The way in which we imagine and understand cities and define their boundaries influences how we think about governing the city, and planning adaptation and resilience strategies, which become increasingly important in the era of the climate crisis.
“…they do not belong to our neighbourhood and are located outside the administrative jurisdiction of Bangalore; hence we do not work on those lakes…” This was the comment made by a representative belonging to a prominent lake conservation group in the city, presenting a focused definition of a city as a territorially bound space, limited to its administrative (municipal) boundaries. This statement reflects a widespread point of view, raising numerous questions regarding how residents of fast-growing cities of the global South ― where de facto boundaries regularly outpace de jure boundaries ― view their cities, whether as discrete units with sharply defined boundaries or as interconnected systems that connect the wider landscape and region within which the city is embedded.
This may seem like a purely academic question, but it goes well beyond such a limiting focus. The way in which we imagine and understand cities and define their boundaries influences how we think about governing the city and planning adaptation and resilience strategies, which become increasingly important in the era of the climate crisis. Cities in the global South are growing exponentially, much faster than the present governance arrangements and infrastructure are able to adapt. For India, in particular, cities are crucial as they hold one-third of the country’s population and contribute to nearly two-thirds of India’s economic output. Thus, understanding urban boundaries is critical to planning and preparing for climate shocks.
Despite many years of work on ideas of resilient, smart, and sustainable cities, we have been caught unprepared for what the Anthropocene has wrought. Beginning with the pandemic, the 2020s have shown us that global environmental change is not a distant future threat, but something that is taking place in the here and now, impacting our daily lives and ways of living. The UN Habitat Report 2022 indicates flooding as the most common risk to urban ecosystems. An increase in the intensity of rainfall, coupled with the concretization of cities and inadequate planning, has led to flooding in nearly every major city across the globe. On July 10th, 2023, the Indian capital city of Delhi was in the news for receiving 153 mm in 24 hours (15% of the total monsoon rainfall of the city).
Figure 1: Glimpses from the recent flooding in Delhi (2023) and Bangalore (2022) (source: licensed under Shutterstock)
This increase in the intensity of rainfall holds true for multiple other cities, both in India and elsewhere. Bangalore received 132 mm of rainfall on 5 September 2022 accounting for about 10% of the total seasonal rainfall of the city. This led to flooding of low-lying areas and localities which were built on lakebeds as shown in Figure 1. The State government started removing encroachments and demolishing structures built on lakes and stormwater drains. Yet, little regard was given to landowners who purchased their property in good faith without knowing that they were built on lake land, while the slips in policy and governance that allowed such widescale violations to take place, often in collusion with builders and land sharks, have not been addressed. Cities like Bangalore have focused almost myopically on economic development, without consideration of the impacts that can arise when city planners and builders ignore the importance of the city as an interconnected ecosystem, embedded in the topology of the surrounding landscape and linked to regional watersheds. This goes against the principles of resilience thinking, which focuses on the need for complex adaptive thinking and managing connectivity for building the resilience of a system.
Multiple criteria have been used to define a city, leading to numerous definitions. Though there is an attempt to develop a standard definition by various international agencies, there are limitations to this standard definition being applied across regions. Economic theories seem to take precedence here, leading to many cities being defined by criteria such as population density, economic development (GDP), and access to infrastructure. These approaches seek to define a city as the spatial production of an agglomeration — but they ignore the spatial ecological and environmental relationships between the city and the larger region within which it is embedded. Even with these criteria, it is not easy to find globally consistent definitions of cities. Different countries use a range of terms such as city, metropolitan area, and urban agglomeration, by combining various definitions.
As an initial exploration, we asked residents of Bangalore a simple question ― “What is a city?” We spoke to 25 opportunistically selected residents of Bangalore: men and women, from varied socio-economic backgrounds (doctors, students, researchers, IT employees, and local business owners), living in different parts of the city, peri-urban, and rural areas. We asked each person to define a city, and also give us five words that come to their mind when they think of cities. The responses we got were distinct but connected to ideas of cities as engines of growth, economic development, job opportunities, and infrastructure (schools, hospitals, restaurants, shopping malls, roads). Alongside, an interesting set of responses we received from a quarter of our respondents indicated that they also thought of the city as a temporary place of residence, a place they wished to “escape from” to lead a life. Some defined the city as a “lonely place” and others said it was “sometimes comforting but away from roots”.
Not all perceptions of cities were negative. Some of the people we spoke to said a city was a “safe space”, “a place to find your tribe”, “modern”, “organized and fast paced”. However, most people viewed the city as a place that enabled them to participate in the benefits of economic development, which they felt to be missing in rural regions.
Figure 2: Word cloud of respondent views on what defines a city (source: developed by authors using wordcloud.com)
What everyone forgets is that a city is not an isolated space but, an interconnected space, which is dependent on its surrounding areas. This leads to a consideration of the city to be indistinct from the urban, based on the structuralist point of view that the “city” and the “urban” are territorially bound entities.
Continuing with the example of the metropolis of Bengaluru, also considered the IT capital of India the city: it was once known as a city of a thousand lakes. The population has increased from around 5 million in 2000 to over 13 million in 2023. There is no major river located in the region and the city developed along a series of human-made interconnected system of lakes. This system was designed keeping in mind the undulating surface of the city, where overflowing water from one lake flowed into the next, and thus, the region thrived as smaller settlements since the Stone Age. All this changed with urban expansion when many of Bengaluru’s largest lakes were filled in, some converted into a bus station and a sports stadium. The same blindness to the importance of topography and local water resources continues to this day, where lakebeds and the interconnected water channels (as is seen in Figure 3) that feed the lakes are encroached and converted into built spaces such as malls, corporate campuses, and apartments.
Figure 3: Encroachments along the channel connecting two lakes in the city
Today, urbanisation patterns globally and in India increasingly challenge the seemingly self-evident distinction between city and countryside, urban and rural spaces. Especially in the global South, urban transformation has led to the formation of peri-urban spaces, often viewed as a “place in-between”. They have fluid characteristics of both urban and rural areas and have the highest dynamicity in land cover change and population growth. This is mainly due to the process of urbanisation, where both megacities and their surrounding spaces are linked to each other. Research in peri-urban areas has shown that there is a mutual dependence between the surrounding areas and the urban centres. It is usually the case, where cities import resources, such as water and food, and export their waste and wastewater into these surrounding areas. This is in line with Lefebvre, for whom the urban condition has gone beyond the boundaries of the city and brings together distant spaces, events, and people. Thus, urban can be considered as a set of processes that links places across space and is defined by connectivity. Urbanisation involves the movement of people from rural to urban areas leading to changes in land use influencing the functional capability by impairing the provision of ecosystem services with impacts on the local ecology, biodiversity, hydrologic regime, and other factors. Urban transformation as a process involves a fundamental change in the dominant structures, functions, and identity of urban systems, leading to new cultural, structural, and institutional configurations. This understanding leads to a different framing of urban areas, as complex adaptive “systems-within-systems”.
Unplanned urbanisation does not integrate local ecosystems and local needs of communities alienating people and their vital association with ecosystems. This affects people’s access to resources in addition to influencing ecosystem functions both within and outside the jurisdictional boundaries of the city. Policy decisions regarding urban growth are often top-down, devoid of stakeholders’ participation, and lack consideration of ecosystems. This is highlighted by numerous cases across Bangalore, where actions by the state and non-state actors have been undertaken without consideration and discussion with the communities (traditional users) residing along them, raising questions of equity. This is being replicated across areas under urban transformation, an example is the comment by a member of the community in peri-urban Bangalore (shown in Figures 4 & 5), where a lake is being restored “…they [the company who prepared the detailed project report] indicated that they would make space for our cattle to drink water but look they have not made any provision for it. They have built an embankment of stones along the lake, how can our cattle drink water now… once the beautification is completed, the lake will be fenced (Figure 6), and we won’t be allowed to come here”. There are also documented cases where the area surrounding the lakes which were once used as common grazing lands have been converted to urban uses such as playgrounds and parks, thus alienating the traditional users (Figures 7). These approaches have created imbalances within the existing ecosystem and livelihoods of communities, especially the vulnerable. Unprecedented increase in population and the consequent demand for land, and unplanned policy interventions with fragmented governance are threatening the natural ecology of the area.
Figure 4: Grazers with their cattle in the peri-urban lake. Pic by AuthorFigure 5: Cattle grazing in the peri-urban lake. Pic by AuthorFigure 6: Fencing of the lake and development of walkways in the urban lakes. Pic by AuthorFigure 7: Exercise Park developed along the lakebed in urban lakes. Pic by Author
Our recent research along the urban-rural spatial gradient highlights how the actors work within their defined administrative boundaries when working on an interconnected common pool resources such as lakes. Actors typically work on single lakes, creating a disjoint/fragmented effort that does not appreciate the fact that lakes are hydrologically and ecologically connected within watersheds within the region of greater Bangalore. For our research, we selected lakes that fall within a single watershed. Thus, forming an interconnected system where water from upstream urban areas flowed into the downstream peri-urban and rural areas. Further, the selected lakes are located within the administrative boundaries of Bangalore Urban District, but the peri-urban and rural lakes fall outside the limits of Greater Bangalore Municipal Corporation. This provides us with contrasting cases, located within a single watershed but fragmented and bound within administrative boundaries, along an urban-rural gradient with an interconnected lake system. Applying network analysis to capture the role of social actors in governing a connected ecological resource, we see that there is no interaction between actors along the peri-urban gradient – as can be seen from Figure 8, which depicts the number of actors actively involved in the de facto management of eight lakes along the urban-rural gradient As is seen, the actors involved are fragmented within their respective administrative boundaries, indicated in the figure by vertical dotted lines.
Figure 8: Fragmentation of Networks of actors involved in lake management along a rural-urban gradient. Network developed using GEPHI
There is a clear difference in the number of actors along the urban-rural gradient, with a higher number of actors in the urban core, due to the increased presence of non-state actors (community associations, corporates, researchers, and academics). Non-state actors other than the local community seem missing in contrast in the peri-urban and the rural lakes which are located downstream of the urban core. This increase in the number of non-state actors in the urban core and not in the peri-urban and rural areas indicate that actors involved in lake management bound themselves to work on lakes based on their neighbourhoods and localities with specific administrative boundaries. Non-state actors do not work outside of the administrative boundaries of the city as they “feel that they might not have a say in the issue” as they are not from the vicinity of the lake. The lakes outside of the urban core are managed by the village panchayat or the revenue department and not by the Greater Bangalore Municipal Corporation. As numerous representatives of lake groups have indicated, “the city corporation has been working with citizens since 2010 and we know what to expect and how to work with them”. Thus, the non-state actors choose not to deal with the unknown, unless they find a local leader or representative who will take the lead in dealing with the local administration, which they have no experience working with and have no understanding of the dynamics and power asymmetries among the actors, thus avoiding working in areas beyond their experience and vicinity.
Though we do not capture the presence of direct interactions between actors across the urban-rural gradient, information disseminated on social media seems to play an indirect role in fostering connections. Thus, one community member working on a rural lake said, “…we see how city dwellers are working with the local government and protecting their lakes, we want to do the same.” Information exchange (though unintentional) has helped break certain barriers of the bounded city, by encouraging actors to explore new possibilities to protect their lakes.
In summary, these explorations ― though initial ― show us the importance of expanding our understanding of a city, from a territorially bound and well-defined space based on economic theories of growth, towards incorporation of the city’s ecological and social characteristics, consider a city as a system-in-a-system, interconnected to its peri-urban and rural spaces based on the concept of agglomerations across a landscape. Thus, viewing the city not as a bound entity based on economic definitions, but as a spatially fluid, dynamic distribution of people, processes, and activities connected with ecological systems, which then leads us to consider a city as an interconnected entity. Such an expansive understanding of cities as a connected and complex system will be important if we are to devise strategies to adapt and build resilience in our cities.
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.
“Urban commons: the goods, tangible, intangible, and digital, that citizens and the Administration, [through] participative and deliberative procedures, recognize to be functional to the individual and collective wellbeing…to share the responsibility with the Administration of their care or regeneration in order to improve [their] collective enjoyment”
—From Section 2 of the “Regulation On the Collaboration Among Citizens and The City for The Care and Regeneration Of Urban Commons”, City of Bologna, Italy
When the ecologist Garret Hardin wrote his much celebrated essay in 1968, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, no one would have imagined that the concept of the commons would apply to the built environment. Yet today, the “urban commons” is increasingly embraced by scholars, activists, citymakers, policymakers, and politicians. These urban commons can include a range of resources in cities—including parks, community gardens, streets, neighborhood infrastructure, vacant lots, and abandoned buildings. The urban commons also include the intangible aspects of city living, such as culture and heritage. Characterizing these resources as urban commons re-imagines the city as a collection of shared resources and its residents as potential collaborators in generating, utilizing, and managing these resources.
When widely and intensely shared urban resources increase solidarity and generative potential, they can invert the tragedy of the commons paradigm.
But why exactly are these urban “commons” or common goods? These terms are not always subject to precise definition. The term urban commons, in fact, can give rise to more questions than answers. What is the difference between natural resources (traditional commons) within cities and abandoned buildings or vacant lots that are turned into a common pool asset by urban residents? What is the difference between privately governed open access spaces and cooperatively governed open access spaces—are they both types of urban commons? Can certain kinds of infrastructure—broadband infrastructure, do it yourself “mesh” networks, new forms of energy (like microgrids), housing cooperatives, etc.—be considered common goods? These are important questions to answer if this framework of the urban commons is to have any lasting impact on our discussions about what cities can or should become as we undergo intense urbanization in the next few decades.
Let’s begin with Hardin’s original, though simplistic, conception of the commons—an open access natural resource. Hardin’s tale of “Tragedy” unfolds in an open pasture in which individual herdsmen bring their cattle for grazing until their combined actions lead to overgrazing, essentially depleting the resource entirely. There are, of course, traditional, open access natural resources in urban environments, around which cities have been built and are now part of their ecological landscape. Lakes, rivers, and wetlands in and around cities are certainly a type of “urban commons”, as Harini Nagendra’s wonderful work and blogging illustrate. The degradation and destruction of these resources as a byproduct of urban development is a concern for the sustainability of cities at a time of obvious climate change. New Orleans, for instance, was built on a marsh and is surrounded by the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. It is not difficult, for instance, to trace the loss and destruction of coastal wetlands over the course of a century (or more) to the devastating flooding that occurred in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans, surrounded by Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, CC BY-SA 3.0
Moreover, much of the infrastructure of a city is an open-access commons—including its streets, parks, plazas, and squares. It is not difficult to imagine how many of these open access, public spaces can result in an urbanized version of Hardin’s Tragedy—overconsumed, degraded, or destroyed. This “tragedy” was arguably reflected in the decline of many open spaces in U.S. cities in the 1970s and 1980s, which left many streets, parks, and neighborhoods unsafe, dirty, prone to criminal activity and virtually abandoned by most users. Much of this decline in the urban commons was attributable not only to over-consumption and degradation, but equally to the onset of local fiscal crises and decline in city appropriations to care for and regulate these spaces, arguably sealing their fate for at least a decade or more.
Most of the focus on the urban commons, however, is not about threatened or endangered natural resources in cities, nor about the tragedy of the urban commons. The push to recognize the built environment as constituting a variety of urban commons is more about opening up access to, and generating, essential resources for a broader class of individuals than is fostered by current urban growth and consumption patterns. This recognition resists the threat of enclosure of the city resources and assets— parks, public spaces and institutions, vacant and abandoned land, underutilized structures, among others—by either public or private appropriation and control. Exclusive public or private management and control tends to monopolize these resources and subject them to domination by elite interests or to the speculative market. The enclosure of these elements of the urban mosaic by narrow interests and capital markets prevents the kind of sharing and pooling consistent with the idea of a commons as a collective, shared resource.
Let’s return for a moment to parks, streets, neighborhoods, and other infrastructure in cities and flip the script from Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” to what Carol Rose calls the “comedy of the commons.” These open access spaces in cities are where the proximity of different kinds of people coming together creates the culture and “vibe” of a city and strengthens social ties within communities. It is this interaction among urban dwellers that makes public space so valuable in cities, and in communities. This openness is crucial to the ability of great cities to thrive amidst tremendous human diversity. As such, increased use and even congestion in open access, interactive spaces are what gives urban commons their value as a shared resource. The more of the public that participates or joins in to utilize the resource, the more valuable the resource is to the individuals or communities that use it. As Carol Rose argues, rather than tragedy in these spaces, we are more likely to find that the “more the merrier” is a better description of high consumption activities in the urban commons. In other words, the more that people come together to interact, the more they “reinforce the solidarity and well-being of the whole community.” Thus, instead of the potential for overconsumption and ruin, we can also imagine the potential for solidarity and the generative potential of the urban commons to create other goods that sustain communities.
The most transformative vision of the urban commons is a recognition that common goods can be cooperatively or collaboratively produced and managed by urban residents in ways that are more attuned to the needs of those users and more inclusive of their input. When residents clear vacant lots and construct community gardens and urban farms on them, they not only facilitate and reinforce their solidarity, but they also produce a host of other goods (public safety, outdoor green space, fresh food) necessary to function and to flourish in healthy, sustainable communities. When activists occupy and squat in foreclosed and abandoned (and often boarded up) homes or public housing units as a means to convince municipalities to clear title and transfer these homes into communal forms of ownership and management, they do so to take the properties out of the speculative real estate market and create limited equity housing or long-term affordable rentals. Transferring previously held structures to a community land trust, or converting them into deed-restricted housing, would keep these properties perpetually affordable for low- and moderate-income households and would allow the residents to self-manage them as an urban commons.
Housing cooperatives have a long history in American cities. However, the use of community land trusts (or CLTs) and other cooperative ownership structures that separate land ownership from land use transform what might otherwise be a collection of individuals owning property (in the typical cooperative ownership model) to a collaboratively governed institution which manages collectively shared goods. Land owned by a CLT is removed from the real estate market and put into a legal structure that is democratically governed by a diverse membership open to people from across the city or a specific community. For example, community land trusts can manage housing, commercial real estate, green space, small businesses, and indeed an entire urban village as in the celebrated example of the “urban village” managed by Dudley Street’s Neighborhood Initiative in the Boston area.
Image: The NYC Community Land Initiative
The emergence of collaboratively generated and cooperatively managed regimes to take care of and regenerate the urban commons is very reminiscent of the groundbreaking work of Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom. In her classic work, Governing the Commons, Ostrom identified groups of users all over the world who were able to cooperate to create and enforce rules for sharing and managing natural resources—such as grazing lands, fisheries, forests, and irrigation waters—using “rich mixtures of public and private instrumentalities.” In such frameworks, we see novel applications of collaboratively managed infrastructure and goods and services that have typically been provided as either public or private goods. There are many emerging examples of the creation of common goods in the environmental, housing, digital, and cultural arenas.
In New York City, there is an emerging “real estate investment cooperative” (or REIC) to finance the transformation of vacant publicly owned buildings for community, commercial, and manufacturing spaces. All of the spaces that the NYC REIC finances will be transformed into permanently affordable space. There are also efforts underway to create new forms of collectively owned and cooperatively managed urban infrastructure, particularly in socially and economically vulnerable communities. For example, community wireless mesh networks (as in Red Hook, Brooklyn) can bring internet service to communities and populations that lack broadband access. These networks can help to bridge the digital divide and promote what some call “network equality”, as well as providing resiliency in case of a climate event. Similarly, and also to address resiliency to climate change in neighborhoods less likely to withstand climate change impacts, some communities (as in West Harlem New York) are exploring installing cooperatively owned microgrids as a way to transition towards more resilient communities.
Finally, beyond particular urban commons, the city itself is a commons—a shared resource that is generative and produces goods for human need and human flourishing. The city as a commons means that the city is a collaborative space in which urban inhabitants are central actors in managing and governing city life and urban resources—ranging from open spaces and buildings to neighborhood infrastructure and digital networks. Moreover, the city (as a public authority) can and should be one partner in a polycentric system creating conditions where urban commons can flourish.
This idea of the city as a commons is motivated by the ongoing experimentation process of establishing Bologna, Italy, as a collaborative city, or “co-city.” As part of this process the city of Bologna adopted and implemented a regulation that empowers residents, and others, to collaborate with the city to undertake the “care and regeneration” of the “urban commons” across the city through “collaboration pacts” or agreements. The regulation provides for local authorities to transfer technical and monetary support to reinforce the pacts and contains norms and guidance on the importance of maintaining the inclusiveness and openness of the resource, of proportionality in protecting the public interest, and of directing the use of common resources towards the “differentiated” public. The specific applications of the Bologna regulation are just now undergoing implementation, as the City has recently signed over 250 pacts of collaboration, which are tools of shared governance. The regulation and other city public policies foresee other governance tools inspired by the collaborative and polycentric design principles underlying the Regulation.
The Bologna regulation, and the related co-city protocol designed by my colleagues at the Laboratory for the Governance of the Commons (“LabGov”) are illustrative of the kinds of experimentalist and adaptive policy tools which allow city inhabitants and various actors (i.e., social innovators, local entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, and knowledge institutions willing to work in the general interest) to enter into co-design processes with the city, leading to local polycentric governance of an array of common goods in the city. This process of commons-based experimentalism re-conceptualizes urban governance along the same lines as the right to the city, creating a juridical framework for city rights. Through collaborative, polycentric governance-based experiments we can see the right to the city framework be partially realized—e.g., the right to be part of the creation of the city, the right to be part of the decision-making processes shaping the lives of city inhabitants, and the right of inhabitants to shape decisions about the collective resources in which all urban inhabitants have a stake.
From my office, on the 9th floor of a tall building in an academic campus in Bangalore, I have a birds-eye view of the city’s peri-urban surroundings. To the west, I can see a 6-lane high-speed highway choked by traffic, full of people frenetically commuting from their homes in city to their jobs in the globally famous Information Technology campuses located just outside. To the east, I am fortunate to witness a completely different picture. A tranquil marshy wetland and freshwater lake, with dozens of cows grazing and cooling down in the water while the mid-day sun blazes overhead, accompanied as companions by hundreds of cattle egrets feeding on the insects that annoy the cattle. This idyllic picture of cooperation, mutualism, and rural bliss has evolved and been sustained over centuries in Bangalore. (Bangalore’s lakes are not natural, but were created and maintained by local communities, with a history that can be traced as far back as 450 AD.) Yet even this picture is marred by construction and dumping of large mounds of debris onto the wetlands at one side of the lake.
Manjunath B—An intact peri-urban lake managed by the local village
Such contradictions of livelihoods and lifestyles, urbanity and rurality, shared cooperation and rampant self-interest, may be typical of many Indian cities but are certainly not unique to India. Certainly, the situation I have just described in Bangalore could be familiar to people in many other countries, even continents. Conflicts such as these just described have given rise to, and are exacerbated by, some of the worst inequities that the world has ever experienced. A recent Oxfam report, released on the occasion of the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, quotes a staggering figure: the world’s richest 85 people now collectively own as much money as the world’s poorest 3.5 billion! In a world that seems to be moving towards increasing self interest, and growing private control of the environment and natural resources, how can we ever hope or plan for a better future?
Following the example of Elinor Ostrom, who received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her pioneering work on the commons, we need to enlarge our discussion of models of urban governance to include a third alternative to the commonly espoused twin pillars of private and government administration, i.e., that of the community. Research from case studies in diverse contexts across the world has now proven clearly that multi-level collaborations between local community groups, civic society actors and government administration are essential for the effective, equitable and sustainable governance of natural resources. For such collaborations to be effective, they should however enable the scope for negotiations on an equal slate between different groups, such as high income apartment owners and slum residents, that are likely to have very different power structures. Developing the platform to allow negotiations at an equal level is particularly challenging in cities given the underlying context of high economic growth, which puts natural resources at stake. The imbalance between power structures becomes every more stark when natural resources are monetized, whether in the context of fracking and industrialization in China and the USA, or ground water withdrawal and water privatization in Latin American and Indian cities.
The recently restored Kaikondrahalli lake in Bangalore restored with community participation. Photo: Harini Nagendra
Effective governance is the key, obviously. Yet, to address these thorny challenges requires an adequate appreciation of the complexities of politics and political science, which is often lacking in approaches adopted by governments, influential thinktanks and international policy makers. Clearly, in today’s information age, lack of information does not constitute a barrier. More likely, it is the lack of dialogue, exacerbated by the imbalance in power, that creates barriers to cooperative governance for inclusive cities. It is the same lack of dialogue and imbalance in power between the urbanized landscape to the west of my office (with its character shaped by the shared use of large roads by high speed traffic), and the rural landscape to the east (with its character shaped by the shared use of wetlands by cattle and people), that leads to the dominance of the road over the lake, of the need for speed and linear growth over reflection and an appreciation of the cycles of life. Such an imbalance in appreciation, in ideology, almost inevitably leads to the disappearance and decay of these commons in urban areas. Cities thus become oceans of gray in a quest for endless economic growth, swallowing up all the little islands where commoners once thrived and flourished in respectful contestation and adaptive dialogue with nature.
A formerly large lake which has dried up due to encroachment of the water channels that feed the lake. Photo: Harini Nagendra
Our studies, as well as practical experience with community governance in the context of Bangalore’s lakes, has strongly highlighted the role for dialogue between communities and city government in providing the conditions that are inductive for effective co-management. This is particularly important in high growth urban contexts, which face political economic challenges of rent seeking, corruption and economic profit-making that can bias planning towards short term profit seeking, at the expense of long term sustainability. Fortunately, Bangalore seems to doing well in this regard, with a number of lake communities coming forward to reclaim derelict lakes in their neighborhood, supported by civic action in the form of Public Interest Litigations and an active judiciary that places pressure on city administration.
Such initiatives cannot be taken for granted, however, and are few and far between at the national level in India and indeed, in most countries with fast growing cities. Our only hope for scaling up such action is to enable outreach at a mass scale, through interdisciplinary education that crosses boundaries, engages with students, local communities, policy makers and private actors, and facilitates respectful contestation across groups of actors joined in the common goal of seeking equitable pathways towards greater urban sustainability. Engaging with problems of sustainability in an equitable, fair and just manner will require the fresh perspectives engendered by such discussion.
Note: This blog post draws substantively on the article ‘Reflections’ by Harini Nagendra in The Commons Digest: Publication of the International Association for the Study of Commons, Spring 2014: Number 15, pp. 15-18.
Investing in the world’s people, regardless of the color of their skin or the accident of where they were born, means that everyone—poor and rich, American or otherwise—can have markedly better lives in the future.
Donald J. Trump’s administration has been very obliging in providing content for environmentalist outrage, never in short supply. In a bit more than six months, Mr. Trump put an anti-EPA litigator in charge of the United States Environmental Projection Agency, sanctioned hunting of bears and wolves in Alaskan wildlife refuges, approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil and gas pipelines, and to top it all off, pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords.
President Donald J. Trump’s policies, and the nationalist policies of others in Europe and elsewhere, could double the human population by century’s end. Photo: Gage Skidmore
But environmentalists, and indeed the President, are missing the biggest, most serious, and longest lasting, unintended consequence of the Trumpian agenda: he and his nationalist, anti-immigrant allies in Europe and elsewhere are putting the world on track to nearly double the human population by 2100.
Demographers have an open secret. The global population growth rate is slowing; in fact, it has been dropping since the 1960s. Most of the advanced economies of the world (Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) have population growth rates that would be flat, in decline, or almost so, were it not for immigration.
The world’s most populous nations, China and India, are well on the way through the so-called “third phase of the demographic transition”, where fertility rates fall to balance mortality rates already brought low by modern medicine. As populations urbanize and gain access to the global economy, busy young adults have fewer incentives to raise large families. Women with more income tend to have more rights and more control of their lives and bodies. Family planning and education are easier to access in urban areas than rural ones. Urbanization is the prime mover of these changes, simultaneously increasing incomes and decreasing the marginal cost of providing public services.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world today where mothers on average have more than four kids over a lifetime, rather than the 1.9 kids for an American mom or 1.5 for a European one. Even in Africa, total fertility rates have dropped 25 percent since 1960. Yet many African cities continue to under-deliver the economic and demographic benefits other regions have seen, hampered as those cities are by corruption and poor governance.
The world population continues to grow because legions of youngsters are just now entering their child-bearing years, but demographers no longer debate if the global population will stabilize. The questions now are: When will it peak? And at what height?
To suggest such answers, an interdisciplinary group of scientists has been working to explore, in the deathless prose of the science, “shared socioeconomic pathways” (or SSPs) to test how policies regarding healthcare, education, trade, immigration and urban development might affect long-term demographic outcomes. They developed scenarios of national and international policies that might plausibly take root in the twenty-first century (references are included below). No one knows what the future will hold and so these different alternatives are not predictions so much as thought experiments with data. Nevertheless the results are startling. They work out five paths, but I think here we should focus on the two most extreme.
The shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) indicate how policies toward urbanization, immigration and education could lead to dramatically different total world populations by century’s end. SSP 1 is pro-urbanization, immigration and education; SSP 3 is the opposite. Data from IIASA’s SSP Database, v 1.1 https://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/SspDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=about. Image: Eric Sanderson
SSP1 (“The Green Road”) is the most optimistic. It models a world that invests in its people through cities, healthcare, and education, while adopting generous trade and immigration policies. The developed world helps the developing world. Urbanization leads to smaller families and better investments in every child. This pathway leads to a peak population of 8.5 billion around 2050, followed by a slow and natural decrease, such that by century’s end, the world population is a bit less than today.
SSP3 (“The Rocky Road”) tests out Trump world. As Brian O’Neill and colleagues wrote in Global Environmental Change:
A resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at most, regional issues. This trend is reinforced by the limited number of comparatively weak global institutions, with uneven coordination and cooperation for addressing environmental and other global concerns. Policies shift over time to become increasingly oriented toward national and regional security issues, including barriers to trade…
The upshot of SSP3 is a world of 12 billion people by 2100 with the peak still to come in the 22nd century.
Why does nationalism lead to a more crowded world? First nationalists want to shut down immigration. Migrants who come from faster growing regions to slower growing ones tend to take on the demographic characteristics of their new society. That is, immigrants coming to Europe or North America tend to have fewer kids than they otherwise would have in their countries or origin; and their kids have demographics indistinguishable from or lower than the rest of the population. So it was in the first wave of immigrants to the US in the nineteenth century, and so it has been in the second wave of immigration during the 1980s – 2010s. Second, trade and investment from developed to developing countries increases economic opportunity and rewards for education, as societies urbanize, industrialize, and globalize. China and India are the leading examples at the moment and Africa is slowly if unevenly on the same trajectory. Higher incomes and more education in these countries is hastening the demographic transition (think Rwanda); decreasing these public goods leads to bigger families and more people (think Niger).
One needn’t be an environmentalist to be concerned about these different future paths. A world of twelve billion is a script for a horror show—global shortages, mass starvation, increased conflict, greater radicalization, and, by the way, destruction of the biosphere. Cities expand viciously to swallow the nature nearby, and people starve for lack of water and bread. Climate change only makes it worse, exacerbating the already explosive differences between the haves and the have-nots.
In contrast, a world that peaks at 8.5 billion isn’t easy, but it means adding only about a billion more souls to the 7.4 billion we have today, while creating a world that is dramatically less poor, productively employed, and safely housed in pleasing towns and cities. Cities are catalysts of economic activity and socio-cultural transformation. Urbanization is driving out extreme poverty on a global scale, as recent studies by the World Bank have shown. In the more distant future, the only way one can imagine finding some kind of harmony between its people and the rest of nature is for the human population to stabilize.
Imagine a world with 7.4 billion people, 80% of whom live in towns and cities, and none of whom are extremely poor. In such a world, nature might recover and expand, helping suck carbon out of the atmosphere, much as forests today are expanding across the northeastern US or Eastern Europe, but on a global scale. In a world where urban places are where most people choose to live, towns and cities interlaced with green spaces and filled with wildlife have a chance to demonstrate the interdependence of human life and natural cycles that underlies pro-environmental practices and policies. Here is a road, if not to paradise, to something closer to it than humanity has seen in a very long time.
The US President prides himself on a being a deal maker. Well, here is the deal of the century. Someone with the presidential prowess to pull this one off would make Misters Washington and Lincoln (or Churchill or Gandhi, take your pick) look like provincial amateurs in comparison.
Investing in the world’s people, regardless of the color of their skin or the accident of where they were born, means that everyone—poor and rich, American or otherwise—can have markedly better lives in the future. And not just us. Tigers, elephants, rainforests, coral reefs, a life-sustaining climate, and the nature of cities, all depend on the deal ahead.
Eric W. Sanderson is a senior conservation ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and adjunct faculty at New York and Columbia Universities. Opinions expressed are solely his own and do not express the views or opinions of his employers.
Note: To read more about the socioeconomic pathways, check out:
Jiang, L., O’Neill, B.C., 2015. Global urbanization projections for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Global Environmental Change 42, 193–199. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.03.008
KC, S., Lutz, W., 2017. The human core of the shared socioeconomic pathways: Population scenarios by age, sex and level of education for all countries to 2100. Global Environmental Change 42, 181–192. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.06.004
O’Neill, B.C., Kriegler, E., Ebi, K.L., Kemp-Benedict, E., Riahi, K., Rothman, D.S., van Ruijven, B.J., van Vuuren, D.P., Birkmann, J., Kok, K., Levy, M., Solecki, W., 2015. The roads ahead: Narratives for shared socioeconomic pathways describing world futures in the 21st century. Global Environmental Change 42, 169–180. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.01.004
A review of Wild by Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes, by Margie Ruddick. 2016. ISBN: 9781610915991. Island Press, Washington, DC. 264 pages. Buy the book.
This book, Wild by Design, is written from the perspective of a landscape architect, Margie Ruddick, who designs cityscapes and individual lots in such a way as to integrate ecology and to reconnect people with their natural heritage.
While Ruddick’s book encourages authentic progress, implying that highly maintained “nature” is a move towards sustainability is problematic.
Full disclosure: I am an urban wildlife ecologist and my review is colored by this. Working in urban areas for over 20 years now with the intent of conserving natural resources, I know the importance of informing and engaging decision-makers in the ways they can incorporate ecological principles into city design and management. For example, yards, cumulatively, can have a huge impact on natural resources (e.g., water, energy, and biodiversity). Without homeowners changing their ways, cities remain unsustainable. I have tried and been involved with similar projects that Margie Ruddick discusses throughout the book. One of the goals for this book was to convey five design principles that help to create more sustainable landscapes. While I applaud Ruddick’s intent, I will comment on the functionality of the examples and fundamental design principles that address the nexus between art and ecology.
The overall goal of the book is to show alternative urban designs that help to conserve natural resources. In her Preface, Ruddick states, “I hope this book will give readers an idea of how they might try to bridge the two realms that were traditionally held distant: the hyper-orderly and aestheticized world of designers, and the sometimes mucky but exquisitely beautiful world of ecologists.” Being an ecologist, that piqued my interest. She goes on to write, in the first chapter, “Landscape architecture. Is it art? Is it ecology?” Again, I perked up and thought to myself, “Aha, a conundrum worth addressing in this age of sustainability. Is there a middle ground?”
Ruddick begins to make the case that creating spaces that are sustainable requires having a cultural component to “…make a landscape that people will internalize, make their own.” While I agree that people need to know what the place was designed to do, I am not sure artful design alone will engage them. I agree, cultural norms do affect whether a community accepts a non-conventional yard. For example, a native woodlands yard, with little lawn, may sequester carbon, provide wildlife habitat, help with water quality, and more, but these qualities don’t mean it will be accepted by the neighbors. My attempts to let my own yard go has, at times, prompted comments from my neighbors, and they were not of the encouraging kind!
In addressing a more ecological landscape, Ruddick says that design took a back seatin the 1990s and the ecological approach had become a more prominent “nondesign approach.” I was a bit taken aback by this, as I have rarely seen an “ecological” approach in urban-based designs, particularly residential neighborhoods. Anyway, I would argue that having areas with “no design” is actually a design choice.
The author goes on to state that for a wild look, you need to walk a thin line between chaos and order. The first chapter delves into her discovery of walking this line when doing her own yard. I read with interest because, as I mentioned above, I have done a similar thing to my own yard. Notably, her use of the word “invasive” in this chapter means plants that spread rapidly and mess up the yard design. This is different from what ecologists consider as “invasive.” As ecologists, we think of “invasive” exotic plants as those plants that are not native and that spread into natural areas, disrupting natural ecosystems. For example, in certain states, the Norway Maple (Acer platanoides, which is in the author’s yard) is listed as an invasive exotic and a threat to natural ecosystems; it should not be planted (USDA Noxious Weed List). I do love that the author highlights that there is less lawn and more structure in her design for her yard. But from her photos, I did see a lot of “showy” exotic flowers. It seemed like much of her yard had exotic plants, which is not good habitat either for insects or for birds. She did leave “snags” in her yard (these dead trees provide habitat for birds and insects, particularly woodpeckers) and talked about wildlife habitat. Ruddick seems very interested in creating an unconventional yard. Her writings about her yard and her experiences with neighbors and the local weed judge were engaging.
The rest of the book discusses a design process that incorporates fundamental principles. Her design process was broken down into five parts: Reinvention, Restoration, Conservation, Regeneration, and Expression. Below, I give my impressions of each section.
Reinvention: The idea here is to think outside the box. As a case study, the author offers up a reinvention of Queens Plaza in Long Island City. First, this project is really a hardscape reinvention and more about people, cars, and noise abatement. The images were beautiful and the landscape plan combined some vegetation with re-designed bike trails and automobile roads. I especially liked the vegetative catchments, designed to capture stormwater. However, the interventions could have gone further. For example, the large concrete curbs could have had cut outs to allow stormwater to infiltrate, a first step in transforming these areas into raingardens. Instead, I assume the vegetation had to be irrigated.
Restoration: I never knew that restoration is considered by some landscape architects as “ … what people with no imagination did.” In my experience as an ecologist, “restoration” refers to a very complex process that requires lots of imagination, historical knowledge, and creativity. I do like, though, that the author mentions the importance of restoring ecological processes in the landscape. However, a concern I have is with some of the definitions the author uses. It was unclear to me whether Ruddick knows the difference between exotics and exotic invasives. She writes, “They [other researchers] argue that plants formerly called ‘invasive exotics’ may not prevent the local ecosystem from functioning. If the food web is functioning so that most species can be sustained, then a plant that is exotic may not be so bad.” Exotic plants that did not historically occur in the area can be solely exotic, without having the additional characteristic of being invasive (i.e., impacting local ecosystems by spreading throughout natural areas). I sense confusion here, as I often do on this subject with some landscape architects—an exotic plant is only an exotic plant, and could theoretically be planted in an area without substantial impacts to surrounding ecosystems. I also get the impression that the author thinks of an invasive as a plants that escapes its landscaped area and goes into other areas of the landscaped area (which is NOT how ecologists think).
Elsewhere, Ruddick talks about using invasive exotics to remove pollutants in contaminated areas. “But where a system has been messed up, and you need to bring in the big guns that can pull contaminates out of the water or soil, invasive species are the star of the show.” Here, the author is thinking at a bigger scale about invasive exotics and that they should be contained. However, I would caution that these invasive exotics, by their very nature, escape and spread. Often, native alternatives exist and could be explored.
Ruddick provides several wonderful examples (especially Living Water Park in China) that involve local communities in the described projects and draw from their experiences. I do agree with the author’s sentiment that designs need to incorporate local people’s wants and ideas.
Conservation: As ecologists, we stress that conservation is the most important step when trying to conserve biodiversity. It is much easier to conserve than to restore (imagine trying to grow a 70 ft.-tall tree!). I like that the author emphasizes this. It takes a huge amount of effort and time to restore a piece of land, but conservation is relatively cheap and, if done correctly, can really make or break a project in terms of sustaining natural resources. As the author suggests, ecologists should be involved in design processes to make this happen. The chapter discusses many ecological principles. However, the case example that Ruddick gives is of a home landscaping project that was not a conservation example at all. Rather, the project was about conserving desert landscaping in “principle”—even though no native plants were there to begin with. It felt a bit out of place.
In another case study concerning a resort landscape plan that was going to be compact (for economic reasons), the author argues about constructing over a larger area to take “ … advantage of the diverse landscapes and to ensure that being out in the landscape would be an integral part of one’s stay.” As an ecologist, to conserve the “wild,” we often recommend that a development should be more compact, not less. This minimizes impacts; spreading the development out typically causes more harm to ecosystems. While I do appreciate the notion that people visiting a compact resort may be exposed to fewer ecosystems, a dispersed design may come at the cost of destroying these ecosystems. If a design truly were meant to conserve natural resources, then, in most cases, I would recommend that it be compact.
Regeneration: The central idea here is that one is setting in motion a set of processes that will restore something that is lost. I agree with this sentiment, as one needs to understand that landscape change, even in an area as small as a city lot, happens over a long period. And I like that the author talks about using local knowledge and establishing partnerships with local people. However, I did not see this as separate from the Restoration section and was confused about why the author chose to separate the two.
One neat example in this chapter came from Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ. They designed bird blinds that became living walls. I thought this was a fantastic way to combine bird watching with creating habitat.
Expression: This chapter was the most informative to myself as an ecologist, because I am very interested in what makes landscape architects “tick.” While I play lip service to aesthetics in my own work, I read this chapter with deep interest. According to the author, landscape architects’ motivations revolve around the desire to employ creative powers that express beauty or touch emotions. The goal is to create beautiful places, and the author noted that most people came to the landscape profession through art (Is that true in others’ opinions? I did not see a reference for the notion). But, is beauty not in the eye of the beholder? I mean, an ecologist’s definition of beauty in a landscape could be quite different than a non-ecologist.
The examples the author gives in this section are a mix of formal and wilder gardens, but they tended to have symmetries, straight lines, and manicured vegetation. To me, as an ecologist, beauty looks more like “controlled chaos,” where patches of chaotic, native vegetation are mixed in with a few exotics and mowed or trim edges. However, in my view, the controlled areas should be a minimal part of the landscape. Overall, this chapter tended to cover formal gardens and designs that occur inside built areas. It emphasized plant sculptures and building shapes that resembled “wild critters” but, in itself, it was not about conserving natural resources as much as it was about representing the wildness around us. Again, I noticed that some of the example gardens used invasive plants, such as Snake Plant (Sansevieria hyacinthoides), in a Florida landscape, which gave me pause about how much impact these areas would have on surrounding natural landscapes.
Reading this book was informative for an ecologist that works in urban areas. It helped me understand more about how landscape architects think and the possible synergies among humans, wildlife, and art/creativity. The whole book is full of great illustrations, photos, and case examples.
The author’s overarching message may be that people feel deeply connected to wild landscapes, and that a design should reflect this. However, I came away concerned that people would read this book as truly incorporating ecological principles into city landscapes. In my opinion, green development is a continuum of doing nothing to doing the whole thing. Almost all efforts are somewhere in between. This book moves the needle towards a more sustainable, wild, and natural way. But it did not go far enough and had some examples that could actually cause more harm than good.
My other worry is that design is not enough; long-term management is critical. This book offers little thought or concern for what happens over the long term. For example, those critical habitat patches in the middle of a subdivision could be compromised by what is put in each of the built lots nearby. If invasive exotic plants in yards were not managed through removal, they would escape and spread into nearby wildlife habitat. Ruddick ends her book by talking about promoting stewardship, and I agree that we need more environmental stewards. My concern is that the designs offered up in her book may demonstrate or reinforce the opinion that highly maintained “nature” is Nature, when it could more accurately be described as highly maintained art.
It is easy to be somewhat critical of different projects using hindsight. However, the devil is in the details and while Ruddick’s book encourages authentic progress in some areas, several of its shortcomings—e.g., not fully addressing ecological concerns—still give me pause. The recommendations and designs contained are not truly “wild.” I hope that as we move down a path of sustainable landscaping, people will appreciate and see the beauty in the “ordered chaos” that is Nature.
The phenomenon of water scarcity and access to safe drinking water as a life-saving resource is a significant concern for human survival and should be recognized as such.
The growing significance of sachet water in Ghana — the machine-sealed 500ml plastic bags of drinking water, known in local parlance as “pure water” — as a primary source of drinking water for households is important. It has a major impact towards the achievement of universal access to improved drinking water in the country (Sustainable Development Goal, or SDG, 6) and should not be under-emphasized. Nonetheless, its end product of plastic pollutants poses an environmental menace to Ghana’s ecosystems and requires a balanced solution to curb the dilemma of water scarcity and ecological stewardship. Though not sustainable, the increased production and consumption of sachet water as a primary source of drinking water is an inescapable reality in rural and urban communities of Ghana today, irrespective of households’ differential experiences with accessing this product.
Granted, with surging urbanization, it is unlikely that Ghana will meet the required capacity to provide universal access to safe drinking water by relying on its piped water supply network (Moulds et al., 2022), as envisaged by SDG 6. The emergent dominance of sachet water in Ghana’s water supply landscape represents an insoluble dilemma of plastic pollution and access to safe drinking water to address the challenge of water scarcity, especially in urban communities where 51.5% of households depend on it as a safe drinking water source (GSS, 2022). It further inhibits efforts to establish the principle of water as a public good and providing access to safe and affordable drinking water as a public service.
In Ghana’s capital city, Accra, 78% of households use sachet water as a primary drinking water source (Moulds et al., 2022: 14). The ubiquity of the product in Accra and its growing presence across the country suggest that sachet water is an indispensable part of Ghana’s water landscape (ibid). As Justin Stoler (2017) posits, the ability of many West African states, including Ghana, to achieve universal access to safe drinking water depends on their willingness to incorporate the sachet water industry into an integrated drinking water platform. The significant contribution of the sachet water industry toward achieving SDG 6 is apparent. The earlier the government recognizes this and embraces a more holistic approach towards addressing the utility of sachet water and its nuisance as a plastic pollutant to the environment, the better.
There needs to be a stress on the quagmire and potentially conflicting public policy interventions to address the challenges of environmental degradation, preservation of water bodies, and the scourge of plastic pollution as an ecological and sanitation problem in Ghana. Against the background of the destruction of water bodies and the ecosystem through indiscriminate surface mining activities, popularly known as “Galamsey”, the odds are against the government finding a way out of this conundrum. The proliferation of bottled and sachet water manufacturing companies in the country adds to the problem, coupled with the general households’ preference for this product over pipe-borne water, which is perceived to be contaminated. This further compounds the issues and must be addressed effectively. Nonetheless, the official public lamentation of households’ preference for sachet water as a safe drinking water source speaks to the counterintuitive narrative of the denial of the polluted state of pipe-borne water. It is unacceptable.
Pipe-borne water is unsafe in Ghana
The argument that pipe-borne water is the safest source of drinking water in Ghana is risible. According to UNICEF, “seventy-six per cent of Ghanaian households are at risk of drinking water contaminated with faecal matter (UNICEF, 2023)”. Even more worrying is that “only four per cent of households in Ghana treat water suitably before drinking and ninety-three per cent of households do not treat water at all” (ibid). These facts reveal the limitations of the Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources’ recent public denial of the country’s contaminated state of pipe-borne water, arguing that it is the best source of drinking water. She asserts that reliance on the sachet water is a personal choice Ghanaians make, as if it is a matter of choice rather than necessity.
A girl drinks from a hand pump in the village of Moglaa, Ghana on Thursday, November 11, 2010. Source: (UNICEF/UN309598/QUARMYNE)
It cannot be true that the pipe-borne water produced and delivered to Ghanaian homes by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) is the safest source of drinking water when, contrary to the Minister’s assertion, the 2021 population and housing census data report showed that 51.5% of urban households in the country depended on sachet water, while 33.6% of rural families survive on borehole/tube wells as a source of drinking water; compared to the 33.7% of urban families depending on pipe-borne water and 28.8% of rural households using same as their drinking water sources (GSS, 2022). The growing faith in and preference for the general population for less sustainable alternative sources of drinking water to pipe-borne water points to a critical failure of the water resource governance system in the country. This requires critical thinking to build back better and find a lasting solution to impending water scarcity and the ecological menace of the pollution that results from the mass production of plastics in the booming sachet and bottled water industry.
A woman carries a basin of water on her head as she heads back home in Savelugu, Ghana on Wednesday, November 10, 2010. Source: (UNICEF/UN128745/ASSELIN)
The phenomenon of water scarcity and access to safe drinking water as a life-saving resource is a significant concern for human survival and should be recognized as such. The politicization of this glaring problem of the contaminated state of pipe-borne water in the country is both baffling and worrisome. Access to safe drinking water is central to the sustainable development aspirations of Ghanaian households, and it is crucial it is for public health, socio-economic development, and healthy ecosystem development (UN, 2023).
The challenge of the unsustainability of sachet water
Indeed, reliance only on sachet water as a source of safe drinking water is unsustainable, but clearly depicts a much broader problem of the deplorable state of affairs in the wake of water scarcity, the contaminated state of pipe-borne water, and water system governance paralysis in the country. A few decades ago, access to pipe-borne water significantly meant access to clean water and governments in West Africa prided themselves on delivering access to pipe-borne water in homes and businesses as remarkable achievements worth commendation. Today, access to pipe-borne water in Ghana means nothing more than another contaminated water source. The worst is that plastic bottled and sachet water, regardless of its consequential end product of a disposable pollutant in our environment, is perceived as a safe alternative water source in our homes compared to tap water.
How did we end up here? The answer to this question is plausible: pipe-borne water is not a reliable source of safe drinking water anymore.
The mass production of plastics and pollution
The worrisome media report of a booming global plastic water industry with over one million bottles of water sold every minute worldwide in an industry that shows no sign of slowing down speaks to a catastrophic consequence of pervasive pollution of our ecosystem. The situation in Ghana is the same. Talk less about what the increasing patronage of packaged water products does to our psyche and the further emphasis on these sales doubling by 2030, according to a report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UN, 2023).
A chocked drainage of plastic and domestic refuse at Chorkor, a Suburb of Accra, Ghana. Source: (AUCC community project, 2019)
This calls for our attention to environmental stewardship, considering the threats mass production of single-use plastic poses to our environments, such as water quality degradation, blocked drains, localized flooding, and ecological degradation (Moulds et al., 2022). Wardrop et al. (2017) estimate that Ghana produced 14,000 tons of plastic waste in 2015, consuming 8.2 billion packaged water (ibid: 17). Given the current growth of the sachet water industry, we must activate our commitment to environmental stewardship, to protecting the environment and hold in check the desire to profit from a booming industry while recognizing the need not to undermine public water utility, the traditional notion of water as a fundamental human right, and establishing a system of water governance which views water as a public good (Moulds et al., 2022: 17).
Common sense solutions are valuable
Finding balanced solutions to the dilemma of increased plastic waste generated from mass production and consumption of sachet water and the utility of the product as an alternative and complementary choice of safe drinking water source requires a holistic view and approach to the compounded issues enumerated above.
Essentially, I subscribe to the idea of Gillian Tett (2021) that finding solutions for public sector challenges requires a much broader view of the problems than relying on hard science and one set of limited intellectual tools to solve them. Beyond the reliance on hard science and big data for effective responses to fast-moving challenges, such as lack of access to safe drinking water and the plastic pollution menace, it is crucial to recognize the significance of what she calls the “soft” science to understand human behaviour and culture. Tett (2021) posits that it is a profound mistake to consider relying on one set of intellectual tools deployed with tunnel vision to solve public policy problems. A lateral vision is needed to appreciate the broader human context and how elements outside the model of the extensive data set or scientific trial could affect what is happening (ibid).
An interview with a surface mining project supervisor at Anyinam community, Eastern Region of Ghana. Source: (AUCC Field Report, 2019)
Drawing insights from her postulation gives me the optimism to grasp the possible solution to the paradox of “faith in sachet water” in Ghana. Building partnerships with the private sector stakeholders, civil society groups, and the local communities and resorting to commonsense approaches, such as intensive plastic reuse, recycling, and innovative use of plastics for household needs, such as “trashy bags” initiatives, would go a long way to address the environmental challenge and re-establish public confidence in the water and sanitation management systems in the country.
Likewise, our society’s imprudence of a preference for a source of life-threatening breeding pollutants that endangers biodiversity, aquaculture, and animal species with a bearing on our survival as humans. Such a call for a diverse spectrum of commonsense solutions and efforts at building resilient partnerships helps create local coping mechanisms to address the myriad problems crippling the water governance system of the country. It will inure to the advantage of the government to move from denialism to making efforts to renew public confidence in tap water quality as a priority to promote water security. This is not aberrant with the SDG 6 advocacy for strengthening local community participation in water and sanitation management. Such participatory water governance mechanisms offer the best chance to re-establish the principle of providing water as a public service (Moulds et al., 2022: 18).
Moulds, S., Chan, A., Tetteh, J., Bixby, H., Owusu, G., Agyei-Mensah, S., . . . Templeton, M. (2022). Sachet Water in Ghana: A spatiotemporal analysis of the recent upward trend in consumption and its relationship with changing household characteristics, 2010-2017. PLOS ONE, 17(1), 1-22.
Stoler, J. (2012, December). Improved but unsustainable: accounting for sachet water in post-2015 goals for global safe water. Journal for Tropical Medicine and International Health, 17(12), 1506-1508.
Tett, G. (2021, December ). Listening to Social Silence: Anthropology is vital for building back better. Finance and Development, 37-39.
(2023, April 8). Retrieved from UNICEF Ghana: https://www.unicef.org/ghana/water#:~:text=Seventy%20six%20per%20cent%20of,not%20treat%20water%20at%20all.
Wardrop, N., Dzodzomenyo, M., Aryeetey, G., Hill, A., Bain, R., & Wright, J. (2017). Estimation of packaged water consumption and associated plastic waste production from household budget surveys. Environmental Research Letters, 12(7). doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa751f
Zurek, K. (2022, February 24). Sachet water main source of drinking water in Ghana – Census Report. Accra, Greater Accra, Ghana. Retrieved April 9, 2023, from https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/sachet-water-main-source-of-drinking-water-in-ghana-census-report.html#:~:text=The%20census%20data%20also%20found,was%20used%20by%2028.8%25%20of
It is time to see the change, make the change and realize the potential of multicultural inclusiveness in building resilient and just cities.
This article describes a new approach to graduate studies, that works at the dynamic intersection of environmental issues and social justice. The Master of Arts in Education with Urban Environmental Education program out of Antioch University in Seattle, has attracted a very diverse student body, who illuminate daily the challenges, struggles, and strategies unique to people of color striving to enter the environmental field. If cities are to be places where all thrive, unraveling inequity, exclusion, and discrimination is paramount. Diverse voices and experiences will build resilient cities.
I spent 2014 doing the market research for a new Master’s degree in Environmental Education for IslandWood, an environmental non-profit on Bainbridge Island. As part of the process, we convened several groups in Seattle and New York City that included community leaders, activists, and organizers in the design effort. The participants were asked one question: “What is the work that needs to be done in urban areas?” Maketa, a graphic facilitator, and I collected their thoughts and translated them into the graphic representation below. The shape of the program is new and refreshing. Traditional environmental education was turned on its head. Launching a program that would prepare a new and diverse cadre of environmental leaders emerged as the unanimous goal.
Capturing the imporant threads of the new program. Image: Maketa Wilborn, Graphic Facilitator, Seattle, WA (www.maketawilborn.com)
The graphic representation above, captured the important threads of the new program:
The world is changing: More live in cities, and they are increasingly diverse culturally and racially.
Cities matter as they represent the greatest hope for long term planetary survival, sustainability, and resilience.
Education has the power to transform the way that people live in cities.
Urban communities will only thrive if they are engaged collectively from the inside out or the ground up.
Urban solutions depend upon the preparation of a diverse cadre of environmental leaders.
The three strands described below shape the pedagogy, practice, and outcomes of the Urban Environmental Education program.
Use the City as a Learning Platform. Place-based and experiential approaches to urban environmental education are aimed at connecting people to the biosphere, to place, to intersecting natural and human-made systems, to change and impacts, to cultural perspectives, and to identifying power, voice, and agency as urban stewards.
“Empty lots are more than just ‘holes’ in the urban façade. They represent the character of a resilient ecosystem, a possibility for vibrant green space in the making. As educators, we help make these possibilities visible and highlight their importance to community strength, health, and resilience.” -Tiffany Adams, Alum of UEE Cohort 2
Focus on the complex socio-ecological dynamic of the urban environment, which includes the ecological, social, political, and economic forces that shape it. Urban environments are ecosystems in which human and ecological health is heavily interdependent.
“Classes are carried out in the city, on the streets, observing and investigating through the perspectives of those who live there. I’m learning to design educational strategies that prepare community members to recognize and act on the impacts of climate change, to identify impacts on environmental health, and employ sustainable practices that lead to the creation of equitable and just solutions.” -James King !!!, Alum of UEE Cohort 3
Develop cultural fluency among environmental educators. Urban areas are dense and increasingly diverse. We seek to engage all people as urban stewards, and its practitioners must represent the diversity of racial, cultural, and ethnic perspectives that live and work in cities. The full story of the urban landscape as a complex socio-ecological place means grappling first-hand with issues of inclusion, equity, and justice.
“Providing intentional voice to environmental justice means that I have personal work to do…studying my culpability, my entanglement. It means integrating issues of power, access, privilege, and fairness into thinking about how I educate others.” -Danielle Nicholas, Alum of UEE Cohort 3
This new approach to Urban Environmental Education intentionally integrates issues of environmental and social justice into the narrative of every academic course and practical experience. Students actively apply the dynamics of equity, privilege, and power as they wrestle with environmental issues. Students insist that they are ‘expanding’ the dominant paradigm of environmental education to include multiple racial, cultural, and ethnic perspectives and experiences.
“The dominant environmental narrative in the US is primarily constructed and informed by white, Western European or Euro-American voices. The black experience of nature always bumped up against social, economic, and historical processes that serve to remind them that their map of the world, while fluid, demands a particularly fine-tuned compass that allowed them to navigate a landscape that was not always hospitable. In the future, environmental programs must address the connections linking race, identity, representation, history, and the environment to awaken from our historical amnesia and create a more inclusive, expansive environmental movement devoid of denial and rich in possibility.” -Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors
Place-based urban environmental mapping with students. Photo: IslandWood Communications and Marketing
We found that most urban communities are exhausted by universities who use them for their own ends. One of the most powerful parts of the program is the 40-week course in Participatory Action Research culminating in a Legacy Project. Students are hired by community organizations in a research capacity with the intention that their research serve the community directly. The research is defined through the ‘eyes’ and interests of the people who live there. The integrity of the research is guided by Paulo Freire‘s approach to community engagement and education. We embed our students in urban communities, to listen closely and without judgment to the everyday experiences, struggles, and solutions percolating among the people who live there.
The UEE program integrates a different set of elements to “nature interpretation”, which includes high-density residential and commercial infrastructure, transformed waterways, waste streams and paved surfaces, air and water quality, and access to healthy food, shelter, and green space. Understanding urban complexity and the interdependence of the natural and the built environment is key to our work. Cities are becoming places of “new nature”, a shifting perspective that is not always green. Understanding the nature of a city requires an intentional shift in environmental perception and educational practice. It requires a new conceptual and pedagogical frame for environmental education that influences the way theory and practice are conceived and delivered.
Historical Ecology in Pioneer Square in Seattle. Photo Khavin Debbs, UEE Cohort 3
“There is a serious disconnect between the changing demographics in our country and the lack of diverse leadership and staffing at organizations that protect our health and the environment.” -Mustafa Ali, Senior Vice President of Climate, Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization with the Hip Hop Caucus
As a learning group, we peel back the layers of the city by walking them, talking with residents and listening to those who live there. Urban ecology is a deep study of the ways that people and nature intersect, influence, and support each other. The students remain our best teachers. The majority are people of color from the guts of cities around the country.
Rasheena is from Chicago, Tiffany is from New York City, James is from Atlanta, Niesha is from Los Angeles, yet they find common ground in their experiences as people of color and as environmental leaders. Every day they, not so gently, open our minds to see a different reality that has actually been there all along. This new environmental lens is one that most of the students live every day, one that transforms the traditional white wilderness model of environmental education to include a parallel awareness of environmental racism, inequity, and exclusion. As one student exclaimed, “I’ve been here all along, you just haven’t and don’t see me.”
In our classes, the realities of race, equity, and environment are a constant theme, sparking hard conversations about power and privilege, barriers and misconceptions, assumptions and implicit bias. Students of color, for the most part, are for the first time in their lives the participating majority in classes. When invited to bring their ideas, feelings, perceptions, and experiences forward, they feel safe and supported. What we hear from them deserves a voice in the larger arena of the environmental field and yet, finding a foothold in environmental organizations continues to be difficult despite the multiple initiatives to create diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mission statements.
Excursion to Danny Woo Gardens in the International District, Cohort 1. Photo: IslandWood Communications and Marketing
The traditional white wilderness model bit the dust early on. Communing with pristine nature is replaced with finding the assets in neighborhoods where most people live including city parks and green spaces. The overwhelming message is that not all people have the means, the power or the voice to ensure the environmental vitality of a place. Social justice plays a big role in determining how people live and thrive in cities.
“As educators, long-term results rely on building trust among constituents, learners, and community members. First, we build relationships…authentic and real relationships. Relationships are key to the longevity of any environmental solutions. We need to step outside of our personal assumptions, our biases, our stereotypes and listen to the stories from inside a community. The real experiences of everyday people shine a light on the environmental issues they face. Embedded in those stories are the keys to building stewards of urban places”. -Jess Wallach, UEE alum Cohort 1
This new program design is cohort based. We live and learn by working through the layers of experience, multiple perspectives, disparate values, and visions of how cities might work better for everyone. The first three cohorts have drawn 60 percent diversity, bringing African American, Hispanic, Asian, and White educators together for 15 months of study and practice. The definition of environmental education has expanded. The traditional environmental education values and goals are consistently questioned and reformulated. Our work is to better understand the nature of cities (rather than nature in the city) from the perspectives of those who live deep in their communities.
“I continued on for years feeling like an outsider in search of environmentalism as a Black woman who grew up partly in inner city Chicago. That was until I realized that I was on the wrong journey. I realized that I hadn’t shown up late to the party, but I had unknowingly stumbled into and was asking to be let into the wrong party. The environmentalism of John Muir and Aldo Leopold was indeed not my environmentalism—not my Chicago community’s environmentalism and not my family’s environmentalism. To be a Black environmentalist means reconciliation with the land and reconstructing the perceptions of nature. It means embracing the toiling of my grandmother in her Chicago backyard urban garden, stepping beyond the nature documentary dreams of my grandfather, and embracing that we too have always been and are environmentalists who may not always fit ‘the mold’.” -Rasheena Fountain, Climate Conscious Collab April 21, 2018, UEE Alum Cohort 2
Group Portrait of Cohort 1. Photo: IslandWood Communications and Marketing
“Leadership will never be measured by what one person is able to accomplish as a result of his or her talents and abilities alone. It can’t be. The word itself implies the existence and participation of motivating and moving with others.” -CJ Goulding, UEE Alum Cohort 1
On an unrecognized and nearly invisible plane, there exists a parallel universe of environmentalists who add important perspectives, approaches, and styles of leadership to a notoriously white profession. It’s time to see the change, make the change and realize the potential of multicultural inclusiveness in building resilient and just cities.
Leading an urban nature hike in Seattle. Photo: IslandWood Communications and Marketing
The students want their stories to be accepted and as well known as Muir and Leopold. Following their lead, traditional approaches to EE are “unpacked” and reworked into a radical intersection of environmental leadership and social justice. Their thinking is fresh and drives educational practice to dance on a necessary edge. These newly recognized voices are rising and challenging us to consider new ways of thinking about old ways of being.
“I hope I am working to add to the plurality of perspectives and stories of relationships with the land. It’s a bridge that I and other environmentalists of color are working hard to build. For this reason, no matter how dissonant it feels, I will keep uttering the phrase ‘I am a Black environmentalist’, even if my dreams may be deferred.” -Rasheena Fountain, Climate Conscious Collab, April 21, 2018, UEE Alum Cohort 2
We experience the city through our senses. When we walk along city sidewalks or in parks, we can feel the city—we hear sounds, feel the materiality of the pavement or grass, and smell the car exhaust or freshly cut grass. These ‘sensual’ experiences of urban space are referred to as sensory engagements. Sensory engagements are those interactions with places, people, objects, animals, events, etc. as experienced through/with our senses.
We need to take sensory engagements seriously in the city, and in urban planning.
Senses, Bull et al. (2006) write in their introduction of the inaugural issue of the journal The Senses and Society, “mediate the relationship between self and society, mind and body, idea and object. The senses are everywhere. Thus, sensation…is fundamental to our experience of reality.” The senses are part of our bodily states and processes. We generally think of senses in terms of the five main senses: hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. But the senses are much more than what we hear, see, touch, smell, and taste. There are also other “senses” that are considered key to our perceptions of the world: pain, balance, sense of motion, sense of time, sense of temperature, and sense of direction.
Moreover, what counts as the “senses” is never universal—it has multiple forms and is constantly changing. Geographer Nigel Thrift writes:
The sensory orders of cultures can vary radically and so, therefore, can the expectations of what counts as perception and experience. …There is no need to think that what we name as the senses has a predetermined or stable character. In all likelihood, the constellation of senses and what we may consequently regard as sensations goes through regular periods of redefinition and re-embedding (2007).
In this regard, the senses cannot always be assumed to be “a ʻnaturalʼ or intrinsic part of bodily experiences.” Rather, they are “highly acculturated” (Longhurst et al. 2009). That is, what counts as the senses and our understanding of sensual experiences is socially constructed. Sensory engagements are different for different people in diverse places: sensations are culturally, historically, and spatially constructed.
The physical experience, of course, is not constructed. To feel is a very material experience in our bodies. These embodied or corporeal ‘senses’ produce and are very much entwined with emotions, feelings, and affect. Emotions can be understood as physical manifestations of sensory experiences. Our sensory engagements with the world and the emotions that we experience depend on where we are, what is around us, language, our bodies, etc.
This article explores the question of how we experience the city through senses and emotions. Paying attention to emotions and sensual experiences enlightens our understanding of what it means to be in, to live in, and to make the city (and world). As such, there is a need in urban planning to take sensory engagements seriously in the city. This is particularly important when considering issues of social and environmental justice.
Scenes from Villa Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, a neighborhood of Managua, Nicaragua, in close proximity to a Big Cola bottling plant. Photos: Carolina de los Angeles Espinoza Ruiz (FUNDECI)
But acknowledging senses and emotion is not easy. How do we adequately represent the senses and emotions of people, especially since language cannot fully express the depth of feeling and emotional meaning? One way is to start paying attention to how people feel about the city—what are their emotional reactions? How do they feel about where they live, their homes, the areas around their homes? How do they experience everyday urban worlds through their senses—touch, smell, sight, and the myriad other senses? We are very good at paying attention to the visual in cities, but the senses comprise much more than what we see. Urban planners should remember more often that the city is not just a planned space, but a lived space (over four decades ago, Henri Lefebvre point out the importance of everyday living and perceiving in cities as critical to the production of urban space). People have everyday routines that take them through the city—they feel the city in complex ways.
We also need to remember that planning itself is rooted in the sensory engagements of planners (most planners are people living in cities!). The emergence of the field of modern urban planning has its roots in sensory engagements with the city. The industrial cities of Paris and London produced so-called sensory overloads: they were crowded and full of smells (raw sewage, body sweat, animals, etc.), disease, contaminated air, poverty, and a host of other characteristics that produced many emotional responses (disgust, sadness, empathy). Modern urban planning emerged with the aim of addressing the unhealthy sensory environment and so-called moral disorder of the city. The aim of modern urban planning at the time was to rid the city of bad natures—to remove the unhealthy physical and sensory engagements—and to transform the city into a sanitary, ordered space. For example, the creation of urban zoning to separate residential spaces from industry has been a key element in creating an ordered city. The physical and emotional responses to industrial cities were an integral part of the production of knowledge about cities and the creation of what we now know as the modern city. The very people who first implemented what we now know as modern urban planning lived in the industrial city and based their efforts to improve it on their daily experiences. We cannot, therefore, separate emotions and senses from rational planning, since they are intimately entwined.
More scenes from Villa Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. Photos: Carolina de los Angeles Espinoza Ruiz (FUNDECI)
Of course, modern urban planning did not create perfect cities. Many contemporary cities have far better environments than industrial cities of the turn of the 20th century, but all cities have social and environmental issues—as the articles on TNOC attest. One problem in most cities is that urban planning tends to ignore sensory engagements in the city. If planners or other city officials attempt to address sensory engagements in their ideas and plans, they are usually sidelined in favour of economic concerns. Urban sensory engagements often come into the spotlight when groups of individuals call attention to particular issues that affect them. Environmental justice issues, for example, are in many cases noticeable when people’s physical health is affected, such as asthma from living too close to freeways or health problems from contaminated water (consider the recent case of Flint, MI). Radical physical changes in an individual’s health engender very emotional reactions. Changes in an individual’s everyday environment can also bring about environmental justice concerns; for example, increasingly bad smells from nearby industry or noise from traffic. Such everyday sensory experiences can accumulate and create larger environmental and health issues.
There is also the problem of privileging certain sensory engagements over others. Because sensory engagements are culturally, historically, economically, and spatially constructed, they are different for different people in diverse places. The ordered city that emerged out of the chaotic and dirty industrial city embodied the visions of certain people who had the power and desire to change the city. The idea of participatory urban planning did not exist at the time, and contemporary urban planning in most cities is rarely participatory; as such, the city is designed to create particular sensory environments. If large, green parks are viewed by planners as the best way to create space for urban inhabitants to enjoy nature (the sounds, smells, and visual calmness), these spaces will, perhaps, be privileged over smaller, neighbourhood-level programmes that assist individuals in maintaining trees and other plant life in their own yards. Many studies have examined how large green parks in cities are surrounded primarily by upper-middle and upper class housing; lower-income residents have to travel much farther to be able to enjoy these spaces, reducing their ability to experience sensory engagements with urban nature.
These two issues in contemporary planning—the sidelining of sensory engagements and the privileging of certain sensory environments—are magnified in many cities of the global south, where class differences are highly spatialised. In some cities, the urban landscape has been produced through a combination of modern urban planning and informal development practices. Managua, Nicaragua, is one such city. In the 1950s, modern urban planning sought to zone the city in a similar manner to that of U.S. cities such as Miami and LA, while informal residential, commercial, and industrial development occurred simultaneously. This combination of formal and informal urban development created a patchwork urban landscape with informal residential settlements sandwiched between middle and upper class housing, industry, North American-style strip malls and, more recently, gated communities. The patchwork has resulted in residential neighbourhoods (most often lower income) emerging adjacent to factories. This has been especially common along the lakeshore, where large industry has been located for decades because of its close proximity to Lake Xolotlán (easy access to discharge waste). Zoning in the city has frequently been defined after areas are already well established, resulting in conflicts between residents and industry. Much of this conflict arises out of unwanted sensory environments for residents. I want to explore one example of a current environmental justice conflict that has arisen because of the creation of an uncomfortable and unhealthy sensory environment.
This particular conflict involves the large multi-national bottling company, Big Cola and residents living beside one of the bottling plants in Managua. Last winter, while I was in Managua finishing research on the cultural ecology of Lake Xolotlán, my long-time collaborator invited me to her house. She wanted to show me what has become a serious conflict between her neighbourhood, the city, and Big Cola. The bottling plant is located across a small canal from the residential area of Villa Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. While the plant is across the canal, it is only 5 metres from the door of the first street of houses. However, this canal is the boundary between the residential and industrial zones.
The plant began operating in 2010 and, after several months, residents started to notice annoying sounds and vibrations. The bottling plant operates 24 hours a day and, as such, creates a constant vibration that can be felt inside the houses located along the first two streets of the neighbourhood. Along with the vibrations, the bottling plant generates interminable noises that fluctuate in volume depending on the time of day. The plant also discharges liquid waste into the concrete canal that separates it from the residential area; at certain times of the day, the liquid waste emits strong-smelling odours.
Discharge of liquid waste from the Big Cola bottling plant in Villa Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. Photo: Carolina de los Angeles Espinoza Ruiz (FUNDECI)
The impacts of the bottling plant are felt in people’s homes throughout the day and night—their everyday lives have been interrupted by the presence of the plant. At first, residents found the pattern of noise and vibration just extremely annoying, but three years after Big Cola began operating this plant, the residents of Villa Pedro Joaquín Chamorro also started to see health effects. Some residents on the street closest to the plant have had their sleep interrupted. The constant noise has, at times, exceeded 170 decibels, which is almost four times the desirable upper limit set by the World Health Organization. As a result, there are already people who are suffering from emotional stress , migraines, insomnia, and tinnitus (a constant ringing or buzzing in the ears). Some residents have also experienced skin and respiratory problems from the emotional stess.
The residents of the neighbourhood have formed a citizens group to try to shut down the plant. They approached the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in an attempt to environmental laws. However, the main concerns about vibrations and noise are not ‘strong enough’ to shut down the plant. The Ministry never conducted an environmental assessment when the bottling plant was installed, nor did they grant the company an environmental permit to discharge liquid waste into the canal. As the bottling plant is located in an industrial zone, any excess of untreated waste into the canal only results in a large fine for the company (as per current environmental laws). If the company is fined a certain number of times, there is the potential to shut the plant. At present, the company has not discharged excess amounts. The noise and vibrations do not fall under the jurisdiction of environmental laws, so the residents have little leverage to insist that the plant close. Moreover, the bottling plant creates jobs for dozens of residents of Villa Pedro Joaquin Chamorro and other surrounding neighbourhoods. There is a conflict between economic development, employment, and everyday comfort of residents. In a country where economic development dominates urban interests, arguing to close a bottling plant because of emotional stress and “sensory” pollution (noise and vibrations) is not convincing enough to bring about any change.
The case of Big Cola’s bottling plant and Villa Pedro Joaquin Chamorro broaches a complex question: what counts as environmental pollution in Managua? Since the 1970s, noise pollution has been considered a serious problem in many cities, but what counts as noise has also changed since then. The constant hum of traffic is, for some urban residents, background noise (‘white noise’). Yet, there is growing research and media attention on emotional well-being. Emotional stress is now understand as a key cause of physical ailments. The sensory environments that have been created in cities shape emotional well-being. Urban planners would be wise to pay attention to how people sense the city and the emotional responses to the sounds, smells, sights and other intricate ways of sensing and feeling of humans (and other animals).
Video data gathering captured the spatial and temporal distribution pattern — the flux/flow — of the ecology of small lanes in Bangkok. It suggests that we should stop seeing cities in terms of centers and peripheries, a residual concept of colonial metropolitanism, but as patchy distributive ecological systems, where every point in the system has value.
Sois, or lanes, are the capillaries of Bangkok, Thailand. Like rectangular blocks in New York City, or piazzas in Rome, they constitute the architecture or the DNA of the city. For anthropologist Erik Cohen, a Bangkok soi constitutes an overlooked “semi-autonomous ecological sub-system” which comprise the “interstitial hinterland” between the dominating lines of urban development and expansion. As the megacity of Bangkok continues to grow along ribbons of wide roads, sois are the informal, unplanned, in-between micro spaces that still make the city varied, interesting and livable. The Bangkok soi remains a particularly revealing unit of analysis to understand the nature of fast-growing Southeast Asian cities like Bangkok.
Cohen conducted his fieldwork during the summers of 1981 through 1984; co-author McGrath lived in Bangkok between December and May from 1998 to 2007; and Diwadkar just arrived in December 2020 in time for the city’s first COVID lockdown. McGrath’s field research chronicled both the centripetal growth of the center of the city with the construction of the first mass transit lines and the extensive centrifugal expansion of the city with the construction of an outer ring road at the beginning of the millennium. In the decade between Cohen’s and McGrath’s longitudinal fieldwork, Thailand was the world’s fastest-growing economy before the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Between 2006 and today, Bangkok has been the scene of continuing political conflict, including two military coups. At the time of Diwadkar’s arrival, COVID shut the entry doors to one of the world’s most visited tourist hotspots and dampened ongoing street protests.
View of Soi Ratchawithi 6, still from walk-through video shot by Bung, one of the students in the workshop (January 2021).
The ecology of Bangkok’s sois have continued to adapt and change in a way Cohen could only begin to imagine in the early 1980s. Sois remain bounded physical environments condensing both social contact and ecological interactions. As Cohen noted, they mark the transitions of rural patterns of canals, pathways, and fields that become unevenly urbanized during various periods of development. As such, they constitute a dynamic and heterogenous patch matrix of social, built, and vegetated structures that often temporarily revert to flooded waterways during rainy season.
Affinities between the architecture and ecology of the city can advance urban ecology beyond social metaphors. The concept of the metacity, postulated in both urban design and urban ecology, positions the science and design of cities up-close embedded within complex lifeworlds, but also reflects on patterns and processes with objective methods remotely. A metacity approach has the potential to address both the cultural and ecological dimensions of environmental justice and the climate crisis by making accessible the descriptive ecological and projective architectural tools through everyday handheld digital videography to collect data information on patterns, micro-climates, movements of the city, in both biophysical and social science senses.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Area: Inside-out
The two authors returned to the topic of the ecology of Bangkok’s sois during the city’s first COVID lockdown in January 2021, as part of a ten-day remote design experiment workshop (DEX), for Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Architecture. We had the unique experience of understanding Bangkok through the simultaneous social-ecological observations of ten students participating in the workshop, locked down in the immediate areas around their dormitories or family homes across the entire Bangkok metropolitan area. Their video data, gathered over a few days, sheds light on the validity of Cohen’s initial fieldwork but also can be evaluated in relation to the centripetal and centrifugal forces of development that transformed both the city’s center and periphery, as documented by McGrath.
We organized the Design Experiment Workshop into two video exercises derived from The Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies definition of ecology. The first videoed a 5-minute walk down a soi near their place of residence in order to study the processes influencing the spatial distribution, abundance, and interactions among and between organisms. The second exercise required visiting one ecological “hot spot” on the soi, framing the transformation and flux of energy, matter, and information from multiple camera positions and different times of the day. The workshop employed data gathering through the architectural application of film framing and editing techniques first described in the textbook Cinemetrics. Videography of everyday life is ubiquitous in an age of YouTube and Tik-Tok, but with a systematic framing method, pictures and sounds can create, in the words of philosopher Gilles Deleuze “sets of information”. We offer four examples of this fieldwork, from two students locked down in Bangkok’s periphery, and from two students in the central city. We use students’ nicknames to preserve their privacy.
Google Earth view of Bangkok Metropolitan Area showing the location of the following four examples from workshop. Hong and Oat from the western and northern periphery, and Bung and Toon in the city center. We use the student’s nicknames to protect their privacy.
1. Two 5-minute walks in Bangkok’s Periphery
As documented by McGrath and Thaitakoo’s survey of the construction of Bangkok’s outer ring road, the centrifugal expansion of the metropolitan region has been conducted primarily through highway construction across agricultural land. The ribbon pattern that Cohen described in the urbanization of central Bangkok in the 1980s continues on the periphery today, as large areas between highways remain unplanned. Both housing estates and industrial zones are constructed as gated enclaves on patches of converted farmland between the commercial ribbons. The path of the ring road crossed huge tracks of wet rice fields to the north and east, major trunk canals that fill and drain the fields, fish farms and prawn fields near the coast to the south, and old fruit orchards to the west. The ring road crosses the mighty Chao Phraya River twice but also bridges several of the canals that follow the old course of the river.
Key map of Bangkok’s outer ring road survey by McGrath and Danai Thaitakoo, 2005.
Hong’s walk down Soi Phetkasam 88
In the western periphery, Hong documented the “interesting ecological heterogeneity” along the “interstitial hinterland” of Soi Phetkasam 88, a very dynamic soi crossing a former fruit orchard area and an irrigation trunk canal. The soi connects to an exit from the recently completed 12-lane Western Outer Ring Road, making it a shortcut by-path for many vehicles, including delivery cars, trucks, taxis, and buses.
Google Earth view of Soi Phetkasam 88 with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Hong’s 5-minute video walkthrough along Soi Phetkasam 88 records the ecology of a soi filled with middle to low-income housing, interspersed with multiple shops. The shops occupy quickly built, one-story sheds, and sell both village craft production, such as straw brooms, but also car mechanics, and, as everywhere in Bangkok, street food. At the end of the walk, a small bridge crossed over the Bangchak Canal, which continues to feed remnant fruit orchards as support older villages and new informal settlements.
Video of Hong’s 5-minute walk along Soi Phetkasam 88
Mining the information on their video, students were asked to make a “soi shed” diagram. If a watershed map documents the catchment area of a river system, a soi shed maps the distribution, abundance, and interactions of sound, energy, material, organisms, and information encountered along a five-minute walk. Additionally, students were asked to construct four architectural cross-sections at key “hot-spots” of ecological interactions captured in their 5-minute video. The video itself is seen as a “moving section” through the soi, capturing 30 frames per second. Each drawn section shown is one of 9,000 possible cross-sections captured in the video. Each video frame can be seen as a slice of ecological information rather than a visual picture, and much like in an MRI scanning a living body, video frames can be analyzed as frozen moments of space/time.
Hong’s soi shed map on the left, and cross-sections at two hot-spots, at a local market and crossing the canal, along the soi
Along Soi Phetkasam 88, there are temperate and tropical plants of various sizes and species competing with each other to grow as well as the colorful competition of various signs, flags, and awnings. There are all kinds of different residences, from one-floor and two-floor houses, shophouses, and small apartment blocks. There are no sidewalks, and all kinds of objects line the soi: cars, signs, waste containers, tables, sandbags, traffic cones, and merchandise for sale. Convenience stores line the soi, providing a small income and activity for older citizens who stay at home. Interestingly, as you walk along the path, there are also many car repair garages located next to the convenience stores. Here, the soi is a little livelier, with human interactions around the stores and garages, in combination with the chirping sounds of the birds.
Oat’s walk down Soi Sinsapnakorn
The northern periphery of the city has experienced development longer than the western frontier, especially following the expansion of Don Mueng, Bangkok’s first international airport, after World War II. This area was first developed for export rice field production, but became the location of inexpensive, densely packed single-family houses in gated communities when rice farmers sold land to developers from the 1960s. Soi Sinsapnakorn is the main lane of such an older suburban community.
Google Earth view of Soi Sinsapnakorn with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Oat’s walk starts at the back south end of the soi and crosses six blocks of tightly packed single-family, walled, and gated homes along the soi to the west, and attached row houses further east. Potted plants, well-maintained gardens, and mature trees attract songbirds throughout. On the left, just before the soi crosses the Lam Phakchi Canal, there is a play and sports ground, occupied in the afternoon and early evening by a market.
Video of 5-Oat’s minute walk along Soi Sinsapnakorn
The Lam Phakchi Canal is a major trunk canal, a remnant of the irrigation system for export wet rice production. Along the soi, north of the canal, are four townhouse blocks with front extensions used for hanging laundry, car parking, or gardens. Some have been adapted to shophouses occupying the sidewalk with goods for sale. At the intersection with the 6-lane Thep Rak Road, there is an empty booth no longer occupied by a security guard. The soi is no longer gated since a new road was built as a cut-through to the south.
2. Two 5-minute walks in Central Bangkok
Central Bangkok has experienced an explosion of high-rise condominium, hotel, office, and shopping mall construction following the introduction of mass transit at the beginning of the millennium. The first two lines of the BTS Skytrain system, the Silom and Sukhumvit lines, meet at Siam Central Station, adjacent to Chulalongkorn University property. In addition to the research on Bangkok’s developing agricultural periphery along the outer ring road, from 2000 to 2005, McGrath also documented the transformation of this central node in Bangkok following the opening of the Skytrain. Data on the construction of shopping centers in the area since 1960 was compiled on a 3D digital model that also included a timeline that demonstrates the impact mass transit infrastructure had on the urban adaptation of the public realm of Central Bangkok.
Digital timeformations model showing the evolution of Bangkok’s central shopping district between 1960 and 2005., The completion of Siam Central Station at the intersection of the first two BTS Skytrain mass transit lines in 2000 led to the explosive developments that followed.
Bung’s walk down Soi Ratchawithi 6
Soi Ratchawithi 6 is one of many sub-sois off Ratchawithi Road, a major east-west road that leads to Victory Monument. The BTS Skytrain Silom line skirts around the monument’s roundabout. Ratchawithi Road parallels the San Sem canal, a major waterway connecting to the royal garden district of Dusit and the Chao Phraya “River of Kings” further east. The elevated Sirat Expressway crosses Soi Ratchawithi 6 near the canal. The area is densely urbanized containing a mix of single-family homes, shophouses, and many small affordable dormitory apartment buildings for workers and students.
Google Earth view of Soi Ratchawithi 6 with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Video of Bung’s 5-minute walk along Soi Ratchawithi 6
Soi Ratchawithi 6 is crowded with local shops, supplemented by many street vendors, some conducting business from the back of pick-up trucks. All this retail activity supports the workers and the students living in small, single-room apartments along the soi. It is a pedestrian-friendly space with motorcycles occasionally weaving through. Vending and advertising trucks give way to occasional cars for the few single-family residences that still line the soi. Residents, outside of these few family houses are not car owners, so motorcycle taxis drive clients to nearby mass transit spots.
Toon’s walk down Soi Sawasdee, Sukhumvit 31
Soi Sawasdee lies north of Sukhumvit Road, a main commercial corridor of central Bangkok. It can be also accessed from Asok Montri and Petchburi Roads, while also connecting to multiple other sois, such as Sukhumvit Soi 23, 31, 39, and 49, all the way to Sukhumvit Soi 51, known as Thong Lor. The Asok Skytrain stop is just a short motorcycle taxi ride away. Toon has witnessed rapid development in the past decade that she has been living here. She observes that there is a wide range of different levels of income and expenses on this soi, and it is truly an “interstitial space”.
Google Earth view of Soi Sawasdee, Sukhumvit 31 with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Walking east, on the right-hand side, is a relatively expensive sit-in restaurant which has recently set up a takeaway booth offering cheaper prices to help people out during the pandemic. On the opposite side of the road are commercial shophouses which are mostly medium to high-end restaurants. Visitors usually come from more distant areas, but now mostly delivery motorcycles can be seen here. On the right is a government school called Sawasdee School, so the 7-11 and the street food vendors are usually packed with school kids during after-school hours. A large number of parents of this school ride motorbikes, so there are street barriers set up for dropping off students. Despite the density of tall condominiums, the heat island effect is not very severe here as there are a lot of family homes with mature trees. There is also a small canal, roughly a meter wide, running parallel to the soi.
Video of Toon’s 5-minute walk along Soi Ratchawithi 6
Further down the soi, there are three interconnected, made-to-order, street food vendors open daily from 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM, except Mondays, when they are prohibited. The local motorcycle taxi station is located across the street, serving residents, school kids, and teachers. The inhabitants of the soi are reflected in the mixture of restaurants serving Thai, Western and Japanese food. On the right is a construction site for yet another high-rise condominium that has been in the process for the last three years. Around 5:00 to 6:00 AM when workers commute here for work there is a large flux of bicycles.
Detail of Toon’s soi shed map on the left, and cross sections at three hot-spots, showing top to bottom, a vendor’s street cart, the sidewalk food vendors across from the motorcycle taxi stand, and below the raising of properties to avoid flooding on the bottom right.
The drainage of the soi has always been problematic, and during rainy season it always floods so every entrance to a shop or a compound will have a slope up to prevent water from entering the property. At the end of the walk is a plastic bottle collector, who comes once a month. On the right is a high-end, high-rise condominium that just opened last year, while on the left is a French bakery and patisserie shop. The flux of visitors typically come from Thai youth who appreciate the European look of the shop and the authentic pastries.
3. Four Ecological Hot-Spots
The second phase of the workshop furthered the ecological study of a soi by applying the Cinemetrics multi-dimensional approach to examine micro-level studies of one ecological “hot spot” on each soi. Through systematic video framing, soi hot spots were systematically “scanned” or “sensed” over several daily cycles in order to compile robust qualitative and quantitative data sets. Students videoed a hot spot from three angles at a close, medium, and long-range according to the multiple still framing technique of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu. From this information, an interactive 3D digital model was constructed that could also visualize changes over time. Like corresponding architectural drawings plans, sections, and elevations, video frames are seen as 3D data, framing space, but also the transformation and flux of energy, matter, and information, which constitutes the ecological metabolism of the soi.
Plan analysis of the first four shots of Yasijiro Ozu’s film Early Sping. (Drawn by Brian McGrath, 2006). Ozu’s 1956 film opens with two households which share a small alley. Through the film, we see the city of Tokyo undergoing a massive post-war transformation from the inside out.
Car Repair Shop, Soi Phetkasem 88
As Hong noted in her walkthrough, the presence of car repair shops has emerged as a distinct characteristic of Soi Phetkasem 88. These shops play an integral role in the ecological interactions on this soi and are hot spots of social, material, and informational flux. Cars are parked on the soi, and the mechanics cooperate with local convenience stores and food vendors nearby and offer their expertise to the local residents. The interaction of this ecosystem includes a complex social pattern of both the cooperation of the businesses and among the residents of the soi.
Hot-spot video of a car repair shop, Soi Phetkasem 88
Hong documented the affection and attention that the mechanics have for their work. They demonstrated expertise in repairing motorbikes, trucks, racing cars, antique cars, as well as small motor parts. The car repair activities sometimes pollute the soi with oily residues and aerosol spray painting. However, the social care offered by the workers in these shops seems to offset the toxic residue for their soi neighbors.
Hong’s hot-spot digital 3D model of a car repair shop showing social and material interactions, transformations, and flux over time.
The auto repair and the convenience shop workers, as well as residents, demonstrate these caring relationships that were built up over time. This explains why people do not complain much about polluting activities such as spray painting or oil changing. Even though there are residues, wastes, as well as some toxic substances being left behind, other businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores, hairdressers, and cafes are able to thrive due to the influence of the repair shops as it becomes an active hub for automotive work.
Afternoon Market, Soi Sinsapnakorn
With the opening of a new connecting road, an afternoon market has emerged next to the Soi Sinsapnakorn community play and sports area at the Lam Phakchi Canal bridge. Vendors wait for the temperature to drop in the early evening to prepare snacks and take-away meals for students after school, residents out for exercise, or people returning from work. There is a cooperative and complementary spirit among the vendors as each specializes in one course, beverages, or dessert, but they share a seating area and customers.
Video of afternoon market at Soi Sinsapnakorn
Oat observed only exercise activity in the park during his first morning walkthrough, but by returning at different times of day, he was able to document the vendor’s preparation and clean-up, and the portable architecture that they deploy. Interestingly, Oat observed not only human activity at the market, but the relationship between the vendors and the customers with street dogs and birds. Many people fed dogs table scraps, and pigeons and sparrows enjoyed overlooked crumbs on the ground.
Oat’s hot-spot model of the afternoon market documented the interspecies relationships between humans, dogs, and birds.
Street Vendors in Soi Ratchawithi 6
Bung’s morning walk through Soi Ratchawithi 6 showed the leisurely pace of a few students picking up some snacks for breakfast. However, in returning over the course of the day to a particularly dense concentration of mobile street vendors, he was able to document the tightly packed choreography of pedestrians, pick-up trucks, motorcycle taxis, and cars. Soi Rachawithi 6 is a narrow soi that effectively slows vehicular travelers down, as there is no way to quickly traverse the lane in a direct line.
Video of street vendors on Soi Ratchawithi 6
From his video over the course of several days, Bung was able to map the dance between the moving parts in the soi and even document how residents help to direct traffic during times of peak activity. In addition to slow traffic, the soi is also a place to enjoy slow food. Bung’s video documents how each dish is freshly prepared according to the customer’s direction – spicy, sour, sweet, or salty.
Map of mobile street vendors on Soi Ratchawithi 6
Cross-soi cooperation on Soi Sawasdee
Soi Sawasdee, like most of the sois off Sukhumvit, has many high-rise condominiums and commercial buildings as well as older detached houses with gardens, town and shophouses, and construction sites for even more towers. One particular cross-section of the soi, just south of the school, is especially active. A row of three food vendors work opposite a motorcycle taxi station. Both provide essential services to inhabitants and workers in this area, but they also help each other out, exchanging labor, on the part of the motorcycle taxi drivers, with food and drink provided by the vendors.
Video of sidewalk food stalls and motorcycle taxi stand on Soi Sawasdee
There are two food and one drink stall with some seating areas on one side, sharing several sun-shading umbrellas. They have an interconnected relationship with the motorcycle taxi drivers on the opposite side. Some drivers help the food stalls set up at 4:00 AM in trade for lunch. People in this area are regular customers for both services, commuting to-and-from the Skytrain with the bikers, and crossing the road to get lunch with the vendors. The food vendors have everything you’d crave in a made-to-order meal. Aunt Jong has a papaya salad shop and another station grills pork neck on a little gas top. On the opposite side, the motorcycle taxi station uses matching green umbrellas. The water tank behind the drivers also gets refilled by the food vendors.
3D model showing video shooting locations at different times of day.
Some customers have built a close relationship with the food stall owner, even dining on the table with cooking utensils to have casual chitchats with Aunt Jong. She hosts a true “chef’s table”. Later in the afternoon, around 2:00 PM, when there are no more customers, the vendors will start to pack up. Dishes are cleaned in the basin by the station. Umbrellas are knocked on the ground to remove leaves. Then everything gets put away through the gate to the house behind the fence, where one of the stall owners lives and works as a maid. Heavier things are packed and rolled away on a cart, again with the help of the motorcycle taxi drivers. Only the drink stall remains for a few more hours, and a couple of motorcycle taxis still operate late into the evening.
Conclusion
Parallel to the concerted efforts by global alliances and nation-states to confront the twin crises of climate and inequity, there are countless undocumented micro acts of ecological stewardship and social cooperation. Any locality can be seen as a spatially and temporally heterogeneous social-ecological system, and as such, can be analyzed as a hot spot of the potential integration of the architecture and ecology of the city. The metacity framework, explored in the Ecology of a Soi workshop, introduces ecological concepts into everyday architectural contexts in order to begin the process of coordinating and quantifying everyday transformation and flux of energy, matter, and information as important contributions to a just climate transition.
The students’ video data gathering captured the spatial and temporal distribution pattern of human and non-human organisms (plants and animals), their aggregation/abundance, as well as the bidirectional relationships between organisms and flexible self-built environments. They also measured the flux/flow of information, energy, and matter with a focus on processes, interactions, and relations. We present this distributive architectural system of local urban ecological data gathering as fundamental in collectively addressing the twin crises of social justice and climate change. It suggests that we stop seeing cities in terms of centers and peripheries, a residual concept of colonial metropolitanism, but as patchy distributive ecological systems, where every point in the system has equal value.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank INDA Program Director Surapong Lertsithichai, Deputy Director Sorachai Kornkasem, and Third Year Coordinator Scott Drake, as well as the students who participated in the workshop, Aticha Thanadirak, Pattraratee Keerasawangporn, Buris Chanchaikittikorn, Pittinun Tantasirin, Nichaporn Atsavaboonsap, Pheerapitch Phetchareon, Nisama Lawtongkum, Nicha Vareekasem, Raphadson Saraputtised, and Pannathorn Amnuaychokhirun. Special thanks to Dr. Steward Pickett for the many fruitful discussions about integrating the architecture and ecology of the metacity.
Brian McGrath andVineet Diwadkar New York and Bangkok
Vineet Diwadkar is a designer and urban planner working at the intersection of technology, ecology and policy. He is currently Associate Director with AECOM, Primary Investigator with the Terreform Center for Advanced Urban Research, and Adjunct Faculty at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Vineet works with communities, governments and multilateral organizations, infrastructure owners and operators, and researchers to deliver strategic planning and policy, cross-sector infrastructure and development, and to strengthen livelihoods through ecological and heritage conservation.
In a previous article I proposed that we adopt a perspective on preservation that allowed for transformation and change of what is to be preserved. This type of change has a more precise definition: iteration. To iterate means to “cover the same ground twice”, using feedback from the result of previous attempts and from environmental change to improve the result. In this article I mean to demonstrate how the phenomenon of iteration creates complexity and explains the form of our cities, how it relates them to the morphology of nature, and how to use it to reshape the cities we inherited from the static, final plans of 20th century modernist design.
Complex things can have very simple foundations. Natural world morphology and even pure abstract ideas like mathematics are full of very simple iterations—repeated fractals—that rely on the impact of time and the abundant data of physical matter to produce very complex forms.
How complexity is made
Fractal geometry has infiltrated popular culture since it was formalized in the early 80’s from the works of Benoit Mandelbrot. While it has been used mathematically to study the form of cities by researchers such as Pierre Frankhauser and Michael Batty, the insights to be drawn from this research have not yet penetrated the field of practical urbanism, defined as the construction of cities. Connecting the fractal city by Nikos Salingaros approaches the topic by asking what type of city is fractal, without going into depth as to how a fractal is made. Christopher Alexander, in The Nature of Order: The Process of Creating Life, begins to develop profound ideas on the topic.
The basic quality of fractal geometry is that it is iteratively-defined geometry; it must be described in terms of steps involving the result of previous steps. Euclidean geometry, in comparison, is built up by combining basic elements into different, higher-dimension shapes. A point becomes a line, which becomes a triangle, which becomes several different kinds of polygons, and so on. Fractal geometry does not take this approach of combination. Instead of using a triangle to make a square, in fractal geometry we use a triangle to make more triangles, such as this Sierpinski triangle, below.
Sierpinski triangle.
At each step we use the results of the previous step and repeat some procedure, in this case either adding two copies of the previous object below the current one (composition) or replacing the three large triangles each by a copy of the whole object (decomposition). Both approaches will generate the Sierpinski triangle over an infinite number of repetitions.
It is generation and infinity that make fractal geometry so different from euclidean geometry, which can be drawn instantaneously and linearly. Because fractal geometry is recursive, it is in theory infinitely complex, and the only way to see what a fractal object will look like is to run the computation that generates it until we grow tired of watching the process unfold.
Objects substituting themselves for copies of themselves are all around us. It is the basic process that underlies all living things. In a living system a starting point, the embryo, contains a program, DNA, that will be multiplied into trillions of cells. The cells follow the transformations described by their DNA codes by taking certain actions depending on their environmental factors and previous states. Christopher Alexander uses the example of a bone, whose shape evenly distributes structural stress across its surface, by claiming that the form of a bone emerges from a program telling cells to add bone mass where the stress is most intense. It is physical and structural feedback that shapes the bone.
Benoit Mandelbrot wrote The Fractal Geometry of Nature, a book that pretty much started the fractal revolution by providing a mathematical framework for understanding real physical space. He also used fractals to describe the movement of stock prices. In his honor, a mathematician named a curious mathematical object the Mandelbrot set, which you are likely to have heard of or seen before.
For given coordinates in the plane made up of the normal and complex numbers (basically an x and y graph, where y is that funny number i, the square root of -1), each coordinate sum will either spin forever in the orbit of radius 2, or escape after a determined number of iterations. The coordinates which never escape are defined as being part of the set, but they are actually not that interesting. What is interesting is what happens when we count iterations and use the results to color the graph.
If, each time we throw out a pair of coordinates (absolute value bigger than 2 at any iteration), we assign to it a number equivalent to the number of iterations it took to figure out it didn’t belong in the set, we will form groups of iteration equivalence. And once we apply a single, shared transformation (a “DNA code” for the chaotic equation) to these sets, in this case defining a specific color for each iteration that threw out some coordinates, applying this color to these coordinates while drawing the Mandelbrot set, we will generate this kind of geometry:
The total Known “Mandelbrot set” in black. Shades of colors are brighter the more iterations it took to determine they were not part of the set. Image: Wolfgang Beyer, WikimediaStep 6 of a zoom inside the edge of the set. A self-similiar set appears, surrounded by complex shapes. Image: Wolfgang Beyer, Wikimedia
The construction of the Mandelbrot set pictures is a fascinating exercise in computer art, especially since it is so simple but generates practically infinite geometry (the computer eventually runs out of cycles calculating all those iterations at the edge of the set, but a stronger computer can always go deeper).
But before we start thinking that this is only a weird property of iterating over complex numbers, we can simplify the generation of fractals even further. Let’s not complicate things with two dimensions and color. Let’s have only one dimension (a line) and show each succeeding iteration as another line.
Stephen Wolfram wanted to figure out what could happen if he tried every possible combination of the most simple program he could imagine. This is one combination of the program, which he called Rule 30 (or 00011110): This diagram describes the following computation: for each row, observe the cells from the left, middle and right neighbor of the previous row, and select the matching color in the rules.
This is the output of running the program, line-by-line:
Iterate infinitely, get infinate complexity.
Here is what happens when the rule changes from 30 (00011110) to 90 (01011010):
These discoveries led Wolfram to write A New Kind of Science, inviting scientists to study pure computations as a model for understanding the physical world. What we should learn from it is that natural world morphology and even pure abstract ideas like mathematics are full of very simple iterations that rely on the impact of time and the abundant data of physical matter to produce very complex forms. Once we start looking at things through the lens of iteration, we start to see how they might have started very simply and been generated.
Geometric depth from the iteration of technologies
I don’t believe that there is a strict separation between a supposedly modern and traditional architecture. Instead there exist different geometric processes, and while traditionally builders have employed nesting and fractal processes in their work, for perhaps no other reason than that it came naturally to them, modern builders have restricted themselves to linear geometric processes due to drawing their inspiration from Cartesian science and engineering. They then created tools, such as drafting tables and computer-aided design software (drafting tables with an undo button) to make linear processes more efficient.
There are only so many tricks that one can perform with linear geometry, although computers have extended the reach of those tricks. But the confusion of modern architects becomes even more obvious when they ascribe artistic merits to traditional builders who never aspired to be artists at all. One such instance is the introduction by present-day star architect Jean Nouvel of a biography of the 18th century French military engineer Vauban. Nouvel describes Vauban’s fortresses as an early form of land-art and morphing, then asks: could a man be an artist without being aware of it?
Vauban was not an artist at all. Military necessity led him to employ geometric processes that significantly increased the complexity of fortifications, and it is incidental that today we find his projects to have artistic merits. The process through which Vauban’s work became worthy of architectural praise provides the key to the distinction between linear and complex geometry, and the process of iteration of new technologies. We see in the construction of star forts the impact of evolving technology and obsolescence on the landscape of cities. That it had no aesthetic purpose makes it even more interesting.
Vauban was not the inventor of the star fort. Those had been around for more than a century when he began his career for the army of Louis XIV. The basic star fort was a simple concept: the old masonry walls with towers of the medieval age had shown themselves obsolete with the advent of cannons, and they had been replaced with thick banks of earth dug out of trenches. The major flaw of this design, it was soon discovered, was to provide space out of reach of defensive fire at its corners. In the first iteration of the design, the corners were extended into diamond-shaped turrets, introducing a first level of nesting geometry and beginning the genesis of a fractal.
Military engineers kept improving on the star fort technology’s effectiveness by correcting their vulnerabilities. And so, iteration by iteration, the geometric depth of the star fort concept increased.
Vauban’s supposedly great invention was nothing more than repeating this process of increasing geometric complexity by iterating again and again, ultimately creating what many now consider to be his masterpiece, the Citadel of Lille, a showcase of complex geometry made from the refinement produced by centuries of iteration of the star fort concept.
Citadel of Lille, and……the system of fortification of the City of Lille, as designed by Vauban.
It is important to note that the Vauban extensions to star fortifications did not mean that the simple early star fort became obsolete. In fact many simple star forts were built in the 18th and 19th century in America as the military threat was low and simple forts much cheaper to build. The difference between a simple fort and Vauban’s complex fort is one of depth and effectiveness, not technology, and there is a real cost-benefit choice to make. The star fort only became completely obsolete when the concrete bunker replaced it, and the early bunkers reset the process of complex geometry generation to its starting point by being simple concrete shells.
When we seek to create symmetry in an urban environment, we want buildings to be as alike as possible while allowing for adaptation to context. If we understand geometric depth we can build in such a way that poor and expensive buildings have the same basic design in their first levels of geometry, but expensive buildings have many more scales of geometry nested within that basic design. It is not necessary for an entire city to be made of the same materials, for instance. Materials are one of the last visible scales of geometry, and so we can have a city of mud bricks and marble buildings that nevertheless share 95% of their geometry and beautifully complement each other to create an emergent structure, while both poor and rich citizens have a home adapted to their situation.
We can look at these examples from Korean traditional architecture for an illustration. The first image (below) is a simple house and the second is the tomb of a great king. Both buildings use the same design, but the building on the right has much greater depth in this design.
Another interesting comparison is between the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and the Verrazano Narrows bridge in New York.
The bridges start off from the same technology, but the Golden Gate bridge develops into more depth and detail within this foundational design, and is for this reason the more famous of the two bridges. That doesn’t mean the Verrazano Narrows bridge isn’t beautiful on its own.
Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco.Verrazano Narrows bridge, New York.
And to make things as simple as they can get, we can compare a Sierpinski triangle with four levels of iteration with one that has six levels.
The fractal on the right has all the same elements as the one on the left, but also has more.
The framework of analysis presented here gives us a very powerful instrument through which to understand the shapes of buildings and open spaces of cities and measure their complexity. It does not, however, sufficiently explain what can make a city appear to be a natural object over greater scales.
I will cover another aspect of iteration, one that occurs in a sequence of fractal objects growing together in an ecosystem, in a following article.
In the Lille citadel example that we saw in the previous part, we could observe a building technology achieving greater complexity over time, as each iteration survived or failed a new series of tests. Another aspect of the complexity of a geometric process seen in the Lille citadel example is its contextual adaptation. The shape of the city and the surrounding landscape is chaotic, and the encircling fortifications bend to match this randomness, leading to Nouvel’s claim that it is an early example of morphing. But again there is no deliberate attempt at morphing going on. Since each component of a star fort is defined as a recursive transformation of the basic wall corner, Vauban only had to design the wall and the other parts aligned themselves as a result of the wall’s configuration. If the outcome has artistic value, it is only incidental.
Nesting idiosyncratic details inside commonly shared building plans was how every building in a city was tied together in a web of geometric relationships; these relationships give cities their quality of wholeness and beauty. Forests patterns are similar.
So how did human creations stop being natural art? We look at a tower block, a subdivision or a shopping mall parking lot and see the worst of industrial civilization translated into form. We tolerate them as necessary to achieve the material comfort we expect of our civilization. Those human settlements that are still natural we grant special protections through UNESCO and historical preservation laws. We do not have a law that promotes the creation of new historic settlements because we are not quite certain about how they are made.
I believe that our mistake is not in the things we make, that there is nothing unnatural about a shopping mall parking lot from a functional point of view. What makes the shopping mall parking lots we build so unnatural are errors in configuration of the design elements. To understand this, one must understand the difference between design and configuration.
Adaptation to chaos and complex geometry
A chaotic configuration of a standard design. Source: http://emergenturbanism.com/2008/11/06/design-configuration-and-natural-form/
The form of a tree is an ideal example to illustrate the difference between the two concepts. Any particular species of tree will have a design that is essentially the same from one tree to the next, minus small genomic variation. In fact trees can be cloned, sometimes to such an extent that most of the world’s bananas are produced from the DNA of the same original individual. The design elements in the tree are all the named parts: trunk, branch, leaf, root, bark, and so on. These parts are organized into complex relationships with the whole tree and with each other. Such a relationship is a design solution that achieves a specific result. However, the shape and position of any of the parts is not fixed. In the DNA of the tree are rules that instruct cells to adapt themselves to the larger context the tree finds itself in, through feedback loops from environmental stimuli. The different configuration of parts that result from this cellular action will therefore adopt a position that reflects the particulars of time and place, ensuring that the tree’s form is constantly adapting to its environment, as well as the history of its growth. No two branches or two leaves will be identical, even though the cells operate on identical DNA.
When we look at a traditional village, we find that the same house design is repeated time and time again, but configured in such a way that it is differently adapted than the other houses, like leaves from the same tree. The reiteration of an often very simple design is all that it takes to create a natural landscape, so long as each house is configured to adapt to its context in time and place, and the design elements of the house are themselves configured to adapt to these adaptations.
Palaos Panteleimonas, a mountain village in Central Macedonia, Greece; the same house design is repeated time and time again, but configured in such a way that it is differently adapted than the other houses. Source: http://emergenturbanism.com/2008/11/06/design-configuration-and-natural-form/
Even today this kind of natural adaptation takes place in modern settlements where planning regulation is loose enough or constrained by historical land usage patterns.
The Monaco skyline. Source: http://emergenturbanism.com/2008/11/06/design-configuration-and-natural-form/
This is the skyline of Monaco, which by necessity of the small size of the city had to be built piecemeal but yet is still made from a modern building stock. The piecemeal process allowed each building to be configured to its site and thus, despite the fact that the buildings’ design is very basic modern architecture, the whole landscape looks natural.
Rochina favela, Rio de Janeiro. Source: http://emergenturbanism.com/2008/11/06/design-configuration-and-natural-form/
This the Rocinha favela of Rio de Janeiro. Here the building design is as bare as could be made, the houses being built by poor residents with little capital to invest, but investing it over a long time. The resulting configurations adapt perfectly to the shape of the hill and the other buildings, and the overall look of the place is that of a human jungle. The buildings in Rocinha are just as natural as the trees.
And here is the rule 90 cellular automaton that we previously saw making a Sierpinski triangle, but this time started from a randomized line of black and white cells.
We see the program attempt to generate the fractal, but become constrained by neighboring attempts, and starting the process over. The end result is a chaotic, complex texture.
How do we translate these facts back into our shopping mall parking lot? It means that although the relationship between the parts, for example the lanes, the spaces and the paint that demarcates them, must be defined, the length of the spaces or the thickness of the demarcations do not have to be identical from one element to another. The chaos of natural and historical context requires that they be slightly different from one to the next to properly fit in their environment, and that means the people who build them must be able to make decisions while they are building, integrating the information from the real world at that moment into the planned design. Simply translating an AutoCAD drawing made in an office onto the physical landscape is unnatural, and to demonstrate that the builders typically begin by wiping away anything that might confuse the plan (“grading”).
The design must be expressed into a language that instructs the builders to make configuration choices while constructing the defined forms. This kind of language is how builders have made star forts, traditional towns, and how DNA becomes organisms. It can be as simple as rules of thumb passed orally, or as sophisticated as a procedural model simulated on a computer. What it needs to be is fractal and adaptive.
Path dependence
What does the Lille citadel look like in the present day?
Satellite imagery of Lille citadel. Apple Maps.
As fortifications became obsolete with the invention of artillery, many cities found themselves encircled with open spaces that served no purpose. Some cities took advantage of the situation to expand significantly, as was the case with the Eixample (extension) district of Barcelona, built out of the open space the Spanish military had claimed for a clear line of fire around the city. In some instances the demise of fortifications coincided with the need for larger-scale transportation, and the walls were replaced with boulevards. In other instances walls filled in a more urgent need for recreational green space. But in almost all instances the traces of the walls still remain, the energy being necessary to fully remove such large structures being out of consideration. The conclusion is that the configuration of a whole city is dependent on its past iterations, much like the configuration of a living tree.
Path dependence affects us at any scale that makes energy conservation necessary. The neighborhood scale is particularly affected, since buildings grow and die essentially at random. A single street can see households move in, leave, break apart and form, shops open and close, with no predictable pattern. Buildings must adapt to these circumstances. In order to create something harmonious, a new building may have to find symmetrical elements with neighbors that are 10, 50, 100 and 500 years old.
We find ourselves facing these historical constraints at every iteration in the process of urban growth. But each generation the constraints come from a newer form of obsolete technology. Today our constraints are the inheritance of post-WWII suburbanization. Elevated highways are crumbling and we must decide how or if to rebuild them. Whole subdivisions must renew themselves because the first generation of children who grew up there have now become adults. Shopping malls and other retail enterprises who dominated the late 20th century are shutting down under intense competition from internet commerce. It is the older cities that are adapting the fastest to these trends, mostly because they have already had to adapt to the previous cycle and adaptation is now integrated to their system.
But our grim reality is that at least half of our urban heritage is automobile sprawl, and we do not have the energy to replace it whole. We now must find a way to increase its depth, to repair it and allow it to become something new. We must do this against the resistance of the system of planning that created it in the expectation that the plan would be final and perfect.
What should a natural urban design movement be about?
Classicism describes itself as the imitation of nature. Complexity, on the other hand, does not imitate. It is nature, or perhaps nature imitates complexity. To create a natural urban design movement requires not adopting a certain style or program, but ensuring that any style or program can be adapted to a particular context. What that requires us to do is use different tools than what we have grown accustomed to.
The tradition of teaching the classical orders in architecture was once an imperfect approach to granting architects this skill. The classical orders are one form of geometric substitution system, where large-scale elements are decomposed into smaller-scale elements which form the whole column structure. Thus when many architects, trained to share this system as part of their skill set, worked on completely different buildings, their work could easily form a larger whole; whenever they hit similar problems, they would employ the similar solution they were trained to employ. While two buildings may have completely different sizes or roofs, or one could have a bell tower while the other didn’t, if both buildings had windows and columns, the windows and columns would be made the same way, and thus symmetrical to each other. Nesting ornamental symmetries inside economically-necessary building plans was how every building in a city was tied together in a web of geometric relationships, and it is the density of these relationships that gave cities their quality of wholeness and beauty.
In the early 20th century, a movement in architecture started by Adolf Loos began to denounce the use of classical patterns in architecture, considering it immoral to increase the cost of buildings with columns that had no tectonic purpose when what the modern world needed was efficient construction relying on new technologies. What it was denouncing was a practice we could compare to building a medieval castle inside a star fort, an expensive folly that would be militarily disadvantageous. On that point we must agree with it.
Art Deco was a step in the right direction in adapting ornamental technology to contemporary construction technology, but the technological basis of architecture soon shifted again to glass, concrete and metal construction. This rapid rate of technological obsolescence was in itself turned into an ideology (modernism), then a counter-ideology (post-modernism) and finally the computer-aided confusion we live in today.
There is a glimmer of hope that the process of technological iteration is still working to create complexity. Streets that were deadly automobile speedways are now being converted into complex superblocks and shared spaces, highway underpasses turned into recreational areas or nature preserves, shopping mall parking lots turned into fairs. The modern autotopia is iterating and growing more complex as its first life runs its course. Inevitably, those systems that are not complex, such as zoning codes, are straining and becoming complicated to the point of failure under the pace of change. Their failure will accelerate.
Life finds a way. The metal, glass and concrete structures we build tomorrow may be as marvellous as the Mandelbrot set fractal. The IKEA parking lot may be a pleasant place to meet someone for a morning stroll. The subdivision neighborhood may become a complex tapestry of gardens and shops. Time and change is the only necessary ingredient, every other obstacle comes from a belief we must unlearn.
(This article has gone through many iterations, and began as a series of blog posts in 2007-2008. It will likely be iterated on again and again.)
To ensure the sustainability of life in the city, urban green spaces must be accessible and exist in their multiple types, forms, and dimensions.
As urbanization intensifies around the world, and the devastating effects of global warming are increasingly evident, it is vital to promote urban ecosystems as a tool to achieve ecological balance within the city. Urban ecosystems are the base to guarantee healthy and sustainable places to live, work and visit. Urban settlements can exist in ecological balance and, in fact, without it, urban areas as we know them, have their days numbered. Ecological balance ensures urban developments are sustained and resilient through time.
Designing cities begins with planning at a larger scale. Nature is not governed by the administrative limits imposed by humans. Ecological limits have been thoroughly studied and it is imperative that we respect them. Cities must accommodate for the natural elements and cycles, not the other way around. It is essential to maintain, preserve, and even increase the area of existing rural and natural areas so that urban areas are surrounded by natural environments. In fact, natural areas must enter rural areas, and rural areas must permeate the urban space.
Green corridors bring the ecological structure to and through the city and are essential elements for the ecological balance of cities. The ecological link between the countryside and the city must be restored, promoted, and nurtured as if life in the city depended on it. Because it does! Human connection to nature has been the basis of our existence for millions of years and, in a world where the effects of climate change reign, it is of the utmost importance that cities position themselves in favor of the transition to more sustainable and resilient environments and where the ecological services biodiversity are promoted.
The success of cities, which want to be green and based on nature, is only possible through a better knowledge of the entire ecological cycle, including air, water, soil, plants, and fauna, and through careful considerations about environmental quality, sustainability, and the well-being of populations. Urban ecosystems and green corridors are key elements of the city’s infrastructure, offering technical solutions to complex problems, such as stormwater management, for example. They are social spaces that provide healthy, sustainable, and pleasant spaces for the population’s contact with nature and are a support for biodiversity.
Parque Urbano do Infantado, Loures. Photo: Maria Aragão
All elements of the urban green structure are an important part of the system, each contributing to the balance of the whole. Planted medians and islands, permeable pavements, and small landscaped areas around buildings don’t have much spatial expression on their own, but together are essential for the stormwater management of the city. Balconies and green roofs scattered throughout the city are crucial for insects on their pollen collection route and as resting places for birds on their migratory journeys. The large municipal park is as important to the urban ecological structure as the alignment of trees or the small residential garden. A balanced system works as a whole. As time passes, the greater or lesser capacity for resilience of the elements of the urban landscape is what allows, or does not, for the balance in the system, because this system is open, dynamic, adaptable, and in permanent transformation. The design, development, and evolution of the city must be guided by the pursuit of ecological balance. To ensure the sustainability of life in the city, urban green spaces must be accessible and exist in their multiple types, forms, and dimensions.
Justifiably, the Amazon region has been at the center of climate change discussions and negotiations since the late 1980s. It is not difficult to explain ‘justifiably’ when one is referring to a region of continental proportions, with unparalleled biological and cultural diversity, and whose biogeochemical cycles and atmospheric circulation processes influence the entire hemisphere and beyond. Few regions have changed so much and so fast as the Amazon, particularly the Brazilian Amazon. Urgency about the Amazonian cause is not an exaggeration! I often use Will Steffen’s concept of the ‘great acceleration’ to illustrate the rate and impact of these changes [see figure 1].
The nature of Amazonian cities is one where pollution and resource provisioning intermingle. But, the nature of Amazonian cities is also one of solidarity and hope.
Misguided and destructive development programs, an ingrained view of forests and forest peoples as “unproductive,” and a short-term, extractive mentality intended to feed commodity markets (all with plenty of government incentives) have fragmented and threatened the world’s largest tropical forest. Indigenous and local populations continue to be impacted and transformed, but they have also responded and become major players in territorial governance of the region. Indigenous and sustainable use conservation reserves represent over 40 percent of the Brazilian Amazon today. Yet, depending where one looks, the transformation of the region is just starting. Some estimates indicate plans to build over 330 new dams in the larger basin during the next 25 years. Prospects for expanding mining concessions are equally aggressive, while perspectives to address the region’s most pressing social needs and changing social reality are limited at best.
Figure 1. The great Amazonian acceleration
On a positive note, the region received strong attention during recent COP21 negotiations in Paris. There is wide recognition among the international community that the region’s ecosystems and peoples have a central role to play in global efforts to mitigate climate change. There were significant discussions and promises to slow and even halt deforestation, as well as promises and agreements to secure funds for carbon-based mitigation programs, including support for indigenous and local populations, conservation reserves and local municipalities. Kudos to these advances!
But, there is one important aspect of the region that has fallen between the cracks of public opinion, climate change conversations and—more broadly—discussions about regional sustainable development and futures. Why are ‘urban’ issues and the predicaments of ‘urban’ populations virtually absent from discussions regarding climate change, sustainable development and the future of the Amazon? As put by Brazilian geographer, Bertha Becker, as of the 1980s, the Amazon was already an “urban forest.” Today, anywhere from 76 to 80 percent of the regional population lives in cities, including an estimated 25 percent of the region’s indigenous peoples. The metropolitan regions of the state capitals of Manaus and Belem have each around 2.5 million habitants. The majority of the population in medium and large cities lives in areas considered “sub-normal” in census terms. The nature of Amazonian cities is not alluring!
From “green hell” to “the lungs of the planet” to “God’s paradise,” the historical popular imaginary of the region is obviously not an urban imaginary. When deployed, images of Amazonian cities often invoke the extravagant wealth and architectural features of the capital cities of Belem and Manaus during the rubber boom period (circa 1850 to 1910). The urban continues to be absent during this new phase of regional imaginary, defined by maps of carbon emissions and sinks.
The ways we see the Amazon continue to change. We have come a long way in recognizing the role of indigenous and local communities in shouldering the biggest share of responsibility to halt deforestation and to protect standing forests and water sources. The sophistication of deforestation monitoring and carbon-budget estimates, visible during COP21 and elsewhere online, shows important steps and advances coalescing around the protection of forests and carbon stocks in Amazon. Conversely and surprisingly, many, if not most, maps, charts, atlases and tools portraying the regional environment lack or pay minimum attention to the urban face of the region. In some cases, cities—from 760 to 792 of them (depending on where one puts the boundaries of the region)—are completely absent from maps portraying the anthropogenic transformation of the region.
Without undermining the relevance and importance of these analyzes, considering the demography and distribution of social conditions in the region, it is puzzling to observe this disconnection. One cannot help but be reminded of the 1970s military government development motto for the region—“a land without people, for people without land”—but in an ironic way: “a land [still presented] without people, for people without carbon.” While the “without people” of the 1970s ignored the thousands of indigenous groups and communities throughout the region, today it ignores 3/4 of the regional population, which is mostly very poor, living in even poorer urban conditions, surrounded by political disregard and hijacked by violence.
Figure 2: City centers and population distribution in the Brazilian Amazon. Image: IBGE census data2000- 2010; BF-Deltas Project. Map prepared by Andressa V. Mansur, CASEL, Indiana University.
In many ways, this disconnection between the regional urban reality, development needs and environmental discussions, including climate change programs and financing, is not surprising. This is also the case for the urban realities of other parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Urban problems, infrastructure deficiencies and social vulnerability in tropical areas, and in developing countries in general, have received scant attention from climate change policies and finances, at least when compared to concerns regarding carbon emissions and sequestration from ‘rural’ activities. The ‘urban’ remains the ‘elephant in the room,’ too messy to be addressed, yet, paradoxically, too easy to be ignored.
From “green hell” to “gray hell”: the threatening nature of Amazonian cities
The majority of Amazonian cities (81 percent) are small (fewer than 20,000 habitants), but 3/4 of the regional population lives in median and large cities [see figure 2]. Most municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon, and thus their ‘cities,’ are ‘young’ (between 30 and 50 years old). Older municipalities tend to be related to river ways, while younger ones have been created along roadways. Irrespective of how one interprets what counts as ‘urban’ or as a ‘city’ in the region, vis-à-vis other regions, and irrespective of age and size, these areas face an ‘urban’ reality common to many other parts of the world: exponential growth and growing population density, mainly very poor constituents with minimum service provision [see figure 3] and mostly informal employment, high levels of prostitution (particularly in larger cities), and even higher levels of violence related to drug trafficking.
Figure 3: Proportion of households in Amazonian municipalities and state capitals connected to sewage collection. Image: DATASUS 2013; BF-Deltas Project. Map prepared by Andressa V. Mansur, CASEL, Indiana University.
The face of Amazonian urbanization can look unmanageable, and perhaps because of that, it is ignored. Unable to cope with hyper-accelerated urban growth, the sanitation conditions of urban areas have hardly changed, in many cases, worsened during the past two decades. Infrastructural projects in large metropolitan areas such as in Belem and Manaus and others are often not concluded or maintained, increasing problems with flooding and health hazards. Fortunately, provisioning of water and energy has become much better. An analysis developed as part of the BF-Deltas project, focusing on 50 municipalities of the Amazon estuary and delta region, shows that, like the rest of the region [see figure 3], the vast majority of the urban and rural populations are not served by any sewage collection or treatment [see figure 4]. Spatial analysis of delta cities indicates that some form of sewage and garbage collection may be present only in older and historical parts of the region’s larger and older cities [see figures 5 and 6 for examples in Belem and Macapa]. Even though census data may show otherwise, garbage is largely disposed in open-air depositories, street corners, or in drainage channels and river ways. When combined with socioeconomic conditions, housing conditions and location, the majority of urban populations face high (and increasing) levels of vulnerability to flooding and storm surges [see figure 7]. This is the ignored face of climate change vulnerability in the Amazon, one that affects millions of people concentrated in “sub-normal,” lamentable urban conditions.
Figure 4: Sewage disposal in the Amazon Delta region. Image: DATASUS 2013; BF-Deltas Project. Map prepared by Andressa V. Mansur, CASEL, Indiana University.
Figure 5: Change in sewage collection in census sectors of two state capitals of the Amazon delta: Belem (Para) [top] and Macapa (Amapa) [bottom]. Images: IBGE census data2000- 2010; BF-Deltas Project. Maps prepared by Andressa V. Mansur, CASEL, Indiana University.More challenging yet, the nature of Amazonian cities is violent. Urban areas in the Amazon region have shown the highest increase in urban violence in Brazil, including by far the most significant increase in homicides since 2002. Estimates suggest that close to 37 percent of the urban population in Amazonian cities larger than 50,000 inhabitants live in areas controlled by drug traffickers. A recent report by a Mexican-based NGO [El Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal] places the Amazonian capitals of Manaus (23rd), Belem (26th), and Macapa (48th) among the 50 most violent cities in the world (41 of which are in Latin America). While figures are hard to come by, larger cities in the region have some of the highest rates of youth prostitution in Brazil.
Figure 6. Examples of sewage in Belem and Macapa. Photos: Andressa V. Mansur
The rural and urban intermingle
When observed from the perspective of families, the Amazon region is indeed a ‘rural-urban continuum.’ Family networks shape the urban and rural landscapes of the region, supporting intense patterns of circulation and exchanges across short and long distances. These networks allow people to maintain some level of access to urban services as well as access to rural resources and livelihood opportunities. More than half of the population in a substantial number of municipalities depends on government conditional cash transfer programs, which must be collected in urban centers. This arrangement has further attracted people to the surroundings of urban areas during the past decade, strengthening connections between ‘rural’ areas and cities.
While this reality is widespread, it is still evolving. Over 27 years ago, when I started to do fieldwork in the region (Amazon estuary-delta, the Transamazon, and other parts), transportation posed concrete limitations to mobility and circulation choices. Today, in many parts of the region, transportation is conditioned by seasonal changes (rainfall and flooding still rule), but it has greatly improved. The same is true for communication and access to energy, the Internet and a broad array of national and global media. Differences between urban and rural lifestyles are becoming less significant, but the city increasingly lures the rural youth, including indigenous youth.
It is not only access to services, education and economic opportunities that have attracted people to urban areas. No matter where or how poor or how violent a city locale, for many residents, a house in the city provides security—or at least a sense of security—from the uncertainties of rural life. The vast shantytowns (a term often avoided in the region in favor of more euphemistic ones) of Amazonian capitals or the mushrooming peripheries of medium and small towns are populated by families—who either lacked land rights or were ‘abandoned’ without infrastructure or social services in agrarian colonization settlements and indigenous areas—or people who otherwise completely lack opportunities to make a living and feed a family. Depending on the season, Amazonian forests and rivers can be plentiful or scarce. Having a place in the city represents having ownership of a roof, as well as access to schools, informal work opportunities, economic niches and social activities that give a sense of access to modernity, whatever people imagine modernity to be.
The fast urban growth of Amazonian cities is also a result of the changing expectations of Amazonians, particularly the youth, and increasingly the indigenous youth. As in other parts of the world, the region is experiencing its own ‘de-agrarianization’ process, changing forms of livelihood and social identities away from the peasantry (but not necessarily from indigenous identity). Much like in other parts of the world, moving to a city opens up opportunities for those previously trapped in sharecropping and indentured servitude, demeaned social identities, kinship obligations, and/or perverse gender relations. As bad as living over open sewage, surrounded by violence can be, cities are still places of opportunity, and offer no shortage of festivities.
The nature of Amazonian cities is one where pollution and resource provisioning intermingle, whether one fishes at the confluence of a sewage stream or wades polluted channels to access a palm tree bearing fruits. Pollution and garbage, even extreme amounts of it, are largely ignored, both by residents and decision-makers. The illusion that the mighty Amazon and its tributaries can absorb and dissolve almost all of the sewage and industrial pollution generated in the region offers a convenient excuse for not dealing with the problem.
The Amazon is often referred to as the land of NGOs and social movements. But very little attention is given to the predicaments of cities. While there is increasing mobilization related to housing rights, few organizations and social movements are concerned with environmental conditions in urban areas. The few heroes trying to advance the cause of urban ‘environmental violence’ face risks and threats. The sense that sewage and garbage pollution are secondary or ignored issues is mind boggling considering their implications for well-being and health of the largest portion of the Amazonian population.
Figure 7: Belem residents document flooding and spill of sewage drainage channels in 2006 (top), 2011 (middle) and 2013 (bottom). Photos: José Alexandre de Jesus Costa and members of the “Frente dos Moradores Prejudicados da Bacia do Una” Belem, PA, Brazil
It is important to remember that behind this reality are deeper structural issues. Most municipalities are insolvent and depend on transfers from the federal government. They are in perpetual deficiency when it comes to providing services for urban growth so accelerated that it can change the face of a city from year to year, or even from month to month. Many Amazonian municipalities struggling with deteriorating urban conditions witness strong, billion-dollar resource economies from agriculture, mining, forest products and fishing, and yet are not able to harness even the tiniest share of rent and taxes. Corruption is another problem, but it is too complex to fit in this essay. The take home point here is that municipal economies, and thus the economies of cities, are largely disconnected from resource economies of the region (including an increasing carbon economy), and are entangled in a historical, structural trap.
But, the nature of Amazonian cities is also one of solidarity and hope. I hardly remember listening about complains from the many migrants and urban residents I have worked with over the years. Regrets about lack of services, disregard and violence often give way to remarks about opportunities, popular culture and the privilege of owning a house. Family and kinship networks extend support to vast areas. There is never a closed door to a kin member in Amazonian houses. Fishes, fruits, shrimp, manioc flour and occasional bushmeat circulate widely. It is a society of reciprocity and reciprocity obligations. This explains, in part, the high density of urban areas, where multiple families share space layered with compartments and hammocks.
There are many faces of the nature of Amazonian cities that are bright and lifting, and I intend to focus on these aspects for my next essay. Here, my intention is not to perpetuate a sense of pessimism, but to recognize the urban as the ‘elephant in the room’ in sustainability and climate change discussions about the region. The face of urban conditions in the Amazon is the face of sustainability challenges and climate change vulnerability that we have not addressed, at least enough. This puts the question of climate change mitigation financing in a different perspective. While most attention seems to go to who would be paying for ‘it,’ less attention is focused on where and to what purpose these funds should be used. This is the underlying challenge of aligning climate change mitigation and the newly agreed Sustainable Development Goals.
I recently argued (at the Global Landscape Forum happening in parallel to COP21) that the sustainability of the Amazon as a region is and will be shaped by its evolving urban networks and forms of urban growth—in other words, by the nature, the networks of its cities. Amazonian cities are shaping the flows of people and resources and the conditions of local and regional ecosystems, and will continue to shape the region’s landscape in the next 20 years and beyond.
As is the case for most of Latin America, the most pressing and difficult sustainability challenge for the Amazon is to mobilize resources, visions, technology and political support to transform the nature of its cities.
Special thanks to Andressa V. Mansur for preparing the maps presented above and to José Alexandre de Jesus Costa, resident of Belem, and members of the “Frente dos Moradores Prejudicados da Bacia do Una” [an organization of harmed residents in the Una River watershed] for providing photographs.
Resources
Belmont Forum Deltas project: Catalyzing action towards sustainability of deltaic systems with an integrated modeling framework for risk assessment (BF-DELTAS). Support from the Belmont Forum funding agency to 24 collaborating international institutions. The US National Science foundation has funded research conducted by the author and colleagues at Indiana University (NSF # 1342898).
Brondizio, E. S., N. Vogt, and A. Siqueira 2013. Forest Resources, City Services: Globalization, Household Networks, and Urbanization in the Amazon estuary. In K. Morrison, S. Hetch, and C. Padoch (eds). The Social Life of Forests. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Pp. 348-361.
Brondizio, E. S. 2013. A microcosm of the Anthropocene: Socioecological complexity and social theory in the Amazon. Perspectives: Journal de la Reseaux Francaise d’Institut d’études avancées (RFIEA). N. 10: 10-13 [Autumn 2013]
Brondizio, E. S. 2011. Forest Resources, Family Networks and the Municipal Disconnect: Examining Recurrent Underdevelopment in the Amazon Estuary. In M. Pinedo-Vasquez, M., M. Ruffino, C. Padoch,. E. S. Brondizio (eds.) The Amazon Várzea: the decade past and the decade ahead. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Publishers. Pg. 207-232.
Costa, S. M. and E. S. Brondizio. 2009 Inter-Urban Dependency among Amazonian Cities: Urban Growth, Infrastructure Deficiencies, and Socio-Demographic Networks. REDES (Brazil) 14(3): 211– 234.
El Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal A.C. 2016. Metodología del ranking (2015) de las 50 ciudades más violentas del mundo. http://www.seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx
Eloy, L., E. S. Brondizio, and R. Pateo. 2014. New perspectives on mobility, urbanisation, and resource management in Amazônia. Bolletim of Latin American Research (BLAR). 2014: 1-16 DOI:10.1111/blar.12267.
Mansur, A. V., E. S. Brondízio, S. Roy, S. Hetrick, N. Vogh, A. Newton. Submitted. An Assessment of Urban Vulnerability in the Amazon Delta and Estuary: A multi-Criterion Index of Flood Exposure, Socio-Economic Conditions and Infrastructure. Sustainability Sciences
Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O. and Ludwig, C. (2015a) The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review DOI: 10.1177/2053019614564785
Winemiller, K. O. et al. 2016. Balancing hydropower and biodiversity in the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong. Science 08 Jan 2016: Vol. 351, Issue 6269, pp. 128-129 DOI: 10.1126/science.aac7082
In winter 2009, Houston Wilderness hosted an inaugural meeting of what would become the Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance. Today the Alliance is a national coalition of coalitions working in ecologically, culturally, and economically diverse communities across the US. Alliance members represent Portland, Oregon; Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, and Baltimore.
Over 80% of the population in the United States now lives within urban megaregions, and this trend of rising urbanization is similar in countries around the world. Amidst significant investments in “grey” infrastructure to support growing metropolitan regions, conserving nature is increasingly challenging. And, more often than not, the most significant challenge is protecting and restoring natural systems that provide clean air and water and other ecosystem services that nature provides us.
Metropolitan regions that effectively incorporate greenspace and Green Infrastructure into their urban fabric share several things in common, often including ample parks and natural areas, both in quantity and equitable distribution; innovative stormwater management; climate adaptation strategies; public transportation and recreational trail networks; and sustainable food production and delivery systems. Whether it’s Vancouver, Reykjavík, Malmö, Portland, or any number of cities around the world that are “green” or in the process of “greening,” the collaboration among governments, nonprofits, scientists, natural resource agencies, and urban planners is essential to transform a place from grey to a green, living, interconnected network of systems that benefit humans and the unique urban ecosystem they inhabit.
The following case study from Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance member Amigos de los Rios describes an almost century-long process of Los Angeles’ greening that should inspire other cities and metropolitan regions toward a greener future. The struggles faced and overcome are not unique to Los Angeles. This story is a glimpse into how universal urban sprawl and development are and the importance of incorporating Green Infrastructure principles into local and regional urban design.
Metropolitan Greenspace Planning in Los Angeles and Beyond
William L. Allen, III, The Conservation Fund
Claire Robinson, Amigos de los Rios
Green Infrastructure Visions for Metropolitan Greenspace Alliances. Credit: MGA
In the late 1920s, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce commissioned two highly-regarded landscape architecture firms to create a vision for the region. Leaders became deeply concerned that traffic, air pollution, overpopulation and a lack of access to parks would harm the area’s future.
Two firms—Olmsted Brothers and Harland Bartholomew & Associates—crafted a prescient plan focused on addressing a scarcity of playgrounds and parks, as well as burgeoning traffic, air pollution and a population rapidly swelling to over two million.
Original Plan Graphic, Credit: Olmsted-Bartholomew Associates
The plan wasn’t adopted, and today these challenges have grown exponentially as the county’s population surges beyond 10 million and the natural landscape is dramatically altered to meet the needs of more residents.
Los Angeles County spans 4,000 square miles and is home to 88 cities and more than 10 million people. Instead of capitalizing on its unique assets of ethnic diversity and picturesque geography, though, the county is cut off from itself. Between mountains and forests to the north and east, and beaches to the west, infrastructure is grey, freeways are gridlocked and quality of life is uneven.
There’s no other place in the United States quite like it; Los Angeles County on its own would be the eighth most populous state in the U.S. and the 88th most populous country in the world. The valley holds nearly one-quarter of California’s population and is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the nation. Its geology is unusual too. Framed by mountains and forests to the north and east, and beaches and oceans to the west, its interior is dominated by grey. Large-scale infrastructure supports a vast population, resplendent with gridlocked freeways, bustling ports, paved riverbeds, and concrete irrigation channels. In the city of Los Angeles alone, average life expectancy differs by 12 years from the lowest-income portion to the highest. Countywide, only 36 percent of children live within one-quarter mile of a park, compared to 85 percent in San Francisco.
The nonprofit Amigos de los Rios decided this could not go on. “We are in the middle of a quiet crisis,” said Claire Robinson, president of the Amigos de los Rios. “We’re not addressing public health, quality of life, and our relationship to nature.” As renowned urban planning writer Jane Jacobs once wrote: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
In 2005, Amigos began planning and designing a 17-mile loop of parks and greenways (often underutilized spaces owned by public agencies) along the Río Hondo and San Gabriel Rivers on the east side of Los Angeles that would connect nearly 500,000 residents. The plan’s parks and greenways provide desperately needed recreational areas for communities suffering from extreme density and urban decay, and the associated social and health issues.
The Emerald Necklace of east Los Angeles County. Credit: Amigos de los Rios
As part of this effort, Amigos has helped convene the Emerald Necklace Coalition, comprised of 62 member agencies with a connection to East Los Angeles. All Emerald Necklace Coalition members have signed the Emerald Necklace Accord, a legal document that pledges its signatories to work collaboratively to preserve and restore the Los Angeles and San Gabriel watersheds and their rivers and tributaries for recreational open space, native habitat restoration, conservation, and education.
In 2008, the vision was expanded to help unify a vast region of Southern California, from the desert through the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, by linking more than 1,500 acres of parks and open spaces along an interconnected greenway around the Río Hondo, San Gabriel, and the lower Los Angeles Rivers.
Initial Conceptual Map of Expanded Vision Plan. Credit: Amigos de los Rios
In 2012, Amigos de los Rios commissioned The Conservation Fund to take a fresh look at how to design and use Green Infrastructure to reconnect people and wildlife with the county’s lands and waters. Over the course of 18 months, the Fund worked with Amigos to convene focus groups, synthesize existing plans, analyze mapping data, and evaluate implementation strategies across the county.
The Fund found that despite the significant alteration of the natural landscape over the past century, many of the core recommendations of the Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan are as relevant today as they were in 1930.
The Emerald Necklace Forest to Ocean Expanded Vision plan, released just a few months ago, has created a contemporary vision—calling for a strategically managed and interconnected network of parks, rivers and lands, designed to re-create Los Angeles County as a better place to live, work and play for decades to come. Amigos and The Conservation Fund hope this ambitious expanded vision is a blueprint to unite the county. Rather than starting from scratch, it integrates common elements from existing plans and outlines specific implementation strategies to create a network of parks and public open spaces connected by greenways and trails.
Expanded Vision Plan Map. Credit: The Conservation Fund, Amigos de los Rios, Hawkins Partners
The plan focuses on eight mutually-reinforcing goals under a common vision. In addition to increasing access to a network of equitably distributed transportation—walking, biking and riding trails—it recommends the creation of functional and multi-purpose natural (“green”) and built (“grey”) spaces. The plan addresses the region’s critical water supply, identifying key recommendations to improve how this vital resource is managed to protect local water quality, and assure ample water supply.
The plan prepares communities to be resilient to inevitable effects of climate change, which can be fostered by a community-wide culture that embraces the benefits of conservation, restoration and recreation. Regional wildlife and natural area “anchors” will be enhanced and restored. Finally, the Plan aims for a robust and durable economy where jobs are created that support the multiple benefits of green infrastructure.
Despite the very clear collaborative priorities and strategies outlined in the plan, the key to lasting success will be if the plan is able to instill “a fierce sense of urgency” among the many partners in Los Angeles County that are needed to make this a reality. The plan encourages cities, counties, school districts, water agencies, public health and environmental groups to put a human face to infrastructure and accelerate improvements now for the benefit of Los Angeles County residents and its collective health.
It has been more than 80 years in the making, and it’s the second—and perhaps last—chance to get it right. It will take 20 to 30 years, cost between $200 million and $1 billion, and involve coordination and funding from the region’s 88 cities, private foundations, public bond issues, and public agencies like Caltrans, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Southern California Edison, and the LA Department of Water and Power. “There’s a full awareness that this would be a slog to get a lot of this done,” notes Will Allen, plan lead for the Fund. “There’s a lot of money out there. A lot is convincing people to invest in things that are multiple benefit.”
Expanded Vision Plan Map. Credit: The Conservation Fund
The City of Los Angeles is on board. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said: “The Emerald Necklace Expanded Vision Plan is a visionary framework to link important L.A. area watersheds and the communities they touch. Much in the way that our vision for the L.A. River encompasses its entire 51-mile length, both inside and outside our city limits, the Expanded Vision takes a regional approach to providing much needed open space in some of our most park poor neighborhoods.”
The Emerald Necklace Forest to Ocean Expanded Vision Plan for Los Angeles County, California is available for download here.
William L. Allen, III, Chapel Hill Claire Robinson, Los Angeles Mike Houck, Portland
Claire founded and serves as Managing Director of Amigos de los Rios. Her approach has led to Amigos de los Rios unique success in creating beautifully designed, culturally relevant green infrastructure in open spaces.
Mike Houck is a founding member of The Nature of Cities and is currently a TNOC board member. He is The Urban Naturalist for the Urban Greenspaces Institute (www.urbangreenspaces.org), on the board of The Intertwine Alliance and is a member of the City of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission.
Story notes: Federal regulations make clean drinking something close to a guaranteed right for residents of cities in the United States, but not all urban water systems are created equal. Last year, independent scientists and grassroots activists discovered a widespread problem with lead levels in the water pouring into the city of Flint, Michigan. Though local officials assured the public that Flint’s water supply was safe, independent tests revealed lead levels in the water flowing from some homes that were comparable to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of hazardous waste.
This podcast episode, produced by Philip Silva, explores “citizen science” efforts to uncover the truth about lead levels in Flint’s water supply last year. Philip spoke with LeeAnne Walters, a Flint resident who struggled to make sense of the sudden unexplained illnesses plaguing her family shortly after Flint stopped buying water from the nearby city of Detroit and started pumping water directly from the polluted Flint River. Philip also spoke with Siddartha Roy, a researcher in the Flint Water Study at Virginia Tech, the lab that teamed up with local activists in Flint to independently measure the lead in the municipal water supply.
The collaboration between residents like LeeAnne Walters and the scientists at Virginia Tech revealed a municipal water quality crisis that now has cities across the United States scrambling to demonstrate that their water is, indeed, up to Federal standards. The World Health Organization and UNICEF estimate that 884 million people around the world lack access to safe drinking water. Yet most North Americans take for granted that government scientists and regulators are keeping a watchful eye on the quality of water that flows through municipal treatment and supply systems. Philip spoke with Caren Cooper, an expert on citizen science at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, to learn about the role that grassroots researchers often play in uncovering environmental injustices and keeping local regulators accountable.
Philip Silva
New York
We often think of the city and the country as separate, and that development planning and urban sustainability ends at the city boundary. But this isn’t true—in a planning and sustainability sense, the city and the surrounding rural areas are deeply linked. With this in mind, I would like to discuss a plan for the sustainable coexistence of a section of forgotten rurality near the megacity of Bogota, Colombia, and how a civic response is being molded to draw attention to the issues involved.
Safeguarding a section of the Bogota countryside should be a transversal management concern for all local public administrators.
Bogota’s metropolitan land area is 75 percent “rural” with 1 percent of the population and 99 percent is found in the 25th percent that correspond to the urban area. This scarcely-populated region of the countryside is home to the Sumapaz high mountain meadow (one of the largest in the world), which is the source of much of the water consumed by the city below; its soil yields abundant agricultural output, and it is a major ecological corridor in the region. At the moment, much of Bogota’s countryside is filled with agro/eco systems and nature reserves.
Bogota: Countryside and City. Image: Aerofotografia , 1960 – IGAC
The Thomas Van Der Hammen Nature Reserve is set within the Bogota countryside: this 1,400 hectare reserve, put into the Public Trust more than 15 years ago, serves as a green corridor that links the city’s eastern mountain border to its northern-perimeter marshlands and then makes its way to the banks of the Bogota River, which lies at the city’s western edge. This nature reserve environmental plan has been divided into 6 percent percent conservation area, 44 percent percent sustainable use, 40 percent restoration, and 10 percent for landscape protection. Its development will have an enormous impact on the region’s ecological future.
At the moment, the future of this Nature Reserve is uncertain, due to the fact that the current Mayor of Bogota (as of 2016) has suggested he would like to modify the Reserve’s bylaws—which consecrate its exclusive conservation use—and open it to housing construction. The mayor’s proposal has been controversial: proponents and opponents are widely separated on the issue, with both claiming that judicial and institutional regulations support their respective viewpoints.
In this article, we will offer the Fundación Cerros de Bogota’s1 [Bogota Mountain Reserve Foundation] position on these issues. We believe that the Thomas van der Hammen Nature Reserve holds enormous potential for Bogota’s metropolitan population of 9 million people that can be turned into a public scenario for ecological and educational activities. Our goal is to protect the Reserve’s landscape and to work with all concerned so that this key urban and regional ecological resource does not become a hostile zone that pushes people apart. On the contrary, we, at the Mountain Reserve Foundation, hope to bring people together, in a peaceful setting, to actively, consciously, and constructively discuss the Nature Reserve’s future.
Starting points
Within our proposal, several transversal areas of thoughts that offer starting points for a long-term, structured vision:
The cultural value of Bogota’s countryside landscapes and activities associated with soil quality and cultural and agricultural value.
The resilience of a landscape typified by river and rainfall flooding.
The diversity of recreational and ecological activities for the region’s population.
The contribution of biodiversity and the economic challenge of preserving public nature reserves.
The nation’s population policies, which transcend this discussion.
Background
The founding of the Thomas van der Hammen Nature Reserve in 1999 marked a milestone for the defense of biodiversity; its ongoing conservation also bears testament to the success of grassroots ecological movements joined by the Colombian National Academy of Science in helping to establish a new urban development model. Their joint campaign to place the Reserve in the Public Trust began with its being approved first by the Regional Natural Resources Agency, or CAR, and later, by other pertinent governmental entities. At this moment, it is important to recall these legal underpinnings upon which the Reserve’s Public Trust rests when the public interest is being challenged by legal claims put forward by construction companies.
In contrast to the van der Hammen Reserve’s precise legal status, the case of Bogota’s eastern mountain border—the region’s greatest cultural and ecological patrimony—has been marked by a long period of official regulatory limbo that has allowed growing urbanization in a deteriorating landscape. We do not want the same thing to happen to our other public nature reserves.
The Thomas van der Hammen Nature Reserve holds enormous potential for environmental restoration, outdoor recreation, and public land use. Developing all of these would improve the quality of life and the availability of recreational activities for the people of Bogota, and at the same ensure the region’s ecological connectivity. Therefore, the van der Hammen Nature Reserve should be classified into both the city’s Ecological Master Plan and into its system of parks and recreation. Assignment to both categories is very important; even if it could sometimes bring about a clash of interests, these could eventually be reconciled as the resource-use policy is being put into place2.
Photo-montage superimposed on a Google Earth photograph that shows the Regional Natural Resources Agency´s (CAR) Master Plan. Prepared by J. Correa for Diana Wiesner
Currently, the Natural Resources Master Plan takes these two roles—ecological and recreational—into account. However, they need to be analyzed to a greater degree so that they can be successfully integrated into existing programs.
Current photo of the VDH Reserve as it reaches the Bogota River. Photo courtesy of Apertura VisualPossible inertial scene in the case that no action is taken. Photo-montage, Diana Wiesner; produced by Johan Correa
To make sure that this inertial situation is not the final scene—an outcome that neither those who favor housing construction in the van der Hammen Reserve nor those who oppose it would like to see—we have put together an image of what haphazard construction, carried out under the risk of floods, would look like and how it would degrade the landscape; something similar has already happened near the banks of the Bogota River. See Image No. 2.
The argument that allowing supervised building in the van der Hammen Reserve would help bring an end to the urban sprawl over most of the Bogota plateau is similar to the argument that if housing construction in the Bogota Mountain Reserve were permitted, then the Bogota countryside would stop being divided up into building sites—particularly in the satellite villages of Calera and Sopo. But we, as active and aware citizens, know how difficult it is to create and defend a Nature Reserve; therefore, we are making an urgent request to seek out alternatives to building inside a nature reserve. One such alternative would be to encourage greater housing density inside the city itself in central areas such as those around the Simon Bolivar Park where infrastructure and recreation facilities already exist, or in other zones near thoroughfares and ongoing urban renewal projects.
The effects of urban sprawl concern the entire nation, so whether the van der Hammen Reserve exists or does not is not truly essential to solving this issue, particularly in the case of the urban sprawl around Bogota’s satellite towns and cities on the high mountain plateau. Each municipality and city government have their own zoning laws. Therefore, what is urgently needed is a regional network of city governments working together to hold back urban expansion. This concept was put forward in the Regional Zoning Master Plan in 2004.
Let’s review a few examples of urban or suburban woodlands that have not been used for detaining urban development, but have, instead, contributed to the coexistence of a number of uses: recreational, productive, ecological. These forested areas function as nature reserves that benefit the local population affected by climate change—and in the conservation of eco-systems.
There are examples from China, Mexico, Argentina, Germany and Canada, to name just a few that illustrate how conservation can be integrated with sustainable cultural, patrimonial, educational, and scientific activities.
Xochimilco Park in the suburbs of México City. Floating fields (chinampas) where food and flowers are grown. Photo: Michael CalderwoodHountain Park in Shanghai, China. An industrial and agricultural zone with public access.Recuperation of Pre-Columbian agricultural techniques (camellones), amphibious parks and lakes in the Conejera marsh and along the banks of the Bogota River. Images by Diana Wiesner, production by AYP team.
Our proposals for the van der Hammen Nature Reserve echo the recommendations included in the Regional Master Plan: greater public access to the park, commercial agriculture with an experiment station, on-site research projects, and educational and training centers.
So that this Nature Reserve can be transformed into the park we have been describing, its land use titles need to be secured through binding agreements on the legal transfer of building and contractual rights, so that its long-term use for public and ecological services can be assured.
Grassroots organizations are invited to share their ideas on how to make the Reserve economically viable. These proposals should be placed within the proper legal framework and focus on serving the public interest.
Our public use proposals are centered on recreation, sustainability, and agriculture that will evolve in amphibian spaces, resilient landscapes, and naturally fertile meadows, instead of in the Reserve’s current kikyograss pastures; our fields would be seeded with wild plants, where pre-Columbian mounds could be built up and used for a number of purposes, including weekend family outings, school excursions, and as park facilities for residents in the city’s Northern Zone.
Recuperation of meadow lands for public use. Image by J Correa to Diana WiesnerWoodlands and lake project for recreation and bird watching. Produced by J Correa for Diana Wiesner.
Why only one piece of land?
Keeping the Reserve intact in one continuous land mass safeguards the area against flooding, provides generous spaces for sports and recreation, and enhances environmental conservation; but, above all, this unbroken land mass fulfills a cultural function by preserving the Bogota plateau landscape in the northern part of the city. It is important to keep in mind that any landscape should be regarded as a complex entity that combines natural and cultural values, both tangible and intangible. In this specific landscape, the rural past and present come together in the north of Bogota. We are encouraging citizen groups to take part in the protection of this irreplaceable piece in the local countryside.
A fertile and diverse gateway to Bogota. Produced by Diana Wiesner with the collaboration of Apertura Visual digital image.
In a final note, the plans for the highway system that would run through the Gateway to Bogota area in the north of the city should keep the region’s interlocking ecosystems in mind. This can be done by building overpasses in the Torca and Guaymaral marshlands.
These structures would stand as landmarks for a competitive city, one linked by functional and fertile thoroughfares that protect its socio-ecosystems. This socio-ecological asset, located on the Bogota Plateau, will be a cornerstone in future plans for Bogota and the region. Safeguarding a section of the Bogota countryside should be a transversal management concern for all local public administrators, and it should be included in the Regional Zoning Master Plan.
Projects for sports, camping, plant nurseries, flower shows and recreation. Produced by Johann Correa for Diana Wiesner.
What will the role of the countryside be in the city without borders?
Painting by Colombian painter of the Sabana de Bogotá: Antonio Barrera 1979
The Bogota Mountain Reserve Foundation is participating in the current debate on the future of the van der Hammen Nature Reserve, in part, because we feel it is important to defend community achievements. The people of Bogota should be supported in their search for legal counsel in preserving their environmental heritage—in this case, the van der Hammen Nature Reserve, which is part of the countryside in a fertile and biologically diverse city. We are putting together a participatory tool that will aid citizens when dealing with governmental agencies in the decision-making process on nature reserves. We believe that conservation of the countryside is of the utmost importance in a country that is committed to weaving a peaceful social fabric.
This article is based on a presentation given by Diana Wiesner-Ceballos at the Colombian State Council Forum, “Challenges for Bogota: The Bogota City Council Debates the Thomas van der Hammen Nature Reserve”, on April 18, 2015 in the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Library, Bogota.
References
1. Fundacion Cerros de Bogota: www.cerrosdebogota.org We belong to a group of civic volunteers whose representative is the Bogota Mountain Reserve Foundation (Fundación Cerros de Bogotá), a civic organization dedicated to the conservation, care and public use of the Bogota Mountain Reserve and a Member of the Verification Committee on the Council of State ruling.
2. Contributions of the Advisory Board for the van der Hammen Nature Reserve provided by our group team: Alberto Galan, Sabina Rodriguez Van der Hammen and Barbara Santos. www.reservathomasvanderhammen.co
* * * * *
La Ruralidad Olvidada: Un Caso Para una Gestión Participativa en la Sabana de Bogotá
La mayor atención de los estudios, planes de ordenamiento y la gestión territorial está concentrada en las zonas urbanas. Sin embargo, se ignora el papel y la importancia de las áreas rurales de las grandes ciudades, las cuales terminan siendo el resultado de la dependencia funcional con la ciudad y de los sistemas de servicios entre áreas urbanas colindantes. Por lo anterior, pongo a consideración un caso de la ruralidad olvidada en la Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia y la posibilidad de habilitar una herramienta de participación ciudadana que ponga en relieve la viabilidad y futuro sostenible de estas áreas en coexistencia con las grandes urbes.
Garantizar una pieza del Paisaje Rural de la Sabana dentro del área rural de Bogotá debe ser un propósito transversal a cualquier administración de turno y debe quedar incluida dentro del Plan de Ordenamiento.
En la ciudad de Bogotá, el territorio rural ocupa el 75% de su área total y contiene tan solo el 1% de la población capitalina. En esta área se encuentra uno de los páramos más grandes del mundo, el páramo de Sumapaz, el cual provee parte del agua que consume la región y el suelo de estas áreas rurales tiene una calidad alta agrológica y de conectividad ecológica. La principal función de las áreas rurales es para los agro ecosistemas y las reservas naturales. En contraste, el area urbana de Bogotá ocupa el sólo el 25% del área total del territorio y contiene con el 99% de su población.
Bogotá: Ruralidad y ciudad. Aerofotografia , 1960 – IGAC
En la actualidad la zona rural de Bogotá cuenta con la Reserva Thomas Van Der Hammen, ésta fue declarada por la Sociedad Civil desde hace más de 15 años y cuenta con una extensión de 1.400 hectáreas, siendo su principal función la conectividad ecológica entre los ecosistemas de los Cerros Orientales, la cadena montañosa que colinda con el borde oriental de la ciudad, los humedales del norte de la ciudad y el Río Bogotá, el cual bordea la ciudad al occidente. Esta Reserva tiene 6% de área de conservación, 44% para uso sostenible, 40% para restauración y 10% para protección del paisaje, tiene un enorme potencial para el futuro ecológico de la región.
Actualmente, el futuro de la reserva es incierto debido a que la actual administración distrital está planteando la posibilidad de modificarla para ubicar vivienda al interior de la misma, esto ha sido objeto de enormes polémicas en la ciudadanía, provocando una gran polarización respecto al futuro de la Reserva, haciendo que se afecte la institucionalidad y la estabilidad jurídica que permitió consolidar esta área. En el presente artículo se presenta la posición de la Fundación Cerros de Bogotá1 frente al debate del futuro de la reserva, la cual consiste en poner a consideración un imaginario del potencial que tiene dicha reserva para la población de la región: un área de uso público y aprovechamiento ecológico y pedagógico para los 9 millones de habitantes de la capital. La propuesta busca que la protección del Paisaje y que el fortalecimiento de la Estructura Ecológica Principal de la ciudad, y de la región, no se convierta en una confrontación ideológica que genere polarización, sino por el contrario que la coyuntura permita abrir posibilidades de enriquecer la discusión. Es por ello, que se hace una invitación a fortalecer un dialogo propositivo y una participación activa y consciente, acciones propias de una cultura de la paz.
Consideraciones iniciales
Dentro de la propuesta, se parte de unas consideraciones frente a temas transversales que deben ser tenidos en cuenta como elementos estructurantes del ordenamiento para una visión a largo plazo:
El valor cultural del paisaje rural de la Sabana de Bogotá y las actividades asociadas a la calidad del suelo.
La funcionalidad de un paisaje resiliente a la inundación congruente con la dinámica del río y las lluvias.
Una oferta recreativa y ambiental diversa en intensidades para la población de la región.
La contribución a la biodiversidad y el reto económico de garantizar la realidad de reservas Naturales declaradas.
La política poblacional a nivel nacional que trasciende esta discusión.
Consideraciones iniciales
Ante el debate acerca de la realinderación y sustracción de áreas en la declarada Thomas Van Der Hammen, ponemos a consideración los siguientes puntos:
La constitución de la Reserva Thomas Van Der Hammen en el año 1999 representó un logro ciudadano en la defensa de la biodiversidad, en este sentido, su conservación significa, también, el reconocimiento de los esfuerzos de la Sociedad Civil y de la Academia Nacional de Ciencia por la adopción de un nuevo modelo de desarrollo urbano. La propuesta técnica de la iniciativa ciudadana fue avalada por la CAR y por las instancias judiciales. Si se reivindica la seguridad jurídica para los empresarios, es igualmente válido brindar estabilidad jurídica para la planeación en las decisiones de interés colectivo.
Los cerros orientales, mayor patrimonio natural y cultural de la región ha sido víctima de un largo limbo jurídico que ha permitido mantener su presión de urbanización y deterioro. No queremos ese futuro para otras reservas declaradas.
La Reserva Thomas Van Der Hammen tiene un potencial de restauración, recreación y uso público, que contribuiría significativamente a mejorar la calidad de vida y la oferta recreativa de los bogotanos, al mismo tiempo permite que esa área favorezca en el futuro la conectividad ecológica regional. En este sentido, la Reserva es vista como parte de la Estructura Ecológica Principal y a su vez como parte del sistema de parques recreativos de Bogotá: dos valoraciones igual de importantes, que implican miradas diferentes, complementarias e integrales2.
Fotomontaje sobre imagen Google Earth con los tratamientos del Plan de manejo de la Car. Elaborados por J. Correa para Diana Wiesner
En el escenario actual, el Plan de Manejo efectivamente permite y contempla estas dos miradas, aunque es necesario profundizar en la coexistencia de los usos para recreación y las actividades existentes.
Foto del estado actual del sector hacia el Río Bogotá. Fotografía de cortesía de Apertura VisualPosible escenario inercial en caso de no hacerse nada. Fotomontaje de Diana Wiesner realizado por J. Correa.
Para evitar el escenario inercial que ninguna de las propuestas a favor de la urbanización o a favor de la permanencia de la Reserva quiere que suceda, se elaboró una imagen de lo que podría ser la construcción no planificada con riesgo de inundación y deterioro del paisaje como sucede en varios de los sectores de la Zona y Manejo del Rio Bogotá. Ver imagen N 2.
Frente a la posibilidad de urbanizar el área, se considera que defender la construcción planificada de la Reserva en aras de frenar la urbanización de la sabana en los municipios vecinos es equivalente a decir que urbanizar planificadamente los cerros garantizaría detener las parcelaciones campestres y urbanizaciones de los Municipios de la Calera y Sopo. En este sentido, como ciudadanos que sabemos lo que cuesta lograr un proceso de defensa como estos, solicitamos respetuosamente, agotar los escenarios posibles de densificación en lugares que ya presentan infraestructura y servicios recreativos como el área próxima al Parque Simón Bolívar, los corredores de movilidad y zonas de renovación urbana.
Asimismo, se considera que el tema de la expansión urbana trasciende a esferas nacionales, pues la existencia de la Reserva tampoco garantiza que el proceso de expansión urbana en los municipios circunvecinos de la Sabana de Bogotá se vaya a detener, debido a que ya existe una interdependencia funcional entre los mismos. En este sentido, se debe inducir la contención de dicha expansión como un tema prioritario de las agendas de gestión y bajo la estrategia de red de ciudades regionales y el Plan de Ordenamiento de la ciudad desde el año 2004.
Casos similares
Antes de mostrar el potencial que vemos en la Reserva, se revisaron ejemplos de bosques urbanos o periurbanos que no buscan ser contenedores de desarrollo sino mostrar la posibilidad de coexistencia de usos recreativos, productivos, reservas ecológicas en beneficio de una población y acordes a principios del cambio climático y de los servicios eco sistémicos. Ejemplos en China, México, Argentina, Berlín, Canadá, por nombrar algunos, demuestran la posibilidad de integrar usos de conservación con usos sostenibles de carácter cultural, patrimonial, educativo, científico, entre otros.
Parque de Xochimilco en los suburbios la Ciudad de México. Campos flotantes (chinampas) donde la comida y las flores crecen. Foto de Michael CalderwoodParque Hountain en Shanghái – China. Una zona Industrial y de agricultura recuperada para uso público.
Se pone a consideración un escenario que sigue las pautas de Plan de Manejo existente y potencia el mayor uso público posible en el área: proyectos-negocios de un gran parque fértil, de investigación, un centro de producción experimental, centros de formación y educación.
Recuperación de Camellones de Cultivo, parques anfibios y lagos para apoyar la función de humedal la Conejera y Rio Bogotá. Imágenes de Diana Wiesner elaboradas por equipo AYP.
Para que este gran parque sea viable proponemos estructurar una gestión integrada del suelo mediante diversos instrumentos tales como transferencia de derechos de edificabilidad y transferencia de cesiones, que garanticen a largo plazo la consolidación del uso público y la prestación de servicios eco sistémicos en beneficio de la ciudadanía.
Es igualmente importante, garantizar mecanismos participativos que permitan escuchar las diferentes propuestas ciudadanas que garantizan la viabilidad económica de la reserva, entre las cuales se incluye el respeto a la estabilidad jurídica y al interés colectivo.
Dentro de estas propuestas, sugerimos pensar espacios anfibios, resilientes, recreativos, sostenibles, agrícolas, praderas naturales fértiles que sustituyan en kikuyo en los cuales pueda haber un área de uso público. Los potreros pueden ser praderas silvestres entre camellones recuperados para diversos usos, desde zonas recreativas para los fines de semana de la familia, para el uso de colegios vecinos o vecinos de la desarrollada urbanización del Plan Zonal del Norte.
Recuperación de praderas para el uso público. Image by J Correa to Diana Wiesnerbosques y lagos proyectados para la recreación y la observación de aves. Elaborados por Johan Correa para Diana Wiesner.
¿Porque en un solo globo de terreno?
Un solo globo de terreno garantiza espacios de mitigación de inundación, brinda oferta recreativa en grandes espacios de múltiples usos, lograr mayor funcionalidad ecológica, pero sobre todo garantizar una única pieza de paisaje cultural rural de la sabana en la zona norte de la ciudad. Por lo anterior, entender el Paisaje como realidad compleja que integra valores naturales y culturales, tangibles e intangibles, e identifica el carácter rural de la zona norte, es fundamental para garantizar esta pieza del paisaje sabanero como el mayor logro colectivo para la región, invitamos a la ciudadanía a sumarse para consolidar una visión compartida y proponer el mejor escenario posible.
Umbral de Bienvenida a Bogotá como ciudad Fértil y diversa. Elaborada por Diana Wiesner apoyo Apertura Visual imagen digital.
Por último, la conectividad vial del Umbral de bienvenida de Bogotá debe darse en trazados coherentes con el respeto y conectividad de los ecosistemas mediante viaductos elevados que permitan la integración de los humedales de Torca y Guaymaral, y sean referentes de una ciudad competitiva, conectada funcional y fértil que protege sus socioecosistemas. Este valor socio ecológico de la Sabana es un componente fundamental para integrar dentro de las variables importantes dentro de la planificación de Bogotá y la región. Garantizar una pieza del Paisaje Rural de la Sabana dentro del área rural de Bogotá debe ser un propósito transversal a cualquier administración de turno y debe quedar incluida dentro del Plan de Ordenamiento.
Imaginario del área con zonas deportivas, camping, viveros distritales, exposiciones de flores y juegos. Elaborado por Johann Correa para Diana Wiesner.Espacios anfibios, paisajes resilientes y naturalmente fértiles con praderas públicas. Imagen de Apertura Visual para Diana Wiesner
¿Cual será el lugar de la ruralidad en una ciudad sin fin?
Pintura de Antonio Barrera de la Sabana de Bogotá – 1979
Para la Fundación Cerros de Bogotá, una parte importante del debate es la defensa de los logros de la sociedad civil, con lo cual se busca dar estabilidad jurídica a las decisiones tomadas y ampliar la participación de los habitantes en torno a sus patrimonios naturales, debido a que la reserva Van der Hammen es un acto ciudadano para una ruralidad y una ciudad fértil y biodiversa. En este sentido, se propone una herramienta de participación ciudadana para que cualquier ciudadano se pueda informar de la problemática y a partir de ello, pueda y poner a consideración de la actual administración sus propuestas con el fin de enriquecer democráticamente las desiciones sobre Reservas Naturales declaradas y que se logre una gestión y administracion que garantice su viabilidad. Lo anterior, permite que la ruralidad vuelva a tomar el espacio que requiere en medio de una sociedad que está tejiendo su proceso de paz.
Este artículo está basado en una presentación hecha por Diana Wiesner Ceballos en el debate de Control Político, “Retos de Bogotá: El Consejo de Bogotá debate la Reserva Thomas Van Der Hamen”, en abril 18 de 2015 en la biblioteca Julio Mario Santo Domingo, Bogota.
Referencias
Somos parte de un grupo de ciudadanos voluntarios representados en la Fundación Cerros de Bogota, organización ciudadana que vela por la conservación, cuidado y apropiación cívica de los Cerros de Bogotá y miembro del Comité de Verificación del Fallo de Consejo de estado.
Contribuciones de un grupo de pensamiento sobre la RVDH dadas por Alberto Galán.
Young people advocating for climate justice are co-creating new rules, norms, and imaginaries to institutionalize a culture of mutual care and challenge the culture of productivity.
Youth voices advocating for climate justice have emerged as a significant force for shedding light on the escalating challenges that climate change will create in their current and future lives. While adults often assume that young people are not interested in politics and/or are perceived to be less politically engaged, youth are not just influencing climate action across local, municipal, national, and subnational institutions but are also laying the foundation for long-term and just societal transformations that center mutual care.
Commoning
Youth — a group that continues to be ignored — today occupy political space, from courtrooms to the streets. Encouraging collective action, socializing, protesting, representing in decision-making bodies, having a youth advisory body, and partnerships are key ways through which young people cultivate intentional communities and work cooperatively to create and advocate for a lifestyle and policy that reflects their shared interests.
In The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All, historian Peter Linebaugh refers to this phenomenon as “commoning”, where actors create new shared and relational processes, redesign institutions such as norms and rules around a shared interest to serve a common good, as well as develop new imaginaries of sharing and caring. The verb “commoning” is distinct from the noun “commons” that are traditionally understood as resources such as land, irrigation systems, forests, pastures, and catchment areas jointly held with formal or informal systems of property rights and enforced governance. Even for the governance of the traditional commons, Nobel laureate and commons scholar Elinor Ostrom found that community or some form of social organization is essential. Thus, according to Peter Linebaugh, there cannot be a commons without commoning.
Fundamentally, commoning claims the right for people to be more involved in direct governance, not just accepting government rules, but in co-determining rules to foster solidarity and ecological sustainability. It requires understanding the deep colonial roots of economic growth to actively disrupt past wrongs, build respect and humility, and envision a resilient, sustainable future. Some examples of commoning include cooperatively managed forests, citizen-managed urban gardens and community gardens, cooperative housing, open-source software, and social currencies.
Today’s youth equipped with the knowledge about how centuries of exploitation and systemic inequities have led to the climate crisis are commoning to advocate for climate justice. In this essay, I highlight the different ways that young people advocating for climate justice are co-creating new rules, norms, and imaginaries to institutionalize a culture of mutual care and challenge the culture of productivity.
Commoning for community
Community Climate Council (CCC), a Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) youth-founded, not-for-profit organization advocates for local climate action through enhancing climate literacy and political advocacy in Peel Region, Ontario. The Community Climate Council, co-founded by Miranda Baksh of Guyanese descent, aims to create a platform for community members to call for bold local climate action and policy change while also centering the community to develop community-led solutions. Thus, creating social and relational processes to create community around a shared interest in climate action or commoning is essential to the functioning of the council. One of the ways by which the council undertakes commoning is through monthly Climate Cafés, an event series that brings together community members to meet and discuss the intersection of climate change and community well-being. In one climate café that I attended, CCC members created an engaging and interactive environment to discuss local environmental issues and different ways of participating in local political processes. According to the CCC, knowing when to pause to prevent burnout, being cognizant that it takes a village to meet a goal, delegating and sharing their success with everybody, and building and maintaining relationships and partnerships has been essential for creating a culture of care.
Figure 1: The Community Climate Council running a Climate Café in March 2023. Photo: Praneeta Mudaliar
Commoning on university campuses
Climate Justice University of Toronto (CJ UofT), born out of the fossil-fuel divestment movement, is a grassroots student group advocating for a #FossilFreeFuture and fossil-free research by calling attention to the role money plays in fueling the climate crisis. Climate Justice UofT relies on a variety of strategies such as strikes, teach-ins for faculty to conduct fossil-free research, and campaign presentations. The most radical of their strategy involves disruptions at high-profile events to pressure the university to cut its ties with the Royal Bank of Canada, the financier of fossil fuels in the world since 2019, according to a report by Banking on Climate Chaos. The most recent win for CJ UofT was in April 2023 when the Board of Regents at Victoria College at the University of Toronto approved to divest from fossil fuels by 2030 after an 18-day occupation of Victoria College, the longest occupation in the university’s history. More than 250 students participated in the occupation, and more than 750 students, faculty, and organizations signed an open letter supporting the occupation.
CJ UofT attributes their success to intentionally creating a culture of care, centering community, and anti-racism work. Specifically, by providing fair compensation to members, centering junior voices as much as senior voices, making a concerted effort to provide space to historically marginalized members, creating institutional memory to institutionalize continuity with student turnover, frequent check-ins, and the opportunity to step back during burnouts has helped CJ UofT build sustainable relationships with its members. At the same time, CJ UofT is open about ongoing challenges such as power dynamics within the group and improving their allyship towards Indigenous groups, on and off campus.
Figure 2: CJ UofT Creating Community on Campus. Photo Credit: Mika Logue
Commoning for food justice
Shade of Miti is a small-scale, ecological farm on rented land in Caledon, Ontario. Run by 30-year-old Rav Singh, the farm specializes in growing South Asian vegetables such as bitter melon, cilantro, fenugreek, Chinese broccoli, and okra. Rav, of South Asian descent, started Shade of Miti with the goals of growing local food for newcomers and immigrants, strengthening the local food system, and creating a culture of knowledge-sharing and education.
Shade of Miti seeks to build relationships with immigrant and newcomer communities as well as the BIPOC farming community through a variety of ways. Although Rav Singh works on her farm by herself, she credits the success of her farm to “taking the time to build relationships, listening to each other, and collaborating with other young farmers”. By conducting outreach with immigrant and newcomer communities on the linkages between the climate crisis and food systems, listening to immigrant and newcomer communities, and sharing resources with other small businesses, Shade of Miti aims to center care for her community. For instance, during a community walk that I attended, Rav made sure to connect with two children, inspiring them to create a garden and learn more about different types of trees.
Figure 3: Shade of Miti connecting BIPOC and new immigrant communities to urban nature in August 2023. Photo Credit: Praneeta Mudaliar
Commoning as caring
Author and activist David Bollier writes that a key aspect of commoning involves caring through volunteering, altruism, selflessness, peer-assistance, and mutual support, which are essential survival strategies when the state or the market fails to provide for basic needs. For these three groups, sharing and caring involves redesigning norms and rules around labor to lay the institutional foundation and support for long-term systemic change. All three of our interviewees mentioned that they eschew the idea that every day must be a productive day. For them, commoning is about institutionalizing a culture of care because “without structures of care built in, the culture of productivity will eat your strategy for breakfast” (Erin Mackey, CJ UofT).
According to Miranda Baksh from the CCC when members started burning out, they decided to slow down. She said, “It took me about a year to adjust to a slower pace. Initially, it felt strange, not diving into weekly meetings, launching projects rapidly, and expecting immediate results. But I recognized that not every volunteer could, or even wanted to, maintain that pace. Overburdening myself only led to stress and stifled my creativity. So, we decided to take a step back, pause, and reflect. We took that break from December to May, which is quite unconventional for nonprofits or any organization. This pause, a kind of anti-colonial approach to operations, allowed us to recharge and return with renewed energy”.
Erin Mackey from CJ UofT saw that burnout coupled with the existential dread of climate change was overwhelming volunteers. She said, “I think [it’s about] making sure that we are being really clear about what our capacity is, being honest with each other, and knowing that there is zero judgment if someone who previously was super active needs to take a step back because they’re really busy with school, life, or whatever it is”.
Similarly, Rav Singh from Shade of Miti said that given the unpredictability of the current times, care is about “letting people show up however they want to show up and letting them show up whenever they want to show up…Of course, there’s something to be said about accountability and showing up when you need to show up, but I don’t know what’s going on with people sometimes. That’s cool. That’s again, full circle going back to trust and community. You do what you can, and I trust that there will be others to pick up the pieces and step in when you can’t”.
Disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, gas explosions, and pandemics, as tragic as they are, also result in the emergence of temporary bottom-up, decentralized practices of reciprocal care and mutual aid networks. However, as David Bollier questions: “how sufficient institutional support for commoning can be developed so that it won’t fade away as the red-alert consciousness of the moment dissipates”. In these commoning examples, all three groups, co-incidentally led by young women, are working toward an ethic of care by institutionalizing a way of being to create a foundation for long-term transformational change. By attributing their success to the culture of care, they demonstrate an alternative to neoliberal capitalism that is relational instead of transactional. Through commoning, young people are well on their way, putting into place their ideas and practices of care toward co-creating a future that actively challenges productivity-centric ideologies in their advocacy for climate justice.
Every month 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.
James Bonner, GlasgowHow do we get to that more reflective appreciation of nature that we are part of, including the language we use? Perhaps, rather than seeing Nature-based ‘Solutions’ in terms of an ‘answer to a problem’ can we think of ‘solution’ in its more watery terms?
Harriet Bulkeley, DurhamWhat if we view mainstreaming differently, perhaps even as nature intended?
Tam Dean Burn, GlasgowHow do we get to that more reflective appreciation of nature that we are part of, including the language we use? Perhaps, rather than seeing Nature-based “Solutions” in terms of an “answer to a problem”, can we think of “solution” in its more watery terms?
Stuart Connop, London Local mainstreaming is critical if we are to reach a tipping point whereby NBS becomes so embedded in our local urban landscapes that people stop noticing it as something risky and unusual, and instead, it becomes something expected, and desired, in urban design.
Bryce Corlett, NorfolkSeveral critical obstacles must be overcome to operationalize NBS at a scale that can reverse the degradation of natural resources and provide an adequate level of climate change resilience.
Laura Costadone, NorfolkSeveral critical obstacles must be overcome to operationalize NbS at a scale that can reverse the degradation of natural resources and provide an adequate level of climate change resilience.
Olukayode Daramola, SurreyWe suggest that efforts to increase public acceptance of NbS in urban design will involve more specific communication about what the solution involves and the types of problems it seeks to address ― including societal co-benefits that this might afford.
McKenna Davis, BerlinWe have the power to change the discourse and eliminate the need for terms like “nature-based solutions”, instead making these solutions the default and new normal to prioritise solutions working with nature.
Gillian Dick, GlasgowA park has been in my town for many years, providing positive social and environmental NbS benefits. The difference now is that because the esplanade is also called a road it has been mainstreamed and has a maintenance budget and some positive financial benefit calculations on the council books. The large park is seen as a negative equity on the books, as all that is accounted for is the maintenance costs.
Loan Diep, New YorkOne of the powers of NbS resides in the fact it can give us clarity on where the greening and the “right to the city” agendas might be in conflict.
Niki Frantzeskaki, MelbourneNature-based solutions have the potential to be expanded in urban development, but only if coupled with biodiversity conservation, restoration, and protection programs as a key part of building more livable and resilient cities.
Zbigniew Grabowski, StorrsWe must remember that the current push for NbS is inherently restorative ― cities and the infrastructures they rely on all occupy (often colonized!) ecosystems and have developed in ways that required and reinforced social injustices and inequalities.
Perrine Hamel, SingaporeParticipation is key to effective and sustainable implementation of nature-based solutions. But if communities supposedly benefiting from a project don’t understand what it could entail (trade-offs and benefits to them, to other human and non-human communities, governance issues, etc.), how are they supposed to meaningfully participate in the conversation?
Mariem EL Harrak, ParisNbS challenge our business-as-usual thinking and call for a transformation of governance, investment, and decision models, in terms of inclusion, scale, and/or mindset. In terms of what it will take to get there, the main question is: will we allow NbS to change us?
Cecilia Herzog, Lisbon/RioMainstreaming requires that diverse actions and activities converge to promote interdisciplinary knowledge and common ground to a wide range of stakeholders and agents: public and private, individuals and organizations (formal and informal).
Nadja Kabisch, HannoverNature-based solutions have the potential to be expanded in urban development, but only if coupled with biodiversity conservation, restoration, and protection programs as a key part of building more livable and resilient cities.
Doris Knoblauch, BerlinWe have the power to change the discourse and eliminate the need for terms like “nature-based solutions”, instead making these solutions the default and new normal to prioritise solutions working with nature.
Frédéric Lemaître, ParisNbS challenge our business-as-usual thinking and call for a transformation of governance, investment, and decision models, in terms of inclusion, scale, and/or mindset. In terms of what it will take to get there, the main question is: will we allow NbS to change us?
Paola Lepori, BrusselsIn the quest to mainstream an idea and turn it into a default option on the ground, each of us needs to engage with those within our reach, speaking their language, understanding their narratives, needs, and concerns, creating alliances and partnerships, cultivating new ambassadors.
Patrick Lydon, Daejeon If the ancient biodiversity hotspots in urban Japan are any indication, the sacred is not likely the enemy of the scientific but might be its best possible partner.
Israa Mahmoud, MilanIt will take a bit more than the EU Nature Restoration Law to be passed to make sure that cities prioritize a nature-based solutions approach for nature-human approaches.
Timon McPhearson, New YorkNature-based solutions have the potential to be expanded in urban development, but only if coupled with biodiversity conservation, restoration, and protection programs as a key part of building more livable and resilient cities.
Seema Mundoli, BangaloreNbS as a neutral term has the potential to enable greater acceptance of multiple uses of urban nature among planners and decision-makers. But the challenge is in making this a reality.
Harini Nagendra, BangaloreNbS as a neutral term has the potential to enable greater acceptance of multiple uses of urban nature among planners and decision-makers. But the challenge is in making this a reality.
Caroline Nash, LondonPerhaps the question shouldn’t be “how to mainstream?”. Instead, it should be “how to remember and reconnect communities with old traditions?”
Neville Owen, MelbourneA concerted effort between research, advocacy, and government sectors is essential to overcome the barriers and to enable NbS transitions to be widely adopted and implemented.
Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, College ParkMainstreaming NbS is going to require us to use novel and direct approaches to connect people to these attributes of urban nature.
Eleanor Ratcliff, SurreyWe suggest that efforts to increase public acceptance of NbS in urban design will involve more specific communication about what the solution involves and the types of problems it seeks to address ― including societal co-benefits that this might afford.
Kassia Rudd, FreiburgIt is corny, but mainstreaming requires working NbS into the tapestry of a city or region. It can’t be only one thread or motif―NbS must be woven into everything. Cities like Quito can help us figure out how best to get there.
Valentine Seymour, SurreyWe suggest that efforts to increase public acceptance of NbS in urban design will involve more specific communication about what the solution involves and the types of problems it seeks to address ― including societal co-benefits that this might afford.
David Simon, LondonPublic awareness and understanding of the concept in different countries and contexts will largely depend on finding locally appropriate terms to substitute for the bland and abstract umbrella label of ‘nature-based solutions’, with illustrative examples.
Takemi Sugiyama, MelbourneA concerted effort between research, advocacy, and government sectors is essential to overcome the barriers and to enable NbS transitions to be widely adopted and implemented.
Morro Touray, SurreyWe suggest that efforts to increase public acceptance of NbS in urban design will involve more specific communication about what the solution involves and the types of problems it seeks to address ― including societal co-benefits that this might afford.
Ibrahim Wallee, AccraThe lack of clarity with the term mainstreaming in the context of NbS stifles initiatives that focus on sustainable city planning and green technology appropriation.
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.
There has been what seems like a lot of work on Nature-based Solutions.
There has been great enthusiasm among NbS professionals for “mainstreaming” NbS into urban practice. We generally mean one of two things when we say mainstreaming NbS: (1) making NbS more widely known in the general public (like, say, “climate change” is…maybe); and (2) making NbS the default or common practice among urban professionals. The two are perhaps related, but the audiences for such social change are not exactly the same. Plus, NbS professionals are often a little vague about which element of “mainstreaming” they are talking about.
As contributor Harriet Bulkeley says: what does it mean to become mainstream?
The answer seems simple, until we actually start talking about it.
The mainstreaming we need may be an old idea, not new one: reconnecting humans to nature.
Now, this is certainly a matter of “communications”: tactics about how to effectively spread the good word about the cultural and environmental importance of NbS. This is important. But it is not only communications. It is also a matter of how the frames we use for indicating “NbS” reflect deeply on what we believe is important in weaving environmentally friendly and effective design into notions of science, society, and place: what NbS installations do; how they fit into the social fabric; the equity challenges of who gets to choose and benefit; their direct economic benefits; how NbS designs occupy a fizzy boundary between ecological and social value and meaning.
What are the wicked problems for which we need “solutions”? They are found embedded in both social and environmental challenges, which are difficult to disentangle. Maybe they should remind entangled, so we an seek and find rich cross-sectoral solutions and then find language to talk about them with everyone.
As contributor Gillian Dick points out, there is a park near her house with a road through it. The park has provided benefits since long before there were called NbS. The road is counted in the government’s books as an economic benefit. The park just counts as a negative because the only thing they count in the budget is the maintenance cost, not the harder-to-quantify social and environmental benefits. Indeed, as several contributors point out, across many years and nomenclatural evolutions, much of what we need is to re-maintream an older idea of human connection to nature.
What are the wicked problems for which we need “solutions”? They are found embedded in both social and environmental challenges, which are difficult to disentangle. Maybe they should remind entangled, so we an seek and find complex solutions. These are questions that firmly reside in the emerging New European Bauhaus mission.
So, OK, we asked 33 people professionally engaged with NbS in one way of another: from scientists to practitioners, from grant makers to artists. What do you mean by “mainstreaming NbS”? And, if the goal is to mainstream NbS in the way you desire, what will it take to get there?
This roundtable is a co-production of Network Nature PLUS (in which TNOC-Europe is partner), which is funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 887396; and by by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee under grant No 10064784.
Dr. James Bonner is a Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. His interests and background are in a range of interdisciplinary research issues and themes including water, trees, place and mobility. He is particularly interested in the relationships between people and society to the places and spaces they inhabit and encounter.
How do we get to that more reflective appreciation of nature that we are part of, including the language we use? Perhaps, rather than seeing Nature-based “Solutions” in terms of an “answer to a problem” can we think of “solution” in its more watery terms?
It is looking at how we ARE nature, and finding the solutions in nature to some of the challenges we face. Trees are the thing that connects us two in the ‘Every Tree Tells a Story’ project, but also all of us. They are maybe our closest allies in nature. If we develop our relationship with them, and then other elements they interact with ― like the mycorrhizas ― fungi they are connected to, and the water, and ultimately the wider ecosystem ― then we facilitate that conversation and thought process: recognising that we are part of, and interconnected within nature. Connections we can make in the city, as much as anywhere else.
Tam Talks Trees
One way to do this could be changing to think and operate around the lunar cycle, rather than the solar cycle. A consequence of climate change and warming temperatures will mean that days are going to become more difficult to operate within, so might we need to shift more activity to the night? How can we become more in tune with nocturnal nature? And can we build a flourishing nighttime economy around this, powered by solar panels from our days?
Consider that the monthly cycle of the moon means that there are periods when it is darker at night, and others in which is lighter ― the waxing and waning from dark to full moon. We recognise the power of the latter. How can we also align with the dark moon? The solarising of the moon, by giving the sun its symbolic ritualistic ruling over us has been a process over fairly recent time, roughly the last 3000 years. But there are other, older ways of thinking that recognise the value of lunar cycles as a way to think of time and our own being.
By thinking in more lunar cyclical ways can we rethink ideas of death and rebirth, rediscovering ways of seeing life and death as interconnected. Compared to trees, for example, who experience a seasonal cycle of life and death, it is in the moments of ‘death’ (in autumn) that they regenerate to become new life.
What do we mean by mainstreaming NbS and what will it take to get there?
The very word “mainstreaming” struck us as having water connections― and water, aside from trees, is a thing that also connects us. (Tam’s surname “Burn” is a Scottish term for a small stream ― so both fire and water elements ― and in name terms “by the river”. James’s research background considers the social and cultural values of water. We are both watery Zodiac signs― Cancer and Pisces!).
Connecting to water and trees
Is a way of mainstreaming NbS to rediscover old myths about nature and our interconnection to it, or recognising words, terms, and things like the animalistic roots of our alphabet as being part of that? Is it also something to do with ensuring the NbS process is not top-down, but rather from the bottom up, and potentially female-led, recognising the links between the feminine and the lunar― the very embodiment of such a cycle?…
Thinking of water reconnects the link to the lunar― the moon having control over the ebb and flow of the tides. How do we get to that more reflective appreciation of nature that we are part of, including the language we use? Perhaps, rather than seeing Nature-based “Solutions” in terms of an “answer to a problem” can we think of “solution” in its more watery terms? Where a solution is a mixture of different substances, and water is the solvent in the process. By thinking in terms of water, do we open up multiplicity and plurality?
Tam Dean Burn has been a professional actor across platforms for over forty years and a performer, particularly of musical varieties, for even longer. He is also a very active activist in local, national and international campaigns. Most recently he has led a successful campaign to press Glasgow City Council to drop the plan for entry charges to the iconic 150 year old Kibble Palace in the city’s Botanical Gardens.
Harriet’s work is concerned with the politics and governance of environmental issues. She has a particular interest in climate change and the roles of cities and other non-state actors in responding to this global challenge. In her work on urban sustainability, Harriet has focused on questions of energy, smart grids, infrastructure, housing, mobility, waste and most recently nature and biodiversity. Throughout her work, questions of social and environmental justice are to the fore.
What if we view mainstreaming differently, perhaps even as nature intended?
Towards Nature’s mainstream?
What does it mean to become mainstream? Intuitively the idea of the mainstream seems straightforward. It’s the centre of things. What we do every day. What it means to be normal. And calls for nature-based solutions to become mainstream have this core intent. That, rather than being side projects to the main game, nice to look at but stranded in the financial, political, and cultural backwaters the call is to bring nature-based solutions into the flow of policy-making, urban planning, community life, and business “as usual”.
That nature-based solutions need to be mainstream now has significant support, with advocates including no less than the United Nations and European Commission, many national governments and multilateral donors, philanthropists and private sector companies, and countless communities and individuals. Yet, for the most part, the intention here is to bring nature-based solutions into the mainstream ― to insert ways of working with nature for sustainable development into dominant flows of knowledge, practice, and values. This approach to mainstreaming requires that nature-based solutions be made to fit with existing paradigms of urbanism and development that have been built on concrete understandings of how, for example, costs and benefits should be measured, return on investment calculated, the division between the public and the private sphere, and how risks should be gauged. As Adrian Smith and Rob Raven put it in their 2012 article in Research Policy, here mainstreaming requires that nature-based solutions ‘fit-and-conform’ to existing institutions and dominant political economies of the urban arena. With the result that countless papers and policy briefings seek to focus on how we can rub the awkward and messy corners off nature-based solutions ― their uncertainties, their multiplicities, the unruly dynamics of nature itself ― and improve our calculations of their service and value towards particular defined ends and for key stakeholders, notably the private financial sector.
Yet what if we view mainstreaming differently, perhaps even as nature intended? Few people can have survived the school geography curriculum without encountering the odd oxbow lake or two. Relic features on the landscape, oxbow lakes stand as a reminder of where the mainstream used to be. As rivers form a new mainstream, the channels that previously served them well have to be left behind.
Oxbow lake, Yamal Peninsula, Russia. Photo: katorisi
Making nature-based solutions a new mainstream from this perspective requires a focus on two key things. First, on how we create the openings, the grit in the mill if you like, through which enough friction starts to be made in existing mainstreams that opportunities for a new channel start to emerge. With Laura Tozer and colleagues, our paper in Global Environmental Change explores the ways in which we can focus on moments of catalytic change as ways of opening up pathways for nature-based solutions. Second, and equally important, we need to be able to leave behind the existing mainstream. This will mean challenging existing taken-for-granted ways of operating, knowing, and valuing urban planning, practice, and everyday encounters. Rather than asking the value of, for example, green roofs or street trees, we might do well to pose the question of what kind of contribution is a concrete pavement or flat grey roof providing towards the sustainable development goals, public goods, or community life? Rather than securing the park gates or allowing for private gardens safe in our existing paradigm of public space, we might ask instead what these green spaces in cities are supposed to do and be for. Making a new nature-based mainstream requires that we bring more friction into the urban milieu and make space for new and unexpected flows to emerge.
References
Smith, A., & Raven, R. (2012). What is protective space? Reconsidering niches in transitions to sustainability. Research policy, 41(6), 1025-1036.
Tozer, L., Bulkeley, H., van der Jagt, A., Toxopeus, H., Xie, L., & Runhaar, H. (2022). Catalyzing sustainability pathways: Navigating urban nature based solutions in Europe. Global Environmental Change, 74, 102521.
Dr Stuart Connop is an Associate Professor at the University of East London's Sustainability Research Institute specialising in biomimicry/ecomimicry in urban green infrastructure design.
Local mainstreaming is critical if we are to reach a tipping point whereby NBS becomes so embedded in our local urban landscapes that people stop noticing it as something risky and unusual, and instead, it becomes something expected, and desired, in urban design.
Having worked on a number of nature-based solutions research and innovations projects, including one specifically targeting the goal to ‘mainstream NbS’, I have spent many hours contemplating the question of: what do we mean by mainstreaming NbS? For me, NbS will be mainstreamed when we reach a point whereby ecological restoration and protection become the de facto starting point for any policy and planning decisions. In other words, mirroring how carbon impact is becoming a foundational component of cross-sectoral policy and practice decisions (no longer just within the environment sector), mainstreaming NbS is the situation whereby nature-positive outcomes are embedded as standard. This would mean:
ensuring no net-harm to nature is the absolute red line for policy and planning;
that nature stewardship and restoration is considered a key target for policy, planning, finance, and business strategic development decisions;
AND
that the “values” that nature provides (ecosystem services) are considered as a first point of call for solutions across the spectrum of societal challenges that underpin policy and practice objectives.
Only by reaching such a situation are we going to be able to tip the scale of global biodiversity declines towards one whereby we halt global loss and start restoring nature to a state where it underpins a healthy & stable global ecosystem able to support itself, including humans as part of that ecosystem.
In terms of how to get there, that is a huge question, a question I’ve found challenging to answer in several of my past publications, let alone in a short one like this. However, here is my attempt at a short answer: it requires different actions across different scales. At the largest scale, it requires reconnecting our communities with nature and supporting them in understanding the key role that nature plays in keeping planetary systems balanced and us all healthy and happy. That starts with the early years of education and development but needs to continue through secondary and higher education, and even into life-long learning. Human rights, equality, inclusivity, and diversity are fundamental components of mandatory life-long learning approaches in the workplace, why not the rights of nature too, and its value in supporting every aspect of our lives? And why stop there? NBS mainstreaming also needs to be embedded in corporate social responsibility. If an individual is struggling with the cost of living, they can’t be expected to make decisions based on what is good for the planet, or good for wildlife, they need to be making decisions that are good for themselves and their families. Responsibility therefore needs to be shifted from the consumer to the producer: the businesses, governments, and financial markets. Only by doing this can you ensure that all decisions, whether driven by desperation or decadence, are fundamentally linked to the protection of nature.
Whilst the global NbS community continues to push for this incremental large-scale change, there is also a need to consider the small-scale incremental change that unlocks local mainstreaming. Local mainstreaming is critical if we are to reach a tipping point whereby NBS becomes so embedded in our local urban landscapes that people stop noticing it as something risky and unusual, and instead, it becomes something expected, and desired, in urban design. There have been many studies that have explored the barriers and drivers to unlocking NbS scaling, with many identifying similar governance, policy, and financial levers. However, in addition to these usual suspect barriers, there is also a need to listen to local practitioners to understand their needs for delivering NBS mainstreaming.
A recent study I was involved in collaborated with practitioners to explore barriers to the roll out of small-scale Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) in London and the River Thames catchment. Whilst some of the barriers identified represented the usual suspects (access to funds, cost to maintain, and ownership, issues), the study also identified some surprising patterns: Insurmountable barriers for one individual were often not perceived as a barrier at all by others. Overall, the research found three key themes in relation to barriers perceived by participants: people-related elements, limiting practicalities, and informational factors. However, by far the simplest solution to unlocking many of the barriers to locally mainstreaming SuDS could be solved by becoming better at communicating and sharing knowledge and innovative practice. A simple example of this? Why do we give awards for the prettiest SuDS and not the ones that share the most information on how they were delivered? Or the ones that drive the most sector-wide exchange? And, on the subject of being better at communicating to unlock mainstreaming, I must get back to getting that study written up!
Dr. Laura Costadone is an Assist. Research Professor at Old Dominion University for the Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience. Laura brings her expertise in co-design and co-create pathways to uptake and implement urban sustainable development goals by engaging directly with municipalities, practitioners, decision-makers, and citizens.
Several critical obstacles must be overcome to operationalize NbS at a scale that can reverse the degradation of natural resources and provide an adequate level of climate change resilience.
The urgency of implementing nature-based solutions (NbS) is higher than ever, especially in coastal areas where cities consistently face growing challenges. Coastal cities must build resilience not only against increasing extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, storms, and urban heat island effects but also against sea-level rise. Although these challenges have global origins, their impacts are acutely experienced at the local level, requiring local governments to take a leading role in devising and executing adaptation strategies. Despite notable research progress demonstrating how impactful NBS can be in addressing the biodiversity and climate crisis, critical obstacles persist, hindering the translation of scientific knowledge into practical projects on the ground.
The scope of our work at the Institute for Coastal Resilience and Adaptation is to help strengthen resilience and adaptation in underserved local communities. Here in Virginia, as in many other places, adaptation choices are often dictated by local priorities and capacities. Yet, the implementation of NBS is often still limited by the inherent preference for gray infrastructures. Based on our experience, several critical obstacles must be overcome to operationalize NBS at a scale that can reverse the degradation of natural resources and provide an adequate level of climate change resilience.
In coastal cities, the growing risk of flooding posed by sea-level rise provides opportunities for proactive planning at the local and municipal levels. However, it also presents the formidable task of prioritizing among numerous pressing concerns. As a result, planning efforts in response to climate change tend to be either deficient or inadequate due to the significant challenges that emerge when attempting to advance climate adaptation while simultaneously addressing other competing priorities and agendas. Local decision-makers need to optimize budget allocation by making targeted investments, and cost-effectiveness remains a key driver of their decisions.
As a research extension institute, one of the initial requests we receive from local government officials and regional land managers is for more comprehensive cost-benefit analyses to justify the implementation of NbS projects. To address this need, one important step we are taking is to identify and quantify the tangible and intangible ecosystem services and benefits that arise from the implementation of NbS. Developing a robust methodological framework that can be applied from the design phase to account for the monetary value of ecosystem services, including recreational services, urban heat island mitigation, nutrient flood reduction, and biodiversity, is critical in mainstreaming NbS into urban practice.
Regulatory and financial limitations are also significant hurdles that impede the implementation of ecosystem-based projects. Government jurisdictions, particularly in coastal areas, can be intricate and overlapping, requiring integration across various government levels, extensive involvement of stakeholders, consensus on perceived risks and practical solutions, and policies that support desired actions. There is an urgent need to implement soft policy instruments to facilitate the process of mainstreaming nature and biodiversity into all aspects of the city’s urban planning.
Promoting a different approach to support sustainable urban development might not be enough. We also need to address a critical question: Where can we integrate nature into highly developed urban environments? In urban areas, space is often limited, and in coastal urban areas, the lack of room to migrate to higher ground as sea levels rise exacerbates the problem. To tackle this challenge, we will need to make some trade-offs, in some cases, give up space, upgrade existing infrastructure, and consider hybrid solutions for projects such as transportation, redevelopment, housing, water, and sewer. To transition to governance more suited to NBS mainstreaming, we need transformational changes that begin with cultural values, economic mechanisms, infrastructural, and technological systems.
Dr. Bryce Corlett, PE, has nearly 15 years of diverse experience in the climate change arena, ranging from identifying sea level rise acceleration along the US east coast to discovering an Arctic current to strategically guiding local, state, and national organizations through climate adaptation, wetland, beach and shoreline restoration, and water/sediment quality analyses.
A park has been in my town for many years, providing positive social and environmental NbS benefits. The difference now is that because the esplanade is also called a road it has been mainstreamed and has a maintenance budget and some positive financial benefit calculations on the council books. The large park is seen as a negative equity on the books, as all that is accounted for is the maintenance costs.
Everybody wants to mainstream Nature-based solutions. It’s appearing everywhere. It’s the “it” word of the moment. But when you talk to communities — professional or specialist — about NbS there is a lot of confusion. Most forget or don’t know that it is a holistic approach. They think it’s all about the nice to have stuff. It’s about planting trees here or pretty flowers with seeds there. Or you’re asked, “don’t you mean green infrastructure or ecosystem management?” Over the last few years, I’ve been challenged about why I keep banging on about Nature-based Solutions. I talk about taking a place-based approach using nature-based solutions to create climate adaptive places. I talk about what does it take to make a space become a place that you are attached to. I also take inspiration, as a Town planner, from Patrick Geddes when he said, “It is interesting sometimes to stop and think and wonder what the place you are currently at used to be like in times past, who walked there, who worked there and what the walls have seen.”
If we stop and really look around we will start to see Nature-based Solutions all around us. Victorian communities created open spaces to give workers somewhere to relax and get fresh air in their time off. Hospitals were built on the edge of towns as fresh air was viewed as good for your health and most of our medicines are developed from herbs and plants that grew near where we lived and worked. So, when I look at where I live in the West of Scotland I see a wide esplanade that also acts as a flood plain; dock leaves growing near nettles and large public parks with trees for shade and areas to play in. All of these are Nature-based Solutions. All provide a positive benefit for social cohesion, health & wellbeing, economy, environment and biodiversity all at the same time. The difference now is that because the esplanade is also called a road it has been mainstreamed and has a maintenance budget and some positive financial benefit calculations on the council books. The large park is seen as a negative equity on the council books, as all that is accounted for is the maintenance costs, litter picking and dealing with expected anti-social behaviour.
But increasingly the noise for mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions is getting louder. The parks, street trees, soils, rivers and lochs are starting to show their value. If we need to reduce the carbon in the air, then lock it in the ground or in the vegetation. If we want to improve educational attainment and health / wellbeing, then get outside and engage with nature. Understanding the significance of nature in urban areas and recognizing the multi-benefits it provides is crucial. Nature-based Solutions provide us with an opportunity to restore the bond between people and nature. It provides an opportunity to make our communities more resilient and resourceful.
Loan is a researcher in environmental studies. Her work is centered on the development of cities that are green and inclusive of communities, most particularly those trapped in marginalizing systems. Her PhD focused on green infrastructure for rivers in informal settlements of São Paulo.
One of the powers of NbS resides in the fact it can give us clarity on where the greening and the “right to the city” agendas might be in conflict.
When the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) started to popularize among IUCN and its circles in the 2010s, many asked what new doors it could possibly open that had not already been pushed by its predecessors “ecosystem services”, “green infrastructure”, “ecosystem-based adaptation” (to name a few, in case they have already been forgotten…!).
Framing NbS as an “umbrella concept” by the big players was a smart move that essentially helped sweep up all the other ones that had already done the hard work of opening up the way towards a greener societies. It has worked pretty well. NbS has already conquered many academic, governmental, non-governmental, and other public and private spaces of most regions of the world. But certainly not all…why?
For a start, the idea of “widening public acceptance” of the NbS concept ― of any concept in fact ― is a misconception, and it surely should not be the goal. The notion of public acceptance is one that carries heavy assumptions. It conveys the idea that the public, as a single homogenous entity, is out there waiting to be convinced (controlled?), largely by those in charge “above” and/or the “experts”. It is a famous rhetorical strategy to portray the public as unaware, unknowledgeable, not interested, or sometimes rebellious, and where the means are justified under the putative argument that “it is for society’s own benefit”. Many have used it to push for the NbS agenda.
And there we went again: the usual greenwashing suspects entered the game and integrated NbS into the same dualistic and hierarchical structures that create exclusionary patterns. These dynamics, we know it, clearly emerge where greening agendas are pushed by governmental institutions supported by big financers, and lead to evictions, land grabbing, gentrification and displacements. Nothing we don’t know. Yet, it keeps happening.
Vila Nova Esperança is a perfect example of the power of international green discourses over everyday lives, and which can be particularly damaging for those living on the edge (metaphorically and not). Because Vila Nova Esperança settled in proximity to an environmentally protected area, this community living on the margin of the city of São Paulo has been threatened with eviction. To resist, their community leader engaged in a series of initiatives to prove the community’s alignment with environmental values (Photo). This helped the community build a counter-narrative, a tool for resistance.
Vila Nova Esperança’s community garden, in São Paulo, created to resist evictions and build an ecological citizenship counter-discourse.
While the political visibility that these actions attracted has enabled Vila Nova Esperança to survive, other communities have not met the same fate. Green projects supposedly aimed at helping the most vulnerable, have commonly ended up creating more issues because of the set of assumptions they are based on in relation to human-nature relationships. Dobson’s Ecological Citizenship theory reminds us that environmental rights and duties are disproportionately owed in society. In its mainstreaming quest, NbS first needs to resolve such non-reciprocity.
If we have learned anything from attempts to mainstream other concepts, it is precisely that mainstreaming can be the enemy of transformational change. If mainstreaming NbS comes with a process of letting the usual suspects in power to (re-)appropriate concepts precisely developed for the purpose of changing what “mainstreamed” concepts failed to address, we are simply repeating history.
NbS helping us put a finger on multi-scalar politics could be its greatest strengths. One of the powers of NbS resides in the fact it can give us clarity on where the greening and the “right to the city” agendas might be in conflict. If NbS brings nuances to dualistic worldviews, it can break barriers that place people and nature in opposition. Only then we will be in position to explore the innumerable possibilities of truly integrating them. Rather than seeking wide acceptance of the concept, understanding its resistance might be where we learn from it the most, dig into the heart of the problems, and finally move forward.
Dr. Zbigniew J. Grabowski (Z or Zbig for short) is an Extension Educator in Water Quality at UConn’s Center for Land-use Education and Research (CLEAR). Z’s primary work is to support just transformations of land systems. His work focuses on green infrastructure, just transitions, and systems approaches to address intersecting social and environmental challenges.
We must remember that the current push for NbS is inherently restorative ― cities and the infrastructures they rely on all occupy (often colonized!) ecosystems and have developed in ways that required and reinforced social injustices and inequalities.
Mainstreaming NbS vs Just Transformations: A perspective from a water person
What does it mean to mainstream? As a kayaker and canoer, mainstreaming implies riding the deepest and dominant current ― the one following what hydrologists call the ‘thalweg’ ― a German word translating to the ‘valley way’ where the current is shaped by the landscape and in turn, shapes the river bed. Sitting in an eddy, amidst the chaos of a big rapid, you can observe the mainstream and study its habits. When it’s time to go, you know you’ve hit the mainstream when you cross the turbulence of the eddy line, feel that bump under your boat, and rapidly accelerate down river. Mainstreaming then, is finding the path of maximum flow, or the path of least resistance defined by how the structures surrounding the flow ― be they rocks, institutions, or built infrastructures ― and the force which is flowing itself ― be it water, ideas, or money. As we move towards mainstreaming NbS, I urge my fellow researchers and practitioners to keep this duality in mind: we are both shaping and being shaped by social currents and structures.
We have a tremendous and historical opportunity to green cities, accelerate circular bio-economies, and engage in just transition work with NbS. And yet we must remember that the current push for NbS is inherently restorative ― cities and the infrastructures they rely on all occupy (often colonized!) ecosystems and have developed in ways that required and reinforced social injustices and inequalities. Restoring ecological systems in cities and transforming technological infrastructures causing harm to human and ecological health are vital and necessary tasks. And yet I deeply question if these tasks can be accomplished through the current structures that have shaped our cities. In over 17 years of experience working on different dimensions of sustainability transitions, urban greening, and ecological restoration and conservation, I have come to believe that the dominant institutions cannot be trusted to enable, steward, or catalyze the necessary transformations, primarily because of their intractable desire to control the flows of ideas and resources. In short, our current landscape of institutionalized inequity is shaping the mainstreaming of NbS, and it will take seismic changes to enable the just transition.
The primary obstacle to just transformations in cities, infrastructures, and landscapes is overcoming the inertia in the political and financial structures directing flows of ideas, material wealth, and labor. This inertia also permeates the academic establishment, which has an uneasy relationship with change. On the one hand, universities are epicenters of the critical thinking and innovation that emerge from concentrations of inquiring minds. On the other, they are the bastions of the prestige economy, the largest gatekeepers of credibility. Funding for research has become progressively more inequitable in the USA, UK, and elsewhere, with funding and collaborations driven by elite institutions and established networks.
To be effective in pushing these larger systemic transformations, the research and practice communities must individually and collectively address our own biases and personality issues that pervade the social hierarchies that delineate which approaches are acceptable and which ones are not. Elsewhere co-authors and I have called for convivial pluralism in developing the NbS agenda, and to their credit, networks like NATURA attempt a broadly inclusive approach but mirror the larger inequities in NbS research and practice (e.g., limited representation from the Global South and minoritized peoples).
Like water flowing down river, the barriers and boundaries, the eddy lines if you will, can be subtle and deep, and we would be wise to keep an open heart and an open mind to identifying and dismantling them before we rush downstream with the dominant flow. The massive inflow of federal funding through ARPA and the IRA in the US, and from the EU for the Green New Deal and circular bioeconomy all have stated agendas to support equitable transformations of these systems. The mainstream is being pointed at challenges of sustainability and resilience that have been created by the structures still directing the flow.
In a river, change can be subtle, slow, and somewhat predictable ― when the Marmot Dam was removed as part of the Bull Run Decommissioning on the Sandy River outside of Portland Oregon, the movement of sediment downstream behaved in accordance with well-understood physical principles, for the most part. This was despite heavy rains during the initial removal accelerating the initial clearance of the former reservoir, and a somewhat unexpected backup at the river’s mouth compounded by static infrastructures including a highway bridge (I-84), rail line, gas pipelines, and a heavily modified floodplain. In contrast, across the Columbia River gorge, the removal of the Condit dam on the White Salmon proceeded with a violent explosion of sediment which temporarily blocked river access for the Native community of fishers downstream and may have removed vital cold water habitat adjacent to the Columbia mainstem, also because of a state highway bridge blocking the river’s mouth. While these types of large dam removals are heralded as major successes for ecological restoration, they can still overshadow the persistent calls for Indigenous environmental justice finally being acknowledged by the US government.
All over the world, we see technological infrastructures and political institutions limiting the effectiveness of ecological restoration, compounding internal issues in the restoration community of overreliance on technical expertise rather than community knowledge exacerbated by funding territorialism. In our rush to accelerate NbS, we must take care to not only ‘include’ Indigenous, minoritized, and marginalized populations, as well as minority viewpoints within the field, but to support their resurgent leadership towards a just world characterized by flourishing biocultural relations. This task runs deep, and yet without it, the mainstream will only perpetuate the injustices we say we are trying to solve.
Perrine is an Assistant Professor at NTU’s Asian School of the Environment. Her research group examines how green infrastructure can contribute to creating resilient and inclusive cities in Southeast Asia. Prior to joining NTU, Perrine was a senior scientist at Stanford University with the Natural Capital Project.
Participation is key to effective and sustainable implementation of nature-based solutions. But if communities supposedly benefiting from a project don’t understand what it could entail (trade-offs and benefits to them, to other human and non-human communities, governance issues, etc.), how are they supposed to meaningfully participate in the conversation?
Mainstreaming nature-based solutions is a good thing, right? Of course, it is. Nature-based solutions are key to addressing the climate and biodiversity crises, and perhaps one of the most promising solutions when it comes to balancing local and global benefits. Mainstreaming nature-based solutions will help to have more decision-makers demand such solutions, and more practitioners effectively respond to this demand. Mainstreaming is also key to inclusion in the process of nature-based solutions design and implementation. As the IUCN Standard highlights, participation is key to effective and sustainable implementation of nature-based solutions: if communities supposedly benefiting from a project don’t understand what it could entail (trade-offs and benefits to them, to other human and non-human communities, governance issues, etc.), how are they supposed to meaningfully participate in the conversation? With these two benefits in mind, upscaling and inclusion, no wonder that many of us researchers and practitioners spend time developing decision-support tools (e.g., to quantify benefits of nature) or heuristic frameworks (e.g., to communicate the complexity of nature-related values) to “mainstream” such solutions.
If mainstreaming is in theory a good thing, what are the implications in practice? An important aspect to consider is that mainstreaming likely means simplifying. Communication Science 101 would tell us that effectively reaching larger groups requires understanding one’s audience and avoiding jargon. Yet with such an umbrella term as “nature-based solutions”, whose strength is to be a boundary object (making it easy for engineers, policymakers, ecologists, etc. to work towards a common goal), the audience is extremely broad. In addition, jargon is bad, we all agree, but it exists for a reason: Communities of research and practice found the need to use jargon to discuss important nuances and complex issues in a specific area (I’m not cynical enough to assume that it’s just to make ourselves sound important!).
If mainstreaming partly means simplifying, the problem is that nature-based solutions are the exact opposite of simple. There’s a phrase tossed around in ecology circles: “Ecology is not rocket science. It’s much harder”. Being trained as an engineer and having spent the past decade in the field of socio-ecological science, I have to agree with that statement. It implies that implementing nature-based solutions requires the understanding of extremely complex, socio-ecological urban or rural systems and their local specificities. With that in mind, simplifying but not oversimplifying the realities of nature-based solutions seems to be the way forward, and to do so narrowing down the audience enough so that the nuances of a specific implementation can be understood and explained.
Finding the right balance between simplification and oversimplification takes skills and time.
Skills are valued, such that people have incentives to work on them. Time, however, is not. Using the example of research and implementation grants, KPIs typically involve workshops with “stakeholders”, outreach, etc. that can be achieved with sufficient project management, facilitation, and communication skills. However, KPIs rarely involve the “number of coffees/teas drank with stakeholders”, or the “amount of time spent on Zoom to resolve misunderstandings” … These are imperfect yet relevant indicators of how one builds a shared understanding of a complex system (building, neighborhood, city) and the issues nature-based solutions are supposedly improving. Would shifting our mindset towards this shared understanding be key to mainstreaming?
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.
Mainstreaming requires that diverse actions and activities converge to promote interdisciplinary knowledge and common ground to a wide range of stakeholders and agents: public and private, individuals and organizations (formal and informal).
The Cartesian/Mechanistic vision of urbanization that intended to control natural processes and flows has been dominant, mainly since the mid-XIX Century. The current globalized neoliberal economic system has accelerated the exploitation of natural and human resources mainly in the Global South, causing heavy impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. Sprawling urbanization is an outcome of this predatory paradigm, causing the eradication of natural and agricultural areas, with landscape transformation leading cities to extreme climatic vulnerability.
This year the critical acceleration of the climate impacts, and the evident changes in the Earth’s system functioning, have led to the speed of the implementation of responses to mitigate the impacts of human activities in many spheres. In this context, mainstreaming nature-based solutions is urgently needed to shift to a new regenerative paradigm.
I have been researching, teaching, and advocating for the adoption of NbS in urban areas for the last 15 years. In my experience, which I consider quite successful, mainstreaming requires that diverse actions and activities converge to promote interdisciplinary knowledge and common ground to a wide range of stakeholders and agents: public and private, individuals and organizations (formal and informal). In this manner, people work together with mutual and complementary interests to regenerate the landscape, urban or not.
I have been in close contact with individuals and grassroots movements that are transforming the pervious and sterile landscapes into urban oasis, with the introduction of pocket forests, biodiverse rain gardens, food gardens, and also, the restoration of urban springs and creeks in parks and in small sites and organizing collective tree and food plantings in dense urbanized areas, besides other communal activities. After more than a decade of intense mobilizations and actions, they are resisting to further eliminate nature-urban assets with judicial actions, halting new constructions in ecologically valuable sites. Furthermore, they are promoting policy changes. The media finally is giving place to those committed, courageous, and noisy urban heroes.
Looking from the top-down perspective, the articulation of several NGOs and academic institutions with the same goal to mainstream NbS is key. They are the ones who give technical and scientific support to city officials to develop robust plans, projects, programs, and policies. The NGOs are also important agents in pushing the mainstreaming of NbS in traditional and social media.
The role of visionary decision-makers is to be drivers of actual landscape transformations. They are the ones who have the capacity to foresee the benefits of their choices when introducing NbS in their cities to mitigate, adapt, and build resilience, as well as enhance the quality of life and well-being of their citizens.
The innovative NbS projects bring people to enjoy the “natural” places, so they can value nature close to where they live.
The fertile soil that enables all the above outcomes is education! So, mainstreaming NbS is only possible with cascading processes to develop research, active learning, and co-creating spaces of exchange of experiences and knowledge. Nature-based solutions are the way forward to face the present systemic and frightening challenges. Let’s definitely enter the new regenerative paradigm that focuses on the life of humans and non-humans, fauna and flora!
This year, climate emergency and Earth’s planetary system’s extreme stress are evident. After years of advocacy for protecting, conserving, and regenerating nature all over the world, nature-based solutions have become the bright star in multiple agendas, from ecological, to social and economic perspectives. But to really mainstream NbS there is an urgent need to have people prepared to plan, design, implement, manage, and monitor nature in and out of the cities.
In the last century, there was a belief that development and growth of the economy, where the dominant elites could and should exploit natural and human resources to achieve a better future, and then the benefits would be shared by all. This definitely didn’t happen. The externalities of this worldview are huge. We are on the brink of the Earth’s system collapse due to a misguided vision of the world as a machine, that people are like clocks, all made of separate parts that could be studied separately to understand the whole.
Mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions in Brazil has been an intricate combination of bottom-up and top-down myriad of actions and activities. It has succeeded, NbS have gained traction in Brazil in the last years. I believe the successful outcomes are related to the synergistic work of many people and organizations (non-profit and public) focusing on cities and citizens, as well as climatic challenges calling for a paradigm shift, among other local triggers.
About 10 years ago many individual and collective (grassroots) movements sprouted in cities, especially in large metropolitan areas where green areas are scarce and neglected, and where the water courses had disappeared causing heavy floods in urban areas. Using social media, activists gathered thousands of people in their urban interventions, which were replicated in cities across the country.
Scientific knowledge has been developed in a few universities in the country, especially at the University of São Paulo, where LabVerde and GIP-SbN. Those programs are attracting more and more people, with an interdisciplinary view and inclusive learning.
In December 2009, a lecture on green infrastructure with Jack Ahern, which I organized, gathered about 130 people, which was a total surprise. It was the starting point for a small group of passionate people to co-create the Institute Inverde in Rio de Janeiro. There were 2 primary activities, firstly we organized monthly lectures for more than 4 years with national and international speakers from diverse fields of knowledge to present, discuss, and propose innovative interventions in urban areas to bring nature back to the concrete jungle. Second, Pierre-André Martin and I started giving short courses on green infrastructure and sustainable urban development. Hundreds of people came from different states of Brazil, and later from other Latin American countries. It was wonderful to have a mix of students, researchers, practitioners, decision-makers, with diverse backgrounds and ages with the same interest. The courses had a theoretical introduction followed by a workshop in an actual local watershed, with a site visit and then the atelier to develop landscape proposals to face the challenges of climate change and improve the quality of life and well-being of all residents.
In 2016, Pierre and I started a Master’s program on Ecological Landscape Planning and Design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Puc-Rio). There was a great interest in the program, with students coming from a wide range of fields, even with PhDs. Many of our former students are now working in and for cities, international organizations, private companies, or continuing their studies in landscape urban planning the nature-based solutions field in various countries.
During this period, ICLEI pioneered working with cities, as the successful case of Campinas showcases. Fundação Grupo Boticário (FGB)and WRI-Brasil, are two of the most active NGOs, among others. Besides working directly with cities, FGB has launched a booklet to communicate with the media about NbS. The launch was on October 31st, 2023. Almost 300 people attended the virtual event.
Some cities are leading the way to enable inspiration and replication of their successful projects, programs, and policies, such as Campinas, Niterói, Sobral, Recife, among others. Virtual and presential events proliferate.
NbS is gaining media attention, social media repercussions, top-down, and bottom-up planning and interventions.
In many pieces that I have written forTNOC, I have discussed the pathways to develop NbS in Brazil.
Doris Knoblauch joined Ecologic Institute in 2006 and is a Senior Fellow and Coordinator for Urban & Spatial Governance. She focuses on green urban environments, local climate protection as well as public participation, amongst others. Doris is currently part of the Horizon Europe-funded INTERLACE project.
We have the power to change the discourse and eliminate the need for terms like “Nature-based Solutions”, instead making these solutions the default and new normal to prioritise solutions working with nature.
What if trees and plants came to mind when searching for shade instead of buildings, even in the middle of a densely populated city?
What if we could enjoy fresh air blown right through our city centres, having been filtered through an urban forest?
What if that forest wrapped around and wound through the city, interwoven with parks, meadows, rivers, ponds, and lakes?
What if this green and blue belt offered sanctuary and recreational opportunities for animals and people alike? And was accessible and safe for everyone to escape their busy city lives and find some peace of mind?
What if these green and blue areas were filled with local trees and plants that are resistant to a changing climate, ensuring the chances of their sustainability in the long term?
What if some of these spaces could function like a sponge, capable of absorbing water during heavy rains and storing it for periods with less rain?
And what if all of these places could attract people of different ages, cultures, genders, and economic backgrounds to freely meet and exchange, to reconnect with and recharge in nature, and to form and build a community… our community?
By embracing these dreams and transforming our “what ifs” into practical actions, we have the power to jointly shape the cities of the future… cities that have reduced heat stress and can move away from inefficient and expensive air conditioning, cities that nourish our physical and mental health and well-being, cities that decrease water stress and incurred damages from extreme weather events, and cities that support the biodiversity upon which we all depend ― all by letting nature play a stronger role in providing the multifunctional solutions to these key challenges.
And importantly, we have the power to change the discourse and eliminate the need for terms like “nature-based solutions”, instead making these solutions the default and new normal to prioritise solutions working with nature. By moving past discussions of “if” and “why” and instead focusing on “how”, we could finally accomplish a true mainstreaming of nature-based solutions and achieve the large-scale potential just waiting to be tapped.
McKenna Davis is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute in Berlin and coordinates the Institute's activities on Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Her work focuses on the science-policy-society interface and bringing different perspectives, types of knowledge and values into the NbS discourse and decision-making processes.
Frédéric Lemaitre is the operational manager for society and policy impact of Biodiversa+, the European Biodiversity Partnership. He is experienced in European project management, international environmental affairs and science-policy-society interfacing, and is knowledgeable about European research and innovation on biodiversity and nature-based solutions.
NbS challenge our business-as-usual thinking and call for a transformation of governance, investment, and decision models, in terms of inclusion, scale, and/or mindset. In terms of what it will take to get there, the main question is: will we allow NbS to change us?
We’ve both had the chance to work together with experts from science, policy, and practice to co-develop a shared vision and roadmap to 2030 of key action areas for research and Innovation (R&I) on NBS in Europe. That shared vision is for European R&I to empower policy, practice, businesses, and citizens in mobilizing the full potential of NbS in achieving a sustainable and just transformation of society, building on robust evidence, and expertise. This is a vision of NBS driven by knowledge of people and nature, with people and nature, and for people and nature.
So, what would we mean by mainstreaming NbS in urban design? In our opinion, it’s about advancing NbS as credible, functioning, and natural options to consider when addressing urban challenges, alongside other intervention approaches, such as so-called grey or mixed infrastructures.
But what would it take to get there?
What we’ve learned from the R&I roadmap work and vision is that it takes nature and people. By nature, we think it is about understanding, mobilizing, and positively contributing to ecological processes at work around us, and by people, it’s about participatory and inclusive governance approaches, which appear to be key in NbS implementation. But both aspects challenge our capacity to understand and manage the diversity of co-benefits and co-beneficiaries, and trade-offs of NbS interventions. Often because we can’t measure or even more so capture these benefits and trade-offs in our decision systems. Not all are monetary or have market value, not all people give the same values or have the same use of nature, and not all ecological interventions deliver or are resilient to extreme events and slow onset changes (e.g., Climate change).
The solution would be to have better socio-ecological knowledge at the service of more effective and resilient NBS, right? But beyond understanding socio-ecological processes and valuation of NBS co-benefits and dis-benefits, mainstreaming NbS means we need standards and tools to assess them. A key aspect for R&I is around the development of evidence-based and accepted standards of NBS design and implementation. However, the vision carried in the roadmap is also about helping to empower society on NbS.
Beyond standardized methods and tools, NBS driven by society will likely not happen without participatory governance systems and structures that can allow effective planning and implementation of NBS, notwithstanding working business and investment models for NBS, nor competencies to implement them. This also raises questions as to the foreseen and unforeseen variation in the performance of any socio-ecological system, and the inherent variability in terms of NbS intervention’s success or failure. Somehow public and private decision-makers deal with uncertainty every day, based on evidenced and perceived risks, potential gains, and importantly insurance in case of failure. The development and operationalization of knowledge and skills came out strongly in our work when it came to advancing financial and investment mechanisms supportive of NBS implementation.
Lastly, if we take a step back, for us there is a critical challenge to achieve the mainstreaming of NbS, which is the chicken or the egg of seizing NbS’s transformative potential. NBS challenge our business-as-usual thinking and call for a transformation of governance, investment, and decision models, in terms of inclusion, scale, and/or mindset. We require proof that they are effective and credible to make these changes, yet we cannot realize their full potential and make them effective and credible interventions without changing.
So, in terms of what it will take to get there, we believe the main question is: will we allow NbS to change us?
Mariem EL Harrak is a Project Officer for the European Biodiversa+ partnership. She is responsible for supporting activities related to nature-based solutions and the valorisation of biodiversity in the private sector. She participates through her missions to the involvement of Biodiversa+ in the NetworkNature project, a European platform on nature-based solutions.
Paola Lepori is a Policy Officer for Nature-based Solutions at the European Commission, DG Research & Innovation. Her core professional objective is building alliances to trigger transformative change towards an inclusive nature-positive future.
In the quest to mainstream an idea and turn it into a default option on the ground, each of us needs to engage with those within our reach, speaking their language, understanding their narratives, needs, and concerns, creating alliances and partnerships, cultivating new ambassadors.
When I try to explain what I do for a job―and it’s never easy because the role of policy officer is somewhat hazier than more tangible professions like architect or farmer—I usually mention that part of it is contributing to “mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions in policy and practice”.
My understanding of “mainstreaming” reflects the Cambridge Dictionary definition: “the process of becoming accepted as normal by people”. Where it gets complicated is in the how to make that happen. What concrete steps lead to something becoming accepted as normal by people and who are these people whom we want to accept nature-based solutions as normal? Lastly, how do we measure success?
I know this roundtable includes brilliant contributors who are going to adopt a much more scientific and grounded approach than I could ever hope to achieve, so I won’t delve into specific mainstreaming strategies and the theoretical approaches behind them. My starting point is imagining and visualising a world in which NBS are “mainstream”.
Imagining a certain kind of world is the very first step towards bringing it into existence. So, I imagine cities where the green, and all the colours that beautifully dot the green, are widespread and accessible regardless of the social stratification of urban areas. Cities where rivers and streams are not bridled but can regain their space and follow their natural courses, truly integrate natural features of the urban landscape rather than constrained sources of potential danger. Cities that are not exclusively human settlements, but where life forms other than us can reclaim space and coexist comfortably, rather than at the margins; and an urban built environment that lives in partnership and symbiosis with vegetation.
While this image seems to convey just an aesthetic idea, it’s actually the visual representation of an urban landscape in which nature-based solutions—which embody an alliance on equal footing between nature and human societies that is not based on exploitation but on mutual benefit and on re-internalising the notion that human beings are, in fact, part of nature—help us tackle a myriad of pressing and even existential challenges that we face today in our city life, mostly due to the combined and interdependent effects of human-induced climate change and biodiversity loss.
This visualisation represents the end goal. How do we get there? The grand objective that seems so far away it’s almost unreachable can only be achieved by breaking it down into smaller components and fostering collective efforts where each contributes according to their skills, expertise, inclinations, and network.
Where can I hope to achieve the most impact? How do I prioritise where to invest my energy? Given my access to EU policymaking in different fields, I’m in a privileged position to raise awareness of nature-based solutions within my organisation—this big and complex public administration that serves half a billion people in Europe—with all the firepower provided by the knowledge produced by the NBS community with (but also without) EU funding, with the ultimate goal to create an EU-level policy and regulatory framework that is conducive to the uptake at the scale of NBS. (In this, I’m encouraged by the words of former EU Commission climate chief Timmermans who said that “we will promote nature-based solutions as much as possible”).
My point is that in the quest to mainstream an idea and turn it into a default option on the ground, each of us needs to engage with those within our reach, speaking their language, understanding their narratives, needs, and concerns, creating alliances and partnerships, cultivating new ambassadors.
Mainstreaming NBS may seem like a vague and far-away objective but it’s already happening and if I can add one last word, ultimately, I don’t even care if people call it NBS; my main concern is seeing the future I describe materialise.
DISCLAIMER: These views are expressed in a personal capacity; they are not meant to represent the official position of the European Commission.
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 writes The Possible City series, is co-founder of City as Nature (Daejeon). He is an Arts Editor here at The Nature of Cities.
If the ancient biodiversity hotspots in urban Japan are any indication, the sacred is not likely the enemy of the scientific but might be its best possible partner.
In search of ancient NbS: urban biodiversity for a thousand years
The term “NbS” urges us to recognize that something is missing. A missing element, not just from our professional practices, but from our daily lives.
What is missing is not a method nor a mantra, but a meaningful relationship with nature. Absent this relationship, history would instruct us that NbS stand little chance of mattering in the long run.
Those who consider ‘biodiversity’ a somewhat recent, fashionable term, might be surprised to know that Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in urban Japan have long been the keepers of sacred biodiversity, sometimes for hundreds or thousands of years. Indeed, some of the oldest and most biodiverse ecosystems in Japan today are not in far-off mountains or pristine wilderness, but actually in sacred forests located inside cities and towns that people have inhabited for millennia.
It seems unfathomable, yet these sacred forests — called Chinju-no-mori ( 鎮守の森 ) — have been maintained through wars, uprisings, and countless changes of leadership. They continue to exist today in highly urbanized areas not because some calculations were made about their value as ecological solutions, but for precisely the opposite reason.
The main bridge and moat which denote entrance to the sacred space of Sumiyoshi Taisha, a 1,800-year-old Shrine in Osaka, Japan, the grounds of which are home to several small forests and a 1,000-year-old Camphor tree. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon, CC BY-SA
A sacred relationship exists here, between people and the forest. Though there may be logical reasons for this, the relationship is not based in logic and reason. It is instead based in a cultural identity and associated habits. These habits are reinforced through one’s daily actions. Perhaps this means two claps and a bow as we pass a sacred tree, or perhaps it means festivals that celebrate community and their connection with the seasons. These habits and festivals exist not within the mundane everyday world but within the space of the sacred, the incalculable, the unseen which dwells in between and manifests this tangible world.
The world in which we dwell.
The world which dwells in us.
Correcting our failure to relate
Our failure to bring about a world where humans and the rest of nature have some sort of accord has always been in the failure to put this relationship — the one between us and the rest of the living world — at the center of decision making and actions.
To enjoy the kind of longevity that Japanese shrines and temple forests have enjoyed, NbS cannot be only about solutions. It must be focused on maintaining the kinds of relationships from which proper, equitable solutions grow in the first place. Call these relationships what you want, they must be first and foremost, meaningful to the everyday lives of everyday people.
While this is a long path to walk, the clear first step is to acknowledge that the sacred — not just from the aforementioned examples, but from whatever personal or cultural practice it hails — is not likely the enemy of the scientific but instead may just be its best possible partner.
Israa Mahmoud is a polyglot Architect and Urban Planner. She is an Assistant professor in urban and regional planning at Urban Simulation Lab, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano. She is lately involved in the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC) as a researcher on co-creation and co-governance themes related to urban biodiversity in living labs.
It will take a bit more than the EU Nature Restoration Law to be passed to make sure that cities prioritize a Nature-based Solutions approach for nature-human approaches.
Mainstreaming NbS for a shared governance of urban biodiversity, intertwined concepts
In the latest academic debate, the shift from nature-based solutions to a more generic approach on urban biodiversity has emerged after the definition of UNEA-res 5.5. on NBS that encourages a comprehensive approach to embrace NbS versatility. Meanwhile, the missing part of the puzzle is the technical, financial, governance, and spatial possibility of rolling out NbS in different contexts as a “Passepartout” key concept that fits all climate, social, and environmental challenges.
Indeed, several research articles criticize the “right message” to convey on NbS in a mainstreaming policy era in which the use of NBS is considered a magical solution to solve both climate change and urban biodiversity challenges (Seddon et al., 2021; Xie & Bulkeley, 2020). Nonetheless, the reframing of the current governance mechanisms towards urban biodiversity seems an intertwined concept with the possibility to mainstream NBS across scales and levels of implementation in cities which is challenging on so many levels (Kowarik, 2023).
Even with the adoption of novel concepts in urban planning such as co-creation processes (Cortinovis et al., 2022; Łaszkiewicz et al., 2023; I. H. Mahmoud et al., 2021; I. Mahmoud & Morello, 2021) the challenge remains on the level of readiness in which the citizens are ready to be engaged within the process. Also, another challenge is the inclusivity level at which these processes are initiated and executed. The NBS mainstreaming processes require technical and political support from the local municipality authorities which they currently do not possess in place coherently (Hölscher et al., 2023). Another major challenge is still a comprehensive framework that assesses the NBS co-benefits to convince decision-makers to adopt NBS as the longer-term solutions taking into account not just the environmental assessment but also the social return of investment.
What will it take to be there? In my opinion, it would take a bit more than the EU Nature Restoration Law to be passed to make sure that cities prioritize a nature-based solutions approach for nature-human approaches. Our relationship with nature is valuable and unless there is an evident prioritization across many sectors, we might not get there, yet!
References:
Cortinovis, C., Olsson, P., Boke-Olén, N., & Hedlund, K. (2022). Scaling up nature-based solutions for climate-change adaptation: Potential and benefits in three European cities. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127450
Hölscher, K., Frantzeskaki, N., Collier, M. J., Connop, S., Kooijman, E. D., Lodder, M., McQuaid, S., Vandergert, P., Xidous, D., Bešlagić, L., Dick, G., Dumitru, A., Dziubała, A., Fletcher, I., Adank, C. G.-E., Vázquez, M. G., Madajczyk, N., Malekkidou, E., Mavroudi, M., … Vos, P. (2023). Strategies for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in urban governance capacities in ten European cities. Npj Urban Sustainability, 3(1), 54. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-023-00134-9
Kowarik, I. (2023). Urban biodiversity, ecosystems and the city. Insights from 50 years of the Berlin School of urban ecology. In Landscape and Urban Planning (Vol. 240). Elsevier B.V. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104877
Łaszkiewicz, E., Kronenberg, J., Mohamed, A. A., Roitsch, D., & De Vreese, R. (2023). Who does not use urban green spaces and why? Insights from a comparative study of thirty-three European countries. Landscape and Urban Planning, 239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104866
Mahmoud, I. H., Morello, E., Ludlow, D., & Salvia, G. (2021). Co-creation Pathways to Inform Shared Governance of Urban Living Labs in Practice: Lessons From Three European Projects. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 3(August), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2021.690458
Mahmoud, I., & Morello, E. (2021). Co-creation Pathway for Urban Nature-Based Solutions: Testing a Shared-Governance Approach in Three Cities and Nine Action Labs. In A. Bisello et al. (Ed.), Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions (pp. 259–276). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57764-3
Seddon, N., Smith, A., Smith, P., Key, I., Chausson, A., Girardin, C., House, J., Srivastava, S., & Turner, B. (2021). Getting the message right on nature‐based solutions to climate change. Global Change Biology, 27(8), 1518–1546. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15513
Xie, L., & Bulkeley, H. (2020). Nature-based solutions for urban biodiversity governance. Environmental Science and Policy, 110(December 2019), 77–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.04.002
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, Nadja Kabisch, and Niki Frantzeskaki
Nature-based solutions have the potential to be expanded in urban development, but only if coupled with biodiversity conservation, restoration, and protection programs as a key part of building more livable and resilient cities.
Effective nature-based solutions won’t just happen. Seven insights to move the NbS agenda forward
Our vision for cities in the future is ambitious ― a just, equitable, resilient, and sustainable landscape of virtuous relations among people, nature, and infrastructure ― and not one where nature and its benefits in cities are sporadically located or only available to a subset of population groups. This vision requires rethinking, retrofitting, and redefining cities (and their connected regions) as social-ecological-technological systems that have at their core a network of nature-based solutions. These networked NbS must be implemented and maintained, operate at city scale, connect, restore, and reinforce social-ecological flows, and provide multiple ecosystem services and co-benefits for health and wellbeing that are deeply inclusive in ways that improve and foster equity and justice.
Nature-based solutions have the potential to be expanded in urban development, but only if coupled with biodiversity conservation, restoration, and protection programs as a key part of building more livable and resilient cities. In our recent open-access edited book, Nature-based Solutions for Cities, with contributions from over 60 authors, we provide a critical starting point for developing and implementing a livable global urban vision that puts nature and people at the center of how we re-imagine, retrofit, build and redesign cities.
The key insights and next steps for urban nature-based solutions drawn from findings across all the book chapters are presented below:
Insight 1:Put nature-based solutions first in adaptation to climate change in cities
Nature-based solutions are affordable and effective in delivering protection from extreme weather events. As such nature-based solutions are “safe-to-fail” infrastructures in design and management. This is the case because nature-based solutions are more flexible in responding to shifting risk profiles or environmental changes and in accepting changes to system design and management than traditional gray infrastructure.
Insight 2: Make equity and justice central in design, planning, management, and governance of nature-based solutions in cities
From ideation to maintenance of nature-based solutions, all phases must put equity and justice at the center of, and as necessary conditions for, efficacy. This goal can be safeguarded through careful consideration and design of how participation is organized, who is represented, and how representation overall is facilitated, as well as ensuring accessibility and openness in processes and attention to distributional aspects of co-benefits or disservices of nature-based solutions.
Insight 3: Ensure biodiversity is a priority in urban planning for nature-based solutions.
Biodiversity aspects such as species richness or traits that are well studied and manageable, should be part of a NBS selection process by practitioners. Often, local knowledge provides important expertise to support species selection and maintenance decisions for resilient and sustainable long-term nature-based solutions.
Insight 4: Employ and design nature-based solutions to improve human health in cities.
Nature-based solutions are an important contribution to keeping urban residents mentally healthy, and to help them adapt to and mitigate a potentially stressful life in the urban landscape. Thus, extensive urban planning and decision-making efforts are needed to bring nature into the city and to increase nature quantitatively but qualitatively by considering the needs of a diversity of user groups.
Insight 5: Realize nature-based solutions in cities with inclusive urban planning, and innovative governance approaches that respond to local context dynamics.
To realize nature-based solutions in cities, urban policy, planning, and governance need to map and assess the local context while critically unpacking local dynamics to respond to the quest for justice and inclusivity for planning with nature-based solutions. NBS should be selected and developed to be adapted to current but also future climate conditions keeping in mind the local biodiversity.
Insight 6: Assess the holistic value of urban nature to make a case for nature-based solutions in cities.
Assessing the value of urban nature can support building a case (or a business case where needed) for investing in urban nature and restoring it or enhancing it with nature-based solutions. As we advance the science and practice of nature-based solutions, a holistic assessment of their value that is contextually informed or nuanced is the way forward. We must ask: Nature for whom? Who and how is the value of urban nature recognized and appreciated?
Insight 7: Bring art into nature-based solutions and position art as a nature-based solutions in cities
Artists can express through creative processes the emotions and relations or loss of relations with urban nature but also showcase new relations with it. Ecological art that addresses environmental issues or is situated in urban green spaces can play a crucial role in advocating for and implementing nature-based solutions. Innovating the practice of nature-based solutions should make artists more central to nature-based solutions design, planning, and implementation.
Nadja Kabisch holds a PhD in Geography. Her special interest is on human-environment interactions in cities taking co-benefits from nature-based solutions implementation for human health and social justice into account.
Niki Frantzeskaki is a Chair Professor in Regional and Metropolitan Governance and Planning at Utrecht University the Netherlands. Her research is centered on the planning and governance of urban nature, urban biodiversity and climate adaptation in cities, focusing on novel approaches such as experimentation, co-creation and collaborative governance.
Seema Mundoli is an Assistant Professor at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Her recent co-authored books (with Harini Nagendra) include, “Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities” (Penguin India, 2019), "Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India's Cities" (Penguin India, 2023) and the illustrated children’s book “So Many Leaves” (Pratham Books, 2020).
NbS as a neutral term has the potential to enable greater acceptance of multiple uses of urban nature among planners and decision-makers. But the challenge is in making this a reality.
The challenge and opportunity of mainstreaming NbS in the urbanizing Global South
For rapidly urbanizing countries in the Global South, such as India, Nature-based Solutions are still an emerging concept both in urban sustainability research and when it comes to urban planning and policy.
At the same time, cities in the Global South have a variety of urban ecosystems. These include conventional trees, parks, forests, ponds, lakes, and wetlands as well as unconventional spaces such as cemeteries, remnant grazing lands, and community woodlots. This nature in cities provides ecosystem services that are accessed at different scales―from the household where urban ecosystems such as wetlands support provisioning services enabling livelihoods of farmers, fishers, and grazers to city-scale regulating services of wetlands in water purification.
As the concept gains popularity, the concern is that NbS in its interpretation and implementation does not prove detrimental to existing urban ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide in the Global South. And also, ensuring the meaningful incorporation of NbS into urban planning and policy without worsening existing inequalities in access to nature.
Wetlands in peri-urban Kolkata that perform the function of sewage treatment plants for the metropolitan city—free of cost. How can they be incorporated into city plans as an effective NbS? Photo: Seema Mundoli
These concerns are not unwarranted. In the context of India, smart cities are one example. Smart cities, an idea that originated in the urban Global North, was a very catchy term and promised not only smart but also sustainable cities. In India, the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) was launched in 2015 to set up an initial 100 smart cities across the country. But as we have seen in our research (Mundoli et al 2017), the conceptualization and implementation of the SCM failed to consider how existing urban ecosystems are being accessed by local communities. Under SCM nature was prioritized mainly for recreational purposes to the detriment of other uses. For example, the rejuvenation of water bodies involved creating built infrastructure such as walkways, amphitheaters, eateries, and so on but failed to consider them being accessed for provisioning services. This resulted in the alienation of users from urban ecosystems adversely impacting livelihoods and subsistence, especially of the urban poor. Smart cities, a Western import into India, both in phrasing and in implementation were not inclusive of the varied interpretation and uses of nature in the context of Indian cities. The concern is whether NbS too will be co-opted to initiate projects for urban sustainability but result in alienating those dependent on urban ecosystems.
Unconventional urban spaces such as Lakshmipuram cemetery in Bengaluru that are of ecological, social, and cultural significance for some communities—Challenge of conceptualizing NbS with these varied uses of green spaces in the Global South. Photo: Seema Mundoli
The Global South already has urban ecosystems that are providing multiple solutions to urban sustainability. But these often go unrecognized when it comes to urban planning and policy. NbS as a neutral term has the potential to enable greater acceptance of multiple uses of urban nature among planners and decision-makers. But the challenge is in making this a reality. For this the existing ecosystem services provided by nature in cities must be highlighted, but, in a context-specific manner i.e., as they are used and accessed by urban residents in Global South cities. Here the focus of research on urban ecosystems and communicating that research in a manner accessible to different stakeholders will play a key role.
Clearly, when it comes to mainstreaming NbS there are both concerns and opportunities in the context of the Global South. There is also much work that needs to be done if NbS needs to be leveraged to effectively address urban sustainability challenges, and to ensure that NbS is not relegated to either being a buzzword or being co-opted to the detriment of cities and its residents.
Reference:
Mundoli, S., Unnikrishnan, H., Nagendra, H. 2017. The “sustainable” in smart cities: Ignoring the importance of urban ecosystems. Decision, 44(1): 103-120.
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.
Caroline is a Research Assistant in the Sustainability Research Institute at University of East London, working primarily on biodiversity and urban green infrastructure design
Perhaps the question shouldn’t be “how to mainstream?”. Instead, it should be “how to remember and reconnect communities with old traditions?”
The question shouldn’t be “what will it take to get there?”. The question should be “what will it take to get back there?” Nature-based Solutions are not a new innovation or a new technology. Whilst some of the ‘solutions’ being developed incorporate new technologies or approaches (like Living Pillars and “Smart” SuDS Planters) the solutions themselves are all based on historical traditions of stewarding and nurturing the land so that it nurtures us back.
Examples of nature-based solutions can be found throughout history:
Many human settlements were built on rivers and estuaries because flowing water represented a multifunctional solution: providing a means to move resources in and out, a source of clean water, and a source of food.
Agricultural land was managed sustainably using crop rotational patterns as far back as 6000 BC so that plants could be both consumed and used to retain soil quality and fertility.
Urban trees have a long history of being used to create attractive and shady spots to escape the summer heat with tree-lined streets part of standard urban planning by the 19th
Using earth that vegetated (green roofs) to provide shelter for dwellings has been recorded as far back as Neolithic times.
As has the practice of coppicing woodlands in a sustainable manner to produce uniform-sized rods for construction.
A traditional timber and turf church at Hof, Iceland, built by a local carpenter in 1883–1885. Photo: Ira Goldstein. Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12038391.
Working on an early nature-based solution Horizon 2020 project, Connecting Nature, one of the objectives the research team was tasked with was supporting NbS mainstreaming in a series of ‘front-runner’ cities that were spearheading NbS mainstreaming. For one of those cities, Poznań in Poland, members of the project team were getting to grips with the concept of NbS. However, for their colleagues in the city authority, and for local communities and other stakeholders across the city, NbS was an entirely new term for them. It wasn’t even one that translated particularly well… So, the task of how to communicate it, let alone mainstream it, seemed substantial. However, a visit to the city and discussions with stakeholders about historic city planning soon revealed that, whilst the term NbS was new, the concept of NbS was what the city had been founded on. The entire city was based on a ‘green wedge’ concept with four tendrils of greenspace shadowing the river corridors that ran through the city, connecting the city centre to peri-urban and rural areas surrounding the city.
Poznan’s green wedge urban design.
City design also included large pond/lake areas that historically managed, and provided, water sources in the city. Despite protection, pressure on the green and blue spaces within the wedges from development was growing. Fortunately, an abundance and deep-seated culture of urban allotments, combined with areas where development was unsuitable, had meant that much of the green wedges had survived. The tendrils tapered the closer they got to the historic centre and, as the green wedge disappeared, the challenges of climate change adaptation worsened: the closer you got to the high-density urban centre, the greater the problems of extreme temperatures, air pollution, and flooding. This made the messaging simple. NbS was a return to the historic way of designing and managing the city, an approach that could keep the city healthy and prosperous. An NbS catalogue followed that presented the context, examples from the city of how nature supported the citizens’ lives, and examples of how new green NbS innovations represented a mechanism for supporting and restoring the green wedge system on which the city was based. This was a great success and supported developing a shared vision across city departments, developers, and local communities. Within the project, a city-wide project of natural playspaces at kindergartens was rolled out and, the legacy of the project continues to grow. So, perhaps the question shouldn’t be ‘how to mainstream?’, instead, it should be ‘how to remember and how to reconnect communities with old traditions?’.
Dr. Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. He is an ecologist studying the interactions of decision making, design, and environmental change on ecosystem processes in urban landscapes.
Mainstreaming NbS is going to require us to use novel and direct approaches to connect people to urban nature.
Mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions is a systemic change to how we design and manage cities — and a systems approach requires us to think holistically. Systems thinking teaches us that we cannot solve a complex problem with just one approach, just one actor, just one viewpoint. So, mainstreaming requires targeting both urban professionals and the general public. Systems thinking also emphasizes relationships ― so while we address multiple actors in cities and urban practice, we also must consider how they connect and interact ― (how) do they see the nature and the scope of a problem, solution, and how they observe improvements and changes.
Through the process of mainstreaming ― demonstrating the environmental, health, resilience, and economic benefits of using NbS we also will learn about trade-offs and limitations. Systems thinking is ultimately going to reveal that a portfolio approach is needed that includes both NbS and grey infrastructure. For example, infilling a neighborhood with bioswales and rain gardens may not bring enough infiltration and storage capacity to mitigate the most extreme rainstorms that are to come. We have to be careful that mainstreamed NbS doesn’t mean you have a hammer (NbS), and every problem is then a nail. We need to recognize and understand the limits of NbS or run the risk of overselling this solution.
We also need to think more clearly about links between what people want in their built environment and then how NbS can be applied there. To foster the view that nature in cities is common, desirable, and default component of urban systems really is going to require a multi-front approach ― working at a granular level in neighborhoods while others work with broader policy, economic, and planning strategies and levers. Mainstreaming NbS will require thinking about outreach and engagement in new and creative ways because knowledge alone doesn’t lead to changes in behavior and practice ― this requires meeting people where they are, engaging them through their prior experiences and biases, and doing it in a way that is active, not a passive information dump. On top of that, the language that we use as academics and professionals to build and share that knowledge ― mainstreaming, coproduction, governance, ecosystem services, etc. zzzzzz ― is dull and can often rob NbS of their power to grab people.
Nature is messy and wild and awe-inspiring ― it can make some feel deeply connected and others feel something alien and foreign.
Mainstreaming NbS is going to require us to use novel and direct approaches to connect people to these attributes of nature. For some this is going to be through art ― for example, artist Bruce Willen uses “ghost rivers” to show residents where streams used to flow in their neighborhoods ― highlighting the intersection of nature, built environment, and histories.
Ghost River Project Credit: Bruce Willen
For others, we might need to get their hands in the soil or feet in the water through direct experiences. This can be done by showing people that the nature right here in our neighborhoods is awe-inspiring and wild.
We need to recognize that a system’s change like mainstreaming NbS is going to require many intervention points and at different scales. Ecological monitoring, policy change, and economic analysis alone will not be enough to get there without also giving space for the wild and awe-inspiring nature of nature.
Eleanor Ratcliffe is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Psychology, School of Psychology, and a Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability at University of Surrey. She is a Board member of the International Association of People-Environment Studies (IAPS) and programme lead for Surrey’s MSc Environmental Psychology.
Eleanor Ratcliffe, Morro Touray, Olukayode Daramola, and Valentine Seymour
We suggest that efforts to increase public acceptance of NbS in urban design will involve more specific communication about what the solution involves and the types of problems it seeks to address ― including societal co-benefits that this might afford.
Nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining attention in the fields of health, well-being, and engineering, among others, to address a range of socio-environmental problems. In this roundtable, we suggest ways in which NbS can become more widely accepted by urban planning practitioners, policymakers, and urban residents. Here we draw on our different disciplinary perspectives as Fellows of the University of Surrey’s Institute for Sustainability these are all based on the One Health model which emphasises the interconnected health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment.
“One Health Triad” (c) by Thddbfk is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
What do we mean when we talk about NbS, and who are they for? Eleanor Ratcliffe
Making NbS more mainstream requires specific communication of what the ‘umbrella term’ means in specific contexts and for different audiences. A solution that makes use of biomimicry in building design (e.g., passive ventilation inspired by termite mounds) is very different from street greening as a sustainable urban drainage system (e.g., Meristem Design’s Community Rain Gardens). A key part of this focused communication may be to clarify the problem that an NbS is trying to solve and what exactly the nature-based part of the solution involves. Further, NbS are often framed in terms of solving environmental or engineering problems, with somewhat less attention towards outcomes for people: e.g., health, psychosocial, economic, or cultural benefits (Raymond et al., 2017). Increased promotion of these co-benefits may support public acceptance and relate strongly to holistic models of health (e.g., One Health). Below we provide two examples of NbS aligned to One Health.
NbS use in social prescribing and to tackle childhood obesity Morro Touray
Integration of NbS into social prescribing is a transformative healthcare approach that can also combat childhood obesity. Social prescribing involves healthcare professionals prescribing non-medical interventions (see Drinkwater et al., 2019) like green exercise and nature-based activities. Beyond conventional treatments, these interventions address physical, mental, and social health dimensions. Parks combat sedentary lifestyles, encouraging outdoor activities and community building. School gardens and outdoor learning enrich education, promoting activity and healthy (food) habits. Nature-inspired playgrounds engage active play, while access to fresh produce through markets supports balanced diets. Nature exposure in social prescribing reduces stress, impacting eating habits indirectly. Community gardens offer therapeutic benefits, fostering a sense of community. Therapeutic gardening, nature retreats, and camps provide tangible, transformative solutions. Integrating nature into social prescribing and tackling childhood obesity initiatives embodies a holistic well-being approach, empowering individuals to enhance overall health and societal connection.
NbS can increase public health awareness regarding parasites and drug resistance Olukayode Daramola
Zoonotic parasites can infect humans and animals via various means such as contaminated water and food, direct exposure to a parasite infective stage, and disease vectors, etc in the environment. To control these parasites, we use various drugs in humans and animals. However, overreliance on drugs constantly presents drug resistance issues at a worrying rate. While we are currently working to develop new drugs, in other to effectively control parasites, there is a need to identify sustainable alternatives to the growing drug use for disease control. Improving public awareness of zoonoses and associated environmental issues, and government provision of adequate public health interventions to urban and neglected communities will be vital in disrupting the parasite life cycle and reducing human and animal infection levels. In other to achieve these goals, collaborative efforts are needed across stakeholders to improve public health.
Citizen science: A collaborative call to action for NbS Valentine Seymour
Citizen science can be broadly defined as the engagement of citizens in scientific research in partnership with scientists, encompassing a variety of topics. In the past decade, we have seen a growth in the number of citizen science projects helping to shape the NbS agenda as well as expand our knowledge of health and planetary wellbeing. Public engagement in these projects helps to broaden community understanding with respect to NbS issues. Some examples of these NbS citizen science projects include the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH)’s iRecord programme, FreshwaterWatch, NatureScot’s NbS citizen science programme, the Woodland Trust’s Natures Calendar project, The Conservation Volunteers’ Green Gym, and Biodiversity Action Team programmes, as well as the EU-funded Connecting Nature project.
Conclusion
The term “Nature-based Solution” can be seen as broad, context-free, and therefore relatively difficult for people to engage with. We suggest that efforts to increase public acceptance of NbS in urban design will involve more specific communication about what the solution involves and the types of problems it seeks to address ― including societal co-benefits that this might afford. We provide two examples of NbS that seek to address human and non-human environmental health challenges within the One Health framework. Engagement of the publics and stakeholders in NbS is crucial to their success, and we suggest citizen science methods as an important mechanism for not only increasing acceptance of NbS but actively involving communities in co-design and production.
Morro ML Touray works as a Research Fellow in Health Economics at Surrey Health Economics Centre, University of Surrey. He also works as a Postdoctoral Researcher for NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (Kent, Surrey, and Sussex) in the Health and Social Care Economics Theme and holds a visiting researcher post at Cardiff University.
Olukayode Daramola is a Lecturer in Veterinary Sciences and Education at the Department of Comparative Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, and a Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey. As a researcher he is interested in understanding molecular and evolutionary biology of zoonotic parasites, to provide sustainable control measures in animals and humans.
Valentine Seymour is a Lecturer in Sustainability Assessment at the Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey. Valentine’s research interests focus on the interface between human health, policy and the natural environment, more specifically the inter relationships between various stakeholder groups and the natural environment.
Kassia Rudd joined ICLEI in March 2022 and plays a leading role in communicating ICLEI's work on nature-based solutions. Kassia leads strategic communication for multiple EU projects committed to furthering sustainability and justice via urban greening, leveraging her professional and academic experience in public health, community outreach, sustainable agriculture, and restoration ecology to render project results accessible, engaging, and meaningful to a broad audience.
It is corny, but mainstreaming requires working NbS into the tapestry of a city or region. It can’t be only one thread or motif―NbS must be woven into everything. Cities like Quito can help us figure out how best to get there.
To answer this question, I have to start with the definition of mainstreaming. What do we mean by the term, and do we all mean the same thing? For me, mainstreaming means that an idea or process has become the default, not the exception. That it is interwoven into everything we do. For Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to be mainstreamed, they cannot be extra, additive, or nice to have. Rather, NbS components must be integral to urban and regional planning, and key components of all construction plans. Increasing awareness is essential because as many have said before me, to change something, we first need to name it. For behavior to change, people must understand, value, and feel empowered with the knowledge, skills, and monetary resources necessary to integrate NbS across the planning and political landscapes.
Based on my work with cities, effective mainstreaming generally involves (1) education at all levels (community, primary, university, professional); (2) practitioner accountability via integration into standards and policy; and (3) financial incentives such as equipment/tax rebates or grants.
These components operate at the individual, community, and governance levels. Effective mainstreaming cannot rely solely upon single initiatives that live or die by champions but must instead provide the scaffolding (education and funding) for grassroots success, but also integrate top-down pressure via political mandates and standards. This is seen again and again in the school garden sphere, where an individual teacher invests time and energy in a garden, but there is no one to fill any gaps should the individual retire or simply experience reduced capacity. We need champions, but we need them to operate as a network supported by a facilitating political and financial framework.
I am smiling now because I recently visited a city that is turning the tragedy of the champion story on its head. Quito, Ecuador, is a city of Champions. The cast of characters includes Yes Innovation, a dedicated duo (individual level) furthering innovative architecture and urbanism via NbS; the residents of the San Enrique de Velasco Neighborhood (community level) who gather regularly to discuss greening their streets; and the office of the Secretary of the Environment, City of Quito (individual/governance level). CLEVER Cities (financial incentive), a Horizon 2020 project supporting the integration of NbS into urban planning helped bring these actors together but these champions worked together to integrate NbS into the new local blue-green ordinance (accountability/governance level). More recently, they wrote a Spanish language guide to NbS for the city of Quito (education), which will soon be translated into English. While the CLEVER Cities project is ending this November, many of the resources guiding NbS Mainstreaming can be found on the CLEVER Guidance, and will also be permanently housed on the NetworkNature resource platform.
At their core, NbS are a holistic approach to a variety of social, economic, and environmental problems. Using NbS, Quito is actively generating benefits for communities such as flood management, water conservation, and protecting biodiversity. While important, any one piece of Quito’s approach would not be mainstreaming, but because Quito is working with the community, has local businesses involved, and is integrating NbS into policy, slowly but surely, NbS is on its way to being normalized. It isn’t the norm yet, as evidenced by the recent destruction of a community rain garden along a seldom-used and often-flooded dirt road in favor of a non-porous pavement. Despite setbacks such as this, Yes Innovation, in partnership with the neighborhood and Secretary of the Environment, are mainstreaming NbS in their own sphere, and reminding the city at regular intervals of the positive impact local NbS could have on recurrent flooding and community cohesion.
While there is still a long road ahead for Quito, substantial change has already taken place. There is awareness at the community level that NbS can provide solutions to local challenges and improve quality of life. Community interest is a key component of mainstreaming, and essential for innovative NbS implementation. At the end of the day, NbS works best when communities decide what they need and how they want to get there, effectively becoming living labs for non-conventional and inspiring NbS.
“What do [future generations] have to learn in order to take care of the planet? We want to generate awareness so that [future generations] can take care of the earth. We would like everywhere to have this policy. The planet is calling, and we want to answer this call” -INEPE Director, Quito, Ecuador.
This is true for all of us, yet awareness is only one step. It is corny, but mainstreaming requires working NbS into the tapestry of a city or region. It can’t be only one thread or motif―NbS must be woven into everything. Cities like Quito can help us figure out how best to get there.
David Simon is Professor of Development Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London and until December 2019 was also Director of Mistra Urban Futures, an international research centre on sustainable cities based at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Public awareness and understanding of the concept in different countries and contexts will largely depend on finding locally appropriate terms to substitute for the bland and abstract umbrella label of “Nature-based Solutions”, with illustrative examples.
The timing of this Roundtable is perfect in terms of being able to address both questions simultaneously. Public awareness and understanding of the concept in different countries and contexts will largely depend on finding locally appropriate terms to substitute for the bland and abstract umbrella label of ‘nature-based solutions’, with illustrative examples. I find this helpful even in my university teaching, although the nature of my courses means that I can and do use illustrated examples from around the world.
One of my current favourites is the highly successful rehabilitation of the Cheonggyecheon Stream running through a densely populated and congested part of central Seoul, Republic of Korea. As a result of progressive encroachment and deterioration through waste dumping and contaminated run-off, it was covered over in the 1970s, with a double-decker highway constructed above it to ease traffic congestion. This, in turn, contributed to air pollution in the resulting ‘urban canyon’ created by the tall buildings lining both sides and further declines in the neighbourhood. Proposals to demolish the highway and redevelop the stream proved highly controversial but provided a popular election platform for a mayoral candidate and the project was subsequently undertaken, with the rehabilitated and decontaminated waterway being opened in 2005. Despite some early criticism, it has been improved and both terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity enhanced over the years. Today it is a well-used and attractive recreational walkway, within the constraints of the sunken nature of the site (Figure 1). Historico-culturally referenced tile murals decorate the sides (see Choi 2010; Simon 2024: 68-71).
Figure 1. A well-vegetated section of the Cheonggyecheon Stream. Photo: David Simon
My other example is collaborative work underway at present with Runnymede Borough Council (RBC), the local district within which Royal Holloway (RHUL) lies and which is the local planning authority within the county of Surrey’s two-tier local government structure. In line with central government policies consistent with its international commitments to net zero and biodiversity conservation, all local councils must develop a green-blue infrastructure (GBI) strategy, while new development schemes and projects have to demonstrate biodiversity net gain. RBC is currently holding an early stakeholder consultation on its high-level outline GBI strategy, prior to further development work, leading to full public consultation on the entire strategy, any required revisions, and then adoption.
Since RHUL is one of the largest institutions and private landholders within Runnymede and I have led the formation of a strategic partnership between RHUL and RBC, I drew together a small group of appropriate specialists of both academic and professional service colleagues to assess and feedback on the draft. Biodiversity net gain and other current priorities are integrated into the document. An additional important innovation is that the policy seeks to ensure overall voluntary co-ordination and integration of GBI across both public and private waterways, wetlands, and land within Runnymede. This should maximise wildlife corridors and habitat restoration, while promoting ‘soft’ approaches to sustainability and flood resilience over ‘hard’ engineering designs that tend to displace floods.
Since another strand of the strategic partnership involves helping RBC set up a deliberative democratic ‘citizens’ panel’ next calendar year, this will provide an ideal forum for engaging different stakeholders and communities in seeking to bridge the classic divides between the Council and these residents and landholders, helping to forge more of a shared vision and understanding of biodiversity enhancement and GBI as part of sustainability and net zero transitions, as well as resilience in relation to existing local flood risk on the River Thames and some of its local tributaries.
References:
Cho, M-R (2010) The politics of urban nature restoration: The case of Cheonggyecheon restoration in Seoul, Korea. International Development Planning Review 32(2): 145-165. Https://doi.org/10.3828/idpr.2010.05
Professor Takemi Sugiyama is the leader of Healthy Cities research group in the Centre for Urban Transitions. Building on his background and research experience in architecture, urban design and spatial/behavioural epidemiology, he explores how urban form (building, neighbourhood environments) can be modified to encourage active living and enhance population health.
A concerted effort between research, advocacy, and government sectors is essential to overcome the barriers and to enable NbS transitions to be widely adopted and implemented.
Coordinated action by researchers, advocates, and policymakers can drive transitions to Nature-based Solutions: tobacco control in Australia is a salutary precedent
The increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and the interrelated need for actions on environmental sustainability are two of the major challenges that our society is facing today. Chronic diseases (e.g., type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and major cancers) are the biggest killers, accounting for three-quarters of all deaths worldwide (WHO, 2023). They are influenced significantly by, along with other causes, physical inactivity, and air pollution (WHO, 2023). It is also highly urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit further global warming.
“Healthy Cities” provides an umbrella set of potential solutions to address these issues (Giles-Corti et al., 2016). A primary target in the promotion of healthy cities is to change how people move across cities, in a context where urban development continues to depend on cars for transportation. Under the global trend of urbanisation, cities expand horizontally, with large segments of the population living in sprawling urban conurbations. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have accelerated this trend due to more people working from home and requiring more space at home (Sisson, 2022). Urban sprawl and the fossil fuel demands of private motor-vehicle transportation (all too easily construed as reflecting individual consumer preferences and discretionary lifestyle choices) continue to drive major threats to human and environmental health.
Urban-built environments can be highly resistant to change for multiple and complex reasons, including challenges to entrenched economic interests, complex dealings with many stakeholders, and large-scale expenses for governmental instrumentalities that will be borne by taxpaying and voting constituencies. Efforts to address car dependency are fundamental to achieving healthy cities, but complementary approaches are also needed to drive the impetus for transitions to healthy and sustainable urban environments.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are a promising approach to address these challenges since urban greenery is known to be beneficial to both human and environmental health (Hunter et al., 2023). However, implementation of NbS is still “limited to isolated demonstration projects, and without attention to long-term management and maintenance” (Hölscher et al., 2023). There are structural barriers, such as the vested interests of existing systems, that prevent NbS from being integrated into core urban development practices (Dorst et al., 2022). A concerted effort between research, advocacy, and government sectors is essential to overcome the barriers and to enable transitions to be widely adopted and implemented.
Public health efforts to reduce smoking in Australia provide a prime example of large-scale societal transitions. The proportion of regular smokers declined from 35% in 1980 to 13% in 2019 (Greenhalgh et al., 2023). Tobacco control initiatives produced a nationwide shift not only in smoking behaviour but also in people’s attitudes toward it (Borland et al., 1990). The efforts were successful due to coordinated action between researchers, advocates, and government officials. Namely, researchers produced a robust evidence base, which advocacy groups disseminated to relevant stakeholders, and policymakers implemented evidence-based approaches in collaboration with advocates.
Policies and regulatory initiatives that radically changed the social and environmental contexts of cigarette smoking included tax increases, advertising bans, plain packaging, the introduction of smoke-free work environments, and the ubiquitous availability of quit-smoking services, all supported by and advocated for with compelling research evidence.
These changes were in some dimensions incremental but also included a striking instance of successful litigation followed by strong regulation to address the health impacts of passive smoking in the workplace and other settings (Chapman et al., 1990; Greenhalgh et al., 2023). It is now the social norm not to smoke in public places in Australia.
Such strategies have the potential to be applied to NbS. Researchers must generate scientifically strong and policy-relevant evidence on urban nature and its impacts on human health and environmental sustainability. Such evidence must be translated into forms that are readily understood and accepted by the public and appealing to decision-makers and regulatory bodies. In the case of tobacco control in Australia, the Cancer Council and Heart Foundation were key knowledge brokers who played a critical role in pushing the anti-smoking agenda by supporting politicians and policymakers to make wide-reaching evidence-based decisions, often in the face of well-funded pushback by pro-tobacco lobby groups and their front organisations (Chapman and Wakefield, 2001).
NbS also require powerful advocacy groups that can bring researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders (e.g., community groups, environmental organisations, media) together with a view to facilitate coordinated action to underpin the pursuit of new (and in some of their strongest dimensions potentially contentious) NbS approaches.
References
Borland, R., Owen, N., Hill, D., Chapman, S. (1990). Changes in acceptance of workplace smoking bans following their implementation: A prospective study. Preventive Medicine, 19(3), 314-22.
Chapman, S., Borland, R., Hill, D., Owen, N., Woodward, S. (1990). Why the tobacco industry fears the passive smoking issue. International Journal of Health Services, 20(3), 417-27.
Chapman, S., Wakefield, M. (2001). Tobacco control advocacy in Australia: Reflections on 30 years of progress. Health Education & Behavior, 28(3), 274-89.
Dorst, H., van der Jagt, A., Toxopeus, H., Tozer, L., Raven, R., Runhaar, H. (2022). What’s behind the barriers? Uncovering structural conditions working against urban nature-based solutions. Landscape & Urban Planning, 220, 104335.
Giles-Corti, B., Vernez-Moudon, A., Reis, R., Turrell, G., Dannenberg, A.L., Badland, H., . . Owen, N. (2016). City planning and population health: A global challenge. The Lancet, 388(10062), 2912-24.
Greenhalgh, E.M., Scollo, M.M., Winstanley, M.H. (2023). Tobacco in Australia: Facts and issues. Cancer Council Victoria. https://www.TobaccoInAustralia.org.au
Hölscher, K., Frantzeskaki, N., Collier, M.J., Connop, S., Kooijman, E.D., Lodder, M., . . . Vos, P. (2023). Strategies for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in urban governance capacities in ten European cities. Urban Sustainability, 3(1), 54.
Hunter, R.F., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Fabian, C., Murphy, N., O’Hara, K., Rappe, E., . . . Kahlmeier, S. (2023). Advancing urban green and blue space contributions to public health. The Lancet Public Health, 8(9), e735-42.
Professor Neville Owen is a National Health & Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow, Head of the Behavioural Epidemiology Laboratory at the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute, and Distinguished Professor in Health Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. His research links urban-environment attributes with physical inactivity, too much sitting, and risk of developing diabetes and heart disease.
Ibrahim Wallee; is a development communicator, peacebuilding specialist, and environmental activist. He is the Executive Director of Center for Sustainable Livelihood and Development (CENSLiD), based in Accra, Ghana. He is a Co-Curator for Africa and Middle East Regions for The Nature of Cities Festivals.
The lack of clarity with the term mainstreaming in the context of NbS stifles initiatives that focus on sustainable city planning and green technology appropriation.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have been keenly debated over the years as a concept with great potential to serve as a cost-effective means for nature to aid humanity in curbing climate change, biodiversity loss, and other rapidly escalating environmental problems (Ghosh, 2023). NbS and climate change are interdependently linked, and efforts at practically treating these concepts independently, irrespective of their conceptual nuances, are counterproductive because they reinforce each other. Unsurprisingly, commitments towards mainstreaming NbS have yet to gain the recognition they deserve to engender public confidence and broad acceptance. That will lead to a universal commitment to embracing NbS as a bridge for the gap between urban functionality and human survival in the global community.
Mainstreaming NbS into city and national policy planning for practical environmental project implementations at the community and national levels is a challenge due in part to the ambiguity of the definition of the concept of mainstreaming as it is conflated with other related change processes and concepts (Frantzeskaki et al., 2023). This situation undermines the planning and implementation of urban design projects and initiatives that promote resilience-building and environmental sustainability efforts, especially in the global south. The lack of clarity with the term mainstreaming in the context of NbS stifles initiatives that focus on sustainable city planning and green technology appropriation. It further fuels the scepticism about the effectiveness of NbS as a sustainable city development solution.
Indeed, there is a global swell of scepticism about the potential for misuse and abuse of NbS, with critics describing it as “a green-washing mechanism by businesses to offset their ongoing carbon emissions without curbing them” and as “a market mechanism to commodify and put a price tag on nature (Ghosh, 2023)”. These scepticisms militate against the general desire to mainstream and promote NbS as a default practice to address environmental crises.
It is a relief that part of the definitional problem was settled at the Fifth Session of the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA5) in March 2022, where the United Nations (UN), through its environmental agency and global partners came up with a multilaterally accepted definition of nature-based solutions (NbS) as: “actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems, which address social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being, ecosystem services and resilience and biodiversity benefits” (UNEA, 2022).
The universal acceptance of this definition contributes towards mainstreaming NbS as a preferred eco-friendly and resilience-building climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy at the community and national levels. NbS actions are underpinned by benefits that flow from healthy ecosystems and target significant environmental challenges like climate change, disaster risk reduction, food security, water security, and health. These are critical for the achievement of the sustainable development goals. It makes sense to strive towards promoting its acceptance by a significant constituent of the voice of reason within the public sphere through effective citizen engagements.
However, the term mainstreaming in the context of NbS needs to be clarified. It begs for further conceptual clarifications from similar actions and concepts and remains the pathway to promoting global acceptance of NbS interventions. Recognizing the need for clarity as a cause for potential misdirection of planning and implementation of NbS interventions, as posited by (Frantzeskaki et al., 2023), is the first step in remedying the situation. Besides, NbS mainstreaming is affected by low climate literacy in sprawling slums and informal settlements within the urban landscape. This trend perpetuates hierarchies in urban communities and stifles efforts at building an inclusive society. It builds up the pressure of civil unrest based on divergent views and preferences for the acceptance and prioritization of green space development as an effective NbS intervention for sustainable city development and eco-friendly environmental sustainability.
The solution to the above-enumerated challenges to mainstreaming NbS lies in enhanced citizen participation to promote transparency, break down socially constructed hierarchies, demystify the complexities of NbS interventions through climate literacy engagements, and further recognize local knowledge as a capacity for inclusive development and resilient systems-building. It further promotes inclusive development and convergence of views and aspirations for green space city development landscapes for sustainability and resilience-building through NbS initiatives.
References:
Frantzeskaki, N., Adams, C., & Moglia, M. (2023). Mainstreaming nature-based solutions in cities: A systematic literature review and a proposal for facilitating urban transitions. Land Use Policy, 130(106661), 1-14.
Frantzeskaki, N., Tsatsou, A., Pergar, P., Malamis, S., & Atanasova, N. (2023). Planning nature-based solutions for water management and circularity in Ljubljana, Slovenia: Examining how urban practitioners navigate barriers and perceive institutional readiness. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 89(128090), 1-11.
Gaspers, A., Oftebro, T., & Cowan, E. (2022). Including the Oft-Forgotten: The Necessity of Including Women and Indigenous Peoples in Nature-Based Solution Research. Frontiers in Climate, 4(831430), 1-6.
UN. (2022). Resolution adopted by the United Nations Environment Assembly on 2 March 2022: Nature-based solutions for supporting sustainable development. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Retrieved November 17, 2023
On the opening day, The Nature Conservancy invited politicians from Water, Urban Administration and Housing Construction divisions, press, and professionals across sectors of the city to bear witness to this innovative project. The green rooftop became not only a living space for nature, but also a living space for communities.
Shenzhen, a coastal city located in Southern China, exemplifies the idea of rapid urbanization. In just 40 years, Shenzhen has transformed from a fishing village to a bustling megalopolis. Today, about 50% of Shenzhen’s 13 million residents live in its urban villages. These urban villages are some of the few places left in the city that provide affordable housing. Urban villages used to be “real” villages, but rapid development has turned the farmland that once surrounded them into high rise buildings.
Aerial View of GangXia Urban Village. Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy
Urban villages are characterized by their dense living conditions, where resident buildings are built so close together that neighbors can shake hands with one another from their windows. Inside the villages, the streets are filled with markets, restaurants and shops, making people’s lives convenient. However, very few green spaces, such as parks or gardens, exist inside the villages. Gangxia Village in Futian district is one of them, where the high density of built environment has replaced nearly all vegetation. Coupled with a limited underground sewage system, during the city’s six months long wet season, urban villages like Gangxia are especially vulnerable to floods.
Dense, urban environment inside the Village. Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy
To address this problem, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), along with other key partners, launched an innovative pilot project— Green Cloud —on an old building in Gangxia village, transforming its rooftop into a “living sponge” space. The project utilizes three-dimensional light steel structures that are simple to construct and have the capacity to hold over 420 plant containers filled with plants mostly native to Southern China. The original concrete rooftop is transformed by vegetation, which is capable of absorbing and preserving rainwater, creating a nature-based stormwater management system for the residential building, achieving a 65% of run-off control rate. As a result, a living “green cloud” is formed on a rooftop of Gangxia village.
The Green Cloud Project became a prominent example of the “Sponge City” initiative, a Chinese national policy framework that focuses on sustainable urban stormwater management led by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. In 2016, Shenzhen became a pilot city of the “Sponge City initiative. Since then, TNC has been working with the local government to help urban communities in Shenzhen become more resilient to urban flooding through the utilization of green infrastructure.
Green Roof Construction in Progress. Photo Credit: The Nature ConservancyThe Green Cloud Project. Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy
The green roof not only serves as a sponge for rainwater, but it is also a sponge for community engagement, education, and culture, even when things don’t go as planned. During the first two weeks of construction, neighbors filed complaints as many thought the renovation taking place was illegal construction. Due to the housing shortage in urban villages, it was not uncommon for land owners to build additional floors to existing buildings.
After receiving complaints, local authorities arrived asking for an approval document in order to continue contrusction. However, the concept of a sponge roof was still so new that approval papers do not yet exist within current government agencies, and unfortunately, the construction of the green roof had to be temporarily shut down. To resolve the problem, TNC made various visits to local community centers, street government offices and bureaus to explain the project and its objectives in further detail. After many such meetings, TNC and its partners established a relationship of trust with the local stakeholders, and the project was given the green light for construction to resume. Realizing the importance of community and local support, TNC took the lead in engaging many university students, residents and youth volunteers in Shenzhen to come together and be a part of building the Green Cloud Project.
Stakeholders were invited to participate in the opening ceremony of the Green Cloud Project. Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy
On the opening day, TNC invited politicians of Water, Urban Administration and Housing Construction divisions, press, and professionals from across different sectors of the city to bear witness to this innovative project. The green rooftop became not only a living space for nature, but also a living space for communities.
Live classical music concert held on the green roof, allowing nearby neighbors to listen in. Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy
Even with just one rooftop, the possibilities for community-building are endless. One idea that was transformed into reality was a live musical concert on the green roof. With the support of a local youth education center, students volunteered to organize a concert for the residents of Gangxia village, many of whom may never have the means or time to attend a classical concert. So, one summer evening, a group of young musicians used the rooftop of an urban village as their stage and performed a classical music concert while sitting among native plants. The surrounding residents simply came to their windows to listen in, and the proximity between neighbors in this dense urban village suddenly became an advantage.
During the summer, the green roof becomes a place where urban youth can learn about nature (Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy)
The Green Cloud Project has also had a positive impact on youth and their perception of nature. For the past two years, the green roof becomes an outdoor classroom for nature education every summer, where children take classes to learn about subjects such as biology, water and conservation. To provide urban youth with the opportunity to soak up knowledge while reconnecting with nature would be the project’s ultimate long-term achievement.
Aerial View of The Green Cloud Project. Photo Credit: The Nature Conservancy
In 2019, the rooftop was incorporated into Shenzhen’s Eco-Discovery Route by CityPlus, an official guidance platform of Shenzhen municipality, as the only sustainable architecture featured in the guide. It is open to visits by the public twice a week. By recreating community spaces such as the Green Cloud project inside urban villages, TNC hopes that they can become “green sponges” for culture and community —— where relationships between neighbors are rebuilt and the sense of community is re-cultivated while enjoying nature. This project has demonstrated the multifaceted benefits that green infrastructure can provide in improving the urban environment and people’s lives. In the future, TNC will continue to work towards building healthy cities through the integration of green infrastructure and community engagement. Vivin Qiang, Fish Xin Yu
Shenzhen
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
For the first time in our history, more people live in urban vs. rural areas and humans continue to move into cities. Cities have huge impacts on our natural resources. Urban dwellers consume vast amounts of energy, produce waste, and alter landscapes to the point where native plant and animal populations decline precipitously. As cities grow, people have pondered – can we develop land without destroying our natural heritage?
While conventional development has years of inertia behind it, there is a movement afoot to design and manage growing cities in a more sustainable fashion. You most likely have heard the buzzwords – green development, new urbanism, smart growth, conservation development, etc. Urban communities have and will continue to expand, and the aforementioned concepts attempt to reduce our collective impact on local and surrounding environments.
This logo for a development near Melbourne, Australia depicts the sustainability goals for the project. Courtesy of VicUrban.
Why are green developments different? The goals are conservation while providing a unique living experience, which includes energy efficiency, alternative transportation, livability and walkability, and water conservation. Biodiversity, however, often is lower on the totem pole of priorities and is not explicitly addressed in urban development plans, unless an endangered species is identified. And even then, it may not be addressed adequately.
Biodiversity, which refers to variety of life and its processes, is unique to each region and country. Metropolitan areas are embedded in natural systems, and the urban matrix dissects and sometimes surrounds natural areas. Often the end result is the homogenization of species within cities. As one travels from one city to the next, exotic species dominate; from turfgrass to ornamentals, it is often difficult to distinguish one city from another. Further, cities impact natural habitats near and far away. For example, both animal and plant invasive exotics can overrun natural environments, and theses invasives (e.g., Burmese pythons and Chinese tallow trees) often originate from peoples’ yards.
Homes can be nestled in amongst the trees and native plants used as landscaping. Photo Credit Steve Allen.
As an urban wildlife ecologist, I have been involved with a number of green development projects, not only conducting research but also implementing outreach programs and consulting with planners, developers, and citizens. Often, there are many connections between biodiversity conservation and energy, water conservation, transportation, and walkability strategies. Examples include conserving native trees near buildings (which provide shade to reduce energy consumption during the summer) and clustering homes to reduce vehicle miles traveled (which conserves open space for wildlife habitat). From my experiences, though, many green development projects fail to meet the test of time and the original intent is lost, and the community becomes dysfunctional, at least in terms of biodiversity conservation.
In the community of Prairie Crossing, Illinois (USA), lots and common spaces are landscaped with native plants. Photo Credit Vicky Ranney.
Of course, site design is very important and one must conserve the appropriate green infrastructure, which translates (among other things) to a compact design where significant natural areas are conserved and connectivity is built across landscapes. Whatever is on paper, though, is only the first step. Construction activities can destroy the conservation areas carefully identified during the design phase. A host of contractors and sub-contractors, with a variety of equipment and heavy earthwork machines, can wreak havoc. Examples include:
• Earthwork machines run over the root zones of conserved trees, effectively killing the trees.
• Construction vehicles park or drive through natural areas, compacting the soil and even spreading invasive exotic plants.
• Silt fences are improperly installed and managed, causing nutrients and sediments to choke nearby wetlands.
• Chemicals and materials on site are improperly managed, changing soil chemistry and killing conserved vegetation.
Even if the design and construction phases went well, over the long term, successful biodiversity conservation is dependent on how people manage their homes, yards, and neighborhoods. The below actions can dramatically compromise the biological integrity of a green community:
• Large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides applied on yards, causing the pollution of bodies of water and killing non-target species (e.g., butterflies).
• People release invasive exotic plants and animals, including cats, killing wildlife in nearby habitats.
• Homeowners remove native plant landscaping and replace it with turfgrass and exotic plants.
• Conserved areas are compromised by improper recreation activities, such as people riding ATVs throughout a designated conserved area.
A Way Forward
How do we create functional, biodiverse communities? First, a range of stakeholders must understand the dynamic relationship among the three phases of development: design, construction, and postconstruction. Policy makers, planners, regulators, tree survey companies, and green certification agencies must not only create the enabling conditions for a good design, but set in motion incentives and regulations to promote good construction and postconstruction practices. Built environment professionals (including landscape architects, contractors, civil engineers, etc.) need to adopt alternative design, construction, postconstruction practices.
Most importantly, each of us needs to know how to evaluate the “greenness” of a community in order influence future green developments. Collectively, through purchasing power, negative and positive feedback will help raise the bar on what is a green development. The “functionality” of a green city or neighborhood is directly dependent on our actions, and we should reach out to neighbors to share and demonstrate green ideas.
In order for urban communities to conserve biodiversity, a range of stakeholders must be engaged. In this heuristic model, policy makers, developers, and residents constrain and influence each other in dynamic ways. Policy makers constrain the decisions made by developers through regulations. Developers constrain the decisions of residents by how the communities were designed. Residents, though, because of voting and purchasing power, can influence the decisions made by developers and policy makers. In addition, developers wielding economic power can dramatically influence policy depending on local political conditions.
I am utterly convinced the way forward is dependent on creating working models of “green” developments, from whole subdivisions to individual yards, in each county and neighborhood across the country. Do not underestimate the power of a local example. Nothing speaks more to increasing the uptake of alternative designs and management practices than examples that people can see and discuss. I have found building that first, local green subdivision helps to showcase green development practices and provide a catalyst for future developers to adopt new practices. To help promote biodiversity conservation in subdivision development, I recently have written a book titled, The Green Leap: A Primer for Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development (University of California Press). This book contains a host of strategies and case studies to create model conservation developments.
The time is ripe for action; the current low in the housing market allows some breathing room to discuss and set in motion new ways for communities to grow. The leap towards a new path is not complicated, but it will take a concerted effort from a variety of folks. I welcome comments and even examples of urban biodiversity conservation in your towns and neighborhoods.
Mark Hostetler
Gainesville, Florida USA
Editor’s note: this blog was also published as a Huffington Blog post
Ruddick begins to make the case that creating spaces that are sustainable requires having a cultural component to “…make a landscape that people will internalize, make their own.” While I agree that people need to know what the place was designed to do, I am not sure artful design alone will engage them. I agree, cultural norms do affect whether a community accepts a non-conventional yard. For example, a native woodlands yard, with little lawn, may sequester carbon, provide wildlife habitat, help with water quality, and more, but these qualities don’t mean it will be accepted by the neighbors. My attempts to let my own yard go has, at times, prompted comments from my neighbors, and they were not of the encouraging kind!
, a book that pretty much started the fractal revolution by providing a mathematical framework for understanding real physical space. He also used fractals to describe the movement of stock prices. In his honor, a mathematician named a curious mathematical object the Mandelbrot set, which you are likely to have heard of or seen before.
This diagram describes the following computation: for each row, observe the cells from the left, middle and right neighbor of the previous row, and select the matching color in the rules.
Story notes: Federal regulations make clean drinking something close to a guaranteed right for residents of cities in the United States, but not all urban water systems are created equal. Last year, independent scientists and grassroots activists discovered a widespread problem with lead levels in the water pouring into the city of Flint, Michigan. Though local officials assured the public that Flint’s water supply was safe, independent tests revealed lead levels in the water flowing from some homes that were comparable to the 
The collaboration between residents like LeeAnne Walters and the scientists at Virginia Tech revealed a municipal water quality crisis that now has cities across the United States scrambling to demonstrate that their water is, indeed, up to Federal standards. The 
I am utterly convinced the way forward is dependent on creating working models of “green” developments, from whole subdivisions to individual yards, in each county and neighborhood across the country. Do not underestimate the power of a local example. Nothing speaks more to increasing the uptake of alternative designs and management practices than examples that people can see and discuss. I have found building that first, local green subdivision helps to showcase green development practices and provide a catalyst for future developers to adopt new practices. To help promote biodiversity conservation in subdivision development, I recently have written a book titled,
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