How can humanity live, together with this earth instead of against it? This question is at the core of what both City as Nature and FRIEC are doing.
Co-sponsored by The Nature of Cities and FRIEC, the inaugural City as Nature Festival took place from 11-22 October 2019 in Osaka, Japan. Featuring interactive, place-based art, workshops, concerts, walks, talks, and storytelling events, the festival aimed at cultivating our awareness of urban environmental landscapes.
The works and activities within the City as Nature Festival represent not only multiple disciplines and ways of seeing, but also nearly every living generation, with participants ranging in age from 5 to 89 years.
Speaking to themes of environmental justice, the voices of festival participants consider both human consequences and those of our non-human brothers and sisters—plant, animal, fungi, bacterial—with whom we share this precarious position, as living beings struggling to find our proper place within a living, rapidly changing, earth.
In doing so, thirty creative practitioners from seven countries and over eight-hundred festival attendees helped each other to uncover moments and places where humans and our cities are intertwined with the rest of nature.
Core Festival Exhibition
Water: Multi-Species Migration and Displacement
When we think of the roles that flags play in our culture, we most often think of their divisive roles. A national flag for instance, brings together people within borders, yet in doing so, it also requires the alienation of the people inside those borders, from those on the outside. Such flags create unity, yet also division. But what of the flags which unite us with each other and our environments, rather than divide us?
Guest artist Takuma Uematsu (Minoh, Japan) talks about his work during a City as Nature exhibition tour. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
This question forms the nexus of the exhibition, Water: Multi-Species Migration and Displacement. The core exhibition of the City as Nature Festival in Osaka, this exhibition is based on the system of international maritime flags, and it enables us to take a different view of what flags might represent. The works give new life and meaning to a 150-year-old system of international maritime communication, creating, as artists Robin Lasser and Marguerite Perret state, a “new language” that like the ocean itself, is in a continual state of ebb, flow, and transformation.
Here, rather than symbols of division, flags start their life as symbols of unity, and of a common language across and through bodies of water. These symbols have been further transformed by artists into celebrations, messages, and inquiries at the crossroads of culture, creativity, and our living environment. Rather than tools to stake claim and build borders, the flags here offer us bridges between borders.
Indeed, the bridges created within this exhibition are many: bridges between countries, generations, social standing, and economic power, between disciplines, between jobs, between ways of living, and between political viewpoints. In this, they show the power of art to help cultivate social wellness between people of different backgrounds and cultures, connecting human concepts of place, power, and providence.
Musician Bomnunbyeol Kim (Seoul, Korea) gives a live performance for the Water Film exhibition during the City as Nature Festival. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
To mark the occasion of the exhibition’s visit to Osaka, the curators invited a cast of nearly thirty creatives from seven different countries to contribute works of textile, sculpture, photography, drawing, installation, weaving, film, music, and performance. Further groups of volunteer teachers, community leaders and academics, helped connect the exhibition with the community by co-hosting various public events and workshops. These participants add their voices to an already impressive array of what is now more than 120 artworks from professional artists, students, and the general public, that comprise the Water: Multi Species Migration and Displacement project to date.
Art & Nature: Connecting neighborhoods, regions, and nations
Of the artworks displayed in Osaka, roughly half are produced by international artists, and the other half by artists living in the Kansai region where the exhibition is being held. Though these works vary widely in medium, they are all linked together, through a common goal of examining our relationships with water. Perhaps just as important, they are also linked through the geography and history of the very place where the exhibition is held, and its own relationship with water.
Artist Masahiro Kawanaka (Osaka, Japan) explains his work, which considers relationships between the machine oil from nearby factories, and the waterways beside them. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
Today, the Osaka neighborhood called Kitakagaya hosts a combination of warehouses, factories, gardens, homes, small businesses, and artist studios at estuary’s edge. Chidori Bunka, the main exhibition venue for this festival, was built and repaired, often in strange fashion, by the shipwrights who lived here over the course of several decades. Informally, their marks also make up part of the exhibition. A few centuries before the shipbuilding factories, this entire area was itself part of the ocean. This land today, still breathes with the sea.
The art here speaks to these local situations, and yet also to a larger global awareness and context. As this exhibition docks itself in Osaka, it enters a space and time where the urban landscape becomes part of the artwork, not only as a subject, but through engaging the eyes, ears, hands, and minds of local people—craftspeople, farmers, chefs, architects, children, parents, teachers, students from local high schools and universities, and various other practitioners—in dialogue, and in the act of producing new knowledge.
In doing so, they offer us clues to answer a critical question facing humanity: How can humanity live, together with this earth instead of against it? This question is at the core of what both City as Nature and FRIEC are doing.
As we have learned, the answers here—as any answer to such a question must be—are unique reflections of the diverse individuals asking the question. Their common ground is in acknowledging the need to form working relationships with their environments, and in this, each culture, each place, and each person must find their own ways. In this multitude voices, the participants each play a role in following the water’s path, uncovering and sharing the wisdom it gives each of us along the way. Through the power of art and awareness, such community-engaged exhibitions fulfill an important role for the future of humanity, by helping urban dwellers investigate the collective and connected current of which they are a part.
Visitors take part in a “Signaling Water” workshop by Robin Lasser and Pittore Felice, one of the multiple public workshops held during the City as Nature Festival. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
One might also view this exhibition as a river, one which flows and meanders its way through mountains, into low-lying valleys, wetlands, and further out to sea, along the way collecting and depositing—as rivers do—valuable nutrients. Each momentary pause offers a chance to deposit the treasures of person and culture from the last place, while collecting new treasures to bring where the currents take these works next.
Take a abandoned industrial site in New York City, design a long-promised park, with oil tanks converted into art spaces, children’s play spaces, vertical gardens. It was imaginative reuse that honored the past and lived the present. It almost happened.
As a student, I walked the narrow river, sliding along edges to reach the massive curves of the abandoned grain elevators, rising in the sunlight reflecting off frayed elephantine concrete skins. My father worked in the steel mills of Buffalo, where I visited the incredible mile-long buildings that I felt demonstrated the curvature of the earth. I slipped out to explore the surrounding industrial landscapes including the abandoned elevators that would inspire me to become an architect.
The Grain Elevators of Buffalo, the largest collection in the world. Source: BuffaloHistory.com
There is a surprisingly common contradiction hidden within centers and scattered along critical edges of the most diverse cities around the world: abandoned and obsolescent industrial structures. This is the narrative of one such place, grounded in its complex natural and industrial history, suspended for a moment in the center of a transforming community in the heart of a growing global city.
From the vibrant centers of expanding cities, to crumbling relics of former metropolitan centers, lurk massive and abandoned industrial architecture, structures, and artifacts. Along waterfronts, former railway lines, pressed up against highways, tracing the gaps between divided communities, we can find the detritus of a former industrial urban revolution. These are the architecture and artifacts that once drove the massive growth of cities in the industrial era, that time of extraordinary expansion from the 19th through the mid 20thcentury. These structures fueled and transformed urban expansion around the world, encouraging abrupt enormities of scale, a repetition and growth of urban form previously unprecedented in human history. Many of these complexes and structures remain but today are decrepit, polluted, underutilized, or simply abandoned, facing imminent destruction.
These former industrial sites pose one of the great urban challenges and opportunities for the early 21stcentury. In this time of the ascendancy of cities around the world, how can we address the urgent challenges that industrial scale helped to create? And how do these ruined former industrial collections of buildings offer particular opportunities on an unprecedented scale to address the current needs of our cities: greater equity, access to green spaces, habitat restoration, and the need to address resiliency in a time of profound climate change? The former industrial Brooklyn waterfront is one place that brings all these challenges together.
We were waiting in a green room in the heart of Manhattan, backstage at The Municipal Art Society Summit. At this conference dedicated to urban innovation, I was presenting our designs to encourage greater equity at Halletts Point, a waterfront community combining mixed-income housing, public schools, green infrastructure, and resilient multi-level waterfront park. Seated next to me were two young women in their early 30s, Stacey Anderson and Karen Zabarsky, who had just presented their idea for a new kind of waterfront community green space named “Maker Park”. Their idea grew out of a previous innovative plan for the Brooklyn waterfront, which had partly gone wrong.
Stacey Anderson and Karen Zabarsky, founders of The Tanks and Maker Park, at Bushwick Inlet, Brooklyn, NY. Photo: 6Sqft.
In 2005, when New York City rezoned the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the Bloomberg Administration attempted to strike a balance between public benefits and private investment. The city’s plans rezoned an underutilized industrial waterfront to create significant new housing with 20 percent affordable residences and waterfront green spaces—including, a large public park located around a natural feature, Bushwick inlet.
Bushwick Inlet also featured the abandoned Bayside Oil works: a former industrial site containing ten cylindrical steel tanks used to store petroleum. The tanks comprised two concentric cylinders of three sizes and placed in a picturesque composition along this inaccessible waterfront on the East River overlooking Manhattan. Years before, the tanks had been emptied and cleaned; tall grass grew up between them to recreate a surprisingly lush landscape supporting wildlife on this rare natural inlet within the tidal estuary uniting Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.
The city’s rezoning was approved and executed surprisingly rapidly. New residential towers rose precipitously within former industrial sites, waterfront parks and ferry stops reconnected inaccessible waterfronts, historic warehouses were renovated, and economic, cultural, and social forces transformed a former working class community one subway stop from Manhattan into an innovative residential community—while escalating forces of gentrification and eradicating much of its history.
And one part of the plan wasn’t realized: where was the park?
Community Members post signs along Bushwick Inlet asking: Where’s Our Park?
The city unfortunately failed to gain control of the land designated for the park before the end of the administration; as values soared, owners refused to sell. With the rapid escalation of adjacent developments, the historic Brooklyn industrial waterfront was being rapidly erased by more anonymous architecture, and by 2007, the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared the Brooklyn industrial waterfront as one of the top 11 most endangered spaces in the United States. Stacey and Karen had looked closely at Bushwick Inlet park site and proposed a radical idea: instead of tearing down the former industrial structures, could they be reused to create a new kind of public park for this remarkable and rapidly transforming community?
Advertisement for Charles Pratt’s Astral Oil Works depicting manufacturing buildings on Bushwick Inlet / Portrait of Mr. Pratt, founder of The Pratt Institute. Source: Pratt Institute Library
I was struck by Stacey’s and Karen’s vison. Their idea was grounded in this special site where nature, industry, and oil combined in a unique urban history: a natural inlet with significant wetland habitat. It was transformed by early industry: the site of the shipyard in 1861 for historic iron-clad, semi-submerged ship theMonitorand the site of an early American industrial story: Astral Oil Works. Founded by one of America’s extraordinary philanthropic entrepreneurs, Charles Pratt, who sold the site to arch-rival John Rockefeller and used the money to found philanthropic endeavors including social worker housing and the Pratt Institute, his progressive institution offering low-cost educations to diverse students including women and people of color. Stacey and Karen, along with the third original founder, Zac Waldman, and inspired by these stories named their proposal “Maker Park” to respond to the neighborhood’s history and current potential.
I suggested if these young activists wanted to explore making their vision into a reality, they would need concrete design proposals to galvanize support and demonstrate to the community what their park could be. My architecture firm STUDIO V Architecture worked with officials, communities, and consultants on actual waterfront projects, and I offered our services pro bono, suggesting we’d need a team to explore their vision and address the complex needs of a public waterfront park.We would need many kinds of expertise, so we reached out to world class landscape architects, scientists, environmental lawyers, remediation specialists, and structural engineers. Not a single person or firm whom we asked turned us down; everyone worked for free. Ken Smith the internationally known landscape architect signed on as our key design collaborator. And the team that created Maker Park was born.
We slipped through a narrow gap in the hoarding. An abrupt jump-cut shifting from teeming urban street to the quiet hush of overgrown urban woods surrounding a hidden inlet. Sights and sounds shift, the din of the streets fading to gentle waves lapping rocky shores, points of light fragment leaves and water surround a waterfowl rising into the sky against the modeled shadows of ten massive cylinders framing the skyline of Manhattan.
Photo of the Tanks at Bushwick Inlet Overlooking the Manhattan Skyline with one of the Original Founders, Zac Waldman
We began with a series of principles. A decade before when the city proposed the park, they conducted community outreach, and our team immediately decided to incorporate every element the public requested: athletic fields, a great lawn, boat launches. The team also studied what was not included in the city’s 2005 studies. The proposed park made no provision for habitat restoration, no reference to the site’s history, and no facilities for the community’s innovative culture of arts and performance.
Finally, there was no mention of resiliency but the inlet was a gateway to flooding the surrounding neighborhood during Superstorm Sandy. Our team saw opportunities to combine new ideas with older ones to improve the design for the community.
Aerial view of existing site of Bushwick Inlet. Source: BingThe design vision for Maker Park/The Tanks. Image: STUDIO V Architecture, Ken Smith Workshop
The team worked together on a collective design that incorporated these ideas, and more. The tanks, just five percent of the park area, represented a unique opportunity to create something completely new: a series of circular gardens that would preserve and reinvent the site’s history in a new way. By removing the roof of each central tank and adding passages and openings, the former tanks would feature a unique series of circular gardens connected by paths. Each tank would offer a different garden or amenity: a grove of trees for picnicking, a pool of water encircled by vines, a children’s adventure playground wrapped with murals by local artists, and a performance amphitheater topped with an observation platform overlooking the skyline.
The Tanks would be transformed into a series of unique gardens, playgrounds, performances spaces, and galleries. Image: STUDIO V Architecture, Ken Smith WorkshopA tank converted into a vertical garden. Image: STUDIO V Architecture, Ken Smith WorkshopA tank converted into a children’s adventure playground surrounded by artwork painted by local artists. Image: STUDIO V Architecture, Ken Smith WorkshopA tank converted into a pool and lily garden with vertical vines. Image: STUDIO V Architecture, Ken Smith Workshop
There were challenges. We knew the site was polluted, so our voluntary team of scientists and attorneys utilized the Freedom of Information Law to obtain 10,000 pages of documents from multiple agencies describing the site’s conditions. The team created a RAWP (Remedial Action Work Plan) that explored options and costs for remediation. We did detailed cost analyses, determining that if the site was dug out, it would cost $220 Million, but if we filled the tanks with soil, used their concrete foundations to cap the site, the gardens would bio-remediate-in-place the limited petroleum for only $23 Million, or one tenth the cost—with the savings going to build the park faster and more safely for the community.
One early idea was the park would not be static, but offer changeable uses. Some tanks could offer changeable venues and installations while others were fixed. We included a large open lawn with a circular boat launch and curved planted berm encouraging performances while shielding the neighborhood from storm surges. And we re-designed the inlet with salt water low and high marshes, introducing gradients to restore native species and promote habitat restoration. The team began to display and publish initial designs and concepts, to gain input and support.
When we proposed our ideas, we didn’t know what to expect. Over time, hundreds of people came out in support of the vision, and the design gained recognition from state, national, and local design and non-profit organizations: the American Institute of Architects, Architizer, World Architecture Festival, and many more.
But nothing in New York is without controversy. A few key community members opposed the design, saying that the site needed to be wiped clean, and wanted all memories of the former industrial artifacts erased as a bad memory of their fight to create a park. They stated that nothing could remain, and only open space mattered.
Compromises were struck. A non-profit, the Waterfront Alliance, offered to mediate between the opposing visions– but the community leaders declined to talk. There was a debate over open space. The original design proposed renovating an existing small building as a community “maker space” for local residents with an accessible green roof– but not everyone supported this and felt it reduced the open space. The founders debated and decided to eliminate the building to address the community’s concerns and focus on the tank gardens. Differences in opinion led to Zac leaving the group. Stacey and Karen redoubled their efforts to engage with the community, and the design team rallied to support them. As the design focused on the circular gardens they renamed their non-profit vision The Tanks.
In the final stages of the design, a final and remarkable new idea was proposed. Another non-profit group, the Billion Oyster Project is dedicated to restoring New York’s harbor through rebuilding its original oyster habitat. This group spent years exploring this idea creating oyster research stations through NYC’s waterways, and using tanks at the NY Harbor school to grow young oyster embryos on donated oyster shells from restaurants to seed the harbor to restore the necessary reefs to reestablish the harbor. Their current entire oyster-growing tank capacity reached 10,000 gallons. We proposed redesigning one tank as an oyster habitat laboratory and educational center, holding nearly a million gallons and allowing oysters to be restored directly to Bushwick Inlet, which their research had shown was one of the most favorable locations for oyster habitat on the entire waterfront. The design featured a spiraling ramp inspired by the Guggenheim Museum allowing school children to ascend the tank, engage the oyster restoration efforts, while learning the story of the destruction and restoration of the New York Harbor.
A tank would be converted into an aquarium to grow oysters in order to clean the East River. Image: STUDIO V Architecture
A social media petition went on line at savethetanks.org. It started gathering hundreds of signatures per day. But perhaps it was now too late. The machinery of government had set into motion at last. Lacking funds to build the park, facing criticism from the community leaders who insisted on wiping the site clean, the government needed to show it was doing something after so many years. So, it did the only thing it could to show change at the site. It finally tore the tanks down.
Now the site of the tanks is an empty rubble and dirt covered lot, wrapped by fences, all the verdant greenery stripped bare.
The site of the former Tanks at Bushwick Inlet is now an empty rubble and dirt covered lot, all the verdant greenery stripped bare.
CODA to an INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Even as these industrial artifacts came down, it was ironic to see the support, including signatures and awards for the project only continue to grow. They continue to do so today.
Perhaps there are some lessons in this story. First, there is never enough community outreach, and people must speak to one another, early and often in any public process to reach consensus and show the potential. Social media can provide a tool for gathering the real support for people don’t always attend public meetings. We shouldn’t be afraid of innovative ideas to create new kinds of public spaces. And in an age of ever-increasing obsolescence of buildings and structures: we shouldn’t be afraid to recognize and address our own history and reuse structures in creative ways.
At the same time, the principals we established for our design continue to inform and transform our work today: reusing artifacts from our industrial past and giving them new life, and creating public spaces that are transformable, to respond to the ever-increasing forces of technological obsolescence. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, this example has reinforced for us more than ever that our waterfront designs must promote habitat and help our beleaguered waterfront cities address the urgent need for resiliency in a time of profound climate change.
Perhaps a few others saw the lessons as well. While showing our work for the Tanks and Maker Park, I was asked to go back to revisit those structures I explored as a young student. Today STUDIO V is redesigning the abandoned grain elevators in Buffalo, into an arts and cultural center, including a sustainable residential and commercial community within the old industrial structures.
The new design and architectural vision for Silo City, Buffalo, NY. Image: STUDIO V Architecture
And the two women that founded the original concept? One was traveling overseas recently, and was asked in Tel Aviv if she had heard of a project called The Tanks. Surprised, she answered yes—she not only knew about it, but was one of the founders, although it had sadly now ended with their destruction. They happily informed her that their city was inspired by our designs, and had designated one of their own former industrial tank farms as a public park—and was using our design as a model to explore creating a new kind of park with circular gardens in their tanks.
As designers and urbanists we all want to realize our visions for cities. And we’re disappointed when they fail to be realized. But sometimes, an idea may in itself be a beginning. And if strong enough, if it resonates with enough people, if it tells our stories, addresses our collective myths and challenges, maybe an idea is enough to carry on, and assist other communities and cultures, to help their people address their needs for new kinds of public spaces, cultural amenities, historic preservation, resiliency, and creative new designs for green open spaces.
This is how I believe we will work together to successfully reinvent our cities.
As long as public transport and high-rise living is seen to be a “budget option”, the middle class is bound to aspire to vehicle ownership and detached homes as an upgrade. The solution could be counter-intuitive, but might lie in making these lifestyle choices more expensive, at least for some people.
Cities are not only hosting 68% of the world’s population by 2050, but a growing population of mobile-toting, car driving, and home ownership aspiring middle class. For rising middle class cities such as Jakarta and middle-income trapped citieslike Kuala Lumpur—middle income trapped cities are cities in countries that are unable to push GNI per capita above $12,056 per annum—the immediate pain of an unaffordable mortgage is often felt more intensely than the global impacts of climate change. Land-locked cities often push affordable housing to the suburbs, encouraging sprawl that further chokes the city with highways and fuel burning vehicles.
The solution, some suggest, is to build affordable housing back in the city to reduce commute times and enhance livability for the growing middle class. But in a land-sparse city like Kuala Lumpur, this line of logic has led to defenseless green spaces being targeted for redevelopment, justified by the need for affordable housing. Several prominent green spaces in Kuala Lumpur have already been sacrificed, including football fields, parks, and even areas adjacent to forest reserves. How then can we ensure adequate provision of affordable housing while preserving nature in cities? Are both these aspirations a dichotomy?
Not necessarily.
The premise for divergence rests on the lack of land in the city. Land scarcity is in turn a function of city living preferences such as landed detached homes and car commute as the desired option. Cities can well afford more space for nature if preferences swing towards high-rise living and public transport-based commuting. Therefore, the true challenge is to convince the person on the street that nature in cities is of greater value than his or her middle-class lifestyle aspirations.
But how?
Like all sales tasks, the first step is to gather intelligence about our citizens and their current behaviors. Do they value living in high-rises or public transportation? Why not? In Kuala Lumpur, we attempted to understand this with data of home prices within walking distance of urban rail systems. Turns out, citizens are frustrated with station construction and prices of homes is practically flat on completion, indicating that residents don’t value public transport much currently.
Price premium of homes close to completed and under construction rail train stations. To read this chart, each par represents a premium or discount paid by a homeowner for a property relative to average neighborhood prices. We then classified the bars to within 500m from a train station or within 1km of a train station. Here, it shows that homebuyers mostly paid only 1% more than neighborhood prices to be within 500m of a train station. Credit: Chaly Koh
The second step to convert our middle-class neighbors into people who value green is to build rapport that resonates with their values and priorities. One way is to convert the value of “nature in cities” to a monetary value that they can directly compare to their immediate concerns of mortgages and housing value. In Kuala Lumpur, we achieved this by showing that homes within walking distance of green spaces were valued 3% higher than those without. In other words, the removal of parks and forest reserve translates to a $3,000 depreciation on a $100,000 home. Most middle-class folks would think twice before letting $3,000 wrung out of their wallets!
Perhaps the most complicated step would be step three, when we attempt to place our middle class to a desired future, where his or her change of behavior would bring a positive impact to their individual lives (not the greater good). A practical approach to this would be to highlight the individual wealth creation of public transport commuting and highrise living in a nature-rich city. In Kuala Lumpur today, 12.7% of household disposal income is spent on transport, which translates to $US3,338 annually, based on median income.
The monetary value would help with the rational hemisphere of the brain, but it boils down to the emotive aspiration that would turn the tables. This is because as long as public transport and high-rise living is seen to be a “budget option”, the middle class is bound to aspire to vehicle ownership and detached homes as an upgrade.
How then can we reframe this world view?
The answer could be counter-intuitive, but might lie in making these lifestyle choices significantly more expensive, at least for some people. Consider the Starbucks effect, which has benefitted coffee distributors all over the United States at the turn of the century. Starbucks gave all coffee and not just Starbucks coffee a new cachet, increasing the desirability of all coffees. In other words, the offering of a luxury version of a product could elevate the overall desirability of the product class of coffee without pricing people out, because not everyone needs to have Starbucks. In Kuala Lumpur, we see the rise of the cafes had such a strong impact that its presence impacted home prices.
Can this convert the middle class to nature-friendly city lifestyles?
The idea, like Starbucks effect, is to create a luxury brand could elevate the status of ALL types of coffee, while still maintaining the price range and options. Not everyone has to have a Starbucks but now there is more demand for coffee.
Similarly, not everyone needs a $50,000 bicycle but it might get more people to buy other bikes and use them instead of cars. We are beginning to see this change with the rise of ultra-luxury bicycles and the status that comes with penthouse living. Maybe, if all the marketing and advertising agencies harness their superpowers for nature in cities, public transport can be as sexy as the next BMW release.
Regularly, we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
show/hide list of writers
Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Pippin Anderson, Cape TownTo take a diverse bunch of people from different backgrounds, work place, and life experiences and put them in a shared space is a very unifying thing to do. At once we are all on the same page, faced with the same scenery, evidence and circumstance.
Celestine Collins, KisumuThrough engagement, we realized that small actions could actually make a big difference.
Julie Goodness, Cape TownThe walking workshop format seems to help to level power issues and allows more voices to be heard. During the walk, I observed people talking that had been largely silent when we were previously in an inside meeting room.
Odhiambo Ken K’oyooh, KisumuThe peer learning sessions—whereby all the different stakeholders shared success stories—made a great impact on me, changing the way I view urbanization challenges.
Viveca Mellegård, StockholmWe walk in African cities to put ourselves at the edge of knowledge and experience. It is a blurred boundary where ideas begin, where they reformulate and reshape, where they fill in at the point at which reality stops.
Benard Ojwang, KisumuIf we embrace the tinkering concept it will focus on local manifestation of such approaches wherein actors from across society create joint experiments to achieve common goals.
Aiuba Oliveira, NacalaThe ideas we exchanged as we walked became increasingly interesting. Now we look at our city differently and as we walk we think about the small changes we can make, making our city better in small steps.
Semakula Samson, EntebbaUrban tinkering is definitely worth trying out in our developing cities as it gives opportunity for small scale innovations which, when aggregated together, can result into large scale worldwide environmental solutions.
Ellika Hermansson Török, StockholmUrban tinkering functions by promoting a diversity of small-scale urban experiments that, in aggregate, can lead to large-scale, often playful innovative solutions to the problems of sustainable development.
Thandeka Tshabalala, Cape TownThe exchange of knowledge between stakeholders can improve governance, ultimately leading to long-term and sustainable interventions.
Jess is part of ICLEI’s Cities Biodiversity Center as well as ICLEI Africa’s Resilience team. She has a background in atmospheric science with a more specialised knowledge of climate change and its relationship with a sustainable approach to development.
Introduction
I was standing in the street in the middle of Dar es Salaam. Every one of my senses was in overdrive as stimuli after stimuli overwhelmed me. Smells of plantain and corn being cooked on open fires. Traffic hooting and honking and people shouting and talking and laughing and running. I quickly move out the way as a donkey cart comes hurtling out of nowhere. A flash of colour as a woman wearing the most beautiful kanga almost bumps into me.
My colleague and city official grabs my arm and laughs. “You see how busy it is here. As more and more people come into the city this area gets busier and busier. But this area experiences flooding. How do we best deliver services to areas like this? How do we plan appropriately here when there is already so much going on?”
Searching for these answers keeps the ICLEI Africa team up at night. How does one support shifts in decision making and city planning to effectively allow future cities to deal with the rapid changes expected? How does one support cities to embrace and implement new ways of thinking and doing that can guide how society works? How can one help cities become solution- and action-orientated?
The Urban Natural Assets for Africa (UNA) programme is trying to answer some of these questions by implementing walking tours in multiple African cities. These walking tours are then combined with an urban tinkering approach in order to co-produce local participatory scenarios.
As expressed by the image above, urban tinkering is a socio-environmental theory that promotes small scale urbanism through adjusting and moulding the existing landscape through small-scale “experiments” that can result in dramatic shifts in the way the landscape works as a system. But does it hold the answer? Is it an appropriate method?
We asked a mix of scientists, practitioners and city officials who actively participated in the UNA walking tours to reflect on their own experience. Specifically, we asked: Why are we doing walking tours in African cities? What small actions made an impression on you? Why is urban tinkering an appropriate method?
There are many interesting and common threads in their responses. Those that stand out are:
Small-scale interventions that are possible might add up to wider-scale impacts. The big systemic problems seem impossible to solve, especially when there are insufficient resources. We become paralyzed. Perhaps the big fix isn’t available (or even understood sufficiently to address the challenges), but a collection of small interventions can add up to a pervasive impact.
Walking tours themselves are a beneficial collaboration mechanism, as they provide the space to effectively share knowledge, understand the local context, break down power dynamics and build relationships.
Understanding the local context is imperative when designing future interventions and dealing with rapid change. Walking tours and an urban tinkering approach allow a group of diverse stakeholders to grapple with the real context in a hands-on and interactive fashion.
There are already urban solutions being implemented at ground-level in many pockets of African cities. City officials should support and build on these opportunities.
Urban tinkering provides the opportunity for decision makers and communities to collaborate in more effective ways.
Decision makers are often overwhelmed by the thought of large-scale implementation. Especially coupled with limited budget and capacity for management and maintenance. Urban tinkering relieves city officials of this burden by providing an alternative planning and implementing approach that is better suited to their context and available resources.
Despite being an approach that focuses on small scale urbanism, the opportunity for up and out-scaling is large. Urban tinkering allows for a “safe-to-fail” approach, which allows for the discovery of innovative approaches that if tested at scale might be too complex. If successful they can then be used to explore ways for larger transformative interventions.
From the responses it is very clear that all authors are suggesting that we need to do more of this in cities everywhere. We need to get people out of their offices and shift the focus away from the operational day-to-day grind. We need to really talk to each other. More importantly we need to get people talking to communities that USE the areas of the city. That changes the dynamic. It produces new ideas that wouldn’t have been possible. It gets the mind, heart, and blood flowing.
Pippin Anderson, a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, is an African urban ecologist who enjoys the untidiness of cities where society and nature must thrive together.
FULL BIO
Pippin Anderson
To take a diverse bunch of people from different backgrounds, work place, and life experiences and put them in a shared space is a very unifying thing to do. At once we are all on the same page, faced with the same scenery, evidence and circumstance.
We walk to think. Research tells us that the exertion changes our body chemistry with an increase in heart rate and the shunting of oxygen around a little faster, including to our brains, and that this aids brain activity both in the moment, and over the longer term. In his 2014 article on why walking helps us think in the New Yorker, Ferris Jabr talks of the manner in which walking provides a rhythm between our bodies and our mental state that resonates with our inner voice, and that we can change the pace or nature of our thoughts by changing the pace or nature of our stride. Walking aids thinking.
And what better way to tackle a problem than to walk through it? I had the pleasure of joining one of ICLEI Africa’s walking workshops in Kisumu in Kenya recently and was struck by the tremendous value of walking to problem solving. Here I got to be part of an urban tinkering workshop which sought solutions towards improving the state of a local river. The workshop spanned three days and involved city officials, people from state government, local academics, and academics from elsewhere. In addition to the individual benefits of improved thinking capacity and rhythms that allow our own thoughts and voices to bubble up, the collective walking proved to be very useful too. To take a diverse bunch of people from different backgrounds, work place, and life experiences and put them in a shared space is a very unifying thing to do. At once we are all “on the same page”, faced with the same scenery, evidence and circumstance. We are all feeling the heat of the day, stepping over the same discarded banana peels and plastic bags, and all smelling and hearing the river in front of us. This immediately brings everyone together through shared understandings and experiences. Locals could provide insights to questions from new comers, and ideas and solutions, their likely successes and short-comings could be discussed in situ.
In his article on the benefits of walking (New Yorker, 2014), Jabr gives us a quote from writer Virginia Woolf, who describing her great pleasure in walking around London, talks of the joy of being, “right in the centre and swim of things”. This is very true. A walk through any city will put you at the heart of its people, their energy, their joys, and their sadness. You will see what they eat, what they wear, and how they spend their time. You will be at the very “swim of things”. This proved very true of our walking workshop. The energy and collective understanding on returning to our workshop space to start designing solutions was palpable.
And why tinker? Tinkering—seeking out those small opportunities for change and influence—is a very appropriate approach in an urban, fiscally-constrained environment. The spaces around rivers in cities in Africa tend to be heavily occupied and well used spaces. In this particular circumstance a light touch with clever, initially small, wins is the order of the day. Tinkering, which tends to towards the considered, out-of-the-box thinking, novel interventions and solutions, builds on past transactions, and seeks where possible to running with current energies, is just the right approach to these collaborative urban environmental engagements.
Celestine Collins is the Director of Education, City of Kisumu (Kenya). She holds a Master of Education Degree. She is currently acting as the Assistant City Manager as an additional responsibility and the Focal Point for Disaster Risk Reduction with the United Nations for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
Celestine Collins
Through engagement, we realized that small actions could actually make a big difference.
The term Urban Tinkering and Walking Workshop, when heard for the first time by Kisumu Residents, raised many questions as to their meaning. Would we actually understand and get the concept? It wasn’t long before we realized in our Walking Workshop that Urban Tinkering is all about embracing an approach that would simply guide the design of new (and redesign of existing) urban structures, while promoting innovative integration of grey, green, and blue infrastructure into achieving environmental and health objectives, while taking into consideration policies and interventions to deal with growing urban vulnerabilities.
Cities are currently experiencing adverse environmental challenges due to climate change, and the degree to which they need to cope with and adapt to such challenges continues to increase. Kisumu, as is the case with other cities, has been experiencing rapid urbanization, accompanied by an increase in environmental challenges that accelerate vulnerabilities. Realizing the need for deliberate action, the office of the City Manager (City of Kisumu) is committed to strengthening the capacity of the City (as an institution) towards resilience. It is for this reason that we as a city have identified our challenges and seek to address them for a more sustainable and resilient city. As a result, we have joined the UNA programme, which has been designed to support local governments in Africa successfully integrate nature-based solutions into land use planning and decision making processes. We embrace and plan to work together for a better course and embrace the Urban Tinkering approach, with the help of ICLEI Africa and are committed to achieving our desired goals.
The challenge we face as an institution is lack of capacity to effectively address issues that adversely affect the people and the institution as a whole, such as majorly floods and solid waste. It is for this reason that I feel that small scale urbanism should be given the attention it deserves. There is a need for institutional capacity building to support local governments with this approach. Local governments are the closest level to the citizens and communities and therefore have a responsibility to take a lead in responding to crises and emergencies and to ensure essential services to citizens (water, health, education, transport, etc.) are resilient to disasters.
Due to rapid urbanisation, population growth, increasing demands for effective service delivery, and infrastructure development and improvement on the City Management of Kisumu, there is immense pressure to deliver. This puts the City in the forefront of the agenda. In the week of 19-23 August 2019, Kisumu hosted the first ever Walking Workshop in their history. It gave the participants a direct view of the challenges we face as a City. This was so exciting as it moved away from the normal dialogue approach that most of the time does not actually give the true picture of the situation at hand.
Through engagement, we realized that small actions could actually make a big difference. A small action that made an impression on me was the fact that the community can be actively engaged in taking responsibilityfor the good of their environment. With a little empowerment, capacity building and monitoring, the City can reclaim its glory and move forward towards resilience. It is important to note that to achieve the best results we need multi-stakeholder engagement, instilling in people a sense of belonging and ownership.
Julie Goodness has a PhD in Sustainability Science from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University; her research is focused on urban social-ecological systems, functional traits and ecosystem services, environmental education, design-thinking and design-based learning, social action and community development.
Julie Goodness
The walking workshop format seems to help to level power issues and allows more voices to be heard. During the walk, I observed people talking that had been largely silent when we were previously in an inside meeting room.
To me, walking workshops seem to enable a unique kind of communication and discussion that is not possible in a conventional meeting room setting. I had the opportunity to take part in the ICLEI Urban Natural Assets for Africa (UNA) Programme’s walking workshop in Kisumu, Kenya, during August 2019. The goal of the workshop was to utilize a walk through the Auji River catchment with stakeholders in the area (including community members, academic researchers, and government officials) to identify challenges along the river, and propose potential urban planning solutions. We made various stops along the walk so that workshop participants could point to and share thoughts on river challenges (for example, pollution and dumping of waste, flooding, invasive species, and locations where crossing the river was difficult because proper infrastructure was lacking). Participants also shared positive aspects of the river: how it was important for water provision to crops and livestock, for fishing, and was also a place of biodiversity.
As part of the photovoice activity, a participant in the walking workshop takes a photo to capture challenges along the Auji River. Photo: Viveca MellegårdThis shows farming of vegetables without a buffer zone. Enforcement of a buffer zone of 6 meters is needed, and fruit trees to be planted closest to the river to prevent erosion. If grass is planted on the buffer zone, this can be used for recreation by the nearby communities when not flooded. Photo: Viveca Mellegård.
I observed that the walking workshop allowed us to have a special kind of grounded discussion, because we weren’t in a closed, inside meeting space; instead we were actually out there in the environment in which we wanted to create positive change. The abstract suddenly became concrete, and we could take in and share experiences with all of our senses. This created a particular kind of understanding, empathy, and common knowledge among participants. It allowed us to reach a shared consensus on river issues, so that we could move towards thinking about potential solutions.
One thing that made a particular impression on me was how the walking workshop format seems to help to level power issues and allows more voices to be heard. When we were out in the field, doing the river walk, I observed people talking that had been largely silent when we were previously in an inside meeting room space. The people who were now talking more and speaking up were often the residents of that community (which is a crucial group to include and integrate insights from in any urban planning project). It seemed that suddenly being in their home environment enabled them to share their knowledge (i.e., they became the experts), and we could all talk about what we were seeing in the landscape together.
Another thing that made an impression on me was the experience of using a photovoice method during the walking workshop as an additional way to identify challenges and facilitate discussion. Photovoice is a method that invites participants in a project to take photographs as a way of telling their own stories through images that represent their perspective at a particular moment in time. Participants paired up during the walking workshop to take photos together. After the workshop, paired participants selected their most important photos and gave them captions that described the challenges the images depicted. Participants then used the captioned photos as objects for discussion, and this process eventually allowed participants to reach agreement about the most important issues to prioritize for action along the river. I think the photovoice was a useful activity to guide participants through this prioritization process.
From the winnowing of ideas, participants decided work on a section of the Auji River alongside a school, which frequently floods and prevents the students from being able to attend their classes. The participants would like to create a nature-based engineering solution that uses vegetation to help reduce flooding impacts. They would also like to involve the schoolchildren in the vegetation planting process and maintenance, and include environmental education as part of the project. This is an urban tinkering initiative that the workshop stakeholders will strive to implement in conjunction with ICLEI during the next year.
Credit: Viveca Mellegård.
Overall, I think urban tinkering is an appropriate method because it allows the implementation of positive action at any scale. While in many cases large amounts of human or monetary capital may not be available to create widespread changes across an urban area (particularly in under-resourced cities), urban tinkering can provide a way to utilize means available, test interventions, and provide learnings and seeds for future change that can be scaled up or out across new locations.
Odhiambo Ken K’oyooh is currently the Director in charge of Environment (Conservation and Stewardship) in County Government of Kisumu (which forms part of the Department of Water, Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources).
Odhiambo Ken K’oyooh
The peer learning sessions—whereby all the different stakeholders shared success stories—made a great impact on me, changing the way I view urbanization challenges.
In equal measures, both man-made and natural assets characterize developing African Cities. Heavy capital investment is often channeled, by city authorities, towards man-made infrastructure at the expense of the natural assets. This is done in an attempt to open up the cities for aspired trade and other socio-economic growth. In addition, the rapid urbanization experienced in these cities coupled with inadequate basic infrastructures like decent housing and water recreation facilities puts immense pressure on urban natural resources, threating their very existence.
In the case of Kisumu City, a fast growing lakeside city in Kenya, we did a walking tour to identify the challenges along River Auji. The river is an important natural asset snaking through two important informal settlements of Manyatta (on the upper reaches) and Nyalenda (on the lower reaches). Siltation, and degenerated aesthetics characterized the stretch toured. The walking tour however also identified the opportunities to address the observed challenges.
What small actions made an impression on me?
The peer learning sessions—whereby all the different stakeholders shared success stories—made a great impact on me, changing the way I view urbanization challenges. Deep community participation approaches and learning appear to be the key element for the successful implementation of projects.
In addition, the practical action of walking, making stops and exploring opportunities at certain stop overs made the practical beat of our urban tinkering session a lot more sensible in coming up with appropriate solutions to challenges faced along River Auji.
Why is urban tinkering an appropriate method?
Theoretical aspects of urban tinkering well prepare the participants with what to expect. It lays the foundation on importance and the important aspects of developing solutions. While on the other hand, field tours bring out the practical aspects of this methodology. Practitioners, representatives’ from city authority and locals are able to freely share experiences and find practical solutions to observed challenges during urban tinkering approaches.
In the case of Kisumu City, the method enabled the team to identify appropriate measures to deal with the challenges faced by communities settled within the lower reaches of River Auji. Silt traps in certain locations, along the river course, appeared to be a preferred sustainable solution to control the river siltation on the lower reaches. Woodlots and greening complete with resting benches was preferred, as a way of improving aesthetics, within a government school bordering the river. A bridge to improve safety for school children was also proposed by community members. This is meant to help pupils’ crossing the river on their way to school, as a remedy to reduce the risk of drowning in the river during high flow periods. It is worth-noting that the aforementioned was only made possible through the participatory nature of the tinkering processes.
Viveca is a researcher and filmmaker. At the BBC she directed and produced long form science, history, and arts programmes. For the past five years she has integrated film and photography as methods in sustainability projects aiming to build better cities, to know more about human-nature interactions and to include marginalised or unheard voices.
Viveca Mellegård
We walk in African cities to put ourselves at the edge of knowledge and experience. It is a blurred boundary where ideas begin, where they reformulate and reshape, where they fill in at the point at which reality stops.
Connection, cooperation, creativity and caring
My pace slows down and gradually my ears attune to the layers of sound mixing and meandering in and out of each other. Our group stands next to a bridge over the Auji river and behind the voices discussing flooding, waste dumping and contaminated water, the stream gurgles over what looks like the remnants of a t-shirt caught by stones on the river bed. I begin to notice details that my eyes had overlooked. Tiny striations on leaves, an insect crawling deeper into the magenta belly of a flower.
Poet and forester, Gary Snyder, promotes this kind of perception with the body, the conversation between ourselves and our environments as “The way to see the world: in our own bodies”. Walking can make all of our senses come alive. A one-dimensional interaction becomes five dimensional. We stop for a moment and our ears attune to the layers of sound all around us. Our eyes pull focus between small details and the big picture. Our sense of smell picks up nuances and changes in scent. We touch and feel different textures, we might taste something.
Urban tinkering can be a way to bring about a whole person engagement with ourselves, others and a particular place because we enter into an activity that asks us to observe, listen, respond, inquire, be curious. In my view, when we walk together in African cities with a tinkering mindset, with the intention to understand more, several possibilities emerge for transformations within ourselves as individuals, between ourselves and others, and between ourselves and the urban landscape.
The first is connection. We connect with each other by communicating what we see and comparing our points of view and understandings of what we observe. There is also a connection to the places we walk through. We mingle with a place and it mingles with us.
The second is cooperation. With a shared purpose to tinker so that we can live in more climate resilient cities, our different experiences, skills and types of knowledge have the potential to become the material from which we shape a shared vision. In nature-based urban tinkering, nature is our partner in guiding and suggesting smart and simple solutions.
Thirdly there is creativity. We bounce ideas off each other, become inspired by what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Walking and moving through space, memories become dislodged and a creative flow begins. Perhaps it is the kind of potent force that can loosen the grip of fear, paralysis even and the feelings of helplessness when confronted by the scale and complexity of problems. (See psychologist R.J Clifton on the human response to catastrophe, in Kimmerer, 2013).
Then there is caring. After spending time somewhere, we become entangled with it and even in our over-stimulated mental landscapes, we find that images have been carved into our memory, our thoughts, and in our bodies. People make an impression on us, we make an impression on them. We are changed by a place and a place can be changed by us. Reciprocal exchanges might sometimes be invisible to the eye but in our imagination, the possibilities for how a city could or might be, has the charge of a creative spark.
Walking and urban tinkering complement each other by creating the conditions for a creative and collaborative mindset—the kind of mindset from which solutions that can lead to more climate resilience and equitable cities might emerge.
We walk in African cities to put ourselves at the edge of knowledge and experience. It is a blurred boundary where ideas begin, where they reformulate and reshape, where they fill in at the point at which reality stops.
Reference Kimmerer, R.W., 2013. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.
Benard Ojwang is the current Ag. Director for Environment at the City of Kisumu (Kenya). Benard holds a MSc in Urban Environmental planning and management, a BSc in Environmental Health and a Diploma in Environmental Resource Management.
Benard Ojwang
If we embrace the tinkering concept it will focus on local manifestation of such approaches wherein actors from across society create joint experiments to achieve common goals.
Urban tinkering is “a mode of operation, encompassing policy, planning and management processes, that seeks to transform the use of existing and design of new urban systems in ways that diversify their functions, anticipate new uses and enhance adaptability, to better meet the social, economic and ecological needs of cities under conditions of deep uncertainty about the future” (Elmqvist et al. 2019).
St Mark’s primary school, which is prone to flooding when the Auji River bursts its banks. Photo: Benard OjwangRepurposing a foot bridge to connect two major access points that is St Marks School and the community area—to prevent loss of life as children cross the river during high flow periods. Photo: Benard Ojwang
In the context of cities, green and blue infrastructure is to be understood as natural and semi-natural elements, like hedgerows, parks, ponds, or water courses. Together they form a green-blue infrastructure which is an important component of the urban tinkering approach. Experimenting with different combinations of these natural elements and the human-engineered “grey” infrastructure to provide social, economic, and environmental values to a city and its surroundings is an important part of the solution.
Urban tinkering can function by promoting a diversity of small-scale urban experiments that, in aggregate, lead to large-scale often playful innovative solutions to the problems of sustainable development.
Small interventions—”tinkering”—can serve to make urban features more accessible and potentially more equitable (i.e., just). Indeed, such acts can expand the sense of ownership among the community members, and belonging and allow for the kind of civic partnerships that can be useful in managing cities, particularly those that face fiscal constraints.
An urban tinkering walking workshop that has recently occurred in Kisumu (as part of the UNA programme) was radical in that while it sought to grow local conservators to lead and manage conservation spaces, it was always with a view to improving local social engagement in conservation practice and spaces.
The walking workshop adopted a variety of reflective and reflexive practices, including listening to communities, hearing their stories, including their views and visions for green space in their communities in our discussions and involving them in planning and management strategies. Conservators were also encouraged to form their own communities of practice where they could share and reflect on failures and successes.
The concept of urban tinkering was first introduced in Kisumu by ICLEI Africa to help the city manage its urban natural resources and promote biodiversity conservation. This has helped the city to plan effectively for the protection of our resources so that we can build better resilience (through managing the natural buffer zones).
As City of Kisumu, we plan for biodiversity, rivers, and lakes within Kisumu city through:
Afforestation programmes, both national and local (tree planting in forests, catchment areas, schools, (wood lots) public institutions and open spaces.
Desilting of river channels to mitigate flooding.
Involvement of community in planning, management, conservation and protection of biodiversity and rivers.
Improving of research to inform planning, policies and programmes.
Continuous awareness and sensitization programmes.
Setting aside adequate resources for planning and mainstreaming for biodiversity and rivers.
Lobbying city and county leadership and County Assembly to consistently provide adequate resources for biodiversity and rivers.
Rivers are vital elements in the water cycle‚ acting as drainage channels for surface water. Most areas in Kisumu County are confronted with blocked drainages and bushy rivers leading to high rates of flooding and waterborne diseases.
Auji River was built by the World Bank in the early 1980s, but lack of maintenance has led to its current state: bushy shrubs‚ raw affluent discharge and soil chunks on its bed. It flows through Migosi ward‚ Manyatta B ward‚ Nyalenda A, and Nyalenda B wards.
Through the “tinkering walk”, we observed the following:
Sewer pipe constructed across the river at fly-over hindering the flow of water.
Continuous bursting of the old sewer pipe.
Emptying of sewer by exhausters in the river therefore causing contamination.
Farming activities along the river.
Solid wastes like bottles and syringes deposited along the river thus interfering with the flow.
Therefore, if we embrace the tinkering concept it will focus on local manifestation of such approaches wherein actors from across society create joint experiments to achieve common goals.
Reference:
Thomas Elmqvist; Jose Siri; Erik Andersson; Pippin Anderson; Xuemei Bai; P.K. Das; Tatu Gatere; Andrew Gonzales; Julie Goodness; Steven N. Handel; Ellika Hermansson Török; Jessica Kavonic; Jakub Kronenberg; Elisabet Lindgren; David Maddox; Raymond Maher; Cheik Mbow; Timon McPhearson; Joe Mulligan; Guy Nordenson; Meggan Spires; Ulrika Stenkula; Kazuhiko Takeuchi; Coleen Vogel. 2018. “Urban Tinkering”. Sustainability Science. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11625-018-0611-0
Aiuba is currently an advisor to the President of the Nacala Municipal Council (Mozambique) in the areas of Territorial Planning, Urbanization and Development Projects.
Aiuba Oliveira
The ideas we exchanged as we walked became increasingly interesting. Now we look at our city differently and as we walk we think about the small changes we can make, making our city better in small steps.
Before the tour, when the UNA Coasts team announced that the next day’s workshop would be a walk, a walk in our own town, and that we should bring sneakers, a hat, and water bottles, I wondered: I walk this city every day, what will be the difference of this walk?
Then we were informed that the goal was to walk around the community and talk about how we could overcome the challenges we face in our city using the method called “Urban Tinkering”.
The idea aroused great interest in me because our city faces major challenges such as erosion that drags soil to our port, lack of drainage, poor access to clean water, decent housing, sanitation, and more. They are beyond local financial capacity and it is not easy to get money from the national government or other donors.
But while the challenges are great, we were asked that while we were walking we should think of small scale things that could help overcome the challenge and perhaps offer other opportunities, environmentally, socially, or economically.
The idea was interesting and made me start thinking differently about the need for big budgets to overcome the challenges we face in the city.
Before leaving, we examined alternative planning methods and how we can embrace informality and use what we already have in our city.
As we walked a little farther, we came to an area that was once a park, a place for children to play safely and where people from the community used to meet to talk. But now there were few trees and the play area was broken. While we were in the park under a tree, we talked about how if we started fixing the park, planting more trees and grass, fixing the swings and play area, then the kids would have a safe place to play again and we could stop the sand from being eroded into our port. Over time, when we received more money, we could improve the park more.
It was hard not to dream big, and instead to think about what we could do with smaller ideas to overcome the challenge. But we soon realized that we had enough to already solve part of the problem and provide other benefits.
We were told to talk and get involved with community members as we walked, to find out what they needed or how what ideas they had. We are not used to just talking to people about street work; we usually gather in a meeting lounge to discuss matters.
We walked a little further and found a building, which had a great view of the bay, with a large and beautiful free ground in front. But the building was in a very poor state. The ground floor was abandoned and full of rubbish. The residents pour dirty water from the balconies to the ground. The front had scruffy bushes. As we passed the building, under the blazing sun, we talked: what if we began to requalify the building, clear the ground floor, and put in some income-generating activities to ensure maintenance? We could clean the front yard and put in shade trees and seating benches for people to sit and watch the sunset in Nacala Bay.
These actions would not really require much money, but would make the place one of the most appreciable in the city because it has incredible views of the bay and this would have a good impact on city life.
The ideas we were exchanging became increasingly interesting. Now we look at our city differently and as we walk now we think about the small changes we can make.
Semakula Samson is an agricultural officer and environmental inspector for the Entebbe Municipal Council (Wakiso District), Uganda. Sam is the focal point for the Urban Natural Assets for Africa programme.
Semakula Samson
Urban tinkering is definitely worth trying out in our developing cities as it gives opportunity for small scale innovations which, when aggregated together, can result into large scale worldwide environmental solutions.
African cities experience unique, multi-pronged, and usually persistent localized environmental challenges. These otherwise local challenges are amplified by global environmental challenges like climate change.
Walking tours make it possible for us city managers to clearly come in touch with the issue at hand at the ground level, and as such enable us to come out with workable and sustainable environmental solutions.
During walking tours in the city you go on an excursion of you own city, like a tourist in a forest. Things that have become the ordinary for the local inhabitants begin to strike you and catch your sight. For example, you see the dirty stagnant water, mosquito larvae, think of the diseases that come with them. So, it is basically re-discovering the city.
It is correct to say that all cities are urbanizing, but they are all urbanizing slightly differently, owing to their localized opportunities and challenges. The spaces are urbanizing differently at the end of the day. Such small-scale difference are made apparent by city walking tours. After touring the city by walking you can then draw a conclusive picture of the city.
What small actions made an impression on me? Why is urban tinkering an appropriate method?
During the walk I was impressed by how well we all (city officials and members of the community) shared our vision of the problem in an area that has been hostile to other enforcement agencies. We are trying to develop a buffer between the wetland body and developments.
Urban Tinkering (UT), if well conducted, has the potential and energy to substantially aid conventional planning and development. UT allows for greater levels of flexibility and this complements finding multifunctional designs that can promote diversity, hence making it more likely to approach the unique challenges of urbanization in our cities. This results in greater levels of adaptability in planning. This is especially the case in our African setting, where development usually overtakes planning processes.
It contributes to the realization of Sustainable Development Goal number 11 (SDG 11) and the New Urban Agenda. It brings about a different mode of operation that brings together planning and management processes onto a similar platform and transforms the use of existing urban systems by helping design innovative simple and practical ways that expand their capabilities and functions. This enhances environmental adaptability to better meet the demands of the city.
UT is definitely worth trying out in our developing cities as it gives opportunity for small scale innovations which, when aggregated together, can result into large scale worldwide environmental solutions. UT also has close relation with improved systems approaches as it is a highly appreciated method which is critical to sustainable development.
It is hence worthwhile to undertaking UT as it creates a platform for interaction between the various environmentalists, planners, engineers, public health teams, and others city stakeholders. UT also works just as well in the peri-urban centre of our cities and this is where environmental challenges are best manifested.
Ellika Hermansson Török is a Senior Adviser for SwedBio at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, and is responsible for SwedBio’s project portfolio of urban collaborative projects in developing countries.
Ellika Hermansson Török
Multi-actor action planning—informed and inspired by the urban landscape
Urban tinkering functions by promoting a diversity of small-scale urban experiments that, in aggregate, can lead to large-scale, often playful innovative solutions to the problems of sustainable development.
I had heard very positive things about walking workshops from colleagues, but I had not understood how helpful and powerful these kinds of place-based discussions can be.
Over the years, I have enjoyed many field trips at conferences and workshops. These often showcase practical examples related to the conference themes, and can provide valuable insights and new knowledge. But unlike walking workshops, field trips are seldom designed to actively advance the discussions or workshop processes. After having experienced the walking workshop in Kisumu, Kenya, I think of some of these previous field trips as “lost opportunities”.
I am working for the SwedBio programme at Stockholm Resilience Centre, a programme that devotes a lot of time and resources into facilitating dialogue on different scales between different actors that represent different knowledge systems such as research, policy and practice, including traditional and indigenous knowledge. Walking workshops have been used by some colleagues in close collaboration with our partner organisations in developing countries, but the walking workshop in Kisumu was the first time for me.
Some quick impressions and reflections: why are we doing these tours, and why urban tinkering?
Understanding.Research has shown that walking stimulates creativity, and it is well-known that learning processes can be improved by using multiple senses. When walking in pairs along the Auji River in Kisumu, we got to use all our senses when observing, identifying, discussing and analyzing problems and possible tinkered solutions. I am pretty sure this “physical experience of observations” helped the diverse group of participants—with very different backgrounds, expertise and language—to both better understand the challenges and opportunities, individually and mutually, and to generate more informed and creative ideas for solutions than in a more formal workshop setting.
Walking workshop along Auji River in Kisumu with participants representing the City of Kisumu, Kisumu County Government, Universities, NGOs, and Community Based Organisations from villages along the river. Photo: Ellika Hermansson Török
Sharing.Insights from previous walking workshops also suggest that discussions that take place in the landscape encourages practitioners and community members to actively share their experience-based knowledge. It creates synergies and innovations based on connections across knowledge systems, rooted in equity and reciprocity. Meeting outside the conference venue, in a local landscape guided by local community members or other local actors, helps to level the power within a group.
Engagement.Like everyone else at the workshop, I was aware of the widespread and severe problems of flooding. But watching local school kids play outside their school building, visibly stained by previous flooding events, made it clear to me and other participants the impact flooding has on the community. This observation effectively brought the reality of local communities into the discussions and injected energy into finding possible solutions. In my mind, engagement is necessary for creating long-term commitment and behavior change.
A local school along Auji River in Kisumu that gets hit by severe flooding and has to close for long periods twice a year. Photo: Ellika Hermansson Török
Prioritisation. The participants were instructed to take photographs of both problems and ideas for solutions identified during the walk. They did so using a method called Photovoice, which is often used for community-based participatory research to document and reflect reality. The photos taken by the participants, with explanatory captions, were helped with the prioritisation discussion. They helped us remember what we had observed and discussed during the walk, and they made the prioritisation process more informed and concrete.
Nothing is useless. By using the urban tinkering approach (Elmqvist et al. 2018), characterized by, for example, “build on what you have on the ground”, “integrate built systems with living systems”, and “see informality as an opportunity for innovation”, participants came up with a plethora of nature-based solutions for decreasing future flooding of the above-mentioned school.
Vegetables are grown on the river bank without any buffer zone. Proposed solutions to reduce future flooding and erosion included the creation of a buffer zone, planting of fruit trees, small scale interventions up-stream such as removal of constructed narrow channels and lowering of some built-up river banks. Photo: Ellika Hermansson Török
As suggested by Elmqvist and colleagues, urban tinkering is most useful and easily applied in rapidly urbanizing regions of developing countries, harnessing social and human capital for innovation. It functions by promoting a diversity of small-scale urban experiments that, in aggregate, can lead to large-scale, often playful innovative solutions to the problems of sustainable development.
The results from the application of the concept through the walking workshop in Kisumu are promising, and with financial support by SwedBio some of the ideas will be implemented. There is a lot that can be done with very limited resources, as long as there is creativity.
Reference:
Thomas Elmqvist; Jose Siri; Erik Andersson; Pippin Anderson; Xuemei Bai; P.K. Das; Tatu Gatere; Andrew Gonzales; Julie Goodness; Steven N. Handel; Ellika Hermansson Török; Jessica Kavonic; Jakub Kronenberg; Elisabet Lindgren; David Maddox; Raymond Maher; Cheik Mbow; Timon McPhearson; Joe Mulligan; Guy Nordenson; Meggan Spires; Ulrika Stenkula; Kazuhiko Takeuchi; Coleen Vogel. 2018. “Urban Tinkering”. Sustainability Science. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11625-018-0611-0
Thandeka Tshabalala is a professional officer in the Climate Change, Energy and Resilience work stream at ICLEI Africa. At ICLEI she is involved in implementing the Urban-LEDS II, Urban Natural Assets: Rivers for Life (UNA Rivers) and Reflecting Cities projects.
Thandeka Tshabalala
The exchange of knowledge between stakeholders can improve governance, ultimately leading to long-term and sustainable interventions.
African cities are very diverse. Most African cities are experiencing high migration rates coupled with a rise of informality. Through walking tours one is able to experience firsthand how urban challenges are interlinked and play out in reality. Walking tours offer an opportunity for exchange of knowledge from the ground up, an opportunity for the community, experts and local government officials to share ideas, and find practical solutions that respond to real needs of the community and/or urban residents. Further, walking tours give an opportunity for decision-makers in cities to immerse themselves in the physical context of the urban environment so that the proposed interventions are well suited to the local context. I have been involved in two walking tours and have witnessed these emergent benefits first-hand. For example, a walking tour in Nacala (a coastal city in Mozambique) took place at midday. The sun was scorching hot, which led to discussions about the provision of shaded areas in public open spaces and using building materials that can withstand the local weather conditions.
The exchange of diverse views during walking tours builds relations amongst stakeholders. This allows for shifts of power dynamic that can potentially remove barriers to effective public participation and interdepartmental collaboration. Given the complexity of urban challenges in African cities, sustainable interventions that rely on local knowledge are vital for creating targeted and responsive interventions that improve people’s day to day needs. The walking tours implemented by the UNA programme saw decision-makers and “experts” being taken on a tour by community representatives and users of the open public spaces. This provided the opportunity for local residents to explain their context (problems and opportunities) firstand, allowing attendees an opportunity to see things through the community representatives’ eyes. The “experts” learned.
What experiences made an impression?
During a second walking workshop (implemented in Kisumu, Kenya), I was particularly impressed by a community member who took the lead of the tour with pride. He showed off some improvements he was doing, such as planting a nursery along the river banks, which not only has potential for future income for his family but also protects the river banks from erosion. As part of the feedback after the Kisumu walking tour one of the municipal officials said she found the tour useful because “it forced her to be out of her office and to walk a site that she has never walked before”. As a result, the walking tour gave her a different perspective on how she could use her expertise and knowledge to enhance some of the activities that the community members valued, and were already doing. The session also offered an opportunity for city officials from various departments to understand how vital interdepartmental and intersectoral collaboration is in tackling certain issues. This showed me how the exchange of knowledge between stakeholders can improve governance, ultimately leading to long-term and sustainable interventions.
Is urban tinkering an appropriate method?
Urban tinkering allows decision-makers and communities to look at challenges and collaborate in innovative ways. It improves the understanding of the local context by providng the opportunity to observe how people use an actual site and analyse how existing opportunities can be harnessed. This includes understanding what kind of economic or social benefits are derived from the site. The methodology focuses on small scale solutions and local knowledge that can later be upscaled to respond to everyday challenges.
A review of Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary, by Harryette Mullen. Greywolf Press 2013. Buy the book.
Mullen delves into the nature of the urban environment, where a plastic bag on the road becomes an urban tumbleweed and city parks become an oasis of joggers and podcast-listeners. She challenges us to be aware of the small things around us.
For renowned poet and professor, Harryette Mullen, awareness is walking. Inspired by the Japanese syllabic verse form of the tanka, Mullen set out to explore her environment in a series of captured moments to create one of her latest collections, Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (Greywolf Press 2013). The tanka form is a traditional Japanese style poem devised of thirty-one syllables that were originally printed as one line then later broken into five lines of strict syllable patterns when the poems were translated into English (Mullen ix). Mullen draws inspiration from this style and adapts it into her own three-line, free syllabic style that echoes her rhythmic and fluid inspiration. This collection was my first experience with the tanka form, and although Mullen purposefully breaks from the syllabic meter, her work draws attention to the unique natural spaces of her environment that might have been overlooked as city-centric in the traditional style.
Because of the drizzling rain, you listened
to the sound of the wind. There, for a brief moment,
you found shelter under boughs of pines.
—Harryette Mullen, 49
The tanka form that Mullen’s makes use of brings a heightened awareness to everyday living. The short lines and quick, often unpunctuated line breaks resemble the thought process of a single snapshot moment. The space between poems allows the reader to savor each moment and reflect on the everyday experience. This balance between pinched and fleeting thoughts and the intentional white space for reflection between moments underscores Mullen’s motive and means of expression as she creates intentionality and meaning through every inch of this collection.
The more thought-provoking of Mullen’s pieces are the poems that make use of the second person, addressing the audience “you” with specific actions and feelings. These “you” poems push beyond the casual observations of surrounding pieces and put the audience directly in the path of Mullen’s expression. After reading these “you” poems, I found myself taking a conscious step back as I walk around my city, narrating my experiences from the outside, as Mullen does, to draw my attention to the experiences I had come to mark as mundane.
One of the important inspirations for the tanka form comes from the idea of “the human being’s place in the natural world,” as Mullen explains in her introduction (ix). Mullen’s execution of this idea is solid throughout, while also wavering between thoughts on the biological, humane, abandoned, and constructed. Distracting from the experience of the everyday moment is the heavily biological terminology that sticks out in the latter half of the collection in general. Mullen’s narrator makes fun of this technical word usage in an attempt to strike another balance between the critical consideration of nature and the humanistic experience of plants and flowers in the sunny Los Angeles scenery. By cultivating an uncomfortable balance between biology and being, Mullen begins to question just how many layers are being built in order to create everyday experiences, most of which go unappreciated and unanalyzed.
A bird flew across the border and when it came to rest, was suspected of being an alien and possibly a spy.
—Harryette Mullen, 100
Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary calls upon its readers to take notice of the little moments and the everyday experiences that seem to fill the majority of our lives to no noticeable change. Mullen’s work as a whole questions the role of these moments and examines them with the same poetic care as the most life-changing experiences. That being said, one of the hallmarks of Mullen’s style is the realism and frankness of her expression. Mullen does not call for readers to take Thoreau-ian approach to the natural world, abandoning the experiences of the city in favor of secluded and undisturbed nature. Instead, Mullen delves into the nature of the urban environment, where a plastic bag on the road becomes an urban tumbleweed and city parks become an oasis of joggers and podcast-listeners. The broader message of this collection points out the lack of awareness of every day pedestrians, city-dwellers, and the participants in the modern world. As the natural world continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate, I read collections like this not as a call to action but as a call to appreciation, and I would recommend Mullen’s work to anyone looking for escapism into the micro-moments of our lives.
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I think we already know enough to craft reasonable design and management practices in urban areas. The unknown is how to navigate the current political, cultural, economic, and public sectors and actually implement this knowledge in design. What we need is more research geared towards a “Science of Implementation”.
For over 25 years, as an urban ecologist working in academic institutions and collaborating with city planners, developers, and the public, I have seen the sustainability needle move ever so slowly.
How can we speed things up? For scientists, if they are going to help make cities more sustainable, what research is critical to help city decision makers make decisions? I will go out on a limb and attempt to explain my views below. I will be pointed and do not mean to offend anyone, and know that I am speaking also about myself.
First, in terms of urban sustainability solutions, do we really need anymore “advancement of urban ecology theory or basic empirical research?” Do we not know enough NOW to create reasonable solutions to conserve urban biodiversity, water, energy, etc.? What more can we really learn? We continue to spend lots of resources (time and money) to perhaps further understand some ecological, social, or economic variable. For example, I am currently doing these basic ecology studies—for example, which migrant birds use urban forest patches as stopover sites.
But much of our research is reductionist science. In other words, studies are reduced to such simple parameters that we already know the broad outlines of answers before we start—of course migrant birds use urban forest patches! People may argue that we need multiple lines of evidence, especially if cities are going to spend time and money on a solution (for example, is conserving that 1 ha forest patch going to be used as a stopover site for birds?). Unfortunately, most science and scientific studies are geared towards reaching other scientists, not the general public or decision makers. We are speaking amongst ourselves. Thus, most research results stay in journals and have little impact on public policies or strategies.
I think we already know enough to craft reasonable design and management practices in urban areas. The unknown is how do we navigate the current political, cultural, economic, and public sectors and actually implement this knowledge in design. What we need is more research geared towards the “Science of Implementation”.
What does that mean and how can we forge a reasonable path forward?
First, scientists need to tailor their research so their outcomes are explicitly tied to what planners, policymakers, and other built environment professionals (e.g., civil engineers, landscape architects, etc.) actually need in order to create a design, a policy, or other initiative that actually moves the sustainability needle. Conventional development and design inertia is strong and it is not enough to make research data available to built environment professionals (usually published in a journal) and expect it to be implemented in the public arena.
This means that we need to determine where in the urban planning or design process is the best place for ecological and environmental data to be considered and discussed. And what data? Ecologists need to converse with local and regional built environment professionals to learn more about the design process and the critical steps (and constraints) that people make when creating a policy, planning strategy, or design. Further, if the outcomes from an ecological or social science study are going to be meaningful, they need to be in a format that is easily translated.
Participants at a Nature of Cities Summit in Paris exchanging ideas about biodiversity conservation in cities. Photo: Elsa Ferreux (TNOC)
As an example from my work, in the course of working with planners and landscape architects on green development projects, several of them asked me, “Is there a biodiversity metric/tool that could be used to assess different development designs and their impact on biodiversity? If we had this, we could give feedback to developers and environmental consultants about how to improve their designs.”
After listening to practitioners, I thought about their concerns for a while and decided that a synthesis of the literature was needed. I focused on birds. I knew there was lots of empirical research on birds, but it is buried in a number of different journals. What was needed was a synthesis of published research. So, we conducted a systematic review of known empirical research, and we determined which birds do and do not use urban landscapes. Using this synthesis as a backdrop, we developed an online tool where people could put in different landscape designs and get avian habitat scores. This research is published and the building for birds tool is available online. Land developers or city planners simply input the amount of trees and sizes of forest fragments conserved and the tool will output an avian habitat score for breeding and migrating birds. I worked with a number of planners and designers to make this tool transparent and as easy to use as possible.
The Building for Birds online tool has been out there for two years and is applicable to any city in North America. Is it being used? I did a speaking tour around the U.S. to market the tool and get feedback. Built environment professionals like it and so I was hoping people would use it to make planning and design decisions. Has it happened? Alas, very few cities and environmental consultants are using the online tool to make decisions.
So, what is going on? There are several possibilities. First, biodiversity conservation may be the lowest on the totem pole of urban sustainability issues. Energy, water, and even transportation seem to occupy higher considerations in city/county planning and have associated land development regulations (LDRs). However, there are very few regulations concerning optimum designs for conserving native plants and animals. Often, city planners primarily think of large patches and corridors as being important for biodiversity (particularly wildlife); save for generic conservation of open space across a city, often the small, unconnected forest fragments/natural areas and even large trees are not considered as important wildlife habitat. However, these small bits of habitat are important to a variety of birds, insects, and other animals.
Second, without policies that help guide and regulate biodiversity conservation, environmental consultants and developers are not keen to try something new (especially if they do not have to). Without policy directives, it takes a maverick team of built environment professionals to implement a unique design that accounts for biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, these forward-looking individuals are few and far between. From my experience, the building for birds design tool is applicable to any situation but very few people are taking advantage of it across the U.S. This is a bit frustrating, as I thought if I made the tool simple enough and applicable to planning, folks would use it.
How do we improve implementation? Not an easy answer. We do need ecologists and other scientists collaborating more with planners, landscape architects, and other built environment professionals. Only by learning from each other can we tailor research that is useful in the planning and design process. My collaborations with these decision makers did produce a useful tool (albeit not as well used as I would have liked). I learned quite a bit about planning and what makes or break a development project. For example, for a developer (with a bank breathing down their neck) it is all about avoiding uncertainty. A developer will do a biodiversity design if it will help them get their development approved and can start construction right away. Research data will not be used in planning and/or design if it is not supported by policy. And to get a new policy passed, research data must be in a format that is transparent to policymakers so that they can easily craft a policy for land development regulation.
Projected urban expansion (year 2060) in northcentral Florida based on population growth. Red is urban areas. Credit: http://www.1000friendsofflorida.org
Thus, I am saying that as scientists we are conducting research in (sort of) a vacuum, more geared towards pleasing each other but with an outside hope that someday our data will be used in the “real world”. However, from my experiences, planning staff and regulators are loathe to require “x” (some sustainable policy or action) if there is not good data to back up the requirement. As I have stated before, data is typically buried in scattered journals and most practitioners do not have the time to scour the scientific literature to come up with a rationale for a policy. Perhaps one important step for scientists is to listen to what practitioners need and help conduct a systematic review of the literature (be it birds, other wildlife, water, energy, etc.). The output would be a scientific summary, (a one pager perhaps) for a planner to talk with elected officials in order to create a new policy. In turn, if done properly, this review could be published in an academic journal.
Even the most “transparent” data or tools can still be underutilized (such as the bird tool that I developed). In the academic world, political scientists, urban and regional planners, landscape architects, and social scientists need to become familiar with city/county decision making in order to understand the important “levers” in urban planning and design process. For example, low impact development features (e.g., rain gardens, permeable pavement, bioswales, etc.) are well known to help improve water quality in an urban development, but are underutilized. Why? It is difficult to say what are the reasons across the board because every city/county situation has local flavors and barriers to implementation. The challenges (and opportunities) are likely different from one area to the next. Probably, the most common barrier is just plain inertia. Environmental consultants, developers, and even city/county regulators are comfortable in doing a design/development in a certain way and any change is met with resistance.
To adopt a new way of doing things, social science researchers can conduct studies to determine what makes regulators, policymakers, environmental consultants, and even the public “tick”. If rain gardens are going to be prioritized, for example, what do regulators need in order to give, in this case, stormwater credit for a rain garden instead of conventional curb, gutter, and pond? Most likely they need synthesized data that states rain gardens work in their local area. Scientists know where to go to review this data and could provide that one-pager for decision makers.
In summary, natural resource scientists should collaborate more with practitioners and decision makers before they conduct research. The study and output data should be collected and presented in a way that is useful for practitioners and decision makers alike. To help decision makers overcome conventional inertia, social scientists need to measure how people operate and make decisions, determining the “leverage points” were ecological data could be inserted to sway decisions. Overall, we need to stop creating and writing scientific research for each other and make it more it explicitly available for city/county decision makers.
“the knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, and can thus only develop in combination with others.”
— Donna Haraway in Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, p586
I grew up in Singapore. I heard stories from my father about when he was a child and how it used to be in the kampungs—Malay for traditional villages. He would go out with a net to hunt for frogs early mornings before dawn and scurry down drains to catch tadpoles and small fishes. Amidst many other kampung stories, that version of Singapore feels like a whole other world—the experience of living on the land here, has shifted drastically within a short span of a generation. Today, Singapore can be seen as a notable example of rapid urbanisation whilst attempting to ensure urban greening proliferates in the city.
The use of resin casts to present a part of the collected plants in an immortalized, encapsulated form echoes the routine of separating ourselves when observing what is around us.
Despite being known as a “Green City”, however, I often catch myself questioning the arranged biodiversity of these ecological entities surrounding me. How many of these are native to the land? Is the diversity human-imposed? Questions like this were the beginning of a blurred understanding between urban greening and ecological landscapes.
How can we come to be aware, know, and acknowledge both empowerments and limitations of the different ways we come to sense make and understand the world around us? Is it possible to step out from the place of human agency to sense make? Looking for ways to cultivate awareness of co-influencement of all living organisms, creating art provides a space to question my human-centred perspective of the world and a starting point was to explore my understanding of what is “Natural” and “Unnatural”.
* * *
Attempts to engage the inside-outside division
Section of blanket bog at Forsinard, October 2017. Photo: Audrey Yeo.
During a field trip to Forsinard, in the Highland area of Scotland, I stood between the fences which formed the boundary between a section of untouched peatland and a section of pine trees that were introduced onto the landscape by man. The breeze was picking up. I closed my eyes. It was distinct—I could hear the manifestation of fences in the landscape.
Detached drawn and painted in Tent Gallery, November 2017. Credits: Audrey Yeo.
I interpreted the fences in the landscape as an analogy to the inside-outside division of how we categorize and order the world around us. Through Detached, the process of physical line drawings of the map-perceived boundaries within the landscapes of Caithness and Sutherland, I was further imposing on the separation that comes from categorising “nature” as a matter which exists outside of my body.
Close ups of Detached. Credits: Audrey Yeo
The use of the gallery wall as canvas was an attempt to undo the single momentary impression of the impermanent and ever-changing landscape that I had taken. I wanted to find comfort in the process of returning the wall space to its original condition as a metaphor for (re-)entering into another state of mind. Perhaps one day, we are able to embrace a state of being that does not drive the inside-outside division. Perhaps the division can be dissolved from finding the balance between trust of our sensorium and reliance on our cognitive abilities.
Do other living organisms struggle in finding this balance, or engage with the inside-outside division? How can we begin to understand the reality of other organisms? Would it help to experience reality from another perspective?
* * *
Stepping out and in and out and…
…exploring reality with new perspectives through interactions with those coming from different disciplines, specifically the sciences.
Crossing disciplines proves to be stimulating and engaging, leading to more questions than answers. We rely on our cognitive abilities. Are the majority of us trapped within a frame of mind shaped by perspectives that are enabled only via western science? Has this led to the separation of us from the ecology of living organisms?
In Western tradition, the tendency to recognize human beings at the top of the hierarchy of beings is perhaps the seed of the capitalistic approach we take towards living. What would happen if we were able to experience the animacy—i.e. aliveness—of the world and give equivalence to all living organisms?
“The language is the heart of the culture; it holds our thoughts, our way of seeing the world”.
— Great grandmother quoted by Robin Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, p50
One of the indigenous languages of the Americas, Potawatomi, an Anishinaabe language, is a predominantly verb-based language and holds most naturally occurring objects as animate beings—rocks, bays, apples, trees and the list goes on. Items that are man-made are inanimate, for example, a chair. In every sentence, it allows us to incorporate respect to the animacy of the world and reminds us of our kinship with the animate world around us. Imagine, relating to the world in this light instead of separating anything non-human, as an “it”.
I grew up with shadows of eastern beliefs and practices such as the teachings of Confucius, and herbal remedies for illnesses from the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Coming from a family with ancestry line from China, paired with rapid westernization in our social culture producesa difficult reconciliation, which creates tension.
Drawing upon this tension as an analogy for the narrow perspective we hold of understanding ecology and other living organisms around us gave rise to another piece of work, a botanical glimpse.
“There was a time where I teetered precariously with an awkward foot in each of the two worlds—the scientific and the indigenous. But then I learned to fly. Or at least I try. It was the bees that showed me how to move between different flowers—to drink the nectar and gather pollen from both. It is this dance of cross-pollination that can produce a new species of knowledge, a new way of being in the world.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, p47
Viewers in “a botanical glimpse”, May 2019. Credit: Audrey Yeo
“Taxonomy, i.e. the classification of the natural world whilst a useful tool, is a system of order imposed by man and not an objective reflection of nature. Its categories are actively applied and contain the assumptions, values and associations of human society” —Mark Dion in Theatre of the natural world
a botanical glimpse attempted to reconcile and put to question the outcome of such an approach—i.e. western scientific methods—and the role of cultural institutions in our perception and relationship to the world around us. Through the use of a theatrical setting of a botanical collection which viewers enter into, it lends itself to the embodiment of authenticity as a way to validate the models of knowledge we have come to rely upon—familiar yet circumscribed.
The sampled area for the botanical collection was determined via a process of walking through a nearby urban ecological landscape with botanist, Dr. Heather McHaffie from Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh. The choice of area intended to draw attention to our entwined co-existence with often overlooked living organisms. That the biodiversity found exists within such a small sampled area—0.07m2—further highlights the ease with which such organisms are overlooked.
Wall painting of locality of sampled area. Credits: Audrey YeoVideo still of sampled area. Credit: Audrey Yeo
Through the process of creating a botanical glimpse, I participated in the beginning phase of a knowledge creation process—in a systemically and scientifically acknowledgeable way—by ensuring the methodology I engaged in is sound.
1 out of 13 of the collected samples’ label. Create: Audrey YeoStandard tools used in for collecting and preserving botanical samples including hand fork, GPS, silica gel, plastic bags and paper labels. CreditL Audrey Yeo
Aware that I have no formal training in such scientific methods reflects the process of reiterating our ways of creating knowledge; it is based on a human-centric belief system. In this way, I placed myself in the role as a creator of knowledge as an attempt to understand the way we come to know and perceive knowledge.
The isolation of each species found within the field sample area brings attention to and serves as an analogy of how within knowledge creation today, where we place significant emphasis in looking at things in parts—broken down to the molecular level—in the attempt to understand and sense-make of the world around us. Furthermore, the use of resin casts to present a part of the collected plants in an immortalized, encapsulated form echoes the routine of separating ourselves when observing what is around us.
Part of the exhibit “a botanical glimpse”: samples displayed in resin. Credits: Audrey Yeo
* * *
Have I come closer to stepping out from the place of human agency and encountering the co-influence of all living organisms? In the end, creating art neither answers nor knows, instead poses more questions about what it might mean to be a living organism. Perhaps the only certainty we can hold for ourselves is the gap between how the world appears to us, and the world as such. We owe it to ourselves to keep trying, to experience and close this gap by repeatedly re-knowing ourselves, each time, closer to nature.
While there is much talk about co-creation and the many opportunities it offers, knowledge about how to set-up and facilitate co-creation processes is limited. Given the novelty and experimental nature of co-creation, there is a need for global learning about when and how to do co-creation.
“Co-creation” has garnered much buzz as a promising enabler of greener and better cities for all. During a hands-on session (“Co-creating inclusive green cities: European examples and global learning opportunities”) at the Nature of Cities Summit in Paris (June 4-7, 2019) with co-creation experts and cities—co-organised by Connecting Nature partners Alice Reil (ICLEI Europe) and Katharina Hölscher (DRIFT)—local policymakers, scientists, practitioners and civil society representatives jointly learned about why and how to co-create nature-based interventions in cities. Co-creation was unanimously embraced as an opportunity for designing more innovative, inclusive and multifunctional nature-based interventions as well as boosting community capacities and empowerment. However, co-creation is no panacea, and different contexts pose different challenges, including cultural issues like criminality, ethnicity and gender.
Co-creation engenders a focus on process of greening cities rather than on results only. Alexander van der Jagt (Utrecht University) introduced co-creation as collaborative knowledge sharing between local policymakers, researchers, citizens, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and practically any kind of actor bringing in specific knowledge about local needs and solutions, building on insights from the NATURVATION and GREEN SURGE projects. Session participants echoed the need to step away from pre-defined issues and solutions towards reframing problems that open up the view on what interventions are needed and possible. Co-creation allows engagement with unusualsuspects, such as the horticulture industry, and to thus enhance quality of solutions. Governments are not able to green cities on their own and seek to tap into the strengths of communities: co-creation empowers and strengthens capacities of local communities by sharing responsibilities and cultures. Experiences from developing country contexts enrich the European perspectives in Connecting Nature on co-creation: the absence of an identity of citizenry was highlighted as key challenge for creating greener and better cities in for example Brazilian and Somalian contexts. Here, co-creation is a way to support identity-building, as well as to collect knowledge in the absence of data and to deal with informal activities.
While there is much talk about co-creation and the many opportunities it offers, knowledge about how to set-up and facilitate co-creation processes is limited. Katharina Hölscher presented a practice-oriented design framework for co-creating nature-based interventions. Drawing on the work of Niki Frantzeskaki (Swineburne University of Technology), the framework highlights quality principles and provides guidance for inclusive, legitimate, and open co-creation processes that result in policy and planning relevant knowledge, new solutions and empowerment.
Inclusivity for bringing together diverse actors and multiple types of knowledge at equal level.
Openness to adopt, integrate and share knowledge throughout.
Legitimacy to ensure that the process includes legitimate and credible knowledge and is trusted by participants and wider urban actors.
Actionable knowledge ensures that the co-produced knowledge outputs are immediate relevant and translated into policy and planning.
Usable knowledge and empowerment ensure that the co-produced knowledge outputs are valuable to and taken up by multiple urban actors.
Extending institutions ensures that the co-produced knowledge outputs connect to multiple goals, strategies and agendas within the city to create synergies across sectors.
The principles were connected to practice: three cities shared and discussed their experiences in designing co-creation processes. Antonio Prieto González (City of A Coruña, Spain) shared the multiple co-creation activities for the re-development of the port of the Connecting Nature city, including expert forums, an ideas competition, online discussion and voting and public workshops and exhibitions during a temporary pavilion (Tribuna Pública). The process benefitted from high level political support, and the inclusion of expert and technical knowledge was considered important for ensuring legitimacy.
Highlighting opportunities for linking citizen initiatives and formal policy frameworks, Gilles Lecuir (Ile-de-France Regional Authority for Biodiversity, France) reflected on the long-term collaboration between citizens and the local governments to greening, and maintaining greened, sidewalks in French cities. While the initiative has grown out of a citizen initiative, the local governments took over to coordinate and facilitate the greening, for example by allocating and depaving lots for greening.
An example from outside Europe was presented by Ana Pellegrino (City of Niteroi, Brazil): a lasting challenge is to get citizens to participate, also due to fear from speaking out against powerful actors. Actively going out to communities and holding regular meetings that are open to the entire community are important conditions for enabling co-creation. Getting inhabitants from different communities to participate helped to enhance shared understanding between such, showing that there is common agreement about needs and desires.
The examples from the three cities demonstrated the multiple faces and facets of co-creation, but the sharing of experiences also revealed opportunities for learning from each other. Given the novelty and experimental nature of co-creation, there is a need for global learning about when and how to do co-creation. Alice Reil presented the Connecting Nature UrbanByNature Programme, which offers such learning opportunities for urban nature pioneers. The challenge is to identify transferable lessons—for example about when to involve what type of people and how to create space for co-creation. Co-creation goes against the usual policy and planning logics in cities worldwide: to ensure financing, projects usually have to first be developed.
Next to transferable lessons, it became clear during the session that context and local culture matters. In developing country cities, co-creating greener and better cities needs to first overcome lack of local identities and lack of trust in fair and safe participation opportunities.
Katharina Holscher and Alice Reil
Rotterdam and Freiburg
This TNOC Summit Seed Session included the following participants: Alice Reil, Arun Mishra, Adèle Gaveau, Ryan Bellinson, Aimee Gauthier, Simon Pittman, Kristin Ohlson, Thibaud Griessinger, François Mancebo, Yeowon Kim, Katharina Holscher, Katherine Moseley, Katalin Czippan, Mariana Nicolletti, Ines Vaittinen, Giles Lecuir, Gillian Dick, Catherine Harris, Alexander van der Jagt, Ferne Edwards, Kim Ressar, Valerie Gwinner, Camille Tallon, Anouck Barcat, Cecilia Herzog, Judy Bush, Oliver Hillel, Aidan ffrench
Alice Reil (she/her) is an urban geographer who strives to bring more biodiverse, urban nature into public spaces. She led the biodiversity and nature-based solutions team at ICLEI Europe, a global city network, and now works at the City of Munich’s green space planning department.
Regularly, we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
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Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Nathalie Blanc, ParisThe good of my well-being is connected to the protection of irreplaceable beautiful environment. The good of my well-being is also connected to my participation in a common good, resisting public policies or human behavior that is destructive. / Le bien de mon bien-être est lié à la protection d’un environnement d’une beauté irremplaçable. Le bien de mon bien-être est aussi lié à ma participation à un bien commun, à la résistance aux politiques publiques ou à un comportement humain destructeur.
Lindsay Campbell, New YorkStewardship is not the same as ownership—but it does mean taking ownership of your place, voice, and power in the world. We aim to show that all of us have a stake in caring for our local environments, whether we own any inch of ground or not.
Zorina Colasero, Puerto Princesa CityThe CommunityAct Program encourages the engagement of the community and other stakeholders in various tree planting and environmental activities and to be stewards of their environment.
Kirk Deitschman, Waimānalo What is aloha ʻāina? Alo (face) and hā (breath) = aloha, to exchange breath with another being, the essence of reciprocity. Aloha is also love, affection, compassion. ʻĀina encompasses everything living.
Johan Enqvist, Cape TownIn Swedish, “Ta hand om” is a common phrase usually translated as “taking care of”; the literal meaning, is more like “taking in your hand”. “Ta hand om naturen” communicates both an individual responsibility to be careful with nature, but also the shared effort of joining hands to achieve in the interest of our co-dependency on nature.
Emilio Fantin, BolognaOnly through an autonomous process of consciousness—suggested by the word stewardship—can we share the sacredness which lays behind human nature. It is not a matter of thinking about which future disasters will kill us, or whether we will destroy the entire planet, but rather a matter of acting on the true sense of our relationship with the existence of life around us.
Artur Jerzy Filip, WarsawIn Poland, our phrase has been “lokalni gospodarze”, which translated back to English might be something like “Local Hosts”. It has enabled us to escape old schemes of thinking about civic participation and cross-sectoral governance.
Carlo Beneitez Gomez, Puerto Princesa CityThe CommunityAct Program encourages the engagement of the community and other stakeholders in various tree planting and environmental activities and to be stewards of their environment.
Cecilia Herzog, Rio de JaneiroWe need to be GUARDIANS, PROTECTORS and DEFENDERS in and out of the cities now. We must resist, all of us, for our common home: Planet Earth!
Michelle Johnson, New YorkStewardship is not the same as ownership—but it does mean taking ownership of your place, voice, and power in the world. We aim to show that all of us have a stake in caring for our local environments, whether we own any inch of ground or not.
Kevin Lunzalu, NairobiIn day-to-day local applications, stewardship is also used to mean a guardian, a servant, and an agent. In rural villages where farming is predominant, farmers are regarded as stewards of their lands, farm animals, and produce.
Patrick Lydon, OsakaThe human is steward of nature, yet only just as nature is steward of humans. Rather than hierarchy, there is mutuality built into this relationship.
Romina Magtanong, Puerto Princesa CityThe CommunityAct Program encourages the engagement of the community and other stakeholders in various tree planting and environmental activities and to be stewards of their environment.
Heather McMillen, HonoluluWhat is aloha ʻāina? Alo (face) and hā (breath) = aloha, to exchange breath with another being, the essence of reciprocity. Aloha is also love, affection, compassion. ʻĀina encompasses everything living.
Ranjini Murali, BangaloreIn Indian rural communities and even certain urban ones, the idea of stewardship permeates people’s lives in their everyday action, as a lived concept. Does the Western concept of environmental stewardship arise as an explicit concern only when the environment becomes visibly degraded?
Harini Nagendra, BangaloreIn Indian rural communities and even certain urban ones, the idea of stewardship permeates people’s lives in their everyday action, as a lived concept. Does the Western concept of environmental stewardship arise as an explicit concern only when the environment becomes visibly degraded?
Jean Ferus Niyomwungeri, KigaliWorking with local communities and getting them on the board has shown an impact. They live day to day with natural resources and, with education and understanding, they respect and become more responsible, embracing the benefits of conservation.
Jean Palma, ManilaThe words across the many languages of the Philippine to understand “steward” and “stewardship” are reflective of the peoples’ inherent nature to care for someone or something, to stand for duty, to protect, and to help or to respond to a certain need.
Beatriz Ruizpalacios, Mexico CityStewardship means nurturing a thing or a place and the relationship we keep with it. We become responsible, and in turn the thing is a repository of our affection and care. There is no particular word for this kind of stewardship, but we prefer to use verbs that emphasize our responsibility and agency: Cuidar, Proteger.
Huda Shaka, DubaiEnvironmental stewardship in the UAE is rooted in the Islamic concept of vicegerency: the responsibility bestowed by God on human beings, which entails them being trustees of the earth.
Erika Svendsen, New YorkStewardship is not the same as ownership—but it does mean taking ownership of your place, voice, and power in the world. We aim to show that all of us have a stake in caring for our local environments, whether we own any inch of ground or not.
Abdallah Tawfic, CairoWe strive to understand the benefits of urban greenery and eventually have the chance to use it for good—that’s how we define stewardship in Cairo without acknowledging it as an understandable term on its own.
Diana Wiesner, BogotáWhen I encountered the word “stewardship”, I instantly thought of the Colombian peasants, all those who save and protect seeds, food variety and biodiversity, without looking for anything in return. / Cuando me encontré con la palabra “stewardship” en inglés, pensé instantáneamente en los campesinos colombianos, todos aquellos que guardan y protegen las semillas, la variedad de alimentos y la biodiversidad, sin buscar nada a cambio.
Fish Yu, ShenzhenIn China, “stewardship” seems to be a word related more to rural conservation, and its core idea of “taking care” embeds an emotional tie to the object, connecting to us equally. The relationship becomes much weaker and passive in an urban context.
Lindsay K. Campbell is a research social scientist with the USDA Forest Service. Her current research explores the dynamics of urban politics, stewardship, and sustainability policymaking.
Introduction
Do you have a word or phrase you use for socially-driven environmental care in your region? Tell us in the Comment section.
In cities and communities around the world, people work to take care of their local environments. This activity can take many forms, from individual actions, to community groups acting to care for their neighborhoods, to larger civil society organizations acting in the public realm. What unites such diverse types of social organization and modes of action is that people are choosing to care for the environments that have meaning for them.
How do we describe or name these activities? How do we, across languages and cultures, express the idea of “actively taking care of things we care about, such as the environment”?
In the U.S. and some other English speaking countries, the word used is—often but not always—“stewardship”. People who take such actions might be called “stewards”. Our work with the USDA Forest Service has been to grow a network of collaborators involved in stewardship research and action across the globe. We have learned that the word “stewardship” in English (“western” and global north usage) has both possibilities and pitfalls through its multiple connotations of caretaking, rights, responsibilities, knowledge, and action. It is a word that often does not have direct translation to local languages. It does not necessarily even work among all English speakers. The concept resonates, but the words that describe the idea vary, and often are in development.
This roundtable was inspired by our workshop “Talk, Map, Act” at the TNOC Summit where we gathered diverse stories of engagement with stewardship from all around the world.
We want to continue this journey by exploring the words people use for the constellation of activities suggested by the English word “stewardship”. We are interested to hear how the act of environmental care is expressed in different languages and contexts.
So, we asked 25 practitioners—scientists, activists, artists, planners, practitioners—from five continents: in your context and experience, what is the word or phrase used for the concept of “actively taking care of things, such as the environment”?
The answers are all over the map. In many languages, there is no direct translation to the English word “stewardship”. But there are many phrases that convey the activity of care—activities that in many countries are newly developing and advancing. The diversity of responses leads to valuable questions:
What sort of multiple linguistic meanings are opened up by exploring how people describe the concept of “care for the environment”?
In addition to thinking cross-culturally, how does the concept translate across urban to rural gradients?
What might thinking deeply about the meanings and limitations of expression of this concept tell us about the role of citizens and the state in our relationships with the biosphere?
[This Roundtable is a collaboration between The Nature of Cities and the USDA Forest Service, and is an output of The Nature of Cities Summit.]
Dr. Erika Svendsen is a social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station and is based in New York City. Erika studies environmental stewardship and issues related to hybrid governance, collective resilience and human well-being.
Cecilia Polacow Herzog is an urban landscape planner, retired professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She is an activist, being one of the pioneers to advocate to apply science into real urban planning, projects, and interventions to increase biodiversity and ecosystem services in Brazilian cities.
Cecilia Herzog
We need to be GUARDIANS, PROTECTORS and DEFENDERS in and out of the cities now. We must resist, all of us, for our common home: Planet Earth!
Since I was invited to write about how stewardship translates into Brazilian Portuguese—especially regarding my own experience in dealing with different people from public, private and civic backgrounds, as well as from different disciplines in the academic world—I have been challenged to define in words what I have seen happening without having to give an specific name to it during many years.
The words that I first thought of were “GUARDIÃO” (guardian), “PROTETOR” (protector), “DEFENSOR” (defender) of the forest, rivers, birds, trees, river springs, nature… Many public and private programs and projects use those names.
Public programs in Rio have helped to change the landscape since the mid 19th Century, when the Emperor D. Pedro II commissioned Major Archer to replant native and fruit trees in the hills of the city, aiming to restore water springs, offering numerous direct and indirect ecosystem services up to now. Actually the benefits were so great that the city is now an international UNESCO Heritage Site: “Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea”. Following the same path, in early 1980”s a city program transformed many of the degraded slopes with collective tree plantings (Mutirão Reflorestamento). This is a term used to bring people together to stewardship nature in the city: MUTIRÃO.
In the last years in São Paulo, there have been numerous MUTIRÕES to plant “Pocket Forests”, “Community Gardens”, “Rivers Springs Restorations”, “Rain Gardens”. Those collective actions are usually led by residents.
In Rio de Janeiro and other cities many actions have also been happening, with residents working together to change gray paved surfaces into green areas, because people need nature where they are. They want to participate, get together and transform the harsh landscape into a livable one. We love to make it together.
In July I had a personal experience when I was engaged in the process of designing and implementing the first rain garden of the city in a famous cultural center in the downtown area: “Fundição Progresso“. I proposed to co-create and co-design it. We organized two workshops and collective plantings (mutirões) with Organicidade, the landscape architect Pierre-André Martin, and also with Celso Junius (a city server with decades of experience in urban greening), with full support of the “Fundição” and Bambuê (the architect company in charge of building the garden). I never thought that we would be named stewards of nature in the city, but that was exactly what we were doing. We depaved a “no-where” gray backyard, built an edible rain garden, with native Atlantic Forest fruit trees, non-conventional edible, medicinal and ritualistic plants. On 28 September 2019 the rain garden area was opened to the public in a wonderful event that turned the decades old cultural institution in the Green Fundição, that aims to connect culture, arts and nature. The ceremony brought indigenous people from tribes located faraway. There was so much symbolism to recover an area and praise Mother Nature back to the city with the original residents of our country, who have been under attack by the current Federal administration.
Actually, I believe that people steward nature, but in countries were millions are unemployed it is not a priority. The systematic destruction of the rich ecosystems that my country has is caused by the myopia of the economic system that only sees the economic value of what is under the forests, and the potential for economic growth on hard infrastructure destroying rivers and forests, with hydropower killing our rivers and culture and new roads crisscrossing protected areas. We need more than ever to be ashamed of this predatory vision of permanent growth and stewardship nature and indigenous people! We need to be GUARDIANS, PROTECTORS and DEFENDERS in and out of the cities now. We must resist, all of us, for our common home: Planet Earth!
Architect, researcher, and practitioner in the field of urban planning and design and author of the book “Big Plans in the Hands of Citizens”. He is the curator of the educational :WCENTRUM project. Assistant Professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture.
Artur Jerzy Filip
In Poland, our phrase has been “lokalni gospodarze”, which translated back to English might be something like “Local Hosts”. It has enabled us to escape old schemes of thinking about civic participation and cross-sectoral governance.
In Poland, the idea of “stewardship” is opening a totally new perspective in thinking about responsibility for public space. So far, we have been rather stuck between two extremities; probably like most post-communist societies. On one hand, we have believed that only direct ownership guarantees honest and sustainable attentiveness to space. The argument here is that anything beyond individual ownership leads to blurred authority and never-ending quarrels … well, this makes the space nobody’s. The tragedy of the commons then is unavoidable. On the other hand, we have feared any private (i.e. individual, group, even community) ownership for being a serious threat to public character of common goods. If anything is somebody’s, then someone else is excluded, isn’t it so? In such a situation, the idea of “stewardship” breaks through the prejudices twofold. First, because the stewards are capable of taking care of spaces without being their legal owners at all. And second, because the stewards care for these spaces for the benefit of others. At least a fair number of examples proves it possible, even if it still sounds like the future for us here, in Poland.
Two years ago I co-curated an exhibition “Warsaw Under Construction” at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. My part was dedicated entirely to the idea of stewardship. On that occasion we faced the linguistic challenge for the first time and ended up with the translation “Lokalni gospodarze”. “Lokalni” meaning devoted to environments, though not necessarily natural or green, actually any kind of urban spaces included. And “gospodarze” meaning the hosts, the ones who manage and keep space in good condition. Actually, if someone would try to translate the phrase “lokalni gospodarze” back from Polish to English, we might get something like “Local Hosts.” Fair enough as well. What is key, after all, is this combination of two fundamental elements. First, public environment considered within particular boundaries: the turf. And second, the ones who care for the turf. All the rest: their modes of operation, levels of cooperation, and ways of calling things might vary across the cases.
In Poland, the conceptual framework of urban—environmental, local, you name it…—stewardship has already proven its usefulness. In some cases, it has served as a handy term to describe and evaluate ongoing projects. In others, as a mind-opening perspective allowing for broadening the visions. On multiple occasions I conducted workshops and gave lectures for citizens, institutions, authorities, and business leaders to share this idea. Today I’m so happy to see that the term “lokalni gospodarze” has already been starting to be commonly used here as a way enabling to escape old schemes of thinking about civic participation and cross-sectoral governance, as we have used to call these things so far. The alteration is significant. The openness and flexibility of the term “lokalni gospodarze” enables us to work on collaboration without being constrained by any rigid formulas established in advance, especially since we still do not have many ready-to-use formulas (policies, programs) that would facilitate multiple and diverse stakeholders to collaborate in support of urban space preservation, maintenance, or development.
Patrick M. Lydon is an American ecological writer and artist based in Korea whose seeks to re-connect cities and their inhabitants with nature. He is an Arts Editor here at The Nature of Cities.
Patrick Lydon
The human is steward of nature, yet only just as nature is steward of humans. Rather than hierarchy, there is mutuality built into this relationship.
Some years ago we met with a curious old Japanese fisherman on the island of Megijima, Japan, who told us, “I fish from the mountain.”
We were curious. Though this man was leader of the local fishermans’ association, and a lifelong fisher, he was somehow just as interested in the mountain as he was in the sea.
We asked if there was something lost in translation from Japanese to English.
The fisherman shook his head and reiterated: “I don’t fish from the sea”.
Sitting on the traditional tatami floor of the Fisherman’s Association building, all we could do was stare at him in confusion. He continued “You can’t fish by looking at the sea. Yeah? You’ve got to fish by looking at the mountains first. The lives of the fish in this sea start with the rains that fall on the mountains. That rain works through the forests, through the agricultural fields, through the town, and then, it becomes the sea. If the mountain is not a healthy environment for the things that live there, the same is true for the sea.”
I ask, timidly “So, you fish from your boat, in the sea, but you are looking at the mountain?”
The fisherman looks at me, not so much annoyed, but quizzically, as if to say, is there any other way?
The main fishing port on Megijima, Japan. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
This man fishes from the mountain because he—and presumably most of the traditional village fishermen like him—understand that in some way everything in this ecosystem depends on the health of every other part.
It’s a recurring theme with the farmers, fisherman, monks, chefs, and traditional craftspeople we have met over the past several years in this part of the world; the human is steward of nature, yet only just as nature is steward of humans.
Rather than hierarchy, there is mutuality built into this idea of stewardship. It is a relationship.
From this viewpoint, humans are no more or less important than any other living being on this earth, and all actors in this ecosystem must play their part, taking their action with “truth, goodness, and beauty” as both fishermen and nearby natural farmers say.
This is not an isolated thought by old farmers and fisherman. Indeed, when the entire village here comes together to celebrate the sea, it starts the festivities from the mountain, moving through the town, and into the sea.
Village elders on the island of Megijima, Japan, carry a portable shrine into the sea as part of a ceremony to pay respect to the sea. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
It took this particular fisherman 70 years living on this island, and generations of wisdom passed down to him, to know what it means to fish from the mountain. That the office worker in Tokyo knows almost nothing of this anymore is a critical problem for cities.
Here on the island called Megijima, when we witness the last generation of people who want a job that requires them to know their role within the ecosystem, we are witnessing the extinction of knowledge. The lessons we might learn, not only from Japanese fishermen, but from similar keepers of traditional knowledge around the world, are about to be lost forever.
We who dwell in the cities, believe that such knowledge has no relevance to our staunch urban fortresses. Yet, truth is, the walls of our cities will most certainly crumble with the loss of this knowledge.
The lessons we need in order to build something akin to a sustainable society will not come from technology. They will not come from reports, graphs, or data analysis of the people who live this way. They will not come from financial growth, profits, investments, or dividends. The lessons we need will only come from our willingness as individual human beings to go, see, experience, and learn from those who know how to live withthe land, and how to become partners again, with the rest of the natural world with which we dwell.
Only if we can do this, will we know what it means to be stewards, and to develop technology, monetary systems, and all else in appropriate ways.
Saving these ways of thinking, living, and being are not just odes to a time long gone, they are the roots that will ensure our continued survival as a species here, no matter if we live in mega city or fishing village.
Sunset on the Seto Inland Sea, with the island of Megijima rising to the right. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon
Ranjini is an interdisciplinary scientist at Azim Premji University. She is interested in studying human-nature relationships, especially the values that people have for nature, and how these are influenced by different drivers of change such as urbanization and climate change.
Ranjini Murali, Harini Nagendra
In Indian rural communities and even certain urban ones, the idea of stewardship permeates people’s lives in their everyday action, as a lived concept. Does the Western concept of environmental stewardship arise as an explicit concern only when the environment becomes visibly degraded?
Through our growing network of collaborators involved in stewardship research and action across the globe, we have learned that this word has both possibilities and pitfalls through its multiple connotations of caretaking, rights, responsibilities, knowledge, and action. We are interested to hear whether and how this word translates to different languages and contexts; and what sort of multiple linguistic meanings are opened up. In addition to thinking cross-culturally, how does the word translate across urban to rural gradients? What might thinking deeply about the meanings and limitations of this word tell us—for instance—about the role of citizens and the state in our relationships with the biosphere?
The idea of stewardship as protecting nature is reflected in the Indian Constitution as the responsibility of both the state and the individual. According to Article 51-A, “it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures.”
To understand what stewardship means in specific contexts, however, we must turn our attention to specifics. Here we draw on our experiences working with communities in two very different parts of India: rural Spiti Valley, and urban Bangalore.
Spiti Valley is a cold desert in the Indian trans-Himalaya, inhabited by agro-pastoralists for millennia. The landscape is largely rural, though some parts of the valley are experiencing initial impacts of urbanization.
An exact translation of the English word “stewardship” is difficult to find in many Indian languages. There is unlikely to be a word in the local language Spitian (a derivative of Tibetan) for environmental stewardship. There also doesn’t seem to be a separate word for nature. However, the idea of stewardship permeates their lives in their everyday action, as a lived concept. It seems to be driven by the use of the natural world for their survival, religion, history, and culture. For example, there are rules established around the use of pastures and of water, to ensure sustainability of use and to enable fairness of access to all. These rules have been established by previous generations and are passed down as norms of accepted use. With tourism entering the landscape, there is a sense of a need to protect their sacred sites, water, and pastures from the ill effects of tourism, such as garbage.
A typical village in Spiti Valley with the agricultural lands in the foreground. The pastures used for grazing livestock extend for kilometers around the village. In the extreme left, the small white structure is a “Chorten”, a religious structure symbolising Buddha’s presence. Photo: Ranjini Murali
Religion also plays a role in stewardship here. The religion that is dominant here, Buddhism, preaches care and love for all living beings. This translates into everyday practices of stewardship. For example, local monasteries ask people not to collect berries from bushes, so that they are left for the birds. During the sowing season, while the yak is sowing the soil, a prayer is said to all the small insects who might get crushed during this process.
In contrast to rural Spiti, the south Indian megacity of Bangalore is facing a starkly degraded environment. Bangalore was once considered a garden city and a city of lakes, prized for its green and pleasant environment. In the local language Kannada, a variety of words such as ಉಸ್ತುವಾರಿ (ustuvaari—taking care of), ಕಾವಲು (kaavalu—to guard), ಕಣ್ಣಿಟ್ಟಿರುವುದು (kannituruvudu—keeping an eye on) and others come close to stewardship, but there is no direct equivalent of the word.
Citizen protests held in Bangalore in 2009, against the felling of trees for the construction of the Bangalore Metro. Credits: Harini Nagendra
In response to recent widespread tree felling and lake deterioration, environmental movements are on the rise. Environmental stewardship is often expressed as a concern of urban middle class residents, and focused on protecting aesthetic and cultural values. Urban residents are inspired to take up stewardship by activities such as waste composting, bird watching, and nature-themed art workshops. In certain wealthy and upwardly mobile sections of the population, the influence of global environmental movements can also be seen in the adoption of lifestyle choices such as veganism, cycling to work, carpooling or shopping local and organic, to reduce individual impacts on the environment.
Residents of informal settlements, and practitioners of nature-based livelihoods such as fishers and grazers, are important environmental stewards who often get left out of the discussion. The motivations for stewardship expressed by these residents of Bangalore is similar to that of Spitians in that they draw from everyday lived experiences of utilitarian and cultural values received from an everyday life immersed in nature. In contrast, our interviews with upper middle-class and wealthy residents of Bangalore show that their environmental stewardship seems to be driven by aesthetic values and concerns about health and pollution, shaped by a feeling of loss because of the destruction of natural spaces they loved.
This contrast raises a fundamental question in our minds. Does the Western concept of environmental stewardship arise as an explicit concern only when the environment becomes visibly degraded? We think there is a need for many more such comparative studies across different Western and non-Western, urban and rural contexts to enable us to make adequate sense of stewardship, and to understand the potential and limitations of global and local environmental movements.
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. She uses social and ecological approaches to examine the factors shaping the sustainability of forests and cities in the south Asian context. Her books include “Cities and Canopies: Trees of Indian Cities” and "Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India's Cities" (Penguin India, 2023) (with Seema Mundoli), and “The Bangalore Detectives Club” historical mystery series set in 1920s colonial India.
Jean Ferus NIYOMUNGERI is a young Rwandan conservationist, born in Southern province, currently serving as a Community Conservation Officer under the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA), the non-governmental organization he started with.
Jean Ferus Niyomwungeri
Working with local communities and getting them on the board has shown an impact. They live day to day with natural resources and, with education and understanding, they respect and become more responsible, embracing the benefits of conservation.
In Rwanda the word “stewardship” means the way of being responsible and taking care of resources. The word itself has no single word translation in Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda. When working in conservation, we translate it as “Kubungabunga umutungo kamere” which means “to protect natural resources”. Conceptually, there is a theological belief that humans are responsible for the world and should take care of it.
Rwanda has built different institutions mandated to manage different aspects of environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation and disaster risk management.
Rwanda has also made efforts to engage people in environmental protection through different home-grown solutions, for instance whereby all communities across the entire country gather on the last Saturday of the month for community work “Umuganda”, such as cleaning, repairing roads or planting trees. This has contributed a lot towards Kigali being one of the greenest and cleanest cities in Africa. However, Rwanda is one of the low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa / East Africa. It is highly populated and more than 70% of people are engaged in agriculture as small-scale farmers. This has led to the loss of forests especially in urban areas as Rwanda’s natural resources and land are overstretched. Many of our natural forests are threatened by their transformation into settlement areas and agricultural land as well as demand for firewood as the main source of energy, and the use of trees for construction despite the government’s efforts towards conservation.
In this context, RWCA has contributed a lot to protect wildlife and natural habitats, engage and educate local communities while improving livelihoods and raise awareness of conservation issues. Our project of saving the endangered Grey Crowned Cranes where we work with people who kept cranes as pets in their home or hotel. With time, people have understood the issues contributing to the cranes’ decline in numbers and have changed their mind about keeping cranes in captivity and decided to contribute to the process of saving them. This project has showed how, with education and awareness raising, our communities were collaborative and supportive of the plan to reintroduce the cranes to the wild.
RWCA’s conservation model includes creating a sense of ownership and stewardship of cranes in order to create long term sustainable solutions to the project. Without this, the illegal trade would likely continue. For example, we have a team of 25 marsh rangers, recruited from the community around Rugezi marsh, a RAMSAR protected site rich in biodiversity and home to nearly a quarter of Rwanda’s Grey Crowned Cranes. Their role is to patrol and protect the marsh but a large part of that is educating people about the need to protect it and creating a sense of ownership over our country’s wildlife.
We also have a team of 30 Conservation Champions across the country located at key biodiversity areas and crane habitats. They are also recruited from within the communities they serve – they monitor cranes and other biodiversity in those areas and again educate people about the role of local communities in environmental protection. Our activities also include planting indigenous trees to restore habitats for the benefit of biodiversity. This activity also takes on the idea of stewardship, where we encourage communities to focus on “growing trees” not just “planting trees”, following up and caring for their trees in the long term. Working with local communities and getting them on the board has shown an impact since we started. They are the ones who live day to day with those natural resources and, with education and understanding, they respect and become more responsible, and embrace the benefits of conservation.
Kids participated in planting indigenous trees event. Photo: Maurice Uwineza
Ragene Palma is a Filipino urbanist currently studying International Planning at the University of Westminster, London, as a Chevening scholar. Follow her work at littlemissurbanite.com.
Ragene Andrea L. Palma
The words across the many languages of the Philippine to understand “steward” and “stewardship” are reflective of the peoples’ inherent nature to care for someone or something, to stand for duty, to protect, and to help or to respond to a certain need.
“Stewardship” is an understanding that transforms across the Philippine archipelago. With more than 7,000 islands and at least 183 alive languages (see Note), the term elicits a multitude of perceptions from the highland farmers to peoples with seafaring roots, from the urbanites who have a more built-up daily experience to the rural dwellers.
The scope of “Filipino”
Understanding Filipino (the national language) entails understanding the origin of the places where the many languages are spoken, how Filipinos have moved and lived across islands throughout history. Ethnologue provides detailed maps of the Philippine language families.
Source: https://www.ethnologue.com Used with permission.Source: https://www.ethnologue.com Used with permission.
Translations across the three major island groups of the Philippines would show similarities of meaning in understanding stewardship. Below are select translations from the different languages.
Luzon islands
In Tagalog, what comes to mind when translating “steward” is tagapangalaga (someone who provides care). A rapid survey would also draw responses such as bantay (someone who looks out for someone), katiwala (a person with whom one entrusts important things), tagapangasiwa (one who facilitates or manages), and gabay (guide). In Kapampangan, “steward” is manyese (someone who takes care of another), or maningat, which roots from ingat, meaning “care”. In Ilocano, “steward” is taga-aywan (someone who provides care).
Visayas and the Bicol region
In Cebuano (or Bisaya), Hiligaynon, and Ilonggo, “steward” is tinugyanan, tigbantay, and taga-atiman (carer); in Bicolano, it is translated to taga-ataman (ataman being word that means protecting, nurturing, and providing care).
Mindanao
In Meranaw, “steward” comes close to kithatandingan, meaning someone who is in charge of a responsibility; thatandingan would refer to the act of protecting one’s own jurisdiction as a form of duty. In Tausug, “stewardship” comes close to daraakun, which is the act of taking care of, and serving others. A common word of the Moro tribe (the Islamic groups of Mindanao) is pamarinta, meaning the authority and responsibility over a certain area. This understanding is very much rooted in how the Moros associate with their home and their environment; in fact, Meranaw means people of the lake (ranaw being lake).
In Binukid, there are related words to stewardship: tulubagën (literally, “to respond”) means a general sense of responsibility; pëgpangamangël leans towards a more directed sense of responsibility for the community and the ancestral domain, and katëngdanan (which stems from the root word katënged, meaning duty).
In the Spanish-Filipino creole Chavacano, cuida means “to act as a steward for”.
Stewardship reflects care, duty
The Filipino words to understand “steward” and “stewardship” are reflective of the peoples’ inherent nature to care for someone or something, to stand for duty (a trait that comes with strong familial responsibility), to protect, and to help or to respond to a certain need.
Filipinos have strong ties to land and the natural environment as a home. It is beautiful how our indigenous groups, who have lived way before the colonial period and the establishment of the government, refer to our lands as lupang ninuno (ancestral lands); this gives context as to why our languages show respect, a certain fierceness (for duty), and affection (giving care), in understanding “stewardship”
Thank you to the following for contributing the translations and context for the Filipino languages: Salic ‘Exan’ Sharief, Jr. (for the Moro tribe languages), Rachelle Santos (Kapampangan), Yowee Gonzales (Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Ilonggo), Ceng Bilgera and Keesha Buted (Ilocano), Jessie Lapinid (Chavacano), PJ Capistrano (Binukid), and Peter Fraginal (Bicolano).
Note: Simons, G. F. and C. D. Fennig (eds.). 2018 Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 22nd ed. Dallas: SIL International. www.ethnologue.com/country/PH/languages (Accessed 4 October 2019)
Huda's experience and training combine urban planning, sustainable development and public health. She is a chartered town planner (MRTPI) and a chartered environmentalist (CEnv) with over 15 years' experience focused on visionary master plans and city plans across the Arabian Gulf. She is passionate about influencing Arab cities towards sustainable development.
Huda Shaka
“With God’s will, we shall continue to work to protect our environment and our wildlife, as did our forefathers before us. It is a duty, and, if we fail, our children, rightly, will reproach us for squandering an essential part of their inheritance, and of our heritage” —Source
The above quote from the founder and first president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, encapsulates the culture of environmental stewardship in the country. It is a view rooted in the Islamic concept of vicegerency: the responsibility bestowed by God on human beings, which entails them being trustees of the earth. More recent concepts of sustainable development and intergenerational equity are also echoed in Sheikh Zayed’s quote above.
Environmental stewardship in the UAE is rooted in the Islamic concept of vicegerency: the responsibility bestowed by God on human beings, which entails them being trustees of the earth.
While environmental stewardship is a core part of the UAE’s culture (and more widely the Muslim world’s culture), perhaps what has changed in the last few years is the breadth of the concept. The focus in the UAE during the second half of the 20th century was primarily on the conservation of local flora and fauna. In line with Sheikh Zayed’s vision, a number of associations and programs were set up from as early as the 1960s to protect and breed local endangered species such as the Arabian Oryx and the Houbara. This included introducing new legislation and designating environmental reserves and protected areas.
Sheikh Zayed’s environmental vision also included utilizing the best expertise and technological innovations to literally “green the desert”. This involved ambitious agricultural, tree planting, and forestry projects to help provide employment, food security, and aesthetically pleasing and comfortable cities and towns for the new country’s residents. The forests functioned as green belts, protecting farms and human settlements in the desert from sand storms. Of course, they came at a water cost with ground water being the only feasible water source.
Over the last decade, the discourse around environmental stewardship has evolved to encompass broader environmental aspects, particularly from a resources’ perspective. In 2006, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) declared the UAE as the country with the largest ecological footprint per capita, surpassing even the United States. This served as a wake-up call for the country’s residents and policy makers.
Since then, environmental stewardship at a policy and grassroots level has developed to encompass water and energy conservation and carbon reduction, as well as ecological conservation. The UAE now has a national energy strategy which includes renewable energy and carbon reduction targets. Similarly, a national water security strategy has been developed to ensure sustainable access to water. These targets are also reflected in local strategies and increasingly in building codes and rating systems. Ambitious development projects such as the Masdar City project aim to pioneer environmentally-sustainable technologies for survival in the desert, and in other resource-constrained contexts.
Today as the UAE is about to celebrate its 48th national day, environmental stewardship remains a concept which carries meanings of visionary leadership rooted in a deep cultural appreciation and understanding of the environment’s value and the present generations’ responsibility towards preserving it for future generations.
Abdallah is an architect, environmentalist and urban farmer. He works at the German International Cooperation (GIZ) and he is also the cofounder of Urban Greens Egypt, a startup aiming to promote the concept of Urban Agriculture in Cairo.
Abdallah Tawfic
We strive to understand the benefits of urban greenery and eventually have the chance to use it for good—that’s how we define stewardship in Cairo without acknowledging it as an understandable term on its own.
In the center of one of the busiest informal settlements in Cairo lies “Mattariya school for girls”. I had the chance to meet with a group of teachers who believe in the importance of the preservation and revival of natural environments in our cities. Informal settlements in Cairo are a jungle of concrete houses stacked together with minimum or almost no open and green spaces, making it very hard to practice the right of being connected to nature.
Looking at the history of this informal construction, those were productive agriculture land in the early 60s, that has transformed incrementally through time—with the absence of laws—into unplanned urban dwellings. The informal construction approach is usually simple:—“build on 100 % of the plot”—so imagine the 60 years aftermath of this continuous fertile land encroachments.
“The students do not understand why and where should we plant more trees and greens” said Omayya, a “Mattariya School for Girls” teacher whom we trained on rooftop gardens implementation & management. “Our urban pattern is challenging, the students living in the neighborhood are completely disconnected from nature”, she added.
The teachers have created rooftop gardening teams of interested students, where they get the chance to be reconnected to nature and learn more about how to produce their food within the boundaries of their neighborhood. They have learned new mechanisms of reviving the original function of this land in an innovative, environmentally responsible and contemporary way. They understand that this land has evolved long time ago to be agriculturally productive, and the aftermath of unprecedented urbanization should not stop them for seeking their rights to enjoy being around green spaces and learn how to locally grow their own food.
We want to change this persistent culture of environmental injustice that has accumulated over years. We want to create stewards taking the lead for a better and greener future.
The students deserve to understand the benefits of urban greenery and eventually have the chance to use it for their own benefits, that’s how we define stewardship in our city without acknowledging it as an understandable term on its own. Stewardship—Idaara in Arabic—is a classical translation for “supervision and management”. Teachers of Mattariya school for girls are stewards—or Environmental Managers if we wish to formulate it in English—who are passing the culture of rooftop community gardens to the new generations. They will one day not only apply it on their everyday activities, but create innovative approaches that improves the quality of life in such challenging living environment.
When I encountered the word “stewardship”, I instantly thought of the Colombian peasants, all those who save and protect seeds, food variety and biodiversity, without looking for anything in return.
Custodians of Life
In Spanish, the word stewardship has many translations: custodian, guardian, executor, administrator, caretaker, depository, protector, defender, keeper.
In this sense, the guardian of life is the one who takes care of something as if he had in his hands his own heart or his soul, he is the one who has the meaning of his own life, of his identity, of his culture.
When I was invited to take part in this reflection, I instantly thought of the Colombian peasants, all those who save and protect seeds, food variety and biodiversity, without looking for anything in return. They do it by conviction, as part of their own life, they have it rooted in their routine and in their sense of being.
So they say, “The seeds have no owner”, and question their marketing. Seeds are world heritage. In geographically isolated areas of Colombia, with social conflict trajectories, the tradition of saving seeds is part of existence. They call themselves “guardians of seeds”. In the tropical dry forest there are more than seventy peasant families for whom seeds represent powerful notions of solidarity economy, territorial rooting, renewal, identity, and cultural heritage. As Cristina Consuegra, an anthropologist and defender of agrifood heritage, points out, “this relationship of belonging, identity, and cultural memory symbolizes the very thread of people’s lives”, connecting them with the memories of their parents and grandparents. It is part of their family.
“My seeds, I adore them so much, I always look for the best place for them, for me, they are part of the family and they are my food”. — A woman from the village of Los Robles, Colombia.
Since 2002, in the department of Nariño, the Network of Life Seed Guardians began to be woven from the work of recovering seeds and crops in risk of extinction. The fundamental work of this network is focused on the conservation of native and creole seeds that are in danger of disappearing, through the rescue, preservation, promotion of sustainable use and consumption, and the transformation of food.
Besides the peasants, there are the so-called “neo-rural” groups, urban inhabitants who have migrated to the countryside with the conviction of having another consistent perspective with their principles of productivity, sustainability and family life. An example of this is a family that lives in the rural area of Bogotá, on the other side of the eastern hills of the city, who call themselves “family of the land, fruits of utopia” and seek to defend food diversity. They are the custodians of ancestral food and have rescued more than forty-five varieties of potatoes in spiral agroecology, traditional cultivation methods and prepare them with ancestral recipes, in one of the largest capitals of Latin America and humanity in general.
In the words of Jaime Aguirre: “we seek to rescue the biodiversity of the Andean edible seeds and to exchange with other agro-ecological brother processes; we aim to take care of seeds with love, dry them and cultivate them spiritually so that small farmers can continue «procreating» the land”; so that they can continue to be the guardians of life.
These are definitions obtained from the Network of Life Seed Guardians:
Guardián de semillas (Seed Guardian): the seed producer, who recovers, produces, conserves, investigates, selects and improves seeds in an agro-ecological context, shares them in a supportive and responsible way, and helps to dynamize their flow.
Semillistas (seedbed-ers): they are the future seed guardians, who are in the process of transition from conventional to agro-ecological agriculture. In the same way, they recover, produce and conserve seeds, without properly dynamize their flow.
Amigos de las semillas (Seed Friends): are people who help the network, making monetary donations or contributing with their work, from their profession, interest and energy, to the process of conservation and flow of seeds, without being producers themselves.
The custodians of life are all those who, through passion, conviction, a sense of identity and cultural memory, look after, guard and protect all expressions of life. The productivity of a country should be measured by its number of life custodians, which multiplies and promotes a deep transformation and rooting of the life identity in the regions.
References:
Consuegra, Cristina. “The thread of life: seeds and agri-food heritage”. University of the Andes. Department of Anthropology. Bulletin OPCA 10, Observatory of Cultural and Archaeological Heritage. April 2016. ISSN 2256-3139.
Gutiérrez, L. Seeds, common goods and food sovereignty. ” The Free Seed Network of Colombia” Available here.
Network of guardians of seeds of life Colombia “Sowing for the future”. July 1, 2016. Available here.
“I have the heart of my territory in my hands, I am its guardian. If I release it, it disintegrates”. Gabriela Villate, 9 years old. Photo: Diana Wiesner «Tengo el corazón de mi paisaje en mis manos, soy su guardiana. Si lo suelto, se desintegra». Gabriela Villate, 9 años. Foto: Diana Wiesner.Isabel, “custodio” de semillas, Rurality of Bogotá. Photo: Stefan Ortiz. Isabel, “custodio” de semillas, ruralidad de Bogotá. Foto: Stefan Ortiz.“Guardador” de semillas. Photo Andrés Estefan. Courtesy of Cristina Consuegra “Guardador” de semillas. Foto: El Salado Foto Andrés Estefan. Cortesía de Cristina ConsuegraNative potatoes. Photo: Stefan Ortiz. Courtesy of Cristina Consuegra Papas nativas, Usme. Foto: Stefan Ortiz. Cortesía de Cristina Consuegra
Custodios de la Vida
Cuando me encontré con la palabra “stewardship” en inglés, pensé instantáneamente en los campesinos colombianos, todos aquellos que guardan y protegen las semillas, la variedad de alimentos y la biodiversidad, sin buscar nada a cambio.
En el idioma español existen múltiples palabras que describen a un cuidador: custodio, guardián, albacea, administrador, depositario, protector, defensor, vigilante. Todos estos sinónimos nos sirven para designar a un «guardián de vida», que es quien prodiga cuidados como si tuviera en sus manos su propio corazón o su alma, es quien tiene el significado de su propia vida, de su identidad, de su cultura.
Cuando me invitaron a participar en esta reflexión, inmediatamente pensé en los campesinos de Colombia, en todos aquellos que guardan y protegen las semillas, la diversidad alimentaria y la biodiversidad, sin buscar nada a cambio. Ellos lo hacen por convicción, como parte de su propia vida, lo tienen enraizado en su rutina y en su sentido del ser. En cada región de Colombia a los guardianes se les llama de formas diversas: en Bogotá y su región se habla de custodios; en la costa son guardadores y en otras regiones cuidadores.
«Mis semillas, yo las adoro tanto, les busco siempre el mejor lugar, para mí, hacen parte de la familia y son mi alimento». Mujer de del Municipio de la Paz en la vereda los Robles. Cesar, Colombia.
Desde el año 2002, en el departamento de Nariño, se empezó a tejer la Red de Guardianes de Semillas de Vida a partir del trabajo de recuperación de semillas y cultivos en riesgo de extinción. La labor fundamental de la red está enfocada en la conservación de semillas nativas y criollas que están en peligro de desaparecer, a través del rescate, preservación, promoción del uso sostenible y consumo, y de la transformación de los alimentos.
Además de los campesinos, están los grupos denominados «neorurales», habitantes urbanos que han migrado al campo con la convicción de tener otra perspectiva coherente con sus principios de productividad, sostenibilidad y vida familiar. Ejemplo de ello es una familia que vive en la zona rural de Bogotá, al otro lado de los cerros orientales de la ciudad, que se autodenominan «familia de la tierra, frutos de la utopía» y buscan la defensa de la diversidad alimentaria. Son los custodios de los alimentos ancestrales y han rescatado más de cuarenta y cinco variedades de papas en agroecología en forma de espiral, métodos de cultivo tradicionales y las preparan con recetas ancestrales, uno de los mayores capitales que tienen América Latina y la humanidad en general.
En las palabras de Jaime Aguirre, cabeza de familia de la tierra: «buscamos rescatar la biodiversidad de semillas alimentarias de los Andes e intercambiar con otros procesos agroecológicos hermanos; buscamos cuidar las semillas con amor, secarlas y cultivarlas espiritualmente para que los pequeños agricultores puedan seguir “procreando” la tierra».
Definiciones obtenidas de la Red de Guardianes de Semillas de Vida:
Guardián de semillas: es el productor de semillas, quien las recupera, produce, conserva, investiga, selecciona y mejora en un contexto agroecológico, las comparte de manera solidaria y responsable, y ayuda a dinamizar su flujo.
Semillistas:son los futuros guardianes de semillas, que se encuentran en proceso de transición de la agricultura convencional a la agroecológica. De igual forma, recuperan, producen y conservan las semillas, sin dinamizar propiamente su flujo.
Amigos de las semillas:son personas que ayudan a la red, haciendo donaciones en dinero o aportando con su trabajo, desde su profesión, interés y energía, al proceso de conservación y flujo de las semillas, sin ser propiamente productores de las mismas.
Los custodios de la vida son todos aquellos que desde la pasión, la convicción, el sentimiento de identidad y la memoria cultural cuidan, guardan y protegen todas las expresiones de vida. La productividad de un país debería medirse por su cantidad de custodios de vida, lo que multiplica y promueve una transformación profunda y el enraizamiento de la identidad de vida en las regiones.
Referencias:
Consuegra, Cristina. «El hilo de la vida: semillas y patrimonio agroalimentario». Universidad de los Andes. Departamento de Antropología. Boletín OPCA 10, Observatorio del Patrimonio Cultural y Arqueológico. Abril de 2016. ISSN 2256-3139.
Gutiérrez, L. Semillas, bienes comúnes y soberanía alimentaria. «La Red de Semillas Libres de Colombia». Disponible aqui.
Red de guardianes de semillas de vida Colombia. «Sembrando para el futuro». Julio 1.º de 2016. Disponible aqui.
Heather McMillen is the Urban & Community Forester with the Hawaiʻi Department of Land & Natural Resources.
Heather McMillen, Kirk Deitschman
Aloha ʻĀina, stewardship in Hawaiʻi
What is aloha ʻāina? Alo (face) and hā (breath) = aloha, to exchange breath with another being, the essence of reciprocity. Aloha is also love, affection, compassion. ʻĀina encompasses everything living.
Aloha mai kākou! Affectionate greetings to you all. We are part of Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, an intensive professional development training program in Hawaiʻi lifeways—of which stewardship is an embedded element—for developing the capacity of conservation and natural resource professionals in Hawaiʻi (Kealiikanakaoleohaililani et al. 2018). A hālau (literally “many breaths”) is a space of learning; ʻōhiʻa (“to gather”) are ecologically and culturally the most important native trees in Hawaiʻi (Metrosideros spp., Myrtaceae). Through Hālau ʻŌhiʻa we are learning to treat each other, our places, and all living beings like ʻohana (family). (See a previous post.) In doing so, we are learning how to steward relationships within ourselves, with our places, and with our communities.
Our understanding of stewardship is grounded in the Hawaiian concept of ʻāina. ‘Āina is land, sea, and all biotic/abiotic elements and processes. It is also sometimes translated as “that which feeds” because it nurtures the spirit and the body. People are in reciprocal relationships with ʻāina as part of an integrated system. In Hawaiian there is no word for “nature” as an entity that is separate from people. The proverb “I ola ʻoe, i ola mākou nei” underscores our interdependence. It means: your life depends on mine, and my life depends on yours. When you thrive, we thrive. We see that these concepts are foundational to aloha ʻāina, an ancient concept that we understand as stewardship.
What is aloha ʻāina? Alo (face) and hā (breath) = aloha, to exchange breath with another being, the essence of reciprocity. Aloha is also love, affection, compassion. ʻĀina, as described above, encompasses everything living. Through Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, we (the authors) have deepened our understanding of aloha ʻāina and our kinship to ʻāina. We recognize genealogical ties to ʻāina (i.e., I am connected to this mountain as much as I am to my maternal grandmother), and we care for the ʻāina as we would a dear family member (i.e., by protecting her). This is true for those of us born here and not, because we all drink the water and breathe the air of Hawaiʻi. The proverb: “I nā mālama ‘oe i ka ‘āina, na ka ‘āina malama iā ‘oe,” tells us if you take care of the ‘āina, she will take care of you. The opposite is also true, if we neglect the ʻāina, we will be neglected. The practice and process of aloha ʻāina requires pilina (relationship), in this case, relationships among people and place.
Aloha ʻāina is embodied in the protection of Maunakea (also Mauna Kea or Mauna a Wākea, “mountain of Wākea”, sky deity and ancestor of all Hawaiians). Since July 2019, kiaʻi (protectors or guardians) have occupied the sacred mountain in efforts to prevent further development for telescopes, specifically a telescope that would be 18 stories tall and 30 meters in diameter on an 8-acre footprint in a fragile, rare, subalpine ecosystem. This movement is based in aloha ʻāina and kapu aloha (multidimensional practice of compassion and peaceful consciousness for all especially for those perceived to have oppositional intentions). In the last three months as we have all held space—physically by being on the Mauna and also spiritually as we stay connected to the Mauna at home—we have all felt the cultural and cognitive shift being ignited across Hawaiʻi and around the globe. The momentum has energized and informed other communities to protect places from development and desecration, to promote opportunities to nurture pilina with ʻāina and with each other. The movement to protect Maunakea has become a reference point for aloha ʻāina and healing in Hawaiʻi and worldwide.
View from piko (center) of kiaʻi activity based at the kūpuna (elder) tent. Puʻuhuluhulu is the hill in the background. Photo (July 2019): Natalie Kurashima)
Kirk loves all aspects of Hawai'i. Throughout his life he has always been involved in uplifting and supporting communities of Hawai'i. His other passion is to continue to learn about the natural resources of Hawai'i and join the efforts to support and protect these important resources.
Lindsay K. Campbell is a research social scientist with the USDA Forest Service. Her current research explores the dynamics of urban politics, stewardship, and sustainability policymaking.
Lindsay Campbell, Erika Svendsen, Michelle Johnson
Stewardship is not the same as ownership—but it does mean taking ownership of your place, voice, and power in the world. We aim to show that all of us have a stake in caring for our local environments, whether we own any inch of ground or not.
Stewardship is far from a commonplace word in American English. However, it is invoked with some frequency in the context of natural resource management, often drawing upon historical roots going back to colonial settlement. The numerous indigenous peoples of the Americas have deep and diverse relations of caretaking and reciprocity with the natural world that we first want to acknowledge. In 1949, Aldo Leopold perhaps most famously invoked a theologically rooted “land ethic” through which humans have a moral responsibility to the land. Continuing the progressive utilitarian approach of Gifford Pinchot, our own agency, the USDA Forest Service, cares for the land on behalf of a “greater good”. On all United States lands, particularly National Forests and Grasslands, our agency is working toward a vision of “Shared Stewardship” with multiple stakeholders.
Our work as Forest Service researchers at the NYC Urban Field Station has aimed to advance the scholarship and practice of urban environmental stewardship, with a focus on the role of civic groups. We understand stewardship to consist of both caretaking for and claims-making on the environment. Anyone can have a personal experience of being a steward through acts of hands-on work, engagement in advocacy, expressions of love, and transformation of systems—and we’ve begun gathering personal accounts of people’s stewardship stories from all over the world. These narratives range from cherished memories, to everyday occurrences, to sparks that started social movements. To add your own story to the map, go here!
We have found that individuals rarely engage in stewardship alone—and often it takes the form of local civic engagement. Many stewardship groups start from a shared experience of friends or neighbors—out of a desire to improve a local community, restore something that was lost, or create something new. And there is incredible power in these civic groups, power that we have aimed to make more visible by mapping groups’ territories and networks through STEW-MAP.
Why a map?In our market-driven American society we have a finely honed sense of private property; public agencies have a clear sense of the lands that they manage and where their jurisdiction lies. But how do we visualize and map the role of the “third” sector, or the civic realm that also shapes so much of our governance and our green and grey environments? Stewardship is not the same as ownership—but it does mean taking ownership of your place, voice, and power in the world. And by mapping stewardship, we are attempting to level the playing field a bit—to show that all of us have a stake in caring for our local environments, whether we own any inch of ground or not.
Graphic depiction of stewardship groups’ territories, based on responses to STEW-MAP survey. Stewardship site types range across the green, blue, and built environment and exist at scales from window box to watershed. Image created by Pratt SAVI using STEW-MAP NYC 2017 data.
Dr. Erika Svendsen is a social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station and is based in New York City. Erika studies environmental stewardship and issues related to hybrid governance, collective resilience and human well-being.
Emilio Fantin is an artist working in Italy on multidisciplinary research.
He teaches at the Politecnico, Architecture, University of Milan, and acts as coordinator of the “Osservatorio Public Art”.
Emilio Fantin
La Stewardship è una strategia di gestione responsabile che introduce un principio etico dell’uso delle risorse. (Stewardship is a responsible management strategy that introduces an ethical principle of resource use.)
“Stewardship,” una parola, molte applicazioni. Il termine anglosassone stewardship non è traducibile con un corrispettivo italiano, ma letteralmente significa: “gestione etica (responsabile) delle risorse”. Quali risorse? I beni comuni come l’acqua, il territorio, le foreste, la salute, le persone, i risparmi e i prodotti. (Stewardship, one word, many applications. The Anglo-Saxon term “stewardship” cannot be translated with an Italian equivalent, but it literally means: “ethical (responsible) management of resources”. Which resources? Common goods such as water, land, forests, health, people, savings and products.)
Stewardship is an ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources. The concepts of stewardship can be applied to environment and nature, economics, health, property, information, theology, etc.
I have selected from the Net, three definitions of stewardship, two of them in Italian and one in English.
Only through an autonomous process of consciousness—suggested by the word stewardship—can we share the sacredness which lays behind human nature. It is not a matter of thinking about which future disasters will kill us, or whether we will destroy the entire planet, but rather a matter of acting on the true sense of our relationship with the existence of life around us.
All of them refer to the word Ethics, which can be defined in different ways but, in general, it refers to actions by human beings, in relation to all living organisms, human and not human, things and objects. Ethics is constituted by a set of values which arises from the relationship between culture and nature and it concerns human beings consciousness.
These values are applied to the idea of good and more specifically, collectively speaking, of common good. Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is the branch of philosophy which addresses to questions of morality. But terms such as “strategia di gestione” (management strategy) or management of resources sound to me like terms which do not belong to philosophy or morality humanistic sphere. There is a big discussion about language, because specific words can be related to concepts which assume different meanings from the original ones, especially when these words do not originate in their own field but they are imported from other cultural spheres.
That is the case with words like “management strategy”, which evidently come from both economic, business, and military lexicons. I know they are commonly used in many other disciplines, but that doesn’t mean that they are properly used. “Stewardship of resources”, from my point of view, has to do primary with the word “care”, which means love put love into practice. If we intend the meaning of the words “stewardship of resources” as the result of a strategy, or we think that it concerns a hierarchical management structure, we reduce it to an abstract concept and we significantly diminish the possibility of a positive result. By-taking care of resources, we intend to individually develop a profound relationship with all resources and common goods such as: water, air, green, food, human beings, soil or animals. It means to understand the essential quality of a particular status, form and way of being of all these elements, their esthetics and functions. It means to respect them in the same way we respect ourselves. That’s it. Because by taking care of them, we reconnect ourselves to a horizon which doesn’t comprehend finalized aims or strategic attitude but a true form of love.
A strong movement of transformation can take place whenever each part of a whole starts to act autonomously, instead of following a common direction or strategy. Only through an autonomous process of consciousness—suggested by the word stewardship—can we share the sacredness which lays behind human nature. It is not a matter of thinking about which future disasters will kill us, or if we will be able to destroy the entire planet, but rather a matter of discovering the true sense of our relationship with the existence of life around us.
Carlo is the Department Head of the City Environment and Natural Resources Office of Puerto Princesa City Government.
Carlo Gomez, Zorina Colasero, Romina Magtanong
The CommunityAct Program encourages the engagement of the community and other stakeholders in various tree planting and environmental activities and to be stewards of their environment. In the case of the City’s Balayong Park—also known as People’s Park—interested individuals and groups were given the opportunity to adopt Balayong Trees, and receive responsibilities and certificates for doing so.
Stewardship is known as “Pangangalaga” in Filipino, from the root word “alaga” which means CARE. It is just but normal for somebody to care or manage properly the things that have value to him/her.
“Stewardship” is one of the strategies/approaches used by the Philippine Government in managing the natural resources of the country. It is making the qualified interested group/individuals as partners in managing properly the particular timberland areas by giving them authority/permits through issuance of appropriate tenurial instrument such as Certificate of Stewardship Contract (CSC)—(individual/family), and Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA) (community/peoples’ organization).
Awarding/issuance of tenurial instruments comes with responsibilities that the beneficiaries/stewards should do to ensure that the area and the resources within the awarded timberland are properly managed with the perception that they own it.
The City of Puerto Princesa conducted various tree planting and other environmental activities in the past, but it was observed that the participants of those activities just come and go and didn’t mind what happens next.
This is the main reason for conceptualizing CommunityAct Program. The Program encourages the engagement of the community and other stakeholders in various tree planting and environmental activities and to be STEWARDS of their environment.
On the other hand, i-Tree Tool, a tree inventory tool developed by US Forest Service to quantify ecosystem services provided by trees, promotes Stewardship since the tool can change how people value trees. People will not only value trees for the lumber they can provide but also for the ecosystem services as well. Such information will give them more reason to be stewards of the trees in their areas.
In the case of the City’s Balayong Park—also known as People’s Park, where “Stewardship” was first applied in tree planting and environmental activities—interested individuals and groups were given the opportunity and/or privilege to adopt Balayong Trees; they were given Stewardship Certificate as a proof of tree adoption.
As stewards of the Balayong trees they have planted, they have the responsibility to ensure that their adopted trees will survive and grow well. Stewardship develops sense of ownership to the trees they have adopted. In addition, STEW mapping activities in Balayong Park is on-going.
Nathalie Blanc works as a Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research. She is a pioneer of ecocriticism in France. Her recent book is Form, Art, and Environment: engaging in sustainability, by Routledge in 2016.
The good of my well-being is connected to the protection of irreplaceable beautiful environment. The good of my well-being is also connected to my participation in a common good, resisting public policies or human behavior that is destructive.
The term stewardship, difficult to translate into French, essentially refers to the idea of being responsible for one’s environment. This includes responding to any damage to the integrity of the latter. Many authors speak of stewardship to describe collective movements that are defined by this relationship to the environment. These groups enrich the environment by maintaining its eco-sociosystemic integrity, but are also defined by their activity as a group in a given territory.
In this round table, I would like to propose extending the use of the term to much more ordinary forms of engagement in the environment, generally based on a lively sensitivity to the state of the latter, or even to not distinguish between the maintenance of human bodies in the environment and the health of this environment itself, modifying or even abandoning, thereby the use of the term “environment”.
The term “stewardship” is therefore likely to be based not only on a commitment to the environment, but also on the idea of its transformation. The objects created, the environments produced, the elements of nature reconfigured in the light of new perspectives, notably in terms of urban planning, are all potential indicators of a transformation of the environment and of people in time and space. In addition, taking care of the objects of the environment made sensitive, active for oneself and loved ones, so that they persist or that, at least, the value that one recognizes to them recurring, supposes to think about the modalities of factors of the environment, but also to the aesthetic and ethical theories that govern this care.
In fact, the aesthetic is crossed right through by the dimensions of the social and the cultural; it promotes, among other things, empathy, the recognition of a relationship between an environment and/or an object therein, and a feeling of pleasure, of self-recognition or of the collectives involved. One of the feelings that this relationship with others and the environment gives rise to is that of protection and the desire to reproduce its sources. These two desires and/or needs are related to the idea of ethics, which, as G. Agamben (2003) explains, is the sphere that knows neither fault nor responsibility, the sphere of the happy life. “Recognizing fault and responsibility is tantamount to leaving the sphere of ethics and entering into that of law”[i].
Engaging in stewardship projects requires us to recognize successes and failures in this area as well as life and death in the environment related to the free will of human beings. How to engage with and in the environment, invest fully, i. e. aesthetically, a living environment, to promote its image in the present and the future, is part of an ethics of “care”. Stewardship is about recognizing what is due to material and social vulnerabilities, the natural and cultural construct, the extraordinary beauties and violence of life, and the possibility of its disappearance. More simply, it is a question of highlighting—it is henceforth indispensable—elements of finiteness of human lives, animal and vegetal lives, of what they rely on to create life, in order to develop an ethic that integrates the environment as relational proximity, as being of the order of an objective concern. It is the impossibility of an overcoming in the manner humans know—that is to say, by the predation of other regions of the world, or other natural resources, or by the exhaustion of those present, or the extinction of a civilization. But an aesthetic reading of the environment predisposes to a prior concern, then corollary of the action towards it. It dramatically changes the perception of the environment’s agency; it creates new opportunities for relocating responsibility for what happens to it.
So, from an ethical point of view, we can’t deny the role of the environment in the sense of what surrounds us, or what the ecological question has produced in terms of a collective representation of the environment. The good of my well-being is identified in particular with the protection of this irreplaceable singularity that represents the beautiful object (or the beautiful environment)[ii] . The good of my well-being is also identified in the idea of participation in a common good in resistance also proactive and positive action to public policies or to human behavior that can be described as destructive. In this sense, the action to be taken is that exemplified by the good of my well-being in the continued adequacy to living conditions. Therefore we could use the word of « intendance » to translate stewardship but being related to nobility, it may raise suspicions, so we may as well behold on the english term.
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Le bien de mon bien-être est lié à la protection d’un environnement d’une beauté irremplaçable. Le bien de mon bien-être est aussi lié à ma participation à un bien commun, à la résistance aux politiques publiques ou à un comportement humain destructeur.
Le terme de stewardship, difficilement traduisible en français, renvoie essentiellement à l’idée de se montrer responsable à l’égard de son environnement. Il s’agit notamment de répondre en cas de dommage ou d’atteinte à l’intégrité de ce dernier. De nombreux auteurs parlent de stewardship pour qualifier des mouvements collectifs qui se définissent par ce rapport à l’environnement. Ces groupes enrichissent l’environnement en maintenant son intégrité éco-sociosystémique, mais se définissent également par leur activité en tant que groupe sur un territoire donné.
J’aimerais, dans le cadre de cette table ronde, proposer d’élargir l’usage du terme à des formes beaucoup plus ordinaires d’engagement dans l’environnement, se fondant, généralement, sur une sensibilité vive à l’état de ce dernier, voire qui ne font pas de distinction entre le maintien des corps humains dans l’environnement et la santé de cet environnement lui-même, invalidant, de ce fait-même l’emploi du terme « environnement ».
Le terme de stewardship, dès lors, repose non seulement sur un engagement à l’égard de l’environnement, mais aussi sur l’idée de sa transformation. Les objets créés, les environnements produits, les éléments de nature reconfigurés à l’aune de nouvelles perspectives en matière d’aménagement ou d’urbanisme sont autant de signes annonciateurs d’une transformation des environnements et des individus et collectifs dans le temps et l’espace. En outre, prendre soin des objets de l’environnement rendu sensible, actif pour soi et des proches, afin qu’ils perdurent ou que, tout au moins, la valeur qu’on leur reconnaît se reproduise suppose de réfléchir aux modalités de fabrique de l’environnement, mais également aux théories esthétiques et éthiques qui gouvernent cette prise en charge. En effet, l’esthétique est traversée de part en part par les dimensions du social et de la culture ; elle promeut notamment l’empathie, la reconnaissance d’une relation entre un environnement et/ou un objet qui s’y trouve et un sentiment de plaisir, de reconnaissance de soi-même ou des collectifs impliqués. L’un des sentiments que fait naître cette relation à autrui et à l’environnement est celui de protection et de désir de reproduction de ce qui en est à l’origine. Ces deux désirs et/ ou besoins sont liés à l’idée d’éthique qui, comme l’explique G. Agamben (2003) est la sphère qui ne connaît ni faute, ni responsabilité, la sphère de la vie heureuse. « Reconnaître une faute et une responsabilité revient à quitter la sphère de l’éthique pour pénétrer dans celle du droit » [iii].
S’engager dans des projets d ‘«intendance» exige que nous reconnaissions les succès et échec en la matière ainsi que la vie et la mort dans l’environnement en lien avec le libre arbitre des êtres humains. En quoi s’engager dans l’environnement, investir pleinement, i. e. esthétiquement, un milieu de vie, en promouvoir l’image au présent et au futur, participe d’une éthique du « care », traduit par « soin » ou « attention », qui met l’accent sur le souci du proche et de la proximité, l’attention au singulier. Il s’agit de reconnaître ce qui est dû aux vulnérabilités matérielle et sociale, au construit naturel et culturel, aux beautés et violences extraordinaires de la vie, et à la possibilité de sa disparition. Plus simplement, il s’agit de mettre en évidence – c’est désormais indispensable – des éléments de finitude des vies humaines, des vies animales et végétales, de ce sur quoi elles s’appuient pour se créer une vie, afin de développer une éthique intégrant l’environnement comme proximité relationnelle, comme étant de l’ordre d’une préoccupation objective. C’est l’impossibilité d’un dépassement à la manière que nous connaissons, c’est-à-dire par la prédation d’autres régions du monde, ou d’autres ressources naturelles, ou par l’épuisement de celles présentes, ou l’extinction d’une civilisation.
Or la lecture esthétique de l’environnement prédispose à un souci préalable, puis corollaire de l’action à son égard ; elle change dramatiquement la perception de l’agentivité de ce dernier ; elle crée de nouvelles opportunités quant à la relocalisation des responsabilités quant à ce qui lui arrive. Donc, il ne peut être question du point de vue d’une éthique de méconnaître l’environnement, au sens de ce qui nous environne, ni même ce que ce que la question écologique a produit du point de vue d’une représentation collective de ce dernier. Le bien de mon bien-être s’identifie notamment à la protection de cette singularité irremplaçable que représente le bel objet (ou le bel environnement) [iv]. Le bien de mon bien-être s’identifie également dans l’idée de participation à un bien commun en résistance à des politiques publiques ou à des conduites humaines que l’on peut qualifier de déprédatrices. En ce sens, l’action à conduire est celle qu’exemplifie le bien de mon bien-être dans l’adéquation poursuivie à des conditions de vie. Par conséquent, nous pourrions utiliser le terme «intendance» pour traduire «stewardship» mais, étant lié à la noblesse, cela peut éveiller les soupçons. Nous pouvons donc aussi bien utiliser le terme anglais.
Notes:
[i] Agamben, G. (2003). Ce qui reste d’Auschwitz. Paris: Payot Rivages, 25.
[ii] Breviglieri, M., Trom, D. (2003). Troubles et tensions en milieu urbain. Les épreuves citadines et habitants de la ville. In D. Cefai et D. Pasquier (Eds), Le sens du public: Publics politiques et médiatiques (pp. 399-416). Paris: PUF.
[iii] Agamben, G. (2003). Ce qui reste d’Auschwitz. Paris: Payot Rivages, 25.
[iv] Breviglieri, M., Trom, D. (2003). Troubles et tensions en milieu urbain. Les épreuves citadines et habitants de la ville. In D. Cefai et D. Pasquier (Eds), Le sens du public: Publics politiques et médiatiques (pp. 399-416). Paris: PUF.
Johan Enqvist is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the African Climate and Development Initiative at University of Cape Town and Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. He wants to know what makes people care.
Johan Enqvist
In Swedish, “Ta hand om” is a common phrase usually translated as “taking care of”; the literal meaning, is more like “taking in your hand”. “Ta hand om naturen” communicates both an individual responsibility to be careful with nature, but also the shared effort of joining hands to achieve in the interest of our co-dependency on nature.
Put your hand around nature
Writing this text was surprisingly valuable to me, and taught me new things about something that I had spent five years of PhD research investigating. After dissecting three words that I thought would together cover the meaning of stewardship—a word with no direct translation in Swedish—I have ended up instead focusing on the expression that I best think captures the notion of “actively taking care of things we care about”.
First, three Swedish meanings of stewardship. Förvaltning generally means management or custodianship, caring for something valuable on behalf of someone else. Most often it is used to describe some part of Sweden’s public administration and bureaucracy, which is meant to run the country for the benefit of the population according to the elected government. Skötsel describes the more everyday activity of taking care of a piece of land, livestock, crops, machinery, or facilities, but also one’s own health or general conduct. The verb sköta version can also refer to temporarily caring for someone else’s children, household, or business interests, temporarily while they are unable to do so. Skötsel implies moral imperative or duty, and professionalism and expertise rather than care or compassion. Vård refers to a nursing kind of care, usually for someone or something (animate or inanimate) that is harmed, sick, aging or exhausted and needs to heal, recover, or receive palliative care. Vården is generally used to describe the health care sector as a whole. An older meaning is to watch over something, like a guard-post, beacon, monument, or a guardian spirits or angels.
None of these words explicitly refer to nature (natur) or the environment (miljö), but all can do so by adding prefixes: Miljöförvaltning is a common name for municipalities’ environmental departments; naturskötsel and miljövård typically refer to activities to maintain and restore natural systems. However, there is a sense of empowerment and bottom-up aspect of stewardship that is lacking in these terms; the commitment that comes from working with something you are personally invested in.
Ta hand om is a very common phrase usually translated as “taking care of”. The literal meaning, difficult to capture in English, is more like “taking in your hand” or “putting your hand around”. It carries notions both of taking responsibility, expressing care and compassion, and making things happen to achieve results. Ta hand om varandra, “look after each other”, is something you affectionately say to an older child left alone with younger siblings, a newlywed couple embarking on a new chapter, or dear friends that leave behind when moving abroad—especially if either party is particularly vulnerable or in need of healing. Ta hand omnaturen communicates both an individual responsibility to be careful with nature, but also the shared effort of joining hands to achieve change (societal, behavioural, cultural) in the interest of our co-dependency on nature. Importantly, the idea of your hand directly applied to nature—even greeting it, “shaking its hand” as ta i hand translates to—also gives a sense of connectedness, of embodied care as opposed to the bureaucratic or professionalised meanings of förvaltning or skötsel. When that connection is established, when we can know the importance of nature, the need to ta hand om it. It is what you do for a heartbroken friend or a neglected houseplant, and it is what we ought to do with the environment more broadly. The metaphor of the hand even provides a helpful way of thinking of the different steps involved: in the friendly greeting and familiarisation, the hearty embrace and commitment, the concrete action and manual labour—and perhaps also, in symbol of the raised fist, a more transformative struggle to overhaul unsustainable societal and economic structures.
Kevin Lunzalu is a young conservation leader from Nairobi, Kenya. Through his work, Lunzalu strives to strike a balance between environmental conservation and humanity. He strongly believes in the power of innovative youth-led solutions to drive the global sustainability agenda. Kevin is the country coordinator the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network.
Kevin Lunzalu
In day-to-day local applications, stewardship is also used to mean a guardian, a servant, and an agent. In rural villages where farming is predominant, farmers are regarded as stewards of their lands, farm animals, and produce.
In the Kenyan context, stewardship is a word that has many derivatives, all of which allude to nearly the same meaning and application. In Swahili, which is the national language for Kenya and which is spoken by nearly all the 44 tribes and 47 Counties, a raw translation of the term stewardship gives Uwakili, meaning being an advocate of. “Wakili” is an adjective coined from the noun Wakili which means an advocate. Another word, Wakilisha translates to represent, as it is in the case of a lawyer appearing before the court of law in place of their client.
Steward is also widely implied to a manager or person in charge. In local Swahili context, the term Msimamizi is in this case used, instead of Wakili. Good examples include Msimamizi wa hali ya hewa (air steward), Msimamizi wa duka (shop steward), and Msimamizi Mkuu (chief steward). In this regard, the steward is directly in charge and answerable to their respective areas of jurisdiction. Stewardship is also used to depict leadership.
As a largely religious country, Kenya’s faithfuls regularly use the term and execute stewardship in their contexts. In Christianity, for example, the Bible depicts Jesus Christ as the steward of the Church, with practical incidences in which He takes care of his flock and looks out for his lost sheep. Christians believe that Jesus is their leader, and they walk in His footsteps. In essence, the word “Christian” is a direct derivative of the term “Christ”, who is the Biblical head of the church. Furthermore, Christians are mandated to “Pro-create” and take care of all the creatures that God created. In Islam, Prophet Mohammed is another supreme being who is largely associated with the ethical stewardship and growth of the religion. Christians and Muslims in Kenya and by extension the world, are taught to live by the teachings of the Bible and the Quran, the respective Holy books that are expected to guide them.
In day-to-day local applications, stewardship is also used to mean a guardian, a servant, and an agent. In rural villages where farming is predominant, farmers are regarded as stewards of their lands, farm animals, and produce. On the other hand, in cities such as Nairobi, people are employed to take care of businesses, government and private property. Think of security officers, human resource managers, chefs, cleaners, gardeners, civil servants, and many other professions—they are all in-charge of a certain jurisdiction. In some cases, stewardship is also viewed as a specialization, with a certain level of understanding, professionalism, set of skills, experience, and abilities expected of the persons in question.
The mantle of stewardship can be passed down from one generation to another. In Maasai cultural setups in Kenya, sons are trained by their fathers on proper livestock techniques while mothers instill homestead management skills to their daughters. Since they are pastoralists, the Maasai people move with hundreds of heads of cattle from one place to another in search of pasture and water. The young boys are, in essence, taught proper stewardship of the cattle—livestock is a highly precious aspect of the family unit and a symbol of wealth. When they become of age, the young boys and girls are initiated into adulthood through a rite of passage in which they are taught how to take care of families and execute husband and wife duties responsibly. In more formal setups such as workplaces, handing over ceremonies depict the same aspect.
Stewardship elements also came out strongly in the olden Kenyan justice systems. Before colonization and subsequent independence that came with the current court systems, the commonly used traditional method of solving conflict and crime cases was through the jury system. In this case, the accused persons were presented before a council of elders who would listen to both the accused and the accuser, and in some cases witnesses, before making a final verdict on whether the person was guilty or innocent of the claims placed against them. The council of elders in this regard were stewards of the principles of the communities and guarded the moral values considered to be acceptable in society.
In ancient times, communities peacefully co-existed with nature. The Maasai and Ogiek people of Kenya are perfect examples, as their lives directly depended on the sustainability of forests and wildlife. While the Maasai exclusively practiced pastoralism and hunted wild animals for food, the Ogiek lived inside forests, depending directly on them for livelihood. This instilled a sense of conservation awakening and environmental stewardship. Well, until modern conservation happened.
Beatriz Ruizpalacios is a PhD student in Sustainability Science in Mexico City. She has worked with different communities in urban and rural settings facilitating sustainable development processes.
Beatriz Ruizpalacios
Stewardship means nurturing a thing or a place and the relationship we keep with it. We become responsible, and in turn the thing is a repository of our affection and care. There is no particular word for this kind of stewardship, but we prefer to use verbs that emphasize our responsibility and agency: Cuidar, Proteger.
Stewardship is a diffuse concept. We don’t have a specific translation into Spanish, at least not in Mexico.
Many governmental and private programs promote stewardship as being guardians of the environment. Stewards in protected natural areas are hired as park rangers encouraged to enforce regulations and communicate biodiversity and environmental services highlights to visitors. In many protected areas park rangers are residents whose traditional livelihoods depended on the use of natural resources. As the area was declared a protected area and regulations were implemented to control biodiversity use and change in land cover, the residents were considered problematic in formal conservation efforts, so they were offered jobs as park rangers, known in Mexico as “guarda parques”.
Another embodiment of stewardship is promoted by companies with outreach programs that involve their employees and neighbors in conservations efforts. Reforestation is a favorite because it gathers families, friends, and co-workers in collective outdoor activities that last a full day and offer the opportunity to reconnect with nature and strengthen community ties. Participants are encouraged to become defenders or guardians of trees and forests and hence of nature, while reclaiming public spaces and a sense of community and belonging. At the end of the day, these “guardianes de la naturaleza” go back home knowing they are part of a bigger movement that aims at building a better world for all species to thrive.
When we talk about the personal sphere, however, as civilians with personal initiatives in our community or family members in a household, stewardship entails a personal relationship with specific things. It becomes a one-to-one relationship with things that we are interested in, that we like, that we are fond of, that carry part of our history, and which we wish to preserve. In these intimate environments, stewardship means nurturing a plant or a place and the relationship we keep with it. We become responsible for its continuity and wellbeing and in turn the thing is a repository of our affection and care. It becomes part of our daily routine and something worth our energy and money. There is no particular word for this kind of stewardship, but we prefer to use verbs to describe the relationship emphasizing our agency and the subject in diminutive form, which expresses our affection towards it: “Yo cuido a mis plantitas”, which in English would be translated as “I take care of my little plants.” It is a personal relationship of ownership and responsibility of something tangible based on interests, personal experience and memory, and that derives into a relationship of obligation towards its welfare.
When I’ve talked to people in Mexico City about how they engage in stewardship actions, they are always careful to make the distinction between participating in activities promoted by the government, private companies, or large NGOs, from those they carry out as a hobby or personal interest by themselves. There is a growing interest in participating in community gardens, however, that works as an extension of their personal spheres and connects people to a larger community. These settings are a combination of guardians of nature and carers of plants they own, linking the sense of engaging in community and even planetary actions while still keeping personal relationships with things they can see grow. Whenever I mention the word ecoguardas or guardianes de la naturaleza, they associate it with specific activities and initiatives or need further explanation of what I mean. So far, we haven’t come up with any particular word that we agree upon and that fully expresses the care we put into things. The formality of the words most commonly used still lack the personal touch and endearing relationship that taking care of something really means. This makes me think that the conversation about being agents who can influence the world at different scales through care is just beginning.
Xin Yu (aka Fish) is Shenzhen Conservation Director and Youth Engagement Director of The Nature Conservancy China Program. Since 2017, he has overseen TNC’s first City project in Shenzhen, China, focusing on Sponge City
Xin Yu (aka Fish)
In China, “stewardship” seems to be a word related more to rural conservation, and its core idea of “taking care” embeds an emotional tie to the object, connecting to us equally. The relationship becomes much weaker and passive in an urban context.
Stewardship in Chinese and my work
My environmental NGO career has mostly taken place in urban China since 2006, previously as a campaigner in Beijing and then in Shenzhen as an urban conservationist with The Nature Conservancy. When I started thinking about “stewardship” in the Chinese language, I recalled that this word hasn’t been used much in my daily work in English communication. So, in order to help make sure my contribution brings broader understanding on the term, I asked several colleagues of mine who have worked much longer in rural China. Here is some interesting feedback I heard back.
Bob (Asia Pacific Cities Program Director): I remember having a discussion with TNC China staff about the meaning of stewardship almost 20 years ago. And it was used a lot in TNC in those days. For example, the old science department was called Science and Stewardship for many years. As I remember, the straight translation was “management” in Chinese, as in nature reserve management. That was the simplest way to translate it and I think that is what we mostly used. That’s my historical perspective.
Bo (Shanghai Conservation Director): I still remember the first time we met people from the Alliance for Water Stewardship, and I asked Bob what’s the meaning of stewardship. It was almost two years ago. After that, there has been no more chance to use the word with others. It is really a kind of challenge to give a nice and proper Chinese translation. Is this the same challenge for “city with nature” or “nature-based solution”?
Yue (Strategy & Planning Director): I think “stewardship” means two things in general: sustainable use and care. The specific translation for the term depends on the context. For instance, we usually say rangers carry out stewardship programs. In this case, it means 管护，management and protection. We also say environmental stewardship is everyone’s responsibility. In this case, it means 维护/保护, care/protection. We say the park has a citizen steward group, in this case, it means 守护, care/safeguard. Water stewardship should be in this category.
Lulu (Hong Kong Conservation Director): I personally understand stewardship as “to take care of something/some people/some place”. We often say at TNC we do our best to cultivate local stewardship by empowering local people, which is really to ensure people to take care of their natural environment after they understand the dependent relationship people have with nature.
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It seems to me that “stewardship” is a word related more to rural conservation, and its core idea of “taking care” embeds an emotional tie to the object, such as land, water and wildlife. We think they are connecting to us equally, as if everyone has a share of them. Nevertheless, the relationship becomes much weaker and passive in an urban context. People do not easily carry a feeling of responsibility about the built environment because it is always with a legal possessor, e.g. developers take the land, rich people buy building units, greening space is under property management, parks are managed by a park service… Urban residents use the term “protection” more frequently due to the urgency of their built environment being damaged. But passionately taking care of something (assumedly) owned by another party? Hardly a common phenomenon of urban mentality in today’s China.
The subtle difference between wildness stewardship and environmental protection reveals an essential effort of my daily work. We keep trying not only to lift the importance of biodiversity in the city environment—people have yet to recognize it as a basic need—but also to cultivate or recapture a citizenship where everyone has a stake in their city.
It is imperative that a transdisciplinary approach that acknowledges disciplinary assumptions and boundaries to transcend them is supported. For example between managers, planners, designers, developers, residents, policymakers and researchers.
Human relationships with nature are highly complex and variable. Particularly now when the human connection to nature has been highly disrupted, and the sense of custodianship or stewardship has been displaced. Yet at the same time, there is a growing awareness and movement of the need to reconnect people and nature, to both address nature deficit disorder, and also help counter the impending extinction crisis highlighted by the recent International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report.
Within the disciplines and groups of people who work with biodiversity or seeking to reconnect people to nature, there is extremely high variability in what we understand nature to be. In an effort to help simplify this variability without losing the complexity, Steele, Wisel and Maller propose the frames of Wild, Stray and Care in their publication “More than human cities: where the wild things are”. These terms were later used to frame a co-authored chapter led by Ferne Edwards as part of the Untaming the Urban collective based at the Australian National University, Canberra. The frames were also explored as a seed session at The Nature of Cities Summit in Paris. This essay introduces the three frames, then shares some of the outcomes from the TNOC Summit Seed Session.
The three frames: Wild, Stray, and Care
“Wild, stray and care” seek to problematize boundaries, such as natural / artificial, human / non-human, and progressive / regressive. Acting as both verb and noun, “wild’ may be interpreted as “first nature” to presume authenticity, as “wild-in-nature” as represented by natural predators or indeed as uncontrollable human behaviour. “Rewilding” presents another interpretation, as in ecological restoration to reintroduce and to return animals “home”. Alternatively, “stray” could represent an outsider species living in liminal space, homeless, unwanted—as an exile, exotic, introduced or wild native species that has entered a foreign space. Often designated as “pests” or “weeds”, such intruders are often downplayed, de-valued and dismissed within urban environments. Finally, “care” offers possibilities for rethinking about human / nonhuman engagements with one possible outcome constructing a bridge of “entangled empathy” to de-centre human’s privilege over all other urban nonhumans (see Edwards et al. forthcoming).
The Nature of Cities Summit Seed Session
The seed session, “Wild, Stray, Care: Exploring multiple ways people co-exist with urban nature” got off to a roaring start at The Nature of Cities Summit in Paris. With artists, geographers, urban planners, anthropologists, policy makers, landscape architects, ecologists and NGOs in attendance representing cities across the world—South Africa, France, the United States, Australia, Belgium, India, Ireland, Russia, UK, Africa, China, Spain and Singapore—we sought to disrupt conventional frames of “nature” towards creating more harmonious multi-species cityscapes. During the seed session three questions were explored. The responses are briefly summarised below.
What is your favourite urban nonhuman?
The warm-up question immediately raised queries about disciplinary preconceptions of “nature”. Can nature be conceptualised as an individual species (such as nightingale, dogs, or birds), as a conglomerate ecosystem (such as “woods, real wild woods”), or as a singular species that leads one into a relational web of life (such as ants that introduce us to soil, other insects, plants and more)? Where does urban nature begin or end: on / in land (clover, dandelion), in waterways (otters, manatees or reeds) or air-blown (as solitary bees)? Are only pretty or distasteful species recognised (cats or cockroaches) and if so, what about all those species in between?
Attendees were then asked three key questions with their responses captured by a mix of butcher’s paper, sticky notes, mobile technologies, word clouds (captured by Poll Everywhere), note-takers and photographs.
A word cloud of responses to the question: What is your favourite urban nonhuman? Word size reflects frequency of each response.
What natures exist in your city?
This next question delved deeper into how humans sense urban natures in a range of environments based with consideration of the three frames. Amplifying the categories mentioned above (loud, pretty or distasteful species, and singular and composite ecosystems), new recruitments included the very small (dust mites, mosquitos, flies, microbes, bacteria, mycorrhizal fungi and pollen), the meso (parks) and the macro (forest patches, island trails). Species that transgressed categorization where also acknowledged as they move from wild to stray to care and back again as they intersect with other species and situations.
For example, water hyacinth from Lake Victoria (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) is a wild species that invades other water systems through lake chains and plane travel preventing navigation (stray). Its overproduction is a good source for furniture-making (care), while by preventing human navigation, water hyacinth creates conditions for the wild return of fish species.
Conversation topics included how care is often focused too much on appearance versus function, a question about human-framed perception on how do you know nature’s there, while parrots, deer, bats and cats were recognised as the most common shared species across all attending cities. One respondent’s responses illustrate a city’s specificity to the frames where, based in Singapore: “wild” is considered as primary tropical forests that fill one with awe, as complex systems that are heterogeneous, multi-layered forests, that are dynamic, mysterious and vibrant providing luxuriant food; while “stray” evokes: spontaneously growing plants, rambunctious transitory and temporary growth, a possible wicked problem, something that is incomplete, unintentional fauna, transforming—there are not many “strays”. Finally, care is seen to be manicured, intentional maintenance, protective, controlled, attentive, designed and manipulated space and animals, where the most distinctive nature that she senses are manicured open lawns with single-tiered vegetation and biotic homogenization. There is also an appreciation of the incredible biodiversity due to topicality.
A word cloud of responses to the question: What natures exist in your city? Word size reflects frequency of each response.
How are those natures being managed?
Popular responses to the second question included a predisposition for hygienist and a human safety focus where reactive measures were taken against fear or anger to create places devoid of assertive forms of nature. Rather than softly mediated relationships with nature, heavy-handed regulation by government plays a large role. For example, in Australia killing is an intense strategy for managing stray species such as an overpopulation in kangaroos or stray dogs and cats. Alternatively, some species defy management efforts where the best management strategy is to not manage nature at all, allowing instead for “wild” nature to blossom and self-regulate in cities. Again, to illustrate the complexity within a Singaporean perspective, “wild” represented protected, highly managed “nature” as the leftover primary wild forests where these are precious; “stray” is infrequent due to land scarcity and clear ownership, while “care” is everywhere, as a one hundred percent urbanized city state, the government has done much taking care. Tidy forms of nature persist under the nation’s Garden City vision that emphasized providing visitors and investors a clean and favourable impression of the country. There is barely even a single patch of the land bare (either turf or paved).
What possibilities can you envision to more positively co-exist with urban natures?
The final question encouraged both fantastical and pragmatic possibilities of future urban natures. Thinking big, conversations explored issues of spatial and temporal scales and their implications for cities in times of climate change (will cities be on or under water?), to think beyond humans as the dominant species, to go beyond government as the key regulating actor (to consider the influence of grassroots movements), to imagine “wild cities” as sources of multiple nature/s (to overcome both the human need to control things and to re-introduce wild urban natures such as eco-corridors and urban forests), to re-think humans fear of dirt (to “open the waste bins” as a treat for foxes and raccoons), and to re-value urban waterways as a source of nature. Rather than leave these fantastical possibilities as distant futures, the room also recognised that “we need to act in the next 12 years” to allow both humans and nonhumans to adapt to climate change. Strategies of action could include efforts to understand public perception, interdisciplinary collaborations, monitoring, and consideration of socio-cultural factors and their economic ramifications. Intended wildness such as explored by Hwang and Yue (2019) is one example where positive relationships could be created with urban nature.
Concluding thoughts
As these frames are a recent contribution to conversations around the nature of cities, they are yet to be fully explored. However outstanding strings from the discussion included that:
Cities must be considered holistically, including biologically, to satisfy aesthetic-sensory experiences, and for people to sense nature as part of ourselves.
The frames of “wild, stray and care” are highly site-specific where geographic, climatic, socio-cultural conditions all have influence. Identifying the specificity of nature to that region (where even single weeds have a function) is crucial.
Local expert knowledge in these regions should be acknowledged and integrated.
Systemic and strategic integration is needed among wild, stray, care by each party. For example, designers could to focus on the housing of non-humans in the city to make them more favourable to humans while supporting flexibility and resourcefulness.
To consider the nested scale and timescale of urban species and situations.
It is imperative that a transdisciplinary approach that acknowledges disciplinary assumptions and boundaries to transcend them is supported. For example between managers, planners, designers, developers, residents, policymakers and researchers.
Indeed, such a transdisciplinary approach was tested in this seed session. From the rich conversation and stickies created, these frames provide some rich fodder in which to reassess natures place in the city and humans place within nature. The positive and energetic reception received is very encouraging for further conversations! We look forward to participating in a broader dialogue in the years to come.
With thanks to all participants: Pippin Anderson, Méliné Baronian, Katherine Berthon, Nathalie Blanc, Lindsay Campbell, Elsa Caudron, Maud Chalmandrier, Marianne Cohen, Marguerite Culot, Samarth Das, Laurent Favia, Cathel de Lima Hutchinson, Chloé Duffaut, Grégoire Durand, Arthur Feinberg, Katie Holten, Juan Miguel Kanai, Aleksandr Kiyatkin, Nadezda Kiyatkin, Julia Lorenz, François Mancebo, Katherine Moseley, Seema Mundoli, Samuel Okello, Simon Pittman, Marisa Prefer, Hugo Rochard, Sylvie Salles, and Lu Yu.
Special thanks to our TNOC session scribe, Jenna Witzleben, and to co-convenor, Kevin Sloan, who was unable to make it on the day.
Dr Amy Hahs is an urban ecologist who is interested in understanding how urban landscapes impact local ecology, and how we can use this information to create better cities and towns for biodiversity and people. She is Director of Urban Ecology in Action, a newly established business working towards the development of green, healthy cities and towns, and the conservation of resilient ecological systems in areas where people live and work.
Yun Hye Hwang is an accredited landscape architect in Singapore, an Associate Professor in MLA and currently serves as the Programme Director for BLA. Her research speculates on emerging demands of landscapes in the Asian equatorial urban context by exploring sustainable landscape management, the multifunctional role of urban landscapes, and ecological design strategies for high-density Asian cities.
How do we translate global nature goals into actionable goals for nature in cities? The Nature-Needs-Half movement, applied to cities, is a possibility.
Even in an era of extreme political divisiveness across the globe, clean air, clean water, and land conservation are extremely important goals across the political spectrum. According to recent bi-partisan polling in the US, 84 percent believe we can protect land and water and have a strong economy at the same time, up from 76 percent in 2009. My work at The Conservation Fund (the Fund) has been a 25-year crusade to have land and water conservation in tandem with a strong economy. The organization was founded to develop solutions that make environmental and economic sense, demonstrating that land conservation is key for our future prosperity in human communities. Land conservation at multiple scales within cities and metropolitan regions are key to the future of both people and wildlife.
A hot topic within both global and metropolitan land conservation circles lately has been to articulate bold targets for land set asides. The highest profile of these recent efforts has been the Half-Earth Project, spearheaded by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. In 2016, Dr. Wilson, in an article in the New York Times, recommended that 50 percent of the Earth’s surface be conserved in a natural state to support and maintain biodiversity, which he felt was “the only way to save upward of 90 percent of the rest of life”. Since this declaration, the Half-Earth Project expanded in 2019 to include a Half-Earth Pledge and a Half-Earth Day on 7 October 2019.
While this has been the highest profile effort to date, the earliest article I could find researching the topic from a city perspective was on the Nature of Cities website by Lynn Wilson. In her 2014 article entitled “Nature Needs Half”, she documents the work of the WILD Foundation and its WILD Cities Project and references the Fund’s pioneering work establishing a conceptual green infrastructure framework and implementing green infrastructure at multiple scales to explain how the Capital Region District in British Columbia, Canada could consider and implement the Nature Needs Half concept, which advocates protection of 50 percent of the planet by 2030.
In April 2019, some of the same principals involved in the Nature Needs Half initiative reframed the aspiration in an article in ScienceMag by promoting a Global Deal for Nature, which targets 30 percent of the Earth to be formally protected and an additional 20 percent designated as “climate stabilization areas”, which, as defined by the article, are “habitats like mangroves, tundra, other peatlands, ancient grasslands, and boreal and tropical rainforest biomes that store vast reserves of carbon and other greenhouse gases”.
In the US in August 2019, a political advocacy group, the Center for American Progress (the Center), jumped on the bandwagon to try to convince policy makers they should adopt and implement a goal of protecting 30 percent of US lands and oceans by 2030. The Center is correct that the US “lacks a clear, common vision for how much nature it wishes to conserve, in what form, at what cost, and for whom” and therefore has vastly underutilized its capacity to conserve nature. I could not agree more on that point!
In our book The Science of Strategic Conservation: Protecting More with Less, Dr. Kent Messer and I point out that billions have been spent on land conservation but too little attention has been paid to how strategic and cost-effective these investments have been. To get to 30 percent or 50 percent protection of the globe or a specific geography, understanding priorities and the opportunity cost of investing in one form versus another is essential. And as the Center correctly points out in its Issue Paper: “A discussion of how much nature to protect—and how, where, and for whom—must honor and account for the perspectives of all people, including communities that are disproportionately affected by the degradation of natural systems; communities that do not have equal access to the outdoors; tribal nations whose sovereign rights over lands, waters, and wildlife should be finally and fully upheld; communities of color; and others.”
So how do we translate these global goals into actionable goals for nature in cities? Tim Beatley wrote about the Half-Earth project in his monthly column in Planning magazine in July 2018. He discussed the potential role of cities in implementing the concept with Paula Ehrlich, CEO of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. Beatley correctly points out that “urban areas can and must be part of the Half-Earth vision and strategy for it to succeed”.
To realistically move towards any aggregate protection goal in the US, or the world, will require metropolitan areas to establish bottom-up goals based on the geographies of their region. One such effort is being spearheaded by Houston Wilderness. In a precursor project to the Regional Plan completed in 2013 focused on green infrastructure and ecosystem services, the Fund found out that in a 13-county area in Houston, 62 percent of the land provided 91 percent of the ecosystem service benefits (see the map below).
A map of the Houston region’s ecosystem service benefits.
The 2019 Gulf-Houston Regional Conservation Plan covers eight counties in and around the City of Houston, the fourth largest US city by population, and has the following three goals: (1) Increase the current 9.7 percent in protected/preserved land in the eight-county region to 24 percent of land coverage by 2040; (2) Increase and support the region-wide land management efforts to install nature-based stabilization techniques, such as low-impact development, living shorelines, and bioswales, to 50 percent of land coverage by 2040; and (3) provide research and advocacy for an increase of 0.4 percent annually in air quality offsets through carbon absorption in native soils, plants, trees, and oyster reefs throughout the eight-county region. In implementing this 2019 plan, it will be important to understand a key lesson learned from the 2013 ecosystem service analysis that it is not just important to reach 50 percent but that it needs to be the right 50 percent.
Clearly, to come close to meeting percentage targets like this by a certain date are going to require significant investments at multiple scales. For instance, the US Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund will need to have appropriations much closer to its maximum annual accrual limit of US $900 million, and the magnitude of state and local bonds will need to increase (over US $3 billion in 2018).
Metropolitan areas in the US, such as Portland, Oregon, have developed Regional Conservation Strategies to help them protect strategically important areas and spend available money wisely, but they have not emphasized specific targeted percentages. The Intertwine Regional Conservation Strategy, in tandem with the Biodiversity Guide for the Greater Portland-Vancouver Region, defines the challenges that the region faces to protect local wildlife and ecosystems and offers a vision, framework, and tools for moving forward collaboratively to protect and restore natural systems.
In synthesizing all of these global and city initiatives, my concern goes back to some of the fundamental principles of green infrastructure that the Fund helped outline starting back in the early 2000s, culminating in the book: Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities. These percentage goals are not a substitute for a strategic analysis for identifying what is important to protect that keeps natural systems and human communities thriving. These goals are also not a substitute for building local constituencies to support achieving conservation goals, as the bi-partisan polling referenced at the beginning of the article suggests there is a disconnect between the general public and current political leadership on these topics. As I like to say: “Figure out where the green infrastructure should be and then build the gray infrastructure around that”. In city contexts, these percentage goals could have the unintended consequence of establishing protected lands that have little relative value for wildlife and people. In the case of both Portland and Houston, both are backed by rigorous analysis of the needs, and it is not that relevant that one has specific numerical goals and the other one does not. What’s most important are that there are intelligent, data-driven goals, and those goals will vary based on the metropolitan area.
Even if one has a conceptual problem with oversimplifying land conservation into percentages, Beatley articulates the value of these types of efforts. Embracing this type of vision “reflects the philosophy that all forms of life matter, that they have inherent worth, and that cities have an ethical duty to blanch biological hemorrhaging.” Beatley asks: “Is it possible a new kind of urban ethic could emerge, one that understands the imperative of cities to conserve and protect nature, local and distant? Can we enlist cities and urbanites in the global struggle to preserve species and ecosystems that are often removed from their daily sight or consideration?” Houston Wilderness and The Intertwine have made statements that they are serious about their role in global conservation. Who else will join them?
Truly addressing the climate crisis in cities may require embracing the mindset of a 16-year old climate activist who is not afraid to challenge every one of our assumptions about life as we know it.
On the last week of September millions of people participated in climate strike marches around the world, protesting against global inaction on climate change. Led by teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, the youth climate strike movement and other social movements such as the Sunrise Movement in the U.S. and Extinction Rebellion in the U.K. are effectively reshaping the discourse on climate change. Over the course of one year, these activists have become a powerful agent of change by offering a nuanced balance between fear and hope and the candidness of young people who are not afraid to call out politicians or businesspeople that fail to act.
Climate march, New York City, 20 September 2019. Photo; Roy (Flickr)
For the most part the millions joining the climate strike marches in September did so in cities, filling the streets of 1,000 cities in 185 countries. While the urban landscape of cities around the world became an inseparable part of the climate protests, it also brought up questions about the role of cities in changing the course of action on climate change. If we accept Greta Thunberg’s narrative that “our house is on fire”, then a key question is what role cities take on themselves?
For cities, this is a burning question. Cities are at the forefront of dealing with the impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events, sea level rise, food and water shortages, arrival of climate refugees and health issues.
While some cities have been at the forefront of climate action (see many examples at C40 and ICLEI), recent studies suggest that most cities respond poorly to the challenge, in terms of both mitigation and adaptation. Moreover, cities with higher poverty rates seem less prepared to address climate impacts. This is not good news given that climate change operates as a threat multiplier exacerbating existing food security, health and other social problems. The stark reality is that nothing we have done so far has managed to move the needle in the right direction on climate action.
The current state of affairs, where cities worldwide (with some cities doing more than others) respond inadequately to the climate crisis, makes it clear that cities, similar to countries, address climate change incrementally and within the confines of the current system. Unlike climate activists, cities, in general, are not interested to “blow up the system”, at least not when it comes to climate change. This inability an/or unwillingness to challenge the status quo is a losing proposition for cities and the majority of the world population living in them.
To change this trajectory cities will need to pursue a different model of action, stepping away from incremental changes in favor of societal-level systemic change. Cities, which have been the driver of technological, cultural and political change for centuries need to figure out quickly how to step up to the challenge. For this, cities need to activate their inner rebel. But, what is the mindset of a rebel activist city? We think it may start with a few critical conceptual and perceptual shifts:
Overcome the red zone/green zone gap.First and foremost what climate activists all over the world are pressing for today is urgency. We have been sleepwalking the climate debate for decades and time is up. Cities can play a critical role in closing the perception gap. On the one hand we have the IPCC reports and overwhelming scientific evidence that suggest climate change is a threat requiring immediate and bold response. On the other hand, most people living in cities still live in a non-emergency state, where the day-to-day is not affected by climate change. If we think of it in terms of color coding scale, scientists suggest we are in the red zone (i.e. severe risk), while most people feel as if they are in the green zone (i.e. low risk). This gap is critical because it means that for the most part, even with growing climate impacts, many people still consider climate change as a distant threat, or what Michael Lewis calls a ‘fifth risk’: “The existential threat that you never really even imagine as a risk”.
Cities can change this. Out of all levels of governments, city governments have the most direct relationship with their population. Local elected officials are steeped in their communities. They should use this power to make climate change more prominent on everyone’s agenda. This is true both in terms of the challenges and the opportunities around climate change. Cities can help redesign their communications to convey a sense of urgency. Some important actions include declaring climate emergency, and continuously informing residents on current and future climate change impacts, using all communication channels available. At the same time, through planning and action, and by placing climate change at the center of every discussion, cities can help their residents imagine what a zero-carbon life would look like. Sam Knights of Extinction Rebellion writes in the book “This Is Not A Drill”: “We need to rewild the world. That much is obvious. But first we need to rewild the imagination. We must all learn how to dream again, and we have to learn that together. To break down the old ways of thinking and to move beyond our current conception of what is and what is not possible.” Cities are best positioned to be the places where we rewild our imagination, experimenting and demonstrating what the relationships with technology, nature and one another may look like in a post-fossil fuel reality that prioritizes values above value creation.
Focus on equity and wellbeing. Income inequality is bad for happiness and “trickle down economics” doesn’t work. Cities can and are getting richer without, for the most part, having these riches spread out across the city’s population. Cities with the highest income levels in the world can and have deep poverty, homelessness and health issues. Cities with the most advanced technological industries do not automatically reap the benefits for their citizens. Put simply, if the purpose of city government is to provide services that allow well being for all its population, then equity has to be the central pillar of any city policy. Equity will not just happen along the way and is difficult to be addressed after the fact. City governments should place equity at the center of their strategies with regards to all aspects of their operations.
When using precious urban land for new development, city government should consider who stands to benefit, who is sitting at the discussion table, how the new development might impact current residents, and whether that development is in line with the social, economic and environmental goals of the city. It is absolutely okay (and necessary) for cities to reject Amazon, Walmart, or any other company pursuing development if those companies are not committed to contributing their fair share towards the social, economic and environmental goals of the city. Similarly, when developing new sustainability and resilience plans, cities should consider the equitable distribution of resources, the spatial distribution of hazards and amenities and the spillover, downstream and teleconnection impacts of their plans.
New technologies for the common good. New developments in smart city technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) and social media are happening at a dizzying rate. Cities have a responsibility to ensure that these technological developments first and foremost help us understand, control and manage the transportation systems, materials and energy flows more efficiently, thus help support our core values and goals while protecting our safety and personal information. Allowing technology companies and corporations to introduce technologies that are not oriented towards these goals can be discouraged. Companies that produce disservices to our communities such as Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber, should be intensely regulated, taxed, or banned.
Many useful solutions are here and some cities already use smart technology and IoT for public transportation and traffic management, waste collection, street lighting, and energy efficiency. Cities have an important role in incentivizing these and other technologies that produce social-ecological benefits. Large scale implementation of green stormwater management, water and air quality, all have meaningful implications for urban sustainability and resilience that are not yet realized. Finally, cities should embrace initiatives and ideas utilizing technology to offer new visions for the production-consumption system that are based on decentralization, localization, open source and circularity, such as Fab City, platform coops, and local time banks.
Build humble infrastructure. As we toil in repairing highways and bridges (or tear them down), or play catch up with the implications of wastewater systems that are designed to send our waste down stream and into bottlenecks that are bound to overflow and pollute, coupled with growing stormwater flows over ever increasing paved surfaces, cities need to quickly learn to build humble infrastructure. We cannot afford another round of infrastructure that will lock us into one path of development for 300+ years. Cities must accept that we cannot know the totality of future consequences of what we build today. New infrastructure projects should take that into account, by investing in infrastructure with the least harmful environmental/sustainability/resilience effects (think trains and bike lanes vs. highways roads; solar panels vs. coal and nuclear power). Infrastructure design and engineering are some of the most rigid disciplines we have. Expanding the capacity to incorporate flexibility and build processes that take into account and leave space for change is their “be a Greta” task for the 21stcentury.
The climate emergency is a threat to almost every city on earth. To address this crisis effectively cities need to start thinking differently, and that may require embracing a mindset of a 16-year old climate activist that is not afraid to challenge every one of our assumptions about life as we know it. While it may feel uncomfortable doing so, dealing with the consequences of inaction will be much more uncomfortable. It’s time for cities’ leadership to decide if they are ready to step up their game and embrace an activist mindset, or they are afraid to do what it takes and prefer to remain a landscape in the protests of young people demanding change.
Raz Godelnik is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design - The New School in New York, where he served for the past 3 years as the Co-Director of the graduate program in Strategic Design and Management.
A review of Sustainable Stormwater Management: A Landscape-Driven Approach to Planning and Design, by Thomas W. Liptan with J. David Santen Jr. 2017. ISBN 13:978-1-60469-486-4. Timber Press, Inc. Portland, Oregon. 280 pages.
“If we are to create living environments in which human beings can lead happy lives, we must plan cities and devise policies for land use that restore harmony with nature”. — Daisaku Ikeda, Thomas Liptan’s mentor
Thomas Liptan’s response to Ikeda’s statement is contained in the set of solutions offered throughout the book. They are mainly oriented to promote the continuity of the natural and vital cycle of water as it passes through built environments, bringing all sorts of benefits to the quality of contemporary citizens’ life.
As promised in the book’s title, a landscape driven approach becomes a fact. The book is filled with illustrations and comprehensive examples that give deserved importance to specific points that urban work in public space design often leaves unattended.
In a very clear and pleasant way, the author puts his experiences within reach of diverse, specialized and non-specialized public. Supported in abundant illustrative photography the reading becomes easy and didactic, mainly for those committed with the detailed design and implementation of urban works. It does not provide just the solution to technical challenges, as can be found in hydraulic engineering manuals on the matter, but motivates sensibility in his readers leading them to reflect on everyday details, which often go unnoticed for many. The content of the book becomes the bridge between engineering technics, the concerns from biology in urban situations, and the resultant landscape. This approach requires a perception shift (p.21), highlights the author and encourages designers to be aware of the rain-capture potential, and simultaneously requests technicians to soften their usually hard, grey physical works of runoff control, since those can be consciously addressed to make a sound, responsible, and profitable management of stormwater.
Sustainable Storm Water Management could be also considered a synthesis of the principal author’s life in relation to water cycle management in urban environments. Liptan starts sharing his first motivation: to put into practice what he had academically learned. Trained as a landscape architect, his career began with a challenge he received from his boss in one of his first jobs: “Put the water in the landscape”. From there, he has dedicated most of his career to research, design, monitoring, and maintaining green solutions for stormwater management. He effectively demonstrates that water management is not a field exclusive to engineers, as it has often been assumed to be.
Stormwater flow, that could be avoided or enjoyed, depending on your perception or interest.
As the author states in the introduction: “Landscape stormwater management can catalyze urban design to become more integrated and alive, making communities more livable and sustainable” (p.17). This idea highlights the contribution of the storm water management in the achievement of a better life quality, which means that a good landscape design, bearing in mind that purpose, must go through the understanding and managing of each technical step: intercept rain, increase infiltration, slow and filter flows, facilitate evaporation, capture and redirects water for irrigation, and reduce flooding and emergency overflow.
Although most of the built examples illustrated in the book are located in Portland (Oregon), where Liptan worked for the Bureau of Environmental Services, he takes us on a journey through several places in the United States. Many cases are close to the west coast, around Oregon, California, and Washington; some in cities on the east coast such as New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia; and cases representative of the center of the country like Chicago, Nashville, Louisville, Phoenix, and Austin. This geographical span demonstrates broad success in the kinds of design proposed here, applicable in many climatic and biodiverse local conditions. The idea is also reinforced by examples brought from countries such as Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and New Zealand.
The set of lessons presented in the book are well supported by sensitive, diverse, abundant, and eloquent illustrations that show the different steps through which the water flows, or could flow, as it passes through the built habitat, principally public space.
If we look carefully, all these steps are in every urban situation related to water. It is possible to notice them from the both large scale to minuscule scale examples, such as the porosity of the walkable city’s surface that passes unnoticed under the feet of the walker. An interesting and generally well received topic is rain gardens. Combining small slopes, calculated depth of water-accepting-vegetated-areas—as the author calls them—prevision of swale flow reduction and also prevision of destiny of eventual overflow, will permit an effective and low maintenance rain garden.
One of the main merits of the book is the way the authors merge two fields: the engineering view of water management and the benefits of doing it from the landscape perspective. The two blocks are logically ordered and divided under illustrative sub-titles that let the reader select or skip sections according to their interests. As promised in the book’s title, a landscape driven approach becomes a fact. The book is filled with illustrational and comprehensive examples that give deserved importance to specific points that urban work in public space design often leaves unattended.
Very small details, added together, can make a big difference. P. 99
Although the author refers to “landscape” as only the vegetated areas—apparently leaving aside the fact that landscape is much more than that, and that landscape integrates spatial morphology, local identity, welcoming to users, orientation and communication to them, and enhancing perception opportunities, among others—the text covers many details regarding careful interaction with stormwater.
It is understandable that landscape is represented in, as the author puts it, “…vegetative approaches, mimicking nature and natural processes to manage natural and manmade phenomena at the surface and breaking through our perceptions of the limits of urban development” (p. 91).
Small slots that can do a significant job in conducting water to free the sidewalk from the rain P.148.
The most relevant bibliography around the topic previously was principally directed, from a reduced technical perspective, at the subject of hydrology, hydraulics, engineering of environment and water, as it is the case of Storm Management by Wanielista and Yousef (published in 1993). Theirs is a quite comprehensive book that explores the economic, financial, political, and social feasibility of stormwater management projects, but still far from the landscape approach. The public and administrative sectors stormwater management has been studied principally by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in recent decades, and also there are contributions from other governmental authorities such as the U.S. National Park Service, the National Research Council or the National Resource Defense Council. In terms of shorter publications and journal articles, a good amount of literature can be found directly applied to technical aspects of storm water management and recently, some articles by landscape architects that relate those aspects to landscape.
Liptan delves into the subject and his contribution builds a bridge between the very scientific-technical level and the natural resources participation in the process, and approaches the topic from the sensitive and everyday experience. There is evidence of the beginning of Liptan’s notions of that association from least since 2000 when he presented a motivating paper, together with another author, to the Water Sensitive Ecological Planning and Design Symposium at the Harvard Design School. There they promoted the application of the (at the time) new urban-nature paradigm, displaying the convenience of symbiotic design principles for water plants and soil management, integrated in urban spaces.
The authors have dedicated a complete chapter to the grey to green revolution through the now common green roofs line and related techniques, which includes the vegetative cover of impervious surfaces; a different synergistic way to accept and guide the development and cycles of water and vegetation within the city. Once more, Liptan shares his personal involvement and devotion to the cause, showing the results of eighteen years of work on his own garage green roof. He explains in detail his personal experience, tracing, learning, monitoring and control, that give lessons which could be applied and examined deeply even to register the contents of certain minerals within the runoff. The chapter is complemented by interesting examples of green walls, trees on impervious surfaces, and climbers on trellises.
In general, the authors stress the importance of these steps to follow in contribution to the subject.
First—a very important one—is the testing of all the accumulated knowledge, built on the numerous experiences displayed in the book applying them on the tropical fringe of the world—such as that of the American continent—within particular less variable climatic conditions throughout the year, as well as a more biodiverse and exuberant growth that represent a huge challenge for strategies that become more and more relevant when the planet as a whole is facing several progressive environmental threats.
Second, cost considerations. Although it isn’t easy to change the way people see things, it is worth noting that green methods are the least expensive approaches; and bearing in mind that they provide additional perceptual and environmental benefits.
Third, a change in design inertia. Design through needless impervious areas removal, design with stream daylighting and design porous paving.
Fourth, operations and maintenance. The mentioned changes in design require new procedures in maintenance, that sure will bring costs saving.
In a phrase: “Designers need to be proficient and broadminded” (p. 248).
To end the work, the authors suggest a view of the future, hoping that the experiences detailed in the book will be “... useful to a better urban design, a more economical and ecological city, and the proliferation of beneficial urban vegetation and wildlife” (p. 248). In short paragraphs, like measured doses, the conclusions of the various chapters are easily collected and absorbed.
It is good to highlight the most relevant of these: that this is the time for new design thinking about long-standing issues, and that with this mission, “… the future rests on the shoulders of those who are most involved in designing every aspect of the urban environment” (p.248). On economics and policy, the authors remind us that green approaches also produce jobs in a wide branch of skills and that there is an urgent task to quantify and establish the economic benefit of vegetative systems when combined with sewer systems. It requires a clear—not easy but environmentally necessary—agreement between the public and private sectors, where the first promote vegetative systems although the sewer service cost rate decreases.
Towards the continuity of developing this landscape approach to stormwater management the authors invite us to remember that mistakes happen, but those few must not be allowed to condemn the success of many.
Definitely, the call to rediscover lost creeks and streams, is one of the topics that deserves more attention and determined efforts. The text leaves it just mentioned but it justifies all efforts. Those hidden water courses indicate the natural direction of hydrological flow; they trace fundamental axes for urban uses and occupation. But having been disregarded, they represent wasted potential in many senses, and require subsequent economical costs to imitate their function artificially. About vegetative stormwater management we should be reminded that “Plants can help us to save us from ourselves” (p. 252). but also that they provide enjoyment of the landscape, cohabitation habitats, and mental health.
Finally, the book is a great provocation to follow and complement the diverse topics related to urban water. It is a call to attend Ikeda’s thought that closes the text: “The challenge to keep something going is more difficult than the initial beginnings of an endeavor”.
Guangzhou’s Pearl River Tower, the first zero carbon building in China. Photo by Brad Wilkins/Creative Commons.
This unprecedented level of construction has tremendous implications—not just for the Chinese, but for everyone. Building operations are responsible for 28% of global energy-related carbon emissions. How China constructs its buildings will either fuel dangerous climate change or help create a more sustainable future for everyone.
Building blocks for zero carbon buildings
Zero carbon buildings would allow countries like China to keep pace with current construction rates while still lowering their greenhouse gas emissions. By relying heavily on efficiency and renewable energy, zero carbon buildings are consistent with the goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a trajectory scientists say is necessary to avert the worst climate impacts.
A promising policy landscape for zero carbon buildings in China
A new working paper from the World Resources Institute with case studies in China, India, Mexico and Kenya shows that these countries already have many of the right policies in place to encourage zero carbon buildings. The paper examines eight policy pathways, including things like building standards, incentives for energy efficiency, and the feasibility of on-site renewable energy development. All policy pathways are feasible today in China at least with limited application, and energy efficiency—the foundation for zero carbon buildings—is well-supported by the country’s current building and energy policies.
Order of priorities for building zero carbon buildings
Source: World Resources Institute
Current feasibility of zero carbon building pathways in China
Energy efficiency has been on the Chinese government’s agenda since the creation of its first design standard in 1986, but initial policies were poorly implemented. Interest from the private and public sectors remained low well into the 2000s. However, investment has grown in recent years with stronger regulation enforcement, new incentives and the emergence of green building rating systems and labels.
✔ indicates that the pathway is feasible under current policy. ⚬ indicates that the pathway is feasible under current policy but with limited application. Basic EE is the minimum required energy efficiency achieved by meeting local regulations. Advanced EE is energy efficiency that goes beyond minimum requirements. Carbon offsets are recommended only if efficiency and renewables can’t meet 100% of energy demand. 1 Energy Efficiency 2 Renewable Energy
China has taken many measures to pave the way for zero carbon buildings. The national government has set a goal for 50% of new buildings to be certified green by 2020, and several major city governments have gone further. For example, Beijing’s local building codes are more stringent than national efficiency standards. The city requires all new developments to earn the minimum level (one star) of certification from China’s Three-Star green building rating program, and it subsidizes buildings that achieve higher ratings.
The iconic Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, one of many green buildings certified under the China Three-Star Rating System. Photo by Leniners/Flickr.
China has also created the world’s largest market for renewable energy. Building on this success, the national government has introduced a trading platform for Green Electricity Certificates, or GECs, which will allow energy buyers to claim the environmental benefits of renewables even if they are not direct consumers. Renewable Portfolio Standards (officially the China Renewable Energy Consumption Obligation), approved in May 2019, will boost demand for GECs—and renewable energy in general—by requiring provincial governments to reach a minimum percentage of renewables (including renewables besides hydropower) in their overall power consumption. Provincial governments will reach their targets by working with grid companies, independent dealers, and companies that directly purchase or produce their own power.
All of these policies have helped China’s green building sector grow. In 2016 alone, China’s Three-Star Rating System certified almost 5,000 buildings as green. But zero carbon buildings—which produce no net emissions—are still a nascent part of the green building sector.
There are many policy, market and technical reasons for this. For example, renewable energy is currently more attainable for commercial and public buildings than residential ones. Limited space on urban roofs discourages homeowners from adopting on-site renewables, while market regulations prevent residential building owners from purchasing off-site renewables directly from solar and wind power producers. In addition, while China is a global leader on renewable energy, it is also a global leader on coal. The country needs to reduce its fossil fuel use to fully decarbonize the building sector.
How can China encourage more zero carbon buildings?
China can take several key policy actions to scale up zero carbon buildings. At the national and provincial levels, periodic energy code reviews would help ensure that efficiency regulations keep pace with new technologies and approaches. The country could build on its 2020 commitment to certify 50% of new buildings as green. China could raise the ambition of this certification process to focus on zero carbon buildings, and it could further increase the goal to include all new buildings by 2030. Outreach and training programs for building owners, developers and investors, in addition to existing national building prizes, could spread awareness and increase commitment. In the longer term, improving building owners’ access to power purchase agreements—direct contracts between energy producers and consumers that guarantee a fixed energy price—would drastically increase the feasibility of residential buildings purchasing off-site renewable energy.
At the local level, governments can start by developing demonstration zero carbon building projects to excite developers and investors. Governments can also follow the example of leading Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai by making local building codes more stringent than the national one, and providing predictable subsidies for buildings that perform above the average. Setting renewable energy targets for public and commercial buildings can also help decarbonize buildings’ energy use.
A future of efficient, clean buildings
China’s buildings sector faces a historic window of opportunity—it can either decarbonize, or it can drastically exacerbate the climate catastrophe.
But China is certainly not the only country at a critical crossroad. Construction is increasing around the world, with the global construction market expected to reach $12.9 trillion per year by 2022. China has the world’s largest buildings market and thus great potential for zero carbon buildings. But other countries like India, Mexico and Kenya have sizable markets and significant potential as well. The right policies to encourage zero carbon buildings in those countries—and around the world—will enable cities to keep pace with growth while minimizing buildings’ environmental and social impacts.
Debbie Karpay Weyl is a Manager for the Buildings Initiative at the World Resources Institute. She leads an expanding global partnership to accelerate building energy efficiency in cities around the world.
A future in which our lives are surrounded by and intertwined with ecological infrastructure systems offers an antidote or balance to the future in which our lives are constantly monitored and informed by digital technologies.
Vision A—The Smart City: The city is an intricate network of digital communications, computations, and connections. Data are being collected everywhere, at all times, and feed into computing systems that work to coordinate functions like power availability and traffic to optimize efficiency in real time. Autonomous vehicles navigate the streets with a quite electric hum, sensing and avoiding each other and pedestrians. Drones and unmanned delivery bots navigate the air and sidewalks. Individuals are plugged in to an ocean of information via mobile devices, but also they are the ocean, as these devices and ubiquitous cameras track patterns of movement and activity, desires and attention. This city is smart, connected, efficient, safe, responsive, and many would say, resilient. It can detect and repair possible localized disruptions in service, conserve precious resources, inform and meet the needs of its citizens quickly and effortlessly.
Connected Smart City. Image: Jack Moreh
Vision B—The Ecological City: The city is an intricate network of living systems interacting with one another, with built structures, and flows of water, materials, organisms, and information. Urban landscapes, roofs, walls, streetscapes and other outdoor and indoor spaces are seen as opportunities to for nature to provide flood control and stormwater management, wastewater treatment, food production, waste recycling, microclimate moderation, access to nature and recreation, and support biologically diverse ecosystems. Plants grow everywhere, softening the harshness of the urban environment. The urban forest draws carbon from the atmosphere and stores it as wood. Urban waterways flow through the city, supporting aquatic and riparian ecosystems that allow human residents to interact with wildness every day.
These alternative visions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, of course, but in my experience they are rarely combined in the same conversation or planning process. That is, among those who spend their time envisioning and working toward future cities, most are working with either one vision or the other. My question is, what does daily life look like in a future city under each of these paradigms?
Ecological City, one of many imaginative designs by this Paris architect. Image: Vincent Callibaut
As we see already, digital technology is increasingly integrated into our daily lives and into the ways in which we receive and consume both products and services. I was thinking about this as I read an article in a recent issue of Planning Magazine, in which an ambitious smart city project in Toronto experienced significant backlash over privacy concerns. The big data that runs smart cities is fed by us, as individuals, by using our phones or even by walking down the street. Cities are about connections. As Bettencourt and West point out in their studies of scaling complex phenomena, the variables that are a function of people coming into contact with one another, such as creative innovation, economic activity, etc. scale superlinearly with city size: As city size increases, these connectivity-dependent phenomena are disproportionately enhanced. (So are less-desirable connectivity-dependent phenomena, such as crime and infectious disease.)
Similarly, we have the Smart City dilemma: as cities become more and more “wired”, tremendous amounts of data are generated that can be used for positive purposes, like more efficient and responsive infrastructure and services, but the risk of privacy loss is also increased. Furthermore, much of the work of running the city—the provision of services, operations, communications and so forth—is done by computers and robots. So, what do people doin this city?
An article in The Atlantic in the summer of 2015 explored the implications of a “world without work”. It explored the possibilities of leisure, creative work and craftsmanship, and post-wage contingency work. Predictions about the future of work in an automated age vary from dystopian to utopian but it seems clear that the general trend embodied by the Smart City movement is a continuation of the trend that has its roots in the ancient, tool-making, animal-domesticating past of our species itself—to free us from the arduous tasks associated with meeting our basic needs so we can do other things. The Smart City envisions this at the level of the city itself.
If we embrace the ecological city approach, it will, like the digital technologies, weave its fine, often-invisible threads into the fabric of our daily lives at home, at work, and in the public spaces of our cities. Living systems are part of the infrastructure of the built environment and daily life is essentially lived in a complex, multi-storied garden. The garden is planted and tended, the species chosen for their particular characteristics, from removal of metals in wastewater to aesthetics. In other parts of the garden, nature will simply be invited to come in and self-organize. Because it is composed of living things, the city-garden will experience dynamics and disturbances, from chemical stressors to pest and disease infestations.
To a great extent, we hope the garden will have the capacity to self-organize and self-regulate, but I anticipate there being a significant role for people in tending, managing, and maintaining these green infrastructure systems. For example, in a conversation with an architect about their experience in rehabilitating a building to be a Living Building, he mentioned the need for a building manager—someone who pays attention to the composting toilets, the water harvesting system, and the overall chemical balance of the various interacting systems. I had a parallel conversation with a horticulturist in planning for a demonstration/research landscape revitalization project we are undertaking—the landscape needs a steward, someone who is familiar with the plant communities, soils, scientific equipment, irrigation system, etc. This is a person and who visits regularly to observe what is happening and if an action needs to be taken they know what to do or who to talk to.
Work in the ecological city involves spending time paying attention to how things are working around us. If buildings or groups of buildings (districts) incorporate living systems such as green roofs or walls, stormwater bioretention ponds (rain gardens), and eco-machines for wastewater treatment, these systems require regular attention from someone who is familiar with that particular system. Ecological systems are complex dynamic systems. While they may be designed, that is, assembled to perform a particular set of functions, each is a unique assemblage of interacting species within a particular chemical and physical environment. While someone trained in working with ecologically designed systems may be able to visit one and offer some insight, only someone intimately familiar with that particular system will be able to recognize behavior of the system that is not within normal parameters, or the effects of specific additions or manipulations. This kind of work involves building relationships. Even in individual residences of an ecological city, there will be some tending to be done; as today we maintain our homes by fixing breakages or leaks, for example, in the future we may need to water and monitor the living elements of our homes. Everyone in the ecological city is a gardener with intimate ecological knowledge of the complex systems that support daily life.
So, it appears that while the smart city reduces work, the ecological city creates work. However, the kind of work created by the ecological city is the kind of work that city-dwellers are strongly attracted to, as we see in the tremendous popularity of urban gardening and greening in cities around the world. This is work that puts those who feel disempowered by city life in a position to reclaim their individual agency to be self-sufficient, to provide for themselves, and to have a relationship with non-human nature. The smart city, on the other hand, removes what little need currently exists for us to attend to our environments—it is not the responsibility of individuals to pay attention to the workings of the infrastructure around us, nor are we empowered to take action. Instead, our digital environments tend to ourneeds and desires, perhaps before we are even aware of them.
I think that a future in which our lives are surrounded by and intertwined with ecological infrastructure systems offers an antidote or balance to the future in which our lives are constantly monitored and informed by digital technologies. The internet is full of articles about the negative impacts of devices on our relationships and our mental and physical health, while it is also full of articles on the positive impacts of access to greenspace and natural systems on our relationships and mental and physical health. We are looking at future cities that are increasingly technologically complex, but there are two possible forms of that technology: the digital, big data variety and the ecological variety. Perhaps these are inherently complementary paradigms.
Barth, B. (2019). Smart cities or surveillance cities? Planning, March issue.
Bettencourt, L., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kuhnert, C. & West, G. (2007). Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. PNAS104(17): 7301-7306.
Thompson, D. (2015). A world without work. The Atlantic, July/August issue.
In this tale of three urban wetlands across three continents, I’m struck by the importance of balancing access and ecological integrity. Surely the promise of these reserves can only be maximized by providing the public the opportunity to experience the riches they hold, while maintaining their integrity.
Madagascar is well known for its incredible biodiversity; the lemurs, chameleons, and the baobabs are, for good reason, recognized as the environmental rock stars of the island. In July 2019 I landed in the capital of Antananarivo to participate in the 56th meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. I arrived a couple of days early but didn’t have time to truly explore the country. Instead, when I got to the hotel I looked at Google Maps and searched for green spaces nearby to explore. A 20 minute walk would take me to a green spot called Parc de Tsarasaotra.
Parc de Tsarasaotra
I searched on Google for details of Tsarasaotra and didn’t find a whole lot. It was clear to me that it was a restricted access site and had open hours. Wasn’t sure where to buy a ticket though. I discovered it was a Ramsar Convention site and thus of international importance. Surprising given its small size and location right in the middle of the city! In fact it is one of the smallest Ramsar sites in the world. The wetland is home to endangered and endemic waterfowl that make use of the habitat for roosting and feeding.
The next morning I got up at a reasonable hour and walked to the park following the map on my phone. When I arrived to the point where Google Maps pointed me to I came to a large wall. Dozens of ducks and herons were flying overhead into and out of the park. But without wings I would need to find an entrance. I darted in and out of the crowds as I followed the wall around the park.
Finally, having circled nearly the entire park (actually, it only took about 10 minutes) I found a gate with a clear view of the wetland. I walked up and was met by a low-key guard who said “20000 Ariary” (about $US5). I gave him the cash and walked in. The small wetland was empty but for myself and thousands of ducks and herons. As I walked around the quiet park I found a Malagasy Kingfisher and some cool orbweaver spiders.
Photos of Parc Tsarasaotra in July 2019. Photos: TC Bonebrake
After about half an hour I left the park and was struck by how loud the city was as I exited the gate back into the city. With the tall walls it was easy to forget the dense city outside. And once back into the city, the presence of the wetland was not apparent other than the ducks flying overhead.
Mai Po
The experience reminded me of the Ramsar wetland located only an hour drive away from where I work in central Hong Kong: Mai Po Nature Reserve. (Disclaimer of sorts, I’m currently a member of the management committee of Mai Po.) Mai Po is considerably larger than Tsarasaotra and is surrounded by a relatively rural landscape. But urban encroachment in the landscape is rapidly advancing in both Hong Kong and in Shenzhen just across the bay (Deep Bay).
Mai Po is well known regionally and internationally as a birding hot spot. Rare and endangered shorebirds and, of course, the black-faced spoonbill make their homes in Mai Po. Visiting Mai Po requires more than walking up and paying someone as I did at Tsarasaotra. But with a little forethought and planning you can indeed arrange (and pay a small fee) to book a visit. World Wildlife Fund Hong Kong manages the reserve and is at present enhancing visitor facilities to improve access and visitor experience as well.
Wildlife at Mai Po as captured on camera traps between 2017 and 2019. Photos: Shane McMillan)
One of the more elusive creatures living in Mai Po is the Eurasian otter. Sharne McMillan, a PhD student at the University of Hong Kong, has been tracking and studying otter in Mai Po for a few years now. And though she’s personally never seen one, she’s found a lot of evidence of the species in the reserve in the form of camera traps and spraints (otter poop). She’s also spent considerable time interviewing fish farmers that live in the areas surrounding Mai Po. Interestingly, based on these interviews, it appears that otter are more widespread than previously appreciated… but still the species seems to be in decline and rare in Hong Kong.
Displaying and protecting urban wetland wildlife
Most urban greenspaces, as conventionally conceptualized, have open access (or something close to it). The idea is that the public can use these spaces, interact with biodiversity, get exercise, or otherwise make use of open space near where they live. Urban wetlands seem to be a bit different. Even if there were open public access there are few people interested in diving into a wetland or tromping through thick mud to get a close look at some ducks (who would fly away in such cases anyway). And if there were such people the damage to the wetland would be severe.
There’s a balance then in urban wetland management that seems especially delicate. Access tends to be restricted to protect the habitat and the species that live there. But in such cases, the case for conservation is made more difficult, or at least the direct benefit to people living closest to urban wetlands may not be so obvious.
Mai Po and Tsarasaotra are both spectacular sights, full of colorful birds and contrasting horizons of water and reeds plus skyscrapers in the distance (in Mai Po) or short two story buildings just outside the walls covered in drying laundry (in Tsarasaotra). These urban Ramsar wetlands hold important pockets of biodiversity and high-value conservation habitats. But the access is also valuable and visits to the sites could likely have considerable indirect benefits as well. So maybe these urban wetlands should be more open to the public?
Sepulveda Basin
As a kid growing up in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California, the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve was a special place for me. My dad and I would drive there early on Saturday mornings and count geese, look for loggerhead shrikes (wonderful little vicious bird predators), and watch raptors above. The reserve was key for my development into the environmentally minded person I am today. I honed my skills and grew a sense of awareness for ecological interactions.
It’s very easy to get to the Sepulveda Basin and access is basically free. You can go whenever you want and there’s no quota or visitor restrictions. As a consequence the Sepulveda Basin is very popular for birders in the San Fernando Valley and a lot of people visit the site daily.
Photos of the Sepulveda Basin, dates not certain, likely late 1990s. Photos: TC Bonebrake
This has not come without problems of its own, however. There are considerable public safety concerns at Sepulveda Basin and at times key wildlife habitat has been removed—for example a large vegetation clearing occurred in 2012 to manage the problem of “sex-for-drugs encampments” and other criminal concerns. In the Los Angeles area the homeless population has surged in recent years (~60,000 in LA County in 2019) and this has caused problems for Sepulveda Basin. Homeless encampments have taken over parts of the reserve. In addition to habitat loss, such pressure also leads to considerable pollution problems and other disturbance impacts. So maybe this urban wetland should have a large wall or restricted access to it?
Pitfalls and promise
In this tale of three urban wetlands across three continents, I’m struck by the importance of balancing access and reserve integrity. I don’t have specific recommendations on this issue for any of the urban wetlands. But surely the promise of these reserves can only be maximized by providing the public the opportunity to seethe riches they hold while not causing any deterioration of the habitat as a consequence of such access. Perhaps more so than other more purely terrestrial, or even marine urban green/blue spaces, urban wetlands have considerable challenges in meeting both goals of space for biodiversity per se and space for people (e.g. for recreation or environmental education). How to balance habitat and open space needs properly will depend on the context (the city, environment and population) surrounding the wetland of interest. On the other hand, when these challenges are met then the value of urban wetlands is exceptional, for biodiversity and humanity alike.
It began, like electricity before it, as a new technology for the rich in lower Manhattan to play with. A daring startup, Helios Travel, began offering teleportation from Greenwich (Connecticut) to Wall Street for the princely sum of $10,000 a pop. Many potential customers couldn’t handle the idea of all of the information in their atoms being encoded in a beam of light and flung into Manhattan, or accept the risk that their beam could be broken and their essence dissolved into nothingness (which happened twice in the first decade of Helios Travel). But for those brave enough to try it, they could make the 60 km trip essentially instantaneously, rather than wasting an hour in a car. For the very rich of Wall Street, it felt like just another option, like the $3,000 helicopter rides to the Hamptons that had been available for years. To the rest of the world, it became a joke, a symbol of the excesses of the roaring 2020s.
But five years later, by 2031, the cost of the technology had fallen exponentially. A ticket from New York to Washington was around $6000, while a ticket from New York to Los Angeles ran around $7000. For the rich, at least, teleportation began to replace air travel. In these early years of Helios Travel, the biggest expense was ensuring an uninterrupted fiber optic cable of sufficient bandwidth to carry passengers’ information, and the cost of teleportation still varied with the distance traveled. While the airline industry was still flying hundreds of thousands of commercial flights a day, they lost most of their first-class passengers to teleportation, and savvy tech analysts began foreseeing the day when the aviation industry disappeared entirely. What society was almost entirely unprepared for was the massive transformation that would come to the world’s cities.
By the mid-2030s, the price had fallen to $0.30/km. That same trip from Greenwich to Wall Street was now $18, and middle-class commuters in New York began to abandon the Metro North train. In cities around the world, suburbs began to extent farther and farther out into the countryside, as people chose cheaper land costs and bigger houses for only a few dollars more on their cost of their daily commute. The rich, meanwhile, had already entered in to a state of hyperconnectivity. It became a normal thing for tech executives in Silicon Valley to live on Maui (Hawaii), commuting in to the office every morning and home at night. And if they needed to go instead to Beijing for a meeting, that was possible too. Reality became a set of stages, each accessible by clicking the right location at the teleportation kiosk and electronically debiting your bank account.
When President Garcia was inaugurated in 2040, it had become clear how disruptive the technology of teleportation truly was. The problem of ensuring fiber optic cable continuity solved, what remained were the fixed costs of maintaining the teleportation kiosks and the ample electricity they needed. Helios Travel had announced a new deal of $9.99 for travel anywhere in the world that the kiosk network reached. Almost overnight, it felt like, real estate markets in cities around the world collapsed. Why would anyone pay for rent in London, when they could live in a sunnier clime for a fraction of the cost? Companies, too, began to realize that while they needed a central place for their employees to work, they need not be near any city. Corporate headquarters often moved to glass office building in rural locations with spectacular views of places like the Rockies or Big Sur.
The poor and working class still could not afford to teleport every day for work and were stuck living close to where their predominately service sector jobs were located, often near urban centers that were now dramatically depopulating. Teleportation also had the effect of erasing country borders for businesses, and many service sector jobs, which had heretofore resisted offshoring, now could be done by workers from any country. That is, rather than offshoring involving moving workplaces to developing countries, workers from developing countries could follow the jobs to wherever they needed to.
Going along with this increased international connectivity was, sadly, an increased potential for cross-border crime and terrorism, as the attacks of May 2041 showed most graphically. Governments around the world began to take control of teleportation technology, strictly monitoring and limiting who could travel internationally. This created further a two-tier world: a mass of people who could teleport, financially and legally, and a group of left-behinds stuck in the places they lived.
Now, as we approach the 25thanniversary of the first commercial teleport, things seem to have stabilized. While many cities have dramatically depopulated, they do not appear to be shrinking to zero. Especially for culturally iconic cities like New York or Paris or Tokyo, there is some subset of people who want to live in that dense environment. Conversely, some industrial cities that were never considered good places to live lost the majority of their population, although often the industries and factories remained. Real estate prices in cities stabilized at roughly 30% of what they were in 2030.
Two major cultural movements started too, exacerbating existing diversions. A back-to-nature movement took hold in much of the US and Europe, as millions of knowledge workers chose to live in beautiful rural places and commute to wherever on Earth they needed to be for work. This had the unintentional effect of dramatically increasing home development in iconic rural landscapes like Provence and the Rocky Mountains. At the same time, a hardcore group of artists and writers began intentionally living and working in dense urban environments, building an ethos focused on localism and authenticity. There was plenty of abandoned urban spaces that this group of urban creatives could reclaim for art.
In the short span of a few decades, humanity has had to get used to the idea that the space where we slept need not be anywhere near where we worked which need not be anywhere near where we recreate. This decoupling can be seen as the end of a sequence of many transportation improvements that decreased travel costs, from subways to automobiles to jet planes to driverless cars. We have had to radically rethink what cities mean in this new era, where the first law of geography (“everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”) no longer applies. Now, instead of being segregated by geography, we are segregated by ideas and dreams and culture and economic class. As the Internet enabled parallel virtual spaces for interaction among like-minded individuals, teleportation enabled parallel physical spaces for such interaction. In the process, we have perhaps lost some of the wonderful ability of urban life to allow for chance intersection and serendipity, that marvelous moment when on a subway car a stock broker used to be able to see (and maybe even have a conversation with) a construction worker or a new mother or a Starbucks barista. The tradeoff is that we have been given the opportunity to create the kind of places, the kind of cities that we dream of. May our dreams be worthy of this great opportunity, to create cities in our vision, unfettered by the tyranny of geography.
One of the One Minute of Dance a Day project. This dance was performed on the Sorbonne campus during the TNOC Summit, outside the main auditorium venue. Beats by 3’z. There are over 700 dances, and you can search them by Paris neighborhood, site type, nature element, and more.
12h03, Sorbonne Université, Paris 5e. Une danse avec 3’z lors du colloque international « Nature of Cities », pour des villes vertes et colaboratives. 12:03 p.m., Sorbonne University, Paris 5th. Dancing with 3’z at the « Nature of Cities » summit, to propel a movement for collaborative green cities.
The team working for the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework – EU Support project implemented by Expertise France participated to the international summit The Nature of Cities (TNOC) from the 4th to the 7th of June at the University of Paris Sorbonne of which the objective is to mobilize cities, metropolitan areas and subnational governments.
See the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework – EU Support Project’s video of the event below.
TNOC Summit represented a unique opportunity for the project team to engage stakeholders on the establishment of a common roadmap for cities, metropolitan areas and subnational governments, in close collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), with the perspective to support an ambitious international agreement for biodiversity at the COP 15 of the CBD which will be held in Kunming, China, in October 2020.
Oliver Hillel has been a Programme Officer at the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD, administered by the United Nations Environment Programme) in Montreal, Canada, for the last 6 years. He is responsible for the issues of South-South cooperation, sub-national implementation (involvement of States, Regions and cities), Sustainable Tourism, and Island Biodiversity.
Elisabeth Chouraki coordinates the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework - EU support project implemented by Expertise France and funded by the European Union.
Regularly, we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
show/hide list of writers
Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Carmen Bouyer, ParisLet’s express our full creativity in answering the question: How can I best sustain life in the place I live?
Lindsay Campbell, New YorkWe must also look to many different ways of knowing—to different world views, epistemologies, and cultures. Privileging the modernist-rationalist-scientific worldview helped get us into this mess.
Marcus Collier, DublinNature is the great leveller—it treats all people the same; provides nourishment for communities and individuals alike.
Katie Coyne, AustinWe must recognize that one of the largest barriers to social cohesion and collectively improving our cities is fear of change.
Samarth Das, MumbaiI dream of cities where people are empowered to fight for the protection and enhancement of these inter-woven ecosystems to ensure a natural as well as political resilience against climate change.
Gillian Dick, GlasgowI want an equitable, resilient city that empowers its citizens to take ownership of their own destiny in a sustainable way.
Thomas Elmqvist, StockholmI dream that cities and the people that live there become more and more the engines of innovations, continuously creating new incentives for sustainable landscape management, so that cities become the hope for the planet.
Cecilia Herzog, Rio de JaneiroWe must face corruption so all people may dream. Social justice is key to transforming the urban landscape.
Jessica Kavonic, Cape TownAfrican cities must embrace Nuance, develop New ways of thinking to guide how society works, and Nurture strong relationships.
Patrick Lydon, OsakaDadada Da Laaaradarara! Radala da da Da DAAAAAA! La dee da dee da. C’est la vie.
Timon McPhearson, New YorkWe must put equity first. Greener cities that are more sustainable, more livable, more resilient, and more just, must be also inclusive and address our fundamental social inequities to ensure that all lives improve.
Andrew Rudd, New YorkWith courage, we confront greed and shortsightedness. We reject the false narrative that barricades work better than flows. And we embrace cities’ offer of contact, camaraderie and common cause.
Chantal van Ham, BrusselsNature tells its secrets not to those who hurry by, but to those who walk with quiet heart and seeing eye.
David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director. David's dad told him once that he needed a back up plan, something to "fall back on". So he bought a tuba.
Introduction
Dada was an artistic and social movement centered in Paris in the early 20th Century. It was—by design—disruptive, counter-cultural, odd, and surreal. One classic Dada action was to hold poetry readings in which all the poems were read at the same time.
That sounds a lot like many “conversations” that we all have, no? At the very opening of The Nature of Cities Summit in Paris (June 2019), we invited the first 13 speakers to the stage. They each delivered a 90 second talk entitled “What is the city of my dreams?” under a slide with the text “This is conversations as they often are”. They delivered these 13 talks at the same time, in glorious concophony. You can read their individual texts in the next section.
But in the months prior to TNOC Summit, they also wrote a collaborative text, serially, one paragraph at a time, with the prompt: What is the nature of the city of our dreams? Under a slide with the text “Conversations as they could be”, they read their collaborative text. There were three rounds of the 13 writers (totally 39 stanzas), and within each round the order was random. Below is video of the entire opening, both the Dada part and the read collaborative text. Further below you can read the full collaborative text, and all the individual texts that each person read in concophony.
On the coming months, more and more TNOC Summit outputs, of which this is one, will appear. Visit TNOC to see them emerge.
What is the nature of the city of our dreams? A Collaborative Meditation written serially
{Jessica Kavonic} I am from an African city and I work with local governments in African cities. Everyday I engage with rapid changes, complex environments, vibrant people and vast amounts of innovation. These cities must: embrace Nuance, develop New ways of thinking to guide how society works, and Nurture strong relationships.
{Chantal van Ham} If planet earth is our mother, then soil must be our father. Seek the silent places where no jarring sound is heard, and nothing breaks the stillness but the singing of a bird. Nature tells its secrets not to those who hurry by, but to those who walk with quiet heart and seeing eye. I hope that the Nature of Cities movement will grow around the world, to make the treasure of nature and especially soil visible and to restore the connection between people and nature.
{Carmen Bouyer} I dream that it creates the ground for new urban cultures. Opening space for respectful and resilient forms of co-existence between humans and non-humans. Welcoming rivers, wetlands, meadows, forests, plants, animals, natural cycles, rhythms … and the poetic cultures they all nurture.
{Katie Coyne} And how can that poetry of people and nature become magnified by insisting that equity and justice are a part of the Nature of Cities charge? We must be uncompromising in our belief that the best urban cultures and natures cannot co-exist and meld together without ensuring all people can experience it!
{Gillian Dick} I want an equitable, resilient city that empowers its citizens to take ownership of their own destiny in a sustainable way. Sir Patrick Geddes got it right over 100 years ago when he said that placemaking (although he didn’t call it that he called it planning) task was to find the right places for each sort of people; place where they will really flourish
{Cecilia Herzog} For places to flourish, ecological education must start since before babies are born, so all people understand their role in this wonderful world, their interdependence with native ecosystems, and then nature will be in all cities bringing not only sustainability and resilience, but for joy and harmony for all.
{Timon McPhearson} I want to be able to walk up, over, and down buildings coated in ecosystems, where nature is intricately woven into the built fabric of the city, where we don’t have to ask who benefits from urban nature, because we all have equal access to the clean air, cool breezes, and fresh food that it provides.
{Samarth Das} According to astrophysicist Nigel Calder, if Earth were a 46 year old woman, humans have been around for just over half a week, only a minute has passed since man began his Industrial Revolution! Yet in this short time the impact we have had on earth’s environment is irreversible. I dream of cities where people are empowered to fight for the protection and enhancement of these inter-woven ecosystems to ensure a natural as well as political resilience against climate change.
{Andrew Rudd} This will require an immediate infusion of openness and empathy, which are probably the most critical deficits of our entire half week on earth. Without them we will not share with other ‘tribes’, whether these are other ethnicities, other generations or other species.
{Patrick Lydon} And how does one find empathy and openness with other species? How do I cultivate a relationship with a river, with a mountain, with a tree? Does it come when I realize the nature within me?
{Marcus Collier} As cities become more and more populous, and the vast majority of humans are living their entire lives in an urban environment, less and less people will know what wild nature looks, feels, sounds and smells like. A large proportion of people will not be able to afford to visit the wider areas of the planet. So, rewilding cities is also rewilding ourselves.
{Thomas Elmqvist} I dream of cities and the people that live there become more and more the engines of innovations, continuously creating new incentives for sustainable landscape management, so that cities become the hope for the planet.
{Lindsay Campbell} Along with the transformation of our urban landscapes, I dream of the transformation our governance structures. We need to recognize the importance of civic innovation and create meaningful, authentic forms of power-sharing and joint decision-making between citizens and government.
{JK} And building effective multi-level governance. Recognising the vital role that national government play in enabling urban development, the building of a future city needs to focus on ensuring sustainability of activities by matching ambition and action with the mandates held at all levels of governance.
{CH} So we must face corruption to enable all people dream and co-create better urban environments. Otherwise wealth will continue to be concentrated in the hands of a few that control the political arena, and the majority of people will prioritize to put food on the table in the next meal. Social justice is key to transform the urban landscape.
{CvH} We are all from the same planet. Cities are the places where people meet and discover the beauty of diversity and exceptional encounters. They can connect worlds which may seem miles apart, hold the key to dialogue, bridge differences in language, nature, culture and beliefs and are the nursery for creative solutions that will make our world the most amazing home for future generations.
{MC} So we are continually seeking solutions to build the kinds of cities that foster all of these dreams. We discuss and debate novel ways that can citie-makers can be simultaneously creative, innovative and cities can evolve into natural, social, cultural, spiritual, artistic and cohesive spaces. But there is pressure for us to end the debating and begin the actions. It is here that we find ourselves in this Summit!
{SD} A summit where we define 5 key urban goals and thematic pillars that reflect the cities of our dreams—justice, livability, sustainability, health, and resilience. We must begin our actions by discarding apprehensions and inhibitions of engaging directly with our government officials, local area elected representatives and professionals and work together to create equitable and unbarricaded green urban spaces where “Nature” becomes the real client, and all of us—it’s consultants !
{AR} We begin with justice–and justice begins with us. With courage, we confront greed and shortsightedness. We reject the false narrative that barricades work better than flows. And we embrace cities’ offer of contact, camaraderie and common cause.
{TM} We must put equity first. Greener cities that are more sustainable, more livable, more resilient, and more just, must be also inclusive and address our fundamental social inequities to ensure that all lives improve.
{GD} But if we wish to take our communities, whether professional or “of interest”, with us we need to look for Nature Based solutions. We need to ensure that what we do has clear benefits for the environment; the economy and society. We need to co-produce solutions in a collaborative way. It’s usefully summed up in the quote “Nothing about us, is for us, without us”
{KC} Well-designed cities and places are only great if they maximize the stacked benefits our ecosystems provide. We must look outside our own conceptions of “US” to be vulnerable, to lean in and let go of our assumptions in the spaces where we differ, and to fully realize the total and truly equitable potential of our cities.
{LC} We must also look to many different ways of knowing – to different worldviews, epistemologies, and cultures. Privileging the modernist-rationalist-scientific worldview helped get us into this mess. Let’s acknowledge and amplify other forms of knowledge and ways of being that might help us forge a new way forward.
{TE} Cities must be more aware of the regions where they are located and take responsibility for a sustainable urbanization. This would entail managing flows and interactions in a more sustainable way, and where not only the cities are developing to become more fair, green and accessible but also the whole region.
{PL} Such bioregional awareness gave birth to one of our few examples of a sustainable metropolis. In deciding to give back to nature more than it took, Japan’s Edo-period government also gave individuals, neighborhoods, and villages creative license, so that they could come up with unique solutions for their own regions. Today, here, each of us holds this creative license, too.
{CB} Let’s express our full creativity in answering the questions: How can i best sustain life in the place I live in? How can I give back more than what I took? By each taking time to attune to the wide diversity of life cycles at play in the local landscapes, we can welcome non-anthropocentric creative answers that will reshape the cities we live in.
{AR} In cities we face difference and realize that it is cause for curiosity and celebration. Together we can address the uncomfortable and incomprehensible. We can better consider the impact of our actions on others in faraway places and times. And we can enrich life instead of extracting from it.
{JK} And as we reflect and consider let all these questions posed guide the development of tailor-made context specific solutions. A future city should build confidence of its decision makers. It should practically embrace the complexity surrounding decision making and financial and political influences. Spaces for ongoing learning, knowledge construction, visioning and relationship building are key to solution development.
{CH} Landscape is the stage, the support of all natural and human processes that can regenerate life for all. We need to enhance biocentric, biophilic and love approaches to gather all agents of landscape transformation, aiming to reintroduce native ecosystems in built and non-built landscapes. We must bring along the young people that are already mobilizing the world about climate change to revolutionize the nature of our cities.
{TM} What information do we still need to make our decisions truly able to adapt to the constantly changing nature of cities? We need to harness the rapidly emerging and evolving data ecosystem from IoT to social media data to make sense of what our ecosystems, our infrastructure, and our residents are already telling us. But we also have to understand the ethical challenges this data brings with it.
{LC} And from these data and other repositories of knowledge, how can we visualize the sometimes unseen, but crucial, social forces that shape our urban realm? By rendering these visible, can we better dance with our social-ecological systems?
{CB} “Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE” concludes Tristan Tzara’s 1918 Dada Manifesto. What we want now is also spontaneity said Tzara: “Not because it is better or more beautiful than anything else. But because everything that issues freely from ourselves, without the intervention of speculative ideas, represents us. We must intensify this quantity of life that readily spends itself in every quarter.”
{PL} Dadada Da Laaaradarara! Radala da da Da DAAAAAA! Da. Da. da da da. Obachan Ojichan. Jijijiji bababa. Jiba la da BA bababa ladaradasa. Oh? Ohsa. Oh SA! Sala dalarada da! Da. Da. Da. La dee da dee da. C’est la vie.
{MC} Dada was a reaction to the social and cultural bourgeois, the business-as-usual, the hegemony of the elites. Cities of the future cannot be bourgeois, cannot have elites. Nature is the great leveller – it treats all people the same; provides nourishment for communities and individuals alike. Nature is irrational, unpredictable and surreal, making nature in cities very, very dada!
{SD} This very unpredictability is what makes it essential to engage with the environments around us- and their various issues- in a holistic way. Our engagements should range from design to pedagogy, from research to conservation, from activism to participation – all at once! In order to break away from the ‘business as usual’ we must blur the boundaries between these various modes of engagements, and ensure that traditional practices perform within expanded narratives of their respective fields. Together, we can bring about the desired, nature-driven change!
{GD} But most of all we must talk in “plain english” , take communities with us and design for understanding and social cohesion working in partnership with the nature based solutions. Does it matter what we call it as long as we all understand why we are taking the actions that we are and that we are all comfortable with them.
{KC} It’s also not just about taking communities with us… we also need to go with communities. We must recognize that one of the largest barriers to social cohesion and collectively improving our cities is fear of change. As much as we advocate for large scale change, we should also be advocates for teaching people how to cope with all scales of change from a young age. Pema Chodron said, “What a predicament! We seem doomed to suffer simply because we have a deep-seated fear of how things really are. Our attempts to find lasting pleasure, lasting security, are at odds with the fact that we’re part of a dynamic system in which everything and everyone is in process.”
{TE} We may have come a long way in embracing a more inclusive approach in identifying the challenges ahead, co-designing what should be our priorities, we might also be on the way to collectively generate, co-produce new knowledge on how to create solutions addressing these challenges. In my mind, where we have failed is in working together to implement these solutions, the co-implementation where we jointly evaluate and monitor for our collective learning of what works and what doesn’t in each local context.
{CvH} And exactly that has been the vision of David Maddox and Mike Houck, when they started The Nature of Cities virtual platform back in 2012. A network of the brightest thinkers, peaceful warriors, and brave heroes who show leadership and inspire us all to create positive change to the way we work together in cities. And here we are today, for the 1st global gathering, creating new connections, sharing ideas and finding the inspiration to do more than we ever imagined in creating cities that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just.
UNISON: These are some ideas that we have created together. Thank you.
Jess is part of ICLEI’s Cities Biodiversity Center as well as ICLEI Africa’s Resilience team. She has a background in atmospheric science with a more specialised knowledge of climate change and its relationship with a sustainable approach to development.
Jessica Kavonic
I am from an African city and I work with local governments in African cities. Every day I engage with rapid changes, complex environments, vibrant people and vast amounts of innovation. But what is the nature of the city of my dreams?
We have been asking the same question to many stakeholders in African cities and they have provide a list of principles that they felt were essential for a future city to adopt. Some of these include:
• Work within context • Embrace creativity and innovation • Build networks of intermediaries • Recognise that informal systems are critical parts of African cities • Encourage adaptive and flexible policies • Support regenerative approaches • Strengthen systems thinking • Encourage knowledge flows and overlapping research/policy agendas. • Strengthen coordinated work between multiple stakeholders, sectors, scales and perspectives • Create diversity – in both the approach to tackling the problem, and the solution
For me, a future African city now rest on the HOW. It is in implementing and embracing new ways of thinking to guide how society works. It is in applying new ways of planning and decision making in order to effectively allow future cities to deal with the rapid changes expected. Future cities need to be solution and action orientated. They should build confidence of their decision makers. They should practically embrace the complexity surrounding decision making and financial and political influences. Spaces for ongoing learning, knowledge construction, visioning and relationship building are key in supporting these shifts.
Chantal van Ham is a senior expert on biodiversity and nature-based solutions and provides advice on the development of nature positive strategies, investment and partnerships for action to make nature part of corporate and public decision making processes. She enjoys communicating the value of nature in her professional and personal life, and is inspired by cooperation with people from different professional and cultural backgrounds, which she considers an excellent starting point for sustainable change.
Chantal van Ham
If planet earth is our mother, then soil must be our father. Seek the silent places where no jarring sound is heard, and nothing breaks the stillness but the singing of a bird. Nature tells its secrets not to those who hurry by, but to those who walk with quiet heart and seeing eye. I hope that the Nature of Cities movement will grow around the world, to make the treasure of nature and especially soil visible and to restore the connection between people and nature.
We are all from the same planet. Cities are the places where people meet and discover the beauty of diversity and exceptional encounters. They can connect worlds which may seem miles apart, hold the key to dialogue, bridge differences in language, nature, culture and beliefs and are the nursery for creative solutions that will make our world the most amazing home for future generations.
And exactly that has been the vision of David Maddox and Mike Houck, when they started The Nature of Cities virtual platform back in 2012. A network of the brightest thinkers, peaceful warriors, and brave heroes who show leadership and inspire us all to create positive change to the way we work together in cities. And here we are today, for the 1st global gathering, creating new connections, sharing ideas and finding the inspiration to do more than we ever imagined in creating cities that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just.
Carmen Bouyer is a French environmental artist and designer based in Paris.
Carmen Bouyer
The city of my dreams is a landscape that thrives with a rich diversity of life forms, of life styles, of life ways. In this dream place all humans and non-humans are all respected in their integrity and equally acknowledged for their unique participation to this large mosaic of ways of being. Living together, close to each other, in a city system, has enable us all to develop multi-faceted conversations, creating unexpected pluricultural ideas and communities, shaping wildly divers open-minded cultures. In this city, streets and parks have melted together. Walking through it is a pleasure for all senses. With its many sounds, languages, tastes, colors, lights, textures, scents, its common space is a gift to the well being of all. Food can be foraged down the corner and everyone can swim in the nearing lake or river or sea. You can drink harvested water from the rain… Crafts and live arts flourish.
Katie co-leads the Urban Ecology Studio at Asakura Robinson where she is a passionate advocate for design informed by studying the overlap between social and ecological systems.
Katie Coyne
The city of my dreams exists in segmented storylines based on lived experiences and identities. It’s a place where I know no one will yell dyke from their car. My friends will not be attacked walking to their car after dancing the night away with loved ones at the gay bar. It’s a place where it is such a non-issue that I am a butch lesbian married to another woman that even the well-intentioned folks don’t need to tell me about their LGBTQ family. In this city, we take care of our folks experiencing homelessness with wrap-around care. We take down monuments to white supremacy and ensure the diversity of our city is not put at risk because of racist policies. Those are the issues that keep me up at night and the reason why the lens through which I view nature, ecology, and resilience in cities MUST be intersectional and geared toward justice. When I have the luxury of thinking beyond that, I know that the city of my dreams is not static – it’s dynamic! This city inspires enough wonder to challenge the comfort of my assumptions. This city’s landscapes change enough with the seasons and over the years to remind me of impermanence. Every space is infused with function across ecological, social, and economic systems. In this ideal city, I don’t wish for harmony—the friction amongst differing values in community is where the most interesting work is done. Folks who wish for entirely harmonious existence are only searching for a comfort that doesn’t exist.
That’s the big picture. None of what I’ve mentioned above exists without folks willing to have hard conversations. Which, is perhaps why the most important component of the city of my dreams is empathy at its core.
Gillian is the Manager of Spatial Planning – Research & Development team within the Development Plan Group at Glasgow City Council.
Gillian Dick
When you think about collaboration what is the first thing that comes to mind? It’s inclusive. It’s equitable. And it’s a meeting of like-minded people with a shared objective. This is the front facing view that folk participating in collaborative efforts want to project to the wider world.
In reality, collaborative projects can be very different for local authorities. In the past Glasgow has had the academic community present us with proposals and asked us to sign on the dotted line. These statements are then presented back to funding bodies as evidence of collaboration.
It feels very different to us. It feels like we are being “mined” for our own research and innovation (often described by academics as “grey” research, as in their view it’s not subjected to academic rigour or peer review), which is then repackaged to be validated by the academic world. The repetition of this process, with the view that there is limited value academically in the research that local authority practioners undertake, taints the process of collaboration between academics and practioners and impacts negatively on trust and understanding.
It’s a breath of fresh air when you encounter a different form of collaboration between academics and local authorities. When we Co-produce research it’s more likely to have joint ownership and understanding. Working together we can innovate in a real world situation and produce sustainable long term solutions to some of the “wicked” issues that local authorities face.It allows us to empower communities to work alongside us and generates trust, empathy and cost effective actions. To take a quote I saw on a Belfast mural “Nothing about us, is for us, without us”.
Cecilia Polacow Herzog is an urban landscape planner, retired professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She is an activist, being one of the pioneers to advocate to apply science into real urban planning, projects, and interventions to increase biodiversity and ecosystem services in Brazilian cities.
Cecilia Herzog
The city of my dreams is a just city, where all the people have access to clean air, clean water and organically grown food. Where nature thrives in all open and built spaces. Where residents vote on representatives who are concerned to give back a regenerative city, that is positive for the planet to keep providing us the wonders of nature in our common home.
All countries share wisdom acquired from their ancestors and cultures. Regional and local policies and actions orient ecological transformations in all urban landscapes, enhancing ecosystems and the benefits they provide to keep our biosphere’s dynamics.
Ecological knowledge is intertwined in people’s minds since before babies are born, because their parents, families and friends know that their lives are interconnected with the web of biodiversity that sustain our Homo sapiens species.
Our cities are biocentric, biophilic and beautiful. Art is everywhere, inspiring and nurturing our XXI Century civilization.
Nature-based solutions drove contemporary human interventions to restore the damages conventional gray engineering hasmade during the previous 200 years.
Cities became a healthy habitat for us, providing high quality of life and well-being for ALL.
Dr. Timon McPhearson works with designers, planners, and local government to foster sustainable, resilient and just cities. He is Associate Professor of Urban Ecology and Director of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School and Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Timon McPhearson
I want to be able to walk up, over, and down buildings coated, literally draped with nature, where ecosystems are intricately woven into the built fabric of the city, where we don’t have to ask who benefits from urban nature, because there is so much, everywhere, that we all have equal access to the clean air, cool breezes, and fresh food that it provides.
But we are not there yet. To move from the present, to the future we want, we have to put equity first. Greener cities that are more sustainable, more livable, more resilient, and more just, must be also inclusive and address our fundamental social inequities to ensure that all lives improve. Green spaces can’t just be for the wealthy, and when we enrich neighborhoods that have little existing nature, we have to do so while also finding ways to deal with the need for affordable housing, and basic urban services.
I’m excited about the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene that already exist in the present. To have a better future, we first have to imagine it, then we need to make plans that are truly transformative, and get to work to what has to happen in the next ten years, next five years, next week.
This will also require information. What information do we still need to make our decisions truly able to adapt to the constantly changing nature of cities? We need to harness the rapidly emerging and evolving data ecosystem from IoT to social media data to make sense of what our ecosystems, our infrastructure, and our residents are already telling us. But we also have to understand the ethical challenges this data brings with it and do much better to incorporate other ways of knowing, other knowledge systems, while also sharing information better, which is itself another equity challenge. I am hopeful, I am eager to make transformative change, and to work with the knowledge holders on the ground, in our neighborhoods, who already know what they want, and have innovative ideas for hot to get from here, to that more livable, more resilient, and more sustainable future.
Samarth Das is an Urban Designer and Architect based in Mumbai. Having practiced professionally in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and subsequently in New York City, his work focuses on engaging actively in both public as well as private sectors—to design articulate shared spaces within cities that promote participation and interaction amongst people.
Samarth Das
Consumed by intense occupations with clients and private projects, architects and planners tend to overlook the immediate environment within which they operate. The city around us is constantly changing, evolving and adapting. Cities, as they grow, are producing several backyards of neglect and exclusion. These backyards are the result of ad-hoc development, lack of a larger urban planning vision and quite simply the market forces that drive today’s development agenda. Most often, these areas of neglect are those that are of no monetary value in terms of real estate potential. Unfortunately, in the case of Indian cities, these are found to be our natural assets- water courses, lakes, mangroves, wetlands, salt pan land and creeks.
Our governments too have shared the lack of interest in protecting and developing these spaces- and consequently have turned these into some of the dirtiest and most unapproachable areas within our urban environments. With time, these spaces lie in decadence and begin attracting feelings of apathy and disdain. Once considered assets for the growth of communities, these natural assets are now perceived as barriers to development within our cities. Major world cities have, over the years, integrated their natural assets with the goal of creating better urban environments that contribute towards a better quality of life. It is about time that Indian cities take up the similar objectives- in order to create sustainable cities of the future which shift the focus away from pure consumerism towards a more balanced growth with nature.
Andrew Rudd is the Urban Environment Officer for UN-Habitat’s Urban Planning & Design Branch in New York, where he leads substantive advocacy for the urban dimension of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (including the SDGs).
Andrew Rudd
Four friends met and ended up debating the how the world would end. The ecologist said ‘climate change’, the philosopher ‘nuclear holocaust’, the epidemiologist ‘an airborne virus’ and I said ‘resource scarcity’. At the time I thought oil and phosphorus; resources such as those. But I’ve since realized they are symptoms of something deeper.
The resources we lack so desperately are openness and empathy. They are the most important deficits of our time. Without them we cannot share with other ‘tribes’, whether these are other ethnicities, other generations or other species. Now more than ever, we need collective effort to prevent planetary catastrophe. Instead, we are putting up walls. Through zoning and algorithms, suburbanization and social media have divided us. And when we don’t physically meet those who are unlike us, it becomes harder and harder for us to empathize with them. Right-wing populism has exploited this. But the world of our nightmares can find salvation in the city of our dreams. With courage, we can confront greed and shortsightedness. And we can reject the false narrative that barricades work better than flows. After all, it is the nature of cities to offer contact, camaraderie and common cause. In cities we face difference and, hopefully, see that it is cause for curiosity and celebration. Together we can address the frequent incomprehensible and uncomfortable. And we can better consider the impact of our actions on others in faraway places and times. In the city of our dreams we enrich life instead of extracting from it.
Patrick M. Lydon is an American ecological writer and artist based in Korea whose seeks to re-connect cities and their inhabitants with nature. He is an Arts Editor here at The Nature of Cities.
Patrick Lydon
In the city of my dreams, the path of my morning commuteto the Agroecology Cooperativeis halted by a caterpillar, the kind that will transform some day soon, into a yellow swallowtail. Reachingdown, Ibring itwith me, out of the busy footpath, and into the central urban forest.
Walking through an urban forest on this day, means an encounter with slender seven-story buildings, intermingling with ten-story trees, the ground interspersed with foliage and small animal life. Vegetables, fruits, perennial grains, pungent herbs, and a colorful pallet of plants we used to call weeds, but now refer more accurately to as healers of people and the land, all thrive together. Within these mostly wild urban gardens, wildlife also make their home, with rabbits, cats, deer, fox, and the occasional wild boar all paying visits to the forested downtown core.
In the city of my dreams, a group of meditators sit dailyon the steps of the Center for Non-Judgemental Awareness and Connectedness. A pillar of our local government, the center has renderedpolice officers andjudiciary officials unnecessaryfor over a century. Fronting the steps of the center, a family of deer sit lazily in the middle of the main avenue, as the traffic—all on foot and bicycle—simply re-routes around them. A few decades ago, the city banished cars altogether, a part of its ‘slow life’ proclamation, and today nearly everything moves through the re-wilded streets on foot, or some other human powered mechanism. Trains are still used for long-distance travel, though even they have fallen somewhat out of fashion as many humans seem happy to hike or cycle around the country.
In the city of my dreams, though we still have elected officials, few of the humans holding public office are studied politicians. Most come from backgrounds like herbalist, natural baker, brewer, agroecological farmer, or some other pursuit involved directly in building personal relationships with nature.
Emerging from the forest—and releasing thecaterpillar from my handsinto a bush of fennel—I run across thecity’s mayor, who is also the chair of the Council for All Beings.Recently elected by a multi-species vote, the Mayor is thecity’s oldest camphor tree. We are proud to say that she is the first ever camphor to hold the office in a major city.
Marcus is a sustainability scientist and his research covers a wide range of human-environment interconnectivity, environmental risk and resilience, transdisciplinary methodologies and novel ecosystems.
Marcus Collier
A very large proportion of the human population now live in urban areas, and the remainder are heavily influenced by the dominance of cities and towns globally. All human communities are now urbanised to some extent. The growth of cities and urban living has resulted in a significant altering of the planet’s ecosystems and their services. We are hearing, on a daily basis, about the problems caused by climate and environmental changes. So, society has devised TECHNICAL solutions and many governments have been promoting BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE solutions, in order to try to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on our daily lives and to build resilient urban communities. The nature-based solution approach sees NATURE as a technology that can provide solutions to climate pressure in cities, and we see the CO-CREATION approach as a key solution to modify our unsustainable behaviour. Nature-based solutions are inspired by nature, are cost effective, and are capable of providing multiple co-benefits in cities. These co-benefits include environmental services such as clean air and water, pollution control, and carbon sequestration), ecological services (such as increased biodiversity, better connectivity, and habitat restoration), and social services (such as improved health and well-being, cohesive communities, and social innovation). In an ever increasing urbanising world, contact with nature is becoming rare in cities, so by renaturing cities through nature-based solutions many more people will have access to the diverse benefits of contact with nature.
Thomas Elmqvist is a professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm University and Theme Leader at the Stockholm Resilience Center. His research is on ecosystem services, land use change, natural disturbances and components of resilience including the role of social institutions.
Thomas Elmqvist
I dream of cities and the people that live there become more and more the engines of innovations, continuously creating new incentives for sustainable landscape management, so that cities become the hope for the planet.
Cities must be more aware of the regions where they are located and take responsibility for a sustainable urbanization. This would entail managing flows and interactions in a more sustainable way, and where not only the cities are developing to become more fair, green and accessible but also the whole region.
We may have come a long way in embracing a more inclusive approach in identifying the challenges ahead, co-designing what should be our priorities, we might also be on the way to collectively generate, co-produce new knowledge on how to create solutions addressing these challenges. In my mind, where we have failed is in working together to implement these solutions, the co-implementation where we jointly evaluate and monitor for our collective learning of what works and what doesn’t in each local context.
Lindsay K. Campbell is a research social scientist with the USDA Forest Service. Her current research explores the dynamics of urban politics, stewardship, and sustainability policymaking.
Lindsay Campbell
The city of my dreams is never finished.
It is always still becoming, leaving space (and time) for communities to create places that meet their needs, but also—perhaps as importantly—to express themselves. To shape landscape and built environment in ways that reflect local culture, priorities, hopes, and dreams and carry with them the legacies of those that came before. A layered, dense, cosmopolitan strata, the landscape is imbued and activated with diversity and memory. While we continue to evolve toward the future, we hold and honor our ancestors.
These places are a co-creation of residents of all kinds—human and nonhuman—in a complex, collaborative dance. So not only do we leave space for our human neighbors, but we have figured out how to coexist and even thrive with rich, biodiverse assemblages of others. We know the names and stories of our plant and animal kin. We understand their capabilities and their needs and we design our spaces to support their inhabitation as well as ours. We learn from and with them; we recognize our interdependence.
The city of my dreams has opportunities for people to make meaning and live with dignity—whatever that looks like to them. People have jobs that they care about, homes they can afford, transit that is accessible, food that is healthy and nourishing, and many ways to create joy. They have relationships with family, friends, neighbors, and a broad tapestry of civic actors with whom they feel connected.
Through that deep understanding of and lived experience of interconnectedness—with other humans and nonhuman others—we figure out how to forge a new way forward for the planet. Perhaps our inspiration will come from a neighbor down the street, or the photosynthesis of plants, or the intelligence of bees, or the murmuration of starlings—who knows what source might catalyze a new idea? From that idea, we go through the bold, necessary, and drastic steps to decarbonize our economy, transition toward sustainability, and truly address climate change.
But all those actions start with love, reciprocity, and empathy. This also means listening to, acknowledging, and following the wisdom of those who have previously borne the brunt of our society’s failures. We cannot have ecological sustainability without social justice. A city where only a few thrive while others suffer is a nightmare of a dream. Instead, we have constructed a more equitable and just way forward—where we all participate in and benefit from the co-creation of our city, our home.
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