Essays Archive

Art, Science, Action: Green Cities Re-imagined
April, 2013

24 April 2013

Mechanisms of Resilience & Other ‘Re-Words’ in Urban Greening
Keith Tidball, Ithaca

I recently gave a talk at the Horticulture Society of New York’s annual Healing Nature Forum: Planting the Seeds of Health and Sustainability. As could be expected, there was a lot of talk about Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath, and the role of greening. This, of course, is of great interest to...

21 April 2013

Windows with a Biodiversity View
Lena Chan, Singapore

Three books inspire me greatly.  They are (a) ‘Biophilia’ by E.O. Wilson, (b) ‘Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity’ by Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, and (c) ‘Biophilic Cities’ by Tim Beatley. Written almost thirty years ago, the first postulated that it is imprinted in our DNA that...

17 April 2013

Parks as Green Infrastructure, Green Infrastructure as Parks: How Need, Design and Technology Are Coming Together to Make Better Cities
Adrian Benepe, New York

In my work at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and more recently with the Trust for Public Land, I have been fortunate to be involved at the nexus of landscape architecture, civil engineering, urban design, environmental management, park planning, and many related areas.  Over the last...

14 April 2013

Patch Reflection
Victoria Marshall, Singapore

Urban Design practices have always been created in response to emerging and overlapping city models and the disciplinary contexts designers find themselves in. I have found that the urban ecology framework of Patch Dynamics has been key in allowing me to see how city models such as the megalopolis and...

8 April 2013

Prospective Urbanism—Using Science and Fiction to Imagine a New Way for Urban Nature
Pierre-André Martin, Rio de Janeiro

A versão em Português segue imediatamente. Une version en français apparaît immédiatement après la version portugaise. Designing nature is a challenging task in an urban environment. For example, how can a 38 years old individual (myself) safely edit a 3.8 billion years old system (Nature)? It is quite a test...

3 April 2013

Reimagining Nairobi National Park: Counter-Intuitive Tradeoffs to Strengthen This Urban Protected Area
Glen Hyman, Paris

Nairobi is a bustling city of over 3 million people, many of whom are stuck in traffic for hours each day. One effort to mitigate these wasteful jams involves construction of additional motorways. But with little space specifically reserved for these new arteries, their proposed routes involve some delicate tradeoffs....

March, 2013

31 March 2013

Straw Polls, Dodos and the Value of Landscape
Paul Downton, Melbourne

The premises on which we build our cities and construct civilisation, and the extent and means by which we include nature in our cities depends on what values we choose to adopt. Our capacity to engage with the processes of nurturing the nature of our cities depends on how we...

27 March 2013

Urban Sustainability and Resilience—Why We Need to Focus on Scales
Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm

Two of the most debated and challenging concepts in urban development are sustainability and resilience. How are they related? Do they mean approximately the same thing or are they distinctly different and can misunderstandings lead to undesired outcomes? In this essay I will try to clarify the concepts, discuss two...

24 March 2013

Vegetation Changes Associated with Coastal Tourist Urbanization
Ana Faggi, Buenos Aires

Evidence from many cities around the world shows that urbanization is a widespread process that homogenises biota as ecological communities become more alike one another through the introduction and extinction of species. On account of this process, there is great concern about the conservation of local biodiversity, which may suffer...

20 March 2013

Working Beyond Park Boundaries to Benefit Public Health in Victoria, Australia
Kathryn Campbell, Victoria

Since writing my last blog in October 2012, I returned to Victoria, Australia, at the conclusion of an exciting two year secondment to the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal, Canada. The focus there was on further embedding biological diversity (biodiversity) and human health matters in the...

17 March 2013

Dolphin as Metaphor for the Limits of Environmental Law
Rebecca Bratspies, New York

On January 25, 2013, a dolphin swam into Brooklyn, New York’s Gowanus Canal. Poor dolphin! Gowanus canal is a 1.8 mile long Superfund site—a toxic stew of pesticides, heavy metals and PCBs masquerading as “the waters of the United States” (to use the language of the Clean Water Act). A...

13 March 2013

Intensiveness and Extensiveness in Our Urban Landscape
Andrew Rudd, New York City

Much of urban history has emphasized density and centrality in city form. Though some environmentalists question the sustainability of such intensive land use, recent studies have shown that urban density correlates positively with resource efficiency and reduced emissions. At the same time, innovations in transport technology have historically allowed cities...

10 March 2013

Critical Questions to Integrate Ecologies and Economies Across Urban-Rural Gradients
Juana Mariño, Bogota

“A sustainable city is one which contributes to sustainable development, and to do this it must have a high level of urbanization. (…) Without urbanization, it’s nearly impossible to have important development and growth in the economy.To have a city that generates wealth, prosperity and jobs for young people, you...

3 March 2013

Temporary Nature’s Potential for Resilience and Liveability
Glenn Stewart, Christchurch

In my last blog I introduced to you the earthquakes that devastated Christchurch city beginning back in September 2010. I had been wondering about what I might share with you in my next blog and when I was driving thru the city the other day and spotted a field of...

February, 2013

27 February 2013

Urbanophilia and the End of Misanthropy: Cities Are Nature
Mary Rowe, Toronto

Jane Jacobs titled her sixth book The Nature of Economies (Random House, 2000). In the Foreword she makes explicit her intent: “The theme running through this exposition — indeed, the basic premise on which the book is constructed — is that human beings exist wholly within nature as a legitimate part of...

24 February 2013

Musings on Winter’s Darkness and the Ways that Birds Brighten Urban Lives
Bill Sherwonit, Anchorage

My enchantment began on a Saturday morning, shortly before solstice and not long after I’d moved from Anchorage’s lowlands to the city’s Hillside area. Lolling in bed, I glanced outside. And there, before me, were several black-capped chickadees flitting about a backyard spruce. Wonderful, I thought. Here’s a chance to...

20 February 2013

In Terms of Conserving Biodiversity—How Functional is a Conservation Development?
Mark Hostetler, Gainesville

I recently blogged about how we could construct urban communities that conserve biodiversity. On private lands marked for development, one strategy to conserve biodiversity is to build a conservation development (CD). CD is an approach to the design, construction, and stewardship of a development that achieves functional protection of natural...

17 February 2013

Port Cities and Nature: The Experience of Brest Métropole Océane and the Maritime Innovative Territories International Network
Oliver Hillel, Montreal

Une version en français suit immédiatement dans cet espace. Just as human activities change the face of our planet, the habits of maritime and port city residents have a disproportionate influence on the fate of coastal and marine biodiversity. We already know that what happens to life on Earth will...

13 February 2013

What We Want and What We Don’t: Forging an Urban Nature that Works for Everyone
Pippin Anderson, Cape Town

Its 11 o’clock on a Saturday night and my husband and I have just returned home from a dinner party. Driving home we encountered Chital deer (Axis axis) grazing outside the Table Mountain National Park boundary and right on the verge of a busy highway. These deer don’t belong here,...

10 February 2013

Water and the City: A Dispatch From an American Frontier Town
Madhusudan Katti, Raleigh

Out in the no longer so Wild West of America, a war is brewing. At the fringes of the great southwestern deserts, in the shadows of the high Sierra Nevada mountains, lies the great Central Valley of California, a primary battleground for this war — a war over water. The war...

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