Essays Archive

In most arid regions of the world cities are growing and rivers are running dry. While rapid urbanisation has left little room for creating new public open spaces, could urban riverbeds that remain dry for an extended period of time provide potentials for new types of public parks? Dryland settlements...

Whenever I listen to the song Some Kind of Nature by the Gorillaz & Lou Reed, it makes me think about what kind of nature we are going to end up with in our cities, even though the song isn’t actually about urban nature at all. From my perspective here...

Regular readers of TNOC will be familiar with the biophilia hypothesis, which supposes an innate emotional link between humans and the natural world that positively impacts our psychological wellbeing. In other words, we feel most at home in naturalistic surroundings, as this is where we evolved and have spent the...

Some weeks ago I took part in a seminar in Recife, Brazil, where colleagues of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico met. The main queries to be answered were: How each professional from their individual specialities could collaborate to address the New Urban Agenda established by the Habitat III Conference, held...

There is strong interest in the theme of re-naturing cities, since “naturalizing” cities can help address multiple global societal challenges and generate benefits, such as the enhancement of health and well-being, sustainable urbanisation, the provision of ecosystems and their services, and resilience to climate change. But, what are the theories,...

Humans have been living with wildlife since time immemorial. But with the growth of cities, people have become so distant from nature and wildlife that many think there is no native flora and fauna left in urban jungles. This alienation raised such concern in the global community that the United...

Warning: What follows is entirely personal and non-scientific. This is a good thing. I live and work in a global city. Here’s my justification for being here. I work on scaling up greening in cities across Europe. My global city—London—has been a leader in urban greening initiatives for many years....

In previous TNOC posts I wrote about two apparently different topics: urban agriculture and living underground. Let’s combine them now into a new urban object: Farming underground. You may very well think that I am playing smart-aleck here, and that this paper is just a piece of bravura, since farming...

If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that that...

Increasingly, urban nature is viewed not only as a scientific, technological or design issue, but a moral one. The recent TNOC roundtable “Ecosystems for everyone” rested on the assumption that provision of and access to ecosystem services and urban nature is a “moral imperative”. Indeed, Steward Pickett began his contribution...

The impacts associated with city functions, economic, environmental, mobility, extend well beyond their administrative boundaries. But the contemporary and dominant frameworks and systems for managing cities have always determined what activity is allowable, where, and how the infrastructure and any developments pertaining to the function would be developed. Thus, functionality of...

Looking back over 50 years working as an ecologist some things stand out as real success stories. Camley Street Natural Park in London is one of these. On the day that I started work as Senior Ecologist at the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1982 I learnt that the Council...

We walk through Mashhad, Iran, and start giggling like children. “Look how clean everything is! There are trash bins, and parks with good exercise equipment, and wide sidewalks you can actually walk on without being sideswiped by motos, rickshaws, bicycles and cows! Oh, how nice… they painted the park benches!...

Worldwide, cities are grappling with aging infrastructure, shifting populations, and changing weather patterns, necessitating the use and expansion of green space in equitable and creative ways. Many are embracing a transition from the sanitary city—comprised of siloed functions and grey infrastructure—to the sustainable city—comprised of regenerative and distributed systems that...

Broken and disparate urban landscapes are common experience. The multitude of issues and concerns that are causing such conditions are not new; neither are responses of those who are committed to ideas of sustainability. Yet, discussions of the causes and responses have to be repeated many times over, in order...

To plan resilient cities is a complex task. It involves making decisions that involve the built, social, economic, and environmental development of a territory, including unexpected changes, such as those caused by extreme natural events. The effects of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and fires, among other disturbances, need to be...

This is a tale of an experience I had in Alachua County, Florida. The challenge? How can we encourage the construction of more natural stormwater ponds, which offer more wildlife habitat and more efficient ways to remove pollutants? We have all seen conventional stormwater ponds—deeply dug ponds, with mowed turfgrass...

Most of the narratives on the crises of development are woven around rapid population growth in developing countries. Yes. The number of world citizens is over seven billion. The challenges that this number raises far exceeds national and intergovernmental agencies’ abilities to address them. Rapid urbanization is but one of...

Urbanization not only changes the landscape structure due to land cover change, fragmentation of natural habitats, and creation of artificial habitats, it also changes the physical patterns of the environment: temperature, wind currents, rain patterns, light levels, or noise levels. For example, urbanization increases average temperature by between 3°C and...

(Una versión en español, aqui.) In pondering the question: “Who should have access to the countless benefits and services that urban ecosystems provide?” We have put together a collection of eight first-person accounts that portray city dwellers’ dreams. This series of Sketches of life explores both individual and collective human...