Essays Archive

Today I would like to celebrate the First Congress of the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE), which took place at the end of July in Berlin, just in the place where urban ecology emerged as a discipline. And also I’ll consider what our discipline of urban ecology has to say...

Have you ever sat beneath an old urban tree and wished that it could talk? Many times older than any human, yet always rooted to one location, imagine the stories that the tree could share and the wisdom it could impart. Such trees could have led extraordinary lives, witnessing profound...

City planners have often many and innovative solutions for how to create a ’good urban milieu’. However, these ideas are mainly focused on accommodating visual aesthetics with necessary practical matters for transport, waste and energy. The dynamic sound perspectives in the urban environment, such as sonic diversity and acoustic ecology,...

Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today Oh, how I wish he’d go away        — William Hughes Mearns 1922 Learning to forget When the early settlers headed west across the American continent their cultural baggage weighed lightly when...

41% of the total land area in the densely built city of Mumbai must be reserved as open spaces. A change in the mindset, along with not so radical changes in the development plan, can make this city very eco sensitive and a sustainable urbanized centre to live in. We feel...

The health benefits of the natural environment One of the most important factors in promoting good health and preventing chronic disease is regular physical activity; ranked second only to tobacco control. With less than a third of Australians getting enough physical activity, this is leading to increased risks of chronic...

In my first blog post for The Nature of Cities, I wrote about environmental justice as a bridge between traditional environmentalism and an increasingly urban global population. I suggested that we had work to do to makes environmental concerns salient to a new, ever-more urban generation. Since then, I have...

Ten years ago this month, in 2003, northeastern North America experienced the second most widespread blackout in history. That August evening, toward the end of my three-hour commute home on foot, a nearly full moon rose over the soft brownstone canyons of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Candlelit stoops hosted small, spontaneous parties...

This blog post takes the form of a seminar report. It is a reflection of the work of the City in Environment class of spring 2013 at The New School, New York. It is also a reflection on urban practice. In this class student explored and interrogated many terms that...

“Human use, population, and technology have reached that certain stage where mother Earth no longer accepts our presence with silence.” ― Dalai Lama XIV I am writing this blog as I am deeply disturbed by the colossal tragedy that happened in Kedarnath and Rambada region of Uttarakhand State on 15 June...

In our transition from rural to urban life (arguably the largest ever migration of humans on Earth), we lose contact with Nature—that we already knew. It is not easy to find ways to raise awareness of the beauty, as well as the critical role, that living beings, all 30 million...

Where will children learn about nature? There has been so much building and housing in Japan that we’ve lost open space and natural areas. Where will children learn about nature? Where do they engage with the nature world? To solve this problem, we wanted to design biotopes within school grounds....

I am currently typing away at a hairdresser in Tarragona, in Spain, while my wife receives a pre-wedding facial. That is the reason for our presence in Spain. Our families will soon descend on a tiny village in the mountains of Catalonia, from South Africa and Japan. This background information...

We’re now deep into summer, which in Anchorage means that conflicts between the city’s human residents and our wild neighbors are at a peak. Most of the problems involve black and grizzly bears, but moose have also made headlines in the local daily newspaper (“Woman stomped by moose at Kincaid...

A versão em Português segue imediatamente. In my last TNOC article, I wrote about the city of Rio de Janeiro’s rich biodiversity and the huge transformations that the city is going through, boosted by the international events that are already taking place here: 2013 FIFA Confederations Soccer Cup happened in...

I am going to take an iconoclastic view on how to conserve urban biodiversity in the real world: we do not need more research on defining the problem or defining the benefits of conserving biodiversity. I think we have enough models and empirical data to know which path to go...

“Your stomach is empty since yesterday. Let me make you some soup,” said the monk to me as I took deep breaths to try and get more oxygen to my altitude-sickened body, “it may help with your nausea too.” As I nodded weakly, he went back into the kitchen, in...

What would you do if you had the opportunity to design and build a new village or city? These opportunities do not come around often, so when one does we have to make the most of it!! The opportunities abound in Christchurch after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011....

The Nature of Cities collective blog is now over a year old, during which time my friends, colleagues and co-authors have written many fascinating articles on various aspects of nature, and on people-nature interactions in urban environments. Today, in my blog, I’d like to step away from my previous two...

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, I thought I would tell a story from back when the City of Portland (Oregon) first was beginning to grapple with the implications of the listing of a species found in our urban environment. In 1993 residents of the...