well as in rural areas. The impacts on many rural infrastructure systems also have direct and indirect impacts on urban populations. Many of these impacts are associated with ecological change. Smaller projects covering allied aspects of human health issues (including in urban centres) associated with environmental and climate change are also planned alongside this more major project.

Currently the main project has achieved a number of milestones. The literature review has been developed and is now going through a series of iterations and refinements. Both planned workshops (one for policy makers and one for operational managers) have been completed and the results fed back to participants and are due to be appraised shortly. The case studies are progressing (albeit at a slower pace than before). The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the flow of the rest of the work in two main ways: through social distancing preventing planned face-face meetings; and because the Public Health staff involved in the project have other priorities at present.

Street trees, in the city centre of Cardiff, the capital of Wales
Nancy McIntyre

about the writer
Nancy McIntyre

Nancy is a landscape ecologist and Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech University. Her research focuses on how land conversion affects animals, particularly birds and insects.

Nancy E. McIntyre

My university placed some restrictions on research expenditures and travel, initially delaying our project; some of our study sites remained closed to access.
I have only one urban ecology project at the current time, focusing on regional wetlands, which are being greatly affected by land-cover change. The project was supposed to start this summer, comparing odonate (dragonfly and damselfly) diversity at urban wetlands and three types of non-urban wetlands in western Texas. Because the four wetland types could be placed into alternate groups according to hydroperiod or salinity (and also differed in surrounding land cover and water chemistry), the objectives were to examine whether hydroperiod, salinity, surrounding land cover, or water quality were the most important assemblage drivers for this charismatic and ecologically important group of insects in this semi-arid region.

My university placed some restrictions on research expenditures and travel, initially delaying our project; some of our study sites remained closed to access.

Wetland restoration under the Wetlands Reserve Program in Texas, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68778699
Monica Smith

about the writer
Monica Smith

Monica Smith is an archaeologist whose principal research interests are the human interaction with material culture, urbanism as a long-term human phenomenon, and the development of social complexity.

Monica L. Smith

There are anecdotal media reports of wild animals re-integrating into city margins, which seemingly demonstrates resilience and niche-construction although this remains to be studied in more detail.
Ancient Urban Water Management

Collaborating with my Indian colleague Prof. R.K. Mohanty of Deccan College (Pune), our archaeological research of the past 15 years has focused on the ancient city of Sisupalgarh in eastern India. Most recently we have used our data to evaluate urban-hinterland food networks; the management of hinterland excess water at times of both predictable seasonal monsoon flooding and occasional exceptional cyclone flooding. As an outgrowth of that site-specific research, I have been collecting data from site reports all around the globe about the extent to which ancient cities were subjected to flooding on a regular basis, and the implications of those floods for urban management and the demonstration of “good governance” through mitigation and prevention efforts.

Library-based work is severely curtailed at the moment; once the current labor-intensive term of online teaching has been finished, I may try to use publicly available databases such as the Hathitrust library to fill in gaps in the database of global urban flooding at archaeological sites (though archaeological site reports, as bulky and arcane documents, are probably among the last items to be scanned in research libraries!).

A more promising angle of research will be experienced by the graduate students working with me who are focused on the role of animals in ancient urban contexts. There are anecdotal media reports of wild animals re-integrating into city margins, which seemingly demonstrates resilience and niche-construction although this remains to be studied in more detail and with an eye towards factors such as neural plasticity, different species’ behavioural patterns, and the long-term effects of urban animal behaviour after people start to move around in cities in greater numbers when the lockdown is over.

Part of Sisupalgarh; Photo by Rajku6070 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21412552
Miriam Stark

about the writer
Miriam Stark

Miriam Stark works at the University of Hawai’i in the USA where she is Professor of Anthropology and Director for the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. With a Masters and PhD degree in Anthropological Archaeology, Miriam has worked in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years.

Miriam Stark

Our planned 2020 archaeological fieldwork was cancelled, which gives us time to explore and write about resilience strategies in historical responses to climate change in Southeast Asia.
My research explores state formation and urbanization in the Lower Mekong Basin, where I have run archaeological research projects since 1996. The region has a 2500-year long history of these processes, and my work focuses on a nexus of topics that revolve around urban forms, political economy, and environment. My work in three different regions of Cambodia’s Lower Mekong examines these interrelated processes through time: the Mekong Delta (Takeo Province), the Greater Angkor region (Siem Reap Province), and the rice granary of Cambodia (Battambang Province). Subtropical Southeast Asia lies in the world’s most susceptible region vis-à-vis climate change, and environmental scientists have begun to concentrate work in Southeast Asia to model potential future outcomes: including work on ancient cities such as Angkor.

Our planned 2020 archaeological fieldwork was cancelled, which gives us time to explore and write about resilience strategies in historical responses to climate change in the region. New opportunities that we hope will open up include collaborations with conservation and climate scientists, both to deepen our understanding of long-term climate records for the Lower Mekong, to build a richer database of the region’s wetland fauna and how it changed through time, and to explore strategies that premodern Khmers used in times of climatic and environmental stress. Archaeological work with conservation scientists has begun to yield productive results in mainland Southeast Asia (e.g., Suraprasit et al. 2020 https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.00067), and we see great potential for extending such work to include riverine species now under threat by Mekong River dam projects. Studying archaeological collections like fishbones could provide a critical baseline for research on environmental and species change.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Katalin Szlavecz

about the writer
Katalin Szlavecz

Katalin Szlavecz is Research Professor, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. Her research includes study of the diversity and ecology of soil invertebrates, soil biogeochemical cycling, urban ecosystems, and invasive species. She is a CoPI of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER.

Katalin Szlavecz

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all field work has been suspended (at least in Baltimore).
Project 1. This study is to characterize the change in forest fragment soils over a period of 17 years along an urban-rural gradient in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. Overall, carbon and nitrogen did not change which may indicate a steady-state forest floor system or a slower rate of change than what is detectable in 17 years. Changes of pH and Ca in urban soil properties over time indicate a different developmental trajectory than native soils.

Project 2. This study is a collaboration among scientists in Helsinki, Baltimore and Singapore, the three cities representing different climatic regions and biomes. We are looking at the influence of plant functional types and soil biota on soil derived ecosystem processes. We measure at soil microbial diversity, enzyme activity, decomposition rates and soil nutrient dynamics in old and young urban parks under different trees producing labile and recalcitrant litter types.

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all field work has been suspended (at least in Baltimore).

Druid Hill Park in Baltimore
Photo by Bruce Emmerling, Wikimedia Commons
Joanne Tippett

about the writer
Joanne Tippett

Dr Joanne Tippett is a lecturer in Spatial Planning in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester. Action research funded by the Sustainable Consumption Institute and 250 staff in Tesco led to the creation of the RoundView Tool for Sustainability [www.roundview.org].

Joanne Tippett

The pandemic has shown that rapid change is possible, and opened a space of opportunity to reimagine our urban spaces and relationship with the natural world. The need for meaningful engagement has never been more important.
Empowering and inspiring custodians of future landscapes through innovative community engagement

The heart of my research is applying systems thinking to collaborative system change. I ask: How can we imagine a sustainable, regenerative future; and how can different groups of people work together effectively to realise such visions? This research has led to the development of a physical toolkit for stakeholder and community engagement, called Ketso, which is used in a range of environmental and landscape projects around the world. My current work includes helping to deliver innovative community and school engagement with the Carbon Landscape Project, which aims to restore and connect habitats in the peri-urban landscapes between Manchester and Liverpool (UK). I am also working with the National Trust’s Quarry Bank and artist collectives Future Everything and Invisible Flock, exploring the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution to inspire new thinking about ecological futures. A year-long art installation will hopefully open in this former cotton mill in Autumn 2020.

Lancashire Mining Museum in the Carbon Landscape

The pandemic has shown that rapid change is possible, and opened a space of opportunity to reimagine our urban spaces and relationship with the natural world. The need for meaningful engagement has never been more important. We will need to harness the ingenuity of communities and those working across all sectors to realise the potential to ‘build back better’. We need to make sure that everyone is heard in this dialogue, to have a better change of building an equitable and fair future. We have been trialling new approaches to engagement, to maximise the value of the hands-on, shared visual language of Ketso in remote workshops. This has required a shift in thinking in the Ketso team, as we have spent decades developing tools for people to build their ideas together in the same physical space. We are looking forward to rolling out this new approach to help deepen and widen the dialogue about the future.

Adapting the hands-on kit for remote meetings: Ketso Connect
Engaging with community members and stakeholders to develop ideas for the Carbon Landscape: A workshop using Ketso

Four Recommendations for Greener, Healthier Cities in the Post-Pandemic

Australia/NZ, Essay, People & Communities, Place & Design, , , , , , ,
Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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City leaders and urban planners should use COVID-19 recovery strategies and associated resources to enhance existing green spaces, and to support those who are already motivated to maintain their physical activity into the future.
The extensive societal changes brought about by COVID-19 restrictions have given pause for thought on how we can create healthier and more equitable cities as we transition to a new normal. Public health measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have meant that opportunities to go out and interact with others have been limited, with many of us spending large volumes of time indoors. Physical inactivity, stress and social isolation can have corrosive, persistent impacts on health, and are likely to persist to a greater or lesser extent for the foreseeable future. Urban green spaces provide a resource that can contribute in several important ways to the amelioration of these problems. We propose four recommendations for city planners and policymakers to achieve greener and healthier transitions towards the post COVID-19 era.

Anniversary trail. Photo: Niki Frantzeskaki

Health benefits of green space

The health benefits of urban green space, typically parks, are well documented (Twohig-Bennett and Jones, 2018). Parks can enhance physical and mental health by providing attractive opportunities for walking and other moderate-intensity physical activities, which help to protect against a range of disabling chronic diseases (Lee & Buchner, 2008). Being exposed to greenery physically and visually has been shown to be associated with lower stress and better mental health (Hazer et al., 2018; van den Berg et al., 2016). Social interaction in parks, which can support ties with neighbours and acquaintances, is also known to contribute to mental well-being (Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014). Thus, urban green spaces can be seen to have at least three positive and synergistic benefits for physical and mental health.

Walking in green space: Antidote to COVID-19

Walking is a key consideration in this context. It is the most common form of recreational physical activity and is accessible to most people across age and socio-economic spectrums. However, the proportion of adults who engage in walking for recreation is far lower than it ideally should be. In Australia, only about 20% of adults walk for exercise (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). With exercise being one of the few permissible activities during COVID-19 restrictions and with reduced opportunities for “utilitarian walking” for commuting and shopping, recreational walking has become even more important as a means to be active and healthy. Recreational walking in green spaces, where there are salutary opportunities for contact with nature and social interactions, can serve as an antidote to the adverse consequences that COVID-19 has had for our way of life.

Opportunity to establish a habit of recreational walking

About 80% of Australian adults did not engage in leisure-time walking prior to COVID-19. One unexpected positive in the current situation has been that people appear to be motivated to step outdoors to get some exercise. This is an opportunity to promote long-term behavioural change and to increase the number of people who engage in regular recreational walking. From a behavioural science perspective, behavioural change is a complex process involving a series of stages: contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance (Prochaska & Redding, 2015). In the current context of restrictions, some will have already moved to the stage of preparation (thinking about starting walking) or action (initiating walking). However, a challenge is to maintain the habit of regular recreational walking over the long run as restrictions ease, especially if the surrounding environments are not supportive for walking.

Walkers in a park. Photo: Manoj Chandrabose

Providing attractive and accessible green space to encourage physical activity

Improving urban green spaces that support recreational walking can help to achieve this goal. There may be a number of parks that differ in their size and features in a single neighbourhood. The current available evidence suggests that the number of parks in a given area or shorter distances to parks alone is not sufficient to promote walking or park visits (King et al., 2012; Sugiyama et al., 2010). What has been found to be more relevant to park use by local residents are the size and quality aspects of the parks: larger parks with features such as walking paths, grassed areas, amenities, and dog-related facilities are known to be conducive to walking and park visits (Cohen et al., 2017; Schmidt et al., 2019; Sugiyama et al., 2010; Sugiyama et al., 2015). Unsafe parks where there are more crime incidents and more incivilities have been found to attract fewer park users (Marquet et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019).

It is important to note that these park features can be relatively easy to modify and improve to encourage higher use for physical activity – particularly in contrast to urban planning interventions to promote walking such as increasing population density and enhancing access to retail areas and to public transport (Stankov et al., 2017). There is also evidence that park renovation is effective in increasing park visitors (Cohen et al., 2015; Veitch et al., 2018). These findings suggest that improving existing parks (rather than creating a new park), which can be done by local authorities with relatively modest cost, can increase the number of park users and thus contribute to increasing physical activity, reducing stress and promoting sociability at a community level.

Urban park in Melbourne. Photo: Manoj Chandrabose

Opportunity to ameliorate health inequalities

This is also an opportunity to reduce some of the health inequalities that exist between deprived and affluent neighbourhoods. It is known that those living in deprived neighbourhoods tend to be less active during leisure time than those in affluent neighbourhoods (Janssen et al., 2010). Although deprived neighbourhoods do not necessarily have a lower quantity of parks, disadvantaged areas tend to have parks that are poorer in quality with greater safety concerns compared to less deprived neighbourhoods (Crawford et al., 2008; Vaughan et al., 2013). Many residents of deprived areas may be facing tough times due to the restricted economic activity caused by COVID-19. In order to prevent further widening of the health inequalities associated with socioeconomic disadvantage, green space renovation initiatives need to prioritise areas where residents do not have access to quality parks.

Urban greenery. Photo: Fujiko Sugiyama

Urban greening for the post COVID-19 era

City leaders and urban planners are encouraged to use COVID-19 recovery strategies and associated resources to enhance existing green spaces, to support those who are already motivated to maintain their physical activity into the future. The benefits would go beyond physical activity, as walking in green space can help people to recuperate through contact with nature and interaction with neighbours.

A first step could be to identify and improve parks that are considered unattractive by residents, lack amenities or have safety issues. Improved parks that are more amenable to residents may also result in higher numbers of visitors, which may also assist to make park users feel safer. The process of renovating urban green spaces should involve local community groups to better understand the needs of all residents (across genders, ethnicities and the lifespan) and the characteristics that would make parks more attractive to them (Ives et al., 2017). Co-design involving a wide range of stakeholders can help to create vibrant parks where local communities feel more connected.

We propose four knowledge-based recommendations that can be implemented by urban planners and designers and those involved in park planning/management to make cities healthy and equitable through urban greening:

  • Take advantage of the new and changing circumstances, within which people may be more open to opportunities and motivated to walk for recreation: We are in a transition period, where people may be changing their daily behaviours. Knowledge of nearby opportunities for walking can help them to establish healthy habits of recreational walking.
  • Ensure parks and other urban green spaces are attractive and safe for all residents, to encourage recreational use that can improve physical and mental health: It is important to identify poorly featured or poorly maintained parks, as they can benefit from additional facilities and amenities. Larger parks without attractive features are a high-priority target for intervention to increase park visitors.
  • Pay particular attention to parks in deprived neighbourhoods, as this can be an opportunity to reduce the health gap between deprived and affluent neighbourhoods: Issues such as litter and vandalism can discourage park use. Periodical maintenance can improve the sense of safety and help to attract more visitors.
  • Consult with members of local communities about the nature of park renovations that are most likely to meet their desires for use and accessibility needs: Parks that serve the needs of the community will be used by many. Partnership between the public and community can help to improve and maintain parks.

Takemi Sugiyama, Nyssa Hadgraft, Manoj Chandrabose, Jonathan Kingsley, Niki Frantzeskaki, Neville Owen
Melbourne

On The Nature of Cities

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2015. Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation, Australia, 2013-14. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.

Cohen, D.A., Han, B., Evenson, K.R., Nagel, C., McKenzie, T.L., Marsh, T., Williamson, S., & Harnik, P. 2017. The Prevalence and use of walking loops in neighborhood parks: A national study. Environmental Health Perspectives, 125:170–174.

Cohen, D.A., Han, B., Isacoff, J., Shulaker, B., Williamson, S., Marsh, T., McKenzie, T.L., Weir, M., & Bhatia, R. 2015. Impact of park renovations on park use and park-based physical activity. Journal of Physical Activity & Health, 12:289–295.

Crawford, D., Timperio, A., Giles-Corti, B., Ball, K., Hume, C., Roberts, R., . . . Salmon, J. 2008. Do features of public open spaces vary according to neighbourhood socio-economic status? Health & Place, 14(4):889–893.

Hazer, M., Formica, M.K., Dieterlen, S., & Morley, C.P. 2018. The relationship between self-reported exposure to greenspace and human stress in Baltimore, MD. Landscape & Urban Planning, 169:47–56.

Ives, C.D., Oke, C., Hehir, A., Gordon, A., Wang, Y., & Bekessy, S.A. 2017. Capturing residents’ values for urban green space: Mapping, analysis and guidance for practice. Landscape & Urban Planning, 161:32–43.

Janssen, E., Sugiyama, T., Winkler, E., de Vries, H., te Poel, F., & Owen, N. 2010. Psychosocial correlates of leisure-time walking among Australian adults of lower and higher socio-economic status. Health Education Research, 25:316–324.

King, T.L., Thornton, L.E., Bentley, R.J., & Kavanagh, A.M. 2012. Does parkland influence walking? The relationship between area of parkland and walking trips in Melbourne, Australia. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity, 9:115.

Lee, I. M., & Buchner, D.M. 2008. The importance of walking to public health. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 40:S512–S518.

Marquet, O., Hipp, J.A., Alberico, C., Huang, J.H., Fry, D., Mazak, E., Lovasi, G.S., & Floyd, M.F. 2019. Short-term associations between objective crime, park-use, and park-based physical activity in low-income neighborhoods. Preventive Medicine,126:105735.

Prochaska, J.O. & Redding, C.A. 2015. The transtheoretical model and stages of change. In Glanz, K., Rimer, B.K., & Viswanath, K. (Eds). Health Behavior: Theory, Research, and Practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Sandstrom, G.M., & Dunn, E.W. 2014. Social interactions and well-being: The surprising power of weak ties. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 40:910–922.

Schmidt, T., Kerr, J., & Schipperijn, J. 2019. Associations between neighborhood open space features and walking and social interaction in older adults: A mixed methods study. Geriatrics, 4:41.

Stankov, I., Howard, N.J., Daniel, M., & Cargo, M. 2017. Policy, research and residents’ perspectives on built environments implicated in heart disease: A concept mapping approach. International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 14:170.

Sugiyama, T., Francis, J., Middleton, N.J., Owen, N., & Giles-Corti, B. 2010. Associations between recreational walking and attractiveness, size, and proximity of neighborhood open spaces. American Journal of Public Health, 100:1752–1757.

Sugiyama, T., Gunn, L.D., Christian, H., Francis, J., Foster, S., Hooper, P., . . . Giles-Corti, B. 2015. Quality of public open spaces and recreational walking. American Journal of Public Health, 105:2490–2495.

Twohig-Bennett, C., & Jones, A. 2018. The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes. Environmental Research, 166:628–637.

van den Berg, M., van Poppel, M., van Kamp, I., Andrusaityte, S., Balseviciene, B., Cirach, M., . . . Maas, J. 2016. Visiting green space is associated with mental health and vitality: A cross-sectional study in four European cities. Health & Place, 38:8–15.

Vaughan, K.B., Kaczynski, A.T., Stanis, S.A.W., Besenyi, G.M., Bergstrom, R., & Heinrich, K.M. 2013. Exploring the distribution of park availability, features, and quality across Kansas City, Missouri by income and race/ethnicity: An environmental justice investigation. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 45:S28–S38.

Veitch, J., Salmon, J., Crawford, D., Abbott, G., Giles-Corti, B., Carver, A., & Timperio, A. 2018. The REVAMP natural experiment study: The impact of a play-scape installation on park visitation and park-based physical activity. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity, 15:10.

Zhang, R., Wulff, H., Duan, Y.P., & Wagner, P. 2019. Associations between the physical environment and park-based physical activity: A systematic review. Journal of Sport & Health Science, 8:412–421.

Nyssa Hadgraft

about the writer
Nyssa Hadgraft

Dr Nyssa Hadgraft is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Urban Transitions at Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia). Her research interests include understanding the multi-level influences on physical activity and sedentary behaviour as risk factors for chronic disease.

Manoj Chandrabose

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Manoj Chandrabose

Dr Manoj Chandrabose is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Urban Transitions. His research involves building the evidence base for how urban environmental exposures can impact human health through various behaviours.

Jonathan Kingsley

about the writer
Jonathan Kingsley

Dr Jonathan Kingsley is a Lecturer in Health Promotion at Swinburne University of Technology. He has worked for nearly two decades in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, government bodies, academic institutes and NGO’s across Australia in the public health and community development field.

Niki Frantzeskaki

about the writer
Niki Frantzeskaki

Niki Frantzeskaki is a Chair Professor in Regional and Metropolitan Governance and Planning at Utrecht University the Netherlands. Her research is centered on the planning and governance of urban nature, urban biodiversity and climate adaptation in cities, focusing on novel approaches such as experimentation, co-creation and collaborative governance.

Neville Owen

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Neville Owen

Professor Neville Owen is a National Health & Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow, Head of the Behavioural Epidemiology Laboratory at the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute, and Distinguished Professor in Health Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. His research links urban-environment attributes with physical inactivity, too much sitting, and risk of developing diabetes and heart disease.

The View from Our Windows: Our Social Ecologies of Sheltering in Place

Essay, People & Communities, , , , ,
Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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The compound disasters of the coronavirus, racial injustice, and climate change are shifting our relationships to the city and its public spaces. Who will be the transformative agents that can help address these issues?
How do you conduct social science research about people’s relationship to place and the environment during shelter-in-place? Many are turning to big data—scraping social media, tracking cell phone use and movements, and these aggregated, digital data streams are providing key insights about mobility, vulnerability, and spatial patterns of the virus and its impacts across the landscape. These data provide evidence that green spaces—including large natural areas—are key destinations with frequent and increased visitation rates.

But there remains a crucial need to understand how these changing relationships to nature, society, and the public realm are affecting us individually and as a society. As such, we need qualitative approaches to document our lived experiences, with all their emotion, affect, embodiment—and dis-embodiment. We need to walk, talk, observe, write, and draw as living, sensing beings in order to understand how the pandemic takes place. We need to remember the head-spinning disorientation of the past three months, to reflect on how it unfolded over time and continues to unfold. Since 13 March 2020, we have been keeping a small group journal with our set of experiences of our communities—both our local communities of place and the virtual communities of which we are part.

Read the second essay in this series here.
We have observed these experiences to change over time, from the initial days in early March to now; as we struggle to make sense of things, it is abundantly clear that the pandemic experience is not singular. We are four white women who all share an enormous amount of privilege to be home, salaried, and working remotely. For essential workers, the experience is entirely different as they leave home to interact with transit, workplaces, and all the risk and potential exposure that comes along with those interactions. For low income families living in shared housing or for the unhoused, home is not necessarily a safe space either. For people of color, there is a heightened risk of exposure, sickness, and death from COVID-19 that is now clear from the nation’s own accounting of this crisis.

Despite our shared experience of racial and economic privilege, each of us is sheltering in a different NYC neighborhood across Brooklyn and Queens, and we also all have different family configurations, risk factors, community networks, and local open spaces and built environments available to us that inevitably shape our experience of place and the pandemic. Out of our collective journaling—separate but together—have emerged some shared patterns and individual insights. We are mindful and reflexive that we are just four people out of the billions experiencing this global crisis- and therein lies the rub, the desire to zoom back out to aggregated pictures. But we need both focal lengths- the macro and the micro, the bird’s eye and the worm’s eye view. So in sharing these reflections we do not mean to universalize, but rather to offer—to ask—does this resonate with your experience of nature and community in the time of COVID-19? Why or why not? We invite others to document their lived experiences of COVID-19—as we need this collective reflection now more than ever.

We offer our reflections below in four thematic parts alternating among each of us. We are cognizant that the crisis continues to unfold and are humble that our particular stories are not really the ones that need to be told the most right now. But if we inspire someone else to write, to reflect, to talk, to share, then we have achieved our aims.

I. Sirens, Birdsong, and Social Media: Soundscapes and Digital Connections

Shelter-in-place, stay home, wear a mask, do not gather, maintain social distance: all of the basic steps that are involved in flattening the curve and slowing the spread of the virus also have the impact of isolating and atomizing us into our household units—whether we live entirely alone, with partners or roommates, or our families. We find ourselves spending more time in our homes and personal spaces than perhaps any other time in history. But of course we are not alone, we are separate together, hyper-connected via the digital realm and the mediasphere. In fact, it is hard to disconnect. In an interview with author and artist Jenny Odell on an Ezra Klein podcast, she discussed how the only distinction now between her work life, social life, personal time, or family time is now in her mind—it is all happening compressed into a single space—and this resonated with our experiences. This lack of physical space and separation of activities is mentally fatiguing. So our minds rattle between stressors and the mundane—the dire news of the day, the work tasks to complete, the groceries to purchase, the friend who was ill, and those who passed. We remain ever-mindful that this sort of fatigue is a luxury, compared to the physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion faced by frontline and essential workers.

While digital connections feel like the most omnipresent and obvious connection to the “outside world” — other flows permeate our homespaces as well, including some that operate on deeply emotional registers. In particular – sound is able to travel at a distance and can reach our ears and minds even without our directed attention. At the peak of the pandemic in NYC with so much less car and air traffic, the city soundscape was altered. Less of the hum/drum of everyday street noise, but the wail of sirens was unignorable. Daylong conference calls and zoom meetings would pause when the uncomfortable reality of a siren came through someone’s speaker. Polite muting did not remove the painful reminder— thousands are ill, thousands are dying. Yes, this pandemic is happening all around us while we sit, sheltered in our homes, grateful for and worried about those unable to do so.

At the same time, many began to notice the subtle melodies of birdsong—a reminder that nature, life, and diversity are here and present all around us. When the shelter-in-place order started in March, our movement was slowed and outdoor spaces were essentially removed for many of us. At the same time, the world was waking up to spring while we were inside. The space in which we notice things has gotten smaller. Here are some journal snippets around this intimate nearby nature:

Michelle:

20 March 2020. Some of my own reflections on my relationship with the environment right now. I haven’t left my apartment in 2 days. I went to the park on 18 March after work and it was too crowded to feel safe. There was a weird frantic energy in the air. Normally I am a “Leave No Trace” person, but I couldn’t stay 6 feet away from anyone without diverging onto the grass.

I am opening my window every day until it gets too chilly. I can hear my neighbors’ laughter and conversation, but I can also hear the birds. The limited nature soundscape I have is so critical. I am not sleeping well and I can hear when the robin starts singing at 3 or 4 am—well before light. It is only daylight when the house sparrows and starlings start chiming in. That robin is a symbol of spring and hope for me.

8 April 2020. I opened my bathroom window last week and found twigs dropped by a pigeon building its nest. I looked out the window at my other sills and found even more twigs on another sill. Normally, I don’t pay attention to these birds—I am more excited about warblers in the park. But now I have an apartment list instead of a yard list/park list and am birding by sound mostly.

I see on social media that my friends who never birded are becoming birders and my birder friends are becoming backyard birders. I talked with my friends about what if I am still inside when the blackpoll warblers migrate through—at least I can hear them when they will be in the park (usually migrate through later than other birds heading to the Arctic in mid to late May).

24 May 2020. Walking around my neighborhood park, I hear my first blackpoll warbler’s high pitched trill. We are still inside—we have been inside the length of spring migration. Last week my friend texted he heard one in Inwood Park in upper Manhattan, so I knew to be on the lookout for them.

II. Rainbows and Cowbells: Signs of Solidarity and Gratitude

What are the messages that we share with our neighbors and the public during the pandemic? Signs in apartment windows or yard signs on residential lawns are vehicles for messages that we wish to transmit—they cross the threshold from our private sphere to the public realm. Collective messages of solidarity and gratitude literally rung out from the rooftops through the evening cheers that developed over the course of the shelter-in-place. These visual and auditory signs and signals are part of how we navigated this crisis, articulating our shared values and sending the message that we are not in this alone.

Lindsay:

On 17 March, I journaled about window rainbows for the first time. My nieces, sheltering with my parents in suburban Annapolis, Maryland, made a large front-yard rainbow saying “Tutto Va Bene” in reference to the Italian practice of children drawing these messages of hope and putting them in their windows during lockdown. On March 19, someone in my local Facebook mom’s group made mention of a google map of rainbows, so kids could do virtual “scavenger hunts”.  Since the group was based one neighborhood over, when I first checked it there were not any rainbows in my neighborhood. We made a point of taking a long family walk with my daughter in a stroller to find and photograph as many rainbows as we could and started a digital photo album just for our “Rainbow Shimmer”. Two months later, that map has spread across the country and world. But we don’t need a map—there are rainbows in almost every window in my neighborhood—as well as chalk drawings and even a street tree festooned with rainbows, but I still find myself taking pictures. The emotion I feel each time is mostly tenderness—I feel cheered by the messages of hope and thanks for essential workers, but I picture the millions of children, sheltering at home with their bewildered parents, and my heart aches and aches.

Rainbows in apartment windows. Photo: Lindsay Campbell
Rainbow chalk drawing on the sidewalk. Photo: Lindsay Campbell
Rainbow-adorned street tree. Photo: Lindsay Campbell

Every night at 7pm, we open up our window and ring a cowbell. My toddler ends this ritual with the phrase I taught her: “Thank you workers, thank you helpers” as we join millions of people around the world in thanking frontline and essential workers. Our neighborhood is relatively quiet, all and all, once in a while we hear a few other bells, pots, pans, and claps, but I have seen videos from other neighborhoods around the city and the world that ring out with song. Who are we thanking? The healthcare workers, of course, but all city agencies keeping us safe: fire department, trash collection, as well as essential workers delivering food, mail, and other goods.

This local street art in my neighborhood captures the broad range of people we need to thank. I make a point not just of ringing my cowbell, but of personally thanking these workers when I see them. I contributed to a fund that was set up to help our postman purchase his own PPE—a necessary, but insufficient step toward protecting an essential worker. Frontline workers themselves have noted and protested that applause is not enough, they need protection.

Street art thanking essential workers. Photo: Lindsay Campbell

Erika:

On 19 April I walked over the big retail chain hardware store near my neighborhood. I was desperate to see if I could find something colorful to grow in planters on my roof. There was a sign thanking emergency responders and a place to sign your name with appreciation. The NYPD, EMS, and the Dept of Sanitation were all listed…and then I saw the logo for the NYC Parks Enforcement Police  (known as PEP officers). This was the first time I personally ever noticed NYC Parks acknowledged on a first responder sign. I smiled. Although the gates are locked, each and every day since this all began, there has been a park worker that shows up in the park across from my apartment. This person sweeps, cleans, and keeps order until we can enter again. I am very grateful for her work.

On 21 May: I was on a conference call today and a colleague who runs a citywide stewardship program shared that she was disheartened. “We were denied our spring this year,” she said. Her frustration was because she knows that when people volunteer in the parks they do more than care for the vegetation, they tend to care for and learn more about each other. I was feeling down about that too. We talked about when and how the city might collectively mourn: When would be the right time? What would this look like for parks volunteers? Digging, planting and pulling vines and being in the company of others amidst a nature where life and death cannot be denied.

Lindsay:

On 21 May, the Empire State Building and other NYC landmarks were lit up green to honor and thank park workers, under the campaign #GoingGreenForParkies. Monuments in San Francisco were also lit green that day for the same reason, and I saw some social media traffic about wearing green as far away as Honolulu. This reflects a public recognition of the important work that park workers are doing and have been doing each and every day.

III. Care Work: Mutual Aid and Stewardship

Prior to COVID-19, much of our shared research has focused on civic stewardship—acts of care-taking and claims-making on the local environment. With this work, we aim to better visualize and amplify the work of local groups in advocating for, maintaining, and educating the public about the environment. We have also examined the ways in which environmental stewards reorganize and respond to disturbance—be it hurricane, flood, tornado, September 11th, invasive pest, or economic downturn. While the pandemic is unprecedented in its spatial extent and cascading public health, economic, and social impacts, it is another form of disturbance to which these local groups and networks adapt and respond.

Most visibly, we have seen the rise of mutual aid groups—many of them wholly new operations, some of them organized on the heels of prior organizing from Hurricane Sandy, which also build on the organizing of Occupy Wall Street. Even before stay-at-home orders were passed, when it became clear that many New Yorkers would be struggling—physically, emotionally, and financially—as a result of COVID-19, community members came together to prepare. Many have memories of responding to past disasters, from 9/11 to Hurricane Sandy, by activating social networks and coming together to exchange resources and hold space. Without the ability to be together physically, organizing quickly began online and via flyers posted on neighborhood streets. Over time, many became networked and began exchanging ideas on how to do the work of helping neighbors.

Whether initiated by local elected leaders, community based organizations, or residents within a building, most early efforts focused on checking in with older adults and other vulnerable populations. Establishing these social connections, sometimes through something as simple as a phone call making sure a neighbor has enough food for the week, can create a lifeline in a crisis. As the death toll ticked up and unemployment rates increased, it became clear that amidst uncertain fiscal budgets and philanthropic support, local organizing would need to fill longer-term needs. Mutual aid groups across the city are now struggling to figure out how to become more sustainable. In Crown Heights, requests for grocery runs are coming in so quickly that there is a backlog of at least a month. The level of need is high, but is it realistic for a group of neighbors, each with their own personal quarantine challenges, to fill the gaps left by the many closing food pantries and dwindling social services?

Michelle:

Because of health concerns, I have only volunteered virtually. I joined my neighborhood’s mutual aid group in late March and have watched it evolve over time, becoming more organized, networked, and complex, as it responded to more community needs and more volunteers. Seeing the volunteer numbers climb has been inspiring. I have called elderly neighbors to check in on them and, for the month of April, served on the dispatch team. Every week when I signed in to my shift, community needs had expanded, available resources had changed, and the mutual aid group was hard at work with evolving dispatcher guidelines for how to assist neighbors in need. Mutual aid groups were coordinating across neighborhoods, yet I observed that not all neighborhoods in NYC had a specific group. What is the social infrastructure a community needs to be able to establish, maintain, and expand such efforts? My neighborhood already had a strong civic-minded tech community; many of them have volunteered to create systems that have enabled communication and organization for mutual aid.

Laura:

So far all of my volunteering has been virtual. As a healthy, able-bodied young person, I struggle with finding the balance between staying home to protect myself and others and assuming some risk in order to support those who cannot safely go to the store. In the early days of quarantine, I eagerly signed up for any and all opportunities that came through my inbox. I shared my name and phone number with neighbors on a list of potential errand-runners circulating in my building. I also unknowingly signed up to make phone calls to seniors in Chicago, and organizers assured me that my actual location was not important—what does distance even mean anymore? Later, I was matched with three seniors here in Brooklyn, whom I called and connected to various services and resources I hoped would be helpful. The phone conversations I had were brief but pleasant, and everyone seemed to welcome the chance to connect. I have also joined my local mutual aid group’s intake team, responding to requests for groceries and matching them with volunteers who can go to the store and make contact-free deliveries. I recently returned a call to a neighbor who had reached out back in April, but she was still in need of basic food items. Seeing the update that her groceries were delivered felt like a tiny victory. It is moving to see people come together in times of need. Other volunteers in the mutual aid group have expressed a deep appreciation to the online community of responders. The woman who led my intake volunteer training said that since becoming out of work due to COVID-19, this has become her job. But what happens when she goes back to work and neighbors are still going without food? So much more is needed in order to support ongoing community building.

While civic stewardship groups have their usual territories and ecologies that they care for, in the face of crisis and our changing reality—we’ve observed their ability to be nimble and adaptive to meet pressing needs of their community. Updating fieldwork protocols, adjusting workforces, cancelling or changing public events, providing educational content online, and a dire need for resources are just a few of the currently emerging changes. Gowanus Canal Conservancy canceled its public events, but set up socially-distant stewardship supply pick-up with public health guidance on how to safely engage. Other local neighborhood organizations focus on serving their communities in a range of ways that include environmental stewardship and social service provision—we see these groups playing key roles as neighborhood “hubs” in providing access to information, resources, services and programming. United Community Centers in East New York is host to the East New York Farms! Youth agriculture program. While their in-person programming was canceled this spring, they focused on being a conduit to their network—providing information on emergency food relief, connecting to city services, and ensuring that their residents were counted in the 2020 census. Astoria Park Alliance, with a focus on stewarding a particular park, has focused on safe use and access of the park, through signage and online advocacy around road closures.

It is not surprising to find that several well-organized groups are in areas that were hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy, such as Red Hook, Brooklyn and Far Rockaway, Queens. Red Hook Initiative is engaged in local, resident-led response, focusing on the neighborhood’s most vulnerable residents, particularly those in public housing, as well as the youth population of the community. Their services and programs range widely from providing food relief to partnering with the city DOT in hosting an open street on W9th Street. Rockaway Initiative for Sustainability and Equity is adapting its programming to include participating in collective mask-sewing efforts, funding PPE for hospital workers, offering information about gardening and foraging for the public, and collaborating with a regional farm to provide free organic produce for Rockaway families in need.

These groups do not work alone—they organize coalitions, campaigns, and networks. For example, a group of conservancies that work closely with the NYC Parks Department organized a report on the impacts of COVID-19 on their operations and services. This report led directly to the establishment of a Green Relief and Recovery Fund with support from multiple philanthropic organizations as well as the general public. The crowdfunding organization, ioby, quickly established matching funds and resources to tailor their platform for mutual aid and community COVID-19 response. Civic organizations like ioby function as “brokers” that help support local leaders and foster emergent groups. At a neighborhood scale, the Guardians of Flushing Bay is a stewardship group that works near the epicenter of the outbreak—in Flushing and Corona, Queens. They organized a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for groups providing direct relief in their watershed, showing evidence that these groups are not solely concerned with environmental quality, but are involved in supporting community well-being and quality of life in nimble and collaborative ways.

IV. Flowers and sidewalks, backyards and parks: Accessing hyper-local nature

As the days passed and the weather warmed, signs of spring became omnipresent. With the luxury of free time, neighborhood walks became a daily or weekly ritual for us. And with this shrunken geographic sphere came a heightened attention—to where the buds had opened, to which front yard had lilacs you could reach from the sidewalk, to which side of the street was warm and sunny for an afternoon walk. The public realm of the street trees and sidewalks is our most immediate access to hyper-local nature. So we notice it all: the lovingly tended flower beds and the unsightly spots where discarded masks and trash accumulate with the decreased street cleaning. Flowers were coming up out of street tree beds—a sign of planning ahead; gloves are left on the street, but the tree beds themselves look cared for. These walks along well-known territory changed over time as leaf out began, as daffodils gave way to tulips and pansies in the street tree beds; at the same time, the people on the street changed, with more people out and about now once there was talk of reopening and nice weather.

Flyer encouraging mask-wearing. Photos: Lindsay Campbell

Nobody and everyone “owns” the sidewalks. They became the space where people congregate, alone with a lawn chair, spaced apart with paper-bagged beverages, in family units. Strangely, in this dire time, the public realm comes to life. But they are also spaces of friction, these sites of encounter. Who shoots an ugly glare or a sharp word to an unmasked jogger, Who steps aside for whom into the roadbed? Public shaming and enforcing of norms starts to happen with handmade flyers that appear on fence posts. These signs are messages that set up expectations about how and for whom access to the public realm occurs. In our past research, we look to the messages that the public adds to our shared spaces—like parks and sidewalks—in order to “read the landscape” for these emergent and informal norms. In the time of COVID-19 we are reading the landscape for how we navigate a changing experience with public space in the time of masking, social distancing, and closures of most of our commercial establishments

Flyer encouraging mask-wearing. Photos: Lindsay Campbell

Laura:

Beyond the sidewalk are the privately owned public spaces—the front yards, stoops, backyards, and patios. In NYC, only a select few have access to these sorts of oases. Backyards have become a symbol of privilege in the pandemic. The ability for some city dwellers to safely get some fresh air by stepping onto their private balcony, or even to escape to a second or third home to comfortably quarantine is a stark reminder of the many disparities exacerbated by the virus. For those of us with access to shared private spaces, a new kind of negotiation of space is necessary. Sometimes, this means having to formalize previously unstated rules and norms. What in the “before times” might have turned into a moment of socialization between neighbors waiting to use the grill in a shared backyard is now distilled into a list of rules about the number of family units allowed in one place at a time.

And then there are the parks. And they remained open—with the exception of playgrounds that are full of surfaces that could not be cleaned regularly enough to be safe. Open and accessible to all— in theory, but the reality of that access looks very different depending upon a number of factors. Some of the issues around park access depend upon the geographic location, size, design, and programming of parks (see NYC Parks Framework for an Equitable Future; New Yorkers for Parks’ Open Space Index; TPL ParkScore). In the time of COVID-19, playground and recreation courts are considered to invite non-social distancing behaviors, while a larger park with a forest canopy or open meadow is deemed more suitable for solitary or small group activities including hiking or birding. Other factors related to access depend on how safe residents feel using a park given their race, ethnicity, gender, ability, or age (See Finney 2014; Sonti et al. 2020; TPL Parks and the Pandemic). On 2 May 2020, we read news and twitter accounts of disparities in policing between park goers who were white or people of color. On 7 May, Mayor deBlasio denounced the racial disparity in social distancing arrests, and on 8 May the City announced it would limit visitation and apply social distancing measures at Hudson River Park and Domino Park, two crowded parks in largely affluent, white neighborhoods (see images). The critical point here is to plan purposefully for equitable and inclusive access, especially as we move into the summer season with higher temperatures. Public green spaces may offer the only respite for those suffering from stifling summer heat conditions

Lindsay:

Living in my neighborhood for 14 years, I had never seen my local park more crowded. At the start of the lockdown, the police drove their cars through the park, blaring a loudspeaker message about social distancing. As time wore on, they came out of their cars, walking, mostly carrying masks to give away. It struck me that there was no reason that this particular role necessarily needed to be played solely by the police. I read that NYC Parks is staffing up with a large cadre of social distancing ambassadors. We could imagine an expanded green workforce that is responsible for the care and maintenance of both our parklands and the health and safety of the visiting public.

The 25 May racist incident in which Amy Cooper, a white woman with an off-leash dog, threatened to call the police on Christian Cooper, a black man who was birding in Central Park’s Ramble who asked her to leash her dog, revealed deeply ingrained, systemic racism that shapes who feels safe in parks. The hashtag #birdingwhileblack did not originate with this incident, but shined a light on the ways in which black and brown bodies are surveilled and controlled in the public sphere. Swift responses from Audubon NYC—where Christian Cooper was a board member—as well as Amy Cooper’s employer, revealed that these incidents will not go unseen or silently sanctioned. We are concerned that in the time of COVID-19, as more and more people are seeking use and refuge of parks and natural areas, we will have these encounters of friction and conflict. How will we as a society ensure equitable, safe, and open access for all to these vital natural resources?

Erika:

On 19 May I spoke with the administrator of a large park here in NYC. She wanted to talk with Lindsay and I about issues of race and inclusion and some research we had done in her park a few years ago. She had taken a diversity course from the Central Park Conservancy and was now reading a few academic papers on the subject. She worried that natural resource managers needed conceptual tools and training to address the issues that were coming up. It troubled her to know that certain people of color are not comfortable in their park and because of that, would not benefit from all that nature has to offer us, especially at this time. She told us how her community was severely impacted by COVID-19. She mentioned that many residents were trying to process the death of Ahmaud Arbery. And then came the May 25 incident in Central Park between a bird watcher and a dog walker. She knew that how the park is managed can contribute to inclusion (and exclusion) across differences of age, race, culture and creed. And she knew that this was a key part of her job. When we hung up, I sat there wondering if most people would believe that park administrators are ‘out there’ thinking and worrying about diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in deep and thoughtful ways? So often we might think of managing parkland as caring for trees and mowing the grass, but it is so much more. Such power and potential for transformation lies within our own capacity as green workers and through our public lands.

* * *

As we are writing this essay, which now feels poignantly dated-in-real time, our streets, sidewalks, and parks in New York City and across the country are erupting in protest over the murder of George Floyd. Our city and country are in anguish over these twinned crises of the pandemic and systemic racism. We know that the public realm has always been a space of assembly and discourse, including violent clashes and disagreements. Even in relatively quiet corners of the city, away from the protest, we see signs of solidarity, anger, and love. We read the landscape for these signs—handmade flyers, chalk drawings, and graffiti asserting that black lives matter—that echo the “shouts in the street”. We read these signs as they are barometers of social meaning and are important to the equitable stewardship of public space.

Chalk drawing stating black lives matter in a public park. Photo: Lindsay Campbell
Rainbow and BLM fist in an apartment window. Photo: Lindsay Campbell

 V. La longue duree

What can daily journaling, observing micro-practices and hyper-local geographic terrains tell us about la longue duree (“the long term” arc of history) and the way in which our society might fundamentally shift in response to this pandemic, as well as the way in which that pandemic intersects with our pre-existing inequities and vulnerabilities?

The historian Frank Snowden informs us in his most recent book on epidemics and societies that in addition to the loss of life, pandemics tend to cause painful rifts in our relationships to each other, among family members, friends, and social groups (Snowden 2019; see link). Over the long arc of time, things do eventually change. Snowden reminds us that the Paris School of Medicine emerged from the French Revolution with a turn toward observation and away from depending heavily on Hippocratic theory in managing public health. The motto of the 19th Century Paris School was: Peu lire et beaucoup voir (read little, but see a lot). In that seeing, it is important to consider what and whose narratives are told in the construction of a historic account. A recent article in the Nation posed this very question with respect to journalistic, archival, and historic coverage of this pandemic and the 1918 pandemic in Africa. How can we understand, document and grieve the grave loss of life and hold ourselves, our leaders, and our institutions accountable to change, but also see the creative, vital, sometimes improvisational, emergent adaptations by all of us, as agents that are critical to that change? These are also stories that need to be told—of lives lived with the pandemic—or else they will be forgotten and will not be learned from. We see this as a call to action for more voices to document and teach us from their lived experiences of the pandemic.

As humans and observers of the world, we journal; as researchers we can think critically about our observations. This approach has clarified the key questions and throughlines that we plan to consider in our own environmental stewardship and governance research in the New York City region and as part of a community of practice that includes researchers, natural resource managers, stewards, artists, and educators across a wide range of cities and towns. These include:

  • How does the pandemic change our relationship with the city, nature, and public lands?
  • How might we transform the public realm to better adapt to our new reality, in ways that are equitable, safe, supportive, and welcoming for all?
  • How can our relationship with nature help us restore and strengthen our relations with each other at all scales: individual, group, and societal?

The compound disasters of the coronavirus, racial injustice, and climate change are shifting our relationships to the city and its public spaces. Who will be the transformative agents that can help address these issues? We have seen prior realignments of the way we conceptualize and orchestrate our cities and towns, with goals of achieving the sanitary city, the sustainable city, the resilient city. What does the post-pandemic city look like?

Lindsay K. Campbell, Erika Svendsen, Laura Landau, Michelle Johnson
New York

On The Nature of Cities

The findings and conclusions in this essay are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.

Erika Svendsen

about the writer
Erika Svendsen

Dr. Erika Svendsen is a social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station and is based in New York City. Erika studies environmental stewardship and issues related to hybrid governance, collective resilience and human well-being.

Laura Landau

about the writer
Laura Landau

Laura is currently pursuing a PhD in geography at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the civic groups that care for the local environment, and on the potential for urban environmental stewardship to strengthen communities and make them more resilient to disaster and disturbance.

Michelle Johnson

about the writer
Michelle Johnson

Michelle Johnson is a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service at the NYC Urban Field Station.

 

Depuis Ma Fenêtre / From My Window

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Read this in English.

J’ai pu voir de nombreuses espèces pendant mon confinement au Covid, même depuis mon appartement parisien. La nature est toute proche.
J’ai fait les chroniques confinées quotidiennes pendant la quarantaine parisienne, et voici quelques observations récentes de notre maison à Pantin, dans la banlieue nord-est de Paris.

Les Mésanges charbonnières qui ont élu domicile dans le trou du mur de mes voisins ont quitté leur nid ce matin. Des six jeunes, un a fini croqué par une pie, mais les 5 autres ont passé leur journée à attendre patiemment leur nourriture dans le cerisier de la cour. Photo du jour d’un des jeunes fraîchement sorti : 

Cet essai fait partie de la nouvelle initiative : TNOC Francophone
Le couple de Rougequeues noirs qui niche vraisemblablement dans la rue voisine se fait discret. Le mâle ne chante plus que quelques fois par jour. Il y a 10 jours, un jeune mâle (2e année) est venu concurrencer le mâle bien noir qui occupe habituellement les lieux. La femelle s’intéressait à lui, le vieux mâle tentait parfois de le chasser, mais s’en désintéressait le plus souvent. L’idylle a été intense (poursuites et vols à deux toute la journée mais brève, car je ne l’ai jamais revu, ce ne fut qu’une amourette de passage, mais peut-être en a-t-il profité pour s’accoupler discrètement comme cela arrive si souvent chez les oiseaux 🙂.

J’ai eu la surprise pendant le confinement d’entendre le rougequeue noir émettre plusieurs imitations, dont le chant du Pouillot véloce, le cri du Chevalier cul–blanc et du troglodyte, et des babils que je n’avais jamais entendus. 

Mais j’ai eu encore plus de plaisir à écouter le chant du Rougequeue à front blanc qui niche de l’autre côté de la rue, dans l’enceinte du Lycée Berthelot. Il niche là depuis l’an dernier (en tout cas je ne l’avais jamais vu avant), dans le vieux mur que l’on voit au fond. J’en suis à 14 espèces imitées par ce mâle très imitateur, qui passe son temps en particulier à faire le chant de la grisette et du grimpereau. Aujourd’hui, il m’a gratifié pour la première fois du chant du Cochevis, juste avant de s’accoupler avec sa femelle ! 

A côté de lui, la Fauvette à tête noire chante quotidiennement, mais ce mâle n’est pas coutumier des imitations pourtant fréquentes chez l’espèce. 

Le confinement a donc été l’occasion d’apprendre des choses sur des espèces très communes : je n’avais jamais par exemple entendu le chant de la Pie, sorte de babil grinçant, et pendant le mois de mars ça m’est arrivé à plusieurs reprises !

Nous sommes à 300m du cimetière de Pantin. Depuis 2-3 ans, un couple de Faucons hobereau y niche, ce qui est remarquable, à 500m de Paris. Mais c’est également le cas dans les bois de Vincennes et Boulogne, et dans d’autres cimetières périphériques. Incroyable comment cette espèce a regagné du terrain. En montant sur le toit, j’ai le bonheur de le voir de temps en temps passer au ras des toits, et la semaine dernière j’ai entendu le couple émettre de sortes de petits cris de perruches que je n’avais jamais entendus, alors que l’un des deux tenait un oiseau dans les serres. 

 

Nous habitons à 2-3 km à vol d’oiseau du nid de Faucon pèlerin de la tour des Lilas, et encore aujourd’hui, j’ai vu la femelle cercler au-dessus de chez nous. Ce luxe d’ornithologie urbaine est tout récent, j’en rêvais quand j’étais gosse, c’est devenu presque habituel. Quel changement ! Je pensais qu’il s’agissait de ce couple jusqu’à ce que j’observe aujourd’hui les deux oiseaux sur une tour abandonnée de la porte de la Villette, visible en me plaçant à l’extrémité de mon toit ! Il semblerait bien que nous ayons à faire à un nouveau couple de pèlerin, juste au bord du périphérique parisien !  

Avec le survol quotidien des perruches, notre environnement s’est modifié à grande vitesse. Sans parler des goélands, bruns et argentés, que j’observe quotidiennement. 

Aujourd’hui, avec le beau temps qui a suivi la pluie, je suis remonté sur le toit, en 2h, entre deux lectures de mails, j’ai vu un Milan noir et un Balbuzard pêcheur en migration, et quelques hirondelles rustiques. Coup de chance ! 

Plus classique, depuis mars j’ai eu plusieurs fois l’épervier, généralement repéré grâce aux cris des corneilles qui viennent le houspiller.  

 Au rayon des grosses surprises, il y a 10 jours, le 23 avril, alors que j’étais sur mon ordinateur dehors comme ce soir, un Oedicnème s’est mis à crier pendant une vingtaine de secondes ! C’est un étrange oiseau des milieux secs, qui adore les carrières et autres terrains nus. Le couple le plus proche est à environ 15 km, aux abords de l’aéroport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, mais l’espèce est connue pour faire des déplacements assez longs la nuit pour s’alimenter et est loquace en vol. 

Il n’y a pas que les oiseaux, et outre les souris domestiques qui passent de temps en temps dans notre cuisine et les Pipistrelles communes en vol le soir, quelques insectes sont de passage. Pendant le beau temps de la semaine dernière, j’ai eu la visite quotidienne d’un Brun des Pelargoniums sur les géraniums de mon voisin (photo ci-dessous), petit papillon introduit dans le nord de la France. Un Némusien est passé brièvement, l’Azuré des nerpruns est présent en continu.   

Les Xylocopes (les grosses abeilles charpentières noires) patrouillent en permanence et sont étonnamment nombreux et presque chaque jour, une ou deux cétoines dorées viennent butiner. De notre tas de bois s’est envolé un Petit Capricorne, on va peut-être participer involontairement à l’installation de l’espèce dans un des parcs voisins ! Les Osmies cornues étaient fréquentes il y a un mois mais je ne les vois presque plus.  

Un syrphe que je n’avais pas souvent vu en ville, Merodon sylvestris, a fait une apparition la semaine dernière, et une autre espèce, Myathropa florea, semble intéressée par le terreau de notre petit pin, il pond surement dedans.  



Bonne dernière semaine confinée ! 

(NDLR : Le confinement devrait être levé progressivement en France à partir du 11 mai 2020). 

Maxime Zucca
Paris

Toutes les photos sont de Maxime Zucca.

Sur The Nature of Cities

* * *

Outside My Window

I could see many species during Covid confinement—even from my Paris apartment. Nature is nearby.
I have made daily confined chronicles (in French) during the Paris Covid quarantine, and here are some recent observations from our home in Pantin, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris.

The Coal Titmouse family that took up residence in the hole in my neighbour’s wall left their nest this morning. Of the six youngsters, one ended up biting a Magpie, but the other five spent their day patiently waiting for their food in the cherry tree in the courtyard. Here is a daytime photo of one of the youngsters, freshly emerged:

This essay is part of the new initiative: TNOC Francophone.
A couple of Black Redheads, who are probably nesting in the nearby street, are discreet. The male now only sings a few times a day. Ten days ago, a young male (a 2 year old) came to compete with the black male that usually occupies the premises. The female was interested in him, the old male sometimes tried to chase him away, but most often lost interest. The romance was intense (chases and flights in pairs all day long) but short. I never saw him again; it was only a passing fling, but maybe he took advantage of it to mate discreetly as it happens so often in birds 🙂

I was surprised during the confinement to hear the Black Redstart emitting several imitations, including the song of the Swift Warbler, the cry of the Leach Knight, and the Troglodyte, and babbling that I had never heard before.

But I had even more fun listening to the song of the Red-headed Redstart nesting across the street, in the grounds of the Berthelot School. It has been nesting there since last year (at least I had never seen it before), in the old wall in the back. I have now counted 14 species imitated by this very creative male, who spends his time to make song imitating the Grizzly Bear and the Creeper. Today, he gave me for the first time the song of the Cochevis, just before mating with his female!

Next to him, the Black-headed Warbler sings daily, but this male is not accustomed to the imitations that are common in the species.

So the confinement was an opportunity to learn things about very common species: I had never heard the song of the Magpie, for example, a kind of squeaky chatter, and during the month of March it happened to me several times!

We are 300m from the Pantin cemetery. For the past 2-3 years, a couple of Hobby Falcons have been nesting there. This is remarkable, only 500m from Paris. But it also happens in the woods of Vincennes and Boulogne, and in other peripheral cemeteries. Incredible how this species has regained its ground. When I go up on the roof, I am happy to see it from time to time passing by at roof level, and last week I heard the couple emitting some kind of little parakeet calls that I had never heard before, while one of them was holding a bird in the greenhouses.

 

We live 2-3 km as the crow flies from the Peregrine Falcon’s nest in the Lilac Tower, and even today I saw the female circling above us. This luxury of urban ornithology is very recent. I used to dream about it when I was a kid; now it has become almost usual. What a change! I thought it was this couple until today I observed the two birds on an abandoned tower at the Porte de la Villette, visible from the end of my roof! It seems we have a new pilgrim couple to deal with, just on the edge of the Parisian ring road!

With the daily flight of the parakeets, our environment has changed at great speed. Not to mention the gulls, brown and silver, that I observe daily.

Today, with the good weather that followed the rain, I went back up on the roof. In two hours between, between two sessions reading emails, I saw a Black Kite and a migrating Osprey, and some Barn Swallows. Lucky break!

More classic obswevations: since March I’ve had several times the Sparrow Hawk, which I spotted thanks to the cries of Crows that come to mob it.

A big surprise: 10 days ago, on April 23rd, while I was on my computer outside like tonight, an Oedicnème started screaming for about twenty seconds! It’s a strange dryland bird that loves quarries and other bare ground. The closest pair is about 15 km away, near Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, but the species is known to make fairly long journeys at night to feed and is talkative in flight.

It is not only birds, and apart from the house mice that spend time in our kitchen from time to time and the common Pipistrelle in flight in the evening, a few insects are passing by. During the nice weather last week, I had the daily visit of a Brown of the Pelargoniums on my neighbour’s geraniums (photo below), a small butterfly introduced in the north of France. A Nemusian passed by briefly, the Buckthorn Azure is continuously present.

Xylocopes (the big black carpenter bees) are constantly patrolling and are surprisingly numerous and almost every day, one or two golden ketones come to forage. A Little Capricorn flew away from our wood pile, we may involuntarily participate in the installation of the species in one of the nearby parks! Horned Osmies were common a month ago but I hardly see them anymore.

A hoverfly that I had not often seen in town, Merodon sylvestris, made an appearance last week, and another species, Myathropa florea, seems interested in the soil of our little pine tree, it probably lays in it.

Happy last confined week!

(Note: Confinement was gradually lifted in France starting on 11 May 2020).

Maxime Zucca
Paris

On The Nature of Cities

All photos are by Maxime Zucca.

Treading the Thin Line Between Individual Freedom and Social Change—Experiences and Lessons to Address the Global Pandemic

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COVID-19 is a stark reminder that the world around us has drastically changed. In the Anthropocene we need to think and act differently. Our thinking needs to be more ecocentric and less anthropocentric. Our behaviors need to be more social and less ego-centric. We need to overcome our fears of others and avoid looking for simple causes for a very complex world.
This essay is a conversation between an economist and a psychologist who live and work in China and Kenya and who exchange observations and are despairing about the impact of COVID-19 on their individual and social lives. Both come to a common point in terms of how much of this pandemic exposes narrowminded perceptions, biases, and lack of social or political commitment to make more positive change amid the pandemic.

Franz: 

As a resource economist who lives and works in China and travelled to Europe end of January 2020, I was forced to stay in Berlin and could not return to China, due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In late February 2020, I was on my way back to China. While walking through the streets of Berlin I get the opportunity to pick up what people are talking about. The public media don’t miss making headlines to report the latest numbers. The coronavirus has arrived in Europe and at that time was already spreading in Germany. By mid-April 2020 the numbers of infected people in Germany had surpassed those in China and end of April Germany had 157,700 and China 84,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. By June 12 those numbers increased to 186,691 infections and 8772 deaths in Germany and 84,216 infections and 4,638 deaths in China.

While in Berlin, I had witnessed a pedestrian shouting at two Asian-looking teenagers: “You Chinese Corona Scum”. A few weeks later, in China, the fear of re-imported cases grew and similar discriminatory expressions against foreigners in China had been reported by the German consulate in Guangzhou. Simple-minded thoughts associate the infectious disease to ethnicity, although the virus makes no such distinction.

Still in Germany on a train from Berlin to Düsseldorf airport, train passengers exchange the latest news about the novel Coronavirus. More cases were  confirmed in days that went by. Important events like the International Tourism Exhibition in Berlin (ITB) had been cancelled and more COVID-19 cases were being confirmed daily. The same train passengers who just discussed the infectiousness of the virus, left the train, flocked to the elevator and squeezed in tightly, instead of taking the stairs. Despite just having discussed an infectious health emergency and the need for keeping distance, their social behavior didn’t change.

Maybe the virus has arrived in Europe and in the brains of people, but it hasn’t yet led to a change of group behavior. It seems as if the knowledge of the virus is insufficient to create a new reality and respective social behavioral change.  If there isn’t a rule for it, which is in use, it can’t be real. People seem to be creating an imaginary distance between an inconvenient truth and the reality they feel comfortable with and are unwilling to give up for a new one. This process of changing behavioral rules, like social distancing, was then discussed for weeks among German politicians and the public and as the numbers of infections grew, the rules became stricter. While in February and March the wearing of masks in public was still officially described as being ineffective and unnecessary by Germany’s Chancellor, Minister of Health, the country’s top virologist and other authorities, by end of April, it was obligatory for all to wear a mask in public.

How can this strange behavior of people and politicians be explained? It seems that people’s knowledge about something in one moment is not taken into account by their actions in the next moment. It takes time to change behavior and it needs to be based on rules. Knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient reason for behavioral change. It is not that people are not intelligent enough, rather individual intelligence is not enough for changing social behavior. Maybe people want the freedom to choose over their own health, however, when individual freedoms impact those of others, we are treading a thin line between individual freedom and social change.

The virus has no intention. It has evolved from environmental circumstances created by people and simply does what it does best: it looks for a new host for reproduction. By doing so it coincidentally is also taking people’s freedom to choose how to put their own health at risk. Smoking or eating unhealthy food is a choice we make by trading off health against pleasure. It is the freedom of choice by trading off health with pleasure, which every smoker makes every time lighting a cigarette. The danger of the new virus, it’s infectiousness, potential deadliness and the fear of a collapse of the healthcare system, prevents people from making that choice.

At my next transfer airport in Frankfurt, no one is wearing a mask. Neither the immigration officers, the police, the airport staff, nor the crew, nobody, except for specific people  coming from or  going to China. Independent from the question of how effective it is to wear a mask, it is an indication of people’s conscious response to a new, potentially life-threatening reality. Wearing a simple mask may be insufficient for protection against a virus, however it is also a passive protection of others. Thereby it becomes a symbol of not only caring about one’s own health but also of that of other’s. Although the protection effectiveness may be low, above all, wearing the mask is a statement of respecting other people’s health, independent of whether a person is infected or not. Those who do not wear it seem to be silently saying “I am healthy”, making others look like “they are not”. Thereby, wearing a mask when the majority doesn’t, can be misconceived as a stigma.

The virus uncovers these human and societal peculiarities and also opens a political pandora box. Taiwan, largely sidelined by the World Health Organization (WHO), stands out as a country which, according to earlier (than late February) predictions should have been affected more seriously, but hasn’t. Most likely that is due to the fact that authorities and experts reacted fast and took rapid measures, instead of punishing early warnings by medical doctors for spreading rumors and instead of blaming another for mismanagement. South Korea was similarly successful. Not only rapid response is critical to mitigate the spread of an infectious diseases, also early response and precaution. If information flows are constrained, controlled and censored, obviously it takes time to process this information and decide whether someone is spreading rumors or giving early warnings based on expertise and facts.

The virus has tested the responsiveness of different political systems. It has become obvious that leadership, authority and responsiveness is necessary for reacting rapidly and freedom is required for information, data and knowledge to reach decision-makers and people. The combination of both is what Duit and Galaz (2008) have referred to as a robust type governance of complexity. In this emergency situation a society needs to react collectively. Some valued personal freedoms need to be sacrificed for the sake of public health, while information about the transmission behavior of the virus needs to flow freely. The right mix of freedom versus constraints seems essential for a successful containment and robust governence of a pandemic like COVID-19.

What seems to matter is that people act on the basis of the knowledge available and that information can flow in order to create the knowledge we need to act appropriately in response. We have termed this circular flow of information, the “data metabolism” of a society: Data is transformed into knowledge and knowledge into action and the action in response to an event creates further data on the basis of which new action is performed. Between knowing what to do and doing it, is a filter of societal rules. If behavioral change needs to happen fast, this layer of rules needs to be in place before an emergency occurs. It is in essence a learning cycle. Regardless of cultural, political or ethnic differences, we can only improve our collective learning and response towards a virus as infectious as COVID-19 if we make such learning cycles work and thereby improve society’s collective intelligence.

Manasi:

We now change perspective.  As a psychologist I take a closer look at the psychology of the human behavior which Franz has described above and suggest addressing the issues under the following themes:

  • Transformational leadership
  • Opportunity to address pending public health issues
  • Rapid social policy response
  • Acknowledging individual freedoms while prioritizing social responsibility
  • Destigmatization

Transformational Leadership. Transformational leadership is defined as a leadership approach that generates change in individuals and social systems. It helps in developing capabilities at individual and systems level. It is open to accepting vulnerabilities and offering timely strategies/interventions for collective behavioral change. Contrary to the responses of the key global players, this leadership style enables development of person-centered and inclusive style of relating to public and one’s key constituents. Racist and xenophobic stereotyping (this is “Chinese virus”, “came from Asian people”, etc., African countries are “shit hole countries”) are actively steered away from. This leadership style also allows championing of evidence based and historically annotated, scientifically, rationally, and ethically sound arguments and decisions to be made. Concerns on distributive and social justice are at the heart of political decisions.

A transformational leadership would gather public opinion in favour of promoting collective well-being and not succumb to narrow and short-term political gains. It would allow champions at different cadres of policy, social advocacy, science and economics to lead the way than become a unilateral decision-making force.

Opportunity to address adverse social determinants of health. COVID-19 has thrown open numerous challenges decision makers would encounter around unaddressed public health issues namely sanitation, drinking water access, access to services, safe and minimum housing and education opportunities. The current health crisis is also an opportunity to address these issues. In countries and communities where these issues remain marginalized by local decision makers and actors, COVID-19 has created even more severe rifts and fissures that are hard to be filled. In addressing this pandemic there is a silver lining to find ways to address disparities that the first section of our essay talks about.

Transforming racial, gender, and class related disparities into success stories of community mobilization and awareness building would be critical. For example, the early COVID-19 days politics of masks where Asian origin travelers wore masks as though trying to protect us all from the spread that was coming from them.

How COVID-19 associated social isolation and lock down impacts the most vulnerable and how it impacts services and functioning for those who are most vulnerable needs to shift into the focus of attention as well. Discussion in the UK around the disproportionate burden of deaths amongst general population as well as frontline workers being those from ethnic minorities and people of color is a stark reality. As a psychologist who lives and works in Africa, let alone treatment and management problems, there are not enough masks or other personal protective equipment (PPE) available.

A rapid adapted social policy response towards multisectoral collaboration and timely Information flow from key political leadership are critical to the development of a well-buffed up response. How rapidly social policies and governance mechanisms are tweaked to respond to the pandemic is critical.

One of the arguments we are making is that when an optimal social response is made which tries to create a social space, prioritize the most marginalized and offer a space for people to utilize their capabilities to best act to prevent severe socioeconomic debilities. The consistency with which public health messages are communicated and complied by from the highest to lowest levels of governmentality and civil society is critical. In that regard, being scared and nervous about the corona virus, smoking or taking elevators avoiding the challenge of extra physical strain of using stairs in the airport or public places, is interesting. In several presidential press briefings at global level we can notice the discordance between the divisive and narrow messages of highest-ranking officials of the country and what the science or social policy needs, given the morbidity and mortality around this pandemic.

Key information and responses from leadership within the US, Brazil, and India have been worrisome. The hiatus between political responsibility and the need to provide socio-economic measures and the need to prioritize medical and behavioral interventions for the more vulnerable has been noticeable in some of these countries where the wrath and the might of this pandemic has not been fully understood. 

Acknowledging individual freedom while prioritizing social responsibility. There is also a political and ethical stance we have in relation to responding to this pandemic. If countries and political regimes can action a response without curbing and violating human rights and dignity, strengthening their own ability to communicate well and in time-limited manner, using science and not propaganda, not only can we tackle the virus, also health, racial and social disparities that wreak havoc no less than any pandemic on any single day.

We need a polis and civility that have the ability to stir human and collective capability in a unified and proactive manner. Individuals who are not subjects of biases of all sorts but who choose to act and think rationally and responsibly, both consistently to make an impact. A polis that doesn’t suppress the voices of its people but allows opportunity to relay their concerns and become a participant in active public action.

We also know that despite the grave mortality and pain this pandemic has caused, there is a silver lining around the relief to the environment through reduction of invasive human activity footprint. Animals and ecosystems around the globe must feel lighter, freer, and more alive with all of us tucked inside. This relief would not have been possible without a pandemic of this scale. There are many issues that would beg the question of collective might and responsibility such as how many people live and die in abject poverty without any pandemic, how many people die of suicides and mental ill health, how many people in the world never have access to clean water, sanitation or even basic medical services. We have to return to these questions as we tackle COVID-19.

Destigmatization. Destigmatizing people is another issue we want to tackle head on in the context of COVID-19. It is not people of Chinese origin (or all those who “look Chinese” in the unfortunate ignorant world we inhabit), people who are living in less sanitized environments or those who are involved in serving patients, from whom we need to maintain a distance. It is also critical to address the full import of intersectional stigma. In some parts of the world, especially in India, where nurses and doctors were beaten up and actively ostracized due to their involvement with COVID-19 patient care. In Wuhan by contrast, severe police atrocities accompanied such as punitively locking affected families from coming out of their homes, or physically and roughly removing family members from COVID-19 patients was seen. In many parts of Kenya, a day or two after the lockdown severe police atrocities were reported by people who were returning from work or caught unawares about the lockdown.

We have to also work towards providing services and looking after people with multi-morbidities such as those with HIV, disability, elderly, and those in challenging situations of life such as poor women about to deliver babies. Stigma can easily be attributed to those who do not live in sanitary conditions, where as in reality the people who may have spread the virus inadvertently were global travelers and clearly better resourced people. In this sense this virus is a greater leveler. It will affect good and bad, rich and poor, high and low cadre equally. We know that stigma mitigation needs strong institutional responses. We also know that those in power and in public offices can show sensitivity and awareness in tackling these stereotypes and biases we uphold without cross-checking facts or reality. In addition, we need people to be aware of their unconscious biases that trigger further injustice and disparity. The pandemic is offering us an opportunity to think through this and make fundamental transformational changes—not just to respond better during the next pandemic but also to improve general societal grievances.

What facilitates human behavior in response to environmental change are institutions and the informal and formal rules, values, and norms a society puts in place to regulated interactions among people and in response to changing environments. In times of public health emergencies, institutions need to be in place, which keep data and information flowing but at the same time constrain certain freedoms and change business as usual. So that an early and rapid collective response is possible, by means of which the spread of an infectious disease can be slowed and contained. People’s fears and prejudices, largely due to a lack of knowledge, need to be taken serious and taken away by knowledge dissemination on how the virus spreads and how its spread can be prevented or slowed. Fears of loosing freedoms are also caused by mistrust in a political leadership which has allowed social inequalities to emerge. Regaining trust in political institutions and leaders is an enormous societal task which requires transparency, communication and shared rights and responsibilities in society. New forms of democracy must be actively created which are beyond either the market or the state.

Together:

With COVID-19 the world has hopefully woken up and noticed how much local and global institutional structures, legal and ethical instruments, checks and balances have been purposefully weakened or made ineffective and economic, political and social imbalances and inequalities have been created. Robust governance must find new paths from treading the thin line between individual freedom and social change towards newly transformed societies, preparing themselves for global collective action.

COVID-19 is a stark reminder that the world around us has drastically changed. In the Anthropocene we need to think and act differently. Our thinking needs to be more ecocentric and less anthropocentric. Our behaviors need to be more social and less ego-centric. We need to overcome our fears of others and avoid looking for simple causes for a very complex world in which we now live, because if we do not think and act together, we all lose. We now know how positive and powerful individual behavioral change can be, even it has involuntarily been imposed on us. The planet is taking a breath from us not traveling around the world to the next business meeting, for example.

At this time our plea may sound confusing but it is critical to begin this new interconnected thinking and to give voice to science, rights based advocates, civil society actors and find ways of addressing needs of the most vulnerable for whom this pandemic is not only about their health but also their economic survival.

Franz Gatzweiler and Manasi Kumar
Xiamen and Nairobi

On The Nature of Cities

Reference

Duit, A and Galaz, V 2008. Governance and Complexity—Emerging Issues for Governance Theory, Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions21(3): 311–335

Manasi Kumar

about the writer
Manasi Kumar

Manasi Kumar is with the Institute of Excellence in Global Health Equity in New York University Grossman School of Medicine, US. She is an Affiliate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Nairobi Kenya.

THIRD LANDSCAPE, Part 1: For the Design of an Amazon Forest City

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Urban development in the Amazon region could be reframed by associating two different systems of thought and practices: natural indigenous and technology capital production. Together—what I call a Third Landscape—they could meld “foreign” and “local” technologies within the relevance of local context.

1 Proposition

The logic of urban growth in the Brazilian Amazon could be changed if we succeeded in bringing together two different systems of thought and practices: that of the natural and indigenous, to that of technology and capital production. Together, they could guarantee the continued economic and environmental resilience of the region and pave the way to interesting hybrid solutions—what I have called a Third Landscape, where “foreign” and “local” technologies are employed within the relevance of local context. The Amazon could become a laboratory for design exploration, to establish a different logic for spatial (and maybe political) organization, where there is a productive encounter between natural and urban environments.

I have prepared a three-part article to expand on this idea. This one, where I lay out the proposition and try to justify it, a second one where through a series of images and short texts I interpret some of the ideas of what I have called a Circular Culture, that will serve as base for the understanding of an “indigenous imaginary”, and the last one where I make design propositions to exemplify what a Forest City could be.

2 Intro: extensive urbanization

In 1970, Henri Lefebvre posed the idea that the “total urbanization of society” was an inevitable process, which would demand new interpretive and perceptual approaches.[i] Indeed, not even fifty years later we are experiencing fast growing rates of urbanization, with more than half of the world’s population already living in urban centers. In many ways, it is not far different in the Brazilian Amazon. As consumption levels in our modern cities demand supplies from far-away sources, the Amazon region has been systematically integrated into the logic of urban growth with pressing global demand for its natural resources. Today, it is interconnected with Brazilian cities like São Paulo and Brasilia, as much as it is with other global cities like Tokyo, Montreal or Beijing. “Urbanization” has, in fact, arrived in the Amazon.

Within the logic of the extraction that regulates Amazonian economy, major deforestation factors such as farming, mining, largescale infrastructure, and logging are all supported by a network of towns and cities throughout the region. As Eduardo Brondizio points out in his  article (https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2016/02/02/the-elephant-in-the-room-amazonian-cities-deserve-more-attention-in-climate-change-and-sustainability-discussions/), the Amazon urban net has grown quickly. There are more than three hundred cities with populations over twenty-five thousand people and an equal number of smaller cities in the Brazilian Amazon, in addition to scores of indigenous and small riverine traditional settlements. Today, the resiliency of the Amazonian biomes is very much intertwined with this web. As Thomas Lovejoy, “the Godfather of Biodiversity”, says: “It’s not simply about what happens in the forests; it’s also about what happens in cities. The quality of life in Amazon cities is a very important part of reaching the ideal solution.”[ii] (https://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/conte-algo-que-nao-sei/thomas-lovejoy-biologo-ambientalista-preciso-criar-cidades-sustentaveis-na-amazonia-21829192)

Urban web in the Brazilian Amazon. Source: IBGE 2010. Image: Axelle Dechelette and Anna Dietzsch

However, despite the rich cultural and natural environments and the predominance of a decentralized pattern of small urban nuclei, urban settlements in the Amazon follow models that are totally foreign to their contexts, mirroring urban centers of the Brazilian Southeast, the US and Europe. There is widespread disregard for the forest and the traditional knowledge that comes with it. As Bertha Becker pointed out in 2013, “In this regional economy commanded from outside, indigenous culture and knowledge have mostly been dissociated from great transformation movements.”[iii]

But does it have to be this way?

No. But if we want to work within the realm of an ecological urbanism, we will have to acknowledge the strong interdependency between natural and urban environments. We will need to transition from a perpetual response to emergency, to a long-term vision that nevertheless is not standardized, but specific, interdependent and aligned with new technologies that are relevant to local context 

The (asphalted) grid stamped into the forest. City of Souré. Source: Google Maps
Armed conflict between the Guarani-Caiowá and farmers in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Photo: Spensy Pimentel

3 Another Imaginary

One point of departure may be to look at the societies of the indigenous populations we have ignored in our rush to “progress”. If their paradigms are different from ours, maybe their solutions could enlighten us. But for that to happen we would have to acknowledge the possibility that modern society is not the only viable or credible social system and that economic progress and reliance on monetization are not “fundamental truths”.

Charles Taylor, in his book “Modern Social Imaginaries” coins the term “social imaginary” to explain the “intrinsic grasp” of our social environment and possibilities, pointing to the existence of a “moral order” that underlies our political and economic structures. In other words, our modern order is the one we may take for granted, or believe in, but it is not by any means the only possibility. Innumerous traditional communities, as well as disenfranchised ones, although imbedded in the reality of global economy, have found ways to live within different sets of values all over the world. Different imaginaries, or different “political imaginaries”, as Gibson-Graham have called them, are not fantasies or naïve discourse, but rather forms of alternative economic organizations that currently exist—“politics of possibilities” [iv] that locally define their own internal rules.

Castells pointed out in the 90s, that as the internet made the globalization of the production economy possible, it also created a platform for the connection of local voices.[v] Grounded in the reality of local possibilities and constraints, these voices can guide us in the conversation of what regional and global design could be. I have talked about this in another article at TNOC.

“The embrace of local power doesn’t have to mean parochialism, withdrawal, or intolerance, only a coherent foundation from which to navigate the larger world. From the wild coalitions of the global justice movement to the cowboys and environmentalists sitting down together there is an ease with difference that doesn’t need to be eliminated, a sense that . . . you can have an identity embedded in local circumstances and a role in the global dialogue. And that this dialogue exists in service of the local.” [vi]

As the deforestation of the Amazon poses a huge threat to our global environmental balance, indigenous populations have been able to sustain environmental preservation more efficiently than in other parts of the world. In Brazil, it is estimated that deforestation in indigenous areas can be substantially s smaller than in other non-indigenous lands, while in the world, indigenous land and communities are responsible for absorbing 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.  It is clear that indigenous cultural resilience and practices are tightly linked to the environmental resilience of their habitats.

In Brazilian Indigenous Territories, deforestation can be eleven times smaller than in other areas. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan

My proposition is that we should examine traditional indigenous practices to inform our understanding of the urbanization occurring in the Amazon and explore the idea of a “hybrid urbanization” that is structured on alternative solutions arising from the encounter of two imaginaries—that of our modern world and that of the indigenous knowledge. I believe we could reframe the discussion of urban development in the Amazon region by associating two different systems of thought and practices: the natural and indigenous, to that of technology and capital production.

Together, they could guarantee the continued economic and environmental resilience of the region. This would pave the way to interesting hybrid solutions—what I have called a Third Landscape, where “foreign” and “local” technologies are employed within the relevance of local context.  The Amazon has the potential to become a laboratory for design exploration, to establish a different logic for spatial (and maybe political) organization, where there is a productive encounter between natural and urban environments.

The city of Altamira, Pará, Brazil. Photo: Marcelo Salazar (ISA)

4 The man-made forest

Three thousand years before Europeans arrived in Brazil, Brazilian Indians lived in a web of spread-out civilizations that covered the country’s surface. Opposing the view of “naïf civilizations”, or “pre-civilizations”, several studies show us today that they were organized in quite intricate and elaborate ways. Satellite imagery has revealed the occupation of the Amazonian Upper Xingu area by a system of gardens villages that could be compared to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities[vii]. These “polities” were responsible for the domestication of the forest: vast areas that we today assume are “pristine natural forests” were really planted and managed landscapes, indicating a high degree of “manufacturing” and yet great balance in the coexistence of man and forest.[viii]

Map showing ADEs found locations and predicted sites. In: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2013.2475

Soil samples from the Amazon Basin tell the story of Pre-Columbian, anthropogenic activity through the analysis of the Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs). The samples that have been classified as such are rich in macro- and micro-nutrients, in stark contrast to most of the Amazon soil, that is naturally acidic and rich in minerals that are toxic to plants at high concentrations. Layered above the more acid soils, ADEs contain remnants of burnt biomass, are rich in essential minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, and zinc and maintain a higher pH that is more forgiving to cultivation. These samples have persisted for centuries because of “fire derived black carbon”, and they have been found in the savannas, rainforests, and various blends of the two across the Amazon Basin. Indigenous cultures have apparently shaped the entire landscape through millennia of coexistence with the environment.[ix]

ADE and acidic soil samples. Image by Carbon-terra.eu. In: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/22/black-magic-secrets-amazonian-fertility/

As a rule of thumb, the Amazonian forest stands on a thin layer of nutritious soil, regulated by a fragile balance of natural processes that allow the system to survive interdependently. By ignoring the complexity of its functioning as a sophisticated superimposition of specific elements and conditions, modern agriculture cannot reproduce the fertility of the original soil in the long term, as many collapsed attempts have shown us.

The occurrence of Mycorrhizal (roots and funghi link) speeds up the decomposition of the large amount of debris the forest produces, feeding the poor Amazonian soil with organic material. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan.
The suspension of volatile organic compounds (“forest perfumes”) in the high pressure zone created by the forest’s perspiration, speed up the cycle of clouds and rain precipitation. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan.

The discourse of pushing the “integration” of the Amazon into the economic logic of the country, and ultimately global capital, will be a failed experiment in the long run. Cities and rural settlements that were implemented in the region since the seventies, along a web of highways and throughways constructed by the military regime, are today the focus of the worst environmental disasters, pushing deforestation and fires to dangerous levels. The political inclination of the current federal government to further advance with this strategy adds a level of urgency to the Amazonian issue that we have not seen since the 60’s, when its indigenous population was considered “extinguished”.

In contrast, “By creating gradients of forests that mutually activated each other – the riparian buffer, the orchard, the managed forest and the gardens –these [indigenous] societies have avoided soil deterioration and could [can]therefore develop complex social relations and durable places of habitation.“[x]

Reconstruction of a section through a pre-Colombian Indian settlement. Information collected from authors: Heckenberger, Neves, Clement and Nevis. Image by Andrea Margit.

These spatial arrangements are imbedded in a social imaginary that is different than ours and that, in admittedly oversimplified ways, will be here described by the pinpoint of four characteristics: fluidity, kinship, cultural territory and subsistence. [xi] In this imaginary, patterns of flexibility, cohesion between man and nature and a non-hierarchical connection between socio-economic practices, natural cycles, and cultural traits form a cohesive system that I have called Circular Culture:

Fluidity: In Latin American indigenous mythology, nature and humans are bound by a “common spirit”. Our bodies and forms are transitional, pertaining to a world that is “all people”. The Brazilian anthropologist Viveiros de Castro borrowed from German philosophy to coin the term Amerindian Perspectivism[xii] to explain this way of seeing things. As he points out, in this world relations are formed between subjects with different perspectives, be it between humans, or between humans and non-humans. There is no “subdued object” and the separation between nature and human (Foster’s metabolic rift) diminishes.

Co-related notions extend to ideas of fluid time and fluid space, where boundaries are related to natural elements and events, rather than to abstract concepts of time or property. Acknowledging their importance in the structural organization of things, rivers acquire the status of deities, being the most important elements of continuity, both as means of transportation, as well as means of subsistence;

Rivers as the elements of symbolic and physical continuity. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Clara Morgenroth.

Kinship: Since the Enlightenment, when theories of natural rights[xiii] started to shape modern man as owner of his own, individual rights, we have valued individuality above community, disassociating both as opposing values. In Indigenous social organization, individuals are intertwined with the idealization of the group and its traditions. In some communities the symbiosis between the two is such, that political forces are horizontalized and apparently “non-hierarchical”, relying on an organic understanding of practices.[xiv]

As pointed out by Pierre Clasters in his book Society Against the State, Brazilian Indigenous societies rely on a political structure with no coercion, where the figure of the leader is important and respected but has no freedom to decide for the group. In periods of peace, leaders act as mediators, peacemakers and providers, and are constantly put in check by the group. “Greed and power are incompatible; to be a chief it is necessary to be generous.”[xv]

The Araweté people. Photo: Viveiros de Castro.

Cultural Territory: Without prescriptive boundaries (therefore fluid), the indigenous territory is defined by historical occupation, use and the capacity of those who occupy (and define) it to defend its natural resources. Boundaries are porous and with strong interdependence between man and land. In both the symbolic and physical worlds, culture and territory are interrelated in defining each other.

Subsistance: In a social logic that doesn’t aim for accumulation, concepts of modern capitalism are subverted, as individual supremacy, objectification of relationships and commodification of values don’t prevail. The construction and management of inhabited landscapes and “cities” will also obviously differ from ours.

In Circular Cultures, man, divine and nature coexist in a non-axial relationship. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan

Turning to Indigenous communities to understand the forest and how we should relate to it as we deal with different degrees of urbanization and extraction patterns, will allow us to question the socio-political parameters that are now threatening the natural balance of the whole Amazonian system, as it could guide us to a more holistic approach where natural, cultural, and economic realities intersect as guides, much in tune to what Sir Patrick Geddes practiced more than a hundred years ago, and trends of “regionalism thinking” are currently practicing too.

Indigenous community protesting in Brasilia, Brazil. Photo: Valter Campanato, Agencia Brasil

It is relevant to notice that indigenous communities are very much imbedded and active in the Brazilian political life, with strong connections to a global web of institutions and governments. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution guaranteed the preservation of their livelihood and laid the framework for the demarcation of Indigenous Territories, which today occupy 13% of Brazil’s total area, if we only account for those already legally established. Ninety percent of these lands are in the Amazonian biomes and together are a real safeguard for the natural environment. Supporting them in deciding how their territories should be managed and how their “cities” could be shaped, will engender design propositions that could be applied beyond the indigenous territories and into the growing net of small and medium-sized cities that populate the different biomes of the Forest.

Anna Dietzsch
New York and São Paulo

On The Nature of Cities

Notes:

Pict 13 – Indigenous community protesting in Brasilia, Brazil. Photo by Valter Campanato, Agencia Brasil

[i] Lefebvre, H. (1970). La révolution urbaine (Vol. 216). Paris: Gallimard.

[ii] Thomas Lovejoy

[iii] Bertha

[iv] Gibson-Graham –Postcapitalist Politics, University of Minnesota Press, 2006

[v] Castells, Manuel – The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell Publishers, 1996

[vi] Solnit, Rebecca – A Hope in the Dark, Nation Books, 2004

[vii] E. Howard Garden City

[viii] Michael Hekenberger

[ix] Arroyo-Kalin, M., E.G. Neves & W.I. Woods. 2008.

[x] Margit, Andrea – Amazon Inaginaries, Masters’ Thesis for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2017

[xi] Andrea Margit

[xii] Viveiros de Castro

[xiii] Thomas Aquina and Locke, etc.

[xiv] Viveiros de Castro – Araweté

[xv] Pierre Clasters

We Had Forgotten That We Are Ecological Beings

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Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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If farmers can listen to nature, can the office workers, educators, and politicians do so too? In these difficult circumstances, it seems many of us are already practicing.
It’s afternoon in the middle of the work-week, and our local park is filled with people as if it were a holiday. There are little kids wildly chasing pigeons, and slightly bigger kids carefully stalking beady-eyed herons. There are teenagers racing on foot along the pond, and families sitting on rocks taking portraits. Watching from the sidelines, several calm-looking old men are drinking beer. Typical denizens of the park on most weekday afternoons, the old men seem unfazed by the extra commotion.

Of course, all stay a distance from each other.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic.

A mother and her children in Sumiyoshi Park, Osaka, Japan. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon (CC BY-SA)

During a time when our familiar ritual visits to restaurants, shopping malls, sporting events, and office cubicles are no longer a thing, people in our old neighborhood on the edge of Osaka seem to be taking leave of their home offices early, heading out into the nature of cities to play with their families and the birds.

It’s not terribly unique to this neighborhood of course. The choice to spend more time in nature is a phenomenon taking place in nearly every industrialized country where the economic and social shutdown is occurring, subject to varying logistical and governmental constraints.

When I talk of such news to friends in rural Japan—a group highly saturated with farmers and artists, mind you—most aren’t surprised. What is happening, they say, is that humans are remembering now, something that we had forgotten during our “pre-corona” days, sitting in traffic or at desks in climate-controlled cubicles.

We had forgotten that we are “ecological beings”.

As I watch the increasing number of people standing under trees, next to streams, or sitting on rocks watching herons, I can’t help but think that many of us are using this time to connect with a part of ourselves that we had been neglecting for a long time.

“Everyone has the ability to know nature, to listen to nature, and to follow nature.” This is a common refrain from Japanese natural farmer and author Kawaguchi Yoshikazu. “Listening to nature” is the basis of everything that happens at his farm. As a result, he and thousands of other like-minded farmers in both rural and urban areas across Japan accept and embrace weeds, bugs, and other parts of the natural ecosystem to degrees that would be unthinkable to most of us. For them however, it works.

If farmers can learn such ways from nature, what about the rest of us—can office workers, educators, and politicians listen and find answers in similar ways?

Some psychologists claim that all humans are gifted with “ecological perception” and that our ecological crisis has its roots in ignoring this gift. Perceptual psychologist Laura Sewall says this perception can be regained simply by practicing, for “if one chooses to listen, the landscape speaks.”

In these difficult circumstances, whether we are aware of it or not, it seems many of us are already practicing.

If we listened in this time of slowness, a time where bird songs triumph in place of what used to be morning rush hour, might we learn how to live and work more sustainably once this pandemic is over? If legislators, activists, and business leaders listened to the winds, as the skies turn deep blue and the bellows of smog-generation subside, would they hear the story of a world where we feed, house, and care for all living beings?

Or, if sitting in the park with our children and the birds is important now, will it suddenly become unimportant when we all go back to the office, and the skies are brown again, and the cars have out-shouted the birds, and things are back to ‘normal’?

It seems for too long, we’ve called this “normal”.

The fact is, we knew a long time ago how to accomplish social and environmental well-being. There exists today, no technological barrier to a world where both humans and our environment are healthy and thriving. There is no functional barrier to a world where the song of birds in Manhattan is louder than the rush of cars. There is no economic barrier to a world where the air in Beijing or Los Angeles or Oakland is clear and safe to breathe. At the root of these issues, there are only social barriers—decisions that you and I and our leaders make each day about what is important in our lives, and what we put our energies toward.

This might feel an overly simple, far-away thought in light of the heavy, tangible, social, economic, and political barriers we encounter each day.

But these barriers can only exist in a society whose social, economic, and political structures rest on foundations of abuse and extraction in the first place, structures which assume nature as a resource rather than a living, breathing, co-habitant with which our success as a species is inextricably intertwined.

Within our current framework, a majority have undoubtedly lost far more than others. All of us however—from corporate CEO to starvation wage worker—have equally lost a fundamental piece of what it means to be human on this Earth.

Now, at a time when the phrases “shelter in place” and “social distancing” have come into the public lexicon; when a chorus of fear and worry drones and glows from every smartphone, tablet and television; and we’re sitting in a park with kids and families and the old men and the birds, somehow, we feel a puzzling comfort we can’t remember feeling in this life.

Early cherry blossoms in Sumiyoshi Koen, Osaka, Japan. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon (CC BY-SA)

No one knows what the damage to human life will be when Covid subsides. Through all the hardship we are now encountering, one hopes, at least, that this pandemic will have slowed us down just enough to help us listen deeply, to care more, and perhaps to ask ourselves what, exactly, we are working in service to anyway.

Is it to technology, industry, progress, and gross domestic product? Or is it to pigeons and herons in the park, to blue skies, to our neighbors, and to living fully and truthfully this precious life?

With this time in relative isolation—a time during which I hope we can all find ways to reach nature—at least we have a chance to practice listening.

With luck, we might even figure out a few answers from what we hear.

Patrick Lydon
Osaka

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of YES! Magazine.

On The Nature of Cities

Why Defunding the Police is an Issue of Democracy and Public Space

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As the virus and the revolution continue to unfold in real time, all with the threat of climate change looming, we must ask ourselves who and what we will prioritize. Will we continue to feed the systems that claim to keep us safe, while in reality upholding white supremacy at the cost of Black lives? Or will we invest in our community resources in the places where it counts the most?
In the first five months of 2020, we have seen enough change, chaos, and uncertainty to last a lifetime. The year began with a world on quite literally on fire, most notably in Australia. The news cycle was quickly upended when the novel coronavirus swept the globe. Now, police violence has led to the beginnings of a revolution in the streets. Watching all this unfold while still under “shelter-in-place” has shifted our relationships to nature and the civic realm, and reaffirmed the need for public space that is accessible and safe for all.

Despite some of the rhetoric circulating, we know that COVID-19 is not a great equalizer that is blind to color and privilege. It is true that this pandemic is personally impacting every individual in a way that few events in history have, and that the COVID-19 infectious droplets cannot themselves discriminate based on race or class. But just as “natural” disasters are a result of both social and environmental factors, the virus itself is only one actor in the current pandemic. Our leaders, police, and healthcare systems are all co-producers of this crisis and help dictate who is impacted. Environmental justice literature and activism have taught us that the effects of climate change disproportionately burden the already vulnerable, and COVID-19 is no different. We are seeing increasing evidence of disturbingly high death rates in poor Black communities in the United States, while the wealthy can escape to their private islands to wait out the pandemic in luxury.

This means that open spaces in urban areas are needed now more than ever. Those of us with the privilege to have a public park within walking distance have likely seen a change in how the space is used and what it means to us. A few of my colleagues and I have been journaling about our experiences in New York City during shelter-in-place, and all of us have found new meaning in our neighborhood walks and park visits. Beyond providing crucial ecosystem services, parks allow for physical fitness and recreation, and have proven mental health benefits. As the weather warms, parks and open spaces are becoming even more of a necessity, providing places to visit with friends while maintaining safe social distance.

But we also know that access to and safety within public space is an issue of racial equity that has been heightened since the pandemic. Activists have long been aware of the general lack of parks and public space access in lower income communities of color. It is no surprise that these few existing parks are seeing increased crowds on nice days, nor is it surprising that we are seeing disparate enforcement of social distancing. Images of police happily handing out masks in crowds of white people contrast sharply with the violent, stop-and-frisk style policing in Black neighborhoods. This inequitable policing, along with the surge in the murders of Black bodies, reminds us that there are multiple pandemics going on right now, all of which are disproportionately impacting the Black community.

Photo: Laura Landau

The recent public murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery—the latter of which has been charged as a hate crime—along with the racist incident against Christian Cooper in New York’s Central Park (which could have easily also ended in police violence), are all direct results of the racist police system embedded in the origins of our country. Indeed, the case of Arbery arguably fits the definition of a “lynching,” an informal public execution over an alleged offense without legal trial. In addition, all of these incidents took place in public spaces that belong to the victims just as much as they belong to anyone else. These are just a few of the recent examples of a much more pervasive and systemic problem, a problem that protesters on the streets demand be finally solved.

These protests have highlighted another important use of public space: the right to assemble. Following Trump’s election, New Yorkers for Parks documented the hundreds of thousands of people who came out to protest in NYC public spaces in the year 2017. The streets, parks, and plazas served a crucial role as gathering points for demonstration. Now, many of those same spaces are once again being activated. In my own Brooklyn neighborhood, I’ve joined and witnessed crowds filling major streets like Eastern Parkway, and congregating at Barclay’s Center and Grand Army Plaza. I am reminded of the many times I have gathered with my community in those spaces to pray, to celebrate, to mourn, and to speak out. I am reminded that the ability to take up space in public is a human right that is protected for white and privileged citizens but not others.

In the past few days, Mayor Bill deBlasio has condemned the “violence” of protesters against inanimate objects while defending the police for driving an SUV into a crowd of people, threatening human lives (he only softened his stance after considerable blowback). Recent budget cuts to crucial city agencies—including the Parks Department have affirmed deBlasio’s priorities. He thinks that more police will equal more safety. But we know that it is the eyes on the street of our community members that keep us safe, not the police. Luckily, some of our leaders agree, and are pushing back against deBlasio’s budget proposal. In an email to his constituents on 31 May 2020, New York City Council Member Brad Lander called for a de-escalation of the NYPD:

“At the city level, cuts to the NYPD’s budget are necessary. As the city faces a massive deficit, the mayor proposed a budget that would put a hiring freeze on teachers, counselors, youth workers, parks workers … but not police officers. If we can’t afford to hire more teachers, then we cannot afford to hire more cops.”
—New York City Council Member Brad Lander

Lander also highlighted the work of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) in leading a campaign for budget justice (#NYCBudgetJustice). As it stands, for every dollar toward the NYPD, crucial agencies and services are getting pennies (see image). The campaign calls for cuts to the nearly $6 billion NYPD budget, and for funds to be redirected towards social services that work to combat the impacts of COVID-19, particularly in the Black, Latinx, and other communities of color that have been hit the hardest. Imagine the impact $6 billion could have on our communities if it instead went toward public health, fair and affordable housing, community programing, and parks.

As the virus and the revolution continue to unfold in real time, all with the threat of climate change looming, we must ask ourselves who and what we will prioritize. Will we continue to feed the systems that claim to keep us safe, while in reality upholding white supremacy at the cost of Black lives? Or will we invest in our community resources in the places where it counts the most? We have entered a moment of sustained uncertainty, and many are feeling the hopelessness that comes from not knowing what will come next. Instead of giving into despair, let’s address the things we can control, starting with starting with reallocating money away from police departments and toward the services and public spaces that foster community building.

Audre Lorde reminds us that “Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.” As researchers and practitioners who are passionate about sustainable and just cities, this is our fight.

Laura Landau
New York

On The Nature of Cities