Essays Archive

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined
April, 2014

6 April 2014

Collective Impact: A New Model for Regional Open Space Planning
Mike Houck, Portland Mike Wetter, Portland

Tim Beatley (2000: 224) cites Portland, Oregon as one example of progressive regional, bioregional, and metropolitan-scale greenspace planning in the country. Portland is also known for its land use planning and sustainability practices. Indeed, the city has more LEED (Leadership in Environmental Design) buildings than any other city. While the...

2 April 2014

The Nature of a City Economy: Towards an Ecology of Entrepreneurship
Vin Cipolla, New York City Mary Rowe, Toronto

City economies as patterns of connection In a healthy functioning city, various forms of urban capital, including natural, social, cultural — and economic — are enabled to flow smoothly and flexibly, along paths that are productive and enriching to the system of which they are a part. The most efficient...

March, 2014

31 March 2014

Heritage Trees of Cape Town (Continued)
Russell Galt, Edinburgh

Cape Town sprawls beneath the majestic Table Mountain in the heart of the mega-diverse Cape Floral Kingdom. With 3.74 million inhabitants, it is South Africa’s second most populous city. Despite the obvious ecological stressors resulting from the city’s high metabolism and rapid expansion (ca. 1.4% per year), a spectacular richness...

24 March 2014

It’s Not Only City Design—We Need To Integrate Sustainability Across the Rural-Urban Continuum
Francois Mancebo, Paris

Nearly 70% of the world population lives in urban areas and nearly 75% of economic activity is located therein. Urban areas concentrate not only wealth but also extreme poverty and environmental degradation. Despite the significant progress in urbanization, still a billion people live in the slums of urban areas. Thus...

18 March 2014

Simulation Models Are Fantastic Tools for Engagement
David Maddox, New York

A lot of recent discussion around urban planning, resilience, and sustainable cities has included ideas about community engagement. How do we get the public more engaged in urban planning in ways that are effective — that honors good design, evidence-based science and community desires? Having decided that community engagement is...

12 March 2014

Ecology Rights and City Development Plans: The Case of Mumbai
PK Das, Mumbai

Mumbai’s development plan is revised every twenty years. The revision process of the current plan is underway for preparation of a new plan for 2014-2034, to be launched some time later this year. Amongst many issues that active citizens and environmental groups have flagged is that of ecology and environment....

9 March 2014

Graffiti on the Path and the Nature of Public Space
Paul Downton, Melbourne

The nature of cities is inextricably tied to the nature of public space and this blog is about just a small part of that ‘nature’. It was inspired by what appeared to be graffiti on a public footpath that runs along the street where I live, in sunny Semaphore, South...

2 March 2014

Why We Need an Urban Sustainable Development Goal
Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm

Next year, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by the United Nations after the Millennium Declaration, are set to expire. The next set of global development goals, which are supposed to be even more environmentally focused — the Sustainable Development Goals — are currently under discussion at the UN and...

February, 2014

26 February 2014

Buenos Aires Tries to Design for Biodiversity
Ana Faggi, Buenos Aires

Recently Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, has begun a transformation to reduce the urban processes that have negative effects on biodiversity. The city has an area of 202 square kilometers and a population of 2.9 million. Every day up to four million people enter in the city from...

23 February 2014

The UN in the Urban Anthropocene
Oliver Hillel, Montreal Jose Puppim, São Paulo

Today, we live in the ‘Urban Anthropocene’. This expression combines the global trend towards urbanization and the neologism ‘Anthropocene’, the term an ecologist would be forced to use these days to describe Homo sapiens as the key structuring species that could determine, alone, the fate of Earth’s life forms. For...

19 February 2014

Greenpoint’s Environmental Benefit Fund as a Model for Community Participation
Rebecca Bratspies, New York

At first glance, Greenpoint seems much like many other ethnically diverse New York City neighborhood struggling with rapid gentrification. Traditional neighborhood businesses jostle for space with trendy new restaurants and shops, while developers hype luxury high-rise development proposals. But, underneath the ground, something is very different. Between the late 1800s...

16 February 2014

Digging Ourselves Deeper
Andrew Rudd, New York City

0 There’s an old saying about defecating and eating and not doing both in the same place. It is usually applied to interpersonal relations but serves just as well for industrial ones. And it is particularly relevant to mining. Certainly we don’t want to mine directly upstream of water intake sites,...

12 February 2014

Hammarby Sjöstad — A New Generation of Sustainable Urban Eco-Districts
Maria E Ignatieva, Perth Per Berg, Stockholm

Hammarby sjöstad (Hammarby Lake City) is an urban development project directly south of Stockholm’s South Island. This is no doubt the most referenced and visited spot among Scandinavian examples of implemented eco-friendly urban developments. Hammarby is included in many publications, for example in the recent Ecological Design by Nancy Rottle...

9 February 2014

Bangkok: Beautiful Mess
Victoria Marshall, Singapore

Walking in Bangkok is a messy experience. It is impossible to predict a change of grade or width of sidewalk under your feet. That is if there is a sidewalk. Similarly it is impossible to predict if the next building you walk past will be a shop house, condominium, bungalow,...

5 February 2014

Biblical Gazelles Will Soon be Welcoming Visitors to Israel’s First Urban Nature Park
Naomi Tsur, Jerusalem

The City of Jerusalem has been subject to geopolitical and religious conflict for more than three millennia, ever since King David chose it as the site for the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. His choice has often been criticized, because of the inherent difficulty in supplying water to the...

2 February 2014

Becoming More Aware of Our Avian Urban Neighbors: The Christmas Bird Count and Other Citizen Science Opportunities
Bill Sherwonit, Anchorage

Kim Behrens and I are driving slowly through my Turnagain neighborhood on a snowy mid-December afternoon, when a legion of songbirds prompts us to pull over to the curb, grab binoculars, and scramble out of her truck. In deepening grayness, we stand in open-mouthed amazement among yards that have been...

January, 2014

29 January 2014

Efficient Roofs for Efficient Buildings: Building Blocks for Energy Efficient Cities in India
Radhika Khosla

I recently relocated to New Delhi after more than a decade — a set of years which entailed rapid economic growth for India. Infrastructure development in cities around the country is booming and it is difficult to travel for too long without meeting the rising towers of concrete and shining...

26 January 2014

Biodiversity Can Flourish on an Urban Planet
Madhusudan Katti, Raleigh

Mention the word biodiversity to a city dweller and images of remote natural beauty will probably come to mind — not an empty car park around the corner. Wildlife, we think, should be found in wild places, or confined to sanctuaries and national parks. But research shows that cities can...

22 January 2014

What Is the Point of Zoos?
Andre Mader, Montreal

What’s a zoo to you? “Zoo” was one of the first words I learned to say, and the local zoo was my favorite place to visit as a child. I can’t be sure that it was that experience which led me to decide, at an early age, to pursue a...

19 January 2014

Involving Children in the Design of Park Renovations to Create Green Places for Play with Urban Nature
Keitaro Ito, Fukutsu City

The “Megurizaka pond renovation” project started in 2008 by creating a place for children to play and help restore nature to a small part of Kitakyushu City in southern Japan. The aim was to create an area for children’s play and ecological education that could also form a part of...

« Newer posts