Why We Need Design Guidelines for Urban Non-Humans

4 October 2015Essay, Place & Design, Science & ToolsBiophilia, Design, Ecocities, Livability, What is urban nature?Paul Downton

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Earlier this year I had the good fortune to be invited to speak at a remarkable ‘Global Conference’ in Chantilly, France. The title of the session I was to contribute to was translated into English as ‘An urbanism built on a priority for fauna and flora’. This, it seems, was a slight mistranslation of ‘Un urbanisme construit sur une préséance du vivant’ but it suggested an emphasis in design and planning that struck me as being just what is needed if we are to have any hope of rolling back the massive damage that urbanisation has inflicted on the biosphere over the last few hundred years.

It fitted well with my contention of the last ten years or so, documented sketchily in my ‘Ecopolis’ book and mentioned in my first TNOC blog that the creation of ecological cities requires the development of Design Guidelines for Non-Human Species. In that blog my example was to suggest that an urban fractal or neighbourhood should be able to provide sufficient viable habitat that it can support at least one key indicator species of fauna and a majority of the species of birds indigenous to the place.

This blog further explores why we need these kinds of design guidelines, and at the bottom, makes some specific suggestions.

Beyond the selfie

Cities are quintessentially human constructions, so it’s hardly surprising that reasons given for having ‘more nature in cities’ are almost invariably anthropocentric (think ‘nature-deficit disorder’ or biophilia). These reasons are typically to do with improving the quality of life for people, or even just their real estate values, but the bottom line for promoting urban nature is more profound; it is about human survival—without healthy natural environments our species cannot survive and cities make or break the natural environment. If cities fail to embrace nature in a demonstrably positive and sustaining way there can be little hope for the environment outside the city walls. Our reasons for valuing nature in cities needs to move beyond the ‘selfie’ view that puts a bit of greenery in the frame of urban portraiture and beyond the very reasonable proposition that integrating nature in our cities is good for livability, resilience, sustainability and human life generally. We need to simply accept that nature has needs of its own, and those needs may or may not be of benefit to human strands in the web of life.

This partly parallels ways of seeing the world found in a number of cultural forms, like Buddhism and Animism; it is close to the Daoist tradition in its acceptance of the natural world as ‘a self-generating, complex arrangement of elements that are continuously changing and interacting’ in which humans are a crucial component but one that should ‘follow the flow of nature’s rhythms’. It is specifically not about an enchanted view of nature and it is not about the worship of nature, not least because we are ultimately part of nature and any degree of self-reverence is dangerous.

No, it’s simply accepting that for natural systems to function certain requirements have to be met and understanding that conditions and pre-conditions for the successful operation of biological processes are set by the nature of the systems and not by the predilections of the human animal. Where human activities affect those systems there are identifiable areas of contact and interaction where we need clear indications as to how to allow or support natural system (ecosystem) function.

Responsive it may be, but Nature does not negotiate

Nature is fractal. Each part of it is a microcosm of the larger whole. An urbanism that gave priority to the needs of nature and the requirements of non-human species would itself need to be fractal and support and nurture the essential functions of natural systems. To some degree it would need to be codified, just as we codify the expectations we have of our artificial human habitat, and that means establishing appropriate design guidelines, rules and regulations. If this agenda is to be taken seriously (and why shouldn’t it?), every city and town on Earth will need to develop such guidelines—to be acted upon as a result of both sensible persuasion (through the political process) and as a response to non-negotiable demands (of ecological necessity). Nature may be astonishingly responsive and receptive, but it does not negotiate.

01 To Life! — Life-affirming graffiti in Adelaide, South Australia. Image: Paul Downton

The rewards for human society of maintaining natural systems, apart from giving it additional capacity for long-term survival, includes the promise of a bold new urbanism, the aesthetics of which transcend the architectural fashions of the day and possess the gorgeous fractal messiness of nature—that messiness which confuses eyes and sensibilities trained by years of seeing orthogonal space and threatens minds crated up in cubicles, fed from cartons and boxed in by built environments. A radical urbanism, perhaps like that imagined by Street Farm over four decades ago as ‘alive rather than inert’, in which ‘a profusion of sprouting, breathing, photosynthesising, living things surround and entwine human dwellings’ (p.102 Stephen E Hunt in ‘The Revolutionary Urbanism of Street Farm’, Tangent Books, 2014).

03 Christie Walk — ‘Alive rather than inert’, Christie Walk in Adelaide, South Australia is a downtown ecocity development in which ‘a profusion of sprouting, breathing, photosynthesising, living things surround and entwine human dwellings’. Image: Paul Downton

Notwithstanding the variants of ‘the ecocity idea’ that jostle for attention in the modern designer’s conceptual mind-scape, it is a fundamental tenet of ecological urbanism that urban areas and their associated infrastructure must shrink and relinquish their hold on the landscape to reverse habitat loss and fragmentation. An urbanism that prioritised fauna and flora would give over far less of the planet’s surface to cities and their paraphernalia. It would minimize the extent of roads and all the other concrete, tarmac and steel spaghetti of dead infrastructure in favour of space for the myriad creatures and vegetation that weave the living tapestry of the planet. An intensely ecological urbanism would distill the human presence into socially, culturally and politically rich, dynamic and diverse cities and towns; it would increase the constraints on how human society housed itself, but enrich and expand the world in which that society might thrive.

Birds, flowers, dirt and fire

There are a number of guidelines in place in cities around the world and numerous efforts to embrace nature in the planning and design of built environments, some of which are mentioned below. But my proposition is that such guidelines should be a requirement for every town, city and region.

According to Andre Mader in his TNOC blog Peregrine Falcons have taken up residence in the Sagrada Familia. They love tall buildings and are the poster children of urban wilding, understandably so, but the successful reintroduction of fauna and flora into the urban environment will result in a lot of activity being out of the sight and awareness of most citizens and away from vidcams and tourist hotspots. Because of how we view and use media, if a city were to make itself falcon-friendly, for instance, and it worked, the chances are high that just one falcon pair taking up residence would be celebrated ad nauseam and the exercise would be celebrated as a success even if no other birds became city-dwellers. There needs to be a clear vision of what aspiring to be a city for nature really means. It has to move way beyond the tokenism of popular media and into an understanding that real life takes place whether or not it has a Facebook page.

04 Peregrine Falcons have found sanctuary in Gaudi's Sagradia Familia in Barcelon — Peregrine Falcons have found sanctuary in Gaudi’s Sagradia Familia in Barcelona. Image: Paul Downton

Guidelines and regulation can be vital in protecting other species. Wind power is shaping up as a major source of energy and ecocities cannot reasonably be imagined or planned without it. The transition to an ecological society requires a move to renewable energy, but also requires that there be safeguards for natural systems in the process. Although far fewer birds are killed by wind turbines than are killed by flying into windows, the numbers can be minimised by not siting turbines in migration corridors. Accordingly, the American Bird Conservancy, which supports wind energy, has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect migratory birds from the negative impacts of wind energy, asking for regulations to safeguard wildlife and reward responsible wind energy development. Such initiatives need to be a typical part of regional planning.

Vancouver provides a good example of what design guidelines for non-human species might look like in its Bird Friendly Design Guidelines Explanatory Note. The American Bird Conservancy publishes an excellent guide to bird-friendly design. Gaining even a passing familiarity with this document makes it hard to see how any architect or urban planner could condone the large expanses of glass on building façades that are known to kill between 100 million and one billion birds a year in the US alone. According to The Expanded Environment these guidelines have been adopted, edited and rewritten by several municipalities around the US and Canada, one presumes Vancouver is one of them. The facts and figures and known solutions are well established, yet glass boxes continue to be built. If we are serious about evolving our environments to be other-species friendly we must raise our game—and architects have to avoid deadly aesthetic fripperies like mirrored glass.

05 Mirror glass in Vancouver — A murderous façade of mirror glass sheaths a downtown skyscraper; ironically, this building is located in Vancouver, a city with an excellent set of guidelines for supporting birdlife in the city. Image: Paul Downton

VicRoads, the transport agency of the state of Victoria in Australia, shows what design guidelines might look like when applied to road building with its Fauna Sensitive Road Design Guidelines (go to <https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au> and search for ‘fauna sensitive road design guidelines’, which will automatically download).

06 Wildlife bridge over highway in Queensland, Australia — Wildlife bridge over highway, Queensland, Australia. Image: Richard Regsiter

We might expect green walls and green roofs to feature prominently in a fauna-and-flora-friendly city, but if the design guidelines for non-human species were thorough, then the green roofs would have to be intensive, containing viable soil able to support micro-organisms and sequester carbon.

Wild flower meadows have been introduced in cities around the world and there are examples of ‘pieces of nature’ being encouraged as a direct intervention in existing urban fabrics. This requires an understanding of the appropriate conditions for these interventions. For example, to encourage wild flowers on the grasslands of Hampstead Heath, the City of London had to invert or remove existing soils made nutrient-rich by past agricultural practices.

A flower meadow has been created in the city of Melbourne. It’s not comprised of native vegetation but is, nevertheless, intended to increase biodiversity and represents a lower fire risk than native vegetation. Not all vegetation is created equal. In many parts of Australia people are encouraged to remove vegetation around houses in bushfire-prone areas although mown lawns are acceptable because they can help to reduce fire intensity. Planning for ‘wild’ green ‘open space’ may appear problematic in a landscape prone to wildfires, but if the totality of the urban/wild space system is an artificial construct in any case, it should be designed to incorporate fire management.

Aliens, domestication and buildings that create habitat

It can be difficult to pursue nativism in cities, but if Fred Pearce is right, it doesn’t matter too much whether the ecosystem that is brought into the urban system is ‘pure’ as long as it works. Allowing the inclusion of alien, i.e., non-indigenous, species in the mix makes the job of putting nature at the core of the city easier—though no less controversial to those who doubt the wisdom of embracing the wild as part of urban planning and design.

Creating built form that accommodates nature is not new; dovecotes, after all, have been around for centuries, although their purpose was not to provide bird habitat for its own sake, but to domesticate a source of food and fertiliser. The primary reason to accommodate fauna and flora in otherwise human environments has been to domesticate a species because it is useful for companionship, food, other products (e.g. dung) and services (e.g. guard duty).

08 Backyard hen — Non-human and well catered for as a productive member of the urban system of metropolitan Adelaide. Image: Paul Downton

Some building rating tools, such as the Australian ‘Green Star’ building rating system give, credit for increases in potential habitat. The credit is a small part of the total green building assessment but is significant for its inclusion. This rating system is an extant example of tools that measure aspects of the built environment which relate directly to the welfare of non-human species. As such, it may inform the development of appropriate design guidelines.

A brief trawl of the Internet indicates that most design education has yet to respond significantly to the challenges nature is confronted with in sharing the world with people. One small exception is a two week design program in Norway titled ‘Designing for non-human clients’ that asked “How would you create a design if your client was a native wetland plant species? What are its wants, needs and desires, and how does it connect to the humans which utilize its services?”.

Thinking like an earthworm: communicating species’ requirements and restoring creeks and meadows

Designers may thus think in terms of briefs being provided by non-human clients and legislators may think in terms of consulting with representatives of non-human species. This idea goes back decades. John Seed’s influential 1988 book ‘Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings’ put forward the concept for representatives of non-human beings to be given an opportunity to put their views in a general council. This idea has been adopted by a number of groups over the years and, inspired by the concept, I trialled a version of it as an urban design workshop for children as part of the Whyalla EcoCity Development design program in South Australia, 1996. It was conceived of as a way to raise awareness of the needs of non-human species and to engage the community with its urban ecosystem through the design program of an ecocity project. Children adopted personas as various species—fauna and flora—ranging from earthworms to kangaroos and through the ‘Council’ voiced their concerns for their character’s environment. It was a way of discovering parameters for non-human species that could guide the design of an ecocity.

09 Whyalla kids workshop — Snapshots of the 1996 ‘Council of All Beings’ ecocity workshop in Whyalla, South Australia. Images: Paul Downton

There are some wonderful examples of redeveloping bits of the city around the idea of ‘releasing nature’—such as creek restoration and the revival of meadowlands in city parks, but my proposition is simple. Rather than be content with a scatter-gun approach to reintroducing nature to our cities we should be seeking systematic ways of embedding the requirements for nature to flourish in, around and between every development in every city and town on the planet. Rather than being integrated as part of occasional special events, urban nature should be routinely integral to every planning process because nature requires it, not because of marketplace demands.

10 Register by restored creek — Ecocity pioneer and creek restoration advocate Richard Register by restored Strawberry Creek, Berkeley circa 1996. Image: Paul Downton

Pulling petals off a daisy and illiterate biomimicry

The commodification of nature is dangerous and devalues its real worth, as I argued in my TNOC blog of March 2013. Natural systems have to be recognised, formally and spontaneously, as having intrinsic value that trumps all other measures of their worth such as their capacity to provide ecosystem services, not because such services are not valuable in a real sense, but because the valuations being made are the result of pseudo-rationalist reductionism and amount to laying out the stem and petals of a daisy on an economist’s desk and claiming to have measured the worth of a flower.

11 Nasturtium in the balance — An economist’s view of a Nasturtium flower. Image: Paul Downton

Economic analyses of ecosystem services are inherently inadequate because they are unable to predict, and therefore measure and value, synergistic benefits that arise from those services. In the same way that reticulated sewage had impacts beyond healthier streets that could only be guessed at prior to its provision as a service, the synergistic benefits of natural systems are often unpredictable and not accounted for. Ecosystem services are valued in relation to a perception of their financial worth which depends on identifying the ‘service’ that’s provided. As a corollary, if a service isn’t, or can’t be identified, it will not, or cannot, be valued. This is the path to blind spots and selectivity based on partial knowledge. This pits butterflies against oak trees, slugs against daisies, worms against wolves. It presumes that nature can be assessed on a spreadsheet like a business, with profit and loss and monetary value overriding all other notions of value. There are those who say this is just a tool, a mechanism, a device for giving natural systems some value in a world that views all values in monetary terms, but that view is culture-bound to a particular world-view (consumer capitalist). It is one-eyed and reductionist—it is pulling petals off a daisy and then calling the pile of flower parts ‘more or less a daisy’.

There are two reasons for acknowledging the intrinsic value of natural systems: 1. because of its holistic beauty, 2. because no matter how hard we try we will never fully comprehend all the elements and their interactions in a natural system and can never be entirely sure that we do understand how it ‘works’.

In an era of accelerated climate change and ecological collapse it can be argued that many, if not all, natural systems are now so compromised and distorted by human intervention that their original intrinsic value and wholeness no longer hold—but that would be going down the slippery slope of pointless nihilism. As our tracks across the planet take us through ever more degraded landscapes, not only has nature dropped into the rear-view mirror, it is often behind the last bend in the road, invisible. If it ever does come into sight our children barely know how to describe it, as the language to describe nature is itself being lost in a world where authoritative publications such as the Oxford Junior Dictionary have decreed that words like ‘buttercup’ be usurped by ‘broadband’. The ability to see the world and understand what is being seen has to be practised and practiced. How can we develop biomimicry in a world where people don’t know the words to describe what they’re hoping to mimic?

12 Redacting the Buttercup — Redacting the Buttercup. Image scanned from p.56-57 of Britain’s Wonderland of Nature, John R Crossland & J M Parrish, eds. Odhams Press 1934. Image: Paul Downton

Guidelines for not building

Effective design guidelines for non-human species may result in things not being built, or in them being demolished. As an example, recent research has established that 70 percent of remaining forest is within 1 km of the forest’s edge and subject to the degrading effects of fragmentation. Forest edges need to be retired. Considerably. If re-wilding advocates like George Monbiot are correct in their approach to wilderness restoration we will need to re-introduce species to regions that lost them hundreds, or even thousands of years ago. Some of these re-introductions may be by stand-in species when the original species has been made extinct—like the elephants that roamed Northern Europe and the British Isles.

For natural systems to operate optimally they generally need minimal human intervention. Restoring ecological health to the wilderness may require that it is maintained as wilderness, i.e. a place that is off-limits to most humans and their activities. Design guidelines for non-human species are likely to specify no-go zones. In order to thrive on this planet we need to occupy much less of it. The advent of virtual reality and the growth of vicarious experience through simulation may be increasing human alienation from the environment and from one another, but the upside may be that the perceived need to physically go into real wilderness will diminish, with positive consequences for real wilderness and the survival of a livable planet. Urban design guidelines for non-human species would almost certainly demand compact urban forms that released as much of the landscape as possible for non-human use.

Ecocity pioneer Paolo Soleri proposed cities of extreme density and zero sprawl, set in a more-or-less ‘undeveloped’ wild landscape. He may yet turn out to be prescient in this regard, along with the science fiction writers who described future cities like the dome enclaves in the movie version of Logan’s Run where the world outside the city walls had returned to wilderness and very few humans ever had cause to enter it. The domed city of Logan’s run was supposedly ecologically self-contained, an idea that has been visited a number of times in fiction. For example, in ‘This Other Eden’, inspired by Biosphere 2, Ben Elton takes the domed biosphere concept to one of its potential logically absurd conclusions as bespoke personal ecosystems where, as in Logan’s Run, the domes contain a closed ecosystem for humans to insulate them from a collapsing global ecosystem.

13 Soleri Arcosanti Apse apt — Looking out from an apartment through the apse of the bell foundry to a view of Arizona wilderness in Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti, 1990. Image: Paul Downton

Buckminster Fuller was the pioneer of the modern domed city concept as something genuinely feasible when, in 1960, he proposed the first use of a dome to cover an entire city, or at least most of it, in his proposal for placing Manhattan under cover. Stretching from 62^nd Street to 22^nd, 1.6 km high and nearly 3 km across, his idea was that the dome would regulate the weather, reduce air pollution and make most of the existing air-conditioning systems in the city’s buildings redundant. Meanwhile, with similar ideas in mind Dubai is planning to build an entire city under a glass dome.

The idea of constructing sanctuaries that contain and protect biomes in microcosm, securing their survival against global environmental degradation, is almost noble. It is the concept of the zoo or giant greenhouse being able to act as a kind of insurance policy by providing a repository of species and natural environments under threat. The Eden Project in Cornwall, England, is a powerful and beautiful expression of this idea. The Eden Project also provides a vivid example of regenerative and transformative development, in which a built environment development has facilitated the restorative use of nature without pretending to restore exactly what was on the (heavily degraded) site in the past.

14 Eden Project domes — A tropical rainforest in the English countryside—The Eden Project in Cornwall. Image: Paul Downton

We know, however, that containing nature in order to protect it is very unlikely to work. Evidence from experiments such as Biosphere 2 suggests that containing nature successfully in entirely closed systems may be beyond our abilities, at least for the forseeable future. The project has demonstrated in detail how hard it is to bottle ecosystems and provides, if nothing else, a salutary lesson in how difficult it will be to establish habitats in space or on other planets. Putting aside the problems of livability and equity, containing humans is relatively easy (think prisons, walled cities…). The logical solution to retaining the integrity of the natural world into the future is not to try and package pieces of that world to protect them from larger environmental stresses, but to quarantine the human activities that are generating those stresses. Rather than incarcerate fragments of biosphere perhaps we should incarcerate the perpetrators of global damage within the walls of their primary engines of destruction, the city. This wouldn’t require domes so much as walls and policeable borders. It would be doable… except that urban systems are entirely interknit with the global biosphere, and without livability and equity in our cities we can kiss goodbye to any real hope of sustainability.

Conclusion

Guidelines can work at any scale, from city-wide to backyard, front garden, or apartment balcony, but may be most readily conceived and applied at the precinct or neighbourhood level where their influence on the larger urban system can, perhaps, be most effective—as a fractal of the system’s larger potential. Every city, every town and human settlement, should have a set of urban design guidelines for non-human species. The development and application of these guidelines would form the core of a new adventure in urbanism that has transformative potential and the capacity to lay the groundwork for a truly ecological civilisation—in which taking care of non-human species will, in turn, enhance the capabilities and conditions of the human animal.

Paul Downton
Adelaide

On The Nature of Cities

*SOME PRELIMINARY DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR URBAN NON-HUMANS*
PRINCIPLES (in no particular order)	EXAMPLES (where identified)
The provision of healthy conditions for urban nature must be integral to every planning process
Built environment development should create and maintain an infrastructure of green corridors within and between discrete projects and neighbourhoods	The Halifax EcoCity Project
Building rating tools and planning assessments should give credits for increases in potential habitat for non-human species	Green Building Council of Australia ‘Green Star’ ‘Land use and ecology’ credits
Built form, particularly at the level of individual buildings, precincts or neighbourhoods, should be designed specifically to accommodate nature and natural processes	Bridges designed for bats in Holland and Texas
All areas of vegetation be they parks, green walls or green roofs, should use substrates and soils that support the proliferation of healthy, ecologically healthy micro-organisms and sequester carbon
All road building must follow fauna-sensitive design guidelines	VicRoads, Australia
Nothing should be built that damages the health of natural ecosystems
Nothing should be built that damages the health of artificial ecosystems which support desirable urban non-human populations
Consideration should be given to demolishing, removing or adjusting elements of the built environment that compromise the health of natural ecosystems	Creek restoration projects
Consideration should be given to demolishing, removing or adjusting elements of the built environment that compromise the health of artificial ecosystems which support desirable urban non-human populations	Creek restoration projects
Human spatial occupation of terrestrial, maritime and fresh water environments should be minimised to a level compatible with the achievement of a ‘one planet’ ecological footprint	Sonoma Mountain Village, California
A guiding principle of all urban development must be to minimise, and eventually eliminate, urban sprawl
No-go zones should be instituted to limit human intrusion into natural ecosystems such as wilderness or near-wilderness areas	Wilderness Act (not quite ‘no-go’, but a start), USA 1964
Restoration and creation of environments for urban non-humans should proceed in parallel and integrated with the building of human environments	Berlin – 44% of the city’s surface area is made up of woods, farmland, water, allotment gardens, parks and sports gardens
Wilderness restoration should be considered to re-introduce species to regions from which they have been lost in the recent or distant past. Some of these re-introductions may be by stand-in species when the original species has been made extinct	Efforts being made to reintroduce wolves, bears and lynxes to the UK
Compact urban forms should be favoured that accommodate humans but protect as much of the landscape as possible for non-human use	Green belts and urban growth boundaries
Existing urban non-human species should be identified and, where appropriate, sustained and protected	Cities around the world owe a lot to wildlife that is not always indigenous
Urban planning programs should consult widely and include a Council of All Beings, or similar, to raise awareness of the needs of urban non-humans and to engage the community with its urban ecosystem through the planning process	Whyalla EcoCity Development, South Australia 1996

September 11, 2015: An Event Ethnography of Living Memorials

30 September 2015Art & Awareness, Essay, People & CommunitiesAwareness, Biophilia, Communities, Experiencing Nature, Resilience, ValueLindsay Campbell

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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A reading of names. A procession. Placing flowers on memorials. Music. Moments of silence. Tolling of bells.

Certain abiding symbols and gestures give structure to our memorial remembrances. In particular, we have come to expect a ritual formality and consistency at the World Trade Center site for remembering September 11, 2001. But how do we mark the day at the hundreds of smaller, community-based memorials across the region and the country? These memorials are set in town parks, beaches, waterfronts, and civic grounds. They typically feature etched stones and evoke the healing power of nature with trees, shrubs, and flowers; each of the sites described below has had an event every year since 2001.

This work is part of our longitudinal research through the Living Memorials Project, which seeks to understand how people use nature and shape landscapes as restorative and reflective symbols and practices in remembrance of September 11, 2001. (To read more about the ongoing national research, see a prior TNOC blog post). A team of researchers conducted a collaborative ‘event ethnography’ of anniversary remembrances at six different community-based memorials throughout the New York City region on September 11, 2015. Event ethnographies are research efforts to document and analyze events; they are often used to cover large-scale, global meetings such as UN negotiations or conventions. But in this case, we conducted a dispersed event ethnography at local memorial remembrances throughout the region. We attended memorial events as participant observers documenting who attended, what the program was, what narratives framed the event, and how plants were used on the site. We wrote field notes, took photographs, and conducted a group debrief about our impressions and reflections, including notable patterns and exceptions.

Overall, we find that these memorial spaces are serving as sites of social meaning for local communities of friends, neighbors, and co-workers that are animated through formal events and everyday use. While many of the same rituals that are used at the national memorials are used at these locales, we find that activities and narratives vary with the creators of and audience for the site. Some are patriotic in tone, some call for peace, some call for a “war on terror”, some center on the emergency responders, and some focus on the local community.

Presented in chronological order of the time of the event (below), we offer a series of brief snapshots of how these memorial events occurred.

As night fell on September 11^th at many of these local, hometown memorials distributed throughout the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, they were united under a common sky that, for a brief time, was aglow with Tribute in Light, two solid streams of light emanating from the September 11^th Memorial and the former site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.

As researchers, we reflect on our own experiences traveling through smaller towns and communities over the years. Sharing stories with our families and friends. Listening and learning as others recount their successes and setbacks in creating these special spaces in their own communities. We find that the light continues to shine in many places throughout the region as people come together in their own time and fashion to remember, to reflect, to continue on, and to pass on traditions to future generations.

We find that nature’s elements—such as an ocean view, a grove of trees, a symbolic ‘survivor tree,’ or a single rose—accompany us and serve as touchstones on a journey of land-marking and remembrance.

* * *

Connecticut’s Living Memorial, Sherwood Island State Park, Westport, CT: September 10, 5:30pm

Approximately 150 people gathered on the shore of the Long Island Sound to pay respects and remember residents of Connecticut who perished on September 11, 2001. Created just six months after the event occurred, this site is the state’s memorial to September 11th; as such, state officials, including the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, were in attendance, as well as representatives from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the former Office of Family Support. In addition to patriotic songs and a color guard, the event featured a glee club performance of the song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as requested by one of the organizers who is a September 11 family member. The organizers noted the therapeutic nature of creating the memorial and organizing this event. There has been a passing of the torch among several different project leaders who oversee the stewardship of the memorial and the event with continuity.

Nature symbolism is incorporated into the “Tree of Serenity”, a large sculpture of leaves, blossoms, and vines made from the cladding of the former World Trade Center and mounted on the park pavilion wall. During the ceremony, we were all invited to lay white roses on the etched marble memorial abutting the water’s edge. The site manager noted the challenges with maintaining a memorial situated so directly in the path of salt spray and tidal incursions, but the ongoing maintenance of the trees and plaques at sacred space is something to which the park remains committed.

Jacobi Medical Center, Bronx, NY: September 11, 8:30 am

Set on the hospital grounds and nestled into a wooded hillside, this site serves as a memorial to all victims from the Bronx, NY. It reflects Jacobi Medical Center’s ethos as a place that serves the community and promotes health and well-being. On September 11, the trauma center was prepared to receive survivors who, sadly, never arrived. But the hospital played a role in treating emergency responders. The event was attended by local hospital staff and administration—in lab coats, scrubs, and suits—many of whom were involved in the creation of the memorial. They were joined by their Community Advisory Board and numerous representatives of local public officials. The staff and advisory board provided the introductory remarks, the musical program (including Jacobi choir members singing Amazing Grace), the benediction, and a poem. Although public officials were acknowledge and thanked, they were not invited to speak.

A brief 30 minute ceremony included a moment of silence when the first plane hit; during that time you could hear the wind rustling, observe dappled sunlight through the trees, and watch commercial planes flying overhead. Being immersed in the natural setting was the goal of the site’s architect, who is retiring this year but noted that this memorial was the most meaningful project that she ever designed. The ceremony closed with everyone placing white carnations on the memorial. Though memories fade with time, one of the speakers noted that as long as she is alive, she is committed to continuing the tradition of holding September 11^th remembrances.

Rockaway Tribute Park, Queens, NY: September 11, 8:30am

Approximately 200 people gathered in and around a small, triangular-shaped waterfront parcel on Jamaica Bay, including an array of FDNY and NYPD members, so many of whom live on the Rockaway Peninsula. Across the bay, the changed skyline of Lower Manhattan is visible from this memorial, which was created where people stood and witnessed the events of that day 14 years ago. The ceremony had few speeches, and focused on music, tolling bells, and reading of names. A procession of bagpipes was lead into the park by a four-man color guard, a new addition to the ceremony this year. Family and community members placed red roses at the memorial mosaic and steel relic from the World Trade Center site. Previously, the site had been flooded and damaged by Hurricane Sandy and was quickly repaired. Building upon this historical commitment, a NYC Parks Department administrator spoke about future repairs and improvements to the site. Stewardship of the site is also an ongoing act of care; every Tuesday morning, volunteers gather to weed, clean, and plant the site, marking the time when the planes hit the Twin Towers.

September 11 Family Group Memorial, Brooklyn, NY: Sept 11, 4:00pm

This fully bilingual service honored the memories of those of Russian descent who perished on September 11, 2001. Set in Asser Levy Park in Coney Island, the memorial features an inscribed plaque, benches, weeping willow—and a recently-planted ‘survivor tree’ that was grown from the surviving callery pear rescued from and returned to the World Trade Center site. It was clear that many in attendance had participated in prior years, as we observed that the procession “worked like clockwork”, with attendees lining up to place their flowers at the monument. The lead site steward seemed to be known and greeted by all of the hundreds in attendance—primarily adult and elderly residents of Russian descent as well as a number of local elected officials. The speeches called upon those assembled to “never forget” the memory of September 11, 2001, making parallels to the moral imperative never to forget what transpired in the Holocaust.

Glen Rock Assistance Council and Endowment (GRACE) Memorial at Veterans Park, Glen Rock, NJ: September 11, 6:30pm

For just a bit longer than usual, the NJ Transit commuter train lingered with its doors open as the train operators observed and paid respects to the town memorial service at the park directly adjacent to the train station. On a warm, late-summer Friday night, about 200 town residents—young and old—took time to reflect and remember. We gathered in front of a semi-circle of 11 plum trees that were planted in memory of the 11 victims from Glen Rock. GRACE always holds their event at this same time to allow family members who attend the service at the former World Trade Center site to then return home and participate in the Glen Rock service. Every victim’s name on the monument was adorned with bouquets of yellow flowers, a color that organizers chose because it symbolizes remembrance and being reunited. We were invited to process through the monument, holding white candles that were handed out and lit by the Boy Scouts.

The overarching theme of all the speeches and remarks focused on one word: community. In their brief and humble remarks, the Trustees invoked the Native American tradition of ‘wampum,’ which was originally used not as currency but to record and narrate history. Offering the ceremony as a gift, they joined together to retell the story of that day and related events in their community. This space was created by, for, and with the Glen Rock community by a committed set of nonprofit trustees focused on support for the September 11 family members, the survivors, and others in the Glen Rock community who experienced grave loss through acts of terrorism.

Babylon Hometown Memorial, Babylon, NY: September 11, 6:45pm

Much like the Rockaways, this coastal town in the middle of Long Island is home to many firefighters and first responders, over 100 of whom filled the walkways and sidewalks in full dress regalia. Bagpipes, patriotic music, and invocations from a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest shaped the program. This memorial is situated directly on the coastal dunes of the town beach, a setting that all the September 11 family members—and town residents in general—remember fondly. In addition to honoring each of the 48 victims from the town of Babylon, the memorial was designed to re-vegetate and enhance the dune ecosystem to support native flora and fauna to be more resilient to future floods. The site is dotted with native grasses, goldenrod, cedars, Rosa rugosa, and other hardy plants for the coastal setting. During the event, so many yellow sunflowers had already been handed out and placed at the memorial plaques that they had run out by the time we reached the front of the procession line. As the sun set, the fire trucks drove away, and beach goers strolled the sand to enjoy the last few hours of their Friday night.

* * *

Lindsay K. Campbell, Erika S. Svendsen, Heather McMillen, Novem Auyeung, Rachel Holmes, Michelle Johnson, & Renae Reynolds
New York City

On The Nature of Cities

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.

about the writer
Heather McMillen

Heather McMillen is the Urban & Community Forester with the Hawaiʻi Department of Land & Natural Resources.

about the writer
Novem Auyeung

Novem Auyeung is a Senior Scientist, Division of Forestry Horticulture & Natural Resources, NYC Parks. Novem guides conservation, research, and monitoring priorities for the Division.

about the writer
Rachel Holmes

Rachel Holmes is a conservation education specialist with The Nature Conservancy’s Forest Health Protection Program.

about the writer
Michelle Johnson

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

about the writer
Renae Reynolds

Renae Reynolds is a Project Coordinator at the US Forest Service Urban Field Station in New York.

What is the insurance value of urban ecosystems and their services?

29 September 2015Europe, RoundTable, Science & ToolsBusiness, Climate change, Coasts, Disasters/Red zone, Economics, Ecosystem services, Insurance, Livability, Resilience, ValueVictor Beumer

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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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.

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Victor Beumer, Delft Urban ecosystems have no insurance value, but that does’t mean the industry can’t have an impact on ecosystem services.

Henry Booth, West Chester Research demonstrates that it would behoove the insurance industry to back urban decision making that promotes natural ecosystem solutions and enhanced resilience. Yet, insurers are hesitant. Why?

Mitch Chester, Miami Our maturing century of an evolving new environmental reality demands more proactive community involvement by casualty and property companies and re-insurers, which assess and thrive on hazard exposures.

Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm There is an urgent need to scientifically explore methodologies and conceptual frameworks for assessing the insurance value of nature and to integrate this into the disaster risk management agenda.

Alexandros Gasparatos, Tokyo Despite certain benefits, I am skeptical about the final acceptability of nature-based solutions in disaster-prone environments such as Japan.

Jaroslav Mysiak, Venice Public authorities and private insurers should liaise to explore mutually beneficial partnerships. If nothing else, an open public debate about the ‘insurance value of ecosystem services’ may contribute to exploring synergies between ecosystem preservation and disaster risk reduction.

Rob Tinch, Brussels Insurance values of green infrastructure should be thought of as precautionary and adaptive, not in expected present value terms.

Frank Vorhies, Divonne-les-Bains How do we articulate the environmental and social co-benefits of disaster risk reduction so that it is clearly understood by the insurance industry and its customers?

Henrik von Wehrden, Lüneburg Recognizing trade-offs is, in my opinion, one strongpoint of the ecosystem service concept. Understanding the interplay between a variety of services and their temporal long-term dynamics can help us to build a better system-level understanding.

Koko Warner, Bonn Resources to protect and restore ecosystems can be generated through a variety of insurance tools, such as parametric insurance approaches (trigger-based insurance payouts happen when a parameter like rainfall or wind speed reaches a certain threshold).

about the writer
David Maddox

David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director. David's dad told him once that he needed a back up plan, something to "fall back on". So he bought a tuba.

Introduction

Insurance is the common modern hedge against risk. We pay in advance as a bet against later uncertain, but potentially larger, costs. The insurance industry (and sometimes society) helps mediate this risk mitigation strategy for us.

Urban life in a climate changed world presents risks to life, livelihood, and property. These risks, when they materialize, are costly, and sometimes catastrophic. When should they be borne? By whom? How much should be invested in risk reduction in advance? These are questions for our societies and for the organizations that contemplate and mediate risk, including the insurance industry.

HurricaneSandyPhotobyMarkOlsen Nature-based solutions and urban ecosystems (through the services they can provide) mitigate some of these risks. So, it is logical to ask: if nature-based infrastructure — such as wetland buffers, storm water catching bioswales, etc. — are effective mitigations for ocean surges and storms, what is their insurance value?

As an example, in the New York metropolitan region, Hurricane Sandy caused approximately 50 billion $US in damage, much of which was paid as claims to insurance (or lost altogether). What if we paid some of the costs of risk mitigation in advance by building on green infrastructure that provide protective ecosystem services? This is what insurance underwriters require of us when we insure our homes against, say, fire—that we reduce the chance of risk in advance. Should we not take the same strategy for resilience?

Or is the construction of nature-based mitigations and adaptations to climate change, in the form of large green infrastructure, solely a issue for government?

The insurance industry surely has a stake in this topic. What is it? What role can or does the industry take, either in a formal way, or to propel policy discussions?

about the writer
Victor Beumer

Victor Beumer works at Deltares, where he is coordinator of the working group Green Infrastructure of the EU Water Platform.

Victor Beumer

Urban ecosystems have no insurance value. Let me elaborate this statement with an example of the application of ecosystem restoration for the purpose of climate adaptation in urban riverine systems.

In the region of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, we are active in a consortium whose ambition is to make urban river shores more natural. It concerns the river Meuse that flows through the city and has a tidal dynamic. The different partners have different goals — the city itself is trying to find ways to the increase livability in the city, especially in their water system, but also to create awareness among its citizens of living in a tidal water system. The Port of Rotterdam has the interest of balancing its portal growth with environmental quality and practicing circular economy. Worldwide Fund for Nature has set their goal to increase natural value in the tidal river system in and around Rotterdam, while the Dutch State water service (RWS) has requirements to generate a certain amount of natural shores to reach the criteria of Water Framework Directives (WFD). Deltares is developing knowledge that is combining these ambitions in nature-based solutions and strategies to implement them.

Examples of restoring tidal ecosystems in the city (artist impression)

You may notice that no partner is committing itself to the ambition of climate adaptation, while it would perfectly fit in the program. I think two reasons may have resulted in this. First, it might be unclear who is responsible for climate adaptation, not only because measures toward climate adaptation are extremely complicated and expensive but also because of the complex governance behind it. In the Netherlands we deal with water boards, provinces, municipalities, and the state itself regarding these issues. I can imagine some countries may have even more complex structures, or an absence of structure at all. Second, despite the extensive research on climate adaptation and accompanying solutions, it is very hard to pinpoint the effectiveness of riverine ecosystems on the mitigation of climate change effects in urban settings.

Now back to my statement: urban ecosystems have no insurance value. I think there are three clear reasons that underlie my statement:

It is rather uncertain how much the restoration of an urban ecosystem will provide in the mitigation of climate change effects; for example, to what extent restoration would prevent unwanted flooding. Top-end research institutes already have trouble making a quantitative correlation between restoration measures and mitigation benefits; therefore, an insurance company will never invest in such measures.
You must consider that an insurance company works with a proven business model. If it were not for highly extreme weather events (of which most are excluded from the insurance contract), damage costs are consumable. After a season of high damage costs, the insurance company will simply increase the yearly insurance premium to their clients in order to balance the business model again.
If measures for the mitigation of climate change effects would have an insurance value, why isn’t it that dikes and drainage measures with a civil-engineered character are financed with insurance capital? In such cases, it is much clearer what the exact quantitative benefits are from building a dike or setting up a drainage system than in cases of restored ecosystem services.

It may seem I have no faith in the potential impact of the insurance industry in the restoration of ecosystems for the purpose of mitigating climate change effects. But it is the opposite — I think the insurance industry is a major stakeholder in these situations. They have the ability to initiate processes of spatial change because of their position in a society: their lobby-power and their indirect effect on the attractiveness for citizens to live in a city where insurance costs are rising.

about the writer
Henry Booth

Henry Booth has worked for over 31 years as an insurance archaeologist. He specializes in the reconstruction and analysis of historical liability insurance coverage for US policyholders.

Henry Booth

The insurance industry has experienced, and counted the cost of, severe hurricane damage, protracted drought, and other natural catastrophes and has been described as “being on the front line” of climate risks. It would seem axiomatic that those working in insurance have an interest in supporting efforts to mitigate the consequences of disasters exacerbated by, or even wholly attributable to climate change. Readily available statistics (see, for example, National Association of Insurance Commissioners & The Center for Insurance Policy & Research on climate risk) regarding losses incurred since the turn of the 21st century provide further evidence that it would behoove the insurance industry to back urban decision making that promotes natural ecosystem solutions and enhanced resilience.

In the course of considering this question, I came upon various analyses in which the value of ecosystem benefits and initiatives was quantified. The cities involved were geographically diverse and included Toronto, Canada (greenbelt benefits, annual value $2.7 billion CDN) and Canberra, Australia (tree planting initiative, value over 4 years $20-67 million US). Belgian and Chinese ecosystem value assessments, sponsored by ICLEI-Global.org, were also detailed. These reports described the insurance value for ecosystem services as the contribution of green infrastructure and ecosystem services to increased resilience and reduced vulnerability to shock.

I also saw a treatise titled “Estimating the insurance value of ecosystem resilience” which analysis included calculations leading to the actual quantifying of the insurance value. The subject of the study was an area of farmland north of Melbourne, Australia, that is threatened by salinization due to rising water tables. The authors concluded that ecosystem resilience provides a sizeable economic insurance value. Here, at least theoretically, was some kind of hard data to support a discernible value that should be recognized by the insurance industry, who can underwrite accordingly.

It seems, however, from various studies by organizations such as Ceres, a non-profit advocating sustainability leadership, as well as by reference to articles in the news media, that the insurance industry is not exactly hurtling into the leadership role that might have been expected of them in this area. As a practical matter, for there to be a real insurance value of urban ecosystems and their services, I suppose that the industry has to be engaged in a way that, at least thus far, they are not.

Why not?

I have seen the phrase “ecological threshold” (ET) used in this connection and I think it provides one reason as to why most insurers in the US marketplace have provided a poor response in terms of leadership in the face of the worsening global impact of climate change . The ET is defined as “the point at which a relatively small change in external conditions causes a rapid change in an ecosystem”—in this sense, the ET is a measure of resilience. To the extent that the ability to quantify the insurance value of ecosystem servicesis affected by the distance to the ET (i.e. the closer the distance to the ET, the more susceptible to error any such valuation is), the riskier the underwriting of insurance for entities, such as cities, that may be at the margins of the ET, becomes.

Another reason that the insurance industry doesn’t want to engage natural solutions may be found in the evaluation of their exposure to underwriting losses by the Association of American Insurers (AIA). The AIA has said that most of their property/casualty product lines have limited or no exposure to climate-change-related losses. For the lines that do have exposure, weather is only one among a number of covered perils bringing in premium. This spread of product lines allows for stability, at least for the insurers, who can offset a possible loss-making line by multiple lines bringing in premium revenue. In addition, it is worth remembering that in the USA, flood and crop insurance are federal programs in which the insurance industry participates through administration—including policy issuance and claims handling—but not in terms of any negative financial exposure. This calls into question their incentive (at least financially) to support urban ecosystems as a means of mitigating risk.

Still, the AIA talks up its ability to respond and adapt in the face of changing conditions and generally supports sustainable development initiatives, provided they have been thoroughly examined and determined not to have the potential to create new hazards. The Ceres’ survey I mentioned above quotes the NAIC as encouraging insurance industry leaders to take the challenge presented by climate change more seriously. Couched in terms of relieving possible financial insolvency and protecting the insurance consumer, they say that insurance industry is uniquely positioned as a risk-bearer to reduce the impending impact of climate change.

Based on what I have seen, the “talk has been talked” by insurance industry regulators and commentators and the potential insurance value of ecosystem services has been ‘actuarialized’. But, for the reasons discussed above, so far this has not yet convinced the US insurance industry to “walk the walk.”

This may also be due to fear of the unknown and a desire not to let history repeat itself. My work is concerned with latent injury claims such as may arise through exposure to asbestos or as a result of environmental contamination. In this world, case facts and appropriate proof of coverage permitting, Comprehensive General Liability (CGL) insurance policies written as far back as the 1930s may respond to a modern claim. Because the insurance industry was marketing its new CGL product in the late 1930s (as well as related coverages over time), it was keen to point out that CGL covered everything that was not expressly excluded. The greed of the marketplace and breadth of coverage written caused massive insurer insolvency from the 1980s forward, including (almost) bringing down Lloyd’s of London.

Likewise, in 2004/2005 I worked on behalf of a large mid-western city whose liability insurance included coverage for their airports. After a convoluted process, the case—involving environmental property damage at, and adjacent to, the airport—settled for cents on the dollar relative to the actual limits of liability purchased by the city. There were some solid reasons for this, but also some knee jerk insurer activity designed to reduce their dollar exposure which, in order to get out from under the case with some not trivial money, the city accepted. This illustrates several things which a city seeking “insurance value”—e.g. a reduction in premium—on account of systems put in place to mitigate possible future losses from climate change-related events would do well to remember.

As a result of cases like these, claims are picked through in the utmost detail before any payment is made. And new frontiers, such as the evaluation of ecosystem for insurance purposes, are a long time in the reaching.

about the writer
Mitchell Chester

Mitchell A. Chester, Esq. is a trial attorney licensed in the State of Florida. In practice for 37 years, he is focused on identifying and seeking solutions to emerging legal and financial issues created by sea level rise (SLR) and climate impacts.

Mitchell Chester

Insurers, bond rating companies, and local governments as proponents of natural fortifications in vulnerable communities

As Naomi Klein points out in her excellent work, This Changes Everything, some insurance industry giants have been very vocal about climate risks, but have not done much to promote proactive climate policies to assist local communities.

Our maturing century of an evolving new environmental reality demands a more proactive community involvement by casualty and property companies and re-insurers, which assess and thrive on hazard exposures. Should they fail to take a more active public stance to deal with rising seas, significant opportunities to insure will soon be lost to the industry, insurance consumers will suffer, and society will fall further behind in needed adaptation and mitigation measures. The end result of such neglect may hasten the day when “retreat” strategies are utilized with more urgency than would be necessary if we had started to connect seemingly unrelated tools.

A curious opportunity thus presents itself. How can the risk industry use natural systems to prepare our towns and cities to maintain public and private economic resources, jobs, and infrastructure? Can a link be made between nature based coastal defense systems and insurance boardrooms? How can large insurers promote utilization of coastal forests, beach and dune restorations, fortified berms, wetlands, coral reefs, mangroves, oyster formations, and reforestation efforts to shore up their premium providing markets?

What stakeholders can be recruited to forge a financial nexus that will empower a partnership between political leaders and insurers to facilitate the public good? In the multiverse of climate change psychology, we can start thinking differently.

Let’s connect some major players.

Insurers depend on the need of local communities to have financial security so that underwriters can continue to provide their varied products. When those markets are challenged by climatic events such as progressive sea level rise, underwriters need to extend their current horizons beyond their usual annual financial risk analysis and partner with communities in natural and urban eco-system fortification strategies. The stakes are very high; the need for new economic strategies to prepare is urgent. According to RiskyBusiness.org, in the United States, “by 2050 between $66 billion worth of existing coastal property will likely be below sea level nationwide.” That’s just the beginning, and probably a conservative estimate at that. Mid-century is not that far away.

The goal is to extend the insurability of the very same risk-vulnerable communities that create yearly premium revenues for insurers. A successful enterprise-level public initiative joining insurance-oriented public-private partnerships with other financial stakeholders is a key opportunity. For example, bond rating companies which team up with insurance industry stakeholders to support nature-based protection solutions can forge an intelligent strategy to help local and regional governments answer tough questions about readiness for some climate events.

This formula would be a positive for both the insurers (by promoting the opportunity to retain insureds as customers for as long as possible in communities threatened by encroaching waters) and political leaders (who need solid bond ratings for public infrastructure). An important by-product of this type of teamwork would be a more durable coastline that protects the “built environment.”

There are historical examples of the insurance industry acting beyond current modes of insurer operations. According to Dr. Evan Mills, Staff Scientist for the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, insurers were a motivating force in the creation of early fire departments and acted as advocates for building codes. Now there are new opportunities. Dr. Mills adds, “While the primary focus in recent years has been on financially managing risks, physical risk management is receiving renewed attention and could play a large role in helping to preserve the insurability of coastal and other high risk areas.”

A new partnership: Coastal Defense Allies

How can we move insurers beyond improving building codes and into nature-based risk reduction? Insurers can structure their proactivity to support construction of natural coastal defense systems through these strategies:

Education of vulnerable insurance consumers about how adapting to climate events using nature-based defense strategies is a good place to start to create public support for the innovative solutions that can be employed by public officials. Grassroots endorsements of such programs, combined with public advocacy for the use of natural systems to protect regions, is a way to spark political will currently lacking in many public officials. According to the Insurance Information Institute, in September 2014, there were already examples of insurance industry advocacy for revised building codes. For example, in some parts of Southeastern Florida, new structure standards are being proposed and implemented in reaction to scientifically peer-reviewed studies about sea level rise. Beyond such efforts, promoting the use and construction of natural coastal defenses should be added to the list of insurer tools to reduce risk and to promote mitigation.
Large insurers can agree to insure multi-million dollar (or more) coastal developments with certain criteria as pre-conditions. For example, large projects on estuaries, inlets, and other coastal areas can be required to construct substantial wetland protection zones to help safeguard the insured’s investments and the risks assumed by the carriers. In locations where wetlands and other coastal defenses cannot be built or properly restored (and meaningful set backs are not physically possible), insurers can decline to accept the mounting risks that will be associated with such construction, while at the same time inducing potential insureds with financial incentives if they move their projects to more sustainable locations. Such incentives can be a major factor in motivating strategic, climate-smart placement of new hotels, office buildings, other commercial properties, and private residences in areas which are less susceptible to sea level rise and more affordable to insure when losses occur. The lesson is clear: Natural systems for coastal areas equals reduced risk. This approach takes insurers beyond the important but limited “green building” approach, such as LEED Certification, to what can be called a “green footprint” policy, which advocates environmental responsibility beyond the walls of built structures and into their surrounding neighborhoods.
Insurers can partner with municipal bond rating agencies to induce responsible governmental and insurance consumer action in promoting natural system defenses in coastal areas. This relationship can help identify needed infrastructure improvements at the “micro” level. “Local government credit quality,” which is measured by the health of municipal bond ratings when viewed from the perspective of climate threats, is already being watched by powerful entities such as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investor Service, and Fitch Ratings. If local governments are not proactively able on their own to handle climate risks such as swelling oceans, they will ultimately receive lower credit ratings. Ignoring this naturally symbiotic fiscal relationship will produce a cycle of lower willingness to insure in areas that are suffering from lower bond scores. However, by enthusiastically working with municipal rating agencies to prevent credit downgrades, property and casualty and re-insurers can help consumers and local governments act stronger with regard to the risks they face. Intelligently slowing advancing waters can also fortify bond ratings so local governments can entice continued investments for public infrastructure needs.
Insurers can direct their investment dollars toward sea level rise adaptation projects in exchange for user fees. Public-private partnerships are great at such relationships. Just as Dragados USA invested in the expansion of Interstate 595 in Southeastern Florida in return for user fees on express lanes, insurers can infuse dollars into construction of natural defense systems in exchange for receiving neighborhood impact fees paid by local beneficiaries such as businesses, municipal governments, and homeowners.

* * *

Government has limited financial resources. The same is true for private sector stakeholders. Each is interdependent with the other in the fight to fortify, for as long as possible, threatened coastal areas. They have an emerging role to play in supporting natural systems to reduce the risk in advance of storm surge, progressive sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, and tidal flooding. As the science of sea level rise advances, so too must our collective economic psychology to bring new players to the adaptation and mitigation fight.

about the writer
Thomas Elmqvist

Thomas Elmqvist is a professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm University and Theme Leader at the Stockholm Resilience Center. His research is on ecosystem services, land use change, natural disturbances and components of resilience including the role of social institutions.

Thomas Elmqvist

To date, the insurance value of ecosystems has been largely overlooked in research and practice and mostly discussed in relation to its role as a metaphor for the value of resilience. However, the concept has recently gained a lot of interest. The latest is an initiative within the EU to base economic development in Europe on nature-based solutions, where maintaining and strengthening the insurance value of ecosystems is a cornerstone.

The reason for this interest is partly that global natural disasters have shown a clear increasing trend. The annual reported economic damages from natural disasters have risen from less than 100 billion $US in 2000 to above 300 billion in 2011 and, between 2002 and 2013, natural disasters led to more than 80,000 fatalities and several hundreds of billions euros of damages in the European Union alone (European Commission, 2014). At the same time, studies have demonstrated the benefit of investment in natural capital and green infrastructure to reduce risks of disasters. For example, according to Korea Environment Institute (2011) for the year 2010, a 1 percent increase in size of green infrastructure, which includes parks, urban forests, and green roofs, is estimated to bring 6.4 percent reduction in economic loss caused by flooding in the cities of Korea.

So how do we include these values in development and urban planning?

Several attempts are now made to develop and operationalize the concept of insurance value of ecosystems. Currently, there are two definitions of the insurance value of ecosystems. The first emphasizes the capacity to generate ecosystem service benefits by maintaining a system within a given regime, despite disturbance and management uncertainty. This definition is closely linked to definitions of resilience and includes a more explicit economic approach. The second definition puts more emphasis on the value of the sustained capacity of ecosystems to reduce risks to human society caused by, for example, climate change-related excess precipitation, temperature, or by natural disasters (Expert group DG Research 2015); it more specifically targets disaster risk reduction.

A combination of the two seems like a way forward: where the insurance value of an ecosystem results from the system itself having the capacity to cope with external disturbances, and includes both an estimate of the risk reduction due to the physical presence of an ecosystem (e.g., the area of upstream land/number of downstream properties protected) and the capacity to sustain risk reduction (i.e., the resilience of the system).

Recognizing the effect of green infrastructure, the European Commission (EC) has initiated EC Green Infrastructure Strategy to promote green infrastructure in the EU. In fact, Target 2 of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy requires that “by 2020, ecosystems and their services are maintained and enhanced by establishing green infrastructure and restoring at least 15 percent of degraded ecosystems.” This project aims to enhance quantity and diversity of urban green areas to increases security against natural disasters, which are projected to increase with climate change.

There is an urgent need to scientifically explore methodologies and conceptual frameworks for assessing the insurance value of nature and to integrate this into the disaster risk management agenda. This could be done, for example, by working with financial institutions and insurance companies to develop innovative ways for promoting nature-based solutions for risk management.

One strategy could be to translate risk reduction capacity into value through calculating benefit/investment ratios in landscape management and restoration. Here, the benefits would represent the reduced risk and potential lower premiums of land and property insurance policies. A new legal framework that serves to create incentives for maintaining or enhancing the insurance capacity of ecosystems should be explored. It would be important to first develop a framework where the models and data (including downscaled climate change scenarios) capturing the capacity of ecosystems to reduce risks are made compatible and harmonised with the risk assessment models and data used by the private insurance sector.

A complementary strategy would be to develop an economic approach to understanding ecosystems as representing the stock that generates the flow of services and to explore how to capture the long-term benefits of maintaining and enhancing that stock.

Thirdly, we should explore the cultural dimension of the insurance value of ecosystems and people’s perceptions of risks and insurance.

about the writer
Alexandros Gasparatos

Alexandros Gasparatos is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Tokyo. As an ecological economist, he is interested in the development, refinement, and application of sustainability assessment and ecosystem services valuation tools.

Alexandros Gasparatos

Living in Tokyo, you become no stranger to the occasional typhoon or earthquake. And you can’t help but notice how the natural environment has been completely shaped throughout Japan, partly to reduce the risk of such events. Indeed, the need to ensure the safety of the population and the resilience of the socioeconomic system does not need to be overemphasized in a metropolis which is both the home of over 35 million people and the economic heart of the world’s 3rd largest economy.

As an ecological economist, I have been trying for several years to persuade others about the multiple benefits that we derive from nature. I whole-heartedly believe that urban ecosystems can indeed insure against certain environmental risks and offer co-benefits such as biodiversity conservation and cultural ecosystem services (e.g. recreation).

However, I also see three highly interconnected reasons that will make it very challenging to adopt such solutions, at least in the short-to-medium term. This is especially true in highly disaster-prone countries such as Japan, where the safety of the population following the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake sometimes overrides economic rationalities.

The first reason that urban ecosystem-based insurance solutions will be difficult to implement has to do simply with the several unknowns surrounding the feasibility and effectiveness of urban ecosystems to insure against different natural hazards, let alone the “reproducibility” of nature-based solutions, especially if we aim for their widespread adoption. More importantly, are there certain thresholds over which ecosystems cannot insure against these risks? And what are these thresholds?

Engineered mitigation strategies usually undergo a series of tests and refinements, both under laboratory and real-life conditions. So there is usually a threshold of (un)certainty about what these strategies can achieve and under what conditions. Undertaking this process with ecosystems (particularly undisturbed ecosystems) is a much more complicated task that is highly reliant on natural experiments. As a result, it can be subject to longer and more difficult verification processes.

The second reason has to do with public acceptability of mitigation solutions and how it can vary not only between different types of natural hazards (and severity levels), but also between cultural and socioeconomic settings. In some settings, “using nature to guard against disasters” equals “taking no mitigation action”. While I do not subscribe to this viewpoint, I cannot help but acknowledge that in such contexts it would be next to impossible to adopt nature-based solutions for disaster risk mitigation. This is because a decrease in the intended benefit of nature-based solutions, i.e. disaster mitigation to ensure the safety of the population at risk, will trample the provision of any other co-benefit that could be added in the equation.

The third reason has to do with assigning (and accepting) responsibility in the event of failure. Even if a nature-based solution is acceptable to the public, it is the decision maker adopting it that will ultimately be scrutinized in the event of a failure. I tend to believe that a nature-based solution will not be preferred over an engineered solution even if it was acceptable by the public, in part because a line of responsibility can be traced from the decision maker to the provider of this solution. A level of “quality” could be assured for an engineered solution, but would it be feasible to assure a level of “quality” in a disaster mitigation service offered by an ecosystem? Who would make such an assessment? An academic or a consultant could quantify (one way or another) the monetary benefits delivered from such an ecosystem service, but could they put their reputation on the line and “vouch” for the level of quality of the service that was ultimately delivered by an ecosystem?

I strongly believe that research could bridge several of the current knowledge gaps and possibly allow for the assurance if the “quality” of risk mitigation ecosystem services. Ultimately, I am highly skeptical that it will be easy to enhance the acceptability of ecosystem-based solutions for the public and decision makers. This might prove to be a too difficult hurdle in high disaster-prone environments such as Japan.

about the writer
Jaroslav Mysiak

Dr. Jaroslav Mysiak is the director of the research division ‘Risk assessment and adaptation strategies’ at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change and senior scientist at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei. His research concentrates on environmental economics and governance, and climate risk and adaptation.

Jaroslav Mysiak

Disaster insurance and nature-based solutions

The recent upswing of interest in disaster insurance from European policy makers and the revitalised appreciation of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions has coalesced into a notion of insurance value of ecosystem services. This term should not be understood as implying that insurers gain from or make a profit out of ecosystem services. Rather, it should be explored what role disaster insurance can (or should) play for conservation and restoration of environment.

In many places, ecosystem services (ESSs) attenuate natural hazard risks, locally or regionally, and hence have an economic value in the context of natural disaster insurance, even if no price actually is paid for their provision and/or maintenance. The implicit value of ESSs is the price difference of insurance under marginal changes of ESSs provision. In other words, it is the price differential for risk premiums homeowners pay for having their property insured, and what they would have to pay if the existing risk-mitigating ecosystem services were somehow eroded. Where, for example, ecosystems such as forests or wetlands in the upstream basin area do reduce or delay peak flow discharges, the flood risk and hence insurance prices are lower than in other places where no similar risk-mitigating ecosystem service is available.

Insurers do not trade with the ecosystem services; the latter are a part of the baseline risk calculations. ESSs are a public good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Their implicit utilisation does not distort the market and competition because all insurance undertakings have equal access to ESSs. The question is whether insurance prices can be used as an incentive for ecosystem conservation or an instrument (one of many) for recovering the ensuing costs?

Individual commercial insurance contracts are perhaps less suitable as incentives to this end, but other forms of insurance, including mutual and community-based schemes, may foster reduction of negative environmental externalities such as surface water drainage discharges. Because flood risk increases as a result of collective externalities, co-operative insurance can reward individual efforts to reduce surface runoff from one’s own property. Whether insurance is a better way that land or property taxes or rainwater collection charges should be explored by targeted research and policy trials.

Using insurance contracts for recovering costs of ecosystem restoration and maintenance is more prone to controversies. Whereas the ‘polluter-pay-principle’ (PPP) is firmly rooted in the European Treaty and secondary environmental legislation, the ‘beneficiary-pays-principle’ (BPP) is not. The European Commission (EC) does consider flood protection as a water service, the costs of which are to be recovered by water prices. But the sentence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case Commission against Germany did not back-up the position of the EC, and the ECJ ruled that, as long as the (environmental) objectives are met, it is at the discretion of the national governments to choose the best suited policy instrument. But even in this case, the ecosystem services were not at the heart of the dispute.

There are practical and ethical aspects in the application of BPP. From a practical point of view, it is difficult to trace the individual benefits of ecosystem services. Hence, any attempt to apply BPP in practice will result in burdensome evidence collection and high transaction costs. Because those property owners who benefit most from existing ecosystem services are those who see the largest saving in risk premiums, the BPP would possibly need to use inverse proportional charges and transfer of collected revenues to areas where the ecosystems are degraded and need to be restored. From an ethical point of view, the BPP clashes against arguments related to social justice and historical responsibility for environmental changes. It is worthwhile, however, for public authorities and private insurers to liaise to explore mutually beneficial partnerships. If nothing else, an open public debate about the ‘insurance value of ecosystem services’ may contribute to exploring synergies between ecosystem preservation and disaster risk reduction.

about the writer
Rob Tinch

Dr. Rob Tinch has 20 years' experience in environmental/ecological economics. Based in Brussels, he works mainly on European research projects.

Rob Tinch

Should we value the insurance services of urban green infrastructure?

Resilience of urban systems is an increasing concern, and urban green infrastructure has an important role to play in providing services and enhancing resilience. It may seem logical that we should attempt to value this ‘insurance value’, to incorporate these values in decision support and urban planning. And there is excellent research being carried out into this issue, on both theoretical and practical levels.

McPhearson et al. (2014) argue that insurance value reflects “the maintenance of ecosystem service benefits despite variability, disturbance and management uncertainty”. Pascual et al. (2015) make space for ‘natural insurance value’ (NIV) as a component of ‘total economic value’, with the more conventional components (use and non-use values) being classified as ‘total output value’ (TOV). Pascual et al. further divide NIV into ‘self-protection’ (lowering the risk of a disturbance event) and ‘self-insurance’ (reducing the size of loss from an event). NIV is quite a specific concept relating to “the value of one very specific function of resilience: to reduce an ecosystem user’s income risk from using ecosystem services under uncertainty” (Baumgärtner and Strunz, 2014:22).

There are problems in operationalising this framework in valuation. Private discount rates are high, so private decisions about green infrastructure and insurance are likely to be socially sub-optimal. Non-linear relationships (edge effects, minimum viable areas, network effects…) will play an important role, making marginal valuation challenging and reducing scope for value transfer.

But these problems are not insurmountable, and valuation can be attempted. For certain types of infrastructure (e.g. natural flood defences) this could be done via expected damages and/or conventional prevention costs avoided. NIV can also form the basis of a stated preference instrument. For example, Figueroa and Pasten (2015) value local climate regulation services of forests via the change in insurance premium that risk-averse individuals are willing to pay when forest cover changes.

If, however, we’re thinking about long-term resilience to extreme scenarios and threats—as in adaptation to high-end scenarios of climate change—then conventional valuation faces serious limitations. We’re talking about different people, preferences, social-economic structures, technologies. There is high uncertainty about risks of disturbances, extrapolation well beyond current experience, unknown tipping-points/thresholds, irreversibilities and feedbacks. Under these circumstances, conventional valuation and CBA break down: their numerical ‘clarity’ becomes “especially and unusually misleading” (Weitzman, 2007). Standard welfare functions work for stable/increasing consumption paths but fail to reflect views on overshoots, fluctuations, and long-term threats to existence. Reducing complex, uncertain paths to expected present values destroys information on distribution across generations, on uncertainty regarding outcomes, and on risks of catastrophic/unacceptable outcomes.

Within a decision support context, therefore, the question of the ‘value’ of insurance might be of rather less interest than the question of the range of scenarios for which green infrastructure provides resilience, either in terms of security of a particular service, or more generally in terms of flexible natural capital stocks that could be designed to buffer against a wide range of possible scenarios. Aiming to pass flexible stocks and opportunities to future generations may be a much more useful goal than aiming to optimise expected present values given huge uncertainties. Attempting to value insurance from green infrastructure runs a risk of bringing a short-term, expected value focus to inherently long-term, resilience-providing investments. While attempts to value natural insurance are academically interesting, the insurance role of urban GI should be considered in the light of precaution, flexibility, adaptation and resilience-enhancing criteria, not expected values.

Acknowledgement: The ideas presented in this note have been prepared during work under European Commission contracts n° 603416 IMPRESSIONS (http://www.impressions-project.eu/) and n° 308393 OPERAs (http://www.operas-project.eu/ )

References:
Baumgärtner, S., Strunz, S., 2014. The economic insurance value of ecosystem resilience. Ecol. Econ. 101, 21–32.

Figueroa, E., & Pasten, R. (2015). The economic value of forests in supplying local climate regulation. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

McPhearson, T., et al., Resilience of and through urban ecosystem services. Ecosystem Services (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2014.07.012i

Pascual, Unai, Mette Termansen, Katarina Hedlund, Lijbert Brussaard, Jack H. Faber, Sébastien Foudi, Philippe Lemanceau, and Sisse Liv Jørgensen. “On the value of soil biodiversity and ecosystem services.” Ecosystem Services 15 (2015): 11-18.

Weitzman, M.L. (2007). A review of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Journal of Economic Literature, 45:3, 703–724.

about the writer
Francis Vorhies

Francis Vorhies, the executive director of Earthmind, works on the interface between biodiversity, business, and the economy.

Francis Vorhies

Yes, we can mitigate disaster risk by investing in nature-based protection scheme areas. This includes natural areas set aside and managed for storms and floods. Such measures will reduce the costs of insuring for disasters, and the industry is capable of estimating cost reductions and adjusting insurance rates accordingly.

Importantly, investing in urban disaster risk mitigation can also have important economic and social co-benefits. Natural areas managed for risk mitigation can also be important areas for conserving biodiversity. The management programmes for these areas can also engage local communities, raise awareness on environmental protection, and provide learning opportunities for young and old alike. And, of course, natural areas can be important areas for recreation and relaxation.

Thus, investments in nature-based risk mitigation can strengthen environmental and social resilience within an urban area. In so doing, these investments further enhance the capacity of the area to mitigate disasters when they do occur. This in turn further reduces the potential costs of disasters and hence should lower the rates for insuring against these disasters. Do insurance companies recognize these savings?

This implies that there is both a public and a private benefit to more clearly articulating the co-benefits of disaster risk reduction.

But who will undertake the work needed to make these benefits transparent to the local policy makers and to the insurance industry? Perhaps this is a task for university researchers or for civil society organisations. Or perhaps the information scientists are providing is somehow not of the right form and this is a task for communicators.

How do we articulate the environmental and social co-benefits of disaster risk reduction so that it clearly understood by the insurance industry and its customers?

about the writer
Henrik von Wehrden

Henrik von Wehrden isa professor of natural science methods at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany.

von Wehrden

What is the optimal sustainable size and management strategy of a city? Adding to the rising debate on optimal city sizes, the ecosystem service concept is increasingly recognized in urban planning. However, much of the literature to date focuses on biophysical entities of ecosystem services. Of course, planning of biophysical aspects of ecosystem services such as climate regulation or flood protection are surely necessary and helpful, but recognition of the perceptions and needs of citizens is also important. More research is needed that considers both normative perceptions and engages in transformation towards a more sustainable state of the given system.

Normative perceptions demand recognition of stakeholders, a labor intensive and often context-dependent task. However, recognition of stakeholders and their perception is crucial when it comes to recognition of the insurance risk, as it is stakeholders who will ultimately endure potential risks and claim compensation. Many urban settings are designed for the people, when they should be designed by the people. When cities started to grow massively, urban planners attempted to separate living from working, and commuting drastically increased. This potentially also led to higher disparities of risks between different neighborhoods, where some areas are at higher risk of catastrophic events than others. This concept was dramatically illustrated by the effects of Hurricane Katrina, where some neighborhoods suffered higher impacts than others.

Today, there is a global trend towards a recognition of functional diversity within cities, meaning that separation of different functions in urban settings often decreases. Neighborhoods with a higher diversity in function and ecosystem services may support a higher quality of life for citizens and a better resilience against drastic changes or catastrophes we face today. The concept of ecosystem services should therefore enable a diverse and resilient setting of services.

Urban planners should, in my opinion, not make the mistake of focusing on short-term optimization by using the ecosystem service approach. In contrast, planners need to include long-term effects of different ecosystem services signatures into their planning process. Costs that protect urban setting from rare catastrophes, especially, may only pay off on a long-term perspective. Planners and citizens need to recognize the value of these long-term services, where settings that are tightly planned may not allow for systems to tackle extremes, and may fail to deliver a just urban setting. Many stressors of urban environments are extreme by nature. Calculation of average system entities is relevant, but current challenges also demand the integration of extremes, including the interplay of extremes. For example, if heatwaves alter soil infiltration capacities, torrential rainfalls later in the year then create devastating floods. Recognizing trade-offs is, in my opinion, one strongpoint of the ecosystem service concept. Understanding the interplay between a variety of services and their temporal long-term dynamics can help us to build a better system understanding. While this is, in part, context dependent, many solutions are also transferable across different neighborhoods and economies.

Disparities are not only found within cities, but also between different economies. While insurance risks are comparably well accounted for in parts of Europe and North America, urban environments in most of the world are not covered by insurance, but are often threatened by risks. Insurance often focusses on individuals, but risks can threaten whole neighborhoods or even cities. Insurance can thus increase injustice within cities, where only those people that can afford insurance are protected. The costs of long term planning endeavors need to be added to the costs of urban settings, both for urban planners and citizens. While urban living would thus become more expensive, it may create a more just setting for all citizens. This may enable more sustainable planning for future cities by increasing equity and justice in cost calculation of urban areas. If this price is too high for citizens and planners, then we will continue to rely on insurances and tackling catastrophes only after they hit us.

about the writer
Koko Warner

Dr. Koko Warner is a Senior Scientist at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, where she leads the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability & Adaptation Section.

Koko Warner

Cities, climate change, and risk

People living in growing urban centers around the world face a variety of risks today related to climate change — storms and extreme weather, sea level rise, water availability are a few of the kinds of risks to people’s lives, livelihoods, and property. When these risks materialize they can be costly. For example, Hurricane Katrina caused around $US 125 billion in the wider New Orleans area when it made landfall in August 2005. Today, we primarily manage risk through insurance. We pay in advance to receive financial protection against future uncertain and potentially larger costs. The insurance industry (and sometimes society) offers us this financial protection.

Urban ecosystems and risk management

In some cities, trees, water systems, and other ecosystem services are increasingly viewed as resources for managing risks of climate change. For example, in coastal areas in tropical zones, mangroves reduce the overall impact of storm surges, reduce coastal erosion, and other risk factors to cities. Coral reefs play a similar role of buffering strong wave action and protecting vulnerable coastal settlements. Such ecosystems provide an important source of buffering and risk reduction.

These ecosystem services are also vulnerable to damage, however. In part because of the public goods nature of ecosystem services, innovative risk management solutions have begun to think about managing risks to them like public infrastructure using tools like insurance. Such infrastructures—natural or man-made—can be insured against damage.

Urban ecosystems and insurance

Resources to protect and restore ecosystems can be generated through a variety of insurance tools, such as parametric insurance approaches (trigger-based insurance payouts happen when a parameter like rainfall or wind speed reaches a certain threshold). Such tools can be combined with early warning systems linked with special training for urban populations on reducing risk to property and life. In case of an approaching storm, affected people would receive a prior warning and by applying knowledge gained through their training, secure their belongings effectively and relocate to a safe area. This scenario would reduce the overall damage to their livelihoods, while ensuring their eligibility for a payout if the storm crossed the predefined thresholds.

Especially in the case of ecosystem services in urban areas, the underlying risk can be ameliorated if the provision of such services is managed comprehensively. For example, in dense low-lying delta regions such as the Mekong Delta that are flood prone, insurance against damages caused by flooding is crucial. However, this insurance must operate hand in hand with the development of more climate resilient infrastructure, the application of building codes, or zoning regulations and other forms of adaptive planning that reduce the potential damage as much as possible.

The insurers we talk to emphasize the importance of risk reduction. By already reducing your risk through early warning systems and climate proofing infrastructure, you can better withstand the medium-frequency impacts and still get a payout from insurance in cases where damage exceeds what individuals can cope with. Some insurers even apply clauses in their policies that require insurance holders to exercise risk reduction. This way, a track record of effective risk reduction action could also lead to a reduction of insurance premiums in the long run. Our research shows that it’s not enough for people to just receive payouts; rather, the support they receive needs to be more holistic for them to be resilient in the face of climate change and other challenges.

Insurance basics. How does one best approach risks of different magnitudes and frequencies? The very frequent and less severe risks (25 years). These risks can only be addressed through insurance and other forms of risk transfer because they usually far exceed the coping capacities of the individuals at risk. However, insurance alone is not enough.

In the case of extreme but infrequently occurring risks, insurance approaches that are organized as public-private-partnerships, such as an insurance solution connected to a social safety net programme, might be able to provide better and more comprehensive protection. Such a solution would combine the strengths of all actors and divide the risks among many stakeholders. However, the important issue to keep in mind is to always link whatever insurance approach is selected to a comprehensive risk management approach.

Stormwater Management as Both Utility and Amenity

28 September 2015Place & Design, Review, Science & ToolsArt, Design, Pollution, Resilience, WaterBen Feldmann

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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A review of Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater, by Stuart Echols and Eliza Pennypacker. 2015. ISBN 13: 978-1-61091-266-2 / ISBN 10: 1-61091-266-7. Island Press, Washington. 284 pages.

Stormwater is a topic of great interest, especially now that the plight of water has been heightened by environmental pollution, dwindling resources, and growing frequency of severe storm events. What was once considered to be a nuisance or of little consequence has become the focus of city leaders around the world, triggering a call to action to support the better management of the critical, life giving natural resource: water. Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater is a timely book that provides insight into the strategies, implementation methods, design parameters, and amenities that creative stormwater design can yield.

The discussion of stormwater management has evolved over the past twenties years and with the emergence of Artful Rainwater Design (ARD), a rebranded, specialty focus of stormwater infrastructure, suggests that not only can we achieve improved utilitarian benefits from this form of engineering, but when integrated as a feature design element of open space, can provide an added amenity with a multitude of benefits to the community. To this point, the book looks at these two overarching themes of rainwater design—amenity and utility—as a means to isolate and reflect on the virtues of ARD within both pragmatic and social realms. Separating these two realms thereby allows the audience, whom the authors describe as “rainwater management designers”, to understand the information and become inspired by these implementable solutions, which are illustrated and explained through the collection of built project references.

Before diving into particular projects, the authors are careful to define the word ‘amenity’ as well as how it can be understood in context of ARD. For the sake of the book, they note that the definition has two “inherent limitations” based on 1) that attractiveness or value is based on human appreciation (as opposed to “wildlife”) and 2) the measure of attractiveness is based on our understanding of mainstream United States of America’s tastes in landscape beauty. This comment reveals that the target audience is not “rainwater management designers” generally, but those designers specifically practicing in the United States.

In this way, the book provokes the question–what are the aesthetic choices and values placed on working in the certain context of the United States vs. other places throughout the world? How do cultural values directly or indirectly identify a ‘sense of water’ through choices of design expression (form, material, texture, color, etc.)? In the case of ‘green infrastructure’, the added layer of plant material, as a designed ecology or part of a larger environmental restoration effort, has the opportunity to portray the intent of ARD and to suggest its belonging to a particular biome (riparian, coastal, wetland, dry wash, etc.) While the book provides a ‘toolkit’ of ideas to achieve amenity and utility driven goals, the challenge relies on the designer to recognize the importance of choosing the appropriate design solution and plant material(s) that are compatible with the frequency and volume of stormwater that the system is designed to manage. Additionally, the designer will need to make an aesthetic decision based on the client/owner’s cultural acceptance of ‘landscape’, and within that, the sense of beauty found within landscape which are designed to be ‘natural’ vs. ‘built’. While amenity is framed in a particular way related to ARDs, the more significant value is triggering one’s awareness that the ARD is intended to improve the management of stormwater and potentially create a reference for the user to engage with.

The book, which has the look and feel of a textbook (in a helpful reference sense), is divided into four parts—Part 1) History and Background, Part 2) Achieving Amenity, Part 3) Achieving Utility, and Part 4) Case Studies. The projects described in Artful Rainwater Design are repeatedly referred to throughout the various parts of the book, which serves the authors’ purpose: to reveal the multi-beneficial nature of ARD as well as to express how goals and objectives can be met through various stormwater management techniques. Midway through the book, the authors present a means to identify and cross correlate the goals, objectives, and techniques through a diagram (Table 3.1 The complex web of ARD utility goals, objectives, and techniques on page 103) which becomes the basis for explaining the assortment of techniques found in Part Three. I found this diagram to be particularly intriguing; it has the potential to serve as a key organizational feature for the book, suggesting a sense of decision making based on values from both amenities and utilities that the book offers.

Part 1: The History of Stormwater Management and Background for Artful Rainwater Design is an important beginning for readers to place stormwater management into a historical context. The authors trace the original aim of stormwater management, which was driven by basic engineering aims (drain water as efficiently as possible; protect from flooding) and narrate how the practice is moving towards a more holistic and less infrastructure-dependent practice. Motivated by early practices of “defensive planning”, stormwater management was formerly considered a means of protection against nature, delineating a defensive boundary to protect from flooding and, as a result, creating a hermetic seal around development. Echols and Pennypacker point to the change in attitude towards stormwater management that was triggered by the environmental movement of the 1960s, and that reached new heights with the release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature (1969), both of which cast a greater awareness that water quality and environmental pollution were interconnected. The authors explain that this awareness by the science community and federal oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which led to the Clean Water Act in 1972, represented the initial steps to more widespread acknowledgement of and the development of a regulatory framework for non-point pollution. Non-point pollution would become the operative lens through which ARD approaches would unfold—finding a means to “green” more urbanized areas and to capture and treat the “first flush” (or first ½ inch to 1 ½ inches of rainfall) of pollutants before they made their way into the tributary system. With better environmental analysis and understanding of non-point pollution, ‘stormwater management’ came to include quality in addition to (flood) control, necessitating the rethinking of conventional stormwater management systems.

Towards the end of Part 1, the authors indirectly define Artful Rainwater Design (ARD) as a strategy that conceives of “…sustainable stormwater management that is not only visually appealing but also informative about the way it manages rain.” This strategy became a movement in the 1990s as the cities of Portland and Seattle sought to make their stormwater infrastructural systems more adept at achieving higher water quality for the sake of threatened environmental species, as well as to allow people to better understand and appreciate how water is handled in urban and suburban areas. While the word ‘artful’ may be subjective, the term “Artful Rainwater Design” provides a non-technical means of packaging the virtues of this new form of infrastructure, which can bring such amenities as community and social benefits. The term encapsulates the multi-beneficial aspects that Artful Rainwater Design can bring and the ideas it promotes, which readers can explore in their own work.

ARD_Amenity — Amenity, expressed through Artful Rainwater Design. Image: Echols

Within Part 2: Achieving Amenity with Artful Rainwater Design, the authors discuss many so-called “amenity” goals found within the practice of landscape design. For the purposes of the book, the goals are specific to the ARD projects featured therein, including: Education, Recreation, Safety, Public Relations (PR), and Aesthetic Richness. Based on these goals, the authors gleaned specific objectives and associated them with the various techniques deployed in the ARD designs. For each goal, the authors provide a table breaking down the various objectives and coupling them with various design techniques, yielding a helpful quick reference for the reader. This design palette of techniques is subsequently translated through the case study projects, which illuminate the possible variation in creating amenities that transcend traditional realms of site design and move into realms of architecture, art, and street design.

05_UtilityGraphic3 — Utility, diagrammatically portraying Artful Rainwater Design. Image: Echols and Maurer

Part 3: Achieving Utility with Artful Rainwater Design, begins with an overview of utility and how to distinguish stormwater management from stormwater treatment. Treatment is “a subset of management that addresses water quality.” I appreciated the author’s note that “..the utility strategies used in ARD are ones that promote stormwater management that clearly celebrates rain.” This is fundamental to their objective of creating awareness about water as a resource on which we depend; such awareness is greatly needed within our communities, particularly in our more urbanized neighborhoods. I would urge that ARD utility strategies are a celebration of water ; they promote and instill a sense of stewardship and a means of direct/indirect learning about how to support a healthier environment.

Part 4: Case Studies of Artful Rainwater Design, the appendix section, provides a helpful profile for each project included in the book. These profiles comprise: the background story (basis for the project, owner/client discussion, funding), both amenity and utility goals are identified as easily readable graphic icons, an in-depth description of both amenity and utility attributes of the project, concluding notes, and the sources for each case study. Information on the project site’s related climate data as well as the construction costs would be greatly appreciated addition for the book’s next edition. As a Southern California native,living with multi-year periods of prolonged drought, I would have found it interesting and beneficial for the authors to have included information on each project’s climate—particularly rainfall—and implementation costs. It is without question that water is everyone’s concern. However, for areas that see very little rainfall whatsoever, it is even more important to illuminate to the public and to convince landowners that every drop of water that lands on a site area needs to be accounted for. Any storm water management design should allow for the value of that water to be maximized.

This book achieves its goal—to explain and express the opportunities that are afforded by Artful Rainwater Design. As a landscape architect and urban designer, I hope that the authors return to this topic and take a deeper look at questions that arise in the (professional) industry, including performance metrics, cost-benefit analyses, and challenges placed on these systems over time. As many cities are faced with rising costs for maintenance and capital expenditures, providing both direct and indirect cost benefits (or means of describing these benefits in terms of their monetary value) to the policy makers along with a description of anticipated costs over the life of a project would provide the incentive to include these exciting advancements in stormwater infrastructure early on, enabling more creative design expressions while securing a healthier environment.

Overall, this book is a worthwhile read and a useful reference for “rainwater management designers”, including professional (and student) landscape architects, engineers, and architects. I am also hopeful that, given the book’s open-ended title, it will find its way into the hands of policy makers, city managers, and community builders at large here in the U.S.A. and abroad, providing more creative means to achieve a healthier, visually rich, water-responsive landscape.

Ben Feldmann
Los Angeles

On The Nature of Cities

The Nurtured Golem: A Nantes Neighborhood Transforms Environmental Bad into Good

27 September 2015Essay, Europe, People & CommunitiesAgriculture, Gardens, Justice, Participation/Democracy, PlanningFrancois Mancebo

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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At the end of my last post, Unintended Consequences: When Environmental “Goods” Turn Bad, I raised the idea that sometimes environmental “bads” can also turn good, and that it usually works better when nobody “looks”. I mean that this process works better when the inhabitants take ownership of their living environment and transform it outside of any legal framework or official urban project, as the remarkable history of La Fournillère illustrates: there, inhabitants of the area turned a wasteland for squatters into a very popular park, combining leisure amenities and urban agriculture by the will of the people and with their own priorities. In the end, they manipulated the local authorities to enact their initiative—which was first reputed as “illegal”—into an official amenity.

Let’s start at the beginning and go back to the 19th century, when La Fournillère was just a village west of Nantes, in France. Indeed, La Fournillère was a small village, but it was on the verge of becoming an industrial suburb of fruit and vegetable canneries. Why did canneries decided to locate there? Well, the soil was rich, and the climate permitted cultivation of early vegetables with high added value, such as field peas, baby carrots, or asparagus. These canneries developed a policy of industrial paternalism and provided kitchen gardens to their workers. By 1908, La Fournillère was annexed to the city of Nantes; in the fifties, social housing complexes were built.

La Fournillère in 1962. Image: Archives de Nantes

The kitchen gardens were still there, and the plot where they were established finally took the name of La Fournillère, while the former village vanished from the collective memory. Now, in 2015, as all the other kitchen gardens of the agglomeration of Nantes disappeared under the growing pressure from real estate development, La Fournillère is still alive and kicking: the plot now covers 3 hectares (7.5 acres) and has become a natural and cultural landmark for Nantes and its region.

Situation Map Downtown Nantes. Image: Google Maps

“Still Alive and Kicking”: The Jardins Potagers. Image: Google Maps

What happened? First, a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, then, local people’s initiative and creativity, converged to preserve this improbable greenery in the middle of the city. Together with the social housing complexes came successive infrastructure projects that were supposed to be built, in the spirit of the post-war boom, on the site of the kitchen gardens of La Fournillère; the first one planned was an access highway to downtown Nantes. But as soon as they were designed, they were abandoned one after the other due to local political turmoil. The workers had been evicted from their kitchen gardens, but nothing happened after and the place turned into wasteland.

But the people living nearby—especially those from the social housing, who didn’t have access to nature—had their eyes on this abandoned land and its rich soils. After enough time had elapsed, they made their move! In the mid-seventies and later, one after the other, first at night, next in broad daylight, they progressively occupied La Fournillère. By the end of the nineties, there were more than 70 squatting gardeners at La Fournillère. To get a piece of land there “you simply have to start digging the ground somewhere—a corner that looks vacant—and wait. If nobody’s coming at you, you keep digging and tending your future garden. A few days more, or a week, without any hostility from your neighbors, means that this piece of land is ostensibly yours: you can start fencing, sowing, and socializing with your neighbors, as mentioned by Elisabeth Pasquier, who wrote a seminal book about La Fournillère. Today, two categories of squatting gardeners coexist at La Fournillère.

On the one side, some of the former evicted gardeners—or their children—came back. They are locals, who descended from Brittany or Vendée (French regions). They are few and they stick together in La Fournillère. They keep closely connected via common emblematic activities, such as pétanque (bocce tournament), aperitif (before-dinner drinks), or barbecues. This category of gardeners is made of poor but not marginalized people. They live in substandard one-family houses: usually old people with a small retirement pension or younger poor workers. They know how to cultivate a small piece of land.

On the other side is a completely different category. These gardeners come from the disadvantaged social housing complexes around La Fournillère. The new ones have different origins and ethnic backgrounds, being mainly Portuguese and North Africans. They are usually unemployed and live on social benefits. For them, “owning” a piece of land at La Fournillère is a way of getting of keeping active: in these new gardens they can develop a social network inside, but also outside, their own community. It is not all about vegetables and fruits, really. These gardeners are called “les autres” (the others) by the “local” gardeners that form the first category, but they represent an overwhelming majority, with nearly 4 gardeners out of 5. For them, La Fournillère is a place were they can settle symbolically—a “circulatory area” (territoire circulatoire), within the meaning of Alain Tarrius, and a place where they can grow roots literally.

Usually, both groups ignore each other. But there is, nonetheless, an element of solidarity that brings them together: they all are fully aware of how precarious and uncertain the future of La Fournillère is. They are squatters and they can be expelled at any time. These gardens don’t exist officially. Both groups know they have to be united to respond effectively to any of the many menaces that threaten their plot—a new urban project, theft and vandalism in their gardens from people from outside, etc. Such a situation fosters social links.

In the early 90s, the new city council of Nantes took interest again in La Fournillère, but this time with the project of creating a neighborhood park there. First, the gardeners were in shock. Most of them went claiming that if the city were going to stick its nose in their gardens, they’d rather leave the garden. But then, something happened. In a sudden about-face, both groups of gardeners—the original and the new gardeners, the “locals” and the “others”—started uniting their forces and organizing themselves collectively to impose their view on this project: they wanted their seat at the decision-making table and went for it. They also knew that the game of illegally occupying pieces of land couldn’t go on forever: it was time for them to make their situation legal, preferably in their own terms. A form of collective intelligence emerged, and with it the seeds of a collective identity.

Rather than making demands and organizing protests, they decided to draw out an in-depth report on the actual situation at La Fournillère, providing an exact overview with maps of the different pieces of land, including the spatial pattern of the different gardens and their history, all of which was realized with the help of Elisabeth Pasquier. The report displayed the long work of clearing and planting that they had done as well the public goods they had created, and illustrated the social and ecological value of these gardens for the whole city. They demonstrated that La Fournillère worked quite well as it was, whereas the project developed by the municipality could very well fail and destroy the whole site, unless it took into account their experiences and included the organization of La Fournillère as it currently stood. And finally, they claimed that they wanted to be decision-making partners in the project.

This time, the planners of the city of Nantes played smart. They understood that the opposition of the gardeners to the project was not just a negative NIMBY reaction, but the expression of collective knowledge and skills. Once they saw that what was happening—the emergence of an alternative proposal with strong local community (and, therefore, elector) support, they agreed to discuss with the gardener’s collective. According to both parties, the negotiations were no picnic, but at the end of a long process—and against all odds—the city council decided to support the gardeners’ alternative project and to abandon its own proposal. The alternative project envisioned a park organized around the existing kitchen gardens and organized under the form of islets or patches. Paths for walkers and runners entwined with these islets, connecting them. In the very center of the park would be a venue for initiating visitors to the recycling of material and waste in urban gardening, including waste sorting and composting to enhance biomass and biodiversity. The gardeners determined themselves what would be the rules for living together in the park: more frugal and wiser water-management; a ban on cutting any tree in one’s own gardens, since trees are considered to be common resources; etc.

Photo 4-min — A shack and a garden at La Fournillère. Image: Miraorti

What was the outcome of such a mysterious alchemy?

Let’s pay a visit to La Fournillère today. Placed in the middle of the city, La Fournillère is a particularly charming and unusually large urban greenspace. In essence, it is a weird farming plot that you can only reach by walking: to get there, one must take two narrow lanes that lead to a kind of huge clearing covered by gardens, scattered trees, and bushes. There, large, colored water tanks surround shacks made out of recycled materials, isolated or gathered in small patches. Plastic strips flapping in the wind form a strange parody of fencing. A maze of service alleys spreads around five key items: three wells, a pond, and an improvised pétanque court. Two larger paths cross the whole area. They were created by the footsteps of thousands of people: traversing La Fournillère is a shortcut for many men and women going to school, to work, or simply to the market in Nantes. And such a lovely shortcut it is, with flowers, trees, birds everywhere, wonderful scents, and friendly people. As a bonus, it gives the thrill of crossing a no man’s land without any official regulation, outside the world of master plans—a brief taste of freedom in an otherwise ordered life.

La Fournillère is also a social theater, where the gardeners perpetually reinvent values and attitudes to live together, as well as learn new agricultural skills. These kitchen gardens—predominately maintained by men, though a bit less recently—give these grown-ups a place where they can get away from it all and become kids again, a gang of Tom Sawyers playing in the wild, a modest parenthesis in their ordinary lives, since at the end of the day they’ll go back home. At La Fournillère, they mimic their household environment to better subvert it: a painting is clamped to the wall of a shack, but outdoors; a former doormat is turned into a blackout curtain, while an old curtain becomes a doormat. They indulge themselves by putting things in the garden that wouldn’t be permitted anywhere else in the city: a doll’s head impaled on a pole, a teddy bear crucified on a picket fence, pinup posters stuck to the walls of the shacks with the mention “beware of the bitch” (“Attention pute méchante”), etc.

Photo 7-min — Recycling of material and waste. Image: Miraorti

A scarecrow, or something else? Image: Aredius44

Photo 9-min — Gateway Park (Huntington Station). Image: villagetattler.com

Who will find the “kamkokola”? Image: Miraorti

Gateway Park (Huntington Station) – source villagetattler.com

Naturally, when you ask them why they do these things, the gardeners always have a rational explanation: the doll was found in a garbage can and is used to protect the tip of the stake; the teddy bear is used as a scarecrow; and so on. Sometimes the explanation is: “It is just fun”, as with the pinup posters. But hidden behind these simple explanations, developed so matter-of-factly, are some really weird and meaningful features: why are all these figures—the doll’s head, the teddy bear, the pinup—always positioned so as to look outwards, right in the eyes of the visitors? Why doesn’t the gardener cover all his stakes, if it is a matter of protection—especially considering that the tip of the unique covered pole protrudes from the doll’s head? Why is there such a proliferation of human and animal figures among the installations exhibited in the gardens (I previously spared you the description of a huge inflatable Casimir, an anthropomorphic orange dinosaur, which was the main character of a French kids’ TV show in the beginning of the 80s) or of big toy soldiers? Are these anthropomorphic setups there to protect the gardens when the gardeners are not there? Curiously enough, it appears that painted anthropomorphic figures are frequent at the entrance of the community gardens like in New York, for example at Gateway Park in Huntington Station. Are they some kind of kamkokolas? (The inhabitants of the Trobriand islands in Papua New Guinea fitted kamkokolas—vertical poles on which two smaller diagonal poles rest, where spirits are supposed to live and watch over the gardens— at every corner of their gardens). All these figures can be seen as attempts by the gardeners to take ownership of the gardens and protect them.

Apart from the magic of the place and its beauty, the gardens of La Fournillère also are kitchen gardens and have, as such, straightforward economic interests: cabbages, potatoes, and other vegetables are planted to feed the family year-round. Protecting this interest is a good reason to erect the gate-keepers discussed above, even though they are mostly symbolic.

One of the many merits of La Fournillère is surely that, in marginal lands, very different people found a way to build something really beautiful, to live together there and, finally, to stand up together to bring their views to the planners of the city in a very constructive way. As such, it is a symbol of what can be done when everybody gets involved in the planning procedures. La Fournillère is about the right to decide and the power to create, renewing and deepening what Henri Lefebvre calls Le Droit à la Ville (Lefebvre 1968).

The example of La Fournillère also gives us insight into how interstitial abandoned urban areas may be one of cities’ main seedbeds of creative innovation. To return to my opening point, it is about how environmental “bads” can be turned into environmental goods: in this case, an environmental that gives consistency to the whole urban fabric of Nantes emerged from what otherwise might have been a space of environmental bad. Though it may have been unwittingly, the gardeners’ actions contributed to the preservation of Nantes’s urban identity.

As I discussed in a recent paper (Mancebo 2015) a city does not arise from the sole will and skill of architects, planners, surveyors, and politicians. Like a golem, a city has to be nurtured and molded by its inhabitants, which finally put their values in its mouth to bring it to life. And such a process needs time. Quite differently from the frenetic timeline and knee-jerk reactions to any opposition that elected officials and planners, guided by their own short-term interests (the next election, compliance with construction deadlines etc.), impose on urban policies, La Fournillère is a wonderful example of the proper use of slowness (Le bon usage de la lenteur) in urban planning, as depicted by Pierre Sansot (Sansot 2000). Grasping what happened at La Fournillère eventually means deciphering the eternal game between what the authorities, whatever their form, try to impose on the social fabric, and what the social fabric—here, the gardeners—impose on the authorities, through deception or force, through confrontation or bargaining. It is all about how people take ownership over their own city.

François Mancebo
Paris

On The Nature of Cities

Works Cited

1. Lefebvre H., 1968, Le droit à la ville, Editions Anthropos, Paris.

2. Mancebo F., 2015, “Insights for a Better Future in an Unfair World – Combining Social Justice with Sustainability”, in Transitions to Sustainability, Mancebo F., Sachs I. eds, pp. 105-116, Springer.

3. Sansot P., 2000, Du bon usage de la lenteur, Rivages Poche.

What Pope Francis Might Do to Advance Climate Justice During His Visit to New York

23 September 2015Art & Awareness, Essay, Science & ToolsClimate change, Faith, Justice, North America, Sustainability, ValueRebecca Bratspies

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Pope Francis visits the United States in late September 2015. He will speak in Washington, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia, including an address at the United Nations and to a full Congress. His visit will be an opportunity for reflection and—who knows—might possibly be a turning point in the United States’ long, tortuous debate about climate change. The Pope’s recent Encyclical on the Environment and Climate Change, Laudato si, was certainly a welcome acknowledgement that an unimaginable crisis is upon us. His urgent appeal not only recognized the immensity of the sustainability challenge we face, but also called for immediate action.

By situating a duty to care about environmental degradation squarely within the Catholic religious tradition, Pope Francis may have shown us a path beyond the political and ideological thicket that has for too long stymied any genuine public conversation about climate change here in the United States. As Rob Verchick put it, Pope Francis has the power to “vouch” that climate change is real, that it is happening now, and that urgent action is required. With any luck, his visit to the United States will give him many opportunities to be the climate change “voucher” we so desperately need. Speaking directly to the likes of Oklahoma Senator Inhofe, the infamous “Senator with a snowball,” the earnest chemist turned priest might be able to open hearts and minds too long closed to the frightening changes going on, and to the deep injustice that climate change perpetrates against the most vulnerable among us. Barring unforeseen catastrophes, Pope Francis’s words will dominate the news cycle. That means that he has a unique opportunity to focus global and national attention on the looming ecological catastrophe that is climate change, and to bring its tragic consequences into the popular media’s 24/7 coverage of his visit.

pope_Image — Catholic Church England and Wales/Mazur-catholicnews.org.uk/flickr/cc

I was recently asked by Newsday to reflect on what I would say to Pope Francis. What came to mind immediately was a line from the New Union Prayer Book: “No longer can we tear the world apart to make our fire.” For me, this line from the prayer welcoming the Sabbath encapsulates the sustainability challenge—how to meet the needs and aspirations of 7.4 billion people while also keeping our impact on the earth within planetary boundaries.

As a species, we are failing miserably in this task. We poison our air, land, and water to “build our fire,” while pumping alarming amounts of carbon into our atmosphere in the process. Unchecked, human exploitation of the planet has created environmental “haves” and “have-nots”—permitting a “throwaway” lifestyle for the few, while leaving billions in abject poverty.

This disparity is as true within nations as it is between them. Looking more closely at how just one or two pollutants affect people in a single city can help make the distributional justice concerns clear. The New York metro region as a whole ranks unfavorably high for air pollution—the 12^th worst metro area in the country. In 2014, Queens, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island all received F grades from the American Lung Association for ozone pollution. The health impacts New Yorkers suffer because of these unacceptable levels of pollution are nothing short of disastrous. According to the New York Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, ozone and particulate matter, two common pollutants from combustion of fossil fuels, are directly responsible for 3,400 premature deaths in NYC each year. For perspective, that means that on average, eight to ten times as many New Yorkers are killed by just these two pollutants as are murdered in any given year.

The morbidity effects are even more striking. These pollutants are responsible for more than 2,000 asthma-related hospital admissions, and over 6,900 asthma-related emergency room visits, each year.

These statistics are grim and getting worse. And, the distribution of this environmental suffering is staggeringly unequal. Asthma rates rise dramatically as income goes down. In New York, asthma rates for those with annual household incomes below $15,000 is more than double the rates for households with annual incomes exceeding $75,000 (15 percent versus 6.8 percent). Over 17 percent of African-American children suffer from asthma, compared to 8.7 percent for white children and 11 percent for Latino/a children. Children under four years of age from low-income areas are more than four times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than children from high-income areas. Here, in these few statistics about the relationship between one disease and one or two pollutants, we see the entire climate justice problem writ small.

The Pope has been an eloquent voice for the current and projected victims of climate change. Over the next few days, he will have the biggest possible platforms from which to try to turn that eloquence into action. Pope Francis will address the entire world as he opens the United Nations Sustainability Summit. He will then speak to the United States during an unprecedented address to a joint session of Congress. The Pope’s remarkable popularity with Catholics, non-Catholics, and, indeed, even with atheists, suggests that his words will matter.

Both addresses will give Pope Francis the opportunity to make real the crises of climate change. The ice is melting, the seas are rising, and we are on track for catastrophe. Those suffering first (and perhaps most) contributed least to the problem and benefited least from the development and exploitation that got us here. Pope Francis can help every-day Americans appreciate that climate change is far more than an esoteric scientific question—it is an immediate, moral one. He can breathe life into New York’s asthma statistics, and bring home the grave environmental inequalities our lifestyle creates.

I hope that Pope Francis will use his American visit to emphasize that while sustainability is a question of survival, it is also a question of justice—environmental justice. Billions of people live in penury, contributing virtually nothing to the planetary crisis, while we privileged few tear the world apart to make our fires. The children of New York deserve more; the children of the world deserve more!

Rebecca Bratspies
New York City

On The Nature of Cities

Move Slow and Connect People with Nature: The Economics of Happiness in Jeonju

21 September 2015People & Communities, Place & Design, ReviewBiophilia, Economics, Livability, Sustainability, ValuePatrick M. Lydon

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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A review of the International Conference on the Economics of Happiness, held on September 3-5, 2015 in Jeonju, South Korea.

“We need to re-establish the link between city and land.”

At the opening ceremony of the Economics of Happiness conference, we were happily greeted with this statement from the event’s director, Dr. Helena Norberg-Hodge, who called for everyone present (governments, NGOs, activists, and local citizens) to re-establish the link between city and land, and in turn, as we understand, to use this link as a basis for how we go about our economic and social activities.

economicsofhappiness_1 — Dr. Helena Norberg-Hodge gives the opening keynote at the Economics Of Happiness conference in Jeonju, South Korea.

Norberg-Hodge called for all activists to be “big picture” activists, united by a shared vision for social and ecological wellbeing. “How do we get there?” she asked the audience “re-connect to others and re-connect to nature.”

It’s a sentiment that we’ve all seen echoing not only through activist circles, but also through professions from architecture and urban design to politics and law. Bringing individuals from such professions together, the Economics of Happiness is a global initiative, bolstered by the success of the recent film of the same name. Through the film and the parent nonprofit organization Local Futures, which Norberg-Hodge directs, it would seem that a global cultural phenomenon is slowly taking root in cities and communities around the world.

Global though it may be, Economics of Happiness is perhaps more appropriately described as a global collection of local initiatives, all of which are united by a shared vision rooted in things like compassion and connection. The conference was uplifting—as you might expect a conference on the Economics of Happiness would be—and filled with advice and success stories presented by speakers from the USA, UK, Japan, and South Korea.

Of particular interest to The Nature of Cities readers, the conference was supported largely by Jeonju city’s Mayor Seong Su Kim, who wants to use it as a blueprint for building a happy, sustainable city, one that looks at a more “useful” measurement than GDP and per-capita income in order to gauge the wellbeing of its citizens. Speakers chimed in to this effect through multiple viewpoints including law, industry, public service, and—perhaps most pervasively—the subjects were sprouting directly from the social and ecological ground in which they are planted.

“The roots of all our major problems are intertwined” noted Keibo Oiwa, author of Slow is Beautiful, and founder of Japan’s Sloth Club, a movement for slow living amidst one of the most fast paced countries in the world. By the acknowledgment that all of our problems are intertwined, we also come to see that the solutions, too, are intertwined.

As in nature itself, sharing one success broadly and across disciplines and borders, will ultimately lead to more success.

A common theme at the conference, Oiwa asked us to look to nature, saying that “Nature seems to know where to stop its growth and progress… how to take just enough”, further suggesting that the major deficiency in the way we think of and carry out “progress” is that this process is fundamentally disconnected from nature, from reality, and often from other people.

Oiwa’s philosophy also pushes us to see how re-connecting to nature and each other as the basis of our design and building process does not necessarily mean stopping progress.

All we have to do is look at the progress of nature itself for a case study, at how fast nature grows and re-generates and innovates; we can have a sustainable progress that is connected to and informed by nature, giving us amazing progress and beauty side by side.

Speaker Janelle Orsi took the concept of ‘connection’ from a social angle, giving a sharp yet witty critique of the “sharing economy.” A highly contested term in urban areas, the “sharing economy” is most often identified, ironically, with highly lucrative business models like Uber and AirBnB, which claim “sharing” as their philosophy.

Orsi, who is co-founder of the Sustainable Economies Law Center in Oakland, California, gave the conference attendees a different take on the meaning of a sharing economy, calling for us to look more deeply at what sharing means, and whether we can morally justify profiting wildly from others and still call it sharing.

The “real sharing economy”, Orsi says, is seen in projects such as community gardens, worker-owned businesses, car shares, and collaborations. She gave a convincing argument for a new local economy, one based on four levels of increasing scale: relationships (such as borrowing and sharing on a temporary basis), agreements (such as co-owning and space sharing), organizations (such as a food co-op), and universal systems of support (public transit, basic income, universal healthcare).

economicsofhappiness_2 — Janelle Orsi explains her ‘legal wedge’ in altering legal structures to encourage local economic activity.

Being a lawyer by trade, Orsi is engaged with “fixing” the restrictive laws we find—perhaps most often at state and local levels—which prohibit a true sharing economy from emerging. “We need different laws and regulations”, said Orsi, suggesting a set of laws for what she calls “extractive” commercial entities, and a different set for “generative” entities like co-operatives and non profit organizations.

The intent is to be more restrictive on profit driven organizations, which tend to “extract” wealth from a local economy, and to be more encouraging for those organizations which generate wealth and wellbeing for the people.

Reflecting strongly the thoughts of the late economist E.F. Schumacher, another constant theme throughout most of the conference was the call to be small. Schumacher’s 1973 book, “Small is Beautiful”, continues to be a highly influential call for economic thinking which puts people and the environment as central concerns.

Smallness encourages better relationships between people and the environment, and better relationships between people and the environment give us a framework to take development actions that have sustainability and wellbeing built into their core. Schumacher’s concepts are statements of absolute simplicity and clarity at once.

Speaking to this point, Neil McInroy, from the U.K. based Centre for Local Economic Strategies, gave a plan to “bring the economy back home” by building out a full, diverse, and resilient local economy that merges “commercial, public, and social” economic sectors.

Perhaps most surprising was Jeonju’s Mayor Kim’s very sincere call to action for building a happy and sustainable city, much of it surrounding ecological and agriculture-related themes.

Mayor Kim, who was a huge champion of bringing the Economics of Happiness event to his city—and who insisted that the organizers make it an annual event going forward—gave a very daring strategy which, he noted, goes against the national agenda in South Korea. This is not easy territory for a South Korean mayor to tread, even in a mid-sized city like Jeonju.

One of Mayor Kim’s main points was ecology, where he highlighted efforts by the city to invest in local biodiversity, reforestation, and cutting river pollution. Of these, the call for biodiversity is one of the most critical, yet is only beginning to take form in public forums.

Mayor Kim might be happy to know, however, that such topics are well discussed here on TNOC:

It’s good to see that biodiversity is now a major target for Mayor Kim and Jeonju City.

In the area of food and agriculture, Kim noted that only 10 percent of food consumed in Jeonju city is from local sources, and he made a call for the city to aim for food sovereignty.

Food sovereignty!

Those are big words, and the Mayor backed them up at least in part, by highlighting the establishment of a city “food charter” which will mandate the use of locally-produced organic foods in schools and city-government organizations. This is only a small gesture compared to what would need to happen for food municipal sovereignty, but the momentum is moving in the right direction.

How will the Mayor go about true food sovereignty? Rather than focusing on urban agriculture, the Mayor primarily pointed to focusing on the broad areas of agricultural land that he is fortunate to have surrounding the city.

Mayor Kim has a year to get to work before the next Economics of Happiness conference, and though none of us reading this are likely strangers to empty promises from political figures, in his corner, the Mayor had a good few hundred citizens in attendance at the conference and related workshops.

economicsofhappiness_3_coverimage — One of the small community-oriented breakout sessions at the conference, which worked to engage more local voices.

Immediately following the conference, there were local workshops, and the Mayor implemented a distributed network of small neighborhood support centers to deal with social economy and urban regeneration, instead of just having a central development office. Small is Beautiful.

Small, local, connected to the environment and to each other: it’s an enviable framework that is taking root both here in Jeonju, and in cities around the world where local governments and citizens are mobilizing to take local actions.

All of that local legwork could add up to some big global changes.

Patrick Lydon
San Jose & Seoul

On The Nature of Cities

Shrink-ing Times Square

20 September 2015EssayDesign, Justice, Livability, Policy, SustainabilityAndrew Rudd

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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1. What’s the matter with Times Square?

Several years ago, Helle Søholt, CEO of Gehl Architects, said that New York would be the most sustainable city in the world if only it fixed its streets. Million Trees NYC is one effort in that direction, as is the CitiBike bike share programme and its corresponding—if slowly-expanding and inconsistently enforced—infrastructure of protected bike lanes. But it is New York’s overall design of ‘complete streets’ that has probably been the most impactful on its sustainability profile. For years, much of Manhattan’s open space was indisputably dominated by the private car. Nowhere epitomized this better than Times Square, where pedestrians famously had to weave in and out of active vehicular rights-of-way to avoid total stoppage on the narrow sidewalks. Then, in 2009, New York decided to experiment with the pedestrianization of the area. The 2010 decision to make this permanent vaulted NYC into the vanguard of sustainable streets.

New York’s Times Square before (left) and after (right) the replacement of a number of vehicular lanes with a pedestrian plaza.

In 2015, with the plaza paved and old problems solved, new controversies are on the front page: unscrupulous hucksters and unclothed demonstrators (a return of some of the louche elements suppressed by the previous mayor, Michael Bloomberg). With the final touches of the repaved pedestrian plaza barely in place, the current Mayor (Bill de Blasio) is calling for the plaza to be removed and cars returned. A number of officials, including the City Council Speaker; the Borough President; the New York Times architecture critic; the head of the NGO, Transportation Alternatives; and others in the field of urbanism have essentially asked whether the Mayor is out of his mind. Nevertheless, de Blasio still appears to be acquiescing to the lone voice of his Police Commissioner that the redeveloped space is simply ungovernable.

Times Square’s pedestrian plaza and an unexpected encounter with Las Desnudas.

Whence the drastic change? Since the installation of the plazas the empirical evidence boasts reduced pedestrian injuries and vehicle collisions (ironically, one of the aims of the current Mayor’s impressive Vision Zero), increased pedestrian traffic and increased sales and commercial rents. With such success, why would he throw it all away? Assuming that his position is not entirely capricious, we might also ask whether there is something deeper at issue. During his election campaign, Mayor de Blasio faced a right-wing critique that his pro-equity platform would return New York to the ‘bad old days’ of crime-ridden subways, drug addict-filled parks, and prostitute-frequented streets, and despite his virtual dismantling of the dreadful stop-and-frisk policy, his choice of police commissioner Bratton (and Bratton’s continuance of draconian ‘broken windows’ policing) suggest that he is still fighting the nemesis of the ‘soft on crime’ liberal label.

The problem is, that fight is getting in the way of one of the most empirically successful sustainable streets initiatives in New York’s history. For many New Yorkers, the specter of its sudden removal is unimaginable. At the same time, several years ago, many of us would never have dreamed of (as transformational a change as) the pedestrianization of Times Square. But then again, going back even further—two or three —few probably imagined a crime-free Times Square (Disney notwithstanding). Yet that, too, happened.

Taken as a whole, the various changes in and around Times Square begin to suggest a chronic pattern of reactionary responses to some of the most visible crises of the time. A series of high-profile pedestrian deaths preceded Mayor de Blasio’s Vision Zero, which since 2014 has led to lower speed limits and redesigned sidewalk curbs, including in Times Square. New York’s loss of the title of top ‘world commerce center’ to London and loss to the state government on instituting ‘congestion pricing’ (which London had successfully premiered) preceded ex-Mayor Bloomberg’s 2010 efforts to pedestrianize Times Square. And a violent crime peak while ex-Mayor Giuliani was District Attorney preceded his mayoral run, following which he cracked down on illicit activity in Times Square in 1994. The question is, could New York even dream of managing all of these challenges simultaneously? As Richard Sennett wrote earlier this year, ‘the way forward lies in urbanists stepping out of our professional confines, drawing on other disciplines, no matter how amateurishly.’

Let’s head to psychology for a moment.

2. Is it about us?

Psychologists refer us to the ‘miracle question’. It is usually phrased as ‘what would a state of perfection look like?’ and it prompts the subject to envision an ideal state of improvement that is disconnected from the status quo and any intervening impediments. However—and somewhat ironically—few subjects are motivated to ask the question unless they are acutely aware that they are already doing very badly. Behavior change often starts at the bottom. Before a subject reaches the lowest point he or she may be in a ‘purgatory of indifference’, from within which it may be difficult to recognize dysfunction. Realizing that one is seriously off course from one’s life vision, there is motivation to rediscover an internal sense of purpose. This, in turn, may provide the incentive for maintaining those improvements over time; a virtuous cycle, if you will, but not an automatic one.

New York, like many cities, does have a wavering uncertainty about how to manage public space and balance spontaneity and control, an uncertainty into which Times Square’s hucksters and Desnudas may have tapped. But perhaps they have not tapped deeply enough to motivate the city to do more than tackle its symptoms as they flare up. As a result, a fear of returning to the ‘bad old days’ seems to have subsumed the recently—if shallowly—solved problems of pedestrian injury. It is also not uncommon for a sitting mayor to erase the legacy project of his predecessor (megalomania, if you like). But does the sudden push to eliminate the pedestrian plaza also reflect a collective, self-destructive tendency? Decades ago, Rem Koolhaas suggested that Manhattan, the ‘capital of perpetual crisis’, had always been obsessed with destroying and remaking itself, in a form of collective delirium, and that it revels in its resulting ‘culture of congestion’. Does it reflect amnesia about the city’s recent past of heightened pedestrian hazards? Paranoia about its far past of runaway crime? Or just hysteria about topless women (perfectly legal in New York City, by the way) in general?

Perhaps, like so many New Yorkers, Times Square needs a shrink—that is, a psychiatrist. Its symptoms suggest the need for a paradigm shift toward a culture of sharing public space that, as city leadership changes, can be sustained over time.

3. How can we sustain behavior change?

The general principles of behavior change—what motivates, how to maintain it over time—also apply to more complex group situations. The city is a sociospatial construct, co-created between people and place, each shaping the other. Indeed, culture and behavior concretize and coalesce in public space like nowhere else. Do behavior change principles also apply to Times Square and New York: its residents, their values, the leaders they elect to represent them, the policies those leaders institute to address their priorities, the police they appoint to enforce them, the influence of the police on the behavior of people, and so on?

We believe so, but with two main differences. First, where there is hierarchy, there is a gap between decision making and those experiencing its consequences; this requires a correspondingly strong communication strategy. And second, more people means more divergent priorities; this requires a strategy for balancing them. Group therapy can help. It transforms one’s peers into ‘mirrors’ that provide increased clarity about one’s own and others’ values and priorities. The mutual vulnerability this generates often increases the intent of the group to learn and improve, rather than protect and regress. And this dynamic is key to effectively addressing deeper issues rather than superficially treating the symptoms of group dysfunction: this is the cultural paradigm shift we seek.

Over time, however, behavior change is vulnerable to relapse. The conflicting priorities and short-term electoral cycles of cities only exacerbate this tendency. A maintenance plan can help, particularly where earlier motivation has disappeared. The technique of motivational interviewing, developed by clinical psychologists William Miller and Stephen Rollnick, gives some guidance on sustaining behavior change over the long term. It works by eliminating conflicting motivations that are inconsistent with the subject’s deeper values. Unless such ambivalence is resolved, behavioral relapse remains a serious risk. Motivational interviewing has five stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.

As change is a process rather than an outcome, progression through the stages is not always linear. In that sense, periodic maintenance may be the most critical stage. How does it work? Psychologists cite three key factors. First, social support, which carries the decision maker through the detours of the change process. Second, public announcement of the plan to change, which encourages accountability. And third, the creation of an escape plan early in the change process, which preemptively anticipates threats and prompts appropriate coping strategies, improving its long-term prognosis.

4. Three cities’ change trajectories

Can behavior change interventions positively influence sustainable urban improvement? And can they bring attention to invisible solved problems as much as visibly unsolved ones, particularly in light of electoral cycles and short-term memory? How does the experience of other cities speak to this? Let’s have a look.

Curitiba

That the city of Curitiba features very high on last year’s inaugural The Competitiveness of Cities, published by the World Economic Forum, will not surprise anyone. Curitiba also ranks at the top of the Latin America Green City Index sponsored by Siemens. For many, the city’s name is synonymous with sustainability. Less talked about is the significant obstacles the city overcame and whether its formerly dire sustainability situation might have motivated its current ‘best in class’ status. Four decades ago, Curitiba’s exceptionally high population growth and declining landfill capacity yielded an unmanageable non-organic waste surplus. (In motivational interviewing terms, one might call this the city’s precontemplation stage.) This was most acute in the city’s burgeoning hillside favelas. Here, there were so few streets that garbage vehicles could barely penetrate the built fabric to clear its growing refuse piles, the runoff from which was contaminating adjacent water bodies. As vermin and disease spread, the city debated how to act. (This suggests the contemplation stage.)

These rock-bottom conditions prompted the city to take action that ultimately led to a low-cost, world-leading waste management system. Its communication strategy was to educate children to be the agents of change who would encourage other residents to separate their garbage (reasonably tagged as the preparation stage). This Garbage Purchase program encouraged neighborhood associations to manage waste collection containers at the peripheries of hard-to-access favelas, with the incentive that each bag of sorted garbage yielded one bus ticket (clearly the action stage). There were early complications with this arrangement, but the city levered a new challenge—in the form of the 1991 cholera epidemic and its agricultural surplus—to strengthen and sustain its original improvement in the form of the Cambio Verde program, which matches sorted recyclables with local produce (arguably part of the maintenance stage, even if unorthodox). To date, Curitiba has a nearly 100 percent recycling rate.

Kitakyushu

Kitakyushu is another high performer, but one that actively touts its dramatic rise from environmental catastrophe several decades ago. In the 1960s, the city developed into one of the largest industrial cities in Japan. Lacking environmental safeguards, its adjacent Dokai Bay became so contaminated from industrial wastewater that it was soon referred to as the ‘Bay of Death’ after one study showed that even the bacteria normally endemic to saltwater bodies could not survive there (perhaps the precontemplation stage). The air fared no better. Skies were said to be filled with coal dust and ‘seven colours of smoke’ from red iron oxide particles, which alerted the public to the gravity of the situation (contemplation). Today, however, Kitakyushu bills itself as the ‘world capital of sustainable development.’

A contemporary view of Kitakyushu’s Dokai Bay.

How did they do it? First, the city prepared for large-scale change by capitalizing on many residents’ firsthand experience of the pollution to motivate and align interest groups to a common goal then communicated their purpose to increase public understanding and support (preparation, clearly). Then it acted by instituting voluntary pollution agreements with the private sector, setting stringent new pollution reduction targets, dredging the bay, creating pollution surveillance centres and building a model eco-town (most certainly action). Kitakyushu maintained momentum over the long term with a second phase plan focused on the new goal of reaching zero-emissions/zero-waste status through improvements in renewable energy and green space (maintenance, in a variation from Curitiba).

Copenhagen

Also at the very top of the European Green City Index, Copenhagen is a model for non-motorized transit in cities worldwide. But its trajectory is more circuitous. By the mid-20th century, urban cycling culture was widespread. But as incomes and car ownership rose in the 1960s, the city experienced a sharp modal shift toward driving (precontemplation). Traffic worsened and car parks mushroomed; even Copenhagen’s Strøget, now famous as a completely pedestrian street, was filled with cars. Change had occurred over a sufficiently quick period that the marked increase in street collisions and air pollution were perceptible. A number of protests catalyzed the eventual reintroduction of the balanced streets of Copenhagen’s pre-car era (contemplation moving into preparation).

Cycling in Copenhagen in the 2000s, after its resurgence in the 1970s.

Copenhagen took advantage of the oil crisis of the 1970s to introduce Car-Free Sundays (preparation moving into action). In the 1980s, however, the city made a number of proposals to bisect its periurban lakes with arterials connecting the city centre to its suburbs. This clear danger had the effect of motivating continuous pro-cycling advocacy over the next several decades, during which time a permanent network of pedestrianized streets and protected bike lanes grew (action). This change, which has been sustained through today, is in large part the result of reawakening consciousness of and pride in a historical culture of sustainable urban transport. And the cultural reversion has been instilled as a daily commuting practice by half of its residents, across all social strata (maintenance). Recently, the city has even assigned 50 police to ensure that ‘cycle karma’ (courteous cycling behavior) is maintained (further maintenance).

5. What do we need to do in New York?

Can we apply these cities’ successful experiences to Times Square? All three show that doing badly is an excellent initial motivator and can vault a city to the top of the pack. All three have managed to maintain behavior change over time in ways that at least roughly validate Miller and Rollnick’s motivational interviewing model. And all three now enjoy visibility at the top of several high-profile urban sustainability and performance indices. To secure continuous improvement over many short-term electoral cycles, these cities actively anticipated future threats and mined their cultural memory for retrievable opportunities. All of the above could help New York actively address its conflicting priorities and shift its public space culture.

New York comes in third in the Siemens North American Green Cities Index; first in the subcategories of land use and transport (undoubtedly reflecting its density and public and non-motorized transit infrastructure). Density and transport infrastructure require the appropriate complement of public space, such as Times Square, to function viably, but the rankings may constitute a negative incentive if these are seen as ‘mission accomplished’ and attention shifts elsewhere. Indeed, the renewed focus on ‘broken windows’ policing of public space suggests that the design priorities of the last administration have taken a back seat to the policing priorities of the administration before that. It is as if Times Square has zig-zagged through the stages of behavior change with three short-circuited cycles of preparation into action, each lacking the necessary contemplation and maintenance stages.

Times Square is not a failure of planning and design, or lacking in sustainability metrics, and certainly not suffering from an underequipped police force. On the contrary, it is a failure to address the deeper conflicts that public space embodies. New York may agree to disagree on the small stuff—what Sennett refers to as ‘difference and indifference’—but it must come to a broad agreement on big values, values such as justice and obscenity, which underlie ‘the right to the street’. Unless it does, the over-reactionary behavior will continue and the physical fabric of Times Square will likely suffer anti-human consequences.

If Times Square were to get a shrink, s/he would undoubtedly first say ‘the answers are within you’. Within whom, though? The public, the mayor, and the police force represent a promising first step. The paradigm shift we seek will require all of them to undergo a behavior shift; one that would benefit from a motivational interviewing intervention if it is to last. What would that look like?

The public

The general New York public is most responsible for actively cultivating the values and priorities (i.e. resolving the ambivalence) underlying public space culture. Too much of New York has lazily acquiesced to increased security at the price of decreased freedom (e.g. stop-and-frisk), in part because most of the public doesn’t see such policies as the Faustian bargain they are until they are directly targeted in the street. Vision Zero has directly benefited a majority of New Yorkers as well as tourists; however, those benefits may not be obvious to those who commute in private cars (nor even to pedestrians once they step into a cab). These members of the public may see the Times Square pedestrian plazas as little more than an obstruction, and though their attitude and behavior is out of sync with the majority of the city, they are still part of—and have an outsized impact on—daily urban function.

These issues might be handled best through better precontemplation and contemplation, which would help the public understand that change is necessary and then help it resolve its ambivalence toward core public space issues. What might the public contemplate? For starters, why do we consider a bare female nipple obscene, but not a toddler killed by an SUV that fails to yield to it on a crosswalk? How is it just for 25 percent of those using the street (from within a car) to occupy 75 percent of its area? Do we really want to arrest people for actions that merely shock our sensibilities (and have we considered how that might that backfire)? As Sennett puts it, are ‘isolation and segregation better than the risks entailed in interaction?’ ‘[C]ommunities have to decide […] [b]ut this is a decision which…should result after the experience of…exposure to difference rather than flight from contact.’ Such a process must also proactively deal with the person who is paranoid about crime, hysteric about nudity and narcissistic about parking his SUV in a protected bike lane.

The Mayor

Mayors are heavily incentivized by the prospect of being reelected by the public. This is not inherently bad, but their zeal to prove themselves strong leaders should not necessarily mean erasing the successes of their predecessors. Mayoral priority setting would benefit from a strengthened process of contemplation. Much of the Times Square pedestrian plaza’s benefits contribute directly to reducing the risk of pedestrian injury and death, which are overarching aims of Mayor de Blasio’s own signature effort, Vision Zero (which even revived and won a decades-old battle with New York State to reduce the speed limit throughout New York City from nearly 50 km/to 40 km/hr [30 to 25 mph]). But Vision Zero needs to lead a wider, long-term cultural shift, rather than simply establishing a new law and set of design precedents. If it does not, it may die an early death in the hands of de Blasio’s successor.

De Blasio would also do well to contemplate New York’s long term cultural legacy. From its genesis, the city was the cosmopolitan, tolerant ‘New Netherland’. The continued viability of Times Square as ‘crossroads of the world’ may depend on de Blasio exercising his moral force to explain these values to visitors, many of whom may be less open to encountering the unexpected—Desnudas, for example—in public space. (Bloomberg, his predecessor, once dismissed criticism of a mosque being built near ground zero by saying ‘whether you like a mosque or don’t…you don’t have to go […] within four blocks of the World Trade Center…there’s [also] porno places…I mean it’s a vibrant community, it’s New York.’ Or, as Sennett puts it, ‘[c]osmopolitanism is stimulation by the presence of others but not identification with them.’) If cities anywhere have any hope of accommodating heterogeneous groups of people, then Times Square needs to continue transcribing the ideals contained in New York’s DNA.

The police

Rather than the Mayor, though, it is the police that regularly interact with the public. Though the NYPD advertises ‘courtesy, professionalism, respect’ as its motto, how many members of the police force share those values? Officer Frascatore’s recent body-slamming of James Blake—one of a long string of abuses that have gone unpunished by Bratton—suggests that the advertisement seeks to compensate for the very attributes the NYPD lacks. Though the police remain exempt from city residence requirements, they must still have respect for the values of those actually living here. Some form of group therapy might help them overcome their defensive posturing and to listen to what security and quality of life really mean for the resident public. But Police Commissioner Bratton and his force cannot be part of the change process until they start enforcing laws as they are: key aspects of Vision Zero, such as the right-of-way law, are still widely unenforced, while legal acts, such as toplessness, continue to be punished.

Bratton continues to argue that ‘broken windows’ policing preempts more serious crime down the line, but action without contemplation or preparation is rarely effective in the long term. Making something unpleasant illegal does not make it disappear, much less address its deeper causes. The NYPD also needs to reconsider the justice in catching all guilty at the price of harming many innocent and end its quota system, which incentivizes arrests. Though this may be difficult in a post-9/11 era, the appalling policing situation to which it has led in this country is another ‘rock bottom’ opportunity for 180-degree behavior change. To start with, the NYPD would benefit from contemplation of the values behind proposals by the City Council to decriminalize certain low-level public space offenses—such as drinking alcohol and riding a bicycle on the sidewalk—which they currently oppose. Finally, adequate preparation would help them enforce these progressive new laws once they are adopted.

Times Square must allow for the possibility of appropriation by an unintended use or it will never evolve as public space must. ‘It is possible to contrive places and spaces which allow for the gradual evolution and opening up of rituals of behavior, so that people experience both form and change.’ Opening up the rituals of behavior will not be easy (and it certainly won’t happen within cars), but until we do, the Times Square pedestrian plaza may not have sufficient cultural support to ultimately stick. And until the average New Yorker regards cars hitting pedestrians as (preventable) collisions rather than (unavoidable) accidents, Vision Zero may also be vulnerable.

Fixing Times Square’s underlying dysfunctions might appear to be daunting. But why can’t we handle them? Other cities have handled much more (and with smaller budgets). Why shouldn’t the public space of Times Square serve as a catalyst for solving multiple systemic dysfunctions? After all, Lefebvre wisely reminded us that all social relations are merely hypothetical until they are spatialized. It is not a question of whether New York can tackle its biggest issues through public space: it is an imperative that it must.

Andrew Rudd
New York City

On The Nature of Cities

With inputs from Stephanie Rudd-Weigleb, LCSW, LCAC, Assistant Manager at Midtown CMHC of Eskenazi Health, Indianapolis.

Social Practice Artwork: A Restaurant and Garden Serving up Connections to Urban Nature

16 September 2015Art & Awareness, Essay, FRIEC, People & Communities, StoriesAgriculture, Art, Awareness, Biophilia, Gardens, ValuePatrick M. Lydon

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Can an urban garden help us remember what it means to be human?

Three months ago, we opened a slightly audacious restaurant and garden in a working-class suburb of Osaka, Japan with the intent of connecting people more deeply with food and nature in their neighborhood. Experimental and temporary in nature, the project was approached not as a business or social enterprise, but as what might be called a “social practice” artwork.

A parking lot does not make life worth living, nor does an apartment tower.

When this restaurant opened for dinner, we seated guests and took their orders as most any restaurant would. Then we kindly let them know that their dinner would be ready to eat in six weeks, explaining that we would first have to grow it in the garden down the street.

realtimefood-00 — Final Straw co-director Suhee Kang serves wild herb tea to guets at the opening of our REALtimeFOOD restaurant. Image: Patrick Lydon, Final Straw

The project was called “REALtimeFOOD: the world’s slowest restaurant” (http://www.finalstraw.org/our-worlds-slowest-restaurant-serves-dinner-finally/) and although we were met with a few seriously raised eyebrows, most of the participants left that first night with smiles on their faces, almost all of them returning six weeks later to eat what they had ordered.

When the dinner finally arrived six weeks later, guests were treated to a rice dish made by friend and macrobiotic chef Kaori Tsuji, topped with greens, radish, and a spicy mixture of eggplant, onion, cucumer, and herbs from the garden, similar to Korean ‘bibmbap’, if you are familiar with it.

My personal favorite, though, was the dessert, a cool tomato jelly with whipped soy cream, garnished with mint. Surprisingly refreshing and delicious.

realtimefood-01 — Our chef Kaori Tsuji serves desert to REALtimeFOOD customers in Osaka, after the six week wait. Image: Patrick Lydon, FinalStraw

So what was the point of making customers wait six weeks? And how did it help cultivate relationships between people and urban nature?

Cultivating compassion and relationships

Outside of the restaurant, most of the action happened during the weeks in between the ordering and serving of the food.

To grow the food, we built a garden in an unused dirt lot. This wasn’t a typical organic urban garden, however. It was based on the principal that our design and actions would be rooted in two key concepts 1) connection between people and nature and 2) compassion for all of nature. Whenever we had to make a decision about the direction, we referred back to this principal, asking ourselves: does it cultivate connection with nature, and does it build compassion for nature?

realtimefood-02 — Final Straw co-director Suhee Kang works in the herb garden. Image: Patrick Lydon, FinalStraw

For those not familiar with how connection and compassion relate to a garden, this particular kind of garden takes its aim from the ‘natural farming’ tradition in Japan. No tilling, no weeding, no killing bugs, no externally produced fertilizers. Similar in action to permaculture or agroecological practices–which a recent U.N. study believes might be our only way to sustainably feed a growing population – natural farmers see themselves as equals with plants and the rest of the natural world. This relationship, and the compassion which comes from it, are the primary informants for every action in their farms.

realtimefood-03 — Natural farmer Kristyn Leach at Namu Farm in the San Francisco Bay Area during an interview for our documentary film. Image: Patrick Lydon, FinalStraw

This is important for us, especially in urban social settings where compassion is sorely needed, yet often difficult to teach and apply. The kind of compassion learned by an individual on a natural farm will travel with them into their lives outside the farm or garden. It permeates their relationships with other people (our social relationships begin mending themselves), with other living things (human relationships to animals and plants become stronger), and even with the built structures of the city (leading to the city being cared for by its inhabitants).

Not only, then, is urban natural farming an ecologically regenerative practice, but the positive social effects are immense as well.

Working with art in the garden

One great difficulty is how to impart such an impossibly idealistic sounding mindset to the urban dweller, how to build and disseminate a deep and complex educational framework across the broad and diverse demographic range found in major urban centers.

In reality, we often make it sound more complex than it is.

What we have found in practice is that although the framework—and a sincere understanding and dedication to that framework—is required, there is not so much difficult ‘instruction’ as one might think. The process of developing such a mindset is largely one of giving people the place and permission to find this mindset of compassion and connection for themselves.

realtimefood-04 — Kaori and Yasu taking part in one of our nature art workshops, using soil and plants as paint. Image: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

In our little Osaka garden, tucked between half-century-old homes, warehouses, and small factories, we helped individuals cultivate relationships between themselves and the plants and living things in the soil. With these relationships in mind, they grew food and created artworks using natural materials, always with a base of connection and compassion in their actions.

Art making is a key for us here too, not only because it uses and reinforces myriad connections to the environment at its very root, but because it gives participants a personally expressive output and a record of their relationship with the soil, the plants, and the other natural living or growing things in their city.

realtimefood-05 — Patrick’s workshop on painting with soil in the garden. Image: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

By example, during one such “soil art” workshop, we began with exploring how there are millions of living things in each square inch of soil and how all of these living things work together to provide a nurturing home for other life to grow. Together with the participants, we then asked these living beings with a sincere respect—again, the instructor’s understanding, attitude, and sincerity is an absolute requirement here—to lend us their color and texture, so that we might share their beauty through our artwork.

At this point, paintbrushes were dipped directly into the moist soil, and some deeply expressive and meaningful artworks emerged.

Along with the artworks came new perspectives from participants. A visitor from Tokyo told us that she always had a fondness for flowers and for how beautiful they are…but that it was a kind of common or easy beauty to appreciate. “Now for the first time in my life” she said “I can finally see how amazingly beautiful the soil is, too.”

realtimefood-06 — Mayu records soil and flower color samples during one of our garden workshops. Image: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

Another participant, an undergraduate design student from Thailand, decided to change his thesis project after seeing how strongly nature could help direct his design. One also noticed, of her own accord, how the colors that the plants produce changed radically based on her intentions and how she approached using the plant. She demonstrated by gently and gracefully rubbing a white flower on paper, producing a beautiful ocean blue hue, and then again, more violently rubbing the same petal and watching as the hue started out blue and then quickly turned brown while the other stayed blue.

realtimefood-07 — A workshop participant named Put creates a composition using color directly from flowers and plants. Image: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

These kinds of discoveries and reactions weren’t prompted or dictated by us, but found by the individual participants as they more deeply connected with the garden itself. Nor are they uncommon reactions.

It seems that simply giving people the ‘permission’ to work with respect with nature, and to cultivate meaningful relationships, can offer such an amazing release for them. All of a sudden, their connectedness, acceptance, and creative mindsets blossom in ways they would each have thought were radical or impossible before.

realtimefood-08 — Participants in Suhee’s flower workshop examine the works created by them and the children. Image: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

We were lucky to have participants from the age of 5 to the age of 70, and most all of them had relatively little trouble flipping this mental switch to engage their surroundings in deeper ways.

Aiming for the long term

The REALtimeFOOD project was a hub for compassion, creativity, and well being for locals and visitors from around Japan and internationally. It was a project that we think created a positive ripple of compassion and well being in the small neighborhood of Kitakagaya and beyond.

That’s all warm and fuzzy.

The other reality is that this was a short-term project funded by the grant-making arm of a real estate firm that owns most of the land in this ailing neighborhood.

We know the reality of this situation is that the story typically ends in higher property values, higher rents, higher incomes, gentrification, and the removal of the creative class and the gardens which are on land that is suddenly far too ‘valuable’ for agriculture and silly creative deep ecology projects and the millions of tiny creatures in a square inch of soil.

The question is always, how do we make it economically viable? And ends with discussions along the lines of: how does a parking lot compare with an active community garden in terms of economic value?

It doesn’t, of course, and the first answer of those working in this space is generally something like “we need to get it through our thick heads that such projects offer value far beyond the economic. There’s social and ecological value too, and we must measure it!”

Let’s not stop the conversation here, though. The result of urban ecological features and programs which bring depth, relationships, and relevance to these natural features, offers value far beyond any social or ecological valuations that we can calculate and graph.

The value of a useless hole in the ground

What is the value when an office worker stops his stride and takes a deep breath while admiring a garden on his way home from work? What is the value when a gardener shares flowers with a local restaurant every week to brighten up the tables, or when a child stops by a garden to enthusiastically dig holes in the soil—even if they are not needed—with a smile so big it’s as if it’s the most joyful thing he’s ever done?

Not only do these values elude economic justification, they can not even be properly calculated with any type of measurement or categorization we might come up with, economic or not; yet, they are absolutely the kinds of values that make life true, beautiful, and good.

realtimefood-09 — Our chef Kaori Tsuji helps one of our young neighbors, Qenji, dig holes without destroying too much of the garden. Iimage: Patrick Lydon, FinalStraw

The end result of an active urban garden is not a number, whether that number is reduction in crime or a point rise in the quality of life index. The end result is the re-connection of human beings with an immeasurable, intangible, essential part of what makes life worth living.

A parking lot does not make life worth living, nor does an apartment tower.

Does a relationship with the natural world make life worth living? Of course, a relationship with nature is life in no uncertain terms. Our personal understanding of this relationship is a part of being human which has been omnipresent in our species for millions of years not just for the nearly invisible space on our historical timeline occupied by the industrial age.

realtimefood-10 — Patrick leads a workshop on ‘feeling’ nature with some of the project’s local team members. Image: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

With respect to human and nature relationships, a few understandings about our current social attitude towards nature have come out of these workshops, including that:

Our connection to nature is a part of life that our culture has either lost or seriously devalued, and ironically much of this devaluation has recently come through our earnest efforts to put a value on it in the first place!
Our efforts to value nature are clear signs that we have no idea what the value of nature is.
Our rejection of a compassionate relationship with nature as an invaluable and integral part of life hurts us humans as much as it hurts the rest of our natural world.
Our mental and physical disconnection from nature hurts all of earth’s beings, socially and ecologically, without discrimination.

Establishing a new value system

It is important that active community gardens, and natural spaces in general, should be seen as long-term public services because they offer a foundation for social and ecological well-being which is necessary for strong, happy, and economically productive communities. Establishing such a mentality might sound impossible given today’s political and business climate, yet the secret is that we know it is not nearly as impossible as most people think.

realtimefood-11 — Talking with an office worker who stopped by to let us know how much he appreciated the new use of the empty lot … and that he was looking forward to dinner! Iimage: Suhee Kang, FinalStraw

Even though our relationship with nature has been devalued and brushed away by most city dwellers, the surprising results of our own efforts to reignite this relationship indicate that human beings are quite easily able to connect with nature on some more meaningful level. We just need a little help.

From our perspective of doing REALtimeFOOD and other similar projects, the requirements are maddeningly simple.

We need to provide:

Ample opportunities (places) to connect with nature – these needn’t be big, but they must contain growing things that are easily accessible, where people are allowed to touch and interact with them, not just look at them from behind a wall

A bit of guidance and social permission – through a combination of sincerely led workshops, signage, and public education, guiding people to use their own capacity for connection and creativity and letting them know that yes, it’s okay to hug that tree, it’s okay to talk to that plant, it’s okay to say thank you to the soil.

Once we try it, we remember quite easily. We remember our part in the world. We remember the power of compassion and connection.

When we re-connect with nature—in the most remote mountains or in the most dense city—we can remember, in no uncertain terms, what it is to be human.

If we truly see ourselves as a part of nature, then the value of this understanding must be seen as a core value of life itself, and a value that no other interest, political, economic, or social, should be allowed to trump, and for which I would step out on a limb to say, the bulk of our human efforts at this point for our species and this planet must be given to fully and freely.

Plus, the tomato jelly is just amazing. Honest.

Patrick Lydon
San Jose & Seoul

On The Nature of Cities

The Myths of Alien Species: An Alternate Perspective on “Wild”

14 September 2015Place & Design, Review, Science & ToolsConservation, Invasive Species, Restoration, Value, What is urban nature?Divya Gopal

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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A review of The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, by Fred Pearce. 2015. ISBN 978-0-8070-3368-5 / ISBN 978-0-8070-3369-2. Beacon Press, Boston. 245 pages.

The New Wild is an intriguing book that looks at non-native species and nature in new light, challenging popular notions of ‘nativism,’ ‘wild’ and nature’s ‘fragility.’ Although the author, Fred Pearce, has taken on a controversial topic, his sources show that he is not alone as an increasing number of ecologists and scientists are questioning the “good natives, bad aliens,” narrative. As a seasoned journalist with years of experience reporting environmental and development issues, Pearce strengthens his arguments with plenty of examples—most of which he has personally observed. The book critically reviews the vilification of non-native species, common misconceptions in ecosystem restoration, and pitfalls in conventional conservation.

The first part of the book, ‘Alien empires,’ mainly deals with ‘horror stories’ of ‘alien invasive’ species. The aliens are often the subject of dislike for most of us conservative ecologists, invasive biologists and nature enthusiasts because of their stereotype portrayal as villains, both in literature and popular culture. With plenty of case studies, Pearce takes us through island habitats and the period of European conquests and colonization that facilitated transport of species across the world—some deliberately and some accidentally. Tales of the alien species that most of us fear—mutant mice that ate up eggs of ground-nesting birds and turtles on remote islands; weeds that choked up Lake Victoria; the zebra mussels that have extensively colonized waterways in North America; and more—are recounted here. Pearce elaborates on the cases that fueled the ‘good natives, bad aliens’ narrative. However, he points out that the aliens seem to be scapegoats in light of the larger (often real) problems that plague these habitats. Case-by-case, he argues how alien species “were simply taking advantage of ecosystems that had already been wrecked by humans.” Further, the introduced species seemed to be cleansing the degraded habitats they had colonized. Most aliens “keep nature going” where other species (mainly natives) falter.

In the second part, ‘Myths and demons,’ Pearce challenges many ill-informed theories about nature and aliens. To protect ‘natural’ ecosystems, he finds conservationists often take it upon themselves to “cleanse” nature of the ‘invaders’ since “alien species encourage myth-making” about wounded environments: the vilification of alien species is easier than dealing with larger problems, such as human-induced environmental degradation. Some examples include:

Britain’s efforts to eradicate muskrats with traps ended up slaughtering more than twice as many water voles.
Eradication of rodents on Macquarie Island (a remote island between Australia and Antarctica) by mass poisoning also killed hundreds of birds.
In Australia, the introduction of the poisonous cane toad as biocontrol for native beetles instead turned out to be lethal for local lizards, snakes, and even crocodiles.
Once declared a national park, the Florida Everglades was reclaimed mainly by non-native flora, which also turned out to offer refuge for the endangered Florida panther. However, eradication of the alien weeds lead to further decline of the panther population.

These expensive and often counter-productive efforts of ‘cleansing’ have had appalling non-target mortality. The consequences of eradications seem unpredictable and often counterproductive. Pearce adds that the efforts of ecological cleansing “fail because conservationists have indulged ill-founded myths about aliens, pristine ecosystems, and how nature works.”

He then moves on to question the studies that are generally quoted by a wide range of academics, government organizations and NGOs—including the United Nations—to support the claims of the negative impacts of introduced species. It turns out that most of these studies do not seem to have statistically significant results to justify their claims. Also, the studies include only “trouble maker” species (that account for a small proportion of all alien species), while the silent majority seems to be ignored by these studies with a gross exaggeration of numbers. Pearce points to many methodological errors by the scientific community in assessing the extent of damage caused by introduced species on ecosystems. The book encourages a neutral approach, giving alien species both credit and debit points. For instance, in the US, cats are considered aliens that cause bird kills. But cats kill more rats than birds. So why not give them credit points, too, while running a cost-benefit analysis of aliens on the American economy

Pearce then moves on to some myth busting about the native and the pristine. Many scientists are contesting the 19th century romantic notion of pristine nature. An increasing amount of archeological evidence of human activities in ‘pristine’ forests is surfacing. Examples include the Amazon and the rainforests of Congo, which are not ‘untouched old growth’ forests. Pearce adds, “nothing is pristine, but nature is resilient and resourceful”… “We have assaulted forests on a large scale. Yet where we have walked away, they have generally revived.” Many species seem to be more disturbance-tolerant than is widely assumed and that nature is not as ‘fragile’ as is often portrayed. Cultural and religious beliefs of ‘nature’s harmony and balance’ seem to encourage such misconceptions. ‘Nativism’ is believed to be an essential part of nature’s balance according to many religious beliefs

In the chapter, ‘Nativism in the garden of Eden,’ the book critically analyses some basic theories of ecology and evolution including nativism and co-evolution. The author stresses that disruption is essential for evolution and “nativeness is not a sign of evolutionary fitness.” Although aliens can sometimes be problematic, not all natives are harmless. For instance, brown rats and black rats are believed to have originated from the region of the Indian sub-continent and China. There is even a temple in India where rats are worshiped. However, their status as native species does not exclude them from being considered as pests in both India and China.

Nativism seems to be stemming from the theory of co-evolution, where every relationship in a ‘balanced’ ecosystem is believed to have co-evolved. However, the book illustrates numerous examples in which newcomers have often fit in well into ecosystems, filling in the gaps. Here, the concept of ‘ecological fitting’ is introduced, where species might not have evolved together but, with time, they learn how to cooperate and function together. There is a constant turnover of new species and this “renewal is almost at random.” Ecosystems are often not “optimum” or nearing “perfection,” “they are often a workable mishmash of species that are constantly reorganizing.” Pearce maintains that ecosystems are more adaptive and random than is assumed.

Finally, in part 3, ‘The new wild,’ Pearce explores the way forward. With the example of the endangered Coqui frog in Puerto Rico, the author introduces the concept of novel ecosystems—“composed of new combinations of native species and species introduced by humans.” The Coqui moved from the native forest fragments and now thrives in the new forests that took over abandoned fields and which include a mix of native and alien vegetation. As established earlier, nothing is pristine; nature’s disposition has probably been ‘novel’ for centuries. Although this assortment of species is often written off as “messed up” nature, it still has great conservation value. Getting back to the example of the Coqui frog, which is still part of the red list of endangered species since its native habitat is threatened; Pearce portrays the disjunction of conservationists who do not acknowledge the Coqui’s new novel habitat. The new forests have huge conservation value and this should be acknowledged.

As a unique and extreme form of novel ecosystems, Pearce urges conservationists to see the great potential in urban badlands/brownfields that nurture numerous rare species. The success of brownfields suggests that nature just needs places that are left alone, with little human intervention. Brownfields might not fit the conventional definition of nature, but they have a huge potential for conservation. Pearce quotes the case of the Chernobyl nuclear station as one of the most remarkable brownfields where nature is making a huge comeback, including the return of large mammals, rodents, birds, and so on. Although highly radioactive, Chernobyl is an extreme example of “nature’s salvation and resilience.” He adds, “nature doesn’t care about conservationists’ artificial divide between urban and rural or native and alien species” or pristine and badlands. This is a powerful statement that we, as conservationists, ecologists, and nature enthusiasts, need to bear in mind. Pearce suggests that conservationists should move on from conventional conservation and its two main aims—“saving threatened species” and restoring nature to its pristine state; and adapt to current environmental realities that include changes due to climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and intensive agriculture. Aliens seem to be “rapidly changing from being part of the problem to part of the solution.” And they are the ‘new wild.’

With the onset of climate change, which is giving rise to an increasing number of climate refugees, adopting a zero tolerance approach towards migrants seems problematic. Previous ice ages and extreme climatic events are testament to massive migrations of species and evolutionary changes. As Prof. Chris Thomas of the University of York is quoted, “A narrow preservationist agenda will reduce rather than increase the capacity of nature to respond to the environmental changes that we are inflicting on the world.”

In the last paragraphs, Pearce expresses that there is no harm in intervening to protect certain aspects of nature that we cherish, nor is there harm in defending against “pests, diseases and inconvenient invaders.” But, “we are serving our own desires and not nature’s needs.” Nature might organize differently than we would like it to. “Open up to evolutionary changes. Let go and let nature take its course.” “…Nature never goes back, it always moves on. Alien invasions will not always be convenient for us, but nature will re-wild in its own way. That is the new wild.”

Species migrations have often occurred in the past and have been driven by various forces, including extreme weather events and geomorphological changes. There is merit to the argument that the term ‘native’ is subjective and depends on the time scale that is being considered. However, there is also truth to the claim that there are species that are harmful to us. Nonetheless, species should be judged based on their merits and not their origin. Humans should learn some tolerance and respect towards aliens. After all, we are responsible for species transportation, most often. As cultures evolve, what was once an exotic garden delight can turn into an eyesore. The social damage caused by aliens often seems to be higher than the actual environmental damage. Nothing is pristine and permanent. Nature is dynamic and resourceful, constantly evolving and reorganizing itself, often not fitting our paradigm. It might seem radical to adopt a completely non-interventional approach towards nature, as Pearce suggests. However, there are an increasing number of ecologists/conservationists who are open to newcomers and are giving them a chance; that is a good start.

The New Wild is persuasive, with well-supported arguments that make for a good read. The simple language and case studies make it easy for even a non-ecologist to follow. This book should be a must-read at the university level for future scientists, researchers, and conservationists, to develop an open mind towards non-native species.

As an ecologist who works in cultural landscapes, this book is refreshing. ‘Wild,’ to me, means spontaneous and not domesticated or cultivated. In many big European cities that I have visited, the median strip along roadways, the small patches of green at road junctions and other nooks and crannies in the city are beautifully decorated with colourful flowers—almost nearing perfection. It was only when I moved to Berlin that I noticed something different. It is refreshing to see dandelions and daffodils appear and vanish on their own. There seems to be a deliberate attempt to bring back the urban wild and it seems to be popular. Yes, it differs drastically from my notions of ‘wild’ as a child who grew up reading encyclopedias and watching National Geographic Channel and Discovery Channel. But, there is something magical about seeing what nature has to offer. Many of the spontaneously growing plants, often considered weeds elsewhere, add character to the city. Some are natives, some aliens. It doesn’t matter. To me, these spontaneous species are the new wild.

Divya Gopal
Berlin

On The Nature of Cities

Popup Parks Reveal the Nature of Cities

12 September 2015Essay, Place & Design, Science & ToolsBiodiversity, Design, Parks, Participation/Democracy, ToolsAmy Hahs

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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September 18 is Park[ing] Day, a day when metered car parking spaces are transformed and reclaimed for other purposes. This annual event was first held in the USA in 2005, but has now grown to include Park[ing] Day events in cities around the world. In looking at the innovation and creativity that accompanies these and other parklet and pop-up park transformations, I am struck once again by the potential they offer as a massive experiment on a global scale. What do these temporary installations reveal about the social-ecological nature of cities?

Designed experiments are a relatively new approach to science and design that embeds a scientific experiment into a physical real-world design project. Landscape Architects and other practitioners collaborate with ecologists and other researchers in the development, establishment, and monitoring of the design project. Designed experiments offer scientists an opportunity to place scientifically rigorous studies into areas of the urban landscape where access would otherwise be problematic, and they offer practitioners an opportunity to improve their practice through assessing the performance of their built projecst. The process is iterative and, when done well, can deliver useful and relevant information to all of the parties involved.

Globally, there is increasing recognition of the importance of greenspaces and biodiversity to the ecosystem services that cities can provide. This has been accompanied by a strong and growing call for an effective evidence-base that will contribute to improved outcomes for people and nature. By incorporating designed experiments into our current investment in pop-up parks and other mobile and temporary greenspace interventions, there is an enormous potential to address some of these critical knowledge gaps. The remainder of this essay will explore this idea in more detail.

Mobile Biodiversity Boxes as experimental building blocks for cities

Parklets, pop-up parks, and other temporary greenspaces can take many forms. I am going to propose one form of temporary greenspace and then demonstrate how it can be used to address a raft of social and ecological research questions using a designed experiment approach. For simplicity, I am going to call my mobile greenspace element a “Biodiversity Box”.

What is a Biodiversity Box?

The best way to envision a Biodiversity Box is to imagine a giant piece of Lego turned upside-down, filled with soil (and perhaps a wicking bed), and planted to create an established garden that can be easily moved around a site and/or around the city.

Biodiversity Boxes as mobile experiments

Depending on your interest, the established garden could consist of a fruit tree, grassy meadow, sensory garden, vegetables and herbs, different forms of trees, shrubs and groundcovers, or it could represent a locally indigenous plant community. In reality, the Lego could be replaced with a wooden crate, a bathtub, a suitcase, weatherproof bags, or anything else that may be available or takes your fancy. The ideas I present related to designed experiments using Biodiversity Boxes can also be applied to more permanent features such as water sensitive urban design installations, although there will be some limitations in the scope of the questions that can be addressed using these established features, as they cannot be moved around a site.

The important thing is that we can take these Biodiversity Boxes and use them to find out more about cities as social-ecological systems and how we can build cities and towns with better outcomes for people and nature.

Opportunities for designed experiments using Biodiversity Boxes

Designed experiments can be used to inform research on both social and ecological aspects of greenspace. The ideas I present are illustrative rather than exhaustive, and I would be delighted to hear about other ideas and examples of projects in the comments section at the end of this essay.

Experimenting with design elements and sense of place

The recent diagnosis of nature-deficit disorder, our increasing connection with virtual worlds, and the implications for human health and wellbeing signal the urgent need to create greenspaces that inspire and motivate people to reconnect with nature. Design has a very important role to play in creating a sense of place and cultivating a meaningful connection between people and their environments. The styles and solutions that work in one context, such as a large park, may not work well in another situation, such as a small plaza.

There are also differences in the needs and wants of people living in different parts of the city which may be tied in with environmental justice, historical legacies, or trends associated with different development or planning approaches. In many cities, the impact of the public on the decisions that affect them is increasingly moving from education and consultation to collaboration and empowerment when it comes to addressing these issues.

In all of these cases, Biodiversity Boxes have the capacity to contribute to decision-making through designed experiments that allow the public to help identify the solution that would work best for their given situation. Biodiversity Boxes offer an opportunity for the public to participate in place-making activities by providing them with the resources that would allow them to configure a temporary space to suit their needs. Imagine an empty parking lot with Biodiversity Boxes on wheels or a track that allows them be moved to different locations in response to traffic, shade, or other local factors. Then add in mobile picnic tables, benches, sports equipment and other amenities, as well as chalk for adding new elements to the space. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see the interplay between the configuration of these elements, the activities that are undertaken, and the perceptions people then have of that site? Now move these mobile elements from the empty parking lot into other spaces across the city and you suddenly have the tools to redesign your city in the real world! This is where the creativity and the flexibility come into play, the innovation and place-based solutions start to unfurl, and the idea of pop-up parks revealing the nature of cities really comes to life.

Experimenting with planting and management options in different contexts

The local extinction of indigenous biodiversity from urban areas and the prevalence of greenspace designs that rely heavily on supplemental additions of water, nutrients, and other resources into our urban landscapes all point to a need for revisiting human experiences of, and expectations for, greenspace in cities. Biodiversity Boxes offer an opportunity to explore how planting palettes and vegetation management options might impact people and nature in urban environments.

Vegetation structure, leaf litter, fallen branches, rocks, and bare soil are all habitat elements that influence which animals and other organisms are present in a landscape. For example, solitary native bees in south eastern Australia require a combination of bare soil for nesting and plants from the Myrtaceae family, which bear their nectar in open, shallow cups. The importance of different elements is also dependent on the landscape context within which they occur. Small, insectivorous woodland birds may be absent from areas where they can forage effectively and retreat from potential predators.

People also respond to these same habitat elements, as evidenced by the large field of studies investigating landscape preference in terms of aesthetics, recreational activity, perceptions of safety, and other cultural ecosystem services. Biodiversity Boxes offer an opportunity to explore these relationships in real-time in the real world.

By retrofitting habitat elements into existing parks and other areas within cities, Biodiversity Boxes allow us to experiment with the optimal sizes and shapes of habitat required for specific social and ecological outcomes. The mobile nature of the Biodiversity Boxes also means that the experiment can commence immediately and can be modified over time, offering the advantage of quicker, cheaper, and more flexible experiments when compared with in situ plantings.

By experimenting with planting and management options, we have the opportunity to develop more ecologically informed management and design outcomes that are also preferred or desired by people. The F3UES Experimental Meadows is an excellent example of an experimental approach to design that could easily be applied using a Biodiversity Box approach.

Sampling local biodiversity

Biodiversity Boxes also offer an opportunity to explore the relationship between urban habitats and biodiversity itself. One of the most basic questions we can ask using our Biodiversity Box is: which animals and micro-organisms are present in this landscape and visiting this Biodiversity Box?

This question can be addressed by incorporating passive ecological sampling techniques into the design of the Biodiversity Box. Track traps can be used to sample terrestrial mammals and reptiles; hair snares can be used to sample small mammals; pitfall traps, pan traps and sticky traps can be used to sample invertebrates; and settle plates, sterile filter paper or other techniques can be used to sample fungi and micro-organisms. Camera traps and other audio visual recording devices offer additional options for passive ecological sampling.

More active survey techniques can also be used, such as field observations conducted by researchers or citizen scientists.

To be confident about which new organisms are visiting the Biodiversity Box, compared with those which are already in the landscape, a modified version of the Before–After Control–Impact experimental approach can be used. This would involve sampling the location where a Biodiversity Box will be installed (Impact site) and a similar location nearby (Control site). Sampling would be conducted for a period of time before the Biodiversity Box was moved to the site in order to establish a baseline, continue during the time the Biodiversity Box was present in the landscape, and for a period after the Biodiversity Box has been removed. This Before-During-After Control-Impact (BDACI) approach allows the effect of the Biodiversity Box to be disentangled from the baseline levels of biodiversity in the area (comparing Before and After data with data collected During) and any possible trends in change over time (comparing Control site data with Impact site data). While scientific rigour would require a large number of sites to be sampled in this way, it still may be worthwhile to consider collecting this information for a single installation, as there is the potential for data to accumulate over time and between organisations, where individual pieces of data would begin to make an important contribution to a larger whole. While many of the designed experiments I discuss could benefit from this BDACI approach, there will be some situations where the emphasis is on the effect of the Biodiversity Box while it is at a site and the additional sampling is unnecessary.

Sampling local ecosystem processes

Ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, water and pollution filtration, and the life cycle of organisms underlie the provision of many Ecosystem Services, particularly regulating and supporting services. Quantifying the inputs, outputs, and transformations of nutrients, water, energy, pollution, etc. in different locations across the city will reveal insights into how ecosystem processes are modified by urban environmental conditions.

In much the same way that the Hubbard Brook Sandbox Studies have contributed to a more detailed understanding of forest ecosystem processes, Biodiversity Boxes offer an opportunity to quantify ecosystem processes in urban environments. To be confident in the data collected for this type of designed experiment, it is essential that the nutrient levels (or other response variables) in the Biodiversity Boxes are standardised and accurately quantified prior to placing the boxes in landscape.

Hahs_11Sept2015_Figure3 — Quantifying inputs, outputs and transformations.

Studying ecological relationships and dynamics in urban systems

Understanding the role of biodiversity, functional diversity, and ecosystem dynamics is one of the key questions in ecology, design, and ecosystem services. Biodiversity Boxes offer an opportunity to set up a designed experiment that can shed light onto these questions, in much the same way that the Grassland Diversity-Stability Experiment, conducted at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Minnesota, USA, revealed important relationships between the diversity of plant species and the stability of grassland plant communities. Detailed understanding of these relationships is critical if we wish to create urban ecosystems that are sustainable and resilient, as it will allow us to develop planting designs that will be effective in responding to future changes in the environment.

Hahs_11Sept2015_Figure4 — Experimenting with composition and performance.

Urban island biogeography

The extent and configuration of vegetation within a landscape can have a significant influence on the movement and persistence of plants and animals. According to Island Biogeography theory, smaller or more isolated patches will have lower biodiversity than larger patches or patches that are closer together. Landscape Ecology research expands on this theory, and proposed that the shape of patches and their degree of connectivity are also important influences on biodiversity. However, the theories of Island Biogeography and Landscape Ecology were largely developed in non-urban landscapes and there are questions around how these principles translate to the build environment. Using the same designed experiment approach that was employed to investigate configuration and placement at the site level (see Experimenting with planting and management options in different contexts), Biodiversity Boxes can also be used to investigate equivalent questions at the landscape scale. Biodiversity Boxes offer an opportunity to add to our understanding of Urban Landscape Ecology and the Island Biogeography of the Anthropocene by understanding species-area relationships, species-isolation relationships, and colonisation dynamics in urban landscapes. This information will be critical in helping us to make decisions about where to place vegetation for the most effective urban acupuncture, as well as giving us a better evidence-base on which to evaluate whether biodiversity interventions have been “successful” by providing a more realistic understanding of “success” in different landscapes.

Revealing and rebuilding the nature of cities

Just like Legos can be used to build and re-build many different things, Biodiversity Boxes have the potential to be the building blocks that provide us with a stronger foundation for more sustainable and resilient cities in the future.

I am positive that some of you who read this will know of examples where pop up parks or other temporary or mobile greenspaces are already being used as designed experiments. Please feel free to share your stories and knowledge by leaving a comment here. It would be wonderful to hear about these projects and they may even provide inspiration for future designed experiments in other locations.

Disclaimer: Human and/or Animal Ethics approval may be required for some of the designed experiments discussed in this article. As application processes vary, it would be worthwhile checking out any responsibilities or obligations that may apply prior to setting up a potential experiment.

Amy Hahs
Melbourne

On The Nature of Cities

What Makes a “Great” City Park? The Beholder Sees

8 September 2015Place & Design, ReviewArchitecture, Design, Ecocities, Experiencing Nature, ParksAdrian Benepe

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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A review of Great City Parks; Second Edition, by Alan Tate with Marcella Eaton. 2015. ISBN 978-0-415-53802-2/ ISBN 978-0-415-53805-3/ ISBN 978-1-315-75071-2. Routledge, New York. 344 pages.

In this thoughtful and detailed documentation of “great” city parks, which is enlivened by spare and insightful opinions, I am reminded of the series that started with the book Jane’s Fighting Ships, first published in 1898 by Fred T. Jane. The book was intended to aid in then-elaborate naval ship battle games. Over the next century, well after Jane’s passing, battleships and war planes have been similarly cataloged for the enjoyment of military history buffs under the catchall title Jane’s … In some very basic ways, Great City Parks is a park buff’s “Jane’s…”. But the author, Alan Tate, with Marcella Eaton, goes much further than cataloguing; he interweaves facts and figures with social and political history, design ethos, management and restoration plans, and, occasionally, subtle but incisive criticism

Having spent a lifetime in city parks, both as a citizen user and as a professional manager, I count myself as a member of the proud and sometimes eccentric community of park lovers and urban nemophilists. Thus, any book that comes out about the great city parks of the world immediately commands my attention. Dr. Alan Tate, planner, landscape architect, and professor and Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Manitoba, has just released his second edition of his 2001 Great City Parks, this time assisted by Dr. Marcella Eaton, also a practitioner and Associate Dean in the University of Manitoba Department of Landscape Architecture.

Park geeks and urban nemophilists, not to mention the “designers, administrators, planners and politicians with current and future responsibilities for city parks” that the author cites as the primary target audience, have reason to celebrate and pore over this lovingly detailed volume, richly illustrated with photographs (most of them by the authors) and simple plans of the parks, and heavily annotated with quotes, citations, and footnotes.

16_Birkenhead_ME_2013-0 — Birkenhead Park, Upper Park, Merseyside, UK. Photo: Marcella Eaton, Great City Parks

Great City Parks focuses on 30 parks, from the very earliest urban public park—Birkenhead Park in Merseyside, UK—to one that has just been completed—New York City’s High Line Park—and looks at a scale ranging from entire parks systems, such as that of Minneapolis, Minnesota (US) and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts (US), to a tiny, (1/10 of an acre) privately owned public space in New York City: Paley Park. The authors follow the same formula for each park so that comparisons can be made, looking consecutively at history, planning & design, and management & usage as broad categories of analysis, with important sub-categories including “Key figures in the establishment of the park” and “Original design concept.” In some of the analyses, the authors include rigorous, in-depth histories; for some parks, these are based on citing the work of other researchers, especially in writing about older and much-documented parks such as Central Park. For others, as with the High Line, the histories appear based on substantial personal interviews with the key players.

24_Central Park_BC_2013 — Central Park, Bow Bridge. Photo: Belinda Chan, Great City Parks

I have visited 18 of the 30 parks cited and have intimate knowledge of all the parks in New York City, some of whose creation or restoration I played a role in. So I paid particular attention to their descriptions of the NYC parks, checking for accuracy in their interpretations. On accuracy, based on my knowledge, they get an A+. In the descriptions of the five NYC parks, I could find only one very minor point to quibble with. The authors properly credited Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Central Park’s first Administrator, founder of the Central Park Conservancy, and leader of the Park’s extraordinary restoration, for her huge roles, but incorrectly cited her for acknowledging “contemporary demands”— specifically, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates,” a Park-wide art installation of 2005, which was held long after Ms. Rogers had stepped down. (In fact, Ms. Rogers and then-Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis rejected the art installation in the early 1980s in a lengthy and eloquent treatise that cited the primary and urgent need to restore the then-devastated Park. With the enthusiastic support of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and First Deputy Mayor Patti Harris, I worked with a team to stage The Gates to enormous critical and popular acclaim in a park that was, by then, beautifully restored.)

That teeny quibble aside, I was astonished at the ability of the authors to capture so much salient information in what were very complex acts of park creation and/or restoration, both in digesting and summarizing many critical works on the parks and park movements, and in keen observations, one mirroring mine about Central Park: “It can also be construed as a precedent for Disneyland—with Main Street USA equating to the Mall and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle representing the Belvedere on Vista Rock.” That observation is contained in the important section of each chapter titled “Conclusions.” Few have ever so succinctly captured the importance of a park: “Central Park is the prototypical American pastoral park and remains one of the most powerful precedents in the entire history of landscape architecture. Latterly it has also become a model for philanthropic private support for public parks.”

Castles — Was Central Park’s Belvedere Castle (left) an inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty’s Castle (right)? Photos retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

The “Conclusions” are also places for the otherwise restrained authors to reveal personal opinions of the various parks. For example, in evaluating Parc de la Vilette in Paris, by architect Bernard Tschumi, they shift from understated to quietly scathing: “The results on the ground do not justify the fanfare that preceded them…[Tschumi] produced an ultimately unsatisfactory exploration of non-place-specific architectural theories—a flat open space between government cultural institutions.” They close with this zinger: “Other park designers tend to recognize that they are responsible for creating places for users rather than for themselves.”

It would be tempting to see the authors as tilting toward the practice and practitioners of landscape architecture (and away from architects and architecture), and toward historic, pastoral exemplars as opposed to modern, architectural parks. However, they celebrate the designs of some very modern parks, including several constructed out of urban blight, highways, and post-industrial areas, such as Freeway Park in Seattle WA (US); Westergasfabrik Park in Amsterdam, Netherlands; Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord Park, in Germany; Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London (UK), and the High Line in New York City, NY (US), among ten parks built after the mid-20^th Century featured in the book. And while Paris’s Parc de la Vilette takes some appropriate criticism, two other contemporary Parisian parks, Parc Andre Citroen and Parc de la Bercy, receive positive reviews.

07_Westergasfabriek_2012 — Westergasfabrik, Water garden in excavated gasholder. Photo: Alan Tate, Great City Parks

21_Duisburg-Nord_ME_201 — Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, recycling of site water into canal. Photo: Marcella Eaton, Great City Parks

17_Olympic Park_2012-07- — Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Wetland bowl and ‘Park Live’ during Olympic Games. Photo: Peter Neal, Great City Parks

Great City Parks is a 344-page treasure chest for park professionals and aficionados and catnip for city park enthusiasts. It is a book to which one can return repeatedly and which one can treat both as a great reference book and as a primer for how one might think about designing or restoring the next great park. In reading it, however, I found myself wishing for just a bit more of the author’s sparingly dispensed opinions along with more of a sensory exploration of what it is like to actually walk around these parks and experience the people, smells, sounds, and the overall genius loci. In the preface, Tate teases at one of the most intangible but important aspect of a park landscapes:

But what might constitute a great park? There is no easy answer. Well, there is. It’s like being in love. You know when you’re in it and that gels with Burke’s definition of beauty as ‘that quality or those qualities in bodies by which they cause love [“that satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating any thing beautiful, or whatsoever nature it may be, from desire or lust”] or some passion similar to it’.

In other words, “greatness,” in a park, is not just what technically makes a park function at the highest level, but what puts the romance in the “Romantic Landscape.” In addition to the important “virtues” that parks bring to cities—as Frederick Law Olmsted enumerated in an 1865 letter to a newspaper, namely “increased real estate value…better public health, an amicable public gathering place, and promotion of safety and social order”—there are so many more values that parks both possess and provide. This book appropriately celebrates Prospect Park as the “less famous but more fabulous younger sibling of Central Park…the ‘anything goes’ counterpart to its more restrained older sibling.” In describing the park’s main entrance from Grand Army Plaza through a tunnel, the superlatives are earned: “The entry sequence through Endale Arch into the Long Meadow is one of the most highly praised human-made visual experiences in the world.” But they also quote Alexander Garvin, planner and educator (who has written his own highly regarded book on the topic, Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities), in a pop culture-oriented comparison of that entry: “Dorothy opening the door of her black-and-white house to wander into Technicolor Oz, enters into a gorgeous landscape devoid of any trace of the city.”

23_Prospect Park_BC_201 — Prospect Park, Long Meadow through Endale Arch. Photo: Marcella Eaton, Great City Parks

And whereas Tate is reserved most of the time in his explorations of the human experience of park space, it may be up to the reader of this book to understand the true soul of city parks and what makes them great, which is the people who use them and how they interact with design, nature, and each other (such personal responses can be found in Catie Marron’s lovely City Parks: Public Places, Private Thoughts, a collection of essays mostly by fiction writers, but including one by President William Clinton).

As someone who has traveled through that Prospect Park tunnel and explored the seemingly vast reaches of the Long Meadow and intimate byways of the wooded Ravine, I understand on a personal and tangible level what this book hints at in terms of the experience of place in great city parks. It’s almost a paraphrase of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of hard core pornography: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

This book succeeds at defining what makes great city parks; what makes them truly great is up to the beholder. And we know one when we see it.

Adrian Benepe
New York City

On The Nature of Cities

Civic Ecology Meets EdX: An Experiment in Online Social Learning and Action

7 September 2015Art & Awareness, Essay, Science & ToolsAwareness, Education, Media, Networks, Participation/DemocracyMarianne Krasny

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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A pop-up garden in Kiev, volunteer “spotfixes” along sidewalks in Bangalore, and a flower garden planted atop a deadly landslide after an earthquake in Japan. These and other civic ecology practices are expanding in number. But how do we connect people across these disparate practices and places so that we learn from and motivate each other? And perhaps realize a common identity or, even, a movement?

When I started work on the Garden Mosaics community garden education program in the late 1990s, I first realized the difficulty of reaching out to small community-based organizations that were not connected through national organizations or networks. These were half-way homes like Abraham House in the Bronx, or youth programs like Literacy for Environmental Justice in San Francisco. They were interested in Garden Mosaics, but we had to reach out to each community organization one at a time. Later, when Keith Tidball and I expanded our work to encompass tree planting, dune restoration, and an ever expanding diversity of civic ecology practices, we experienced the same challenge. How could we facilitate social learning and action by connecting multiple organizations around the world, all of whom were conducting some flavor of community-based environmental stewardship?

CE course image — Images from the Civic Ecology course.

The answer came in an unexpected place. Last year, I was invited by Cornell to develop an edX Massive Open Online Course—or MOOC—which we named Reclaiming Broken Places: Introduction to Civic Ecology. Like all unsuspecting MOOC instructors, I was overwhelmed by the number of hours it took to prepare the lectures, readings, and assignments—and terrified at the prospect of talking straight into an unforgiving camera. It took the better part of 10 months full time to develop and teach the 6-week MOOC.

Also like most MOOCs instructors, I facilitated a discussion board, which was clunky on the EdX platform, but which generated novel perspectives about civic ecology. (We are in the process of analyzing these data to further our civic ecology scholarship.) And like some MOOCs, we had a Facebook group. But unlike Facebook groups for MOOCs that are content- rather than idea- or action-driven, our Facebook group became a means for people from all over the world, who were engaged in similar yet diverse practices, to connect and learn from each other. My favorite example comes from a Facebook conversation initiated by a student in Syria, who was supported in her quest for information from fellow students in Lesotho, Iran, and the USA.

Not only did the MOOC provide a platform for connecting civic ecology stewards around the globe, it was also an experiment in motivating civic action. Students shared stories about their civic ecology practices on the Storify multi-media blogging platform. We harvested a bunch of interesting cases: a group building trails to the site of “Caved in Castle and an Old European Wild Pear” in the Czech Republic, one of the first community gardens in Kiev Ukraine, and a coal mine restoration project in Alberta Canada, among others. (The author of the Czech story later visited community gardens in Kiev, hosted by our Ukrainian student.) One student, Danny Rueda Cruz from San Francisco and the Philippines, decided that he was going to compile an eBook of all the practices that were shared. Watch for the Civic Ecology MOOC eBook later this year, which will be a compilation of these and other stories.

Stanford professor and Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng’s statement that “we now have the technology for professors to teach not just 50 students at a time but 50,000” has come to define the way we view MOOCs—as sharing content with the masses. But so called content-driven or xMOOCs, which often focus on science and engineering, are not the only game in town. In fact, the first MOOC was a cMOOC, or connectivity MOOC, where students designed their own learning experience. And although MOOCs have been called a “disruptive” force in higher education, they are not just upsetting the ivory tower. WA State University professor Justin Smith has worked for years with people trying to create online platforms to motivate democratic action. He feels that our MOOC Facebook site is one of the most successful experiments he’s seen to date of “designing” an online platform to facilitate social learning and action.

Our MOOC wasn’t totally successful in connecting people and creating opportunities for what’s called “many-to-many” (as opposed to “one-to-many”) learning. Similar to other MOOCs, we reached few low-income students in the US. We actually we tried an experiment in “mentored MOOCs” to address this issue. And we are just starting to analyze the student postings to find out how much we motivated them to engage in civic ecology practices. But MOOCs are many different things. For some, they offer a chance to gain a certified professional credential. For others, they are simply a free library of resources. For still others, they represent an opportunity to meet people with similar interests. But as groups such as Occupy Wall Street and The Ugly Indian have shown, social media can be a platform for forging a common identity that sometimes coalesces into a social movement. So let’s keep experimenting with MOOCs and online learning, in combination with mentors, Facebook, Storify, and other people and platforms, to connect people from around the world who are stewarding urban nature and community.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll forge a movement.

Marianne Krasny
Ithaca

On The Nature of Cities

Acknowledgements: I thank my MOOC teaching assistant Samar Deen; MOOC production team Rob Vanderlan, Dina Banning, Colbert McClellan, Mike Tolomeo, Serge Petchenyi, Patrice Prusko, and Diane Sempler; and co-instructor Keith Tidball.

A New Urban Paradigm: Our Way of Looking at Cities Needs to Be Turned Inside-Out

2 September 2015Essay, People & Communities, Place & DesignCorridors, Livability, Parks, Participation/Democracy, Policy, Sustainability, What is urban nature?Naomi Tsur

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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According to the old urban paradigm, cities are crime-ridden, car-infested, unhealthy and over-crowded centers of humanity.

Could we conceivably cherish nature, respect others, grow our own food, earn a reasonable living, and enjoy a healthy and equitable urban environment?

Reversal of the old urban paradigm is not yet a given, especially when we take into account that people’s opinions are not usually based on facts, but on their perceptions of reality. I am sure that both contributors to this blog and its readers will agree that in an urbanized world, we should be heavily invested in marketing the new global brand: sustainable urbanism. However, I am not at all sure if this brand is perceived by the majority of city dwellers as worthy, desirable, or even identifiable. Thus, not only do the “country mice”, or rural dwellers, continue to feel superior to their brethren, the “town mice”, but the city dwellers themselves feel their quality of life is inferior in terms of its lack of nature.

I believe that most of us, by nature (not a pun), tend to pursue research or develop specific projects, and it is certainly good to know that many people around the world care about the quality of life in cities and see urban nature not only as a barometer of sustainability, but also as a factor contributing to biodiversity. I understand that urbanism is currently “in”, but for sustainable urbanism to thrive, we are going to have to work much harder.

The change in attitude to cities needs to take place at several levels. I will attempt to address the levels that are easy to identify, but there are probably additional layers to examine.

Individual and “social/cultural” mindsets: it is not easy to see past concepts that many of us grew up with. For example, if we want to breathe clean air, we should go “to the country”; we will find nature “in the country”; and we will grow our food, of course, on farms “in the country”. Even if we live in an enlightened city that has reduced emissions and pollution levels, improved its care for natural resources, and encouraged residents and communities to grow food locally, it does not mean that the residents themselves perceive their city environment as healthy.

Local government: there is a strange disconnect in the understanding of local government leaders: more and more people will be moving into cities, resulting in an ever-increasing need for housing, yet there is a lack of awareness of the need for cities to be really attractive and healthy places to live. It is therefore fascinating to see grass-roots, community-based initiatives building the fabric of solidarity and social frameworks that make neighborhoods livable and happy environments. This is an integral part of the new urban paradigm, in which bottom-up processes are setting the tone for community life. Local governments have grasped the need for urban densification, but will have to work together with their neighborhood communities to understand what is needed to make the renewed neighborhoods livable.

National government: in many countries, yet another disconnect results in the inability of local governments to revitalize their cities because national or regional legislation has impeded, or even contravened, local processes. This means that even when local governments manage to tune in to the needs of their neighborhood communities, their decisions are stymied by outdated national laws. An example from the local arena in Israel is the issue of garbage. The country set national targets to reduce the dumping of solid waste and to gradually increase the percentage of recycled solid waste, separated at source. This is admirable, but local governments were unable to provide incentives for their residents to separate waste at source, since the kind of tax reduction they wanted to offer needed to be approved at the national level. In the resulting impasse, national government continually complained that local governments were not meeting their recycling quotas, while the latter were complaining that they lacked the legislative power to offer their residents a financial incentive to recycle.

Global: It is not surprising that the mindsets that influence individual perceptions are the very ones that establish global trends. After all, experts in the U.N grew up like us: “knowing” that to breathe clean air, to enjoy the wonders of nature, or to grow food, we must head to a rural area.

I am writing this contribution to The Nature of Cities in dismay—not in anger, yet with a touch of the innate optimism that has buoyed me through two decades of environmental campaigns, many of which have not only proved successful, but which have also been recognized as “right’’ and which have been vindicated by the establishment that initially rejected them out of hand. I have included pictures of two such examples from my own beloved city of Jerusalem. The “Gazelle Valley Park” and the “Railway Park” in Jerusalem resulted from a massive fights between civil society organizations and the planning authorities. Remarkably, today, those very same planning authorities cite these two parks as the key to sound urban development, each in its own setting.

gazelle — Gazelles meet kids and adults daily at the Gazelle Valley Park, 60 acres of urban nature in the heart of diverse neighborhoods that can now undergo densification because of the green balance provided by this wonderful park.

These two examples illustrate another, equally important aspect of the reversal of paradigms in urban thinking. Local communities are turning out to be key players in the process of branding sustainable urbanism in a way that they never were before. Communities are rising to defend their urban nature, which is often integral to the cultural identity of their neighborhood.

In addressing the intricacies of the global transition from a rural to an urban world, I believe we should include the urgent need for a change in our perception of the role of nature in cities. Not only do residents fight to protect nature in their neighborhoods, realizing the important role of local flora and fauna, as well as the cultural values of our urban landscapes, but academics of global repute recognize that cities have an important role to play in protecting biodiversity. This role can be fulfilled much more effectively if we adopt the model of the inverted biosphere, whereby the large city at the center of a metropolitan hub recognizes its responsibility for the sensitive bioregion around it, along with the smaller towns and villages in the region. This model is being developed with considerable success by the Jerusalem Bioregion Center for Ecosystem Management by addressing cross-boundary issues together with the other stakeholders in the bioregion and by understanding the irrelevance, to this shared thinking, of statutory municipal or geopolitical boundaries.

The urban challenge facing the world is both simple and complex. Some will say this is the final and most tragic phase of a process that began with the industrial revolution. The continuing influx of individuals and families to cities in search of a livelihood, or, in some cases, the influx of desperate refugees fleeing persecution or a climate event disaster zone, is indeed producing a new generation of slum-dwellers alarming in its proportions.

This might imply that in cities that are neither in a disaster zone nor severely impacted by disaster, all is well. And yet, while it is true that there are many wonderful examples of sound urban practice, these are somehow the exception, while our job is to make them the rule. From the perspective of years of leadership in the environmental movement in Israel, and from a full term of office as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, I find myself taking a somewhat simplistic approach, and often wonder if that is perhaps the very thing we all need in our urban thinking, planning, and managing—simplicity. Just as when we set up an aquarium and want the fish in it to thrive, we put in appropriate plants to generate oxygen, and the kind of shells and stones that we believe will make them feel comfortable (although nobody really knows what a comfortable fish feels….). Why can’t we do the same in our cities? Why can’t we plan cities to be as beautiful and as healthy as possible for all the diverse communities living in them?

bike — Eight kilometers of abandoned railway line have become Jerusalem’s famous “Railway Park”, a meeting place for all the neighborhoods nearby it, and for all of Jerusalem’s diverse communities.

It is true that the approach to cities began to change when, in 2007, we were told that more than 50 percent of the world’s people were already city-dwellers. The current estimation is that by the end of the 21^st century, 90 percent of us will be city-dwellers. This is an extraordinarily dramatic shift, compared with 15 percent of the world’s population living in cities at the beginning of the twentieth century. 2,500 years ago, when Aristotle penned his famous sentence, maintaining that “Man is a political animal”, meaning that human beings like to live in organized communities such as cities, he surely didn’t expect us to go so far….

One useful development came in the 1980s, when global city networks began to be established, and cities around the world began to talk to each other about their common challenges. Within their own countries, cities felt that their national governments were not always the partners they should be, and were strangely pleased to find that this was the case in other countries too. By the 1980s, the U.N was already talking about sustainable development but— being a community of nations, not cities—found it hard to relate to cities at all. The only U.N agency that actively concerned itself with cities was UN HABITAT, which is responsible for human shelter. The reason for its engagement with cities was simple—most human shelter occurs in an urban context.

In 2016, UN HABITAT will be hosting HABITAT III, focusing on the conditions of urban communities around the world. UN HABITAT has requested its member states to mitigate the disconnect between national and local governments by establishing national urban policy, to be debated and worked out by a national urban forum. In my simplistic world, this is a minor revolution in global thinking, since it recognizes a disturbing reality whereby national legislation often serves as an impediment to achieving urban sustainability, instead of assisting cities as they strive for a sustainable future.

This minor revolution is the latest in a short history of progressive actions. At the WUF (World Urban Forum) held in Naples, Italy, in 2012, Dr. Joan Clos, Director of UN HABITAT, requested member states to formulate urban policy at the national level. By the next WUF, held in Medellin, in April 2014, the process was already well under way and a special UN HABITAT team had been set up to visit countries and regions where nascent national urban forums were taking the first steps in “thinking urban” at a national level. In 2012 and 2014, delegations from my country, Israel, attended the WUFs. We appreciated the significance of Dr. Clos’ request and the possible benefit this could have for our country.

Israel is a tiny country which is already more than 90 percent urbanized, but has only just begun to think of the national implications of its intensive urban development. Profoundly influenced by the UN HABITAT vision, we have taken the first exciting steps towards the establishment of the Israel Urban Forum, which is to be launched in Akko in November 2015. There is a steering committee for this process, which has brought together representatives from government ministries, local government, academia, businesses, and NGOs. We are discovering just how many stakeholders there are in the urban arena and are inviting them all to contribute to an urban celebration in Akko, which will mark the creation of a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary platform for the better understanding of sustainable and equitable urbanism. We hope that the main product of our Akko conference will be the launch of the Israel Urban Forum in its capacity as a body of urban thinkers, that will continue to ponder the most intelligent solutions for the multiple challenges facing not only each city individually, but also the country as a whole, in the sense that it represents the collective of all the cities in Israel.

As Chair of the Steering Committee of the First Israel Urban Forum, I feel a burden of responsibility, as all of us who love our cities must surely feel at this time. In a 90 percent urban world, it seems that global sustainability will depend on urban sustainability, while the latter will depend on our joint ability to ensure that the cases of best practice in planning and management of our cities become mainstream—no longer the exception, but the rule. I would posit that on this front, failure is simply not an option.

Naomi Tsur
Jerusalem

On The Nature of Cities

Biocultural Diversity and the Diverse City: A Model for Linking Nature and Culture

30 August 2015Art & Awareness, Essay, People & Communities, Science & ToolsArt, Awareness, Biodiversity, Communities, Indigenous peoples, What is urban nature?William Dunbar

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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The concept of biocultural diversity— the coming together of biological and cultural diversity—is receiving more attention recently along with an awareness that elements of cultures all around the world are deeply rooted in the nature, or biological diversity, around them, and that greater cultural diversity comes with greater biological diversity.

Cultural innovation in urban areas is often attributed mainly to the cultural diversity found in urban areas because the myriad ways that cultures and cultural elements merge, clash, interact, and rub off on each other in urban areas makes them hotbeds of innovation and creativity. Wide recognition of this fact manifests itself through the existence of programs like the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), which includes member cities all over the world in seven categories of cultural creativity—Crafts & Folk Art; Design; Film; Gastronomy; Literature; Media Arts; and Music. UCCN recently held its 2015 Annual Meeting in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan, a Creative City in the Crafts & Folk Art category.

Logo of the UCCN 2015 Meeting in Kanazawa.

From biological and cultural diversities to biocultural diversity

While cultural diversity has always gotten a lot of attention, the existence of The Nature of Cities and the lively dialogue it generates is just one example of the increasing recognition of cities as equal hotbeds for biological diversity. Parallels between urban biological and cultural diversity can perhaps be seen in the way diverse species are brought to cities—for example, as pets, ornamentals in gardens and parks, etc.—just as cultural elements from all over the world are gathered in cities to interact, interbreed, compete, survive, or perish.

This biological interaction, however, functions differently from cultural interaction in a number of ways. It can lead to problems with alien and invasive species, whereas the cultural parallel—interesting new cultural elements—is often seen as a beneficial rather than a damaging factor. Also, while some new biological variants have certainly arisen from urban biological melting pots, actual evolution of new species is subject to a much longer time scale than cultural innovation. These differences in the functioning of cultural and biological diversity in urban settings can make it harder to see what biocultural diversity means for cities.

It seems intuitively true that richer biological diversity leads to richer cultural diversity if you think about the wide variety of art, rituals, traditional knowledge, etc. that are related to nature and are integral to indigenous peoples and local communities around the world. Empirically as well, greater cultural diversity has been shown (for example, in this study) to correlate with biodiversity hotspots.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Many urban natural spaces are preserved specifically for their cultural value, like Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the center of Hanoi, Vietnam. Photo: William Dunbar

From this description, it might be tempting to think that biological diversity leads to cultural diversity but not vice-versa. But in fact, the causality can work in both directions, meaning that cultural diversity can actually lead to higher biological diversity. For example, the areas surrounding Kanazawa, where the Creative Cities Network Meeting was held, are known for their satoyama landscapes and satoumi seascapes, which are places where long-term interactions between human production activities and the surrounding nature have produced a diverse mosaic of land and sea uses. This diversity of land uses comes from a wide variety of cultural practices and traditional knowledge resulting from people historically diversifying their livelihoods in order to ensure sustainable provision of ecosystem services. Diversification of livelihoods in turn results in a wider diversity of habitats within the landscape, from rice paddies to coppiced forests to maintained grasslands to sustainable fisheries and human settlements. A multi-year survey called the Japan Satoyama Satoumi Assessment found that the diverse forms of land management practiced over long periods of time in satoyama and satoumi have led to higher levels of biodiversity in these areas. Similar results have been seen (for example, here) in other human-influenced areas around the world, with higher biodiversity compared to places that have been left wild or abandoned.

A Japanese satoyama landscape. Photo: Mikiko Walker

A proposed model for a biocultural region

The importance of satoyama and satoumi areas for biocultural diversity around Kanazawa was on display at an event held in the city at the same time as the UCCN meeting. The event was an International Symposium titled “Introducing the Ishikawa-Kanazawa Biocultural Region: A model for linkages between biocultural diversity and cultural prosperity”, held on 28 May 2015 at Kanazawa’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art and organized by the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability’s Operating Unit Ishikawa/Kanazawa (UNU-IAS OUIK). According to the event website, “UNU-IAS OUIK has been conducting research focusing on how ecosystem services are associated with interrelated cultural and biological diversity. This research looks at how the tangible and intangible aspects of culture in Kanazawa City are influenced by the ecological conditions of surrounding rural areas and vice versa.”

The event featured speakers from the Ishikawa/Kanazawa area, from around Japan, and from around the world. Among the keynote speakers were representatives from a Joint Programme between UNESCO and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD) on “Linking Biological and Cultural Diversity”, which was established in 2010 to respond to the need to better understand the mutual links between cultural and biological diversity. Abstracts and discussion by the presenters can be found in the conference proceedings.

The International Symposium “Introducing the Ishikawa-Kanazawa Biocultural Region: A model for linkages between biocultural diversity and cultural prosperity.” Photo: UNU-IAS OUIK

One of the outcomes of the International Symposium was the reading of the “Kanazawa Message 2015”, and its endorsement by the participants. The original English text of the Message is as follows:

We, the participants:

Recognize the contribution of biological and cultural diversity to our health and wellbeing as well as to building a resilient and sustainable society.
Support to enhance urban and rural communities towards maximizing the vitality of local power and the pleasure of ingenuity based on the use of local biocultural resources, and to create a commons and human resources for the next generation.
Seek integral pathways to conserve, utilize and hand down local biocultural diversity and landscapes through learning each local knowledge, technologies and cultural practices.
Promote the building a platform in which citizens, municipalities and researchers can form networks and foster exchange towards better policy development regarding biocultural diversity with urban-rural linkages.

At the international symposium, “Introducing the Ishikawa-Kanazawa Biocultural Region: A model for linkages between biological diversity and cultural prosperity” held on 28 May 2015 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan

The Symposium and its Message are intended to serve as an early step towards wide recognition of the Ishikawa-Kanazawa area as a model for promoting biocultural diversity, both in urban areas themselves and in terms of the ties between urban areas and surrounding rural areas. The Ishikawa-Kanazawa region’s claim to be worthy of serving as a model is due to the essential connections between the many crafts and folk arts Kanazawa City is famous for, as recognized by the UCCN, and their grounding in the nature and traditions of satoyama and satoumi areas around Ishikawa Prefecture and beyond.

Maps showing some of the biocultural elements in the Ishikawa-Kanazawa area. Photo: excerpt from a brochure by UNU-IAS OUIK.

The ongoing development and promotion of such a model will require a great deal of institution-building, as noted in Paragraph 4 of the Kanazawa Message above, in addition to a firm theoretical underpinning. In recognition of this, one of the keynote addresses at the Symposium was about the process leading up to the Florence Declaration on the Links between Biological and Cultural Diversity and its promulgation at the UNESCO-SCBD European Conference on Biological and Cultural Diversity in Florence, Italy, in 2014. Another example mentioned as informing the Ishikawa-Kanazawa model, this one also originating in Japan, is the Satoyama Initiative, a global-scale effort to promote the revitalization and sustainable management of so-called “socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes” in rural, peri-urban, and even urban areas around the world, including Japan’s satoyama and satoumi (for more information on the Satoyama Initiative, see the website of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative). UNU-IAS OUIK, the organizer of the event, will be the main coordinator of institutional efforts in favor of the Ishikawa-Kanazawa model.

Finding roots of biocultural diversity

The proposal of the Ishikawa-Kanazawa region as a model for biocultural diversity brings us back to the original issue of this essay, namely: how biocultural diversity applies in cities, where biological diversity and cultural diversity apparently function quite differently. What makes the Ishikawa-Kanazawa region a suitable model to resolve this apparent conflict? The answer would seem to lie in exactly what is described in the previous section: the close ties between the urban area of Kanazawa City and the satoyama landscapes and satoumi seascapes in the surrounding Ishikawa Prefecture.

A Japanese satoumi seascape. Photo: Akane Minohara

As noted earlier, it would likely take evolutionary timescales for biological processes to produce new species from urban interactions, while cultural innovations sprout quickly from urban diversity (although it would not surprise me to learn that new species have appeared recently in cities, and I encourage anyone to post examples in the comments). The biological underpinnings of cultural elements that ultimately interact in cities, however, are what make urban cultural innovations biocultural.

A kind of biocultural diversity: a biodiverse mosaic production landscape portrayed in an urban mural in Guatemala. Photo: William Dunbar

In the Kanazawa Message, this idea is present in its references both to “landscapes”—in the local context, meaning satoyama landscapes—and “urban-rural linkages”. Representatives from the local region at the International Symposium explicitly noted the rural origins of apparently urban cultural elements, ranging from the dyeing of silks used to make kimonos to different kinds of food culture. Food may be a particularly easy-to-understand example in that, while much of the cuisine found in the city’s restaurants represents a fusion of elements from various places coming together in the urban setting, there is no denying the ultimately rural origin of the ingredients. When seen in this light, other aspects of urban culture, art, crafts, music and others can be seen to be biocultural. Many such elements have been covered in The Nature of Cities recently. For example, regarding trees as a basis for art, where artistic techniques likely refined in urban settings are nonetheless highly reliant on nature both for content and for technology, illustrates how otherwise “urban”-seeming cultural phenomena can be described as biocultural.

Dyeing silk for kimonos with a nature-based pattern. Photo: UNU-IAS OUIK

The approach proposed in the Kanazawa event and ongoing work related to it is, of course, one model of urban biocultural diversity; further work will show to what extent it can be applied to different settings. In any case, it would behoove us all to keep in mind cultural aspects of biological diversity and biological aspects of cultural diversity whenever we work with the nature of cities.

William Dunbar
Tokyo

On The Nature of Cities

Inspiring Urban Youth for a Biodiversity-Friendly Approach to Development

26 August 2015Essay, People & Communities, Science & ToolsDevelopment, Education, Planning, Policy, SustainabilityOliver Hillel

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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The challenge of integrated approaches

We all know that we are living in a deep crisis regarding the rate of our use of natural resources. We also know that addressing these problems will have inter-related and resonating effects. Such interconnection also has good aspects. Smart catalytic action can produce benefits across many levels—science has explained that butterfly wings can affect planetary weather.

We also know that there is too little time and too little capacity from challenged funders for us to squander the little money we have to invest in anything but the best solutions. Moreover, we know that there is a need for local action to follow global guidelines, so that those solutions reach the scale we need. As we move toward interconnected tipping points surrounding the use of nature and our quality of life, the need for decision makers who can think of and apply interconnected solutions for resource conservation and development options—those precious win-win approaches that improve efficiency in our use of resources and generate equitable forms of employment and business—increases. For globally significant impact, local activities need to be coordinated so that influences resonate across various level of governance. Such “glocal” solutions should be attuned to the guidelines of Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the policies of global and UN agencies. We need our future policymakers and managers to focus on integrated solutions.

It is already difficult to find experienced professionals who can work with these inter-related challenges and smart solutions today. So, how can we train our youth, who are increasingly urban, to deal with these complex connections? Many of tomorrow’s decision makers today live in cities and may have lost, by force of circumstance, many cultural and intuitive connections to the evolving links between natural cycles and survival. In these conditions, how can we promote opportunities for urban youth to get engaged and to learn—in concrete governance situations—the kinds of professional qualifications that create benefits for people and biodiversity?

These questions have driven several agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, to adopt programmes to encourage action by youth and to promote scientific and technical cooperation and capacity-building programmes designed to “mainstream” approaches for biodiversity and development. They exist, these synergetic approaches—they are described as “bright spots” and, under the best circumstances, can be part of exchanges that inspire other sets of players in new places to adapt the key ideas and exchange lessons. There are opportunities for applying composite solutions that optimize capacity and needs in each case. We need to qualify people who are capable of creating, identifying, and spreading such solutions at a global scale.

There are creative ways to overcome the difficulties in developing such change makers. One we’d like to highlight involves connecting students and teachers in Quebec with real development situations in developing countries. The Inspired Generations (IG) project is an insightful example for what could be achieved if well-coordinated capacity-building is connected to local integrated planning needs.

IG students and local residents interact during consultations in Telchac... — IG students and local residents interact during consultations in Telchac, Mexico.

The Inspired Generations programme

Recently, the Secretariat began cooperating with the Quebec-based Youth for Sustainable Development Foundation (YFSD) on their IG programme. This innovative, capacity-building approach, alongside its related “Youth United for Change” programme, engages university students and their teachers across various disciplines in the on-the-ground sustainable development of a city, region, or country through missions over many years. For hosts, the programs offer planning and technical support tools to a local community in a developing country. After a sustainable development diagnostic is agreed upon with local leaders, a conference is set up in cooperation with international, national, regional, and local stakeholders to develop a common vision and a 5-year strategy, all to be managed by a Sustainable Development Committee. The Committee, usually led by local governments and including associations, NGOs, businesses, and local universities, then calls for projects for which it will help to raise funds. In the municipality of Telchac Puerto, Mexico, for instance, the work of the Foundation-supported Committee is focused on increasing sustainability in the main sectors of the local economy: tourism and fisheries. Students and teachers contribute directly to create more socially equitable food and handicraft production systems that are better connected to the needs of the local tourism industry.

Today, nine countries are engaged in the implementation of the IG and related methodologies, with over 300 students and teachers participating. Twelve conferences on sustainable development (and their respective Committees) have been organized since the beginning of 2012: nine in the Indian Ocean and three in Africa, with an average participation of 150 people per conference. 17 projects have been executed since 2013, creating perspectives for green and inclusive economic development and generating approximately 30 local jobs since 2014. Experiences by the YSDF around the world show that such goals are best achieved through involving students in the design and implementation of the IG projects, which include feasibility studies, environmental impact studies, engineering works, training activities, social venture incubators, etc.

Scaling up action for global impact with the CBD

More recently, the SCBD and IG have approached each other to explore synergies. With the objective of coordinating local action with the mandates and strategies of the CBD, a pioneering activity has been started in the province of Samana in the Dominican Republic, where students have so far cooperated with the local Committee on strategies for sustainable fisheries’ management, coconut production, and sustainable packaging/solid waste recycling and management (the latter in cooperation with local restaurants). Annual meetings of the Committee and the IG student/teacher team will allow for further support, stock-taking, reporting, and definitions of next steps. Following the same approach, contacts are being developed in Brazil with the prestigious Fundacao Getulio Vargas.

The community garden initiative designed by the Committee with collaboration from IG students, to support local revenue generation linked to tourism, Samana, Dominican Republic. — The community garden initiative—designed by the Committee with collaboration from IG students,—to support local revenue generation linked to tourism, Samana, Dominican Republic.

However, in most IG cases, there are still limitations to the scope of integration of CBD objectives and projects could only feed back to national-level CBD-related activities on some issues. It is expected that closer cooperation of the Secretariat and the Foundation, with national focal points for the Convention in future activities, will result in greater efficiencies and multiplying effects.

Perspectives for local action with regional impacts with the Indian Ocean Commission

A more comprehensive local-global connection is being planned in the YFSD’s partnership with the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) within its ISLANDS Project and Biodiversity programme. In the Seychelles following the IG Symposium in Mahe, April 27-28, 2015, the Foundation and the Commission, in contact with the SCBD, have been working to support the establishment of the Seychelles Committee for Sustainable Development to generate a Status and Action Plan. The Committee will provide a better link with all local stakeholders (NGOs, the private sector, students, local authorities, social and economic actors) bound by a shared strategy and will facilitate public-private partnerships and better linkages with student/teacher networks locally, regionally, and internationally.

In September 2015, the YFSD will co-organize a regional Forum for all the countries of the Indian Ocean involved in IG where these ideas can be explored further. With support from the Secretariat, the Foundation has started a cooperation with the official focal points for the governments of IOC members in Comoros, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Seychelles.

IG Coordinator Cedric van Riel leads an IG student team in Madagascar.

Focus on reciprocal exchanges

In our vision, the reciprocal involvement of youth, teachers, and universities in developed and developing countries is critical. In remarks to declare the IG symposium open at the international Conference Centre in Mahe in April 2015, the Minister for Finance, Trade and the Blue Economy of the Seychelles, M. Jean-Paul Adam, recognised and acknowledged the support being provided by the Commission, the European Union, and the Inspired Generations Programme. He noted how important it is to project the experience of the Seychelles internationally and said the IG is another opportunity for young people to share ideas and to work side by side with their Indian Ocean coastal neighbours.

Universities at the regional or national level on both sides could be further involved in regional technical and scientific cooperation, and activities could be proposed to optimize links to the work of the Convention’s scientific and technical bodies and initiatives. Initial discussions are ongoing to develop exchanges between the University of the Seychelles (UniSey) and international students through a SIDS Youth AIMS Hub supported by Quebec universities and a French network of students (REFEDD, Réseau Français des Étudiants pour le Développement Durable). These partnerships will contribute to UniSey becoming a regional center of expertise and a CBD knowledge hub. These synergies are particularly relevant given that the overall objective of the IOC’s Biodiversity project (an agreement between IOC and EU for the Biodiversity project for an amount of € 15 million over five years) is to contribute to regional integration by promoting an effective, coordinated, and sustainable use of the regional natural capital in compliance with the relevant regional and international agreements. In this sense, future IG activities can be planned to help Parties achieve their national objectives, reflecting the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and thus generating opportunities for students and teachers to support voluntary reporting by Parties.

Local students participating in the Indi an Ocean Commissionís Inspired g..._1 — Local students participating in the Indian Ocean Commission’s Inspired Generations programme.

Some ideas for the future

Ongoing cooperation between the Foundation and the Secretariat may result in an IG manual with guidelines and lessons learned about the most effective ways to link local action with implementing the CBD. Better coordination can also result in valuable contributions from students and teachers (with input from local governments and representatives of major groups) to be considered by national governments for voluntary reporting to the CBD in line with the Aichi Targets. Putting the Convention to work requires better local coordination and regional exposure as part of annual Inspired Generations Forums.

As project support by IG is designed for longer range projects, students (Canadian and local) would be uniquely able to witness the evolutions of the Committee’s work, and thus would be able to get qualifications that help them evolve into professionals who can mainstream the services of nature into development approaches while helping to make concrete decisions that address the challenges of local communities. And if the Committees are linked to ongoing government strategies, reflecting local needs identified and revised in multi-stakeholder governance systems, the IG teams on both sides can help Committees align their strategies with national and global policies; identify and address technical and scientific needs and cooperation; exchange opportunities; and (through reporting to the Convention) get global recognition of their progress.

Other similar programmes and initiatives could follow suit—the Foundation regularly cooperates with other agencies and organizations supporting students in Canada and elsewhere. We look forward to exchanges and comments from TNOC’s expert community about capacity-building and professional development opportunities for youth on urban and local development strategies that address the need for integrated approaches. Please contact us at [email protected].

Oliver Hillel & Manuela Gervasi
Montreal

On The Nature of Cities

about the writer
Manuela Gervasi

Manuela Gervasi is an urban planner with a master's degree in Environmental Governance awarded by the Institute for the Advanced Studies of Sustainability of the United Nations University in Tokyo and another in Urban Planning and Policy at the Polytechnic of Milan.

Risk: How Can We Put the UN, Governments, and the Public on the Same Page?

24 August 2015Essay, Science & ToolsDisasters/Red zone, Planning, Policy, Resilience, SustainabilityFadi Hamdan

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Urban populations—and the associated concentration of livelihoods and assets in cities—continue to increase worldwide, thereby increasing exposure to hazards. Coupled with aging infrastructure and housing stock, this trend leads to an increase in vulnerability. And this vulnerability is compounded by climate-change driven storms, sea-level rise, and associated flooding and landslides. Such events are increasing year after year; still, governments avoid reducing existing risk because they prefer not to spend money on uncertain outcomes before a disaster, especially because such efforts remain invisible even if the risk materialises. Instead, there are plenty of certain and visible outcomes to spend money on: compensating people after they lose their homess and sources of income. Governments also choose not to spend resources on risk reduction because of the prevailing political-economy climate, which is curbing expenditure in the public sector. This means that new risk (in terms of both exposure and vulnerability) continues to accumulate at a rate higher than existing risk is being reduced by risk reduction and resilience strategies. Most alarmingly, the prevailing process of reconstruction of houses, infrastructure, and livelihoods after a disaster often reintroduces risk into livelihoods and the built environment. Why is this still happening?

The Political-Economy Framework for Understanding and Analysing Drivers of Change FHAMDAN — The political-economy framework for understanding and analysing drivers of change. Copyright F. Hamdan

The UN, practitioners, and risk management consultancies are doing a lot of good work on disaster risk reduction, including encouraging governments to invest in disaster risk reduction. But the participants in this work haven’t connected to the public debate that is happening about risk—they are disconnected. What can we do to connect them?

To answer the above questions, it is probably good to start with examples of some of the problems that whole cities, and certain sectors (e.g. education sector especially in poor neighbourhoods and urban slums) within cities, are facing worldwide. Below are a few such examples:

The rapid growth of cities and the populations within them means that cities are expanding quicker than the ability of governments to plan them according to pre-designed urban master plans and land use plans. This makes the people and the infrastructure more susceptible to damage from weather-related hazards (e.g. storms, floods, sea-level rise, etc.) and other hazards (e.g. earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides, etc.). Also, all cities have poorer neighbourhoods with aging infrastructure (sewers, rainwater drainage networks, etc.) that is becoming ineffective even without the additional pressures due to climate change. These poorer neighbourhoods tend to have high population density, with people living in cramped conditions, in old unsafe buildings, and sometimes in close proximity to hazardous polluting industries. Clearly, this is a disaster waiting to happen when the next storm or the next earthquake arrives! Everyone knows that! National and local governments know that, local businesses know that, international aid agencies and UN agencies should know that, and the people themselves most certainly know that! Yet rarely do we see these risks being reduced before a disaster! Why? This is a question that we must ask even if we don’t have a clear answer to it.
The stock of school buildings varies widely in many countries, with some new buildings built to resist major earthquakes and other risks together with older school buildings designed and built decades ago. Often, such older buildings are crumbling without the help of an earthquake or a storm. Countries that have succeeded in improving safety in all their school buildings are countries that have adopted what is referred to as a National School Safety Programs (NSSPs) that takes a long-term view to safety in schools. NSSPs have been successfully adopted in Chile and New Zealand and are promoted in all OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) member countries. Yet in many countries, even including those ranked as middle as high income countries, an NSSP is not even on the agenda! Why? This is another question that we must ask!
In our age of globalisation, economies and businesses in different continents are connected by complex supply chain dynamics wherein businesses in the USA depend on parts manufactured in Asia or Europe and vice versa. Businesses rely on the safe functioning of trade routes, including ports and canals, in order to ship and sell their commodities all over the world. If a trade route or a supply chain is interrupted somewhere, capital and investments will leave and not return. In such cases, local economies and livelihoods will be lost and investments wasted. Yet we still see a prevailing mentality of investments pouring into countries with a short-term view of maximising profits irrespective of the sustainability of these profits or the livelihoods producing them.

Risk Governance Framework 2 FHAMDAN — Risk governance framework model. Copyright F. Hamdan

The answer to all of these questions—or, at least, the part of the answer which is often ignored—has to do with the way decisions are made regarding 1) accountability for the creation of risk, 2) what risks we decide to reduce or not reduce, 3) to what levels we reduce those risks, 4) where we get finances to reduce those risk or why we decide not to finance risk reduction, 5) who participates in all of the above decisions and who is excluded in terms of sectors (e.g. banking, industry, commerce, agriculture, natural scientists, social scientists, etc.), and 6) to what degree the decision making process is transparent, subject to scrutiny and accountability (for example: how often are officials held accountable if risk is not reduced or if risk is reintroduced after a disaster?). All of these aspects of decision making related to risk form what we call Risk Governance: how governments arrive at decisions on risk creation and risk reduction, as well as who is allowed to participate in the decision-making process.

It is only recently that we have recognised risk governance as an issue, and so more work needs to be done to rectify problems with risk governance. Improved risk governance is very important because it forms the missing link between the knowledge creation being pioneered by various practitioners, UN agencies, and aid agencies on the one hand and between governments who are ignoring the evidence and not acting on this knowledge on the other hand. Good risk governance will empower all affected people, sectors, and businesses to lobby for enhancing the accountability of decisions regarding risk construction, risk reduction, and risk reintroduction.

But let us first start from the beginning, or near the beginning, of one of the most important international initiatives to manage and reduce risks.

International frameworks and initiatives for disaster risk reduction, including risk governance

The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005 – 2015 (HFA) is a 10-year plan to make the world safer from natural hazards and was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in the Resolution A/RES/60/195 following the 2005 World Disaster Reduction Conference. The HFA set five Priorities for Action for reducing disaster risk between 2005 and 2015:

Ensure that disaster risk reduction is a national and a local priority with a strong institutional basis for implementation.
Identify, assess, and monitor disaster risks and enhance early warning.
Use knowledge, innovation, and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels.
Reduce the underlying risk factors.
Strengthen disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels.

The above priorities for action are meant to be implemented at national, local, and sectoral levels. In particular, their implementation at local levels was strengthened by the development of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign, launched by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in May 2010.

jeddah-flood-2011 (Saudi Gazzette) — Jeddah flood, 2011. Courtesy of Saudi Gazzette

In analysing progress in the implementation of the HFA, the following challenges have been observed:

More effort is needed to move from a culture of disaster management that focuses on responding to disasters after they occur to a culture of disaster risk management that prevents new risk from accumulating and reduces levels of existing risk before a disaster actually occurs.
While significant effort has been directed at planning to respond to disasters and to prevent new risk from accumulating (partly through building codes and land use planning), more effort is required to reduce existing levels of risk. Even when strategies for disaster risk reduction are developed, they are not regularly transformed into policies with corresponding allocations of resources.
Additional effort is needed in developing recovery strategies, policies, and plans a priori to ensure that reconstruction of livelihoods and the built environment in the wake of a disaster will not reintroduce risk. We can only avoid reintroducing risk by building back better. However, in many cases, in the wake of a disaster, the pressure to restore services and housing means that risk is created and transferred as a result of a reconstruction process that lacks the necessary scrutiny and participation of various stakeholders.
Additional work is needed to understand how risk is constructed and transferred between sectors, which will in turn allow for much-needed enhancement of accountability for risk construction and transfer.
Additional effort is required to engage more diverse stakeholders in disaster risk management activities, particularly in the most vulnerable sectors and communities.
Capacity-building for local and national governments did not lead to the desired change in disaster risk reduction practices. It was concluded that change can only be effected by focusing on improving risk governance as defined above.
In many cases, capacity-building and awareness-raising is driven by supply (e.g. by universities and research institutions, risk management consultancies, etc.) rather than demand and ignores the social, economic, and institutional factors contributing to vulnerability; instead, such efforts focus solely on natural and physical factors contributing to vulnerability.
In many cases, too much emphasis is placed on natural factors (e.g. hazard frequency and severity, which are used to produce hazard area and hazard intensity maps) and physical factors (e.g. the physical state of the built environment, critical infrastructure, etc.). Notwithstanding the importance of the physical and natural factors, these alone do not complete our understanding of why vulnerability and risk accumulate (and are allowed to accumulate) and why they are (or are not) reduced. To do that, there is a need to examine the social (construction of risk in informal settlements, limited awareness, social capital), economic (financing disaster risk management from public and private investments, competing sectoral needs) and institutional (e.g. overlap in mandates, gaps in mandates, capacity shortages) factors contributing to vulnerability.

The above challenges are also reflected in The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 – 2030 (SFDRR), the successor instrument to the Hyogo Framework for Action, which was adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, on March 18, 2015. The SFDRR reviewed the progress of various states in the implementation of the HFA and identified the following challenges: the need for improved understanding of disaster risk; the need to strengthen disaster risk governance; the need for accountability for disaster risk management; the need to be better prepared to “Build Back Better”; the need for recognition of various stakeholders and their roles; the need for mobilization of risk-sensitive investment to avoid the creation of new risk; the need for resilience of health infrastructure, cultural heritage, and work-places; and the need for accountability for risk creation and the transfer of risk. Based on the above, the SFDRR proposed seven global goals, outcomes, and outputs and then identified the following four priorities for action over the coming 15 years, from 2015 up to 2030:

Priority 1: Understanding disaster risk.
Priority 2: Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk.
Priority 3: Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience.
Priority 4: Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective responses and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction.

Gaps in risk governance

At this stage, as the SFDRR is being finalised and the monitoring framework and indicators agreed upon, it is useful to elaborate on some of the main governance gaps in the implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies and policies categorised under different headings below:

Institutional governance gaps: very few countries worldwide have succeeded in establishing risk governance frameworks to provide checks and balances—in a transparent and participatory manner—throughout the risk management and reduction process.
Science-based governance gaps: There is unanimous agreement on the need to improve the science/policy interface, particularly in view of the increased recognition of linkages with sustainable development and climate change. However, the “science” in the science/policy interface is often dominated by earth science and risk management consultancies addressing frequency and severity of natural hazards and/or by engineering consultancies addressing the vulnerability of the built environment and housing, including critical infrastructure. Therefore, often the social, economic, and institutional factors are missing from scientific assessments on vulnerability and risk. In many instances, this leads to “scientific” solutions being developed without addressing the social, economic, and institutional challenges and factors that have led to the accumulation of risk and vulnerability in the first place.
Preliminary assessment governance gaps: In many cases, important solutions are not identified or are ignored at the risk framing stage, when the scope of hazards is identified and the qualitative and quantitative methodologies that may be used to assess risk are being selected. For example, as mentioned in the beginning of this article, in the education sector, best practice dictates the adoption of National School Safety Programs (NSSPs) that have proven to be an effective tool in preventing new risk from accumulating in school buildings and in reducing existing levels of risks. However, in many countries worldwide, NSSPs are not identified as a possible solution. A similar argument can be made for other critical infrastructure sectors (e.g. health, industry, energy, water, public sector buildings, and primary responding agencies). Indeed, in many instances, calls for identifying the financing gap—let alone securing the finances—required for ensuring the sustainable development and resilience of cities and sectors within them go unheeded.
Comprehensive risk assessment governance gaps: Even though there is scientific evidence that extensive risk (risk that occurs regularly, such as the flood that happens every year due to average year rainfall and is not severe) significantly and disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities and livelihoods, leaving them more vulnerable to intensive risk (which happens rarely, such as the flood corresponding to the storm that happens once every couple of hundred years, but is more severe when it happens), the fact remains that most multi-hazard, vulnerability, and risk assessments continue to a) ignore extensive risk and b) assume that intensive risk happens in a vacuum rather than recognizing that it is superimposed on a socio-economic situation where people and communities allocate resources to address everyday needs and extensive risks (which feel more tangible because they are more frequent).
Societal risk governance gaps: Very few countries and cities have mechanisms for carrying out both technical and societal risk assessments, which are important in case of substantial uncertainty associated with the frequency and severity of hazards or with the consequences of its occurrences.
Risk evaluation governance gaps: The value of the tolerable and the unacceptable levels of risk should be determined by states and countries depending on their level of development and available financial resources. Setting values of tolerable and unacceptable risks inevitably involves setting a value on saving a human life. However, these decisions are too often made in an implicit, non-transparent manner or, perhaps even more worryingly, these decisions are knowingly or unknowingly delegated to private sector companies.
Disaster loss data collation governance gaps: Loss of human lives, sources of income, and assets continues to be influenced by disaster-loss data collation practices that focus on compensation. This automatically implies that those communities that are living in informal housing or whose livelihoods are obtained from the informal sector will not be included in the loss collation exercise, as they are not considered eligible for compensation. However, especially because there is wider recognition of the need to identify and strengthen linkages with sustainable development and climate change, there is a need to widen the scope of disaster loss collation and analysis so it includes direct and indirect losses to livelihoods, lives, and economic sectors irrespective of eligibility for compensation. Furthermore, loss data, when available, is not dis-aggregated according to age, sex, ability, and social and economic backgrounds, making the analysis of factors affecting vulnerability more challenging.
Recovery governance gaps: Few countries and cities have developed a priori recovery plans so that the reconstruction process will not reintroduce risks into the built environment, critical infrastructure, and livelihoods. Having a priori plans is particularly important when the reconstruction process is being financed using public debt for developments that are unsustainable. These will have to be paid for by future generations who will not reap the benefits of the unsustainable development.
Financing risk reduction governance gaps: all countries and states have fixed budgets with competing sectors and stakeholders for resource allocation. There is a need to understand why certain strategies and policies for risk reduction are not being implemented, how the winners and losers are determined as a result of decisions being made regarding where public funds are directed, and the type of incentives given to the private sector.
Governance gaps regarding the regulatory role of governments in disaster risk reduction: National and local governments are allocating resources for responding to disasters. More recently, through land use and building codes, amongst others, new risk is prevented from accumulating via sound investment and development decisions by both the private and public sectors. Through such decisions, governments are fulfilling part of their stewardship role of protecting people against external hazards. Currently, this role is not being completely fulfilled because existing risk is not being sufficiently reduced. In addition, governments are explicitly reviewing and refining mandates for disaster risk management to ensure they are capable of fulfilling their managerial role in disaster risk management. The main gap, however, is in the regulatory role of governments. Governments are required to protect people and sectors against risks created by other individuals and sectors. This was one of the main gaps in the HFA and therefore it is necessary to ensure that it is sufficiently addressed during implementation of the SFDRR. In turn, this requires us all to address the challenging task of understanding how risk is created by sectors and individuals and the manner in which it is transferred, legitimately or maliciously, to other sectors and individuals.

A proposed way forward

jeddah floods 2013 — Jeddah floods, 2013

Risk management consultancies have vested interests in focusing on the natural and physical factors contributing to vulnerability. Other stakeholders, including insurance companies and contracting and construction companies, may have other vested interests related to risk transfer and recovery practices. Many practitioners are trying to balance these vested interests by calling for a risk governance process to manage all decisions and by producing evidence-based arguments showing the need for risk governance. However, these arguments produced by practitioners will not effect change unless they are taken on board by concerned and affected citizens and stakeholders who want to improve the environment in which we live.

Therefore, it is important for us—disaster risk management practitioners, urban designers, and others—to recognize that we must increase our efforts to ensure that we are providing the needed advice to decision makers. However, perhaps more importantly, we must also view our work as trying to act as the missing link: to inform the public debate that is taking place around disaster risk and resilience, thereby providing the public (the ultimate decision maker) with the scientific tools to carry out scientific, evidence-based lobbying to reduce disaster risk and improve resilience.

Fadi Hamdan
Beirut

On The Nature of Cities

Getting Our Nature On: Take a Train and Start Walking

19 August 2015Essay, People & Communities, Place & DesignEcocities, Experiencing Nature, Livability, Planning, Policy, ValueJennifer Baljko

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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How to bring together nature, fitness, and public transportation.

A few weeks ago, my partner, Lluís, and I wanted to go for a two-day trek, to test some camping gear, to sleep outdoors, and to listen to birds while walking under the shade of pine trees.

But we didn’t want to make a big deal of it. This wasn’t meant to be a trip to a faraway place requiring lots of planning, expenses, or days off from work. It was a spur of the moment decision, a little escape from the city noise, traffic, and summer heat baking concrete buildings. We wanted a quick way to “get our nature on.”

Luckily, because we live in Barcelona, this turned out to be a pretty simple thing to do.

One early Friday morning at dawn, free of work commitments, we grabbed our backpacks (which now sit ready to go near our front door because we’re planning a multi-year walking trip and spontaneously head out for training hikes) and walked out the door.

We strolled 10 minutes to the city’s main train station, paid €2.15 for a 19-minute regional train ride, and found the red and white trail marks near the arrival train station. We climbed a flight of stairs, followed a paved path under a highway overpass, and, a few minutes later, we were all alone listening to our feet crunching dirt.

Now and again, a runner would zip by or a couple of cyclists would pass us. Occasionally, we would see the rooftops and terraces of the housing sub-divisions at the end of edge towns, cross a busy street to pick up the trail again, or hear dogs barking from behind fences. Even so, for long stretches of time, we were out in the woods by ourselves and lost in our thoughts along parts of the GR 92 trail that loops behind the densely populated towns circling Barcelona. We were never far away from home–and at some points we could see our neighborhood in the distance–but it certainly felt like we were.

These are the kind of things I have come to love about Catalonia and my adopted hometown of Barcelona. It seems like a little thing, something obvious and logical: Let’s design nature trails and outdoor fitness routes close to cities and accessible via public transportation. Unfortunately, I think it’s less common than it should be.

Barcelona view from the trail — Walking trials loop around Barcelona city and throughout Catalonia, allowing locals to get their nature on within a few train stops. Photo: Jennifer Baljko

Shifting views of nature

I grew up in the United States, in Jersey City, New Jersey. Talk about life in the city. During my childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, my idea of nature, green spaces, and parks was marked by images of sad-looking oak trees, broken swings, basketball hoops without nets, chain fences dividing concrete tennis courts lined with weeds, crushed beer cans, and the occasional used drug needle (Thankfully, urban revitalization initiatives and scores of Manhattan-based workers looking for affordable housing on the other side of the Hudson River have changed parts of Jersey City for the better. Today, there are more green spots with improved care and maintenance. With any luck, kids living there today will have better memories of playing in the parks than I did.)

For anything that looked like “real nature,” we had to load up the car and do a grand expedition to some place like the Delaware Water Gap a couple hours away. Those were rare events and logistically complicated ones because of my father’s work schedule and coordinating the whims of five kids. I admired nature from the backseat of the car as we moved along New Jersey’s highways and I remember staring out into the clumps of trees lining the road’s shoulder lanes, wondering what was behind them. In those younger years, though, it never occurred to me that I could go explore the woods or that there was an invitation on the table waiting for me to do that.

In the late 1990s, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and lived in and around the city for about 9 years. My idea of nature changed there and became forever linked to health and fitness. Being outdoors meant “doing something outdoors.” Nearly everyone I met was a marathon runner, a 100-mile cyclist, an Ironman triathlete, or did some other sport that involved being outdoors for hours at time. On the weekends, besides their regular exercise routines, people piled into their cars and headed out to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, or along windy, coastal roads with breathtaking views and redwood forests. I fell into that rhythm, too. I would run several times a week in random parks in and close to San Francisco, and would be immensely grateful that I was there and for things my eyes were seeing. At some point, I realized I was stopping to smell the roses, literally, in Golden Gate’s rose garden or pausing to pay momentary homage to blooming calla lilies before trudging onwards. Even though my daily encounters with nature were confined to the local parks, the rest of the West Coast had many outdoorsy things to do, and hopping in my car to do them seemed normal.

Now that I have lived in Catalonia longer than I lived in the Bay Area, my appreciation for nature has shifted again, but in a subtle way that I have just started to more fully understand. Whether it’s because we have good weather most of the year or because we’re in Europe and life is just different than in the U.S., the idea of spending time outdoors shows up here in less assuming ways. For instance, Catalans will say, without any pretension, “vaig a fer muntanya.” This literally translates to “I do the mountain,” but what they mean by that is that they will go for a hike, rock climb, or walk somewhere out in the mountains. They’re not usually doing this as part of a competitive race to prove courage or to achieve lofty personal fitness goals. They would simply say that they want to be outside enjoying the mountains and breathing fresh air. The novelty of that struck me when I turned the phrase around in my native-English mind. “Oh, you can walk out in the woods and go do the mountain, just like that? You can walk for the sake of walking, and take in whatever you see?”

Although many locals drive to do the mountain and some parks can only be reached by auto, Lluís and I don’t own a car. It’s not practical for our everyday lives. So, getting our nature on depends on where our two feet and local trains and buses take us. And, surprisingly, we have no shortage of choices.

Bus and Trail sign — Caption: Common things in Barcelona: Buses and signs pointing the direction to a greenway where locals walk and cycle. Photo: Jennifer Baljko

Making nature accessible

In almost any direction from our Barcelona apartment, we’ll eventually hit some green patch sooner or later. A few blocks from home we have Montjuïc Park, a big open space that makes living in the city bearable. We call it our backyard, and that’s where we spend a lot of our time “doing something outdoors”: running, going for an evening promenade, or general de-stressing. For longer day walks close to the city, we trek through Barcelona’s streets and then up to Collserola Park, which boosts 8,000-hectares of natural goodness, has lots of well-marked trails, and can be reached by local trains. Or we can walk along the greenway linking Barcelona with neighboring towns and parks.

Fan out farther from the city, say a couple hours by bus or train, and you could be criss-crossing vineyards; smelling fennel, rosemary and thyme; or doing leg-crunching ups and downs in the foothills. There’s access to routes with views of the sea or snow-capped peaks or rolling hills of Mediterranean flora.

To their credit, the Catalan government and local municipalities have done a good job connecting the embedded cultural idea of “vaig a fer muntanya” with modern-day, health-oriented fitness programs and public transportation accessibility.

The Catalan government, for instance, has a census of the region’s sport and equipment availability. This particular statistic caught my eye: under the category of “sport activity areas,” there are 2,791 installations around Catalonia, including walking trails, protected rock climbing routes, greenways, and activity zones in urban, sea, or aerial areas. And there’s plenty of information online about combining train rides with mountaineering, hiking routes, walking guides and maps, and touring national parks. (While I focus on walking options, because that’s my primary way of being in nature, I would be remiss if I did not point to the multitude of other ways locals “get their nature on” that don’t involve walking; some alternatives options are found here).

Provincial and city tourism offices usually have brochures or maps with outdoor itineraries encouraging people to appreciate nature, engage in healthy exercise, and take in local sights or landmarks. Many of these experiences are waiting to be had within short distances of train or bus stations.

Maps Brochures — Many tourist offices around Catalonia have maps and brochures outlining local trails and providing information about the bio-diversity and landmarks you’ll find along the way. Photo: Jennifer Baljko

It’s hard for me to say if my relationship with nature has changed because I live in a place where nature is within closer reach to me, or if my growing need to have nature play a bigger role in my everyday life and how I choose to stay fit has increased my awareness of how much accessibility I now have to it. In the end, they feed each other’s motivation and leave me feeling grateful that I’m no longer admiring nature from the backseat of a car, but instead folding it seamlessly into my urban lifestyle.

Jennifer Baljko
Barcelona

On The Nature of Cities

London: A National Park City

16 August 2015Essay, Europe, People & Communities, Place & DesignBiophilia, Communities, Ecocities, Europe, Landscape, Stewardship, Wildlife People InteractionsDavid Goode

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Something very significant is happening in London. It’s a plan to make London the world’s first National Park City. Now that’s an idea that could catch on in a very big way.

Over the past 18 months, a movement has been growing, drawing together Londoners who want to apply National Park principles to the whole of Greater London. The aim is to turn traditional attitudes to the city inside out, ensuring that nature has a place in every aspect of London’s fabric and making it accessible to every Londoner. The idea has gained huge support from many different sectors of society. It’s a people’s movement that is gaining momentum by the day and, last month, a draft charter was launched for public consultation (see NationalParkCity.London).

St James's Park — St James’s Park in Westminster, where people and nature co-exist a stone’s throw from parliament. Copyright David Goode.

The steering group has come up with a working definition of a National Park City:

“A large urban area that is managed and semi-protected through both formal and informal means to enhance the natural capital of its living landscape. A defining feature is the widespread and significant commitment of residents, visitors and decision-makers to allow natural processes to provide a foundation for a better quality of life for wildlife and people”.

They have gone further by identifying nine specific aims:

Ensure that 100 percent of Londoners have free and easy access to high quality green space.
Connect 100 percent of London’s children to nature.
Make the majority of London physically green.
Improve London’s air and water quality year on year.
Improve the richness, connectivity and biodiversity of London’s habitats.
Inspire the building of affordable green homes.
Inspire new business activities.
Promote London as a Green World City.
Nurture a shared National Park City identity for Londoners.

DSCF0134 — Richmond Park, a Royal deer park since 1637, was designated as a National Nature Reserve in 2000. Copyright David Goode.

This movement is not something that has suddenly emerged out of the blue. London has a long and impressive history of protecting its green environment, from the Royal Parks created in the late medieval and Tudor periods, to the Metropolitan gardens movement of the 19^th century and Garden City suburbs of the early 20^th century, to the designation of London’s Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land in the 1950s and the massive proliferation of urban nature reserves since the 1980s, large numbers of which are now protected through planning legislation. The idea of a National Park City is building on firm foundations.

The statistics are extraordinary. Greater London covers nearly 1600 km², of which 47 percent is physically green. Nearly 20 percent is made up of private gardens and there are 3,000 parks. The total length of streams, rivers and canals is more than 850km, many of which are accessible by footpaths. Signed footpaths and well established greenways exceed 1000km in length. London’s natural habitats are exceptional, with considerable areas of ancient woodland, meadows, heath and common, as well as ancient deer parks—such as Richmond Park—and recently created wetlands that have proved to be extremely popular. These natural habitats include some that are internationally important, but it is particularly striking that the total amount of natural habitat now protected by nature conservation designations amounts to nearly 20 percent of Greater London.

These habitats, which are spread throughout the capital, include about 50 specially protected areas of national significance, 142 Local Nature Reserves and over 1400 Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation. Londoners have access to hundreds of natural areas within this great conurbation and there are numerous groups providing everyone with facilities for contact with nature. It is an extraordinary paradox that the capital city of the UK, with 8.6 million people, is so rich in accessible wildlife compared with rural farmland, which is fast becoming bereft of nature.

DSCF0167 — Walking through Brook Farm Open Space along the Dollis Valley Green Walk, which takes you across north London to Hampstead Heath. Copyright David Goode.

So, the idea of a National Park City is not so strange as it may seem. Indeed, if we were not so conditioned by deep seated assumptions that a national park must be a pristine wilderness, or that a city must be an entirely man-made entity from which nature should be banished, the idea might have emerged much earlier. It is entirely logical. London is paving the way for a new approach that will be very exciting.

What makes me excited is that the idea has sprung from a diverse group of ordinary Londoners who have a vision for the future. It is not a top-down initiative from government, or the Mayor, or from IUCN or UNESCO. This is a people’s movement. The prospectus says, “All kinds of people are involved: cyclists, scientists, tree climbers, teachers, students, pensioners, unemployed, under-employed, doctors, swimmers, gardeners, artists, walkers, kayakers, activists, wildlife watchers, politicians, children, parents, and grandparents.”

They have put it in plain words:

“Let’s make London the world’s first National Park City. A city where people and nature are better connected. A city that is rich with wildlife and every child benefits from exploring, playing and learning outdoors. A city where we all enjoy high-quality green spaces, the air is clean to breathe, it’s a pleasure to swim in its rivers and green homes are affordable. Together we can make London a greener, healthier and fairer place to live. Together we can make London a National Park City. Why not?”

Having worked on a detailed strategy to protect London’s wildlife habitats since the 1980s (see link below), I am delighted that this new initiative is based on a much broader constituency. It gives ordinary people a voice, an opportunity to influence London’s environment in ways that have not been possible before and an opportunity for everyone to benefit from London’s natural assets.

DSCF0142 — Mudchute City Farm, next to the financial district of Canary Wharf, in 2007. Copyright David Goode.

The idea has been remarkably well received. Celebrities such as Stephen Fry have been wholehearted in their support. He said, “Imagine London as the first National Park City. Wow, heck of a thought. Help make it happen.” But most of the comments come from lesser-known people who recognise the enormous opportunities offered by this idea to their own particular area of work. Whether it be child poverty, sustainable schools, transport planning, mental health, green building projects, or provision of long distance footpaths, these are just a few of the vast array of activities that are likely to be affected. Sir Terry Farrell, the prominent architect and urban planner, described it as “One vision to inspire a million projects.”

It has also gained the support of the London Assembly and several London boroughs, though the instigators are not looking for the kind of top-down designation by Government that is the hallmark of traditional national parks. This will be a people’s project which will act as a catalyst to promote new solutions for our capital city. But the idea of a National Park City could take the concept of nature in the city into a whole new realm. If it catches on, it could go a long way to meet the kinds of objectives now being espoused by IUCN for protection of urban natural areas; I am sure it will influence the future debate on development of urban Biosphere Nature Reserves.

Momentum is growing in London for this radical new venture and there are positive signs, even in these early stages, that it could shake up some long established attitudes to nature. I believe there is a parallel here with public perceptions of climate change. In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein argues that it will require a shift of public attitudes on a scale equivalent to the movement for abolition of slavery if we are to reverse current trends. So it is, too, with our perception of nature in our predominantly urban lives. But the idea of a National Park City led by citizens turns everything on its head. I’m all for it.

With acknowledgements to the National Park City steering group prospectus.

David Goode
London

On The Nature of Cities

Postscript: The work done by the London Ecology Unit and others to protect wildlife habitats in London was described in some detail in The Urban Imperative (see https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/PAPS-015.pdf.)

Let Streams of Linear Open Spaces Flow Across Urban Landscapes

12 August 2015Essay, People & Communities, Place & DesignCorridors, Design, Landscape, Parks, Participation/Democracy, PlanningPK Das

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined

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Can we re-envision our cities with a stream of linear open spaces, defining a new geography of cities? Can we break away from large, monolithic spaces and geometric structures into fluid open spaces, meandering, modulating and negotiating varying city terrains, as rivers and watercourses do? This way, the new structure of open spaces would relate to and integrate with many more areas and provide access to more people across neighborhoods and the city. Why? Because a linear park passes near more people than a square part of the same size—that is, more people are within a short walk of a linear park than a square one of the same size in the same neighborhood. And linear parks are parks of opportunity. Where would one create a big square park in Mumbai? But streams and other naturally linear features provide opportunities to create park access in an otherwise crowded urban zone.

Over the years, across cities, we have been planning and building parks and gardens and other public spaces as geometric blocks that, in most instances, stand out in sharp contrast to the character of the neighborhoods in which they are placed. Such decisions that impose such blocky parcels of land seem guided by intentions of promoting exclusive spaces, spaces that could be contained and controlled, with access to them regulated. In many urban situations, such blocks have led to class and community polarization due to the very nature of their design and governance structure. A public space has significant socio- political colour that cannot be ignored or masked under the guises of city beautification programs and limited environmental objectives.

Today, we are confronted by many critical questions that need to be answered. Can public spaces in various forms be conceived to harness social and community relationships? Can they bring together the disparate fragments of spaces within cities, otherwise characterized by forced ghettoisation and gated communities? Can sensitive ecological assets that have been classified, colonized, and/or treated as backyards of development programs be put into the public domain and turned into social and cultural fore-courts? How can we alter the established blocks of barricaded spaces and structures into open and clear spaces for all, forever? Can more people freely access and exercise control over common property in order to democratise the ecology of cities? Alternately, can we work towards developing linear structures of open spaces as an answer to many of the above issues, while significantly altering the established, dogmatic order of public spaces in the planning and development of cities?

These are key questions for the future of city building. It may be a tall order, but worth pursuing, as it is rooted in the idea of a new urban rights agenda—governance models that strive to achieve integration, equality, and socio-environmental justice. In most instances, public spaces have been shrinking with city expansion. Open land, including that reserved for gardens and playgrounds, has either been converted by governments for building construction purposes or is being grabbed and developed for real estate projects, as has been experienced in the case of Mumbai. In such an event, collective or community ownership of common spaces becomes crucial for maintaining a desirable balance between open spaces and built-up areas. It is in this regard that linear streams of open spaces achieve significance. This is not to say that larger parcels of land for open spaces are not necessary at all. Rather, that the interesting possibility of linear systems is that small residual or marginal spaces that are often ignored or neglected can be stitched together with other open spaces and natural areas into a larger structure of open spaces. Such an approach would greatly aid our struggle for expanding open spaces in dense cities where open lands are in short supply, helping us to achieve minimum open spaces standards.

Pimpri Chinchwad Networking Plan: Central Park. A network of green corridors and a central park in a plan by this author for Pimpri Chinchwad town in the state of Maharashtra, India. Credit: PK Das & Associates

In terms of physical planning, at P.K. Das & Associates we aim to develop contiguous open spaces by interconnecting various facets of areas open to the public. This would produce a network of green corridors throughout the city and its various localities, nourishing community life, neighbourhood engagements, and participation. With public space being the main planning criteria, we hope to bring about a social change: promoting collective culture and rooting out alienation and a false sense of individual gratification promoted by the market. By achieving intensive levels of citizens’ participation, we wish to influence governments to devise comprehensive urban plans and to integrate disparate developments. The ‘open and clear forever’ public space policy will truly symbolize our democratic aspirations. This is a significant way to rebuild humane and environmentally sustainable cities.

In Mumbai, the ‘Mumbai Waterfronts Centre’ and architects PKDas & Associates have made an attempt to re-envision the city by proposing such a linear public spaces structure, bringing together the vast extent of the natural assets and the available open spaces within the city. An illustration of such an idea shows how a system of linear parks and other public spaces can radically alter the socio-environmental character of the city. More importantly, by this plan, it is possible to mobilise neighborhood people’s participation in the development and expansion of open spaces as much as their participation in the development and expansion of the city, as seen in the plans for Juhu, a neighborhood in the western suburbs of Mumbai.

In order to Re-Vision Mumbai and democratize its public space, we have launched the ‘Vision Juhu’ plan as a pilot project.

A public campaign poster, published by area residents and this author to popularize the idea of linear open spaces structure in the Juhu neighbourhood of Mumbai, currently under implementation. Credit: PK Das & Associates

A rendering of the green corridor onto a Google image of Juhu area. Credit: PK Das

As Mumbai expands, its open spaces are shrinking. The democratic ‘space’ that ensures accountability and enables dissent is also shrinking, very subtly but surely. The city’s shrinking physical open spaces are of course the most visible manifestation of this, as they directly and adversely affect our very quality of life. A new order of linear open spaces must clearly be the foundation of city planning.

Open Mumbai Exhibition and inauguration photos

Through this plan we hope to generate dialogue between people, governments, and professionals and dialogue within movements working for social, cultural, and environmental change. It is a plan that redefines land use and development, placing people and community life at the centre of planning—not real estate and construction potential. A plan that redefines the ‘notion’ of open space to go beyond gardens and recreational grounds to include the vast, diverse natural assets of the city, including rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, mangroves, wetlands, beaches, and the incredible seafronts. A plan that aims to create non-barricaded, non-exclusive, non-elitist spaces that provide access to all our citizens for leisure, relaxation, art, and cultural life. A plan that ensures open spaces are not only available, but are geographically and culturally integral to neighbourhoods and participatory community life.

Such plans for cities will be the beginning of a new dialogue to create a truly representative ‘Peoples’ Plan’. Let streams of linear open spaces flow across urban landscapes, defining a new ecology—socio-environmental order—of cities the world over

PK Das
Mumbai

On The Nature of Cities

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Koko Warner

about the writerManuela Gervasi

about the writer
Erika Svendsen

about the writer
Heather McMillen

about the writer
Novem Auyeung

about the writer
Rachel Holmes

about the writer
Michelle Johnson

about the writer
Renae Reynolds

about the writer
David Maddox

about the writer
Victor Beumer

about the writer
Henry Booth

about the writer
Mitchell Chester

about the writer
Thomas Elmqvist

about the writer
Alexandros Gasparatos

about the writer
Jaroslav Mysiak

about the writer
Rob Tinch

about the writer
Francis Vorhies

about the writer
Henrik von Wehrden

about the writer
Koko Warner

about the writer
Manuela Gervasi