Category Archives:
People & Communities

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined
Search by Author
Select Author
Search by Month
Search by Tag
Search by Category
May, 2017

28 May 2017

Trees Are More than Just Trees: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Christine Thuring, Vancouver

Most of us know how “good” trees are for the urban environment, and for the planet overall. Whether you’re a human, an insect, a fungus, a bat, a bird, a four-legged omnivore, or an amphibian, we all love trees. Trees are symbols of health, vitality, and goodness. For the greater...

12 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

23 May 2017

UPinARMS: How effective is environmental activism in cities of the Global South?
Sumetee Gajjar, Cape Town

What do the Steel Flyover, the Karnataka Power Corporation Limited Power Plant in Yelahanka and Kaikondrahalli Lake have in common? They are all representative of how citizens across Bangalore are responding to environmental sustainability in the city, often linked to choices related to “development”. They were also discussed at a...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

17 May 2017

ALWAYS TOGETHER: A Tale of Indigenous Buried Pasts and Pervasive Futures
Steve Brown, Sydney

How many traces of Indigenous or First Peoples’ presence have you unknowingly walked, driven, or otherwise passed over today? In my case, walking along the Sydney Harbour foreshore, through the inner-city suburbs of Glebe and Camperdown, and across parklands to my workplace, the University of Sydney, I am conscious of...

2 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

14 May 2017

What South Asian Cities Seem to be Missing
Jennifer Baljko, Barcelona

I slump into the sofa of the hotel lobby. It’s been another exhausting day walking through India. We squeezed ourselves through narrow alleyways where bicycle carts, cows, and mopeds also wrestle to move a few feet forward. We sidestepped the foil cookie wrappers, paper tea cups, plastic flour bags, and...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

10 May 2017

Urban Landscape: Reading Nature from Big to Small Scales
Gloria Aponte, Medellín

Cities start, grow, expand, and usually—mainly in developing countries—exceed their limits, overflowing into rural and wild lands. This city growth applies not only to the imposition of manmade facets on geographical extensions, but to increases in the city’s complexity and dynamics. Urban phenomena start and keep mistreating nature beyond the...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

8 May 2017

To whom does a city’s nature belong? Is it a common pool resource, or a public good? And who decides?
Amita Baviskar, Delhi Lindsay Campbell, New York James Connolly, Barcelona Sheila Foster, Washington, DC Phil Ginsburg, San Francisco Jeff Hou, Seattle Marianne Krasny, Ithaca Mary Mattingly, Brooklyn Oona Morrow, Berlin Harini Nagendra, Bangalore Raul Pacheco-Vega, Aguascalientes Michael Sarbanes, Baltimore Philip Silva, New York Diana Wiesner, Bogota

5 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

8 May 2017

Tracing Contemporary Landscape Architecture to Sound Ecological Foundations
Steward Pickett, Poughkeepsie

A review of Toward an Urban Ecology, by Kate Orff. 2016. ISBN978-1-58093-436-7. The Monacelli Press, New York. 272 pages. Buy the book. Kate Orff, one of the leading ecologically-oriented landscape architects working today, and her firm, SCAPE, have put together an engaging and important book. The book describes what it means...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

7 May 2017

Eight Machinic Scenes in Hamasen, Taiwan
Brian McGrath, New York Cheng-Luen Hsueh, Tainan

In this post, we report on a recent design workshop at National Cheng Kung University, or NCKU, in Tainan, Taiwan, a continuation a series of of intensive practicums held at undergraduate schools of architecture in successive locations internationally since 2008. The work presented here extends from our last essay, posted...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

3 May 2017

Thinking about a Landscape Approach to Revitalize the American Landscape
William Dunbar, Tokyo

I normally write in The Nature of Cities about biocultural diversity, particularly related to the developing world, but in light of recent events, I would like to ask the reader’s indulgence in my writing about a slightly different topic, and maybe even getting on my soapbox a little. You see,...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation
April, 2017

30 April 2017

Re-Wilding: Cities by Nature
Kevin Sloan, Dallas-Fort Worth

The historic gardens of Western civilization typically include segments that were municipal areas, hunting grounds, or, on occasion, fragments of the region’s original forest. Many of the Italian, French, and English gardens that establish the history of landscape gardening were interventions added within or onto lands that, originally, were uncultivated...

2 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

26 April 2017

Retrofitting the City: Interweaving Urban Nature for Transformative Adaptation
David Ralston, Oakland

For city planners and those interested in addressing sustainability of the city as its interrelates with nature, we are very familiar with the pervasive discourse of climate change and the idea of adaptation to, as well as mitigation of, climate change effects and causes. As with any such terms, there...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

23 April 2017

The Nature of Universities and Sustainability
Lorenzo Chelleri, Barcelona Giulia Sonetti, Turin

Through their educational and experimental roles in society, universities can play a unique and vital role in cities’ transitions to sustainability. Although life itself is a learning process and education can happen anywhere, from the streets to virtual places, the temples of educations in our minds were—and still are—schools and...

1 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

19 April 2017

Watts Neighbors Build a Much-Needed Park in Los Angeles
Tori Kjer, Los Angeles

Within a 10-minute walk from just about any home in Watts, Los Angeles, you’ll find freeways, liquor stores, train tracks, and paved or weedy vacant lots. You’ll also find houses—lots of them, in this dense community of bright concrete streets and sidewalks. What you’re much less likely to find are...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

16 April 2017

Challenges of Transitioning to Sustainable Urban Infrastructure in the Amazon Delta and Estuary
Andressa Mansur, Cádiz Eduardo Brondizio, Bloomington

As paradoxical as it may seem, the Amazon region is considered not only an “urban forest”, but also a region with one of the most rapid rates of urban population growth in Brazil. Within the region, the Amazon Delta and Estuary (or ADE), where the urban population has increased about...

1 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

12 April 2017

Exploring Questions of Architecture and Identity from “The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria”
Huda Shaka, Dubai

Marwa al-Sabouni’s recent book on her experience as a young architect in Syria provides fascinating insights into the past, as well as current and future life in war-torn Syria. Although I have not been to Syria, the brave questions and reflections al-Sabouni poses resonate with me as they have resonated...

1 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

10 April 2017

The Suburban City, Usefully Seen as a Mega-Landscape
Kevin Sloan, Dallas-Fort Worth

A review of The Future of the Suburban City: Lessons from Sustaining Phoenix, by Grady Gammage, Jr. 2016. ISBN 1610916239. Island Press, Washington, D.C. 208 pages. Buy the book. When taken together, recent books, lectures, and exhibitions on design paint a picture that Architecture and Landscape Architecture are two disciplines moving in...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

9 April 2017

Relocating Industry to Address Air Pollution in Beijing
Pengfei XIE, Beijing

Beijing, China’s capital, has been experiencing serious air pollution in recent years. Greenhouse gas emissions from industry, coal heating, and vehicles are believed to be three major causes of the city’s air pollution. Beginning over a decade ago, Beijing Municipal Government began to take targeted actions to control air pollution....

2 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

5 April 2017

Response and Recovery After the Deadliest United States Tornado in a Century
Traci Sooter, Springfield

On Sunday, 22 May 2011, a multiple-vortex tornado touched down shortly after 5:00pm and began to rip a path nearly a mile wide across Joplin, Missouri, through the town of Duquesne, and into the rural areas of Jasper County. The Storm was on the ground for 38 minutes and traveled...

1 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation

2 April 2017

Extinction Debt: Is Urban Nature Conservation in Peril?
Marié du Toit, Potchefstroom Sarel Cilliers, Potchefstroom

We tend to think that what we see is what we get, and also what we’ll get in the future. Nature will always be there—it can just grow back. But it depends on what we want to grow back. In fact, urban ecological communities may be accumulating a large amount...

1 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation
March, 2017

29 March 2017

The Models are not Prescriptions—Applying Green Roof Technology in New Places
Andrew Clements, Corinth

Greek green roofs—Oikosteges, or OS for short—were born when I discovered that the existing conventional Northern and Central European green roofing systems could not be applied to our situation because they had been designed for the climate and building situations in those countries. Greece has many differences. Greece is in...

0 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation