Essays Archive

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined
April, 2015

16 April 2015

A Tree Hitched to the Universe
Russell Galt, Edinburgh

A wee garden in a windy city From a leafy suburb in the shadow of Table Mountain, I need not venture far to encounter a myriad of remarkable creatures employing clever survival strategies. Fighting, stalking, feigning, loving, dancing, stealing, and darting, biodiversity spills into and out of my garden. It...

12 April 2015

A Tech Touch: Connecting Beaches, Parks, and Big Data
Jennifer Baljko, Barcelona

Smart city technology is going beyond data-collecting sensors in streetlights and on garbage containers. It’s expanding to beaches and parks, creating a feedback loop that will allow local Barcelona Metropolitan Area officials to better manage public spaces. This technology adds a layer of big-data information that, ideally, will help cities...

9 April 2015

What are “Garden Cities” Without a Garden Culture? How a Cultural Connection with Nature Can Build a Truly Sustainable Future
Patrick M. Lydon, Daejeon

This marks the fourth year that my partner Suhee Kang and I have been studying, working with, living with, and learning from individuals in East Asia and the U.S. who are at the forefront of the sustainable (agri)culture movement. During this time, our primary goal has been the making of...

5 April 2015

Chinese Urban Green Areas: Classic Gardens to a Globalized Landscape
Maria E Ignatieva, Perth Na Xiu, Uppsala & Xi’an Fengping Yang, Uppsala

In October 2014, we had a great opportunity to explore different green areas of several Chinese cities within the project “Sustainable green infrastructure in urban-rural areas of China based on eco-civilization,” which was sponsored by the Chinese Government. It was particularly interesting to see different types of greenery that reflects...

1 April 2015

Signals and Snapshots from Semaphore: Musings on Design Guidelines for Urban Fractals
Paul Downton, Melbourne

The fractal idea revisited in an attempt to make the concept clearer on a day-to-day, more visceral basis. In my first blog for TNOC I outlined my concept of an ‘urban fractal’ and noted my fascination with the idea that “one might be able to identify patterns in urban systems...

March, 2015

29 March 2015

Green Transport Routes Are Social-Cultural-Ecological Corridors
Janice Astbury, Buenos Aires

Since moving from Edinburgh to London, I have greatly missed my bicycle commute along the former’s Union Canal. There are similar routes in London, but they’re unfortunately not on my way to work. I have always sought out such corridors and they have sometimes influenced my destinations. In response to...

26 March 2015

Unintended Consequences: When Environmental “Goods” Turn Bad
Francois Mancebo, Paris

After a hectic start to 2015, I finally managed to slow down the pace. A few days ago, I attempted to catch up on some overdue readings—my way to keep in the loop. Among the many documents piling up on my computer desktop was this short podcast from TNOC: “Closing...

22 March 2015

Lessons on Post-Resilience from Venice, 2015
Franco Montalto, Philadelphia and Venice

“Stronger than the storm.” I can’t get this phrase out of my head, nearly one week into my sabbatical move to Venice, Italy. It so happens that we arrived on a week when the moon and the winds lined up to create acqua alta (high water) for six days in...

18 March 2015

Neighborhood Planning for Resilient and Livable Cities, Part 2: Can ‘Nested’ Neighborhood Planning Lead to Urban Ecological Democracy?
Jayne Engle, Montreal Nik Luka, Montreal and Uppsala

Is neighborhood planning worth doing? We argued in our last blog entry (Part 1 of this series) that neighborhood planning has the potential to be transformative in improving community resilience, but that it also has a dark side. It can be divisive both spatially—by setting clear geographic ‘limits’ that signal exclusion or...

15 March 2015

Extinction of Experience: Does it Matter?
Marianne Krasny, Ithaca

Right after I graduated from Cornell, I took off for the North Cascades wilderness. First as a student and later an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School, I spent summers in Glacier Peak Wilderness Area, ice climbing out of crevasses, backpacking through Pacific Northwest old growth forests, and scaling ancient...

12 March 2015

It Is Difficult to Take In the Glory of the Dandelion
David Maddox, New York

“It is difficult to take in all the glory of the Dandelion, as it is to take in a mountain, or a thunderstorm.” Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) is legendary for his watercolor landscapes, painted near his Buffalo, NY, home. His paintings are typically about nature: swamps and forests and backyards that include...

9 March 2015

Why Do People Use Parks and Plazas in Buenos Aires?
Jonathan Craik, London Ana Faggi, Buenos Aires Sebastian Miguel, Buenos Aires Leslie Vorraber, Buenos Aires

Parks have been significant sources of open space in urban history, ranging from private, even sacred spaces to fully public spaces serving as central points of social interaction and recreation (Stanley et al. 2012). On any given day, many thousands of people spend several hours outdoors in their local park...

4 March 2015

Encountering the Urban Forest
Lindsay Campbell, New York

For all the critical scholarship that is written about the harnessing of volunteer labor in caring for urban trees (see, e.g., Perkins 2009), it never squared with my experience of engaging in stewardship. Following attendance at a human geography panel on ‘powerful objects’, I came to realize that my leisure...

1 March 2015

Citizen Science in the City: Lessons from Melbourne’s BioBlitz
Chris Ives, Nottingham Yvonne Lynch, Riyadh Caragh Threlfall, Melbourne Mark Norman, Melbourne

Every day, citizen scientists contribute their time and energy to support thousands of research projects around the world (Bonney et al., 2014). They collect, categorize, and analyze data, generously volunteering their time and their personal resources in return for little other than recreational enjoyment or the personal satisfaction of helping...

February, 2015

26 February 2015

The Secret Life of Bees: Using Big Data and Citizen Science to Unravel…What Bees Are Saying about the Environment
Jennifer Baljko, Barcelona

Once you start talking about bees, you open Pandora’s box…You’ll find small and very delicate stories behind them. Each one is interesting. — Josep Perelló, associate professor and project leader of OpenSystems UB at the Universitat de Barcelona If Josep Perelló is right about discovering the stories behind bees, Barcelona’s...

22 February 2015

Marriage Therapy for Ecologists and Landscape Architects
Steven Handel, New Brunswick

Hello. Come in. What’s on your mind? Why have you come to chat with me? “We have such different backgrounds” Ecologists’ interest start with an exploration of the natural world, its structure and function. Architects and landscape architects start with human needs and how constructed features can answer those needs....

18 February 2015

The Nature of Holy Cities
Naomi Tsur, Jerusalem

While it is undoubtedly true that thousands of cities around the world share a wide spectrum of common denominators, from garbage to biodiversity, from air pollution to sophisticated bike-path networks, or from unemployment to entrepreneurship (to mention only a sample few) it is perhaps important to examine common urban denominators...

15 February 2015

The Wild Beast as the Other: Framing of Urban Wildlife in Popular Imagination
Harini Nagendra, Bangalore

India is on a rapid path to urbanisation. While currently only 30% of India’s population lives in cities, this is changing rapidly. Plans have been recently announced to build 100 new “smart cities” across India, with an ambitious plan that includes the proposed investment of 1.2 billion US dollars in...

11 February 2015

Unintended Consequences Can Be Opportunities for Conservation
David Goode, Bath

In reviewing the wildlife habitats of British towns and cities for my recent book Nature in Towns and Cities (Harper Collins 2014) I became acutely aware that many of the UK’s most spectacular urban wetlands resulted from industrial activities. The most extensive of these are newly created lakes that formed...

4 February 2015

The Bright Side of Indigenous Urbanization for Biodiversity 
Henrique Mercer, Montreal Viviana Figueroa, Montreal Andre Mader, Montreal Oliver Hillel, Montreal

Over time, cities originated wherever indigenous cultures agglomerated and planned links between their settlements and peri-urban ecosystems for the provision of water, food and other goods and services. Not by coincidence, these settlements often occurred in biodiversity hotspots—and we know that historically cities were hotbeds for innovation of all sorts....

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