As the virus and the revolution continue to unfold in real time, all with the threat of climate change looming, we must ask ourselves who and what we will prioritize. Will we continue to feed the systems that claim to keep us safe, while in reality upholding white supremacy at the cost of Black lives? Or will we invest in our community resources in the places where it counts the most?
In the first five months of 2020, we have seen enough change, chaos, and uncertainty to last a lifetime. The year began with a world on quite literally on fire, most notably in Australia. The news cycle was quickly upended when the novel coronavirus swept the globe. Now, police violence has led to the beginnings of a revolution in the streets. Watching all this unfold while still under “shelter-in-place” has shifted our relationships to nature and the civic realm, and reaffirmed the need for public space that is accessible and safe for all.
Despite some of the rhetoric circulating, we know that COVID-19 is not a great equalizer that is blind to color and privilege. It is true that this pandemic is personally impacting every individual in a way that few events in history have, and that the COVID-19 infectious droplets cannot themselves discriminate based on race or class. But just as “natural” disasters are a result of both social and environmental factors, the virus itself is only one actor in the current pandemic. Our leaders, police, and healthcare systems are all co-producers of this crisis and help dictate who is impacted. Environmental justice literature and activism have taught us that the effects of climate change disproportionately burden the already vulnerable, and COVID-19 is no different. We are seeing increasing evidence of disturbingly high death rates in poor Black communities in the United States, while the wealthy can escape to their private islands to wait out the pandemic in luxury.
This means that open spaces in urban areas are needed now more than ever. Those of us with the privilege to have a public park within walking distance have likely seen a change in how the space is used and what it means to us. A few of my colleagues and I have been journaling about our experiences in New York City during shelter-in-place, and all of us have found new meaning in our neighborhood walks and park visits. Beyond providing crucial ecosystem services, parks allow for physical fitness and recreation, and have proven mental health benefits. As the weather warms, parks and open spaces are becoming even more of a necessity, providing places to visit with friends while maintaining safe social distance.
But we also know that access to and safety within public space is an issue of racial equity that has been heightened since the pandemic. Activists have long been aware of the general lack of parks and public space access in lower income communities of color. It is no surprise that these few existing parks are seeing increased crowds on nice days, nor is it surprising that we are seeing disparate enforcement of social distancing. Images of police happily handing out masks in crowds of white people contrast sharply with the violent, stop-and-frisk style policing in Black neighborhoods. This inequitable policing, along with the surge in the murders of Black bodies, reminds us that there are multiple pandemics going on right now, all of which are disproportionately impacting the Black community.
Photo: Laura Landau
The recent public murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery—the latter of which has been charged as a hate crime—along with the racist incident against Christian Cooper in New York’sCentral Park (which could have easily also ended in police violence), are all direct results of the racist police system embedded in the origins of our country. Indeed, the case of Arbery arguably fits the definition of a “lynching,” an informal public execution over an alleged offense without legal trial. In addition, all of these incidents took place in public spaces that belong to the victims just as much as they belong to anyone else. These are just a few of the recent examples of a much more pervasive and systemic problem, a problem that protesters on the streets demand be finally solved.
These protests have highlighted another important use of public space: the right to assemble. Following Trump’s election, New Yorkers for Parks documented the hundreds of thousands of people who came out to protest in NYC public spaces in the year 2017. The streets, parks, and plazas served a crucial role as gathering points for demonstration. Now, many of those same spaces are once again being activated. In my own Brooklyn neighborhood, I’ve joined and witnessed crowds filling major streets like Eastern Parkway, and congregating at Barclay’s Center and Grand Army Plaza. I am reminded of the many times I have gathered with my community in those spaces to pray, to celebrate, to mourn, and to speak out. I am reminded that the ability to take up space in public is a human right that is protected for white and privileged citizens but not others.
In the past few days, Mayor Bill deBlasio has condemned the “violence” of protesters against inanimate objects while defending the police for driving an SUV into a crowd of people, threatening human lives (he only softened his stance after considerable blowback). Recent budget cuts to crucial city agencies—including the Parks Department have affirmed deBlasio’s priorities. He thinks that more police will equal more safety. But we know that it is the eyes on the street of our community members that keep us safe, not the police. Luckily, some of our leaders agree, and are pushing back against deBlasio’s budget proposal. In an email to his constituents on 31 May 2020, New York City Council Member Brad Lander called for a de-escalation of the NYPD:
“At the city level, cuts to the NYPD’s budget are necessary. As the city faces a massive deficit, the mayor proposed a budget that would put a hiring freeze on teachers, counselors, youth workers, parks workers … but not police officers. If we can’t afford to hire more teachers, then we cannot afford to hire more cops.”
—New York City Council Member Brad Lander
Lander also highlighted the work of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) in leading a campaign for budget justice (#NYCBudgetJustice). As it stands, for every dollar toward the NYPD, crucial agencies and services are getting pennies (see image). The campaign calls for cuts to the nearly $6 billion NYPD budget, and for funds to be redirected towards social services that work to combat the impacts of COVID-19, particularly in the Black, Latinx, and other communities of color that have been hit the hardest. Imagine the impact $6 billion could have on our communities if it instead went toward public health, fair and affordable housing, community programing, and parks.
As the virus and the revolution continue to unfold in real time, all with the threat of climate change looming, we must ask ourselves who and what we will prioritize. Will we continue to feed the systems that claim to keep us safe, while in reality upholding white supremacy at the cost of Black lives? Or will we invest in our community resources in the places where it counts the most? We have entered a moment of sustained uncertainty, and many are feeling the hopelessness that comes from not knowing what will come next. Instead of giving into despair, let’s address the things we can control, starting with starting with reallocating money away from police departments and toward the services and public spaces that foster community building.
Audre Lorde reminds us that “Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.” As researchers and practitioners who are passionate about sustainable and just cities, this is our fight.
My vision for a just city is one where design and its power as a tool against inequality is leveraged for the benefit of all residents. As the director of design programs at the National Endowment for Arts, and one of the U.S. government’s primary advocates for good design, I spend a lot of time with mayors and other leaders advocating for the power of design. In the words of Charleston, South Carolina Mayor Joseph Riley, a mayor is “the chief urban designer” of his or her city. Even so, most mayors require education on what design can do—and what it cannot do.
Why does design matter to the just city?
Residents must be part of the urban design process. They must not only demand good design but also support and reward it. History has shown good design does not happen without public input.
Design matters because design is all around us. Every object, place and many experiences are designed. Design is a problem-solving tool that transforms an idea into reality. Good designers take their creative genius, apply it to the most difficult problems in our lives and come up with solutions that are sensitive to people’s needs, efficient, and ultimately cost-effective. A recent British government study showed that every one pound invested in effective design yielded 26 pounds in savings.
Yet there are forces of inequality that are outside design’s reach as a tool. A just city will have fairer tax and fee codes to balance community resources for all of its citizens. A just city will crack down on predatory lending and other detrimental banking practices. A more just city will have better paying jobs to help lift people out of poverty. A more just city will listen to the #Blacklivesmatter protestors and look at policies to address the unjust penal and policing system. None of those are design issues. Still, design can play a role. Here’s how:
Creating a better public realm: Mayor Riley likes to talk about how every citizen’s heart deserves to sing in public spaces. These are the spaces in the city that all of us own—the places where we can mix and build understanding across economic and racial barriers. It is vitally important that they are designed the right way, and often, they are not. How a building meets the street matters, the materials you use matter, and the scale and size of spaces and buildings matter. It has been proven that better designed streetscapes and public spaces typically have less crime, higher pedestrian activity and increased economic activity. If done correctly, public space can also have multiple other benefits too, such as the Main Terrian park in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which cleaned up a polluted site in a historically disadvantaged neighborhood (environmental justice benefit) and has public art that encourages exercise (public health benefits).
Many people (and NEA grantees) across the country are dedicated to making better public spaces. I advise you to go seek out their suggestions. It is important you empower not only the designer in the creation of public space but also the public at the same time.
Maintaining infrastructure: The maintenance of the designed part of cities, the buildings and infrastructure, matters. It shows respect for the entire public when you respect the public space. A just city is well-maintained across all of its neighborhoods. At the most basic level, the public infrastructure needs to work. Public water systems impact public health. Street lights lead to safety. It is all connected. Dr. Mindy Fullilove urgently talks about how the aging lead pipes in historically underserved neighborhoods are poisoning the children and holding them back in educational ability—maintenance matters. Even where you put flood infrastructure matters. In Fargo, ND, the huge drainage basins they built in response to the disastrous flooding of the Red River tore apart some of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. To fix this mistake, they have used NEA funds to work with artists and designers to rethink the spaces as community commons for the neighborhoods—spaces to gather and be active that can also flood.
Improving connectivity: Transportation is a design issue. It helps determine street life, walkability and much more. Because of the gentrification of strong market cities and the hollowing out of the inner core of weak market cities, many lower income people have moved to the first ring of suburbs, which are often poorly served by public transit. This trend means if they do not have cars, they are unable to easily access the economic centers of their community. Some cities are responding to this trend better than others. In Atlanta, there are stories of people taking Uber to the nearest bus line because it is not walkable. Whereas in Houston, the city is redoing all of its bus lines—literally throwing out the map and starting over – in order to better serve lower income residents. What it all boils down to is people need to be able to get to jobs, and not everyone can afford a car and gas. If we want to create accessible cities with economic opportunity for all, we must design better transportation systems.
Zoning for progress: There may be no topic more important to urban designers and more impenetrable to the public than zoning. These are the laws that regulate land use in most of America. They must be modernized if we want to build thriving, inclusive neighborhoods. Too many communities try to work within outdated regulations instead of tackling the issue head on, or they use zoning as a way to keep existing power systems in place—regulating affordable housing out of communities, for instance. It is a tool that must be used carefully though, as evidenced by the recent backlash to the rezoning plans in New York City. The intention was to help the market build more affordable housing, but instead the plans have led to a gold rush of speculation of the existing properties and begun to price out longtime residents.
Engaging all residents: Residents must be part of the urban design process. They must not only demand good design but also support and reward it. History has shown good design does not happen without public input. Most of the design people I know who care about inequality are asking important questions right now: When does design matter to the civic engagement process? How can it give voice to the previously unheard or underserved? How can design help them take control of the development decisions in their own neighborhoods? We at the NEA are working with field partners to expand on what we already know: designers can help residents see what proposed change could look like sooner rather than later through temporary or inexpensive installations, and design processes can help residents envision their own future in inventive ways. I suggest you check out the work of the Kounkuey Design Initiative in the Coachella Valley in California to get a sense of what design can do to engage and give voice to residents. They are one of many designers working in this space.
Experiment: We all know that there is limited funding out there to support our cities. To combat this, be experimental. Try small things. There has been an explosion of “tactical urbanism”—a fancy term for small temporary projects—happening across the nation in which designers and others act on their own initiatives to solve urban problems. Parking Day is one example of such works—it’s when people create a temporary park in a parking space. While some probably think these projects do not address the big issues needed to be addressed in a just city, I have seen many of them impact their communities in important ways, such as the Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco, in which the Planning Office is using temporary experiments to learn about what works before they undertake a massive rebuilding of the street. We’re seeing experiments all over the place and in unexpected places—take the work of Emily Roush-Elliot, an Enterprise Rose Fellow working closely with residents of Greenwood, MS. As a first step to engage this historically disadvantaged African-American community, Emily and her co-workers took a muddy lot and, using a few concrete pavers and some benches, created a small new park. This space brought residents out of their homes to discuss housing and economic needs and set forward a whole series of activities that are chipping away at years of disinvestment and distrust. Inequality will die from a thousand cuts, not a silver bullet.
Don’t forget about beauty: Aesthetics are subjective, but good design is not. In 2010, the Knight “Soul of the Community” study investigated just why people move somewhere. It asked the question: “Great schools, good transit, affordable health care and safe streets all help create strong communities. But is there something deeper that draws people to a city—that makes them want to put down roots and build a life?” After interviewing more than 40,000 residents over three years, the top three answers for why someone loves living in a place shocked almost everyone—they are “social offerings, openness, and aesthetics.” Doesn’t a just city build the place that people want to love? Don’t all residents deserve beauty? Many people have made the case as to why beauty is a tool for justice—the most famous being Elaine Scarry in her landmark work “On Beauty and Being Just.” While it is a must read, I do prefer the TED talk of another author in this series, Theaster Gates, who, amongst other ideas, makes a great case for how beauty begets beauty; beauty is a positive beacon shining a light to show that change is possible, and hence beauty can change how people act.
Design Matters
Remember, design is a tool—not a solution. It is imperative that when trying to build a more just city you remember the anthropological history of a place and understand what has shaped it up to this point. Any leader or resident or designer must dig into the history of a place and look at the policies that have shaped it. If you do that and use the tools of design the right way, I am convinced that design will matter, that engaging smart designers will help as we try to bend the arc of history towards just cities.
Parks have been significant sources of open space in urban history, ranging from private, even sacred spaces to fully public spaces serving as central points of social interaction and recreation (Stanley et al. 2012). On any given day, many thousands of people spend several hours outdoors in their local park simply living their lives. In addition to the explicit ‘reasons’ why people visit parks (take children, walk, play, or practice some sport), they are also places for solitude, places to think or talk things out, or places designated for slowing the pace of life (Greenhalgh and Parsons 2004). What are the principal and most common reasons people use green and open spaces? Surely having data on their desires would be important input to key city management planning. We interviewed park and plaza visitors in Buenos Aires to find out what attracted them to such spaces.
Public green spaces across Latin America have traditionally been favourite meeting places for people from all walks of life and all ages because of their association with air, light and nature, as well as culture and multiculturalism. Today more than ever before, and in common with the rest of the world, these spaces cater to a wide range of needs and provide society with social, environmental and economic benefits (Faggi et al. 2015).
In Buenos Aires, as in many cities around the world, parks and plazas have been designed as sites of aesthetic reflection or for specific social practices following a “top-down” planning approach (Stanley et al. 2012). While parks are large and contain a multifaceted green infrastructure, plazas are open space framed by buildings on most sides and usually hard surfaced. Both can host a diversity of civic activities and tend to be multipurpose. In Buenos Aires, by the late nineteenth century, green spaces began to be relevant urban areas in social life. Large public parks arose under the influence of French and English landscaping models coinciding with the hygienist movement in its attempts to relieve the burden of urban living. These transformations in the urban matrix produced structural and functional changes in Latin American cities that gradually departed from their colonial past, with tiny dry plazas between blocks, to striking landscaped big parks playing a central role as places for social integration (Faggi and Ignatieva, 2009).
What is it that makes someone feel attracted to a park or a plaza? How can size and form of a green space influence how it is used?
Surveying users to explore public perceptions of parks and plazas
In Buenos Aires, we compared representative parks and plazas in the federal city by interviewing users to explore peoples’ perceptions of the spaces. We wanted to know what people thought about the quality of the green spaces and how they used them. Plazas are smaller neighbourhood green and open spaces (up to 1 hectare), which tend to serve only local residents. Parks are larger areas, more than 2 hectares, which people take pains to visit because of their scenic qualities and diverse potential for activities.
Parks and plazas of Buenos Aires. Centenario and Rivadavia – Parks (above left and right); Misericordia and Pueyrredón Plazas (below left and right).The most common reasons for using public parks and plazas. The data are from 232 interviews with people using the spaces. Each person was asked to provide their top three reasons for visiting the space.
Interviewees preferred parks for practicing sports (running, yoga, aerobics, riding a bike) and recreational activities, while they preferred plazas for relaxation, to walk or stroll, and for other psychological benefits. We found no differences between parks and plazas when assessed by benefits such as social interaction or the opportunity to breathe fresh air.
Our results show that parks and plazas are valued spaces, although many of the respondents also have daily access to outdoor space (back yards, terraces, balconies) in their homes. People have many reasons for visiting green spaces. Parents want somewhere to take children to play in spaces close to their homes (plazas), as well as more distant parks that are well equipped with games infrastructure such as swings and playgrounds. The majority of those using parks are not residents within the neighbourhood itself, but people who travel from elsewhere to make use of high-quality and safe green spaces. For the last 10 years in Buenos Aires, municipal authorities have set up a green spaces revitalization programme and established a multifaceted strategy to make the green spaces more attractive. These actions aim at guaranteeing good, easily accessible places for social interaction, for walk or sports, or simply to come close to nature. They also intend to promote a healthier life through the practice of sport and the prevention of illnesses. Outdoor gyms, which are freely available, have been set up in several parks in order to increase the number of people getting physically active. They contain high quality fitness equipment suitable for people of all ages. In addition, professional instructors give a wide range of aerobic and yoga classes and different recreational activities. These new activities have been added to the traditional existing ones such as street markets, music, and various shows.
Urban green spaces provide a full range of community benefits (physical, environmental, psychological and social), but some parks types appear differentially important in providing certain benefit types. To meet friends, experience an organized and entertaining scene, or to get out of the house to breath fresh air did not seem to be linked to the size of the green spaces, as these services were mentioned for both parks and plazas. On the contrary, we found that physical and recreational activities, which are place demanding, can best be set up in larger parks (physical activities in parks: 28%, in plazas: 8%).
Appreciating nature could also be linked to larger sizes of green spaces. In some countries, people may want to enjoy plants, flowers, and trees, and much is invested by city councils to satisfy these demands. We found that, in both cases, interviewees did not mention green infrastructure. It seems that in Buenos Aires, green spaces are perceived to be more useful for recreational and social services than as places to conserve or appreciate biodiversity. However, we believe that “appreciating nature” was masked by our concept of “relaxation”, which occupied an important place in the scale of benefits. Abundant literature has shown that to “see green” can reduce domestic violence, quicken healing times, reduce stress, bringing psychological benefits in individuals (Ulrich 1984, Kaplan and Kaplan 1989). As stated by Tidball (2012) “seeing green” (plant–people interactions) implications for human health and well-being are well documented.
Plazas, but not parks, were mentioned as ideal places for a relaxing walk, to read, or to rest (psychological benefits). This finding is in accordance with Nordh and Østby (2013), who found that in Oslo, small parks are best fit for relaxing and philosophizing, reading, or eating/drinking. Perhaps this is because plazas are calmer places than parks, and are preferable for experiencing an undisturbed peacefulness on one’s own, as there do not exist the multiple activities that are frequently offered in the parks, especially at weekends.
Incorporating our results into management of green spaces
Our findings show that size and the offer of activities/infrastructure in Buenos Aires play a role in how a green space is used and how different benefits are recognised and perceived.
As around the world, there are now many different pressures and conflicting demands on parks and green spaces, from environmental pressures to sports, leisure and general recreational uses. Similarly, it is common to find a wide range of interdisciplinary work which includes interdisciplinary professional expertise, from landscape designers, ecologists, foresters, grounds maintenance staff, to play workers and health workers, all wishing to adapt and use a green space for different purposes (Greenhalgh and Parsons 2004). A management plan that takes into account these needs and desires from the outset will best serve the city’s population.
Jonathan Craik1, Ana Faggi2, Sebastian Miguel2 and Leslie Vorraber2 Copenhagen (1) and Buenos Aires (2)
Faggi, A. And Ignatieva, M. (2009). Urban green spaces in Buenos Aires and Christchurch. Municipal Engineer, 162 (4), 241-250.
Faggi, A., Nail, S., Ceres Sgobaro Zanette, C. and Tovar Corzo, G. (2015). Latin America and the environmental health movement. In: Bird, W. and Van den Bosch, M. (eds), “Nature and Public Health: The Role of Nature in Improving the Health of a Population”. Oxford University Press (In press).
Greenhalgh, L and Parsons, A. (2004). Raising the Standard The Green Flag Award Guidance Manual 2009. Cabe.
Kaplan, R. and Kaplan. S. (1989). The experience of Nature: a psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Nordh, H. and Østby, K. (2013). Pocket parks for people – a study of park design and use. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 12(1):12-17.
Stanley, B. W., Stark, B. L. Johnston, K. L., Smith M.E. (2012). Urban open spaces in historical perspective: a transdisciplinary typology and analysis. Arizona State University Urban Geography, 33(8),1089–1117. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.8.1089
Tidball, K.G. (2012). Urgent Biophilia: Human-Nature interactions and biological attractions in disaster resilience. Ecology and Society 17(2):5.
Ulrich, R.S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science 224:420-421.
Ana Faggi graduated in agricultural engineering, and has a Ph.D. in Forest Science, she is currently Dean of the Engineer Faculty (Flores University, Argentina). Her main research interests are in Urban Ecology and Ecological Restoration.
Architect and Master Architectural Design (University of Buenos Aires). Director Bio-Environmental Design Lab (University of Flores- Buenos Aires). Professor and researcher at Catholic University of Salta (UCASAL). Principal at Sebastian Miguel Architects & partners (Buenos Aires). Member of Argentinean Association of Renewable Energies and Environment (ASADES)
Leslie Vorraber is an ecological engineer, university professor of undergraduate and graduate students, and works as an independent consultant on environmental issues.
Every month we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
show/hide list of writers
Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Maryam Akbarian, TehranRoof gardens have to become an accessible and economically native item that enhance buildings’ spatial quality and operating income.
Wolfgang Ansel, NürtingenCarrots and sticks—the combination of regulations, incentives, and public relations is a successful recipe for municipal Green Roof policies.
Nathalie Baumann, BaselCities can require much more green infrastructures on buildings via policies and laws combined with subsidies campaigns.
Michael Berkshire, ChicagoThe City of Chicago is estimating that over 80 percent of its 509 green roofs were built because they were required by the Sustainable Development Policy.
Amy Chomowicz, PortlandTwo key ingredients for a green roof program are policies and education.
Andrew Clements, CorinthScaling green roofs to the world with safe, cost-effective, user friendly OS could make them accessible to your granny.
Karla Dakin, DenverWhy should a developer spend money on a green roof? What is the long-term return rate? How does it benefit investment? The answers can be found water, healthcare, and community/jobs.
Stuart Gaffin, New YorkI see no necessity for hot urban surfaces any more, what with new cool roofing technologies and options (including green roofs) becoming well-known, popular, sometimes required in building codes, and increasingly comparable in cost to traditional membranes.
Dusty Gedge, LondonAll public and private buildings should have green roofs, but the natural benefits of soil and vegetation don’t quite fit into the current market model.
André Gonçalves, GoiâniaThe challenge is to get people involved. Civil society can play an important role in the establishment of public policies for green roofs.
Ulrike Grau, Mexico CityGreen roofs on every single public building require a joint effort of all city government departments, not only the Environmental Secretary.
Angela Loder, DenverLegislation and links to resilience and biophilia will move green roofs into the future.
Amosh Neupane, MiddleburyOne solution to the lack of green space in New York is the installation of green roofs on all of the City’s public schools—we did it at our high school.
Matt Palmer, New YorkTo greatly increase the number of green roofs, we need convincing evidence of the benefits, realistic comparison of the costs in comparison to other technologies, and a solid sense of the long-term return on investment.
Kerry Ross, CalgaryDespite acceptance of the multiple benefits of green roofs elsewhere, costs, misperceptions and a protracted approvals process hinder greater uptake in Calgary.
Kaveh Samiei, TehranThe worst trend underway in vertical greenery in Iran is limiting ourselves to an ornamental view—an orchard on a rooftop!
Julie Santos, London & Buenos AiresGovernments, business leaders, and communities alike need intense and constant education regarding green roofs and all the advantages these bring to the built environment, let alone our wellbeing.
Kate Scherer, New YorkOne solution to the lack of green space in New York is the installation of green roofs on all of the City’s public schools—we did it at our high school.
Mark Simmons, AustinGreen roofs in temperate climates are too easy. I suggest that, for hot climates, the barriers of plant palette and growing media need to be significantly modified.
Kevin Songer, JacksonvilleGreen roofs provide critical habitat niches for the survival of imperiled plant and animal species.
Christine Thuring, SheffieldFor widespread green roof implementation to be worthwhile, a future-oriented approach with a committed ecological vision is crucial.
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.
Many of the benefits of green roofs are appreciated and increasingly well-studied: stormwater management, mitigation of heat islands, insulation, biodiversity, increased longevity of the waterproof membrane, green space for enjoyment, and so on.
With all these benefits, why don’t more buildings—especially large ones—have green roofs?
Shouldn’t they?
Should all public buildings and large new construction be required to have green roofs?
Answering these questions obviously requires complicated technical and political calculations about the real and perceived values of green roofs, what they cost to build and maintain, and whether greens roofs are “worth it”.
So, would programs to significantly expand the use of green roofs make sense? If so, how can we better make the case—say, with better data or more effective outreach—to elected officials, to developers, or to the public that green roofs belong on all buildings?
Creating green shells, including green roofs and walls on the outer sides of buildings, causes many well studied and approved positive effects on ecosystems and the quality of urban life that are mentioned in the introduction article of the roundtable. Although these features have irreplaceable values in the fields of sustainability and climatic adaptation, something more is needed to convince private investors to add these living shells to their buildings—something made of continual economic profits and involving the creation of vendible value added parts in the building.
A roof garden in Tehran.
Among two main types of green roofs, due to their functional and spatial characteristics, extensive ones are often used in large urban public buildings and shells. In Tehran, governmental organizations such as municipalities are most often sponsors of these projects. Intensive and semi-intensive green roofs, which are used more in large and medium-sized privately owned buildings, are the main subject of this article.
In Tehran, private investors own a significant proportion of commercial and office buildings and almost all residential on both large and medium scales. The use of green covers in buildings and the creation of green roofs is growing rapidly, but is not popular enough yet. Roof gardens in residential buildings tend to be added as a fancy item intended to increase luxury, just like a rooftop pool, a billiard room, or a high-tech home theater.
The main obstacles in using green roofs in buildings in Tehran are as follows:
High cost: The main reasons that green roofs are expensive are imported green roof materials and the lack of true competition in the pricing of goods and services, which is rooted in the novelty of green roofs. Shortages of materials at affordable prices and skilled construction teams lead to unreasonable prices for each square meter; consequently, most small building owners (due to Tehran’s small-scale urban subdivisions, this group of buildings is numerous) do not have the financial ability and justification to have roof gardens.
Poor quality construction process
Operating problems: Unfortunately, a significant portion of the green roofs in Tehran are designed and constructed by the trading companies that supply green roofs materials. Most of them don’t have any landscape architects or other related professionals to consult during the design and construction process. Obviously and naturally, their main concern is the business. Sometimes, a quick access to sale step means finishing the design of a 1,000 square meter roof garden in just 3 hours, drawing only a few lines on the existing building’s roof plan. Most of these green roofs have operating problems in many parts such as insulation, irrigation, planting maintenance, and even, in some rare cases, structural stability. All these transform the process of designing, constructing, and operating green roofs into a challenging item which owners and construction investors are hardly likely to do again.
High maintenance: Green roofs in hot and dry weather have significant benefits for projects; meanwhile, they have higher maintenance costs that can result in a challenging situation if construction and design teams don’t pay enough attention to materials, planting, soil composition, and other issues. For example, people’s planting taste is a bit different in Tehran. They prefer annual blooming flowers in all seasons instead of the appearance of perennials and permanent bushes. In fact, they like a spring landscape much more than autumn or winter ones. This is a combination of culture and aesthetics and affected by context. In roof gardens, the need to use perennials and planting maintenance hardships require planting designers to reach an optimum point between technical requirements and owners’ desires.
Safety: Roof gardens, especially intensive ones, are often joined with other recreational and entertaining functions. When you send users to the highest parts of buildings, which are most attractive at their edges, you must pay attention to safety systems seriously; this is even more critical in public buildings for both designers and investors.
Lack of supporting laws: Legislative support for private investors, who dedicate a part of saleable building spaces to green areas such as green roofs and spend money to make the outer shells of buildings green, can help to popularize green roofs faster. At this time, there are no codified and inclusive laws related to this in Tehran.
To give cities greener top views, roof gardens and green shells of all kinds have to become an accessible and economically native item that, along with proper construction and maintenance costs, enhance buildings’ spatial quality and operating income.
Wolfgang Ansel is Director of the International Green Roof Association (IGRA), a network for the worldwide promotion of the ecological green roof idea.
Many municipalities in Germany are using regulations to make Green Roofs mandatory in new urban development plans. The background of this policy is that the city officials believe in the environmental benefits of Green Roofs for urban ecology. The regulation policy generates a kind of “flat rate” for the German Green Roof market. As a result, several million square meters of Green Roofs are installed every year. And Green Roofs have become an accepted standard in the building industry over the last three decades.
Can the German Green Roof experience be duplicated in other countries? Yes and no. In a lot of countries, environmental regulations in the building sector are not well accepted. Therefore, an exact transfer is not possible. Cities should also develop an individual Green Roof policy in light of their financial and human resources and their specific urban ecological problems. There is a saying that many roads lead to Rome. And this is also true for the different ways to establish a successful Green Roof policy.
What helps to speed up this process and to avoid setbacks is information exchange. The policy toolbox with the main ingredients for a successful Green Roof promotion campaign is already available and has been tested. Among the established instruments are regulations (“sticks”), incentives (“carrots”), and public relation activities in different specifications. The International Green Roof Association (IGRA), the City of Portland (Environmental Services) and the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) created a platform to facilitate information exchange in the field of Green Roofs Policies, the “International Green Roof City Network” (www.igra-world.com).
In Stuttgart / Germany Green Roofs are mandatory for new flat roof buildings. Copyright IGRA.
From my point of view, one of the most important things for the spread of Green Roofs is to show that the roof is a valuable open space. Imagine a new building with a room that is locked up and can’t be used by anyone. Of course the investor would agree that this is a waste. But if we look at aerial pictures of cities we can see a lot of unused open space on top of flat roofs. People seem to accept this waste of space as normal. If we can make them see the development potential, we achieve a great deal.
Nathalie Baumann is an urban ecologist and lecturer, researcher, and consultant in the Green Space Development Research Group at the Environment and Natural Resource Sciences Institute of the Department Life Sciences and Facility Management in Zurich (Zurich University of Applied Sciences).
I’m sitting in a bar, 32 floors above ground level, called Bar Rouge and enjoying the view over the city where I grew up and still live: Basel, Switzerland. The people who are with me are stupefied by the view: there are loads of green roofs around this city. About 23 percent of the flat grey roof surfaces are greened, maybe even more nowadays. Just below this view, the last big surface of approximately 20,000 m2 was greened one year ago: one of many combination roofs with Solar Panels (PV) and green roofs: a Biosolarroof (www.biosolarroof.com). There are not only big public surfaces that have been greened, but many private buildings are visibly green from above as well.
View from Bar Rouge (in the exhibition tower) to the green roof and Solar panel roof (PV) of the Messehalle (exhibition Hall) just below the view point. 16,000 m2, completed in 1999. The whole roof is greened, as well as below and behind the panels. It’s a combination of LandArt with ecology and renewable energy—there are no limits! Photo: Carole Blomjous (2015)
How can this be possible?
It was an engagement of the city authorities, their politicians, and citizens which started nearly 20 years ago. Their engagement was to make a change to save money on energy consumption and to promote biodiversity, which brought them to one of several solutions: biodiverse, extensive green roofs.
The second step to this engagement was to launch a subsidy campaign in 1996/1997 with good public communication in different media to inform house owners (public and private) about this solution; those who renovated their roofs or built a new one within this subsidy year could apply for funds (20-30 Swiss francs/m2). This money was coming from a city fund, which is fed from a special tax for energy consumption paid by individuals—part of citizens’ commitment to support innovative and low energy consumption techniques. In 2001, this engagement resulted in a simple paragraph in the Law of Construction for the city, which said: “…each flat roof, public or private, new, built, or renovated, has to be greened.” Any construction project receives documents and manuals providing information about how quality of a design, choice of substrate (local and natural), and choice of indigenous and regional plants can be fulfilled. This documentation was provided by us: the Green Roof Competence Centre of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
Basel is one of the densest cities in Switzerland and doesn’t have a square meter left open to be built on. Therefore it’s a waste to have empty grey spaces—as many cities of this world do—which could serve as replacement habitats and ecological compensation to promote biodiversity.
It is absolutely possible to green many more roofs. It’s not a Swiss phenomenon; it’s about the commitment of decision makers, planners, and politicians to make a change and to take a step in order to be sure that future buildings are greened—it doesn’t matter if it’s public or private buildings or the size of the surfaces. Cities can make the change and have to do it! The example of Basel shows this possibility explicitly: after the implementation of the law, a green business developed and supported the local economy (small companies) in developing well. It’s in the cities hands!
A green roof visit up on the roofs of Basel with delegates from the Parisian government, planners, scientists, and a National Assembly member from France. We explainined to them how a biodivers green roofs looks and how to install it and maintain it. We also let them meet with the local government ministers who brought the green roof change into Basel 20 years ago. Photo: Karine Peiger (2013)
Cities can require much more green infrastructures on buildings via policies and laws combined with subsidies campaigns. Parallel to that, it is important to offer possibilities of trainings for professionals (planners, roofers, landscapers, etc.) to learn how to install green roofs right—just to put green on a building doesn’t mean that it will promote biodiversity. This is all possible because there are already some experts around the world who have been to Switzerland and the UK in order to see the best practices in these countries and to learn how to do it.
It’s not necessary nowadays to re-invent everything; there is already a long history of well-designed, biodiverse green roofs in Europe. Just get in contact with us.
Michael has a Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning and has been with the City of Chicago for the past 12 years creating and implementing public policy and incentives that encourage sustainable urban development.
Beginning with the iconic, 20,000+ square foot prairie planted on the roof of City Hall, the City of Chicago has been placing green roofs on municipal buildings since the beginning of the new millennium. The latest count is one dozen public buildings with green roof systems ranging from shallow tray systems to 20-inch deep, fully-integrated systems.
Once it was proven that green roofs would work, flourish, and perform, the City began requiring green roofs on private projects. Since 2004, all buildings that are (1) receiving financial assistance from the City, (2) part of a planned development, and (3) located on the Chicago waterway system or near Lake Michigan must have a green roof.
This is a requirement of the Chicago Sustainable Development Policy, a summary matrix of which can be seen here. According to satellite imagery from 2013, there were 509 green roofs in Chicago totaling almost 5.6 million square feet. Based on a previous analysis, the City is estimating that over 80 percent of those green roofs were built because they were required by the Sustainable Development Policy.
Rebecca Bratspies is a Professor at CUNY School of Law, where she is the founding director of the Center for Urban Environmental Reform. A scholar of environmental justice, and human rights, Rebecca has written scores of scholarly works including 4 books. Her most recent book is Naming Gotham: The Villains, Rogues, and Heroes Behind New York Place Names. With Charlie LaGreca-Velasco, Bratspies is co-creator of The Environmental Justice Chronicles: an award-winning series of comic books bringing environmental literacy to a new generation of environmental leaders. The ABA honored her with its 2021 Commitment to Diversity and Justice Award.
Urban areas are replete with environmental burdens. The air is polluted, the water is polluted, and green spaces are few and far between. It is the urban poor that suffer the most. Poor communities, especially poor minority communities, bear the lion’s share of environmental burdens while having the fewest resources for promoting resilience. If investment were apportioned on a “biggest bang for the buck” basis, cities would be pouring money into solving environmental problems in these communities. A good place to start would be with green roofs.
Growing concerns about climate change add an additional impetus for green infrastructure. In New York City, buildings are responsible for the vast majority of carbon emissions. Anything that reduces energy consumption in those buildings will also reduce the building’s carbon footprint. This set of concerns prompted Chicago to launch an extensive green roofs project.
Green roofs are, of course, just one aspect of the green infrastructure needed to transform cities into sustainable, low-carbon communities. Yet, even considered in isolation, green roofs might make a big difference. Green roofs can filter airborne pollutants, offset urban heat island effects, reduce carbon emissions, provide flyways for migratory species, in addition to reducing energy consumption.
Despite the clear benefits from urban green roofs, cities have been slow to invest themselves, or to mandate green roofs for private development. And, when such investments do occur, they rarely are directed at the poor communities most in need of the benefits that green roofs bring.
There are many implacable social and political forces behind this lack of investment. However, there are also a set of legal and regulatory barriers. Much of the impetus for green roofs, along with other green infrastructure, emerges from the Clean Water Act’s mandate to manage stormwater and to control combined sewer overflows. Grey infrastructure, in the form of pipe and concrete, has an established regulatory effectiveness. Green infrastructure is less certain in the near term. Lingering information and performance gaps mean that adopters may be taking additional risks. With fines for violations ranging in the thousands per day, it is a safer design choice to choose concrete pipes, even though green roofs and green infrastructure offer so many additional environmental benefits.
With thought, regulatory mandates could be revised to promote, rather than inhibit, green infrastructure.
Nearly a decade ago, the New York Department of Design and Construction recognized that per unit area, green roofs save over twice the energy as cool roofs. However, the cost is very high. As a result, there has been no official recommendation for putting green roofs on the roughly 4,000 buildings New York City owns. The One City Built to Last Initiative commits the City to invest in energy efficiency, clean energy sources, and installation of many leading edge technologies. Despite a commitment to “lead by example” the Initiative contains virtually no discussion of green roofs, focusing instead on cool roofs, solar power and energy efficiency.
For private real estate, the Initiative requires information gathering and energy benchmarking, but does not include any green infrastructure mandates. New York City does offer a tax abatement to property owners that install green roofs. The tax benefit, along with the marketing cachet of green living, might be enough to tempt private developers to incorporate this element into new designs.
That still leaves the environmental justice question—how to direct the investment in green infrastructure toward those most burdened and vulnerable communities. Sometimes, all it takes is political vision.
In terms of making an impact, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is an obvious target. NYCHA is the single biggest landlord in New York City, overseeing 2,553 residential buildings that are home to nearly 5 percent of New York City’s residents. NYCHA’s combined real estate holdings are roughly three times the size of Central Park. Anything that happens at NYCHA would have a huge impact on the City, and would make an important statement to the rest of the world. Green roofs at NYCHA housing could be a bellwether for use of green roofs elsewhere, and might make a real environmental difference for the City’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. In short, NYCHA might achieve environmental goals while advancing environmental justice. This potential for synergy is not lost on NYCHA residents, and environmental justice advocates.
Unfortunately, no such plan exists. NYCHA is chronically underfunded, and has been running a budget deficit. Mayor DeBlasio’s Next Generation NYCHA proposal call for reducing energy costs by making basic investments in upgraded equipment. These investments will certainly make an environmental difference, but it misses the opportunity to do more. Green roofs could make a significant contribution to Next Generation NYCHA by dramatically lowering heating and cooling costs, while also addressing other environmental justice concerns in these communities, providing flyways for migratory birds, improving air quality, and diverting runoff from the City’s overtaxed combined sewer overflow system.
Small, incremental steps are happening. For example, Corsi Houses Community Center in Manhattan already has a green roof and Bronx River Houses has a blue roof, installed as part of a green infrastructure pilot project.
Schools and other public buildings are also inviting targets for bring the benefits of green infrastructure into all the City’s communities. PS118 in Queens is home to a blue/green roof investigational study. The Parks Department headquarters on Randall’s Island has one of the largest green roofs in the City.
While green roofs require commitment in terms of vision, policy, and personnel, they have the potential to transform the City.
Amy Chomowicz is a board member of the Green Roof information Think-tank (GRiT). GRiT is a Portland non-profit that provides education and outreach to support the use of green roofs.
Portland’s ecoroof program began in 1996, when Tom Liptan put an ecoroof on his garage. (An ecoroof is an extensive green roof.) Tom, now retired, worked for the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), and his co-workers, bureau leaders, and, ultimately, elected officials were all receptive to his continuous advocacy for ecoroofs. In 2008, Sam Adams, who was Portland’s Mayor at the time, launched the 5-year Grey to Green (G2G) Initiative. G2G fully funded an ecoroof program along with several other watershed restoration initiatives and programs. Through G2G, BES offered a cash incentive of $5/sq ft and significantly expanded our technical assistance.
So, why don’t all public buildings have green roofs? Or all large private buildings (e.g. businesses)?
Retrofitting existing buildings with a green roof can be a challenge. From our experience in Portland, most existing buildings cannot hold the additional weight of a green roof without structural upgrades. From 2008 to 2013, BES evaluated 18 buildings in Portland to determine if they could be retrofitted with an extensive green roof. Results showed that three buildings could be retrofitted with no or minor adjustments. The remaining 15 structures would require extensive structural modifications to be retrofitted. It wouldn’t make sense to incur the substantial cost of structural modifications just for an ecoroof. However, if an owner is embarking on a building renovation anyway, it is a good opportunity to upgrade the structure so it can be retrofitted with an ecoroof.
The lack of local data can be an obstacle to implementing a green roof program. One of the unique aspects and an essential element of Portland’s program is data BES gathered from monitoring several Portland ecoroofs over the past 10 years. The data show ecoroofs retain 50 percent of the rain that falls on them and cut peak flows by 90 percent. Having local performance data demonstrated the benefits of ecoroofs to local decision makers and provided information our engineers can use for modeling and design.
Is this a good idea?
Green roofs make sense from many perspectives. They provide many environmental and human health benefits as well as adding green jobs to local economies. BES manages stormwater, so green roofs, with their stormwater management capabilities, make a lot of sense for our system needs. BES uses green roofs to keep stormwater out of our combined and separated sewer system to preserve pipe capacity, help reduce local flooding, and reduce basement sewer backups. Also, when space on the ground is limited, an ecoroof may be the best way to manage stormwater sustainably.
Cities need to grow by developing in ways that restore the environment and protect human health. The negative impacts of current construction practices need to be mitigated, and new construction should have a net benefit to environmental and human health. Green roofs are one aspect of restorative development which provides multiple benefits to the buildings themselves, as well as the community.
What would it take to make it happen and be worthwhile?
Two key ingredients for a green roof program are policies and education. Jurisdictions such as Chicago, Seattle, and Washington D.C., that have strong policies and requirements are seeing a booming green roof industry. Portland’s ecoroof policies are embodied in our Stormwater Management Manual, which requires onsite stormwater management for new construction, the Green Building Policy for city-owned facilities, and financial incentives such as reduced stormwater fees.
With or without a requirement, education is critical. Teaching building owners about ecoroof benefits helps them understand what they will gain and makes them more likely to ask for an ecoroof. We conducted ecoroof seminars and vendor fairs that attracted as many as 500 attendees. We also provide technical workshops and materials for the design and construction community. To respond to requests for a low-weight, low-cost, low-maintenance, and no irrigation ecoroof, we developed the red cinder ecoroof design.
The Green Roof information Think-tank (GRiT) is a discussion forum that is unique to Portland. GRiT’s membership includes design and construction professionals, agency staff, landscapers, roofers, irrigation contractors, and interested citizens. GRiT supports education and outreach, and GRiT members consult on projects and they advocate for green roof policies, codes, and programs.
Andrew holds two patents for Greek-appropriate green roofs and is particularly interested in water-wise, natural, ecosystem development in hot cities such as Athens, as well as the challenges of working in a seismic region. Landmark projects include The Greek Treasury building in Constitution Square, Athens.
On a plane trip to Turkey from Greece five or so years ago I was seated next to the CFO of a global corporation and we got chatting about cricket. The conversation inevitably turned to what we each ‘do’. When I told him that I worked on green roofs and showed him photographs of projects, he responded with a surprised ‘Wow, what a great idea’ and said that he had never seen or heard about the practice. This was an eye opener for me. I think green roofers, like all professionals, misjudge the level of penetration into the consciousness of humanity of their field of expertise. We live in a rock pool at the edge of the world’s oceans, in other words, thinking we are in the sea and that all the other creatures know of our presence. We are still an embryo of an industry in comparison with other fields.
The reasons for this are varied and numerous. First of all, although the practice of putting plants on roofs is literally as old as the hills, in its modern form, it is quite a recent development in many countries of the world. And in many countries of the world, there are formidable technical challenges to safe, cost effective green roofing. In a hot, dry, seismic region such as Greece, for example, these technical challenges include severe weight restrictions, use (or preferably not) of summer irrigation, hot gale force summer winds, and monsoon-type torrential downpours. Add to this the financial difficulties most of the post-2008 world faces—and, in particular, debt sunk places such as Greece face—and it is not hard to realise why we have not yet seen much wider implementation of green roofs, despite the increasing attention, interest, and huge efforts made by many of us to network and communicate. Finally, although modern green roof technology is well developed and does tend to function as it is designed, the general perception of putting plants on a roof immediately draws comments like ‘Won’t the roof leak?’ or ‘Won’t the roof collapse?’
Whether large-scale implementation of green roofs is a good idea is a no brainer for me. The plethora of well-known benefits of green roofs makes this technology an essential component of sustainable building practices going forward. The question really is, how do we make this happen?
Firstly, green roofs have got to become accessible to everyone. Most current technology is the green roof equivalent of MSDOS to information technology, in my opinion. Green roofs need an Apple type OS or a MS Windows OS to make them user friendly to the masses. We need green roofs that can be understood by a Yiayia (Granny) in a Greek village.
Furthermore, green roofs have got to become far more affordable to the masses in our cash-strapped world economies. A green roof should cost the same, if not less, than a conventional roof on a new build and should be equivalent in cost to thermal insulation on a retrofit if we want to see mass adoption. Moreover, a green roof must have similar or lower maintenance costs to a conventional roof. If the end user has to shell out for summer irrigation water, weeding, fertilisers, and pesticides, we are unlikely to see wider implementation beyond the novelty-seeking architect or the hard core eco-enthusiast.
Finally, we need to get green roofs into the human mindscape as the obvious default method of roofing. This requires the continual, relentless, communication and networking that this site has afforded green roofers with this roundtable and that countless green roof activists and enthusiasts from around the world now engage in on social media and through other communication outlets.
Karla Dakin combines her landscape architecture expertise—she holds a masters degree in landscape architecture from the University of Colorado, Denver—with fifteen years of experience in the art worlds of New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Dakin’s past work in the art world gives her insights into the creativity of art and design.
The motivating question here seems like an odd one given the context of our ingrained, American, individualist sentiment. America is not Switzerland or Germany after all, whereby government fiat mandates the inclusion of green roofs. And yet, all the time I get asked some form of this same question. It usually goes like this, “How can we convince people, i.e. those with money and control, that they need to include green roofs in the planning of their public and commercial buildings.” The answers go way beyond the up front costs—the main reason green roofs do not get built in this country.
History, albeit a brief green roof history in the US, is a good place to start for answers. We can study our past to see how we coerce controlling parties to build green roofs, reflecting on “carrots” (i.e. expediting of permits if you include a green roof or stormwater credits), “sticks” (Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] fines for polluted waterways that led the charge for many green roofs in Portland, Oregon and in the Washington D.C. area), and “visionaries” like Mayor Daley of Chicago bringing to fruition his city greening initiatives. Does history teach us that we must wait for the next disaster or the arrival of a forceful politician?
Not to overstate the obvious, but the primary component of American democracy is capitalism and that is about money, baby. Money, money, money. Why should a developer spend money on a green roof? What is the long-term return rate? How does it benefit investment? Can’t they just use some other less costly implementation to get around stormwater mandates?
Perhaps what we need to do in the U.S. is lay out the truth and consequences, like a showdown at the OK Corral. Make the reason for green roofs all about money—the money “you” will make. We ought to drive the conversation not only about present but also about future costs.
WATER: Oil and gas might be cheap now and projected, long term low costs look rosy, but what about the cost of water, now and in the future? The paucity of water in the far west United States will drive water costs up but so will the abundance of polluted water across the continent. Polluted stormwater is coloring and will color the conversation. Green roofs can pull the stormwater filtration card when we need to clean our polluted water or slow down our stormwater.
HEALTHCARE: How about healthcare costs? Anyone who pays for their own insurance can attest to the rising monthly payments. Corporations pay huge health insurance costs for their employees. Do they know about the rising rates of asthma caused by pollution in the cities? How about job stress and its related medical expenses? Now it’s time to pull out recent studies by people like Dr. Angela Loder (also in this panel), whose research reveals how green roofs can mitigate these costs.
COMMUNITY/JOBS: Apparently crime pays the wrong people. How much money do we spend as a citizenry on crime? Our prisons are overcrowded and costing us billions. Have we looked at green roofs as an answer to this expenditure? People like Ben Flanner and Majora Carter can explain the cost benefit ratio of introducing people who never have seen a garden to the world of growing their own food on a roof. Young people get exposed to a world beyond their dreams, where they might find a different profession. We also need to educate the public on the research that shows increased real estate values around green roofs, not only from the ecosystem services angle but also from the community-forming angle.
I recall a statement I read from Art Rosenfeld and colleagues of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab Heat Island Group that paraphrased as ‘… the era of the dark asphaltic roof should be phased out …’ I agree with the statement, as I see no necessity for such hot urban surfaces any more, what with new cool roofing technologies and options (including green roofs) becoming well-known, popular, sometimes required in building codes, and increasingly comparable in cost to traditional membranes. Public buildings should go green, especially when the old roof is up for retirement. As to why they currently don’t, such technologies are probably still novel in many respects to building managers who often just opt for the same old, same old.
Or all large private buildings (e.g. businesses)?
Private owners may have more leeway about building decisions and less red tape or bureaucracy to go through, so they have even less excuse to not go green. Plus, they have more personal incentive to enhance building amenties and cut down on energy costs, especially if they live there. These amenities include novel new green spaces with potential for such popular residential activities as gardening or small-scale food or herb production—I once heard that gardening is the number one hobby in America.
Would this be a good idea?
Yes, for the reasons just cited and the public benefits from urban heat island mitigation, stormwater management, and ecosystem services. If we debunk the remaining misconceptions about green roofs (costs, maintenance burden, and the winter heat penalty, especially), that can increase the demand and market share of these systems, and thus bring down costs, as has happened apparently in Germany, the undisputed leader in the field; the price there is ~40 percent of the US cost (Phillipi, 2006).
What would it take to make it happen and to make it worthwhile?
The appeal of living green infrastructure with multiple functions, as opposed to single-purpose gray infrastructure, is growing within cities. Indeed, cities, as they are in so many ways, are the incubators for innovation and leading the way, especially on climate change policy, both in carbon emission mitigation and adaptation. It is an exciting time for many urban disciplines and urban environmental research that will shape how cities evolve, function, and look over the next decades and beyond.
Reference:
Phillipi, Peter. (2006). How to Get Cost Reduction in Green Roof Construction. Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities. Retrieved here.
Dusty Gedge is a recognised authority, designer, consultant and public speaker on green roofs. Dusty has also been a TV presenter on a number of UK shows and makes his own Green Intrastructure and Green Roof and Nature Videos. He is an avid nature photographer and social networker posting on Twitter, Facebook and G+.
All public and private buildings should have green roofs. This is more than a good idea. It is an intelligent one. All the benefits that vegetation and soil bring to both cities and the buildings themselves is where we need to be going to help our cities adapt to climate change. When ones consider a city, such as London, where I have estimated that over 10 million m2 of existing roof space could be greened tomorrow, why aren’t we green roofing like crazy?
The problems is that the natural benefits of soil and vegetation don’t quite fit into the current market model. The cost-benefit analysis of the payback time of a green roof really doesn’t stack up if you are private owner of a building. Therefore, there is no fiscal stimulus to entertain the idea. I have met many a building manager who has bought into the idea, but who just can’t justify the costs. Furthermore, many existing buildings, both in the public and the private sector, are restricted because of weight issues. Notwithstanding this technical issue, there is huge potential in cities across the globe if the fiscal challenges can be overcome.
The main driver for the delivery of green roofs on buildings can only be through policy initiatives from city and regional authorities. Linz in Austria was one of the first in the world to start this process back in 1984 and has also provided funding to deliver the green roofs.
When you visit the industrial areas of Linz, one can easily tell when which buildings were built before 1984 and those that were built after. Soil and vegetation bedecks the newer buildings. The developers and owners are unlikely to have delivered green roofs without the policy and the initiatives from the City.
Since London initiated its policy, green roofs have blossomed over the capital. Prior to 2008, the Mayor encouraged the use of green roofs. This was like asking commuters politely to pay for the London congestion charge. Most wouldn’t. Since 2008, there has been a planning ‘expectation’ for green roofs. My city now has over 175,000 m2 in the Central Activity Zone. Encouragement would never have achieved that.
Whilst helping to form the policy, I travelled widely in Europe and North America to research green roof policy for a technical report I was writing for the London Government and England’s Environment Agency. Switzerland, in many ways, has the best approach, although Germany is seen as the world leader. Swiss cities take a more holistic approach in my view—some cities performance criteria requires native wildlife flowers. Specific seed mix characteristics are desired and this ecological approach is now enshrined in the Swiss green roof standard (one of only two such standards in the world (the other being the Austrian Standard).
This is important as, commercially, the early innovators were actually interested in supplying a broader landscape than the current sedum extensive green roofs seen across Europe and North America. This is an important elemental detail within the question. What do we want on our public and private buildings to deliver when it comes to green roofs?
Sadly, green roofs over the last 30 years have been pared down to their bare essentials.
Green roofs are almost like an oak tree, full of promise, stripped to their bare bones—a barkless trunk akin to a telegraph pole. And this is not naïve—I know how the construction industry works, when it comes to green roofs and I know how landscape architects and architects respond to the issue. The original Swiss and German green roofs were ‘nature’ roofs supplied by commercial companies. No romance there. In the last twenty years, the main driving force for green roofs has been stormwater, which is engineer-lead, not ecologist-lead. To achieve designs that attain stormwater and building physic requirements, architects want a neat product that ticks the boxes. The green roof industry, often berated, can only supply what they are asked for.
So the early green roof suppliers, who may well have wanted to supply ‘nature’ roofs, have been constrained to supply the simplest homegenous systems throughout the world. When Swiss cities and my city ask for wildflowers and provisions of biodiversity as part of the policy agenda, the architects have to respond and the green roof industry can return to its roots of providing sustainable, resilient vegetation that is locally appropriate.
Policy is probably the only way to get not only more public and private buildings to have green roofs, but also to refine and re-invigorate how green roofs are delivered. I can already hear the naysayers—after 20 odd years promoting green roofs with a reasonable degree of success, I am used to the grumbles in the wings and the dress circle! But if we really do think green roofs are a good idea, which they most definitely are, it is up to the nature movement in cities to take a robust stand. It needs to demand an approach that is in keeping with our specific city and it needs not to be cowered by the might of the design and construction professionals.
One final point also needs to be made; how we incentivise more green roofs on existing buildings. This is the real challenge currently facing our cities. My answer is simple—if only building owners had to pay a rent to the ‘original’ landlord. The landlord (nature) would probably spend the rent on returning our cities to some semblance of what was there before buildings usurped the natural environment. And it would be at roof level, as most cities are nearly 80 percent roofscapes.
Sadly, I can’t see this happening in the near future. However, we can make policies deliver for both natural and human inhabitants of cities. To that end, cities need to set the agenda, not the design and construction professionals.
André Gonçalves is co-founder of Sobreurbana, a startup company dedicated to the activation of public spaces and promotion of urban culture in Goiânia, Brazil.
Our planet is getting more urban every day. Since 2008, more than half of the world’s population has been living in cities that keep growing faster and faster as the countryside shrinks. This tendency, dosed with some lack of planning, greed, and absence of knowledge or ethics, have already provoked disastrous consequences for Earth, most of them irreversible. Urban heat islands, floods, air and water pollution, droughts, and lack of biodiversity are some of the climate change phenomena that we feel more and more strongly everywhere in the world.
Green roofs are a solution to mitigate these problems. They can be effective at cleaning the air, retaining rainwater, isolating buildings, and bringing beauty and biodiversity to the neighborhood, among many other advantages that contribute to well being and life quality. So the question is quite pertinent: why don’t all buildings, or at least public buildings, or large private buildings, have green roofs?
The immediate answer would be: costs. Building a green roof is more expensive than building a conventional one, besides which it needs maintenance, which also has its costs. However we may question this accounting: as a green roof isolates the building, it contributes in saving energy; as it cleans the air, it saves money that would be spent in health; as it manages stormwaters, it prevents floods and saves private vehicles and public equipment from getting damaged. Thus, green roofs, like other urban green infrastructures, are not luxuries, but investments that actually bring economic benefits: financially, by cutting off expenses that would be spent in energy, health, restoration work, etc…; but also in other non-accountable advantages such as life quality and air quality, which are increasingly becoming luxury goods in the real estate industry.
Politicians tend to manage their agendas according to their mandates and green roofs are long-term investments whose return can’t be seen in a spreadsheet. So why would they prioritize green roofs when they could invest their efforts in other areas with more visibility and immediate returns? I believe the answer resides in civil society. Politicians are elected by citizens, who are increasingly informed, connected, and committed to environmental and urban causes. All over the world, movements of citizens concerned with improving their cities and their public spaces have been rising. These movements, and civil society in general can and must pressure their leaders to start thinking in the long-term and working for their neighborhoods, their cities, their planet. When we talk about politicians, we can also point out developers and construction professionals: if their clients are truly concerned about these issues, they will build and sell them green buildings.
The challenge is to raise awareness and get people involved. We now live in a time where citizens are gaining more and more power: information is increasingly accessible, processes are increasingly transparent. Citizens elect their politicians to represent them. If they feel misrepresented, they will charge for it.
A Jane’s Walk in Goiânia.
In Goiânia, Sobreurbana has been promoting Jane’s Walks since 2013: free community walks, based on Jane Jacobs’s ideas and aiming to bring people out to the streets to discover, observe, and discuss their city and their neighborhoods. Sobreurbana also produced Goiânia’s Urban Ecology Week, joining specialists, researchers, professionals, politicians, and citizens to share their knowledge on that subject. These activities aim to raise awareness about urban issues and to discuss possible solutions.
Also in Goiânia, a movement leaded by the construction industry organized public sessions to debate and ideate the future of the city in the long term. The purpose was to create a city development council composed of different actors in the civil society as a means to pressure politicians to make the right choices for the city. On the environmental panel, it was unanimous that green roofs are necessary in a future sustainable city.
We believe that these kinds of initiatives, promoted by different sectors of society, can play an important role in the establishment of public policies for green roofs.
Ulrike Grau has been involved in green roof design and the setup of plant trials in Spain, Puerto Rico and Mexico. She is currently working at the agricultural Chapingo University in Mexico.
My gut response is “Sure, in an ideal world, all public and private buildings would have a green roof.” While it is relatively easy to require a green roof in every new construction, things seem to be a bit more difficult for the thousands of already existing buildings. You’ve got the building up and running, have fulfilled all the legal requirements, so why spend extra money on something that mainly “only” benefits the environment?
I have been living in Mexico for 15 years and things have moved forward considerably over this period. In 1998, the first green roofs were installed on public buildings in Mexico City, on the initiative of the city government, later followed by urban public schools. As in most cities, the environmental regulations of Mexico City oblige all new constructions to compensate their impacts through a series of different programs and specific actions. Since 2012, these have focused more on green roofs and green walls as a means to guarantee green areas in new development projects. Also, fiscal incentives for green roofs range between 10 and 15 percent off property taxes.
Apart from the recognized environmental benefits of green roofs, the City takes advantage of other benefits: put a green roof on a school and you can use it for environmental education. Following this principle, over the last four years, the government of Mexico City has financed almost 35,000 m2 of green roofs on public schools and hospitals.
Though all these actions sound good, they still seem to be a drop in the ocean. Why doesn’t every single governmental building, school, and hospital feature a green roof yet?
It probably does not only boil down to the major money issue, but also to the fact that relatively few local green roof companies exist which are able to fulfill legal requirements for governmental contracts as well as having the capacity for managing bigger building sites. And even with established companies, sufficient supply of materials, such as plants, can be a limiting factor at times.
Especially with green roofs on public buildings, one possible way out of the dilemma springs to my mind. Promoting and financing green roofs should not only be up to the Secretary of Environment, for example. It should be a combined effort of several governmental entities such as the secretaries or departments of:
Finances — let it spend part of the city’s income on green roofs
Education — use green roofs as a source of environmental education for the youngest citizens and for further research
Health — implement green roofs on hospitals and as a general means of reducing stress levels induced by living in an ocean of concrete
Economic Development — support the creation of new green roof companies
Social Development — lead the way by turning green roofs into recreation centers, food production units, and locations of social cohesion
Rural Development — show rural communities a way to a new source of income such as producing green roof plants
Housing and Urban Development — implement policies to include green roofs in every urban development
…and—why not?— even the…
Secretary of Tourism — be the first one to offer green roof tours.
While most of these ideas are directed towards a general support of green roofs and the strengthening of the corresponding industry, those secretaries could also be politely obliged to “sacrifice” a percentage of their budget on the actual implementation of green roofs. Or is this being too optimistic?
The biggest challenge, and possibly the most difficult to overcome, is cost. Green roofs cost at least twice as much as a conventional roof and the benefits are dispersed over multiple factors—private and public, energy and habitat, air quality and social/psychological well-being. This makes it harder to figure out who should pay for a green roof, particularly for public entities. Getting green roofs on public buildings also requires industry and municipal staff training, as well as the alignment of the planning and building codes, which can be obstacles to green roof implementation. How successfully green roofs are adopted can be indicative of a city’s overall ability to implement environmental initiatives, as their benefits cross departmental jurisdictions and thus require economic, socio-political, and ideological buy-in by different departments in the city.
For example, the City of Toronto initially paid for their Eco-roof incentive program using money from Toronto Water (for the stormwater mitigation benefits of green roofs), but the incentive program did not initially cover nearly enough of the cost at $10/square metre ($1/square foot) to encourage green roof implementation. Though in 2007, costs increased to $50/square metre/ ($5 square foot) and up to $100,000 per project, the real green roof shift came from City’s 2010 legislation, which required all new developments over 2,000 square metres (21527.82 square feet) to install a green roof. This required a graduated coverage ranging between 20-60 percent of available roof space for institutional, commercial, and residential buildings. It should be noted that this legislation also required a provincial legislation that allowed the City of Toronto to require and govern a more stringent green building code than required by the province. Similarly, while Chicago also had a green roof incentive program, it was their Green Matrix that placed Chicago as the national leader in the US for multiple years in a row. The Green Matrix requires projects receiving public money and/or building in certain areas of the city (such as the Loop) to choose a green building option, one of which is a green roof.
There are two lessons to be learned here. (1) Though incentive programs encourage early adopters and some green roof traction (especially among residential projects), there is some indication that these developers would have put a green roof up anyway, as it encourages their brand or reflects their beliefs. This is happening in New York City, where high-end condos are using decks and green roofs as amenity spaces for residents, regardless of municipal legislation. Requirements, code, and limited choices to encourage ‘greener’ building options seem to be the most effective methods for encouraging green roof legislation where there isn’t a market to encourage green roofs. (2) There may be legislative changes that are needed in order to require green roofs, and this can necessitate state and municipal coordination.
Would green roofs on all public and/or private buildings be a good idea? In cities with serious stormwater or urban heat island issues, possibly, but they need to be integrated as part of a larger plan and a broader discourse on resilience in the face of climate change, with green roofs being part of ecosystem services.
The other area where I see green roofs being pushed is in the health and design industry. Biophilic design is increasing in popularity and explicitly mentions visual or physical access to nature, including green roofs as an option to achieve this access in densely built urban environments. Healthy buildings are also increasingly looking at adding greenspace for their tenants based on research that shows that looking at a green roof can improve concentration and calmness and can contribute to well-being. For example, the new WELL Building Standard has green roofs as one of their biophilic design optimization strategies.
Thinking of green roofs as providing more than just stormwater and urban heat island benefits will engage the public and make green roofs more popular. To paraphrase the former Mayor Daley of Chicago, ‘people need to see that you’re doing something’ and green roofs, with their symbolism of progressive design and environmentalism, might be the mascot many cities need.
Amosh Neupane is a 19 year old climate activist is a sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont. He's worked with Global Kids for the past three years, and is an alumnus of Global Kids’ Human Rights Activist Project and the Greening Western Queens Internship program.
We live in a city, New York, that is over 190,000 acres, yet only 19 percent of this is green space. One solution to this issue is the installation of green roofs on all of New York City’s public schools. I (Amosh) first learned about “green roofs” when I was an intern for Global Kids, Inc. and the Horticultural Society of New York‘s collaboration on the North Star Fund’s “Greening Western Queens” summer program. During the course of the internship, we sat in on classes on green roofs, visited several of them, attended information sessions, brainstormed ideas on how to make one, and walked around neighborhoods to collect signatures for petitions all through the summer.
One of the biggest obstacles to building green roofs on public schools is the cost of the work. Constructing a green roof can range from ten to thirty $US per square foot. The structure of a green roof includes insulation on the roof, a waterproof membrane, a drainage layer, and a layer of light soil. In addition to these fees, there is also the issue of hiring an engineer or architect. Logistical issues can arise in the building process. Before starting construction, the original roof must be in good condition. If it is not, then there must be repairs. There is also an annual cost in maintenance that can vary depending on the size of the building and its accessibility.
Amosh Neupane with GK Leader Maxine Nash and GK Trainers Angela Marshall and Devon Mercurius, November2013
Cost issues often deter public schools from even considering the idea of a green roof. However, there are ways to build green roofs at lower costs with minimal maintenance—this is what we aimed to do (and did!) at Global Kids back in 2013. Our goal was to convince the NYC Department of Education to build a simple green roof on one public school in each of New York’s five boroughs. We wanted to do this at schools and in neighborhoods that desperately needed green spaces. My supervisor designated my school, William Cullen Bryant High School, in Queens, as a school that was in dire need of a green roof.
William Cullen Bryant High School is located in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. With two major power plants in operation in the vicinity and many industrial complexes running in Woodside, Astoria, and Long Island City, Bryant lies in one of New York City’s most environmentally challenged neighborhoods. The majority of students attending Bryant are immigrant or first-generation Americans and living in low-income communities of color. In the Global Kids’ Leadership Program at my school, I learned the importance of empowering youth to create social change. Kids attending schools such as Bryant often faced injustices perpetuated by socioeconomic factors. Our schools aren’t as robust as the ones in more privileged neighborhoods. There are dismally low numbers of healthy, fresh food markets and restaurants in the area. Often, students and families from these communities are unaware of the importance of a pollution-free environment, green spaces, and fresh food for their minds and bodies. If people are not educated about the effects of climate change and pollution, they often don’t advocate for things such as green roofs on schools because they don’t realize their significance. Through our green roofs campaign, Global Kids students wanted to alleviate some of the environmental issues in underserved neighborhoods.
A Global Kids Leader at William Cullen Bryant High School tending the green roof garden, May 2015.
The importance of green roofs cannot be understated. They reduce carbon emissions by cooling the building. Green roofs also cool the surrounding air, decreasing heat island effect. In addition to helping overall temperature and gas emissions, green roofs can also protect our water supply. Green roofs absorb excess stormwater, stopping it from flooding our streets and backing up our sewers. By putting green roofs on every public school, we would ensure that every neighborhood in New York City would have its environment improved. If we limit the amount of green roofs to only commercial buildings, we would only see improvement in the environment in select neighborhoods in New York. These green roofs can also act as science classrooms for students. With their new climate knowledge, future generations of students will advocate for better environments for their communities.
By 2013, after two years of work, we made several remarkable accomplishments. After several months of successful campaigning, Bryant High School had a green roof. To reduce costs, we decided to use simple planters rather than put soil on the entire roof. We planted basil, thyme, tomatoes, lavender, and mint, among many other herbs and vegetables. Even though we hadn’t managed to reach our campaign goal of building a green roof in one public school in all five NYC boroughs, we had managed to get a green roof for one school in a heavily environmentally burdened neighborhood. Another of our vital achievements was influencing the Department of Education’s Office of Sustainability to publish the “Guide to Green Roofs on Existing School Buildings,” a handbook on how to retrofit public school buildings with green roofs. We also led a community discussion on sustainability and climate resilience.
Today, the green roof at William Cullen Bryant High School is tended to and managed by the students participating in the Global Kids program—there is no need for outside maintenance, eliminating a huge potential cost. A year ago, the school set up a farm-stand and the proceeds of the sales were used to aid victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. The site also serves as an education space for certain science classes. Tehmeena Khan, a rising junior at Bryant, says:
“The green roof is an ideal place for me to wind down, contemplate things I’ve learned at school, hang with my friends, and just indulge in some gardening. I like the escape it provides from the stressful academics of the school, despite its location within the school walls.”
Kate Scherer is a 15 years old junior at the Notre Dame School of Manhattan. Kate has been with Global Kids since 2014 and has been working as a youth activist since, especially on climate education.
Matt Palmer is a senior lecturer in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. His research interests are primarily in plant community ecology, with emphases on conservation, restoration and ecosystem function.
Infrastructure is expensive and retrofitting older buildings with new technologies takes time, money, and a tolerance for risk. In many regions, green roofs are new enough technologies that the cost and benefit calculations are not robust. Few cities have green roofs with extensive monitoring data, so many questions remain about how well green roofs perform their stated benefits—especially when considering how these benefits may vary over time. Given this, it is understandable that many municipal governments have been slow to adopt green roofs for public buildings or to require them of private building owners.
The range of possible green roof designs is extensive—there are choices on drainage materials, the depth and composition of the growing media, and the composition and maintenance of vegetation, to name only three axes of variation. While having choices is great, there are also tradeoffs involving costs and benefits. For example, a thicker layer of growing media will capture more stormwater and support a greater biomass and diversity of plants, but adding thickness increases both installation costs and the wet weight, thus increasing the structural load. Choosing the right design will vary from building to building based on engineering and financial issues and on the desired kinds of human interaction (e.g., visibility from surrounding buildings, passive recreation, educational use). Some designs will succeed on one building but not others, and some designs may succeed in one city but not in others. While it is exciting that design choices abound, the work of comparing them—especially across cities and through time—has only just begun.
Some of the benefits of green roofs can be realized at lower cost with other technologies. Many of the energy benefits to individual building owners can be achieved more cheaply through better insulation and HVAC upgrades. Stormwater can be captured and stored more cheaply at ground level with bioswales, basins, and storage tanks. Green roofs could offer benefits that these other technologies cannot—extensive greening in densely built neighborhoods with potential neighborhood aesthetic and cooling benefits—but these benefits are hard to value quantitatively. Though green roofs are sometime touted for their ability to filter stormwater, they increase runoff nutrient concentrations in many cases, making them far worse for water quality improvement than other types of green infrastructure.
Some of these limitations to green roofs can be overcome with innovative design and associated research on green roof performance. With regards to vegetation design, there are exciting advances in trialing a greater range of plant species such as a recent program at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Much of this work is horticultural in nature, focused on survival, growth, and aesthetic appeal. It will take the next step of translating these findings to ecosystem functions, such as potential for stormwater capture, cooling, and effects on nutrient and pollutant capture, to be able to evaluate how plant choices might affect the overall benefits of a particular design.
Since green roofs are dynamic, living systems, it is also important to study how plant and soil communities change over time. Many building owners will have limited resources for green roof maintenance, especially over the long term. Without regular care, some plants will die out while others will spread, including “weeds” that will arrive and establish on their own. Since green roofs are usually built with expectations of a long life, it is critically important how the living components of a roof will change as the roof ages. These successional dynamics will be affected by maintenance efforts and will influence the value provided by green roofs.
So, what would it take to greatly increase the number of green roofs? Convincing evidence of the benefits, realistic comparison of the costs in comparison to other technologies, and a solid sense of the long-term return on investment. There are many aspects of these cost-benefit relationships that are hard to quantify, but there are research groups around the world contributing to our collective knowledge. Whether building all these roofs would be a good idea depends very much on what we all find.
Why don’t all public or large private buildings have green roofs?
In Calgary, Canada, we have been slower to adopt green roofs than we ought to be despite being the first municipality in Canada to implement the requirement of a LEED Silver (now LEED Gold) certification for all new municipal buildings and major renovations. This early adoption brought tremendous awareness of and action in the building design and construction sector to lessen environmental harms and attain targeted levels of sustainability, which, in turn, led to the development of New Best Management Practices for buildings.
However, a lack of understanding of the performance of green roofs and how they contribute to LEED certification has led to green roofs being overlooked not only for public buildings but many other building projects. This has resulted in fewer uptakes in favour of other competing technologies (reflective roofing, solar panels, etc.). There is also concern that LEED may not adequately value or reward green roofs.
The capital costs of green roofs are higher compared to other alternatives and the business case for their use is poorly understood; hence, they are often thought of as a luxury feature. For instance, while working in Edmonton, I became aware of concerns expressed by their Mayor for the expense associated with green roof technologies for publically funded projects. Efforts were made by the design team and administration to demonstrate the value to the project and the green roofs were retained.
Many of the same reasons that green roofs are not incorporated on all public buildings also impede their uptake on large private buildings: higher first costs, lack of full understanding of the multiple benefits, competing technologies, aesthetic preferences, etc.
On many large projects, particularly mixed-use commercial developments with residential towers, the local planning department promotes the inclusion of green roofs. These green roof projects are typically developed as intensive rooftop gardens for open space amenities.
It is my experience that green roofs are included in either public projects or large private buildings only when there is a champion of the technology amongst the stakeholders or when the planning department makes them a requirement.
Is this a good idea?
An increase in green roof implementation would be beneficial to my region. While we have an excellent stormwater management system overall, our region is subject to sudden, intense rain and hailstorms. This can overwhelm the catchment systems and causing flash floods, particularly in established neighbourhoods.
Hail damage to buildings, including to roof waterproofing, is on the rise, which has resulted in some very large insurance claims, making the protective covering of a green roof a wise choice for building owners.
As one of North America’s sprawling municipalities, Calgary is actively promoting “Smart Growth” to encourage higher density development. Accommodating multiple functions on site, including places for people, and providing habitat and ecosystem services, all while making density more attractive, would be a definite win-win.
With our new Biodiversity Action Plan, there are opportunities to look at rooftops as sites to compensate for habitat loss and enhance the ecological network in the city.
Whether public or private, green roofs on large-scale developments are an excellent idea, as they would profit from greater economies of scale, create positive environmental impacts in the city, receive higher visibility, and encourage more organizations and individuals to incorporate green roofs.
What would it take to make it happen and to make it worthwhile?
As a first step, our municipality could expedite the approvals process by making it easier and more streamlined, particularly for owners who voluntarily integrate green roofs. Other incentives that we should consider include a renewal of the density bonus, reductions for stormwater fees, or tax breaks to motivate project teams eager to incorporate green roofs.
Broad education and training is needed at the local level to more fully understand the business case for green roofs in our region and to and convince design teams and municipal leadership that the initial capital outlay is worthwhile. Closing the gap between research and practice will further facilitate appropriate local solutions, improve success and help lower the upfront costs.
It is also important to shift our appreciation for new forms of urban landscapes and aesthetics. In many areas of the country, it is understood that vegetation goes dormant in the heat of the summer; however, we remain infatuated with the mowed, green lawn despite our low level of precipitation (399mm/yr). Recognizing the potential for more frequent droughts in our future, we need designs that incorporate water-wise strategies and better ecologically performing vegetative practices.
I prefer to answer the question with particular reference to current conditions in Tehran. Loss of green urban areas during the last century and high rise construction has meant that vertical green technology is now the most effective way to implement greening in Tehran.
One group of people assigns the built and natural to distinct realms. Others make efforts to achieve significant integration between built and natural realms, including using green roofs.
But why vertical? Aren’t there other choices? And while we don’t take advantage of green spaces on lands correctly, why do we need to implement vertical green spaces that consume more time and money? Don’t forget, the design and construction of vertical vegetated systems requires sufficient skill, room for experimentation, and, finally, appropriate and adaptable technology.
Despite these arguments, there are many benefits of vertical greenery right now in the middle of polluted and crowded cities such as Tehran. The main reasons for utilizing vertical greenery are:
Shortage of unoccupied lands for urban greening in most metropolitan areas
High-rise construction and the growth rate of overall of grey surfaces where flat green spaces can’t develop more
More benefits through utilizing vertical green skins rather than ordinary green spaces
The possibility of making an integrated green space network by greening each building and attaching separated parks and green spaces to them
Recently, rules about green roofing in large cities have been approved. They include incentive programs, i.e. the ability to increase building density on top of public and governmental buildings if a green roof or roof garden is installed. Also the Headquarter of Vertical Green Space Development, a governmental organization in Iran, has begun work in the “Tehran organization of green spaces and parks”. Some municipal branches and “Park and green space organization” headquarters now have a green roof, or their facades became green during recent years, although the quality is questionable!
The main barriers to future development are created by the lack of understanding of the benefits of green skins among people and environment-construction managers. Knowledge, acquired through education and exposure to existing technologies, is critical. Still, in some schools of thought in architecture and construction, vertical greenery is viewed by professors and tutors as merely decorative! Still, encouraging change is beginning.
In addition, vertical vegetation systems are typically very expensive, very slow to mature, or both. Therefore, when vertical vegetation projects are considered, it is important to be able to make informative design decisions at an early stage.
In Tehran, the acceptable exemplars meeting minimum of standards are limited. A semi-arid region is not a heaven for green roofers but choosing plants intelligently, using suitable layering systems, and finding an appropriate irrigation system are the mysterious components of successful green roofs that normally are not specified in most exemplars! Certainly, ecological and environmental benefits of a green skin are the last or forgotten element here!
The worst trend underway in vertical greenery in Iran is limiting ourselves to an ornamental view—an orchard on a rooftop! From the current point of view, decorative beauty and large spaces are more important than other benefits. There is a necessity to shift opinions from this misguided, ornamental view of ground-level greenery on green roofs. The dominance of hard landscape over soft landscapes is another problem for inexperienced green roofers and designers.
We require educational and learning programs. The change must be happen in two main portions:
Shifting traditional view points about vertical greenery.
Adapting laws, codes, regulations, and incentives in the works and designs of law makers, designers, and contractors.
At least, educators must start to introduce vertical greenery in university classes and all architecture, landscape architecture, and environmental design students must take courses in this field. Definitely, the future of architecture and construction will be ecological; that’s not a preference or prediction, but a fact!
This is why most public and private buildings in Tehran have no green roofs yet. Planning for green roofs and living walls are important components of green development in urban planning alongside guiding suitable policy and providing standards and supportive regulations. With sufficient awareness, we can improve and develop vertical greenery in Tehran and throughout urban areas of Iran. We need to go towards such a green infrastructure framework for Tehran, bolstered by research and experiments.
Public and large buildings do not host green roofs in their totality mainly due to a lack of appreciation and steadfast support—as a consequence, we are without the full power enlightenment can harness. Governments, business leaders, and communities alike need intense and constant education regarding green roofs and all the advantages these bring to the built environment, let alone our wellbeing. But is it enough with our current approach?
Living roofs and urban greening as a whole have definite roles to play in our cities, unifying and grounding us in the nature within our immediate surroundings. Advantages such as maximising food production, supporting life forms, and lessening our environmental impact are well documented arguments in favour of green roofs. As a Digital Art Director and Garden Designer, I feel my case is best put forward by touching on the design considerations of our daily experience within our cities—taking into account the end-to-end experience of our interactions and how these affect each person and our culture as a whole.
As we observe relationships with the built environment, it soon becomes evident that there is much frustration and stress caused by the everyday demands a modern city bestows on us. From the daily commute to the concrete jungle, there is little opportunity for pause and taking respite—essential ingredients in continuing with renewed energy whilst keeping healthy, connected, and centred. Modern cities as we know them today date back to a mere 250 years or so—it is no wonder, then, that we are not fully equipped for the demands these complex hubs expect from us, should we compare them with the millennia of earth’s evolution. Genetically, we still belong to seas and rolling hills, so ensuring our cities equip us with a balanced environment is not only advisable but essential.
Green roofs provide specific solutions to challenge the disconnectedness brought on by modern lifestyles. As focal points, they soften the visual landscape, allowing our eyes to rest whilst positively influencing mood through colour, sound, and texture. By supporting and improving fauna, green roofs retain our connection to nature, providing grounding and a sense of belonging. A lessened dependancy on regulating temperatures helps curb artificial environments, improving health and natural resilience while maintaining a closer-to-optimum environment for indoor plants to thrive—‘bringing the outdoors in’ and purifying air in a more natural manner. If green roofs can interact with added immersion in a natural environment, they bring a welcome opportunity to closely appreciate flora and fauna, encouraging the curiosity and observation that are essential to creativity and ‘out of the box’ thinking—key assets for professionals in all walks of life.
At present, we are heavily dependent on government support for social awareness and laws regarding green roofs. If we are to make the most of these unique offerings, we should strenghten existing research in Applied Service Design: mapping the lifecycle of a green roof with its key interactions as well as observing how the value in these interactions is directly brought into workplaces, homes, and our other social structures. This approach will reinforce our existing research and back up the scientific advantages with people-centric profitability, effectively influencing business and government interests by bringing swifter takeup via a profit-led understanding and, therefore, committed buy in.
There is still so much that can be done to maximise the understanding and appreciation of green roofs and why they are essential to any serious and forward-thinking community. I believe Service Design thinking can improve the effectiveness of the green roof message and ensure this most deserved cause harnesses the attention it deserves.
Why green roofs in hot climates are missing and why we need them there more than anywhere.
PREAMBLE Green roofs in temperate climates are too easy. They have been developed and adopted in the temperate and cool-temperate climates of Europe and North America. Although these regions can get extreme weather, they generally do not experience climatic extremes of high temperatures, prolonged drought, or intense rainfall events in the same way as tropical and subtropical regions. This presents challenges for hot climate green roof design to not only provide adequate growing conditions for plants, but also to improve roof performance with respect to all the intrinsic (e.g. cooling building, extension of roof membrane lifetime) and extrinsic (e.g. flash flood mitigation, reduction of heat island effect) benefits we expect. I suggest that the components of conventional green roofs, including plant palette and growing media composition and components, need to be modified. Here I identify the following barriers:
PLANT SELECTION First, we need to get away from traditional temperate plant palettes: plants adapted to thin, well-drained environments. High daytime and (as importantly) nighttime heat loads, drought, and floods mean a switch away from plant guilds with a narrow niche (e.g. most sedums) to those with a broader ecological breadth. Plants must be able to survive long-term saturation for weeks, as well as weeks or months of drought and seasonal or year-long heat.
WATER RETENTION AND PLANT AVAILABILITY Paradoxically, green roof design has been driven by the need for the conflicting goals of good stormwater retention and adequate drainage (both in the media and immediately above the roof membrane), while at the same time leaving sufficient available water in the growing media for plant uptake. These benefits are even more desirable in a hot climate to optimize retention of stormwater— prolonging its availability for plant use—and to be able to dry-prime media to accept the next rain event. Plant transpiration abilities and root morphology can be exploited to help this, but the conventional ‘sandwich’ design of media over root barrier over retention layer may actually interfere with this performance benefit.
HEAT It isn’t necessarily high leaf temperature that limits growth in the hot-climate green-roof environment. Most vascular plant roots have a much narrower temperature envelope of performance in comparison to aboveground stems and leaves. Although it is species-specific, generally the operational temperature range of root physiological processes is from 4°C to 30°C. Above that upper temperature limit, respiration and other root processes decline rapidly and certain processes, particularly the synthesis of secondary materials, slow down until temperatures climb above 48°C, where such processes stop functioning altogether. Conventional green roof media has a high fraction of expanded mineral component (clay, shale) and this can have high specific heat capacity and high conductivity; together with large pore space between particles, this allows for air movement, meaning that heat can travel vertically through the media to depth—remember that, on a hot day, media surface temperatures can exceed 70°C. On an extensive roof, this means reduction of effective root volume and reduced nighttime cooling.
CONCLUSION The characteristics of green roof water retention, plant water availability, plant selection, and thermal properties are all critical factors which need to be adapted to help address the harsher environmental conditions and performance demands of hot climates. If these problems can be overcome—and current research is showing that they can—then the combined environmental, ecological, and sociological benefits suggest green roofs could be an imperative technology for towns and cities in tropical and subtropical regions of the world.
Kevin is a plant biologist, lawyer and acute aortic dissection survivor. His tropical and coastal green roof designs include installations in Main Street Disney, Orlando, Florida, on the island of Bermuda and on historic structures.
Today, many native wildlife and plant species struggle to compete with exotic, invasive horticultural and anthropogenically related non-native species for survival. Aggressive species with no natural predators are, in many areas, replacing native plants and animals at an alarming rate. Although change across our planet has always occurred, today’s rate of pre-Columbian ecosystem change has accelerated to the point where mass extinctions may soon be unavoidable.
Species extinction issues involve great risks to humans, including loss of potential medicines, of important economic resources, of longstanding traditions, and more. Unfortunately, invasive species colonization and native displacement is hard to control across most urbanscapes—except, perhaps, on green roofs.
We may never fully win the battle of preserving all pre-Columbian ecosystem component species. Over time, humankind will continue to lose critically important species to monocultures of aggressive plants and swarms of unnatural predator species, most brought on by our own anthropogenic activities.
Noxious species roots and seeds will cover the landscape, transported by roads, stormwater ditches, and urban runoff. Native flower blooms may be relegated to specimens in a museum or photos in a library book.
Yet green roofs, be they on a shed, garage, house, commercial building, apartment complex, or bus stop can truly make the difference between death and survival for many of our native plants and wildlife. With the health of the human species so closely related to successful functioning of those ecosystems around us, ensuring native plant and animal survival benefits humankind.
Yes, there are many sustainability-oriented reasons to require green roofs on new buildings, from urban heat island effect reduction to cleaning and attenuating stormwater to sequestering carbon. I suggest, too, that many of our native species, both plants and animals, may find last corners of uninvaded habitat on our city rooftops.
While ground-level landscapes can quickly fall prey to invasion of nuisance plant monocultures, green roofs have boundaries. Yes, maintenance on a green roof may be just as cost- and labor-intensive as ground-level exotic plant control. Green roofs, however have, clearly defined borders, usually free of an unrelenting and uncontrolled neighboring invasive grass, shrub, or tree patch.
Many threatened native plants thrive on green roofs. Case studies across the world have highlighted endangered plant colony survival successes in green and brown rooftop habitat.
Importantly, imperiled wildlife will seek out green roofs. We have seen the progression after installation of vegetated roofs of the arrival of smaller creatures: lizards, anoles, tree frogs, insects and dragonflies, butterflies and moths, each establishing its community throughout native vegetation on green roofs.
Here in Florida, as the first generation of smaller wildlife species became established on green roofs, additional populations of larger birds and reptiles begin to appear. Snakes soon forage through green roof plants for lizards and frogs, maintaining population control.
Following snakes come birds of prey tracking snakes, smaller birds, squirrels, and other green roof species.
Owls, red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, swallow-tail kites, osprey, and a pair of eagles regularly visit our green roofs, choosing perches in nearby trees and often taking the opportunity to feed on a ground mouse running through the neighborhood streets and yards below.
Green roofs are important wildlife sanctuaries in the concrete jungle, especially for those species endangered because of habitat loss. Green roofs should be considered necessary infrastructure—required for all new development for many reasons, but especially as a conservation measure, providing habitat for threatened and endangered species.
It may well be that future generations’ archaeological and paleontological expeditions will find that many pre-Columbian plant and animal species made their last stand atop our urban core rooftops.
Christine Thuring is a plant ecologist who integrates her love of life into creative collaborations and educational dialogues. While her expertise is expressed particularly in the built environment (green roofs, living walls, habitat gardens), she is passionately practical and enjoys restoring peatlands, mentoring students, leading interpretive walks, and advocating sustainable and healthy lifestyles.
This question reminds me of the early days of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the US Green Building Council’s credit-based approach to sustainable buildings. It was predicted that LEED would succeed in widespread implementation because the US government was its biggest investor. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense. By investing in green building technology through implementation, the government would save tax dollars through improved energy efficiency of public buildings. More importantly, this would also help establish the market for all the bits and pieces required for this system of sustainable architecture to flourish, from carpets and windows to methods and process.
Turning to green roofs, I think it’s safe to say that the reason these systems are found on some—but not ALL—public (or large private) buildings around the world is because only some, but not ALL, civic leaders and building owners are fully aware of all the benefits green roofs impart. Any city with considerable green roof coverage has probably had at least one ‘green roof champion’ on (or within the fringe) of its council. Someone with sufficient interest and time to recognize that green roofs offer numerous benefits and are economical because of everything they can do.
Installing green roofs on all large buildings is always a good idea, I reckon. Benefits such as thermal efficiency, reduced material waste (e.g., extended lifespan of waterproofing), mitigation of stormwater, improvement of air quality, and habitat creation are just the tip of the iceberg.
To make this happen, my sense is that before anything else, you need that champion. Someone who understands green roofs’ potential and who has the skills to develop and maintain a program that will facilitate their implementation. (I look forward to the contributions from the green roof champions who are part of this panel!)
For such a program to be worthwhile, a future-oriented approach with a committed ecological vision is crucial. The reason for this emphasis is to offset the simple customer transaction kindly provided by the commercial green roof industry. While this arrangement makes coverage easy to achieve, it also leads to green roof installations that could be anywhere in the world, expressing little of each bioregion’s unique ecology. Sedum-dominated green roofs emerged from ecological design processes in 1970s Europe, and they are superb for that bioregion. The sedum roof is a trimmed down ‘basic common denominator’ resulting from decades of competitive innovation, however, and is lacking in contemporary ecological rationale (e.g., Decade on Biodiversity).
In other parts of the world, then, a future-oriented approach with committed ecological vision for widespread green roof implementation could mean ensuring that regional opportunities, such as the needs of migrating species, are considered. Off-the-shelf systems may be suitable, and sedums are fantastically resilient, but the opportunities that a new, large-scale vegetated roofscape could offer invertebrates, birds, and ecological processes must not be neglected. Trans-disciplinary conversations involving ecologists with green roof and other experts, within a framework of the region’s specified goals (e.g., biodiversity action plans), will also help to make widespread green roof implementation worthwhile for this and future generations, both for human and other forms of life!
This election season, Prickly Lettuce, Horseweed, and Tree-of-heaven invite you to show up, vote, and to envision a new era of multispecies politics and democracy.
The notion of giving voice to more-than-human communities has long been of interest to artists, activists, and change-makers worldwide. Though still emerging, movements like the rights of nature have increasingly advocated for granting natural entities—rivers, forests, ecosystems—legal standing, akin to the rights given to people or corporations. Over the past several decades, several examples have emerged ranging from New Zealand’s recognition of the Whanganui River as a legal entity (2017), the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in Ohio (2019), Ecuador’s enshrining nature’s rights in its Constitution (2008), and Colombia’s Constitutional Court recognizing the Atrato River among others.
Yet, when it comes to giving nature political representation, there remain few examples where more-than-human communities are granted a direct vote or significant role in decision-making—despite their deep entanglement with human activities and policies. The limited examples we do have mostly come from contemporary art and the humanities, offering a thought-provoking and speculative look at what decision-making might look like if more-than-human stakeholders were given a legitimate voice and how they may actually influence policy. Consider, for example, The Party of Others by Terike Haapoja (2011), which uses immersive visual projections to propose a speculative interspecies party platform in Helsinki, Finland, advocating for the inclusion of non-human beings in local governance. Similarly, Future Assembly (2021) by Olafur Eliasson and Studio Other Spaces, presented at the Venice Biennale, envisions a future where non-human entities are granted agency in global decision-making, symbolized by a circular assembly space with objects representing non-human life forms. La voix des glaces (2019) by Robin Servant captures the haunting sounds of melting glaciers, using field recordings to translate their movement and eerie soundscapes into an auditory experience that highlights their fragility in the face of climate change.
Central to these works and the broader discourse of giving voice to nature, is the critical need to examine the ethics of translation. As Eben Kirskey (2014) describes in the Multispecies Salon, speaking on behalf and representing what nature “needs” or “says” can be easily reified as a form of ventriloquism that runs the risk of exploiting or anthropomorphizing more-than-human actors. To approach this thoughtfully, we need not only a radical commitment to deep listening but also a critical awareness of how we frame more-than-human organisms as “other”, and how political and economic systems shape our interactions with ecosystems and the species they support.
As we approach the 2024 U.S. presidential election in November, the idea of how nature is represented in our electoral process is fresh in my mind. This November is also a critical inflection point, particularly as a member of the Environmental Performance Agency, an artist collective founded in 2017 in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (EPA was co-founded by members Andrea Haenggi, Catherine Grau, Ellie Irons, Christopher Kennedy, and spontaneous urban plants).
In 2017, outraged by the appointments of Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler—both well-known fossil fuel lobbyists—we organized creative actions and artworks inspired by the resilience of urban plants, particularly species we often dismiss as weeds or invasive. As some of the most common vegetation encountered in urban areas, we felt a strong kinship with these resilient plants, not only for their ability to thrive in harsh environments but also for the essential ecological functions, habitats, and cultural services they provide to both human and more-than-human communities. Using this as both a lens and platform for artistic, social, and embodied practices, we advocate for the agency of all living performers co-creating our environment, specifically through the lens of spontaneous urban plants, native or migrant.
This year marks the 2nd presidential cycle where the resurgence of Trumpism looms. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency faces renewed threats, we look again to our resilient “weedy” plant allies for inspiration and guidance. In many ways, they offer a chance to reflect on the far-reaching consequences of political decisions, especially those made at the polls, which impact not just human communities, but all life on Earth. To foster this reflection, EPA agents Haenggi, Grau, and Irons developed a series of “scores”—invitations for deep listening and cultivating kinship with urban plants we affectionately describe as plant “specialists”. These plants have a remarkable ability to adapt and respond to human activities, making them valuable models for resilience in the Anthropocene. By engaging with their unique wisdom, the EPA hopes to offer a new perspective on how their adaptability can inspire decision-making in this era of ecological crisis.
Consider for example Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriola), the EPA’s Lead Program Analyst. Also known as the compass plant or opium lettuce, Lactuca serriola is an annual or biennial plant related to dandelions and known for sedative effects and used by ancient Egyptians as an aphrodisiac with pain-relieving effects ascribed to lactucarium, contained in milky white sap in stems and leaves. The leaves have a row of delicate spines along the mid-vein of the lower surface and are ingeniously held vertically in a north-south plane, perpendicular to direct sunlight. Prickly lettuce invites you to be scratchy―to reframe potential frictions as opportunities for new directions even if they push against the status quo.
VOTE SCRATCHY
DEMOCRACY DIVERSIFICATION
Experiencing election apathy?
Pause.
Consult a plant.
Consultant: Prickly Lettuce
Visit prickly lettuce in the street.
Greet the compass plant.
Align your hand with one leaf, then with another.
Wait for the sun to shift.
Tolerate the friction. Stay in community.
Ask yourself: What if plants led the way?
EPA Voter Support Poster, 2024 – Prickly Lettuce
Next, the EPA invites you to commune with Horseweed (Erigeron canadensis), whom we’ve dubbed the EPA’s Herbicide Branch Chief. This resilient annual plant, native to much of North and Central America, grows as a tall, upright stalk encircled by leaves. Horseweed has adapted remarkably well to monoculture farming and holds the distinction of being the first species to develop resistance to glyphosate, a common herbicide. Historically, it has also been used medicinally to treat ailments ranging from diarrhea to headaches and earaches. Horseweed encourages you to stand tall, be bold, and reflect on the power of resistance. It prompts you to think about how you can best spread your ideas, seeds of change, within your community and beyond.
VOTE BOLD
DEMOCRACY REVITALIZATION
Experiencing election dissonance?
Pause.
Consult a plant.
Consultant: Horseweed
Visit horseweed in the street.
Greet the emergency plant, an herbicide resistor.
Align your body with the plant’s uprightness.
Get grounded, build your resistance.
Let authenticity spread like seeds.
Ask yourself: How do new democracies germinate?
EPA Voter Support Poster, 2024 – Horseweed
Finally, consider the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), the EPA Air Pollution Investigator. Originally brought from East Asia via Europe for both botanical and commercial purposes, it was once planted widely as a street tree due to its remarkable adaptability to polluted urban environments, but now widely considered an invasive pest. Despite its fast growth and short lifespan, the Tree of Heaven can reproduce vegetatively, extending its life and even fracturing concrete and other impermeable surfaces, aiding in stormwater drainage. It’s also culturally significant, lending its name to the classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The Tree of Heaven invites us to be persistent, to disrupt toxic systems with actions that can break through and create space for renewal.
VOTE PERSISTENT
DEMOCRACY DETOXIFICATION
Experiencing election dismay?
Pause.
Consult a plant.
Consultant: Tree-of-Heaven
Visit tree-of-heaven in the street.
Greet the pavement disruptor.
Align your head with the trunk, looking to the sky.
Test out the unexpected places.
Be fast. Organize. Send out runners.
Ask yourself: How do toxic systems crumble?
EPA Voter Support Poster, 2024 – Tree of Heaven
While it is unlikely that you will see weedy plants like Horseweed or Prickly Lettuce on your local ballot anytime soon, there is immense value in imagining how other species could be included in our political processes and governance. Our lives are deeply entangled with those of other species, forming a mutual interdependence that many believe is crucial for our survival. As you navigate an election season that feels at times like an emotional rollercoaster, I hope you can find a sense of hope and solace in knowing that these plants and other species hold space for us regardless of who we vote for—we rely on them, and in many ways, they rely on us. Let them serve as guides and reminders of our shared kinship, and perhaps an invitation to consider a new multispecies approach to governance that can foster a greater sense of connection in a time of immense uncertainty and change.
Despite laudable international initiatives for climate change mitigation and environmental preservation [i], major changes in Earth’s balances have been set in motion and we’re starting to experience their consequences: heat records; increased droughts; increased wildfire intensity and frequency; melting of landlocked ice; increased sea level and coastal storm damages; ocean acidification; climate change-based migration flows of human and animal/insect populations, along with pathogens and diseases—without considering the great loss in biodiversity, where one animal or vegetal species disappears every 20 minutes.
Habitat loss is the main cause of biodiversity loss, and a main cause of habitat loss is land use change due to urbanization and transport infrastructure.
Indeed, when the debate is focused on “energy efficiency” and “greentech”, we’ve almost forgotten one major threat for human survival: the survival of all the other inhabitants of our planet. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the extinction rate is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than during the 65 million (!) previous years. As a result, 26,000 (known) species disappear each year, and according to the Living Planet Index 2014 [ii], “population sizes of vertebrate species—mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish—have declined by 52 percent over the last 40 years”; that measure is up to 76 percent for freshwater species. According to the IUCN, the picture isn’t rosy for the near future: 25 percent of mammals, 13 percent of birds, and 41 percent of amphibians will disappear in this timeframe, adding to 37 percent of all known species by 2050.
Figure 1. The Global Living Planet Index is based on trends in 10,380 populations of 3,038 vertebrates (mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and fish species). The white line shows the index values and the shaded areas represent the 95 per cent confidence limits surrounding the trend. Image: WWF, ZSL, 2014
Why should you care, if you’re not an enthusiastic nature conservationist?
For three reasons at least:
Firstly, species—from bacteria and viruses to mammals, including humans—are part of the “web of life”, as Fritjof Capra [iii] writes it. “These are the living forms that constitute the fabric of the ecosystems which sustain life on Earth”, says Marco Lambertini, WWF’s International Managing Director.
See also this, on biomimicry as a key path forward.
Life is not the simple addition of all 10 million species: it is their intricate relationships, which form the fabric of ecosystems. On a vertical axis, the food chain—where, for example, ocean acidification is depleting plankton populations to the extent that the whole trophic chain, up to large aquatic mammals and fisheries—is endangered. On the food chain’s horizontal levels, the myriad collaborations that take place—starting in the soil, where thousands of species, such as mycelium and bacteria transform rock and digest dead organic matter, including human pollutants, into a rich earth—form a process that, over 700 or so years, creates 1 cm of soil. Yet, that creation can be destroyed in a few hours by deforestation or new built infrastructure.
On a global level, where all those interactions add to biochemical and geochemical cycles (such as the nitrogen, water, carbon, oxygen, and phosphorus cycles), they have historically maintained the delicate balance of Life. Therefore, biodiversity, from genes, to species, to ecosystems, is paramount to the presence of life on our planet, and to our own survival, notably through all the ecological services it provides [iv].
Despite our great effort to disconnect ourselves from the “web of life”—to the extent that we are investing billions into inventing artificial life-support systems for space exploration—we, human beings, continue to be inextricably tied to this web of life.
Secondly, because we human beings are the main threat to biodiversity and our environment, so, therefore, are we our main threat to our own survival.
Indeed, the primary explanation for biodiversity loss, according to the Living Planet Index, is the degradation, fragmentation, or loss of natural habitat (45 percent), followed by the over-exploitation of resources (37 percent) and climate change (7.1 percent only). Habitat loss is identified as a main threat to 85 percent of all species described on the IUCN’s Red List. Habitat loss is mostly caused by the expansion of agricultural land; intensive harvesting of timber wood for fuel and other forest products; and overgrazing. “Around half of the world’s original forests have disappeared, and they are still being removed at a rate 10x higher than any possible level of regrowth. As tropical forests contain at least half the Earth’s species, the clearance of some 17 million hectares each year is a dramatic loss”, says the Living Planet Report 2014.
But the second main cause for habitat loss is land use change due to urbanization and transport infrastructure. We’re generating a quantity of artificial soil as big as the area of Greece every year. In the European Union alone, such land use change represents 1,000 km2 each year, or 275 hectares per day [v], of artificial soil—the equivalent of Central Park in New York City, or the area of Hungary within one century. Alongside urbanization comes air (and also sound and light) pollution, accounting for 4 percent of biodiversity loss.
The Global Ecological Footprint [vi], published each year by the Global Footprint Network, is a very clear and understandable signal measuring our pressure on our planet’s resources and “biocapacity”: we are using more natural resources than our natural environment can provide, and we would need 1.5 Earths to fulfill our consumption needs (and up to 4 Earths if we all had the living standards of U.S. citizens).
Figure 2. Global ecological footprint evolution and Earth Overshoot Day forecasts. Image: Global Footprint Network (2016)
With the phenomenal growth of the world’s population, which has added 2 billion people since 1990 and is expected to add 4 billion more by 2100 (3 billion for Africa alone); with the growing concentration of this population in urban areas (from 30 percent of the global population in 1950 to 66 percent by 2050), especially in Africa; with the rise of new economies; and with developing countries seeking the average standards of living in the West, the pressure on our planet is not going to ease.
Figure 3. Countries by Real GDP Growth Rate (2017). Image: Kami888 – Own work; Used a blank map from here., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68753479
Experts believe we entered the Anthropocene epoch in the mid 20th century, and our planet is paying the price. As the climate experts from the IPCC noted in their 2007 synthetic report: “Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed, and human systems to adapt. (WGII 20.7, SPM). This description does not even name the biodiversity loss and nitrogen cycle threats that are identified by the Stockholm Resilience Center as the major Earth boundary overshoots, out of ten such factors.
Figure 4.The Planetary Boundaries. Image: Stockholm Resilience Centre (2009)
To put it more directly, we’re heading toward the wall at full speed, still wondering and discussing how we can slow down; we now have to prepare ourselves for damage (crash?) control, as well as resilience (survival?).
Thus, the third reason we should care about biodiversity is that it might be the solution to our problems. See my next post for details on how using biodiversity could help us achieve sustainability and resilience.
[iv] The United Nations Environment Programme made this very clear more than 10 years ago in its Millennium Assessment programme : supporting services (nutrient recycling, primary production, and soil formation), provisioning services (food, raw materials, minerals, water, energy, genetic, and medicinal resources), regulating services (climate regulation; carbon sequestration; waste decomposition and detoxification; purification of water and air; pest and disease control), and cultural services (recreational, therapeutic, educative, historical, spiritual).
The only way to succeed is when this is a truly global project—that is, where everyone is doing everything they can, individually and collectively, pressuring elected officials and policymakers to put us on a clean and sustainable energy pathway into the future.
As 2017 draws to a close in the U.S., we are still getting our lives back in order, reeling from the human and economic losses of the recent hurricane season. Experts estimate that hurricanes Irma and Harvey combined will cost more than the $160 billion in damage in comparison to Hurricane Katrina. In Puerto Rico, there is an ongoing environmental crisis with water contamination from sewers. This summer, similar disasters unfolded in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, where record levels of flooding caused massive destruction and loss of homes, killing more than 1,000 lives and the estimate is over 41,000 people are affected.
Hurricanes are part of the expected seasonal changes in many countries, and in fact, human populations everywhere have always risen to the annual test with courage and resilience, as documented in Steve Curry’s award-winning photography of the South Asian monsoon season in 1983. However, while hurricanes (or typhoons, or cyclones) will continue to take place, they will be more intense, and the potential damage and loss exacerbated.
Climate science is clear. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s findings confirm that with global warming, we can expect tropical cyclones to be more severe, and very intense storms are more likely to occur as hotter air has the capacity to carry more moisture. Furthermore, with sea level rise, the impact of coastal storm surge is worsened. Incidentally, with this season of unprecedented hurricane disasters, we find that August 2017 was the second hottest August on the record. “Climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly,” renowned atmospheric scientist Michael Mann stated in a recent article.
The truth is a hard pill to swallow
We have known for a while now that our planet is warming up because of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities. Anthropogenic global warming is a fact endorsed by 97 percent of research with a position on the matter. Essentially, scientists point a finger at us as responsible for climate change and, by extension, many other socio-environmental and humanitarian crises taking place today all across the world. Not only hurricanes and flooding, but many of the occurrences of forest fires, droughts, erosion of topsoil, loss of farmland fertility and rural livelihoods, food insecurity, internal displacement and political conflict can be connected to global warming. Observers point to the severe climactic conditions and drought from 2006 to 2011 in Syria as offering an important back story to understanding the unravelling of the social compact and subsequent unrest and refugee crisis in the region.
Most of us are not yet prepared to confront our personal role in causing global warming and to see that we stand as an essential part of a causal chain of suffering from our carbon-dependent modern lifestyle. Even if we appreciate our causal role, it is even more challenging to commit to giving up the convenience of using private transportation, changing to a meatless diet or just consuming less stuff.
Beyond the individual level, there is progress, and there are setbacks where it comes to GHG reductions and energy policy at the city, national or global corporate level. While we cheer on the many city mayors who are taking the lead on climate action, unaligned state and federal level policies can limit their effectiveness. We should be aware that a clean energy, zero carbon future is technologically and financially attainable but the link to this future is tenuous. In this light, rather than bemoan the lack of action by politicians and corporations, anyone who is interested in securing the long-term sustainability and continued viability of this planet—including citizens and businesses, NGOs and associations—need to work continuously to make each voice and vote count so as to realize the clean energy agenda, more jobs and training in sustainability, and to save ourselves from further disruptive climate events in future.
The work needs to start by swallowing the hard pill. Only with awareness can there be action.
We are emotional beings
Emotions are the drivers of our participation in political action. Some constituencies are overwhelmed into inaction, even as they disagree with those who actively deny climate change and lobby for our continued dependence on fossil fuels. While anxiety does not lead to participation and influential action, anger and enthusiasm can trigger one into action but also propagate partisanship and confrontational policies. None of these common emotional reactions are that helpful in the larger scheme of solving the climate crisis. In short, science meets its limits even if it has all the answers. In order to change (for a better future), what we need to pay attention to are our emotional gatekeepers, which shut out changes deemed unpleasant or threatening to our being and familiar way of life, even if we know that these changes will ultimately save us from destroying the fragile balance that makes this a livable planet.
This is why the heart, feelings, and emotions matter so much when we are talking about climate change, and how we got here to a year filled with hurricanes and other climate disasters of unprecedented severity. Looking at this from a positive angle, we can tap into our instinctive caring and empathetic emotions in response to our friends and family’s suffering during the superstorms, or when reading the news of populations displaced from regions that are no longer habitable. If we allow ourselves to be moved, most of us can develop a strong and authentic personal connection to global warming and climate disasters. What we need is the skill to be able to sit with these strong emotions and not be overwhelmed, the latter of which would switch us into emotional shut-down mode instead. Leaders have a role to play in facilitating the process of reframing emotions and nurturing climate action within their communities.
As a Climate Reality Leader, I am committed to presenting climate reality and truth-telling on climate change. At our recent gathering in Pittsburgh, while there was no lack of panels speaking about the science and logic of global warming and extreme weather patterns, the key message was about engaging hearts on this topic. We need to use our combined emotional intelligence to reach everyone and get them onboard the climate movement. The only way to succeed is when this is a truly global project, that is, where everyone is doing everything they can, individually and collectively, pressuring elected officials and policymakers to put us on a clean and sustainable energy pathway into the future. Because this is the only way that we can all come out winning.
Carrying the weight of the world
Being in fellowship with other members in our communities can help many of us to see with eyes wide open, to witness the role of human-caused climate change, acknowledge our mutual pain, distress and concerns, and be able to come to dialogue with others who agree or disagree with us, and find out how we can take action from a common ground.
To get from where we are now to where we need to be, any discussion on climate change needs necessarily to start from the issues that affect us directly. Earlier this year, Lima-born architect Rossana Poblet Alegre started the “Women’s Initiative” with a group of international professional women at her current base, Berlin. The group is currently preparing an exhibition, using photos, maps and art installations to showcase citizen´s views and perception of climatic water events, like the floods caused by El Niño Costero in March 2017, which caused devastation in the coastal cities of Peru.
Art is a great medium that can trigger a range of emotional responses at the same time as it can stimulate insight and encourage constructive dialogue on challenging issues. “We believe that the art component will help us to reach a broader public to reflect not only on the overflow but also on the benefits of water as an element of energy and flow. The question is how to find the balance!” Rossana Poblet Alegre shares. On this side of the Atlantic, artist Carolyn Monastra not only documents climate change to spur action but highlights the “solutions” found by individuals who have taken it upon themselves to make a difference while they share this planetary home with others.
From architects to artists and others, we need more leaders to step up from every group, in every community, in service of the climate movement. So, my first challenge to you is to start listening out for the one issue that is a key concern in your area of expertise or influence. We convene, and we listen—especially to emotions and underlying unspoken positions—and allow the process to bring us all closer towards that which binds our destinies together.
Parenthood, health, and energy costs are some entry points that can lead people from climate apathy to action. “Women are speaking up. Our children are watching us. Their health, their future and their now are at stake and weigh heavily on our hearts and minds,” says Harriet Shugarman, Executive Director of Climate Mama, an organization that helps families to implement a low carbon future. In a similar vein, expectant parents carefully checking Zika virus maps do not need a hard sell to see that the reach of mosquito-borne viruses can be curbed by reducing global warming and the spread of tropical regions. Everyone is interested in reducing their costs; so in cities within deregulated energy markets, more can be done to bring awareness to the cost-effectiveness of sustainable energy choices. Wherever we look, there is an opportunity to uncover a climate solution that addresses a particular need and speaks directly to a particular group. The good news is, the more we talk about climate change in a way that is meaningful to the groups we are engaging with, the more we normalize it as a real and salient issue.
My second challenge to leaders is to take care of regulating our own emotions. Doing so ensures that we can communicate openly with those who may challenge our facts and our cause, without taking it personally. At the same time, this is a big job with no fixed end date. We can only do this sustainably if we are not drained by the process ourselves. The most reliable tool in our kit is within us. When we cultivate self-awareness through any mindful, contemplative practice, we can find that deep within, each of us is naturally called to take action for a cause in which we truly believe. Be it reducing climate caused suffering, or preserving our last natural heritage, a strong cause will come with the requisite strength that will help us remain steadfast and clear as we lead others through uncertain terrain. Additionally, meditation and retreat groups, interest-based circles, faith-based organizations all have a lot to offer where it comes to providing the community to support our practice and self-care, and structure to facilitate self-investigation and refining of our purpose. As we renew our commitment to this cause, we can carry the weight of climate change without being crushed by it.
Next year, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by the United Nations after the Millennium Declaration, are set to expire. The next set of global development goals, which are supposed to be even more environmentally focused — the Sustainable Development Goals — are currently under discussion at the UN and in multiple fora around the world.
While some goals have already, or will be successfully achieved in 2015 — tackling key social, economic, and health problems (the first six MDGs) — there is an awareness of that the process has failed to address environmental issues, including biodiversity loss and climate change (MDG seven). The failure to address global climate change is particularly worrisome because it has the potential to reverse gains made in other areas of development.
There have been a myriad of efforts to prepare goals to succeed the MDGs. Current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commissioned a report by a high-level panel; the UN Development Group created 11 task forces to look at specific issues; and nearly a million people across the globe have participated via websites like The World We Want. These efforts are expected to filter into something of a consensus foundation for the SDGs, but there is doubt whether they would produce specific, clear, and meaningful goals that the international community could agree on.
The United Nations uses an Open Working Group (OWG) structure to engage stakeholders other than nation-states. In particular, the OWG on SDGs allows formally constituted groups including the scientific and technological community, and The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) to influence the decision-making apparatus. SDSN is a global network launched by the UN Secretary General in 2012 to mobilize scientific and technical expertise from academia, civil society, and the private sector in support of sustainable-development problem solving at local, national, and global scales
A consensus is emerging among members of the OWG over the inclusion of a few stand-alone goals — such as on food security, water access, energy and health. But with a list of around 25 other candidate themes to cut down and group together, much work remains.
In early January this year, I attended the OWG 7th session at UN in NYC, addressing among other things urbanization and among the critical issues now being debated is how the SDGs should deal with urban issues. At stake is whether there should be a stand-alone urban goal (and what it might be) or a mainstreaming and/or a continuation of the situation that prevailed under the MDGs.
The arguments for an urban SDG are many. Urbanization has the ability to transform the social and economic fabric of nations and cities are responsible for the bulk of production and consumption worldwide, and are the primary engines of economic growth and development. Roughly three-quarters of global economic activity is urban, and as the urban population grows, so will the urban share of global GDP and investments. The right to development for low-income and middle-income countries can only be realized through sustainable urbanization that addresses the needs of both rural and urban areas. It must also be recognized that cities are home to extreme deprivation and environmental degradation with one billion people living in slums. In many countries the number of slum dwellers has increased significantly in recent years, and urban inequality is deepening.
Given the profoundly transformative impact of urbanization also highlighted in many contributions to TNOC, many believe that failure to develop a goal around sustainable urbanization would be a significant missed opportunity to unlock the potential of local governments being deeply involved and leading the sustainable development agenda.
What would an urban SDG look like? This is a delicate and complex issue and many argue that such a goal should center around the sustainability of urbanization rather than sustainability of cities per se, and focus on the process rather than specific geographical locations. A focus on urbanization as a process would have the advantage that crucial urban-rural interactions that need to be considered and the long-distance effects of urbanization on resource extraction, energy, waste, etc., also to be included.
The OWG 7th session at UN NYC on Sustainable Cities 6 January 2014
My impression from the discussions in the OWG 7th session in January was that while many UN member states are sympathetic to ensuring that attention has to be given to the urban question, some are clearly threatened by the potential threats to development assistance to less-developed and primarily rural economies. For others with a strong interest in infrastructure development and other priorities, it is not clear whether a stand-alone goal or a mainstreamed interest will more effectively lead to appropriate action.
One important function of a stand-alone urban SDG would be to signal to the world that we have crossed an important global threshold and that we now live in a predominantly urban planet. This would enable a mobilization of all urban stakeholders around sustainable pathways and the adoption of the SDGs in 2015 could represent a turning point in how cities are perceived, structured and run. This is especially true for much of Africa and Asia, which are concurrently the poorest, least urbanized, but also the most rapidly urbanizing regions in the world.
There is now a campaign on supporting a stand alone urban goal initiated by SDSN. The Campaign for an Urban SDG argues that a dedicated and stand-alone urban SDG is essential to mobilize stakeholders, promoted integrated, city-level approaches, and accelerate progress towards sustainable development, including the end of extreme poverty. To date more than 200 cities, regional governments, international organisations and academic institutions support the Urband SDG campaign.
My final reflection is that to ensure that the urban realities of the next decades are adequately profiled in the SDG process, the burden is for scientists to engage in the setting of appropriate targets and indicators. The system for monitoring the SDGs needs to be:
a) flexible, to enable cross-referencing of environmental, social and economic questions;
b) scalable, i.e. selecting indictors that make sense on a local scale and can also, where appropriate, be upscaled to address national, regional or global agendas and,
c) based upon credible data.
Clearly, overcoming the existing gaps in data, theory and analytical capacity, especially at the urban scale, must be a priority for the global scientific community. The establishment of an international scientific program, Future Earth provides an opportunity to mobilize the research community to address the challenges of sustainable development. More specifically, scientists with urban and data expertise must be called on to support the technical discussions on selecting the SDG targets and indicators. For example, the only “green” urban indicator mentioned at all is a measure of green space area per inhabitant. We could surely do better than that (see for example the City Biodiversity Index/Singapore Index).
If poorly defined and managed, targets and indicators will almost certainly have unintended consequences and negative outcomes that will be difficult to reverse. In this context, silence from the urban scientific community may be the most dangerous path of all.
Earlier this year I had the good fortune to be invited to speak at a remarkable ‘Global Conference’ in Chantilly, France. The title of the session I was to contribute to was translated into English as ‘An urbanism built on a priority for fauna and flora’. This, it seems, was a slight mistranslation of ‘Un urbanisme construit sur une préséance du vivant’ but it suggested an emphasis in design and planning that struck me as being just what is needed if we are to have any hope of rolling back the massive damage that urbanisation has inflicted on the biosphere over the last few hundred years.
It fitted well with my contention of the last ten years or so, documented sketchily in my ‘Ecopolis’ book and mentioned in my first TNOC blog that the creation of ecological cities requires the development of Design Guidelines for Non-Human Species. In that blog my example was to suggest that an urban fractal or neighbourhood should be able to provide sufficient viable habitat that it can support at least one key indicator species of fauna and a majority of the species of birds indigenous to the place.
This blog further explores why we need these kinds of design guidelines, and at the bottom, makes some specific suggestions.
Beyond the selfie
Cities are quintessentially human constructions, so it’s hardly surprising that reasons given for having ‘more nature in cities’ are almost invariably anthropocentric (think ‘nature-deficit disorder’ or biophilia). These reasons are typically to do with improving the quality of life for people, or even just their real estate values, but the bottom line for promoting urban nature is more profound; it is about human survival—without healthy natural environments our species cannot survive and cities make or break the natural environment. If cities fail to embrace nature in a demonstrably positive and sustaining way there can be little hope for the environment outside the city walls. Our reasons for valuing nature in cities needs to move beyond the ‘selfie’ view that puts a bit of greenery in the frame of urban portraiture and beyond the very reasonable proposition that integrating nature in our cities is good for livability, resilience, sustainability and human life generally. We need to simply accept that nature has needs of its own, and those needs may or may not be of benefit to human strands in the web of life.
This partly parallels ways of seeing the world found in a number of cultural forms, like Buddhism and Animism; it is close to the Daoist tradition in its acceptance of the natural world as ‘a self-generating, complex arrangement of elements that are continuously changing and interacting’ in which humans are a crucial component but one that should ‘follow the flow of nature’s rhythms’. It is specifically not about an enchanted view of nature and it is not about the worship of nature, not least because we are ultimately part of nature and any degree of self-reverence is dangerous.
No, it’s simply accepting that for natural systems to function certain requirements have to be met and understanding that conditions and pre-conditions for the successful operation of biological processes are set by the nature of the systems and not by the predilections of the human animal. Where human activities affect those systems there are identifiable areas of contact and interaction where we need clear indications as to how to allow or support natural system (ecosystem) function.
Responsive it may be, but Nature does not negotiate
Nature is fractal. Each part of it is a microcosm of the larger whole. An urbanism that gave priority to the needs of nature and the requirements of non-human species would itself need to be fractal and support and nurture the essential functions of natural systems. To some degree it would need to be codified, just as we codify the expectations we have of our artificial human habitat, and that means establishing appropriate design guidelines, rules and regulations. If this agenda is to be taken seriously (and why shouldn’t it?), every city and town on Earth will need to develop such guidelines—to be acted upon as a result of both sensible persuasion (through the political process) and as a response to non-negotiable demands (of ecological necessity). Nature may be astonishingly responsive and receptive, but it does not negotiate.
Life-affirming graffiti in Adelaide, South Australia. Image: Paul Downton
The rewards for human society of maintaining natural systems, apart from giving it additional capacity for long-term survival, includes the promise of a bold new urbanism, the aesthetics of which transcend the architectural fashions of the day and possess the gorgeous fractal messiness of nature—that messiness which confuses eyes and sensibilities trained by years of seeing orthogonal space and threatens minds crated up in cubicles, fed from cartons and boxed in by built environments. A radical urbanism, perhaps like that imagined by Street Farm over four decades ago as ‘alive rather than inert’, in which ‘a profusion of sprouting, breathing, photosynthesising, living things surround and entwine human dwellings’ (p.102 Stephen E Hunt in ‘The Revolutionary Urbanism of Street Farm’, Tangent Books, 2014).
‘Alive rather than inert’, Christie Walk in Adelaide, South Australia is a downtown ecocity development in which ‘a profusion of sprouting, breathing, photosynthesising, living things surround and entwine human dwellings’. Image: Paul Downton
Notwithstanding the variants of ‘the ecocity idea’ that jostle for attention in the modern designer’s conceptual mind-scape, it is a fundamental tenet of ecological urbanism that urban areas and their associated infrastructure must shrink and relinquish their hold on the landscape to reverse habitat loss and fragmentation. An urbanism that prioritised fauna and flora would give over far less of the planet’s surface to cities and their paraphernalia. It would minimize the extent of roads and all the other concrete, tarmac and steel spaghetti of dead infrastructure in favour of space for the myriad creatures and vegetation that weave the living tapestry of the planet. An intensely ecological urbanism would distill the human presence into socially, culturally and politically rich, dynamic and diverse cities and towns; it would increase the constraints on how human society housed itself, but enrich and expand the world in which that society might thrive.
Birds, flowers, dirt and fire
There are a number of guidelines in place in cities around the world and numerous efforts to embrace nature in the planning and design of built environments, some of which are mentioned below. But my proposition is that such guidelines should be a requirement for every town, city and region.
According to Andre Mader in his TNOC blog Peregrine Falcons have taken up residence in the Sagrada Familia. They love tall buildings and are the poster children of urban wilding, understandably so, but the successful reintroduction of fauna and flora into the urban environment will result in a lot of activity being out of the sight and awareness of most citizens and away from vidcams and tourist hotspots. Because of how we view and use media, if a city were to make itself falcon-friendly, for instance, and it worked, the chances are high that just one falcon pair taking up residence would be celebrated ad nauseam and the exercise would be celebrated as a success even if no other birds became city-dwellers. There needs to be a clear vision of what aspiring to be a city for nature really means. It has to move way beyond the tokenism of popular media and into an understanding that real life takes place whether or not it has a Facebook page.
Peregrine Falcons have found sanctuary in Gaudi’s Sagradia Familia in Barcelona. Image: Paul Downton
Guidelines and regulation can be vital in protecting other species. Wind power is shaping up as a major source of energy and ecocities cannot reasonably be imagined or planned without it. The transition to an ecological society requires a move to renewable energy, but also requires that there be safeguards for natural systems in the process. Although far fewer birds are killed by wind turbines than are killed by flying into windows, the numbers can be minimised by not siting turbines in migration corridors. Accordingly, the American Bird Conservancy, which supports wind energy, has petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect migratory birds from the negative impacts of wind energy, asking for regulations to safeguard wildlife and reward responsible wind energy development. Such initiatives need to be a typical part of regional planning.
Vancouver provides a good example of what design guidelines for non-human species might look like in its Bird Friendly Design Guidelines Explanatory Note. The American Bird Conservancy publishes an excellent guide to bird-friendly design. Gaining even a passing familiarity with this document makes it hard to see how any architect or urban planner could condone the large expanses of glass on building façades that are known to kill between 100 million and one billion birds a year in the US alone. According to The Expanded Environment these guidelines have been adopted, edited and rewritten by several municipalities around the US and Canada, one presumes Vancouver is one of them. The facts and figures and known solutions are well established, yet glass boxes continue to be built. If we are serious about evolving our environments to be other-species friendly we must raise our game—and architects have to avoid deadly aesthetic fripperies like mirrored glass.
A murderous façade of mirror glass sheaths a downtown skyscraper; ironically, this building is located in Vancouver, a city with an excellent set of guidelines for supporting birdlife in the city. Image: Paul Downton
VicRoads, the transport agency of the state of Victoria in Australia, shows what design guidelines might look like when applied to road building with its Fauna Sensitive Road Design Guidelines (go to <https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au> and search for ‘fauna sensitive road design guidelines’, which will automatically download).
Wildlife bridge over highway, Queensland, Australia. Image: Richard Regsiter
We might expect green walls and green roofs to feature prominently in a fauna-and-flora-friendly city, but if the design guidelines for non-human species were thorough, then the green roofs would have to be intensive, containing viable soil able to support micro-organisms and sequester carbon.
Wild flower meadows have been introduced in cities around the world and there are examples of ‘pieces of nature’ being encouraged as a direct intervention in existing urban fabrics. This requires an understanding of the appropriate conditions for these interventions. For example, to encourage wild flowers on the grasslands of Hampstead Heath, the City of London had to invert or remove existing soils made nutrient-rich by past agricultural practices.
A flower meadow has been created in the city of Melbourne. It’s not comprised of native vegetation but is, nevertheless, intended to increase biodiversity and represents a lower fire risk than native vegetation. Not all vegetation is created equal. In many parts of Australia people are encouraged to remove vegetation around houses in bushfire-prone areas although mown lawns are acceptable because they can help to reduce fire intensity. Planning for ‘wild’ green ‘open space’ may appear problematic in a landscape prone to wildfires, but if the totality of the urban/wild space system is an artificial construct in any case, it should be designed to incorporate fire management.
Aliens, domestication and buildings that create habitat
It can be difficult to pursue nativism in cities, but if Fred Pearce is right, it doesn’t matter too much whether the ecosystem that is brought into the urban system is ‘pure’ as long as it works. Allowing the inclusion of alien, i.e., non-indigenous, species in the mix makes the job of putting nature at the core of the city easier—though no less controversial to those who doubt the wisdom of embracing the wild as part of urban planning and design.
Creating built form that accommodates nature is not new; dovecotes, after all, have been around for centuries, although their purpose was not to provide bird habitat for its own sake, but to domesticate a source of food and fertiliser. The primary reason to accommodate fauna and flora in otherwise human environments has been to domesticate a species because it is useful for companionship, food, other products (e.g. dung) and services (e.g. guard duty).
Non-human and well catered for as a productive member of the urban system of metropolitan Adelaide. Image: Paul Downton
Some building rating tools, such as the Australian ‘Green Star’ building rating system give, credit for increases in potential habitat. The credit is a small part of the total green building assessment but is significant for its inclusion. This rating system is an extant example of tools that measure aspects of the built environment which relate directly to the welfare of non-human species. As such, it may inform the development of appropriate design guidelines.
A brief trawl of the Internet indicates that most design education has yet to respond significantly to the challenges nature is confronted with in sharing the world with people. One small exception is a two week design program in Norway titled ‘Designing for non-human clients’ that asked “How would you create a design if your client was a native wetland plant species? What are its wants, needs and desires, and how does it connect to the humans which utilize its services?”.
Thinking like an earthworm: communicating species’ requirements and restoring creeks and meadows
Designers may thus think in terms of briefs being provided by non-human clients and legislators may think in terms of consulting with representatives of non-human species. This idea goes back decades. John Seed’s influential 1988 book ‘Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings’ put forward the concept for representatives of non-human beings to be given an opportunity to put their views in a general council. This idea has been adopted by a number of groups over the years and, inspired by the concept, I trialled a version of it as an urban design workshop for children as part of the Whyalla EcoCity Development design program in South Australia, 1996. It was conceived of as a way to raise awareness of the needs of non-human species and to engage the community with its urban ecosystem through the design program of an ecocity project. Children adopted personas as various species—fauna and flora—ranging from earthworms to kangaroos and through the ‘Council’ voiced their concerns for their character’s environment. It was a way of discovering parameters for non-human species that could guide the design of an ecocity.
Snapshots of the 1996 ‘Council of All Beings’ ecocity workshop in Whyalla, South Australia. Images: Paul Downton
There are some wonderful examples of redeveloping bits of the city around the idea of ‘releasing nature’—such as creek restoration and the revival of meadowlands in city parks, but my proposition is simple. Rather than be content with a scatter-gun approach to reintroducing nature to our cities we should be seeking systematic ways of embedding the requirements for nature to flourish in, around and between every development in every city and town on the planet. Rather than being integrated as part of occasional special events, urban nature should be routinely integral to every planning process because nature requires it, not because of marketplace demands.
Ecocity pioneer and creek restoration advocate Richard Register by restored Strawberry Creek, Berkeley circa 1996. Image: Paul Downton
Pulling petals off a daisy and illiterate biomimicry
The commodification of nature is dangerous and devalues its real worth, as I argued in my TNOC blog of March 2013. Natural systems have to be recognised, formally and spontaneously, as having intrinsic value that trumps all other measures of their worth such as their capacity to provide ecosystem services, not because such services are not valuable in a real sense, but because the valuations being made are the result of pseudo-rationalist reductionism and amount to laying out the stem and petals of a daisy on an economist’s desk and claiming to have measured the worth of a flower.
An economist’s view of a Nasturtium flower. Image: Paul Downton
Economic analyses of ecosystem services are inherently inadequate because they are unable to predict, and therefore measure and value, synergistic benefits that arise from those services. In the same way that reticulated sewage had impacts beyond healthier streets that could only be guessed at prior to its provision as a service, the synergistic benefits of natural systems are often unpredictable and not accounted for. Ecosystem services are valued in relation to a perception of their financial worth which depends on identifying the ‘service’ that’s provided. As a corollary, if a service isn’t, or can’t be identified, it will not, or cannot, be valued. This is the path to blind spots and selectivity based on partial knowledge. This pits butterflies against oak trees, slugs against daisies, worms against wolves. It presumes that nature can be assessed on a spreadsheet like a business, with profit and loss and monetary value overriding all other notions of value. There are those who say this is just a tool, a mechanism, a device for giving natural systems some value in a world that views all values in monetary terms, but that view is culture-bound to a particular world-view (consumer capitalist). It is one-eyed and reductionist—it is pulling petals off a daisy and then calling the pile of flower parts ‘more or less a daisy’.
There are two reasons for acknowledging the intrinsic value of natural systems: 1. because of its holistic beauty, 2. because no matter how hard we try we will never fully comprehend all the elements and their interactions in a natural system and can never be entirely sure that we do understand how it ‘works’.
In an era of accelerated climate change and ecological collapse it can be argued that many, if not all, natural systems are now so compromised and distorted by human intervention that their original intrinsic value and wholeness no longer hold—but that would be going down the slippery slope of pointless nihilism. As our tracks across the planet take us through ever more degraded landscapes, not only has nature dropped into the rear-view mirror, it is often behind the last bend in the road, invisible. If it ever does come into sight our children barely know how to describe it, as the language to describe nature is itself being lost in a world where authoritative publications such as the Oxford Junior Dictionary have decreed that words like ‘buttercup’ be usurped by ‘broadband’. The ability to see the world and understand what is being seen has to be practised and practiced. How can we develop biomimicry in a world where people don’t know the words to describe what they’re hoping to mimic?
Redacting the Buttercup. Image scanned from p.56-57 of Britain’s Wonderland of Nature, John R Crossland & J M Parrish, eds. Odhams Press 1934. Image: Paul Downton
Guidelines for not building
Effective design guidelines for non-human species may result in things not being built, or in them being demolished. As an example, recent research has established that 70 percent of remaining forest is within 1 km of the forest’s edge and subject to the degrading effects of fragmentation. Forest edges need to be retired. Considerably. If re-wilding advocates like George Monbiot are correct in their approach to wilderness restoration we will need to re-introduce species to regions that lost them hundreds, or even thousands of years ago. Some of these re-introductions may be by stand-in species when the original species has been made extinct—like the elephants that roamed Northern Europe and the British Isles.
For natural systems to operate optimally they generally need minimal human intervention. Restoring ecological health to the wilderness may require that it is maintained as wilderness, i.e. a place that is off-limits to most humans and their activities. Design guidelines for non-human species are likely to specify no-go zones. In order to thrive on this planet we need to occupy much less of it. The advent of virtual reality and the growth of vicarious experience through simulation may be increasing human alienation from the environment and from one another, but the upside may be that the perceived need to physically go into real wilderness will diminish, with positive consequences for real wilderness and the survival of a livable planet. Urban design guidelines for non-human species would almost certainly demand compact urban forms that released as much of the landscape as possible for non-human use.
Ecocity pioneer Paolo Soleri proposed cities of extreme density and zero sprawl, set in a more-or-less ‘undeveloped’ wild landscape. He may yet turn out to be prescient in this regard, along with the science fiction writers who described future cities like the dome enclaves in the movie version of Logan’s Run where the world outside the city walls had returned to wilderness and very few humans ever had cause to enter it. The domed city of Logan’s run was supposedly ecologically self-contained, an idea that has been visited a number of times in fiction. For example, in ‘This Other Eden’, inspired by Biosphere 2, Ben Elton takes the domed biosphere concept to one of its potential logically absurd conclusions as bespoke personal ecosystems where, as in Logan’s Run, the domes contain a closed ecosystem for humans to insulate them from a collapsing global ecosystem.
Looking out from an apartment through the apse of the bell foundry to a view of Arizona wilderness in Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti, 1990. Image: Paul Downton
Buckminster Fuller was the pioneer of the modern domed city concept as something genuinely feasible when, in 1960, he proposed the first use of a dome to cover an entire city, or at least most of it, in his proposal for placing Manhattan under cover. Stretching from 62nd Street to 22nd, 1.6 km high and nearly 3 km across, his idea was that the dome would regulate the weather, reduce air pollution and make most of the existing air-conditioning systems in the city’s buildings redundant. Meanwhile, with similar ideas in mind Dubai is planning to build an entire city under a glass dome.
The idea of constructing sanctuaries that contain and protect biomes in microcosm, securing their survival against global environmental degradation, is almost noble. It is the concept of the zoo or giant greenhouse being able to act as a kind of insurance policy by providing a repository of species and natural environments under threat. The Eden Project in Cornwall, England, is a powerful and beautiful expression of this idea. The Eden Project also provides a vivid example of regenerative and transformative development, in which a built environment development has facilitated the restorative use of nature without pretending to restore exactly what was on the (heavily degraded) site in the past.
A tropical rainforest in the English countryside—The Eden Project in Cornwall. Image: Paul Downton
We know, however, that containing nature in order to protect it is very unlikely to work. Evidence from experiments such as Biosphere 2 suggests that containing nature successfully in entirely closed systems may be beyond our abilities, at least for the forseeable future. The project has demonstrated in detail how hard it is to bottle ecosystems and provides, if nothing else, a salutary lesson in how difficult it will be to establish habitats in space or on other planets. Putting aside the problems of livability and equity, containing humans is relatively easy (think prisons, walled cities…). The logical solution to retaining the integrity of the natural world into the future is not to try and package pieces of that world to protect them from larger environmental stresses, but to quarantine the human activities that are generating those stresses. Rather than incarcerate fragments of biosphere perhaps we should incarcerate the perpetrators of global damage within the walls of their primary engines of destruction, the city. This wouldn’t require domes so much as walls and policeable borders. It would be doable… except that urban systems are entirely interknit with the global biosphere, and without livability and equity in our cities we can kiss goodbye to any real hope of sustainability.
Conclusion
Guidelines can work at any scale, from city-wide to backyard, front garden, or apartment balcony, but may be most readily conceived and applied at the precinct or neighbourhood level where their influence on the larger urban system can, perhaps, be most effective—as a fractal of the system’s larger potential. Every city, every town and human settlement, should have a set of urban design guidelines for non-human species. The development and application of these guidelines would form the core of a new adventure in urbanism that has transformative potential and the capacity to lay the groundwork for a truly ecological civilisation—in which taking care of non-human species will, in turn, enhance the capabilities and conditions of the human animal.
Building rating tools and planning assessments should give credits for increases in potential habitat for non-human species
Green Building Council of Australia ‘Green Star’ ‘Land use and ecology’ credits
Built form, particularly at the level of individual buildings, precincts or neighbourhoods, should be designed specifically to accommodate nature and natural processes
All areas of vegetation be they parks, green walls or green roofs, should use substrates and soils that support the proliferation of healthy, ecologically healthy micro-organisms and sequester carbon
All road building must follow fauna-sensitive design guidelines
Nothing should be built that damages the health of natural ecosystems
Nothing should be built that damages the health of artificial ecosystems which support desirable urban non-human populations
Consideration should be given to demolishing, removing or adjusting elements of the built environment that compromise the health of natural ecosystems
Creek restoration projects
Consideration should be given to demolishing, removing or adjusting elements of the built environment that compromise the health of artificial ecosystems which support desirable urban non-human populations
Creek restoration projects
Human spatial occupation of terrestrial, maritime and fresh water environments should be minimised to a level compatible with the achievement of a ‘one planet’ ecological footprint
A guiding principle of all urban development must be to minimise, and eventually eliminate, urban sprawl
No-go zones should be instituted to limit human intrusion into natural ecosystems such as wilderness or near-wilderness areas
Wilderness Act (not quite ‘no-go’, but a start), USA 1964
Restoration and creation of environments for urban non-humans should proceed in parallel and integrated with the building of human environments
Berlin – 44% of the city’s surface area is made up of woods, farmland, water, allotment gardens, parks and sports gardens
Wilderness restoration should be considered to re-introduce species to regions from which they have been lost in the recent or distant past. Some of these re-introductions may be by stand-in species when the original species has been made extinct
Efforts being made to reintroduce wolves, bears and lynxes to the UK
Compact urban forms should be favoured that accommodate humans but protect as much of the landscape as possible for non-human use
Green belts and urban growth boundaries
Existing urban non-human species should be identified and, where appropriate, sustained and protected
Urban planning programs should consult widely and include a Council of All Beings, or similar, to raise awareness of the needs of urban non-humans and to engage the community with its urban ecosystem through the planning process
And What Grassplots, Amur Leopard, and Mold Have in Common
It is estimated that the extinction of the Amur leopard resulted in $722 million in damage to the Russian economy.
What is biodiversity for? Some don’t need that question answered: you just adopt a philosopher’s perspective, and everything becomes clear—all living things have the right to dwell on the planet. For others, the question is confusing. Those trying to find a quantitative answer to this question include not only biologists, but also economists—the latter may calculate the “price of ecosystem services” rendered to humankind by nature. If you crash a car, everyone understands what material damage will be suffered and by whom. And what if a forest is cut down? Or a grassplot is converted into a parking lot? Were the last Amur leopard to die somewhere in the mountains, would the economy be affected at all? In 2008, the answer was found in the Russian State University of Management, where for calculations they used a formula by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: the disappearance of the last 40, to that day, individuals of that leopard species on the planet would have equaled $722 million in damage to the Russian economy.
Megalopolises are oftentimes referred to as concrete jungle. And it is true that living in a city doesn’t overturn laws of biology. Somewhere in distant mountains, the Amur leopard is dying out because of random deforestation, fragmentation and reduction of its habitat, and inbreeding, ie, mating of individuals closely related by ancestry due to their population being too small. The very same adverse factors also affect city-dwelling populations of plant and animal species in our vicinity. A new highway cuts through a forest? Animals living there will most probably not be able to leave their respective resulting plots. And the stronger the fragmentation, the faster the local population will go into decline. The only bit of wasteland between the houses has been repurposed into a parking lot? Yet another grassplot has been paved? That means not only soil animals, many plants, and insects have died, but, to make matters worse, butterflies and bees in adjacent territories have been deprived of the means to populate broader areas, as they could have used that plot as a place to stop, rest, and refuel on some food.
For example, many bees are known to be only capable of flying no farther than 1.5–2.0 kilometers. “So what?” you may ask. In order to survive, some bees only need one single plant. For example, Moscow’s red bartsia bee (Melitta tricincta) only feeds on red bartsia. What would become of humankind if that red bartsia bee were to disappear? Regretably, it can only be found out by experience. And we may not like that experience.
For instance, last year alone, according to the estimates by the National Beekeepers and Bee Product Processors Association, the decrease in the population of one single species—domesticated Western honey bee—cost Russia over 1 trillion roubles (around $13 billion) in losses. And that estimate doesn’t include losses resulting from wild bees dying out—the ones not counted by beekeepers. According to the UN, the world relies on pollination of crops by bees to produce almost a third of its food worth an estimate of $380 billion.
There’s another example illustrating the Butterfly Effect, which is a story dating back to the mid-20th century: two years after China declared a war on sparrows for allegedly destroying field crops, the resulting major pest outbreak and the deterioration of crops that followed were of such a scale that around 10 to 30 million people died of hunger.
It would be rather naïve of us to believe that any damage can be estimated in advance. Or that—should the ecosystem lose even one of its elements—the course of events can be foreseen. Humankind hardly knows anything about the planet it lives on, but succeeds in taking advantage of discoveries that happen from time to time. There was a time when we were in the dark about the properties of the mold fungus Penicillium that we have to thank for penicillin, of the willow bark that gave rise to aspirin, and of the rice hulls from which vitamin B1 was synthesized. I believe it will be easy enough to evaluate the economic effect brought about by those discoveries to the world’s economy.
On the contrary, it’s impossible to calculate the forgone benefit resulting from the loss of those species whose properties will forever remain unknown to us—with biodiversity declining at a dramatic pace. Scientists estimate, for example, that every year the total insect biomass decreases by 2.5 percent. And that estimate doesn’t take stock of the plants, fungi, microorganisms, and other living things—many of which the humankind never knew—that, potentially, could have come in handy for people.
For example, back in 1990s, when many Moscow’s grassplots were still covered with knee-high grasses, and city parks had some decent forests and meadows, fragmentation already prevented even mid-sized animals, such as hare or stoat, from establishing viable populations there, while small (and well-studied) animals, such as day butterfly, had lost up to a third of species composition by 2001, when Moscow Red Book’s first edition was published. But the dying out of a third of butterflies also means that about a third of less well-studied insects followed suit: pollinators, entomophagous insects, soil formers, dead wood destructors, etc. By the time Moscow Red Book’s second edition was published in 2011, that assumption had proved true for bumblebees and dragonflies.
Nevertheless, about 70% of species remained and continued performing their functions. Due to that, data obtained from forest pathology research showed that large natural expanses—contributing the most to maintaining a normal environmental situation in the city—are in a relatively good condition.
According to Liudmila Volkova, Biodiversity Conservation Center’s expert and Moscow Red Book’s scientific editor, a 50 percent “threshold” of Moscow’s insect survivability will be the limit, meaning another 20–30 percent of entomofauna species will have died out—because of excessively frequent grass-cutting, mass park (and even special protection natural areas) beautification, and a sheer extensive “sealing-off” of soil in the city. And it’s from then on that the humankind will have to compensate for the undermined capability of green areas for self-regulation and to resort to insecticides in order to control pest population in city parks, as populations and diversity of entomophagous invertebrates (e.g. ichneumonoidea, parasites, predators) and songbirds will have decreased.
An alternative solution would be to use nature’s “ecosystem services” rather than fight it. Thus, its restorative influence on the human body was tested in practice more than once. As far back as in 1981, scientists from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology proved that patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural setting recovered faster than those in rooms with window views of a building. Similar findings have been made for children: researchers Taylor and Kuo noticed that children with attention deficits showed improved concentration results after a 20-minute walk in the park.
So why do we need biodiversity? To eat, heal, stay healthy, take rest, save money, and earn money. Do those arguments suffice to protect a grassplot, a wasteland, or a forest? To finally shift our perspective from “what is it that nature gives us” to the one where the only answer begs itself, and namely “because all living things have the right to dwell on the planet”?
We had a “wicked problem” on our hands when Hurricane Sandy struck the US eastern seaboard on October 29th, 2012. Sandy was dramatic, destroying 72,000 homes, causing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructural damage, displacing thousands of residents (many of whom are still displaced), and completely disrupting one of the largest regional economies in the world. However, the wicked problem Sandy posed for New York City (NYC) was not the magnitude of the storm damage or any particular local disaster. The wickedness of the problem lay in exposing the sensitivity and vulnerability of the complex social-ecological system of NYC, where a single storm event simultaneously decimated multiple components (and connections between components) of the city system.
A New Jersey beach, post Hurricane Sandy. Photo: Cheryl Hapke (USGS).
How best to get clean water, food and shelter to the thousands of affected residents of New York and New Jersey when roads were flooded or washed away, when food and fuel distribution centers were out of power and regional transportation was effectively cut-off, when people couldn’t even make a cell phone call to report they were in need? The fact is there was no perfect solution to the problem of what to do after Sandy struck, because that is the nature of wicked problems, you only really understand the nature of the problem after you’ve started working on the solution, which is to say, after you have gotten your hands dirty trying to fix it. This is not the way we typically think of problem solving, and it’s why Sandy was difficult to respond to.
Widespread shortage of gasoline was a example of cascading problems, far beyond the direct damage of the storm.
Responses to Sandy didn’t just call for, but required systems thinking. Ecologists have been thinking in systems since Arthur Tansley first used the term “ecosystem” in print in 1935. The Odum brothers (Eugene and Howard) pioneered systems approaches in ecology in the 1950s and 60s. More recently the emerging field of urban ecology, which explicitly includes humans as fundamental components of systems, has taken a social-ecological systems approach to the study of cities. Cities like New York are the classic example of a complex social-ecological system and systems thinking remains one of most useful tools to understand cities. In this post I illustrate a couple case studies of how systems thinking can provide useful tools for both understanding the structure of complex systems like cities, and dealing with wicked problems.
Wicked Problems
It turns out that the nature of cities is one of fundamental system complexity, and this complexity can be wicked to understand, wicked to manage. Sandy was a wicked problem. Wicked problems are those that have multiple interacting systems — social, ecological, and economic — a number of social and institutional uncertainties, and imperfect knowledge, all of which apply to the state of the New York megacity immediately following Sandy. Wicked problems are not easy to solve because it is impossible to define and describe their full nature. Additionally, wicked problems are continually evolving. For example, when Sandy struck New York electrical power was knocked out regionally for millions of residents by high winds and flooding, yet those with generators for their homes or businesses were not initially too worried, that is, not until the gas lines became increasingly long and fuel availability to power generators eventually went to zero. At this point, only a couple days later, the problem initially posed by high winds and flooding had already evolved into a myriad of new problems, including how to provide liquid fuel to residents who needed it for heat as the weather began to turn cold. What required solutions on day 1 after Sandy was very different in many places from the problems arising on day 4 and 5. As a consequence, no single or definitive optimal policy solution to the wicked problem of Sandy could satisfy all the affected parties. There was no perfect governance decision for a mayor or governor to make.
The man who coined the term ‘wicked problem’, urban planner and designer Horst Rittel, perceived the limitations of the linear ‘systems approach’ of design and planning over 30 years ago. Rittel and his colleagues’ provided a foundation for what Rittel termed a ‘second generation’ of systems analysis because he found traditional planning methods inadequate for the ill-structured problems he encountered in city planning. One of the fundamental problems with solving wicked problems is lack of information, or lack of transparency and availability of information since social and infrastructural complexity creates barriers to information sharing.
During the aftermath of Sandy, one of the critical issues at the heart of helping survivors in the hardest hit areas was information about their actual needs. Scientists like to address these problems by creating new sources of information, but if the information is not able to flow easily to where it is needed for decision-making, what use is it? Social complexity can cause fragmentation in the system that makes problem solving difficult or worse, impossible. Fragmentation in information availability is a serious source of the wickedness in urban problems.
One thing we are learning from Sandy in New York, but likely true in cities in general, is that because of social complexity, solving a wicked problem may fundamentally be a social process. Having a few brilliant people or the latest project management technology is no longer sufficient. As Russell Ackoff, operations theorist, puts it:
“Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other… Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.”
Systems thinking and the social-ecological systems of cities
Systems thinking is a way of understanding the world, a worldview, a process of organizing information in order to understand its complexity. But it is not the only way of organizing information and is contrasted with linear and non-linear thinking, much more common modes of understanding. Ecologists and social scientists have taken advantage of systems thinking for decades to better understand complex systems from ecosystems to organizational systems to cities. This includes understanding how systems respond to external perturbations, whether it’s a hurricane or economic recession, and what fundamental structures and functions are critical for resilience and sustainability.
Interconnectedness is a fundamental trait of systems and cities as examples cannot then be understood or effectively managed by focusing only on a subset of system components. All social-ecological systems are marked by interconnectedness. Importantly, connectivity is within and between the ecological and social components. Indeed, the hallmark of system thinking is that it focuses on the connections and relationships, more than the components themselves.
Systems thinking is crucial to problem solving including for urban planning and policy, because no problem exists in isolation, all are part of a larger system of interacting networks; social networks, biogeophysical networks, political networks, and economic networks. Interestingly, it turns out that you can’t understand the behavior of system by studying its parts; you need to study the whole thing. Which poses perhaps a series of wicked problems for urban planners.
Jay W. Forrester was an early architect of systems thinking. As he puts it:
“Systems of information-feedback control are fundamental to all life and human endeavor, from the slow pace of biological evolution to the launching of the latest space satellite… Everything we do as individuals, as an industry, or as a society is done in the context of an information-feedback system.”
Systems thinking must play an integral role in how we think about the nature of cities. The concept of ecosystems is a cornerstone of twenty-first century science and urban ecology theory can be traced back to systems thinkers who provided much of the intellectual foundation for organizational theory. Despite the applicability of system thinking to natural resource management, we are constrained in our ability to think in systems. For example, virtually all natural resource managers have some formal university education, which nearly always includes traditional philosophy based on ideas of reductionism developed by Descartes. We all “know” that the way to solve difficult problems is to break them into their component parts and solve each part in isolation. This approach is ingrained in education and scientific knowledge. However, the implications are largely unrecognized.
Systems thinking starts by questioning the Cartesian assumption that a component part is the same when separated out as it is when part of the whole. In social-ecological systems, it is fair to say that we now know this assumption is wrong. The behavior of a component depends fundamentally on its relationship with other components in the system (and on their relationships with still other components). This is true of genes in genetic networks, it’s true of human behavior in social networks, and true of businesses in economic networks. Urban ecologists have applied this approach for over a decade, but the application of interdependence of system components has still not been well enough understood to change the way we problem solve in complex systems such as cities.
Is the problem of hurricane-driven storm surge fundamentally a flooding problem? Is there anything a priori particularly wrong with flooding? Or rather, is flooding instead a problem because it is connected to issues of energy supply, economic productivity, food security, drinking water availability, transportation, and energy supply. To solve flooding problems in highly interconnected social-ecological systems requires not only thinking about hydrology, but also about the relation of flood prone areas of the city to transportation networks (subway tunnels in NYC are prone to flooding in many areas), population density (in flood risk zones), building height (elderly living on high floors were more at risk in power outages caused by Sandy), electric cable routes (are cables underground?), backup energy supply for cell phone towers (when power goes out, so does other infrastructural functioning), and food distribution (how does flooding affect equity of food provisioning?). Luckily for New Yorkers, planners, engineers, and scientists are continually expanding our understanding of connectivity and feedbacks between components of our urban system.
Components or variables in systems undergo change, but the rate of change varies. Some variables may change quickly, others slowly. Understanding slow and fast variables is critical to understanding how changes in one part of the system may affect other areas. Slow changing variables can be problems when trying to alter the system, such as making it more resilient or more sustainable. For example, policy is slow to change, because it is part of a system that tends to reinforce itself. A systems thinker will not be surprised that changes to policy are slow, whether at the neighborhood, city, or state scale.
Once you start thinking in systems, you realize the fundamental interconnectedness of all aspects, from residents’ political opinions and therefore what leaders they choose, to the number of acres of wetlands remaining in the NY-NJ harbor and their ability to absorb storm surges. Sandy’s impact underscored the importance of a systems oriented approach to planning our way toward climate change resilience in NYC. Just as Sandy was not an isolated incident, but part of a larger regional and global climate system that produces weather, including very rare hurricane events, the effects of Sandy on the city were also not isolated, but driven by the interwoven social, ecological, and economic infrastructure of the city. The variation in each system component across the city allowed some areas to be more resilient to the storm than others. Most of the hardest hit areas were low lying and directly affected by storm surges which produced major flooding, but the larger scale effects were not only driven by flooding, but a combination of infrastructure, timing, social networks or lack thereof, energy supply, and, as is the nature of complex city systems, many, many other components.
Resilience
Can systems thinking enable us to design, build, and renovate cities to be more resilient? Since we live in an era of rapid change, including urbanization, population growth, and climate change, we have the challenge of rapid and flexible response at all levels. Resilience theory is one of the major conceptual tools we have to deal with change at multiple levels of organization, from local to global. In social–ecological systems theory, resilience is the capacity of the system to continually change and adapt and yet remain within critical thresholds.
Resilience is a systems concept, and the social–ecological system, as an integrated and interdependent unit, may itself be considered a complex adaptive system (Norberg and Cumming 2008). As such, the analysis of community or urban resilience will likely be sensitive to the various principles of complexity ins systems, such as feedbacks, nonlinearity, unpredictability, and scale.
Resilience theory inherently deals with system dynamics and envisions ecosystems as continuously changing, sometimes abruptly and unpredictably. In its broader context, resilience is about ecosystems and people together as integrated social–ecological systems in which social systems and ecosystems are recognized as coupled, interdependent, and coevolving. As Fikret Berkes and Helen Ross suggest in their recent paper, applying systems thinking can help us move towards a better basis for sustainable development, one where adaptive governance is driven by a social-ecological systems approach towards resilience.
Below I describe two urban case studies to illustrate the utility of system thinking for dealing with wicked problems and understanding the complex nature of cities.
Two Urban Case Studies
Environmental Studies students at The New School have been practicing systems thinking in my Urban Ecosystems course since 2009. They spend a full semester conducting extensive research on a city of their choice from a social-ecological systems perspective, focusing on a particular issue (e.g. stormwater, pollution, food security, drinking water, biodiversity). Students immerse themselves in systems theory and the latest urban ecology research, and then practice thinking in systems by creating a systems diagram that describes the relationships among major variables connected to the particular issue under study in their city. Below are two case studies from the fall 2012 course illustrating how systems thinking can provide insight into complicated social-ecological issues and point towards new opportunities for improving resilience and sustainability in the city.
Environmental Health in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Let’s start with the issue of pollution in NYC. The waterways around the city have historically been very polluted, in the past receiving the lowest possible EPA water quality rating in much of the harbor and surrounding areas. Pollution levels have been overall largely reversed in recent years due to significant focus by the city to cleanup contaminated aquatic habitats, with fecal coliform bacteria now below levels determined safe for swimming in many areas, including in the Hudson river.
Still, three water bodies in NYC have been declared federal Superfund sites, including 200 river miles of the Hudson River. There are seven more Superfund sites within the five boroughs alone, including the Gowanus Canal, Newtown Creek, three land sites in Queens, and two land sites on Staten Island. Newtown Creek in particular is one of the most polluted waterways in the US and is home to contaminants such as PCBs, VOCs, pesticides, and heavy metals, due to countless spills and leaks from industrial production along the creek, including from over 50 oil refineries, coal yards, petrochemical plants, and glue factories, some of which are still in operation today.
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a neighborhood with intense levels of pollution, was the focus of a study by New School student Alex Dolan. Greenpoint has the largest proportion of industrial land in NYC, is home to multiple sources of current and historic pollution including the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant, a radioactive storage facility, 30 extremely hazardous waste storage facilities, 17 petroleum storage facilities, and 96 above ground oil storage tanks. Added to this is the infamous Greenpoint oil spill consisting of 30 million gallons of oil spilled over 100 acres, equal to three times the volume of the Exxon Valdez spill, which leaked oil into soils and groundwater in the surrounding area.
When considering the spill from a systems perspective, Dolan realized the combined effect is not simply polluted water, but the pollution of a complex, interdependent social-ecological system.
Systems diagram of pollution in the Greenpoint social-ecological system, which identifies sources, pathways, interactions, feedbacks, and impacts of pollution. Credit: Alex Dolan
There are several different flows of pollutants that degrade aquatic environments in NYC, reducing aquatic biodiversity and adversely affecting human health. In Dolan’s diagram pollutants flow from the economic system, where industry and businesses provide services and products to other industries and businesses, as well as the residential sector, which both directly creates waste and leads to other waste generation by the second tier of users. From the economy, pollutants spread into many parts of the biosphere, here specifically to New York Harbor. Pollutants are added to the harbor as they flow downstream from upstream sources, including via landfill leachate and through storm water runoff from city streets, which combines in sewer overflows when it rains. Pollutants also reach the water through atmospheric deposition, which deposits particulates including laden with metals, and through the continuous burial and resuspension of sediment, which can carry PCB’s and heavy metals.
Once pollutants reach New York area waters, some degrade the aquatic environment so that only the most tolerant species remain. Ultimately, persistent pollutants taken up by aquatic organisms bioaccumulate in the food web. PCB’s work in this way and though their production was outlawed decades ago, they remain persistent in New York and many other waterways. Certain species are more likely to contain PCB’s and other bioaccumulating substances and are therefore more dangerous to consume than others due to their specific habitat location and diet. Even the safest category of fish (except Bluefish) caught in New York Harbor and surrounding waters are only deemed safe enough to eat 4 times per month, and then only by males over 15 and females over 50.
Contaminated fished are caught and eaten as an important source of food in Greenpoint homes, and pollutants move from the ecological system to the social system of Greenpoint residents. Here, 35.7% of residents live below the poverty line with median household income only $16,409 ($10,000 below the Brooklyn mean), contributing to a high proportion of families relying on local fishing as a source of food security. In a recent study by the EPA, anglers were either Latino or African American and almost all were male between the ages of 16 and 60. All the anglers interviewed said they were providing food for at least one family member under the age of 19. Anglers in these neighborhoods were catching between 40 and 75 fish per week, and each family member (including children) was eating an average of 9.5 fish per week, sometimes two fish meals per day. Those interviewed expressed the need to feed their families in an environment that was hard to find work in, and that fishing also provided an important link to traditional life. The four species most frequently caught by Greenpoint residents were blue crab, American eel, bluefish, and striped bass, all of which are listed on New York State fish advisories.
To better understand why Greenpoint residents consume contaminated fish even though advisories and posted signs around the city warn against consumption, Alex created a second systems diagram to map the relationships within the angler system. In interviews Greenpoint anglers mention that they often have trouble finding work and that fishing is the only way they can reliably provide food for their family. In the preliminary systems analysis, it became clear that social complexity in this system is highly connected to Greenpoint residents’ status as an at-risk population. In the systems diagram, Alex has identified a reciprocal relationship of influence on the environmental health of the community with strong influence by cultural norms and income, and with flows of pollutants, information, capital, and social connectedness all influencing patterns of fish consumption and their effects on community health.
Systems diagram of the relationships among major components of the angler system in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which identifies fishing habitat, fish health, community and cultural norms promoting fishing, interactions among regulations, advisory councils, and impacts on consumption. Credit: Alex Dolan
One can initially ask why government has not been particular effective in terms of influencing local residents to eat less contaminated fish, and the systems analysis helps shed light on this problem. In this case, systems thinking does not automatically point to solutions. Rather, it is a tool for better understanding the problem, perhaps even providing a more clear statement of what the problem is, or how it is evolving.
It turns out that signage in fishing areas often warns of the dangers of fishing in English, whereas most of the anglers are non-English speaking. Possible points of intervention in this social-ecological system may need to better recognize cultural norms and the power income has over food availability, while still recognizing the ecosystem service fishing provides to food security. Clearly, social, cultural, political, economic, and ecological systems are all at play in influencing the health of New York Harbor and the New Yorkers who rely on it for their livelihood.
New York City Watershed and Sandy
Stephanie Valencia, another student in my fall 2012 Urban Ecosystems course, took up the issue of flooding in New York, with a focus on understanding how hurricanes like Sandy affect the hydrology of the system and result in damaging flooding effects on area residents and infrastructure. First she realized she needed to understand the water infrastructure, including the organization of the drinking water supply for NYC.
Diagram of the drinking water supply system for NYC, including the relative locations and connections among the Delaware, Catskill, and Croton watersheds that supply drinking water through multiple reservoirs (colored) to the city. Credit: Stephanie Valencia
To understand how hurricanes influence flooding in NYC, Valencia needed to also understand how water moves in a tropical storm system and comes ashore to cause storm surge. In the second diagram she maps the primary drivers influencing tropical storm development as warm ocean water, winds, and warm moist air create positive feedbacks with the humidity and evaporation until the cycle on the top of diagram is created leading to a tropical storm or hurricane. When the hurricane encounters the coast, the system changes to interact with land creating storm surges, also affected by tide and wind patterns.
Diagram outlining the process of tropical storm formation, which results in a positive feedback (in black) causing the drivers of warm moist air, winds, and warm ocean at point 1 to drive a positive feedback system that creates tropical storms. When the storm interacts with land at point 2, storms surge is created interacting with air pressure, tide, and wind patterns. Credit: Stephanie Valencia
Valencia’s effort at applying a systems approach to understanding Hurricane Sandy led her to diagram how storm surge generated at point 2 above leads into the social-ecological system of the city in point 3 (diagram below). Here, storm surge causes infrastructural damage that in turn causes nearly all city-wide organizations in the social system to mobilize to respond to the problem of Sandy, here defined narrowly as the problem of flooding. The infrastructural damage leads to damage of residential homes including home flooding, sewage backup, plumbing, and roof leaks causing residents to be homeless. This is damage is viewed as an input to the residential home subsystem where pollution, organic nutrients, viruses, debris, and toxicity are effects. The effects on the residential home system drives organizations to allocate resources, funds and volunteers to create alternative methods to combat the complex interactions within the system driving gas shortages and impacts on public transportation. Alternatives like bus shuttles, biking, car sharing, and free generator power were created in order to bring relief to highly impacted areas. These alternatives served to improve social cohesion and collaboration toward mass recovery.
Diagram of how storm surge at point 3 is connected to infrastructural damage and how organizations mobilize to address effects driven by storm surge. Credit: Stephanie Valencia
A fourth diagram (below) illustrates how CSOs in NYC during wet weather flow (WWF) contribute to the flooding problem with affects on aquatic ecosystem and drinking water, which in turn has effects on the social system through drinking water contamination, fishing and recreation restrictions, and biodiversity loss.
Diagram of Wet Weather Flow and interactions among storm surge, CSOS, and effects the social system. Credit: Stephanie Valencia
Clearly, there are many aspects of the system that are not included in Stephanie’s system diagrams, and that is the point. To really describe the state of a complex system like a city, we need to think from a systems perspective intuitively and recognize the vast complexity involving hundreds and thousands of interconnected, interacting variables. The second point is to illustrate as Stephanie has done, that we can temporarily break the system into subsystems to begin the description process that may ultimately lead to improved understanding of where the points of leverage are for intervening in the social-ecological system to increase resilience to the next disturbance.
In Stephanie’s final diagram she focused on how one particular community organization, the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance (RWA), responded to Sandy as a small subset of the larger social system. The idea here is to understand how one can slowly begin building up an understanding of the larger social-ecological system of the city by understanding particular components, such as the social organization RWA, and how it shifted their service model in the wake of Sandy to organize, support, mediate, fund, and gather and organize resources, and volunteers.
Credit: Stephanie Valencia
Systems Thinking and Wicked Problems
Noted ecologist Kevin Gaston, in his edited book, Urban Ecology, notes that urban environmental management poses a classic wicked problem, one where there is no obvious solution and the complexity of the system makes it extremely difficult to find out in advance if a proposed solution will improve resilience and sustainability or ultimately make matters worse. For example, installing tidal barriers around New York City could alleviate the problem of storm surge, but they may also simultaneously affect the harbor economy and lead to environment impacts in the harbor in difficult to predict ways. System thinking helps us understand what is difficult to predict, which is important when urban planners and policymakers are analyzing the costs, benefits, and short and long-term effects of design interventions for improving resilience to Sandy-like events.
Sandy is now long over, and many of the effects are no longer visible in the less impacted areas of the city. But rebuilding, designing, and planning a future NYC to be more resilient to future Sandy-like disturbances remains a challenge. Dealing with future urban disturbances means rebuilding the most affected areas to be resilient to hurricanes and also other significant disturbances, but which components of the system are most important to address to achieve resilience?
For example, NYC is very focused on buildings and water. Clearly we need to find better ways to deal with storm surge, given the fact that NYC is low lying. If sea levels rise four feet by the 2080s as predicted then 34 percent of the city’s streets could lie in the flood-risk zone, compared with just 11 percent now. On the other hand, if infrastructural solutions are not well understood in the context of the complex social-ecological system, then resilience could just as easily decrease.
Can wicked problems be solved?
Donna Meadows, one of the early pioneers of systems thinking, notes that there are, of course, complex problems that may have no solution. Systems thinking is not in itself a solution to wicked problems, but a method for highlighting areas of intervention that can lead to potential solutions or ways to improve the resilience and sustainability of a complex system. However, in the era of Big Data the ability to understand the nature of cities as complex systems has gotten a boost with now massive amounts of data about fundamental components, which means we should, in theory, be better able to understand the relationship among components. Take for instance New York City as a system. We now have high-resolution spatially explicit data of all kinds. Real-time social networking data from New Yorkers can also be downloaded and analyzed from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Foursquare. Local census data provides social demographic data while land use, land cover, soil data, and other biophysical data are increasingly available at high resolution. The list goes on. In my last post I illustrated how combining big data with a social-ecological systems approach can open new opportunities for urban transformations. I examined vacant lots as a particularly fruitful area where, from neighborhood to city scale, ecosystem services can be improved.
Whether it’s understanding how vacant lots can be improved to increase resilience in local neighborhoods, or how to decrease consumption of polluted food in Greenpoint, systems thinking is at the core of more clearly understanding urban environmental problems. Until we understand that we live in a highly connected, interactive, and evolving social-ecological system, we will continue to apply our creativity and ingenuity to improving components rather than the structure and functioning of the system itself.
Finally, it is important we not make the mistake of overlooking the magnitude of social change we need. Social change is difficult, but precisely because our individual and community behavior is also tied to the behavior of other parts of the city system. This is not to say that we don’t need infrastructural development, but thinking in systems allows us to recognize the importance of the social system as well as the infrastructural system and thus how changing physical infrastructure alone will never create system-wide resilience. Resilience involves the ability to adapt to changing environments and an adaptive approach acknowledges that a long-term systems view is needed to deal with our very real, sometimes very wicked, problems. In New York City, we have the opportunity, perhaps the imperative, to capitalize on what Sandy has taught us to develop more complex models and systems approaches for understanding the short- and long-term feedbacks and relationships between components of our urban system so that when the next disturbance strikes, we are even more resilient.
Of all the cities in America, Detroit, Michigan may provide us with the best opportunity to discover how to create a connection to nature within an urban population.
The New Nature in Detroit. Photo: Rebecca Salminen Witt
Detroit is a place of glass and asphalt and steel juxtaposed block by block with wild prairies, emerging woodlands, and re-emergent wetlands. We are immersed in a kind of new nature here, but most Detroiters quite literally can’t see the forest for the trees. Detroit is a place of contradictions where the unexpected is a daily occurrence. Here, we see pelotons of cyclists 300 strong, first rolling along in the company of a stray dog or a lone pheasant on urban avenues that no longer host any homes, and then pedaling toward downtown streets crowded with cranes marking new building development.
These contrasts fascinate the world, but it is the wildlands which are emerging in between these extremes—places like the small second stage forest which has grown up on what was once an illegal dump site on King Street, pictured above, or the pockets of prairie that have claimed blocks of former home sites in the old Briggs Neighborhood, that are most interesting and which may actually have the most potential to improve the lives of Detroiters by providing them with the opportunity to cultivate a lasting connection to nature.
Detroit Wildland Urban Interface. Photo: Rebecca Salminen Witt
Wikipedia will tell you that the Wildland Urban Interface is that zone of “transition between unoccupied land and human development.” This zone (the WUI) is often studied for its relevance to outbreaks of wildfire, and particularly the escalating danger to human lives and property that wildfires represent as more and more homes are built within the wildland urban interface which exists on the outer edges of suburban development. Traditionally, we investigate human intrusion into the wildlands and discuss the disruption in natural systems (including suppression of wildfire) that this causes. In urban areas, the wildland urban interface receded long ago and, for the most part, urban residents no longer consider themselves to be part of the interface with nature.
But in Detroit wildland has suddenly and unmistakably appeared in spaces where neighborhoods recently stood. Here, wildlands exist within the city limits, not on the outer edges of development. After decades of disinvestment and abandonment in the urban core, there is, once again a “zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development.” In this context, we see an unpredictable—and often interesting—disruption in human activities caused by nature’s wild return. It is this disruption that has created space, both literally and figuratively, for Detroiters to discover a connection with nature.
Green Corps. Photo: Greening of Detroit
I recently moderated a brainstorming session for high school students tasked with generating ideas for improving the environment of their neighborhoods. Their interests ranged from occupancy of vacant structures, to illegal dumping on vacant land, to urban gardening. They were palpably afraid of the wildlife (pheasants, raccoons, deer, coyotes) that they had begun to see patrolling their streets.
Much of the discussion centered on “blight elimination.” Their interests were motivated by how they feel when they are in their neighborhood, what they think they deserve, and how the current conditions impact the self image they carry with them into the world. In the eyes of the students, the wildland that is encroaching upon their neighborhoods is evidence that they have been ignored, forgotten, or blatantly disrespected. To them, uninvited nature in their neighborhood represents nothing more than urban decay requiring an intervention designed to eliminate it.
Our discussion was wide-ranging and very animated. By the end of the day, we had arrived at an unexpected conclusion: maybe this new nature was an opportunity to be considered more carefully. Perhaps, the wildland that had emerged at their doorsteps was something better managed than eliminated, and maybe this was a civic issue that they, as young people, could actually do something about. Most surprising was their conclusion that maybe this opportunity made them the lucky ones after all.
My discussion with the kids that day emphasized a simple truth that isn’t glamorous or romantic in the way many recent articles have portrayed Detroit and its residents. Detroiters are not necessarily willing stewards of the environment or intentional civic ecologists in this assertive nature that we find ourselves living amidst. We are merely human participants in the inevitable march of evolution, adapting as we must, surviving as we may. But we are surviving, and because Detroiters are resilient and hardworking, we are finding our place within this new wildland urban interface.
Unintentionally immersed in nature. Photo: Rebecca Salminen Witt
Detroiters did not seek to experience nature within their city. This may be why they have not fully recognized its benefits. A few years ago, The National Wildlife Federation published a handy fact sheet that lists many of the benefits of human exposure to nature. A quick review reveals that despite heightened access to nature, Detroiters still suffer from the ills that exposure to nature is supposed to alleviate: ADHD, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, autism, increased depression, stress and pain. Our kids are asthmatic and hyperactive. Our adults are depressed, obese, and suffer from heart disease. It’s no wonder that most Detroiters aren’t embracing the nature that has appeared in their urban space—they aren’t getting any of its benefits!
I have begun to think that in order to realize the benefits of exposure to nature, one must intentionally seek it out. Further, the Detroit experience suggests that proximity to emerging wildlands does not equate to a connection with nature. Immersion in natural space undoubtedly increases the opportunities for connection with nature, but alone, it is not enough. To create connection, we must be intentional and deliberate in crafting quality opportunities for interaction with nature.
So, given that Detroiters have more opportunity now than ever before to develop a meaningful connection to nature, what can we do to capitalize on our de facto immersion in wildspace to create that connection?
Camp Greening. Photo Credit: The Greening of Detroit
Start small
By giving the youngest and most vulnerable Detroiters the opportunity to experience nature in the wildland urban interface, we have begun to create tiny emissaries of true connection to nature.
Infusing environmental education and nutrition education into the Detroit Public Schools curriculum was an important step in creating an environment where immersion in emerging wildlands could be recognized as an opportunity to build a connection to nature. We began in a classroom, building excitement and expectations for the things that we might find outside. We worked with teachers and students alike to make them comfortable with the idea of moving intentionally into the wildspace in our city. And then we ventured out.
Our LAND. Photo: The Greening of Detroit
Our first adventures in the wildlands were a learning experience for all of us. Children in spotless basketball shoes labeled by LeBron picked their way gingerly through rubble and mud. So we bought boots. They showed up for our “field” trips unprepared for the weather. We brought hats and mittens. Teachers suggested that “troublemakers” stay behind. We made the troublemakers team leaders and let their exuberance light the way for their peers. Everyone was afraid of bugs, and spiders, and worms. We played I Spy and Wildlife Bingo and by the end of the day, we were searching pockets so that no pet worms made it back to the classroom.
We all adapted. The kids (especially those “troublemakers”) thrived. The littlest of us all were some of the first to realize that the new nature that surrounds us just might be a gift. I’m betting that they will also be the first to exhibit the benefits of a connection to nature.
Gardening in the WUI. Photo: Rebecca Salminen Witt
The agriculture of opportunity
Another group of Detroiters that have become emissaries to the wildlands can be found within the urban agriculture community.
The urban garden is emerging in Detroit as one place where the barriers have started to come down for urbanites struggling to understand their place within the changing ecosystem of the City. Gardeners were some of the first residents to venture into the wildlands on the edges of their neighborhoods, carving gardens of all types from the emergent prairies and woodlands. We could consider urban gardeners the first to recognize the opportunity inherent in Detroit’s vast open spaces.
These early adapters are a different breed; for the most part we aren’t talking about happy hipsters growing green zebra tomatoes and red russian kale in tidy urban allotment plots, although we have those, too. The pioneers in the wildland urban interface are a rough crowd forced off the grid by life circumstances and an unstable local economy; they are growing a crazy profusion of food in abandoned lots to feed their families and sustain their neighborhoods. For these folks, forging a connection to nature is not the primary objective. In fact, many times it seems almost accidental. Nevertheless, through the work in the garden, the gardeners develop an authentic connection to nature and come to enjoy the benefits that it creates.
Green infrastructure planning. Photo: Greening of Detroit
Participation
Another opportunity to bridge the gap between immersion and connection can be found in community-based planning and design.
Encouraging residents to engage in discussions and planning activities around the vacant spaces in our midst almost inevitably leads them to recognize the benefits that they are already deriving from open space, simultaneously providing them with the opportunity to participate in its long term preservation and/or use. Community-based planning has gained momentum in Detroit during the past several years, and we now have examples of neighborhoods that are not only firmly connected to the nature that surrounds them, but are also empowered to begin to shape that space to facilitate comfortable coexistence.
On Detroit’s lower east side, residents of several neighborhoods joined together to form LEAP, the Lower Eastside Action Plan. The LEAP target area borders one of Michigan’s most affluent suburbs as well as the Detroit River. It has a major automobile manufacturing facility within its borders, as well as several of Detroit’s major streets. Still, this area is notable for its residential abandonment and resulting acres of open space. The members of LEAP recognized the need to be proactive early on. They realized that community-based planning could give them a voice in what would happen in their neighborhoods. Today, they have an organized Greenway, an open space master plan in the implementation stage, and a voice in what will be done with the vast vacant spaces in their community.
Neighbors building Brightmoor. Photo Credit: Greening of Detroit
In the opposite corner of the City, the Brightmoor neighborhood came to community-based planning from the other direction. There, community residents first came together to build a garden and to rid their street of prostitutes and drug dealers. Soon after, a community group formed and the neighborhood began to redefine itself with gardens at its core. Brightmoor is another neighborhood near an affluent suburb, with abundant open space and a location along the banks of a (different) river. The natural assets of the place are undeniable. This is a place where gardens work with the existing terrain to create a connection with nature that is almost immediate for everyone who visits.
Here, the plan came later. In fact, the plan was created as a tool to preserve and extend the community-based development that had already occurred in the neighborhood.
These examples are fascinating when compared. The neighborhoods have similar assets: abundant wildspace, riverfront, proximity to an affluent suburb. They also have similar challenges: residential abandonment, aged infrastructure, combined sewer overflow issues. And they arrived at a similar conclusion—that community-based planning was a valuable tool to help them manage the wildland urban interface that had come to exist in their neighborhoods. The control that community-based planning provided helped both of these neighborhoods turn immersion in wildland into connection to nature for their residents. In each neighborhood, the residents are beginning to experience the benefits of their exposure to nature. Not surprisingly, these benefits are more readily visible in the Brightmoor neighborhood. After all, those residents intentionally sought the benefits of nature through gardening.
Detroit has miles to go when it comes to capitalizing on the wildland that has emerged in its core, but we have begun to recognize that these places give us the chance to create a city that more fully supports its citizens. Our children and our gardeners have shown us that connection to nature can be wrought from immersion in wildland. Our community planners have demonstrated that planning can create a voice for residents, leading them to recognize the value in nature.
Detroit’s wildlands hold its richest opportunity to improve the lives of its citizens. These are places were Detroiters can learn to embrace nature and in so doing, realize the lifelong benefits that such a connection provides. This unique opportunity must be cultivated carefully in recognition that connection to nature is not assured even given immersion in wildland. This is no time to stand idly by. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to enjoy a connection to nature must get off the sidelines and help orchestrate the preservation, use, and enjoyment of Detroit’s most surprising asset; the new nature at its core.
It is imperative that a transdisciplinary approach that acknowledges disciplinary assumptions and boundaries to transcend them is supported. For example between managers, planners, designers, developers, residents, policymakers and researchers.
Human relationships with nature are highly complex and variable. Particularly now when the human connection to nature has been highly disrupted, and the sense of custodianship or stewardship has been displaced. Yet at the same time, there is a growing awareness and movement of the need to reconnect people and nature, to both address nature deficit disorder, and also help counter the impending extinction crisis highlighted by the recent International Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report.
Within the disciplines and groups of people who work with biodiversity or seeking to reconnect people to nature, there is extremely high variability in what we understand nature to be. In an effort to help simplify this variability without losing the complexity, Steele, Wisel and Maller propose the frames of Wild, Stray and Care in their publication “More than human cities: where the wild things are”. These terms were later used to frame a co-authored chapter led by Ferne Edwards as part of the Untaming the Urban collective based at the Australian National University, Canberra. The frames were also explored as a seed session at The Nature of Cities Summit in Paris. This essay introduces the three frames, then shares some of the outcomes from the TNOC Summit Seed Session.
The three frames: Wild, Stray, and Care
“Wild, stray and care” seek to problematize boundaries, such as natural / artificial, human / non-human, and progressive / regressive. Acting as both verb and noun, “wild’ may be interpreted as “first nature” to presume authenticity, as “wild-in-nature” as represented by natural predators or indeed as uncontrollable human behaviour. “Rewilding” presents another interpretation, as in ecological restoration to reintroduce and to return animals “home”. Alternatively, “stray” could represent an outsider species living in liminal space, homeless, unwanted—as an exile, exotic, introduced or wild native species that has entered a foreign space. Often designated as “pests” or “weeds”, such intruders are often downplayed, de-valued and dismissed within urban environments. Finally, “care” offers possibilities for rethinking about human / nonhuman engagements with one possible outcome constructing a bridge of “entangled empathy” to de-centre human’s privilege over all other urban nonhumans (see Edwards et al. forthcoming).
The Nature of Cities Summit Seed Session
The seed session, “Wild, Stray, Care: Exploring multiple ways people co-exist with urban nature” got off to a roaring start at The Nature of Cities Summit in Paris. With artists, geographers, urban planners, anthropologists, policy makers, landscape architects, ecologists and NGOs in attendance representing cities across the world—South Africa, France, the United States, Australia, Belgium, India, Ireland, Russia, UK, Africa, China, Spain and Singapore—we sought to disrupt conventional frames of “nature” towards creating more harmonious multi-species cityscapes. During the seed session three questions were explored. The responses are briefly summarised below.
What is your favourite urban nonhuman?
The warm-up question immediately raised queries about disciplinary preconceptions of “nature”. Can nature be conceptualised as an individual species (such as nightingale, dogs, or birds), as a conglomerate ecosystem (such as “woods, real wild woods”), or as a singular species that leads one into a relational web of life (such as ants that introduce us to soil, other insects, plants and more)? Where does urban nature begin or end: on / in land (clover, dandelion), in waterways (otters, manatees or reeds) or air-blown (as solitary bees)? Are only pretty or distasteful species recognised (cats or cockroaches) and if so, what about all those species in between?
Attendees were then asked three key questions with their responses captured by a mix of butcher’s paper, sticky notes, mobile technologies, word clouds (captured by Poll Everywhere), note-takers and photographs.
A word cloud of responses to the question: What is your favourite urban nonhuman? Word size reflects frequency of each response.
What natures exist in your city?
This next question delved deeper into how humans sense urban natures in a range of environments based with consideration of the three frames. Amplifying the categories mentioned above (loud, pretty or distasteful species, and singular and composite ecosystems), new recruitments included the very small (dust mites, mosquitos, flies, microbes, bacteria, mycorrhizal fungi and pollen), the meso (parks) and the macro (forest patches, island trails). Species that transgressed categorization where also acknowledged as they move from wild to stray to care and back again as they intersect with other species and situations.
For example, water hyacinth from Lake Victoria (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) is a wild species that invades other water systems through lake chains and plane travel preventing navigation (stray). Its overproduction is a good source for furniture-making (care), while by preventing human navigation, water hyacinth creates conditions for the wild return of fish species.
Conversation topics included how care is often focused too much on appearance versus function, a question about human-framed perception on how do you know nature’s there, while parrots, deer, bats and cats were recognised as the most common shared species across all attending cities. One respondent’s responses illustrate a city’s specificity to the frames where, based in Singapore: “wild” is considered as primary tropical forests that fill one with awe, as complex systems that are heterogeneous, multi-layered forests, that are dynamic, mysterious and vibrant providing luxuriant food; while “stray” evokes: spontaneously growing plants, rambunctious transitory and temporary growth, a possible wicked problem, something that is incomplete, unintentional fauna, transforming—there are not many “strays”. Finally, care is seen to be manicured, intentional maintenance, protective, controlled, attentive, designed and manipulated space and animals, where the most distinctive nature that she senses are manicured open lawns with single-tiered vegetation and biotic homogenization. There is also an appreciation of the incredible biodiversity due to topicality.
A word cloud of responses to the question: What natures exist in your city? Word size reflects frequency of each response.
How are those natures being managed?
Popular responses to the second question included a predisposition for hygienist and a human safety focus where reactive measures were taken against fear or anger to create places devoid of assertive forms of nature. Rather than softly mediated relationships with nature, heavy-handed regulation by government plays a large role. For example, in Australia killing is an intense strategy for managing stray species such as an overpopulation in kangaroos or stray dogs and cats. Alternatively, some species defy management efforts where the best management strategy is to not manage nature at all, allowing instead for “wild” nature to blossom and self-regulate in cities. Again, to illustrate the complexity within a Singaporean perspective, “wild” represented protected, highly managed “nature” as the leftover primary wild forests where these are precious; “stray” is infrequent due to land scarcity and clear ownership, while “care” is everywhere, as a one hundred percent urbanized city state, the government has done much taking care. Tidy forms of nature persist under the nation’s Garden City vision that emphasized providing visitors and investors a clean and favourable impression of the country. There is barely even a single patch of the land bare (either turf or paved).
What possibilities can you envision to more positively co-exist with urban natures?
The final question encouraged both fantastical and pragmatic possibilities of future urban natures. Thinking big, conversations explored issues of spatial and temporal scales and their implications for cities in times of climate change (will cities be on or under water?), to think beyond humans as the dominant species, to go beyond government as the key regulating actor (to consider the influence of grassroots movements), to imagine “wild cities” as sources of multiple nature/s (to overcome both the human need to control things and to re-introduce wild urban natures such as eco-corridors and urban forests), to re-think humans fear of dirt (to “open the waste bins” as a treat for foxes and raccoons), and to re-value urban waterways as a source of nature. Rather than leave these fantastical possibilities as distant futures, the room also recognised that “we need to act in the next 12 years” to allow both humans and nonhumans to adapt to climate change. Strategies of action could include efforts to understand public perception, interdisciplinary collaborations, monitoring, and consideration of socio-cultural factors and their economic ramifications. Intended wildness such as explored by Hwang and Yue (2019) is one example where positive relationships could be created with urban nature.
Concluding thoughts
As these frames are a recent contribution to conversations around the nature of cities, they are yet to be fully explored. However outstanding strings from the discussion included that:
Cities must be considered holistically, including biologically, to satisfy aesthetic-sensory experiences, and for people to sense nature as part of ourselves.
The frames of “wild, stray and care” are highly site-specific where geographic, climatic, socio-cultural conditions all have influence. Identifying the specificity of nature to that region (where even single weeds have a function) is crucial.
Local expert knowledge in these regions should be acknowledged and integrated.
Systemic and strategic integration is needed among wild, stray, care by each party. For example, designers could to focus on the housing of non-humans in the city to make them more favourable to humans while supporting flexibility and resourcefulness.
To consider the nested scale and timescale of urban species and situations.
It is imperative that a transdisciplinary approach that acknowledges disciplinary assumptions and boundaries to transcend them is supported. For example between managers, planners, designers, developers, residents, policymakers and researchers.
Indeed, such a transdisciplinary approach was tested in this seed session. From the rich conversation and stickies created, these frames provide some rich fodder in which to reassess natures place in the city and humans place within nature. The positive and energetic reception received is very encouraging for further conversations! We look forward to participating in a broader dialogue in the years to come.
With thanks to all participants: Pippin Anderson, Méliné Baronian, Katherine Berthon, Nathalie Blanc, Lindsay Campbell, Elsa Caudron, Maud Chalmandrier, Marianne Cohen, Marguerite Culot, Samarth Das, Laurent Favia, Cathel de Lima Hutchinson, Chloé Duffaut, Grégoire Durand, Arthur Feinberg, Katie Holten, Juan Miguel Kanai, Aleksandr Kiyatkin, Nadezda Kiyatkin, Julia Lorenz, François Mancebo, Katherine Moseley, Seema Mundoli, Samuel Okello, Simon Pittman, Marisa Prefer, Hugo Rochard, Sylvie Salles, and Lu Yu.
Special thanks to our TNOC session scribe, Jenna Witzleben, and to co-convenor, Kevin Sloan, who was unable to make it on the day.
Dr Amy Hahs is an urban ecologist who is interested in understanding how urban landscapes impact local ecology, and how we can use this information to create better cities and towns for biodiversity and people. She is Director of Urban Ecology in Action, a newly established business working towards the development of green, healthy cities and towns, and the conservation of resilient ecological systems in areas where people live and work.
Yun Hye Hwang is an accredited landscape architect in Singapore, an Associate Professor in MLA and currently serves as the Programme Director for BLA. Her research speculates on emerging demands of landscapes in the Asian equatorial urban context by exploring sustainable landscape management, the multifunctional role of urban landscapes, and ecological design strategies for high-density Asian cities.
Written almost thirty years ago, the first postulated that it is imprinted in our DNA that people need connection with biodiversity. Five years ago, the second documented comprehensively the multiple ways in which biodiversity has contributed to our well-being. With more than half the world’s population living in cities, the third book emphasized the importance of integrating nature into urban design and planning.
How can one translate the lessons learnt from these three books to an individual level?
Tim Beatley posted ‘Exploring the Nature Pyramid’ in his TNOC blog on 7 August 2012 where he shared a tool that Tanya Denckla-Cobb initiated and Tim developed to help us conceptualise how much biodiversity we need. Tim posed several thought-provoking questions that triggered some lively discussions.
There is ample evidence of the importance of biodiversity to our health. The key contentions are not whether biodiversity is crucial for human health but rather: (1) how much of what biodiversity do we need for what aspects of our health; and (2) in what form of biodiversity do these requirements have to come?
While there are logical follow-up questions—such as “Are there such things as minimum daily requirements of nature?” or, “What constitutes a ‘serving’ of nature?”, etc.—I would like to work from the premise that it is essential to maximise our daily exposure to and interaction with as much biodiversity in as many forms possible for our physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Moreover, the ground-breaking work carried out by Terry Hartig et al., as published in ‘Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings’, highlighted that, “for urban populations in particular, easy pedestrian and visual access to natural settings can produce preventive benefits”.
I would like to invite you to join me in the following thought experiment. Let’s walk through a day in our life, consciously ensuring that we maintain a biodiversity view at most, if not all times of day.
Home views
What a refreshing way to start a day when we open our eyes to a green feast every morning through a bedroom window view like this.
This is one of the many biodiversity-filled windows in Dr Thomas Easaw’s house in Singapore. Photo: Cheryl Chia, National Parks Board, SingaporeAnother biodiversity-filled window view in Dr Thomas Easaw’s house. Photo: Cheryl Chia, National Parks Board, Singapore
On the other hand, it might be so pleasant that we would like to spend the rest of the day in bed, gazing out of the window and indulge in some day-dreaming.
As we drag ourselves out of bed to get a cup of tea or coffee, a verdant spread for the eyes stimulates the mind, better preparing us for a productive day ahead.
Personal actions:
Have you planted any trees or shrubs outside your residence to ensure your daily dose of biodiversity? Do you have pots of flowers to brighten your window ledges? Have you suggested to your apartment’s management committee to plant more trees and shrubs around your apartment block? Are you a member of your neighbourhood’s Community in Bloom group?
Journey views
Tree and shrub-lined roads liven our daily journeys with continuous luscious greenery, keep us cooler, surprise us with fluttering bats, bees and butterflies, clean the air and provide many ecosystem services for free.
Personal actions:
If you had a choice, would you select a route with better scenery along the way?
Having tree-lined streetscape involves commitment by several agencies, including the city councils, planners, road departments, etc. Have you suggested to your city council to plant more native plants that will attract small mammals, bats, bees, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.?
Tree-lined and shrub-lined park connector in Singapore. Photo: National Parks Board, Singapore
Work views
On an average, we spend around 9 hours per day at the office and at least 6 hours in school. Most offices have windows, preferably with biodiversity views. How does it enrich our lives and improve our health? A bird or butterfly or squirrel can provide interesting entertainment outside the window at different times of the day. They take your attention away from the computer screen, letting your eye muscles relax. Bird songs and the cacophony of cicadas add an element of naturalness to the sounds of technology that currently dominate our lives.
Personal actions:
Have you persuaded the maintenance managers of your office to plant more trees outside the building and to improve the horticultural landscaping? Have they diversified the floral species to include plants that attract birds, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.?
School views
School grounds that have a substantial area of natural ecosystems enjoy many benefits. The students are not only healthier because of the cooler classroom conditions and cleaner air quality but they can also concentrate better. The natural habitats function as living labs within the school grounds, adding a sense of reality to their lessons.
Personal actions:
Have you tried convincing your school to create an eco-garden or dragonfly pond or butterfly patch? Have you carried out a biodiversity audit in your school? Have you tried to increase the biodiversity in your school by planting native species targeted at specific taxonomic groups?
Greenery around the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School in Singapore. Photo: Lena Chan, National Parks Board, Singapore
Hospital views
Roger S. Ulrich in his paper in Science, ‘View through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery’, concluded: “the results imply that hospital design and siting decisions should take into account the quality of patient window views”.
Mr Liak Teng Lit, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Alexander Health System took this further and ensured that Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) is both ‘hospital in a garden’ and ‘a garden in a hospital’. Hence, all the hospital rooms in KTPH have windows with a biodiversity view. KTPH embraces an environmental philosophy that is based on sustainable development and the preservation of biodiversity. Some of the ways that operationalised the environmental policy include: (1) natural ecosystems have been created within the grounds of KTPH; (2) bird and butterfly attracting plants are key landscape features; (3) ponds with native freshwater fish provide one of the water features; (4) a roof top garden, that is lovingly maintained by volunteers and KTPH staff, produces organic vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices; and (5) a lake that harbours native freshwater organisms and provides food for raptors.
Visitors to KTPH enjoying the natural scenery. Photo: Taken from KTPH website, www.ktph.com.sg
Restaurant views
The favourite pastime of Singaporeans is eating. While having breakfast, Singaporeans would most likely be discussing where to have lunch. Since people, especially those living in Singapore, spend at least 20% of their waking hours having meals, it would add on to their dining experience if they can also enjoy a visual biodiversity feast.
Au Jardin Les Amis in Singapore Botanic Gardens. Photo: Lena Chan, National Parks Board, Singapore
If each of us plays our part in trying to make our living spaces populated with biodiversity, there will be more biophilic people living in biophilic cities.
Signing off from a room with a biodiversity-filled window view.
Lena Chan Singapore
View from my office. Photo: Lena Chan, National Parks Board, Singapore
The year 2014 seemed a long year when it came a year ago but passed by very quickly giving way to another long New Year and fresh hope that the world would be prosperous. What does it mean for all the countries in the world to be Prosperous? It requires creating a successful, flourishing or thriving conditions to be well-off?
At the beginning of 2000, the world leaders identified the most pressing development challenges and took a pledge to strive towards these eight goals, popularly called Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The MDGs—with eight goals, 21 sub-goals monitored through 60 indicators—established a blueprint for a better tomorrow. Thus, this year, 2015, is an important milestone and we have just a year ahead of us to achieve the MDGs. Already the world is geared towards post-2015 development agenda. To quote Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of United Nations: “Efforts to achieve the MDGs are a critical building block towards establishing a stable foundation for setting sustainable development goals beyond 2015”.
It is time to take stock of what has been achieved so far in our goal of making a better tomorrow. A key question is this: can all of these goals be achieved, or are their trade-offs?
An examination of the data suggests that we gain in some areas of the five capitals—natural, human, social, financial, and manufactured—at the expense of others.
The table below lists the MDG goals and the achievement so far, as per the Millennium Development Report 2014. In sum, work on the time-bound targets has yielded results far off the mark.
Goal
Achievement so far, as per the Millennium Development Report 2014
1
Reduce poverty and hunger
• The extreme poverty rate has been halved, but major challenges remain
• Limited improvement in job quality is accompanied by slowdown in productivity growth
• Hunger continues to decline, but major efforts are needed to achieve the hunger target globally by 2015
2
Achieve universal primary education
• Despite impressive strides forward at the start of the decade, progress in reducing the number of children out of school has slackened considerably
3
Promote gender equity and empower women
• Gender disparities are more prevalent at higher levels of education
4
Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2005, the under-five mortality rate
• Despite substantial progress, the world is still falling short of the MDG child mortality target
5
Improve maternal health
• Much more still needs to be done to reduce maternal mortality.
6
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• There are still too many cases of HIV infection• Have halted growth by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases; the world is on track to achieving the malaria target, but great challenges remain
7
Achieve environmental sustainability
• Millions of hectares of forest are lost every year
• Global greenhouse gases continue their upward trend• Renewable water resources are becoming more and more scarce
• Many species are driven closer to extinction• The number of people living in slum conditions has been growing
8
Develop a global partnership for development
• Official development assistance is now at its highest level, reversing the decline of the previous two years
What do these millennium goals mean for the overall well-being?
Based on the achievement of targets, can the nations judge whether they are sustainable?
Should income, as measured by the Gross National Product, be the sole criteria for prosperity or are some other indicators important also?
“Income alone is insufficient”
This argument has been promoted since 1990s through one such effort, the human development indicator created by UNDP: the Human Development Index (HDI). HDI emphasizes that each country’s capability should be the ultimate indicator for assessing and comparing development in different countries. Thus the HDI is the geometric means of normalized indices for standard of living (as measured by gross national income), health (measured by life expectancy at birth) and educational attainment (measured by the mean years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and above and expected years of schooling for children entering the school). The index is limited in the sense that it does not consider other important issues like inequality, poverty, empowerment, etc, which however, were used in other HDI versions. HDI should be seen as the maximum attainable level when all the nations are similar and all nationals have similar levels of inequality, poverty, empowerment, etc.
The good news is that since 2000 all the nations have improved their human development index as per the different Human Development reports. This is clearly a good sign but countries vary significantly. The figure below shows HDI in different countries, based on the Human Development Report (2014). It is obvious from the figure that countries with higher levels of income have higher HGI.
Human Developmen tIndex. Source: http://www.ourworldindata.org/data/economic-development-work-standard-of-living/human-development-index/
HDI has parallels with the Millennium Development Goals, above. Goals 1, 2 and 4 of MDGS can be evaluated through HDI. However, HDI falls short as a measure of other goals. The MDGs are balanced on five pillars: the nations standard of living (Goal 1), health capital (Goals 4, 5 and 6), human capital ( Goal 2), natural capital (Goal 7) and social capital (goal 8 and goal 3). HDI, of course, falls short on measuring natural capital, but other indices are available to measure the progress and prosperity of the nations.
Inclusive Wealth Report (2014)
The UNU-IHDP and UNEP initiative on the Inclusive Wealth Report (IWR) fills this gap in measuring other forms of capital. Inclusive wealth is the measure of productive capital base of the economy. The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) was created to reflect a bigger picture of a country’s wealth in terms of progress, well-being and long term sustainability.
The index complements GDP by introducing the impact and value of ‘Inclusive Wealth’: Natural Capital, Human Capital, and Produced Capital. IWI measures the wealth of nations by carrying out a comprehensive analysis of a country’s productive base. That is, it measures all of the assets from which human well-being is derived, including manufactured, human and natural capital. In this, it measures a nation’s capacity to create and maintain human well-being over time.
Growth in Inclusive Weath Index (IWI). Source: http://inclusivewealthindex.org/#the-world-wants-to-know-how-its-doing
IWI shows (above) that around 91% of countries for which the data is available experienced a positive annual average growth rate in wealth during the period 1990 to 2010, while the remaining countries exhibited a negative growth. However, if one takes population growth into consideration (i.e. the proportion of the pie that each person gets over a period of time), only 60% of the countries experienced positive growth rates while the rest experienced negative growth rate.
The key reason why inclusive wealth has increased is because (1) in 137 of the 140 countries considered by the IWR (2014) there was an increase in human capital during the period 1990 to 2010 and (2) and increase in produced capital in 132 of the 140 countries. Thus, IWI shows how well the MDG targets are reached but also shows the conflict: to achieve certain targets the natural capital has to be compromised (Target 7). The IWR analysis shows that natural capital has experienced positive growth in only 24 of the 140 countries.
The Millennium Development Goal 7 is “Achieving environmental sustainability”. The analysis of forest wealth of nations in IWR (2014) shows that most of the countries with low and medium HDI are liquidating their forest capital in the process of increasing their income to provide better job opportunities and income earning opportunities for their population. While the total GDP of the nations chosen in the study grew by 69% between 1990 and 2010, low and middle income countries experienced relatively higher growth, with GDP growth ranging between 20 and 66 percent.
Though the human capital has improved, this growth, however, has come with a trade-off in precious forest capital. With the exceptions of Rwanda and Gambia, the low-income countries depleted forest wealth while experiencing positive GDP growth. Haiti experienced a decline in GDP while increasing forest wealth. Zimbabwe experienced declines in both GDP growth as well as forest wealth. The middle-income countries showed a mixed trend. India and China managed to be on the positive growth path while increasing their forest wealth, whereas Brazil and Indonesia are losing their rich forest capital.
Most of the lower middle-income countries are growing at the expense of forest wealth. All the high-income countries in the sample have stabilized their forest wealth.
The illustration suggests that it may not be possible to achieve all MDGs simultaneously.
Percent change in forest wealth against percent change in GDP for four classes of HDI. Note that each sub-graph has different scales. The red zones represent the loss of forest wealth. Credit: Haripriya Gundimeda
What is the role of our urban community? It is clear that urbanisation has a major influence on determining the growth of the nations as well as the quality of the environment. As the pressure on land increases for habitation, infrastructure development and industrialisation increases, natural capital will be at risk.
Sustainable development requires integration of all the five capitals together. It is important to create jobs, provide income earning opportunities and food security, reduce inequalities, improve the standard of living, and improve the human capital health capital but at the same time conserve natural capital.
How we do this is a big open challenge for our urban community. This is what makes countries prosperous. Can we hope that 2015 will prove to be an important year in improving our prosperity?
Since writing my last blog in October 2012, I returned to Victoria, Australia, at the conclusion of an exciting two year secondment to the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal, Canada. The focus there was on further embedding biological diversity (biodiversity) and human health matters in the work of the Convention; increasing the international policy support for health and biodiversity links; and further strengthening a range of strategic partnerships, particularly between the CBD Secretariat and the World Health Organization (WHO). Now I’m delighted to be further building on this work on the human health and nature nexus in the context of sub-national protected areas and parks in the role of Manager Healthy Parks Healthy People (HPHP) in Parks Victoria.
My blog this week focuses on some of the work underway on the integral links between nature and human health in Victoria’s cities, and the embodiment of the phrase Healthy Parks Healthy People, an approach pioneered by Parks Victoria more than 10 years ago now. Parks Victoria is dedicated to protecting and improving the wonderful natural environment — and helping Victorians become healthier.
Healthy Parks Healthy People in the Victorian context
There are a number of drivers in the Victorian context that have raised the awareness of these links and resulted in actions for public health and public lands managed by Parks Victoria, in partnership with other public land managers and health agencies. Parks Victoria, is the statutory authority which manages approximately 17% of Victoria, Australia including national parks, state parks, bays, waterways, cultural and heritage sites. Parks Victoria adopted the Healthy Parks Healthy People approach in 2000.
In Victoria, we live in increasingly urbanized societies, a trend seen throughout the world’s population. Another significant and alarming trend, often linked with urbanization, is the rise in a range of non-communicable diseases (such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease), as well as mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, and declining social and community connectedness. Additional drivers in the Victorian context, which are also relevant in many other cities around the world, include changing demographics and population factors, such as an aging population and understanding increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.
In combination, these factors are challenging and altering the perceptions, management and usage of parks in cities and in urbanized areas in regional Victoria.
Well-managed parks can contribute to improving several of these public health challenges as they provide access to nature throughout Victoria. Parks offer a wonderful setting for improving our mental, physical and spiritual health, while they continue to be fundamentally important for the protection of biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services, such as clean air and water. In addition, parks can provide social and economic benefits.
The Healthy Parks Healthy People approach underpins the foundation of Parks Victoria and results in a holistic approach to parks, people and nature, with a greater “well being” focus and an emphasis on management for ecosystem services and facilitating access for people to get active in nature. For service delivery, this translates into a broader partnership approach in the management of parks that supports multiple benefits and experiences, and actively seeking health and nature connections that reflect community diversity within the broader ecological, economic and social landscape. In the longer term, we seek to offer life-long experiences that benefit people’s health and benefit parks by supporting healthy lifestyles in nature and active participation in the sustainable management of public land by staff, the community and visitors.
Given the evidence, and as the custodian of four million hectares of parklands, Parks Victoria has a clear role to play in connecting people with nature and providing broad societal benefits above and beyond those traditionally associated with parks.
And the word is spreading. In May 2010, over 1000 participants from 37 nations attended the International Healthy Parks Healthy People Congress held in Melbourne. This successful event explored the many ways nature and parks significantly contribute to our health and wellbeing across different sectors and resulted in two key outcomes, being the Melbourne Communiqué and the HPHP Central web portal. Other organizations have now adopted and developed the Healthy Parks Healthy People approach. For example, the U.S. National Parks Service is set to host a Healthy Parks Healthy People International Congress and Expo in Atlanta, Georgia, in June 2014 and the once-in-a-decade IUCN World Parks Congress will profile health and wellbeing in its program in Sydney, New South Wales, in November 2014.
Parks Victoria is continuing to further work on translating the Healthy Parks Healthy People approach into reality. Two practical examples of innovation and leadership with key partners are provided below:
Active in Parks, Geelong and Keilor
Active in Parks is a Healthy Parks Healthy People program which targets health and community development agencies to undertake activities in parks and open spaces to achieve social, physical and mental health outcomes in two Victorian cities: Keilor, approximately 19 kilometres north-west of Melbourne has a culturally diverse population of more than 191,000, over 40% of which were born outside of Australia; and Geelong, approximately 75 kilometres south-west from Melbourne on the shores of Port Phillip Bay with an urban population estimated at approximately 175,000 for the City of Greater Geelong.
Active in Parks is an innovative multifaceted approach to increase physical activity in parks, encouraging health and community agencies to embed park visits into their regular routines and encouraging communities to enjoy parks’ benefits for physical and mental health, and social well-being. The program facilitates access to and promotes appreciation of parks, aiming to increase community health, build the value of parks, commitment for conservation and advocacy of parks whilst promoting community physical, social and mental health benefits.
The program was initially launched as a 12-month pilot to assess the effectiveness of the activities, the local needs, the appetite of the health community, and the resources and facilities needed to run the program at a local level. After this period, it was mutually agreed by the funders and key partners to continue for a total of three years due to its high interest from multiple stakeholders, proven effectiveness and replicability.
The success of the program has been achieved by partnering with the health and community sectors along with local government, and tapping into the many local health and community organisations and, of course, the contribution of the participants themselves has been critical.
• Patients with pre-diabetic lifestyle risks referred by General Practitioners to structured exercise program in parks.
• Patients with serious mental illness referred into guided park visits by Pathways Psychiatric Disability Rehabilitation Support Service.
• Clients of Health Centres who experience severe mental illness and whom may have risk factors of obesity or health conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and/or diabetes. An 8-week exercise and lifestyle program now extends their activities out in the parks and encourages daily park visits.
• Families with children under 4 years old in need of support referred into bush playgroup by local Community Services Agencies and local government.
• Young people at risk of disengagement from education in ‘Park Ambassadors’ program 12 week adventure challenge – partners: Secondary College, Headspace Youth and YMCA.
• People with a disability referred into “green gym” program. With partners: Leisure Networks, Conservation Volunteers, Barwon Water and Catchment Management Authorities.
• Refugees referred into guided park visits by refugee support service partnering Diversitat Services.
• Children’s Week activities in parks promoted to young children and families utilizing various partner organizations.
• Young Australian Aboriginal students sponsored to take part in a ‘learn to surf’ program.
• Guided park walks marketed in Seniors Week promotions.
• People from low socio-economic areas encouraged to participate in consecutively run weekend events with various partner organizations.
• The general community is encouraged to get active in parks via a calendar of events and activities that were promoted through social and print media campaigns.
“I remember coming here when I was a teenager ….this place makes me happy” Pathways Rehabilitation Photo: People and Parks Foundation
The Healthy Parks Healthy People Active in Parks vision is that it will connect people to parks and open space to improve their health and wellbeing. The Active in Parks program achieves its vision by working in partnership, delivering within a sustainable framework – that is replicable and innovative, while benefiting the community and meeting the objectives of key partners. This program provides opportunities for advocacy of parks by diverse stakeholders, builds the reputation of parks and encourages people to value the access to and easy availability of nature (in parks) for their health, as well as practical improvements such as planting and weeding to improve and restore habitat and undertaking ecosystem monitoring surveys.
The framework that was developed incorporates sustainability on a number of levels: local advocacy, incorporation of Active In Parks into participating organisation’s operations, replication of components into other settings – various ‘types’ of parks and other open space areas, secured funding, co-funding models combining various partners and a strong commitment from various levels of government.
There is considerable evidence of the effectiveness of the program. It has been measured on four levels:
1. Organisational engagement — Many organisations are engaged and 35 are specifically committed to involvement in the program. A regional governance structure involving multiple agencies has been formed and 30 organisations have incorporated ‘Healthy Parks Healthy People’ into their operations.
2. Recruitment of participants—over 2,000 participants recruited, and 590 repeat/multiple participants.
3. Participant experience — results indicate participants enjoy the program. There is evidence that participation motivated more future visits to parks and increased the likelihood of some of the participants taking up more outdoor activities. Research for walking groups indicated 70% had never been to some of the parks before and 90% intended to return.
Participant comment: “I enjoyed it every day I went…I liked meeting different people and the fresh air, not being boxed in – I’ve never done that kind of exercise in the fresh air before.”
Another comment: “The kids and I had a fantastic time each week and the park was the perfect location…it is lovely to show dad the plants the kids planted…”
4. Facilitator experience—Many facilitators saw great value in working in different settings and with organisations that they had not traditionally viewed as partners.
For example, the General Practitioners’ Association – one Doctor commented: “… I have no trouble in finding new participants (patients); in fact I am creating a waiting list …”
Western Health Manager said “It isn’t about training hard for a marathon but making healthy changes in their day to day life, one participant would love to be able to walk her children to school each day”.
From the outset, the program was designed with a key indicator of the success of Active in Parks being its replicability and transferability of the program. Twelve months later, with the learnings from the pilot, the program was replicated in another site. The program has attracted recognition and high levels of interest from many preventative health agencies and park agencies in the local areas and across Victoria. For example: Active in Parks has been recognised at the prestigious 2012 Victorian Health Promotion awards in December 2012 when the People and Parks Foundation were one of three finalists in the Building Health through Community and Local Government category at the official awards ceremony; and, Active In Parks was awarded the Parks Forum 2012 Excellence in Parks Award.
Kitchen garden project at Werribee Park
The kitchen garden at Werribee Park has undergone a major revival thanks to the efforts of new Victorians living in the City of Wyndham, approximately 35 kilometres southwest of Melbourne and has benefited the health and community connections of the volunteers too. Wyndham is in the outer urban fringe of Melbourne and it is one of Victoria’s fastest growing suburbs. The volunteers are new residents whom have come from various countries and represent some of the new and emerging communities in Victoria’s western suburbs.
The project was initiated by the Adult Multicultural Education Service (AMES) and Parks Victoria and is part of a local Parks Victoria program that focuses on “stepping outside” of some of the more traditional ways to connects with communities around parks. It is not just about getting people to visit and enjoy the parks, it’s about exploring ways that make parks more relevant and contemporary to communities and when people volunteer, the park benefits by their contribution of labour, skills and time. Parks Victoria is working on a range of projects to better connect to the diverse, local communities in three Melbourne urban growth areas where parks are located, being Werribee Park, Point Cook Coastal Park and Brimbank Park.
At Werribee Park, the kitchen garden project is strengthened by its focus on some broader social and educational components. The gardening forms part of a women’s program, which addresses mental health issues, such as isolation within the communities. It targets a number of women from the culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in the City of Wyndham area that are experiencing loneliness and depression associated with having been newly arrived to the country. These women have been encouraged and supported by AMES to join the program and by taking part in the activities are able to socialise through gardening and growing vegetables, as well as network with others who are already established in the community and build their confidence and sense of place.
Volunteers and Parks Victoria staff learning about the need for mulching in Victoria’s dry conditions in the kitchen garden at Werribee Park Photo: Will Raynor, Parks Victoria
In addition, the project has a formal educational aspect that is led by a registered training organisation and provides the participants with park-based training in vocational English as well as Horticulture. As a result, participants develop skills and ultimately an accreditation that can contribute to future employment and their involvement also helps to establish and transition participants into the local community.
The kitchen garden currently has more than 40 active members and is part of an extensive suite of existing volunteer-based projects in Werribee Park including Heritage Orchard, State Rose Garden, Mansion Interpretation Program, Children Education Program, Garden Volunteers and the Friends of Werribee River Park.
Over coming years, the project is likely to expand to include a number of other CALD communities and to further build and expand on new partnerships with a range of organisations, with a focus on ensuring the sustainable future of the project and undertaking further evaluations and monitoring to quantify the health benefits to participants. Additional funding for this pilot project has also been acquired from the Australian Government under the Skills Australia program. Based on the initial success of this innovative project, there are plans to replicate it in a number of other parks in line with Parks Victoria’s Healthy Parks Healthy People approach.
Secrets for future success
So, hopefully you’re now inspired to get out and active in nature!
You might be asking yourself some personal questions, such as “Why walk on a treadmill indoors when I can take in some of the best views and exercise outdoors in a park?” or “Why ride my bike only on the road when there are some amazing park trails with sounds, smells and sights to exercise all of my senses?”
You might even be considering how to bring this approach to your work and wanting some suggestions on getting started. It’s not surprising that there are many factors that have contributed to the successful creation and delivery of these community partnerships to benefit community health and help to improve the management of public land. There is no simple recipe that will apply in all contexts, as many of you will already be aware.
However, I believe that there are some themes that often re-appear, so I have distilled this down into my version of three do’s and three don’ts and I welcome your comments and suggestions from your own experiences:
Three do’s:
Do find energetic partners in diverse sectors and committed leaders in the community
Do think long-term and be clear as to what you want to achieve in ten years time — consider transferability, evaluations and monitoring
Do develop a simple governance structure and roles that support each contributor’s mandate
Three don’ts:
Don’t be afraid to trial different ideas with different partners in different locations over time
Don’t create unachievable expectations with partners or the community
Don’t give up!
After all, a healthy park system is a vital component of a healthy community – parks offer tranquil natural areas where you can release your stress; beautiful venues to uplift your spirit and connect with your community; and a myriad of opportunities for healthy exercise.
Public parks belong to all of us. Let’s get healthy in a park today.
Kathryn Campbell Victoria, Australia
Acknowledgements: Kathryn thanks the partner organisations, funding agencies, volunteers and colleagues for their enthusiastic involvement in these projects. I also think Jacquie deKievet (People and Parks Foundation) and James Brincat (Parks Victoria) for their contributions to this blog.
If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi
If planners and ecologists found more ways to work together, would cities look different? Would they be better?
The idea of planning and designing urban spaces from an ecological perspective goes back to the very origins of the disciplines of ecology, planning, and design. Frederic Law Olmsted precipitated a landmark movement from “picturesque” to “natural” urban spaces at the same time as the nascent scientific field of ecology was beginning to take shape in its modern form.
The plan-as-experiment approach is ideally suited to joint teams of planners, designers, and scientists who are involved in all phases of an ecological design project.
In the 1960s, Ian McHarg famously exhorted urbanists to “design with nature”, a concept that has had a lasting influence on both the design and planning fields. The terms “ecological planning” and “ecological design” are ever more widely used, with many varied interpretations and applications. Many of these reside mainly within the planning, landscape design, or urban design/architecture disciplines. At the same time, the discipline of ecology as a branch of the life sciences has ventured further and further into cities and designed spaces, providing a rapidly growing body of information about how cities function as complex, human-dominated ecosystems.
In theory, capitalizing on both of these trends in order to plan and design healthier, more sustainable cities should be a simple matter. Shouldn’t it? At first glance, one might recommend that the fields of ecology and planning simply communicate with one another. But, they don’t – at least not enough. The contact between the disciplines rarely occurs as a direct collaboration between practicing ecologists— whose job is to generate new scientific understanding—and practicing planners, whose job is to envision and plan better cities. The more frequent points of contact are either through education, where planners may take classes that convey ecological principles, or through professional interactions having to do with site and/or environmental impact assessment. Ecological planners use the best available information within their field to create places that account for social, environmental, historical, and geographic contexts. However, due to the slow and indirect paths flow of scientific information to non-scientists, they may not be aware of the most recent advances in the field of urban ecology, which has seen a rapid proliferation in the scientific literature. At the same time, ecologists making scientific observations in and about cities will have a very incomplete understanding of how cities grow and function without a thorough grounding in the local planning, political, and cultural context.
So, these fields clearly stand to benefit from one another, but how in practice can and should they interact? Opportunities for joint teams of planners and scientists to re-envision urban spaces together are rare in reality. But when they do occur, the outcomes can be very different than the status quo.
Ecological planning of an urban stream
To use a simple example, our university recently solicited a master plan to improve a stream that runs through campus property. Positioned at the boundary between a protected natural area in the Wasatch Mountain range and the highly urbanized neighborhoods of Salt Lake City, the University of Utah has long sought to establish its identity as a place at the urban-wildland interface in the U.S. intermountain west. Initially, ecologists proposed that the campus “restore” the highly degraded stream that traverses its wild-to-human-dominated gradient. Stream restoration, they argued, would bring ecological and environmental benefits, such as wildlife habitat and improvements in water quality. To achieve this, many scientists envisioned the removal of built structures and exotic vegetation in favor of more “pristine” plantings of native vegetation. For planners, however, a re-imagined campus stream had quite different connotations, including opportunities to improve the campus transportation network with bicycle and walking trails, and recreational spaces to enhance human access to the riparian zone. On the surface, these visions were incompatible: one aimed to optimize “non-human” habitat by isolating the space away from human use, and the other meant to increase visitation and enhance the function of the riparian zone for traffic and recreation.
The urban-wildland transition of Red Butte Creek at the University of Utah. Image: University of Utah Red Butte Creek Strategic Vision
In the end, an ecological planning process that included both groups resulted in a different vision entirely. Faced with opportunities to increase human access to “wilder” spaces for education and to enhance well-being, many scientists will quickly acknowledge that there are numerous benefits to designing wilder spaces with human access in mind. From an urban ecological perspective, these benefits may outweigh the impacts of adding well-designed trails, access points, and built structures to a revitalized urban space. A combined vision of the campus stream that incorporated expert opinions in native plant and wildlife management, stream geomorphology, and nutrient cycling—but also allowed for construction of a new trail and other built structures—quickly became palatable to the scientists on the planning team. Notably, this can require a significant shift in ecological thinking outside the common paradigm, in which “pristine” is best and human access to wild spaces always results in ecological degradation. Although urban ecology has made substantial inroads into the mainstream of ecological science in recent years, the “pristine” paradigm is still quite prevalent in the United States.
At the same time, scientists were able to discuss the state and nature of ecological uncertainty with planners and designers. The high degree of scientific uncertainty in many environmental best practices, such as restoration methods and low impact development, is rarely discussed in conventional plans. However, deliberate strategies to reduce this uncertainty can be a central feature of ecological plans. In this case, the team discussed the knowledge gaps in stream restoration and stormwater management in desert cities. While reducing streamflow by increasing stormwater infiltration is widely accepted as a method of slowing stream erosion and degradation, studies of how best to do so originate largely from wetter areas that are not limited by rainfall. Salt Lake City, positioned in the Great Basin Desert of the United States, receives virtually no summer rainfall. Therefore, establishing new plantings, bioswales, and raingardens to increase infiltration with no or minimal irrigation is a challenge. However, rather than ignore or overlook these uncertainties, our ecological plan addressed them head on by treating each phase of plan implementation as an opportunity to test and monitor different stormwater management strategies, incorporating new knowledge and lessons learned into each iteration. Variously called adaptive management, resilience planning, or designed experiments, the plan-as-experiment approach is ideally suited to joint teams of planners, designers, and scientists who are involved in planning, monitoring, and managing all phases of the process, from conceptualization to implementation and performance evaluation.
As of this writing, the plan that resulted from the University of Utah’s planning process, led by the University’s Ecological Planning Center, is available for public comment. The first phase of implementation has already begun, with the design of a 15-acre parcel that is positioned directly along the stream. The resulting physical space is quite unlike anything that either scientists or planners had separately envisioned early in the process. Both replicated experiment and picturesque garden, this recreational and functional “landscape lab” will test the performance of two different bioswale designs that will replace an extensive, heavily irrigated, and intensively fertilized lawn. The site will include paths and seating spaces for occupants of nearby buildings, as well as the first segment of a new streamside bicycle and pedestrian trail. The plantings are meant to be water efficient and climate appropriate, but their establishment success, water use, and capacity to absorb runoff and pollution will be measured directly in fully replicated experimental plots. The results will inform future phases of plan implementation, with the goal of reducing campus irrigation and stormwater runoff using strategies that are increasingly tuned to the local environment and ecosystem. At the same time, the plan will bring larger numbers of visitors to the stream, which historically has not been safely accessible for students and university classes, let alone the larger Salt Lake City community. The impacts of recreational use will also be monitored, along with the responses and perceptions of visitors to particular aspects of the steam, the riparian area, and the surrounding landscape, including both designed and non-designed features.
Schematics for replicated, experimentally controlled bioswale designs. Image: VODA Landscape + Planning
Scientists as stakeholders
Through this process, we note some significant areas in which scientists and planners were both pushed out of their usual “comfort zones” by the ecological planning process. For many types of scientists, the notion of creating urban spaces or “human habitat” can be discomforting. Traditionally trained to be objective observers, scientists involved in ecological planning will contribute to decisions that shape the environment in novel ways that are neither strictly “natural” nor entirely human-built. This may require a more active role in shaping decisions and places than is the norm in science (invoking many historical and ongoing debates about boundaries between science and advocacy).
In addition, planning decisions are inherently normative and context-dependent. There are no clearly right or wrong answers (although planners and urban designers often seek to implement “best practices”), and many decision-making criteria are value-laden and highly dependent on political and cultural contexts, the degree of inclusivity, and who is at the table and empowered to contribute. Many decisions and outcomes will seem “unscientific” and not entirely, or even largely, driven by technical or biophysical concerns. The role of people and communities is inherently at the center of urban ecological planning, leading to difficult choices about the balance among the needs of many constituencies. Currently, scientists have little training to contend with such choices, and have much to learn from methods and lessons in adaptive and community planning.
Planned uncertainty
For planners, the merger of planning with ecological science requires a shift from focusing on what is known to what is not known—from “best practices” to “best possibilities”. Ecological approaches to planning are not one-size-fits-all solutions, but must be tailored to the uniqueness of a place. Cities as social-ecological systems are complex, self-organizing, and adaptive, and may display unexpected and surprising behavior. This leads to the possibility that planning decisions intended to achieve a particular goal may result in unexpected and sometimes unwanted outcomes, or simply fail to perform as desired (for example, relocating a flooding problem to another location rather than reducing flooding, or unintentionally displacing low-income populations).
Ecological planning can diminish the likelihood of unwanted outcomes over time by targeting key areas of uncertainty with well-planned experiments and observations in which planners and scientists collaborate to share ideas, information, and options for adaptive planning and management. This may lead to different types of plans and spaces that intentionally include “riskier” strategies, with the understanding that under controlled and well-monitored conditions, “failures” can offer important lessons for the larger planning process. In essence, we assert that it is better to fail at a small scale and under relatively controlled conditions than by widely implementing plans and strategies before they are well-tuned, monitored for performance, and evaluated for local conditions. In the case of stormwater management near an urban stream, this means testing new and locally-tuned bioswale and landscaping configurations in a small area using the best available measurement and monitoring methods, with safeguards in place to mitigate possible flooding and overflows. In the long-term, this method has the potential to be more effective than importing designs and strategies from other regions and widely implementing them at scale, without fully exploring possible unintended consequences.
Looking ahead
Ecological planning as a partnership of planners and ecologists is, in itself, an experiment. Scientists and planners working together to plan with nature produce outcomes that are different than conventional planning and ecological science alone. But are they better? It’s probably too early to say. Can several decades of studying such relationships in cities contribute to planning more healthy and resilient urban spaces? Can active participation of ecologists in the planning process generate and disseminate ecological understanding more effectively? The is probably yes, but only the results of the experiments underway to monitor and document the outcomes will provide answers in the years to come.
To make these experiments more common, planners and scientists need spaces to work together. Universities are an obvious place to provide these, but this can also happen in professional planning contexts. Most importantly, these collaborations work best when scientists and planners share the same goal of making cities better places to live by applying our best understanding of how cities work and how natural and built spaces interact. For scientists, this means expanding beyond the creation of knowledge and into the creation of places. For planners, this means embracing the notion of places as experiments to produce knowledge that may go beyond their training in planning theory and practice. Place-making and knowledge-making have always been intimately tied together, but the paths from one to the other are commonly slow and indirect. Connecting them more directly provides a critical tool to improve the health and well-being of both the human and non-human components of cities and places.
Diane Pataki, Sarah Hinners, and Robin Rothfeder
Salt Lake City
Sarah Hinners is a landscape and urban ecologist focused on bridging the gap between academic research and real-world planning and design applications. She is the Director of Research and Conservation at Red Butte Garden and Arboretum in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Robin Rothfeder studies water resources planning, policy, and management in arid urban areas as well as history, theory, and practical applications in the emerging field of ecological planning.
What would you do if things went terribly wrong with your city after promises made by your decision-makers of an “Urban Golden Age” resulting from hosting the Olympic Games? In my city, Rio de Janeiro, my students and a lot of people I know and talk to are willing to leave not only the city, but the country. Indeed, Brazil is in a gloomy situation due to systemic corruption that has led to widespread and interrelated political, economic, social, and ecological crises.
Immersive experiences can reconnect students to urban nature—and inspire them to improve their cities.
How can a person pursue joyful living when so many find themselves in an everyday challenge to bring food to their families? In Brazil, there are more than 14.1 million unemployed people (13.7 percent of the population). Many of my colleagues and former students are jobless. Architecture and urbanism studios have dramatically shrunk, if not closed their doors because the real estate market has collapsed at all scales. Students are scared because they believe they won’t find jobs when they finish school, which is what is happening to many of their recently graduated peers.
How can you keep up the positive energy to teach future professionals that will plan and design cities when you experienced deep frustration with your own performance as an ecologically- oriented planner and designer? The “market” decides what kind of city we are living in now, and the “market” opposes all urban interventions to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and just city. The priority is not life—human or otherwise. The city is seen as a big business, the means by which to generate huge profit for a few select companies (many of which are now under legal investigation due to unimaginable levels of corruption in Brazil, with many high-level entrepreneurs, top executives, and politicians in jail).
These questions are not exclusively related to my personal experience as a Brazilian living in Rio de Janeiro. The time that Jane Jacobs foresaw in her book, Dark Age Ahead (2004), has come. We are living an urban crisis, where most urbanites are disconnected from nature, and economic volatility makes things worse. Meeting immediate needs is most people’s priority and the “market” plays with the fear to push their growth at any cost in less educated countries. Such is the case of Brazil. We now live in the Anthropocene, a new geologic epoch generated by fossil fuel-addicted society. The entity that rules the world—known as “The Market”—considers people consumers and members of the workforce, not as human beings. We are not only disconnected from nature; we are disconnected from each other. We are not a community anymore; we are individuals competing “to make a living” (this expression is quite weird for me; I believe that we need water, food, and shelter to live, and our work should fulfill us and contribute to the common good).
So now what? A bottom-up, gentle revolution
A new paradigm is emerging, and it must gain worldwide expression to overcome our great twenty-first century challenges. Cities and the local scale are at the center of this transformation in search of a more sustainable and equitable future; these movements irradiate to other areas, urban or not. The new paradigm is emerging from a bottom-up gentle revolution that is driving changes in our connection with the urban environment, where people and nature are returned to the center. Diverse people are gathering and transforming the urban landscape to have a more nature-friendly coexistence, and at the same time are cultivating civic relationships. The sense of community is being restored around themes that touch people’s hearts, such as water, rivers, organic food, trees, biodiversity, social interaction, mobility, culture, arts, and so on. The interventions that are being made by people in local communities have been called Tactical Urbanism (Garcia and Lydon 2015). Those actions are great inspirations to envision the city as a real human habitat. I have been researching bottom-up initiatives that are responsible for urban landscape changes, and have written about some of them in previous essays at TNOC.
In search of answers
As a professor at the Architecture and Urbanism Department at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, or PUC-Rio, I decided to take students on an elective course of Ecological Landscape Design and Urban Ecology in a study trip to São Paulo. I cannot teach about landscape sitting inside a room all the time. The aim was to make the pupils feel the landscape and to enable them to meet active leaders who are articulate and are fueling a deep change in the urban landscape through the movements they have created. In this process, these leaders are mobilizing hundreds of people by reconnecting them with nature and their communities. The trip to São Paulo was a response to my own anguishes with our shady reality, and a search for answers to the questions above. My deep personal goal was to drive my students to experience real, bottom-up changes that are undergoing in this tremendously complex megalopolis.
Two PUC-Rio professors asked to join us, so the trip became even more stimulating. It became interdisciplinary: Henrique Rajão is an ecologist, and Pedro Lobão is an architect embodying a lifestyle shift driven by the jackfruit tree he has in his backyard in a residential, central neighborhood in Rio. His tree produces hundreds of fruits that he is using in a new venture as an urban food producer.
PUC-Rio is ranked as the best private university in the country. It is not affordable to everyone, in spite of offering scholarships to many students. Unfortunately, the trip was also expensive. Only students who could afford to pay extra to travel were able to join. This situation gave me an opportunity to discuss equity and justice with the economically privileged young adults who will soon be working in our cities.
We had four intense, mind-changing days together, which I will try to condense and communicate in this piece. I organized a class a few days before the excursion to prepare the students and my colleagues for the intensive program we would have later in the week.
After a very early morning flight, we went straight to the epicenter of the city: Paulista Avenue. (You can see Paulista Avenue on TV whenever public demonstrations or protests gather up to hundreds of thousands of people.) We walked along the busy avenue to meet our first hosts: architect José Bueno and geographer Luiz de Campos Jr. They are the creators of Rios e Ruas (Rivers and Streets), an initiative they started a few years ago when they met and discovered their mutual passion for the urban watercourses that have been buried underground. They became river chasers, and have brought thousands of people to realize that São Paulo has an immense treasure hidden under its streets and paved areas.
View of Paulista Avenue—the heart of the business district—during a protest. Image courtesy of Cecilia Herzog
We tried to gather bellow the iconic Modernist building of the famous architect Lina Bo Bardi, the Museum of Art of São Paulo, but there was a protest against corruption that was very noisy. We crossed the avenue and went to Trianon Park, a fragment of Atlantic Forest in the heart of the Business district. It is an island of peace, so we could start our conversation. Luiz and José developed a methodology to touch everyone with sensibility and knowledge. First, they asked each student’s names and a river’s name. Yes, the name of a river as if it were the family name. It was so moving for all of us to think about a river as family, and the connection that we could have to one single watercourse. It was easy for some, and impossible for one. She didn’t have a river of which to be reminded, no memories of rivers…I found this to be so sad.
After a brief explanation about the urban rivers and the urbanization process, we headed back to the museum’s esplanade that oversees what once was the Saracura river valley. And that was our river now! After telling the history of the urban growth over the river, Luiz and José guided us in our urban expedition to discover where one of its springs still drips water; to see where a former cascade was put into pipes; and to walk in the streets where the river’s waters are flowing but hidden from our sight. Traversing these partially neglected neighborhoods, the group felt the shapes of the landscape; the water paths that follow the geomorphology and some remnant green areas; and the various periods of architectural styles and social differences in construction types. Along the way, they discovered a complex and alive city, full of diverse people. We continued until the very end of the buried river in the downtown area. There, we found a surprising illustration of nature’s resilience: a capybara was sleeping over a trash island in the channeled Tamanduateí river, were the Saracura issues its waters in a polluted brownish waterfall. It was a comprehensive class to understand geographical, ecological, social, economic, and historical interrelationships, as well as the impacts of the urban growth process.
Saracura river valley viewed from the Museum of Art of São Paulo. Photo courtesy of Cecilia HerzogLuiz de Campos explaining the urban transformation process. Photo: Cecilia HerzogSaracura springs, where water flows permanently to the streets. Photo: Cecilia HerzogModel of the city of São Paulo with dynamic projections of the relations between the rivers and the urbanization at the exhibition Rios.Descobertos. Photo: Cecilia Herzog
To wrap up the first day, we went to an exhibition that was conceived and organized by the two river’s lovers, Luiz and José, named Rios.Descobertos (Rivers.Discovered—the name has double meaning, referring to the discovery and uncovering of the rivers). It is a huge city model with projected images that unveil the landscape change that has occurred during the urbanization process in a dynamic, beautiful, and colorful manner. In a panel, pictures and phrases cover a wide range of geo-biophysical, social, cultural, and even emotional transformations of the city’s landscapes related to the rivers and streets. We could see and feel São Paulo as a city of waters. That was astonishing for all. All of us started to see the unseen.
The next day, our host was Nik Sabey. This young man is a former executive of an advertising company who loves trees. Ten months prior, he decided to stir up his life. He abandoned his job and stable lifestyle, and went out to plant trees all over the urban hardscape and unused lawns in public areas. He started the Novas Árvores por Aí (New Trees Over There), a collective movement that gathers hundreds of people to plant pocket forests, together with the landscape architect Ricardo Cardim—a trained dentist who studied biology to become a landscape transformer specializing in the original ecosystems of São Paulo.
Saracura “falls” into the Tambanduateí river. Note the brownish color of the polluted water, and the island of trash where the capybara is resting. Photo: Cecilia Herzog
Nik took us to one of the most exclusive office buildings of the city, the famous Victor Malzoni. Well known companies occupy their floors, including Google in Brazil. The monumental mirrored façade and manicured gardens hide a recently-developed, groundbreaking waste treatment facility. Organic waste (there are three restaurants on the lot) generates four tons of compost each month, which is donated to urban tree plantings. Other residues are separated and sold. At the facility, they’ve developed a subterranean demonstrative food garden, where people who work in the building can harvest fresh organic herbs (picture) and leafy greens. Bicycling is also a priority, which is very unusual in Brazil. There is a bike lane that enters the garage into the underground parking area, with showers for sweaty bikers, and even a small bike shop. Sewage is locally treated and the water is 100 percent reused. For the students who are future architects and civil engineers (we had two), this visit was a mind-blowing experience. Within ten days of her return to Rio, one student had started working in a start-up project inspired by those practices.
Close-up of the capybara. Photo: Cecilia Herzog
After being underground almost the whole morning, we ventured to one of the most discussed urban spots in recent memory: Largo da Batata (Potato Square), a former traditional and very popular site. It was totally demolished to give way to the construction of a subway line and the local station. Ten years ago, the construction collapsed and people died. When the construction was finally opened for the public, it was a concrete desert. The residents started a movement to transform it, and they called it A Batata Precisa de Você (The Potato Needs You); from then on, the site changed a lot. They planted trees and developed areas for social interactions, including designed urban furniture and playgrounds. They also gave priority to people over cars by painting pedestrian crossings to connect the different areas of the public space. There is even an area for open-air movie projections. Urban art is scattered all over. Today, the area is alive and full of people. The students had direct contact with homeless people, and other interesting people that live in the area.
From there we went to a small pocket forest in the banks of the Pinheiros river (one of the two main rivers of the city). It is a small planting, but a great achievement to call attention to along this polluted, channelized river compressed between two highways. This was an opportunity to teach about the interrelation of riparian forest and watercourses, and the change that car-oriented urbanization has made to it. It was excellent to discuss after the exhibition we had visited the day before.
We crossed the big river by bus and went to visit one of his tributaries, the Iquiririm creek. Its source is hidden behind the wall of the University of São Paulo, where one can see the water falling through a hole in the wall in a jammed, green residual lot. It was a polluted wetland where people dumped garbage until José Bueno and Luiz de Campos discovered it, and began to clean it up and care for it. There was the starting point for Rios e Ruas. Fefa, one of the contributors to this process, was waiting for us there. He was so enthusiastic, telling us the story of Rios e Ruas’ work to recover the stream while he stood over top of the almost-restored wetland. The students got excited and absorbed his love and curiosity. They decided to jump the wall and enter the university to see the other side, where there is a forest that embraces and nourishes the spring. It was an experience that involved all the students and professors, together with José Bueno and Luiz de Campos, who arrived from work just to accompany our group to the discovery of the water source. At that point, things started to amalgamate for the classmates: water, trees and biodiversity, and people! And a better place to live in the city!
Open-air movie at one corner of the Largo da Batata. Photo: Cecilia HerzogPocket Forest at Candido Portinari Park. Ricardo Cardim explains the process of urban transformation through his passion for native São Paulo’s ecosystem, and through tree planting with Nik Sabey and more than 500 other people. Photo: Cecilia Herzog
When the sun was going down, we went to meet Ricardo Cardim in the largest pocket forest yet planted by Novas Árvores por Aí, together with more than 500 people of all ages. That forest is located at the Candido Portinari Park. They planted Atlantic Forest and also a patch of Cerrado (a Brazilian Savannah ecosystem) that covered part of the original landscape. The native trees were planted in association with a diverse array of edible and flowering plants to attract biodiversity. And they came: we saw lots of birds and insects. We had a surprise: a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) flew over us. He was going back to Canada. Fortunately, our specialist in birds, Henrique Rajão, was there!
In the third day, we headed to the Praça da Nascente (Headwaters Square—the official name is Homero Silva, but nobody knows why). In fact, Praça da Nascente is now like a small park, whereas a few years ago, it was a place that people dumped garbage; it was derelict, and nobody used to go or even look at it. Andrea Pesek, Lu Cury and the biologist Sandro Von Matter were waiting for us. The sweetness of Andrea hooked everyone. She and Lu told us about the gentle revolution they made and keep making to restore the water sources, and the entire place, reintroducing native flora and fauna. Sandro is responsible for the aquatic fauna that is controlling the mosquitoes in the area. This work was recently highlighted in the headlines of the main newspapers and TV. These caretakers of the park are also legally disputing to block a new real estate development over the water sources. (picture)
It was a kind of magic being there with the students, sitting in the improvised auditorium, where the soundscape consisted of the water flowing as Andrea smoothly told us about the tremendous transformation they had promoted in the landscape and in the neighborhood. (picture)
Praça da Nascente (Spring Square)—Andrea Pesek, Lu Cury and Sandro Von Matter talk about their experiences in the transformation of this beloved small park from a neglected and dangerous area. Photo: Cecilia HerzogThe powerhouse Claudia Visoni fascinates the students with her life history of personal transformation—and the impacts on other people’s minds and hearts—that led to the creation of the Horta das Corujas (Owl’s Square) and the urban food movement Hortelões Urbanos. Photo: Cecilia Herzog“Urban Beach” documentary projection on Saturday night. Photo: Ana Clara PellegrinoThe biologist Sandro Von Matter explores the difference between the biodiversity of the first São Paulo’s park—Parque da Luz—and the Trianon Park. Photo: Cecilia HerzogTrianon Park—A fragment of Atlantic Rain Forest in the heart of the Paulista Avenue that still has trees that are hundreds of years old. Juliana Gatti triggers the curiosity and the biophilia of the entire group: students and professors. Photo: Cecilia Herzog
We also met Daniel Caballero, an artist passionate about Cerrado. He has planted this dry ecosystem vegetation in the slopes of the small park. With his art and planting, he has educated residents, and he is raising awareness about this forgotten ecosystem. It was absolutely incredible to see the regeneration of the green area and to see people strolling up and down the hill, appreciating nature and the small pond in the beginning of fall on a Saturday morning.
At lunchtime, we walked through the Beco do Batman (Batman’s Alley). It is an open-air gallery with astonishing graffiti that attracts visitors from all over the world. Underneath flows the Verde River (Green River), that reappears in heavy rains and can even drag cars, causing a lot of destruction. This neighborhood attracted artists in the 1980s and has become one of the most popular in the city.
After lunch, we went to meet Claudia Visoni, a charismatic urban food gardener (as she likes to call herself). She is a journalist that also overturned her world, abdicating an economically stable life to grow food at the Horta das Corujas (Owls’ Garden, in a small park with the same name). She catalyzed the urban food movement that spread to the entire country, founding the Hortelões Urbanos (Urban Food Growers), now with almost 70,000 members on Facebook. Claudia is a powerful woman that spreads, like a good virus, the idea of living in harmony with nature, in all spheres: producing your own food and cleaning products, consuming only what is absolutely necessary, checking the sources of the products, valuing social relationships, and so on. She is an engaged activist, member of the Regional Environmental Council, and teaches about permaculture and food production (as Nik and Ricardo do about trees and ecosystems). Actually, they work together frequently as activists and doers.
After an inspiring guided tour in the garden that transformed a lifeless lawn into an urban oasis, some students started to work in the field. It was rewarding to watch them work in the soil, cut plants, climb trees, and have a lot fun.
The evening was a surprise. We went to PIPA SP, an urban “beach” in the central area—another public space that was recovered by residents, cleaned, and re-purposed to offer recreation and well-being to all in its new function as a meeting place. While we were there, PIPA SP showed a projection of four short documentaries at the “beach”, by Cine Solar—an itinerant open-air movie theater focused on environmental docs that have already toured around the country. The young group got so excited and enthusiastic with their experience that they started a team called Tribo da Semente (Seed Tribe) to spread what they had experienced and contribute to a better Rio de Janeiro.
On Sundays, Paulista Avenue closes to cars and becomes an urban park. People claim the streets, bikers abound. There was another protest against corruption been organized to happen later in the day, in the same place where it had been three days prior upon our arrival. We started walking along the huge urban space to go back to Trianon Park to meet with Juliana Gatti, founder of the Instituto Árvores Vivas (Alive Trees Institute). She also shifted from her previous professional life because of her passion for trees and urban green areas. The students told us that this second visit to Paulista Avenue was totally different from the first. They could feel, listen, and smell differently as Juliana explained about the trees, accompanied by her husband, the biologist, Sandro (the same who was with us at Praça da Nascente).
We continued the open-air class in the downtown area, where the first public park of São Paulo, the Parque da Luz (Light Park), is located. It has a Romantic design and it was a botanic garden when it was created. There, the trees were different, with many huge and old exotic species. We toured the park, full of people on a sunny day. Juliana has a gift for making people see trees in a sensorial way—not only seeing, but feeling the differences and the role of each one in the urban ecosystem.
View from the elevated highway transformed into an urban park each Sunday, with the huge green wall at the Minhocão in the central area of São Paulo. Photo: Cecilia HerzogTree hug: love you, Jequitibá rosa (Cariniana legalis)!! Photo: Cecilia HerzogOur group at the top of Praça da Nascente (Spring Square) with our hosts, plus the artist Daniel Caballero (who introduced Cerrado vegetation on the slope) and other volunteers. Photo: Cecilia Herzog
We continued our trip with a brief visit to a flyover highway that is also transformed into a park on Sundays, calledMinhocão (Big Worm, due to its shape). We went there in part to see the controversial, expensive, and huge green walls built with the funds earned from 800 trees that were cut near the water reservoir in the South zone of the city.
To wrap up with deep social-ecological experience, we went to São Paulo Cultural Center, a special place that gathers arts, culture, and nature in a Modernist building. It houses a library, café, classrooms, and theaters, and has a patch of forest in its center. It also has green roofs that are used as a park, and one of its sides was transformed in an agroforestry experiment where people compost organic residues and produce organic food. The group stayed there until the very last minute, enjoying the fun of people enjoying the open areas: dancing, singing and rehearsing.
A week after we returned to Rio, we had a class in which we asked each student to bring and present a product to express the experience they had. When I asked for them to translate the trip in word, the word was: TRANSFORMATION. I felt so much joy, so rewarded with the outcome. They had been transformed. They wanted to change the city into a place where they would want to live; they were not talking about leaving the city anymore. They were concerned with everyone, and even questioned the Neoliberal way of exploring and depriving people from the feast of the wealthy. They wanted to learn more to be able to plan and design better cities. They were full of energy and desire to contribute to the society in a systemic and holistic manner—not thinking solely about a future job to “make a living”. They were filled with love and inspiration. They wanted to transform their backyards. Yes, in their backyards! (picture)
Ana Luisa Artesi, Buenos AiresThe creation of sustainable projects can be achieved only by acting in coordination and direct relationship with professionals from many disciplines.
Jürgen Breuste, SalzburgBy taking an ecosystem service approach, urban ecology and landscape architecture can cooperate.
Mary Cadenasso, DavisThe studio training of a landscape architect offers a setting ripe for fostering meaningful interaction between the disciplines.
Danielle Dagenais, MontrealEcologists are calling upon landscape architects and planners to join their teams: as partners, or as wallflowers. Can genuine hybridization occur?
Susannah Drake, New YorkThe landscape architect can synthesize the work of many disciplines and integrate myriad voices into a clear unified vision. But design has sometimes been lost.
Vero Fabio, Buenos AiresThe creation of sustainable projects can be achieved only by acting in coordination and direct relationship with professionals from many disciplines.
Ana Faggi, Buenos AiresThe need to re-nature the urban matrix, making it more livable and sustainable, will not allow professionals to put design before ecological functionality anymore.
Andrew Grant, Bathit’s not really about the respective roles of ecologists and landscape architects that will make a difference. It is how we are engaged by the powers that be, either public or private, in the challenges of city planning and design.
Amy Hahs, VictoriaNow, the largest barriers to cooperation between the disciplines are the practicalities of trying to overcome current business as usual limitations and constraints.
Steven Handel, New BrunswickI know we haven’t grown up together or even gone to school together, you over there in the design school and me stuck with the scientists across campus. but invite me to the public works dance, please.
Marcus Hedblom, StockholmBuilding parks seems deeply rooted in planning, but there are major and important differences between parks and natural remnants.
Sarah Hinners, Salt Lake CityEcology ≠ “Good”: in treating ecology as “the right way”, people fail to recognize that the world—and the field of ecology—are in a state of constant change.
Mark Hostetler, GainesvilleCity landscapes can be both aesthetically beautiful, functional for people, AND ecologically functional, but we need to revisit aesthetics and what actually are norms in different situations.
Yun Hye HWANG, SingaporeWe must redefine the scopes of landscape architects and involve ecologists from the beginning of the design process.
Maria Ignatieva, UppsalaAt the site or neighborhood—at the actionable scale—we discover we don’t mean the same thing about the quality of “green”.
Jason King, SeattleWe need to better align the key strengths of each discipline—focusing scientific analysis to achieve accessible, applied solutions and integrating design synthesis that achieves cultural goals and rigorous, measurable ecological outcomes.
Nina-Marie Lister, TorontoIt is precisely within creative tension of multiple perspectives that we find the possibility and the promise of a more resilient, convivial future.
Ian MacGregor-Fors, VeracruzArchitects, engineers, urban managers, and planners all need to know the problem, raise awareness, and contribute to reducing the effects of bird-window collisions.
Jala Makhzoumi, BeirutSuccessful collaboration between ecologists and designers should accept that an ecological reading of a landscape, especially at the urban scale, cannot be “handed” to the designer as packaged information.
Diane Pataki, Salt Lake CityMore than just providing performance monitoring, scientists are hoping to work with landscape architects to test critical pieces of the urban ecosystem puzzle with every new project.
Kevin Sloan, Dallas“Facts and Ideas”: when landscape architecture is seen ONLY as art, problems arise.
Christine Thuring, SheffieldDear Landscape Architecture: working at plan view is such an abstract and technical exercise! I’m concerned that you are limiting yourself.
Anne Trumble, Los AngelesTry as we might to act on behalf of all living creatures and systems, a landscape architect’s work is anthropocentric.
Mike Wells, BathThere is a pressing need for us all to develop a much deeper knowledge and respect of each other’s disciplinary lineages and value sets.
Peter Werner, DarmstadtI think it is necessary that landscape architects grapple with scientific knowledge about urban biodiversity through education and collaboration with ecologists.
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.
In the creation of better cities, urban ecologists and landscape architects have a lot in common: to create and/or facilitate natural environments that are good for both people and nature. Mostly. Some may tilt toward the built side, some to the wild. Some may gravitate to people, others to biodiversity, form or ecological function, or social function, or beauty.
There are a lot of shared values. And yet, they are still two distinct professions, ecology and design, and so there are ways in which we may say similar sounding things but mean something different. Steven Handel wrote in this space to analogize ecology and landscape architecture to a marriage: it takes work to make all that love and harmony happen.
Built into this roundtable prompt is certainly an issue of communication. That is, the possibility that, if we just talked to each other more, and more effectively, everything would be fine. But it is also possible that value sets do not exactly align. If you had to choose, what is the most important thing to consider? The responses in this roundtable include development of a unified vocabulary and suggestions of more integrated training, collaboration that functions throughout a project’s duration, start to finish, and ideas beyond.
So, get it off your chest. What is something your partner in environmental city building, the other profession, just doesn’t get about you? And what would it take it fix it? Or, if you don’t like the marriage metaphor, what are one or two key ideas from your profession’s beliefs and way of working that are not making it over to the other profession in a complete and true form? How can we get landscape architecture and ecology better integrated in the service of better cities?
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers expressed it quite well, singing the words of George Gershwin in Shall We Dance:
You say to-MAY-to, I say to-MAH-to
You eat po-TAY-to and I eat po-TOT-o
To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to, po-TAY-to, po-TOT-o
Let’s call the whole thing off
But oh, if we call the whole thing off then we must part
And oh, if we ever part then that might break my heart
—”Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” by George Gershwin (from Shall We Dance)
Here’s how Fred and Ginger said it, in a park, no less. And even if you don’t read another word of this roundtable, check out the dance number (including tap!) on skates.
We all have our points of view. Someone said about Rogers and Astaire: “Sure he was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did…backwards and in high heels.”
Better call the calling off, off. Because, in the meantime, the stakes of getting city design right are high. And in diversity and collaboration, the spice of life creates new paths.
Gloria Aponte is a Colombian landscape architect who has been practicing for more than 30 years in design, planning and teaching. She lead her own firm, Ecotono Ltda., in Bogotá for 20 years. She led the Masters program in Landscape Design at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, in Medellín. She is a consultant and belongs to "Rastro Urbano" research group at Universidad de Ibagué, and also the Education Clúster at LALI (Latinamerican Landscape Initiative).
Historically, a wide distance has existed between (1) disciplines that have nature as objects of study or which are based on biotic materials (such as ecology or biology), and (2) disciplines focused on anthropogenic creation and usually based on processed materials (such as architecture or civil engineering). That distance has evolved through the time since the west’s medieval epoch (it’s important to remark that history evolved very differently in Prehispanic America), when the realm of the second group was the small urban settlement, and the first realm was considered far outside the purview of the second group.
Landscape architecture is not one extreme—it is the bridge!
Such limitations have progressively vanished, mainly because the built world has invaded the “outside” world, and the natural one has suddenly demonstrated that it exists and underlays the built environment (through floods and landslides, for example). Nevertheless, the concepts and focus of both disciplinary lines haven´t been adjusted as they should be. Thoughts in public policy are mainly driven by physical proposals, and the “function” of the proposed design is planned under a utilitarian, western way of looking at life, ignoring the unavoidable eco-systemic base function. Meanwhile, natural sciences struggle, trying to convince others that nature matters and that our life on this planet depends on natural resources that we are spoiling.
Only when urban sprawl becomes worrying in scope and fundamental resources are increasingly scarce does society start to feel concern about certain urban-nature relationships.
It is at this time that the Landscape discipline comes to catalyse and sew these two halves of land management ideologies together. The landscape discipline is not at the other end of the spectrum as this Round Table question suggests; rather, the Landscape discipline is the bridge that deals with both mentioned branches, but additionally highlights experiential input in habitat complexity, the sensitive component that leads to establishing a sort of negotiation between human beings and the living and non-living world.
Historically, there has been a certain ambiguity in the title of the professionals dedicated to dealing with landscape matters or around the name of the profession itself. Brilliantly, the Spanish authors Busquets and Cortina suggest coining the term “paisalogía” that resumes in one word for landscape science, embodying: conceptualization, research, planning, design, materialization, and management of the whole spectrum—natural, built, and human—in a delicate balance and at multiple scales.
The word “architecture” in its name refers to spatial composition, but it does not necessarily mean artificially built. Not keeping this clearness in mind leads to the imprecision of locating this activity as an opposite to ecology, as it has been suggested by ecologists, while engineers identify it with environmentally guided activities. As someone said once, we are bats in the middle of a rats and birds confrontation. Consequently, the subject of landscape professionals is quite complex; as Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe states: Landscape design is the most complex of the arts. Among other attributes, it could be said that:Landscape is spatiality: “multi-dimensions” and physic spatial relationships (long, wide, high, time), as well as the proportions in which these combine. The landscape is observed, perceived, and lived space.
Landscape is perception: multisensory experience. Not only visual, but tactile, auditory, olfactory, and even gustative.
Landscape is identity: local par excellence, unrepeatable. A big difference with architecture, which can put the same building in different places or environments. For this reason landscape is an expression of identity, of a society, in a place in a certain time.
Landscape is expression: The expressions of the individuals or the conglomerate over spaces, are translated, spatially and compositely, and thus contribute to the strengthening or fading of the habitat character.
Therefore, to practice landscape professional activities, you have to:
Accept that nature is everywhere: living, functioning, and supporting
Inspire based on local resources and identity
Attend to local people’s traditions, interests, and concerns.
In opposition to other land ordering professions, landscape-responsible interventions propose:
Articulation instead of limits
Systems instead of polygons
Ecotones instead of frontiers
In the rich tropical strip of the world, and particularly in Colombia, landscape concern comes later than in many parts of the world—paradoxically, because of the native richness itself. We have all natural sources in abundance, mainly close to most cities’ locations. In addition, technology advances have been driven to bring those resources from places ever-farther away, so citizens are not aware of their imperative need or scarcity.
Interest in landscape is increasing because of the economical concern derived from tourism business. Only when it is considered as an income source does landscape seem
to deserve attention from policy makers, even insofar as regulation and law.
Landscape is SPACE,
Is not “object”
Is not “ornament”
Is not “tool”
Landscape is LIVING,
Not only scientific analysis (landscape ecology)
Not just planimetry or “render” (hard contructions)
Landscape should be INTENTIONAL,
No random result.
Not a sum of casual fragments.
The need to incorporate landscape considerations into decision-making is not new, but it grows in importance as interest in sustainable development grows (Swanwick). No small or large scale physical, urban, or infrastructural development project should be addressed without landscape considerations. And this does not mean remedial gardening, or “landscaping” after the fact, but honest, ethical, and systemic considerations of common convenience, above functional, economic, or formal whim decisions that guide many development projects.
In this way, landscape is the bridge between ecology and the built environment, for the satisfaction and happiness of the beneficiary of that bridge: us.
Ana Luisa Artesi is Head and Founder of the studio Ar&A – Arquitectura y Ambiente, an interdisciplinary office, whose focus is on highways, private and public landscapes, individual houses, multi-family buildings and housing developments
Cities are the setting and the resultant of the dynamic relations and tensions between nature and human culture, in constant transformation.
The creation of sustainable projects can be achieved only by acting in coordination and direct relationship with professionals from many disciplines.
Conceptually, Natural Landscape—no longer original but the result of evolution—is the integrator of life, a service provider, a connector of the various superimposed frames. The continuity of landscape is the nexus and support for the dynamics of Biodiversity.
On the one hand, Landscape Architects’ projects can generate substantial change (sometimes permanent) that may affect the environment, not only in immediately apparent ways, but also in underlying and subjective values.
On the other hand, the Urban Ecologists and Naturalists comprehend the site from a dimension of full nature, considering mostly the nature as it was in its origin.
Ecology’s principles and vision of the Natural Landscape refer to the ancient times, and all transformation is perceived as a threat.
We have heard many times concepts such as: manmade projects have a great impact against nature because they permanently alter biodiversity; biodiversity corridors must be only natural; projects should only use native species; nature must be respected as original; production of goods and food produces harm nature. In many ways, they are correct and true ideas, but they may fall in an extreme interpretation.
This, we believe, is the trigger of the opposite positions between ecologists and landscape architects.
So, today more than ever, it is imperative that we find an understanding.
The nature in cities is composed by tangible and intangible elements such as natural traces; its history, culture, rites, myths, monuments, and buildings; natured and artificial spaces; and its biodiversity. They are inherent to cities and their landscapes.
Soil, water, air, vegetation, life in all its forms and other protagonists of the natural systems coexist with the anthropic systems in the context of the three spatial dimensions plus the variable of “time”.
It is in cities where people live, devise, realize, and grow, forging their history and values in ways that are intertwined with the public space. In this way, the natural and the social are inseparable.
Our space, the one where our house lies, is the very planet earth.
Today, cities are more inhabited and densified. A recent study shows that these days 50 percent of the world population inhabits cities, and it is estimated that this proportion will grow dramatically.
It goes without saying that without proper planning, the clear division between the rural and the urban will become blurred, due to the proliferation of new developments.
Thus, Urban Landscape is a living organism in a delicate evolutionary (or disruptive) balance.
Over the years, nature awareness and knowledge applied to landscape architecture has been varying. Studying it from a new and different perspective has substantially modified the related design principles:
Projecting in a more sensible way, we must increase the use of approaches that relate nature to the built environment. This provides a different view of the construction of the landscape.
Sustainability principles are a priority when dealing with landscape projects. Side by side collaboration is required between the different disciplines.
It is our mission to make Landscape Architecture a discipline of integration. The creation of sustainable projects can be achieved only by acting in coordination and direct relationship with other professionals and specialists such as Landscape Ecologists, Naturalists, Biologists, Sociologists, Cartographers, Geologists, Surveyors, Planners, Architects, Engineers, and Artists.
The challenge is to consolidate and unite criteria among these disciplines, in order to generate new ideas, to enable the growth and continuity of nature systems in today’s cities and in the “cities to come”.
Verónica Fabio is the Director of the landscape studio Verónica Fabio and Associates since 1985, specializing in the design of public and private space, both small and large scales.
Dr. Jürgen Breuste is Head of the working group Urban and Landscape Ecology at the University of Salzburg, and founding President of the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE).
The subject “How can we get landscape architecture and ecology better integrated in the service of better cities?” is really important. It is important to bring all possible partners and activities for this target of “creating better cities” together. This aim requires even more partners than ecologists and landscape architects. But these two disciplines can be seen as core disciplines for reaching the target.
By taking an ecosystem service approach, urban ecology and landscape architecture can cooperate.
These disciplines are often labeled “basic” knowledge (ecology) and “applied” knowledge (landscape architecture). This is right, but things are not always so clear cut, because ecology has already developed in the direction of application, and landscape architecture in creating new knowledge needed for architectural applications.
What we need is knowledge about the urban ecosystem, its functionally, processes, and structure. Without knowledge, all design is based only on ideas, fashions, or individual perspectives. But knowledge alone is not enough. We can see that only a part of the existing and available knowledge is used in planning and design of new buildings, new open spaces, new districts, and new or renewed cities. The actual visual example is the fast ongoing urban development of Chinese cities; this development is mostly not based on ecological principles and does not apply urban ecological knowledge.
Urban ecological knowledge includes not only knowledge from the natural sciences’, but also knowledge about those who design, develop, and use the urban ecosystems: the urban dwellers. For this, we definitely must integrate social science knowledge.
To apply ecological knowledge, a perspective of what is necessary to create better cities is useful. Any general goal has to break down to clear targets, measurable by indicators; only then can we make better designs. This is perhaps the rarest profession in the chain, from knowledge-gathering to change-of-reality. A lack of policymakers causes even the best ecological designs not to be realized. All contemporary Chinese building projects have green roofs in the designs, but mostly none will be realized.
Flip sides of the same coin—one target
Ecology and landscape architecture seem simply to be flip sides of the same coin: both aim to make better cities. But this is not completely right. Ecology, as a university discipline, can successfully create new knowledge. Landscape architecture as a university discipline is forced to use knowledge for practical design solutions to problems. But both disciplines can work on both sides, the knowledge and the application sides.
Both urban ecologists and landscape architects aim to help develop natural environments that are “good for both people and nature”. But it is good to accept that the urban environment should be a natural environment, but one that is predominately designed for people! We should not aim to protect biodiversity or, more simply, rare species as assiduously in cities as we do with nature protection outside of cities for ethical reasons. We need a paradigm shift towards considering the whole range of urban ecosystems and towards the benefits we need from nature in cities for their inhabitants. Nature conservation may be challenged by the novelty of some urban ecosystems. But it is necessary to recognize the associated ecosystem services and social benefits of novel urban ecosystems, too. With this ecosystem service approach, urban ecology and landscape architecture can cooperate well and bridge the gap from understanding to making use of urban ecosystems.
Two key ideas of urban ecology
The most important critical idea that remains in urban ecology is to simply understand the ecosystems in a city or the complex urban ecosystem as a whole. With understanding, we follow the idea of modeling and balancing, which is ambiguous, especially when humans and human behavior are included. This is not an intellectual game, but a necessity for the next step, planning, and design of urban ecosystems. Landscape architects are typically better than urban ecologists at this kind of thinking. But we are best when we cooperate.
Mary L. Cadenasso is a landscape and urban ecologist interested in how the heterogeneity of a system influences ecological processes in that system. She is a professor of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis.
Urban ecologists and landscape architects are both interested in the structure or form of urban land. While an ecologist may investigate how the structure of the land influences, and is influenced by, ecological processes, landscape architects have a more direct hand in actually shaping that land. An idea from ecology crucial for understanding how cities work and for guiding efforts to create better cities is the reciprocal link between the spatial heterogeneity, or structure, of urban systems and the ecological functioning of that system.
The studio training of a landscape architect offers a setting ripe for fostering meaningful interaction between the disciplines.
Heterogeneity is fundamental to general ecological theory because of this hypothesized link between it and ecosystem functioning. In its most basic definition, heterogeneity is the spatial variation in at least one variable of interest, and urban heterogeneity consists of the spatial differentiation of biological, physical and social structures of urban areas. Specific descriptions of heterogeneity may include zones of different land use types, maps of socially bounded neighborhoods, or areas of greater or lesser vegetation diversity. These heterogeneities may influence the flow of nutrients and pollutants, the diversity of organisms, or the amount of carbon stored, for example. Because landscape architects can fundamentally alter the spatial heterogeneity of urban systems, recognizing the ecological functioning of that heterogeneity is crucial in order to incorporate heterogeneity into designs in a way that maximizes positive ecological outcomes and minimizes negative outcomes of the design.
Of course landscape architects incorporate heterogeneity into designs; heterogeneity in the physical or biological structure of the landscape can be aesthetically pleasing. Conveying the style or signature of the designer is important so that their work is recognized, but how can heterogeneity be used functionally and not just stylistically? Sometimes designed heterogeneity is constrained to the boundaries of the specific project and in other cases the design integrates the project with adjacent areas. Flows of people across boundaries are usually considered, but how about the flows of nutrients and pollutants, non-human organisms, information, etc.? How would the design differ if it explicitly considered both the ecological processes occurring in the specific project area and the ecological flows across the boundary between the project site and the adjacent landscape?
Because both disciplines share an interest in the structure of urban land, the potential for integrating the work of ecologists and landscape architects is enormous. The studio training of a landscape architect offers a setting ripe for fostering meaningful interaction between the disciplines. I, along with colleagues, have had the privilege of engaging with landscape architecture students in their studio courses as they work on design ideas throughout a term. We provided a broad overview of ecological concepts relevant to design in a seminar format but that was of limited utility. More productive was time spent together walking the project site and talking casually about what we each were seeing through our respective disciplinary lenses. In this casual setting, we could build trust and share the motivations and assumptions we each hold. We could also discuss design scenarios to achieve stated goals and the potential ecological implications of each scenario. After that “walk and talk”, we ecologists went away until the end of the term, when we attended the charrette, listened to the students’ presentations of their work, and provided feedback. Feedback at the end of the term is useful but, again, limited. The second time we contributed to a studio class, and every time following, we participated in “desk crits” at regular intervals. This process of literally dragging a chair from desk to desk to engage with students over their ideas and designs added an incredible richness to our conversations and allowed us to collaboratively make modifications to the design. For example, the use of a particular tree species in a design may be driven by the quality of shade it throws, and the tree’s size and shape. In conversation about resource needs of the tree, perhaps a different species that could provide those same characteristics but also be more appropriate for the climate could be substituted, or the number and arrangement of trees could be discussed relative to the flow of resources.
As an ecologist, learning the motivations, assumptions, processes, and constraints that a landscape architect experiences in the process of design was informative for how to communicate lessons from research and, excitingly, these collaborative conversations also sparked new research ideas for testing the link between urban heterogeneity and system function. Working collaboratively in a studio setting requires intellectual openness and a desire to learn from the other discipline. Participants have to be willing to be surprised, confused, and challenged respectfully in order to learn a different way of thinking. Obviously this takes a certain personality and combination of personalities, and sometimes it will fail. But when it works, it can be enormously valuable because of the ideas generated and the new ways of thinking developed and shared.
Associate Professor, School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, Université de Montreal B.Sc. Agriculture, M.Sc.A., Environmental Engineering, Ph.D., Environmental Design Research: Phytotechnology, Stormwater Management, Urban Biodiversity
In our part of Canada, ecologists have been leaving the “pristine” forests of the North for the cities, first invading their conservation areas and more recently their inner cores. Is this migration the result of an epiphany, a road to Damascus, or just an opportunistic change in habitat due to the gradual extinction of funding resources in the natural range of that species? One can only guess.
Ecologists are now, more or less reluctantly, calling upon landscape architects and planners to join their teams: as partners, or as wallflowers. Can genuine hybridization occur?
Anyway, the result is that the urban jungle now gets the attention of ecologists. They are slowly realizing that the key species in that strange built environment is man, and humans have strange views on nature. In fact, they don’t always appreciate it or recognize the true value of biodiversity. To contend with this challenging urban environment and win over urban communities, ecologists are now, more or less reluctantly, calling upon landscape architects and planners to join their teams: as partners, or as wallflowers.
For example, ecologists might deploy heavy modelling artillery to plan green infrastructure considering target species. Or they will go to great lengths to study the ecological dynamics of urban forests or wastelands. Or they’ll decide to conserve a piece of remnant nature. At first, the city and its inhabitants are not taken into account. After a while, landscape architects and urban planners are invited to join in, out of caution or to put a qualitative or aesthetic finish on the project. However, the question or the project is already framed within a very narrow ecological perspective. Important issues such as people’s perception, appreciation, valuation and uses of urban nature, not to mention social acceptability, are neglected. Co-design was never part of the plan. Had landscape architects participated in the definition of the project or the construction of the research object from the start, the collaboration would have had a better chance of success.
Are ecologists entirely to blame? Interdisciplinary research is hardly the norm, even today. Funding agencies and universities are partly responsible for the state of affairs. In Canada, at least, funding agencies are still divided between Health, Natural and Applied Science, and Social Sciences. And in this age of meagre funding, competition between disciplines is fierce. Any project on the margins, any hybrid that may possibly be funded by another granting organization, is viewed with suspicion. In universities, education in biology and ecology is still heavily, if not solely, focused on the natural environment, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Students have very little chance to acquire basic social science or planning and design notions. Yet I often see ecology students who work on urban sites and are eager to integrate a social, design, or urban planning aspect into their graduate research. But the format of graduate studies in ecology and sciences in general and the productivity expected from universities precludes the students from taking the time to acquire the necessary knowledge to venture outside of their field or to work with a colleague from another discipline.
Studies suggest that encountering nature is important both for children’s development and their connectedness to nature. Isn’t time that ecologists encounter landscape architecture and planning earlier in their education if we want successful connections to occur and better cities to be built?
Susannah is the founding principal of DLANDstudio architecture + landscape architecture pllc. DLANDstudio’s public projects include the QueensWay Greenway, MoMA Rising Currents Exhibit, BQGreen and the Gowanus Canal Sponge Park.
Large, interdisciplinary consultant teams have become the norm in urban design over the last 20 years. The movement away from a purely formal, architect-driven vision of city making reflects a shift in understanding away from the primacy of a modernist position which uncoupled form and environmental process.
The landscape architect can synthesize the work of many disciplines and integrate myriad voices into a clear unified vision. But design has sometimes been lost.
In an essay titled “Regenerating Landscape Architecture” published in Topos 71 in 2010, I suggested that one of the reasons landscape architecture waned as a recognizable professional presence in the 60s and 70s was its merge with the discipline of ecology. Landscape architecture took on the mantle of environmental planning, a position that had a somewhat anti-urban focus. What resulted were large-scale planning efforts such as Ian McHarg’s layered analysis of Staten Island (see his book Design with Nature, 1969), which prefaced regional analysis over the urban human scale of design. The work, which ultimately led to the development of GIS mapping, remains a very important component of planning and mapping that should not be confused with design.
The formal backlash that occurred in the 80s and 90s is perhaps akin to the provocation hinted at in our prompt. While some designers remain purely aesthetically driven, others deny form, giving preferences to fish and mollusks over people. Happily these camps are more at the fringe of the profession as a whole, which is now more rooted in a nuanced and hybrid approach that blends functional urban design, civic beauty, and viable ecological planning.
Collaboration between ecologists and designers is not without a lot of give and take. My firm DLANDstudio is currently working on a project for daylighting a stream with an engineer as the lead, an ecologist as designer of the stream bed, and DLAND—the landscape architect—as community liaison. The problem with this arrangement is that the landscape architect is tasked with explaining to the community why they will lose their programmed recreational space. The design is functional and will likely be beautiful, and will work well as a daylit stream, but denies the complex program requirement of a public park located in a dense urban center. If the landscape architect were leading the team, elements of program, ecology, community engagement, and civil and structural engineering would be more synthetically managed and prioritized. It is not an issue of form over function. It is an issue of finding a balance of form and function. The landscape architect is better able to synthesize the work of many disciplines and integrate myriad voices into a clear unified vision. Civic beauty comes from maximizing the potential of both natural and formal systems.
Ana Faggi graduated in agricultural engineering, and has a Ph.D. in Forest Science, she is currently Dean of the Engineer Faculty (Flores University, Argentina). Her main research interests are in Urban Ecology and Ecological Restoration.
Although ecologists and landscape architects have shared many values they have often not, until recently, succeeded in reconciling important aspects in their shared projects, and that’s what causes many projects to fail. I think that this difficulty is anchored in the roots of both professions and by the way they have been developed so far.
The need to re-nature the urban matrix, making it more livable and sustainable, will not allow professionals to put design before ecological functionality anymore.
Ecologists are aware, and often carry the burden, of the complexity of any ecosystems they intend to restore or rehabilitate, while designers, in their day-to-day work, plan and fashion the form and structure of objects. When the object to be planned is a landscape, designers frequently threaten nature by neglecting the fact that creating green infrastructure is about designing autogenic (or self-regenerative) systems.
An ecologist working on a restoration project, in contrast, moves in hesitation, knowing of the hopelessness of an ecological landscape created by a designer; only Nature itself can do this. Nevertheless, the act of creating is central to the designer’s work; thus, landscape architects often approach a project by giving more weight to aesthetic and human aspects at the expense of ecological responsiveness.
Placing a recycled frame for an upcoming descriptive poster in an agroecological orchard.
However, this divergence is changing, and I trust it will change radically in the future. The need to re-nature the urban matrix, making it more livable and sustainable, will not allow professionals to put design before ecological functionality anymore.
Beyond collaborative thinking processes that presently prevail in any given project, smart city planning should move away from merging approaches or struggling to balance ecologists and designers in their traditional domains. A smart city needs doers trained in transdisciplinary knowledge at early stages of their academic studies. Transdisciplinarity arises when participating experts interact in an open dialogue, giving equal weight to each perspective and relating them to each other.
To decrease the present divergence between ecologists and architects, higher education should engage in curricular transformations. Evidence shows that different academic subjects and forms of curricula organization produce different kinds of people because disciplines involve clear world views and values. Therefore, universities, as key institutions in processes of change and innovation, should reassess what gets taught and researched and the way they train skilled labor forces. Professors and students should be involved in transdisciplinary long-term projects exploring ways of engagement with their communities.
For six years and with these goals in mind, the architecture and environmental engineering faculties at the Flores University, Buenos Aires, have offered students of both disciplines the opportunity to enroll in Landscape Ecology and Alternative Energy courses, where they work together and take part in ecological restoration and rehabilitation of public space projects (see photos).
Ecological restoration of polluted riverbanks in Buenos Aires, which are shared projects between the Engineering and the Architecture Faculty at Flores University.
Andrew formed Grant Associates in 1997 to explore the emerging frontiers of landscape architecture within sustainable development. He has a fascination with creative ecology and the promotion of quality and innovation in landscape design. Each of his projects responds to the place, its inherent ecology and its people.
Of all the ecologists I have worked with in 30 years of professional life, I would like to promote Dr. Mike Wells as a great example of an ecologist who understands how to inform, enthuse and encourage landscape architects and, also, when needed, to challenge and question their ideas.
It’s not really about the respective roles of ecologists and landscape architects that will make a difference. It is how we are engaged by the powers that be, either public or private, in the challenges of city planning and design.
Mike has a particular ability to think outside the usual confines of ecology and science to find inspiring ecological options and I want more ecologists to be similarly creative in their thinking because we need a step change in the way we work on city planning and design issues. We are making headway in getting green and blue and health and food issues into the city planning debate, but are we really offering the ecological vision needed to push us out the other side of the global problems?
If ecologists need to get in touch with their imagination, then landscape architects need to learn more effective ways to process and apply ecological principles into urban schemes. We can only bring change if we act together to deliver the planning, design and management of more ecologically sound and inspiring, socially inclusive city environments.
This triple-layered objective to deliver Ecological, Inspirational, Purposeful urban landscapes should be our focus. Ecologists need to realize that arguments based on ecosystem services or species diversity are only half the answer, and landscape architects who are entirely obsessed with aesthetics, function, and experience are only offering the other half. We need both professions fused together in each and every urban project.
Of the above objectives, I believe ‘Inspirational’ is the least understood, but a crucial ingredient. If we are to change our behaviour and values to achieve a more sustainable urban future, we need to be inspired to do so. Much of the output of current ecology and landscape design derives from tired and traditional models and, whilst there are exceptions, I believe more than ever that we need radically new landscape interventions within cities that challenge our notions of the traditional patterns and components of urban landscapes. In addition to places for play, food, sport and leisure, I want to bring the awe and surprise you get when you see a natural wonder right in the heart of the densest urban areas. Magnificent waterfalls, dense forest, characterful rock outcrops—landscapes in scale with the new urban fabric that become the social media memories of the city.
While I see the role of landscape architects as communicating and implementing designs of the scale, purpose, and physical expression of such interventions, I would like to see more ecologists stretching their imagination to define new approaches to ecosystem design that allows the evolution of entirely new habitat types and systems that help bring these places to life and put nature at the doorstep of every urban resident and worker.
However, it’s not really about the respective roles of ecologists and landscape architects that will make a difference. It is how we are engaged by the powers that be, either public or private, in the challenges of city planning and design. We need a step change in perception of our joint value.
The television series “Thunderbirds” made a big impression on me as a kid. Palm trees that can be flipped over to make space for a runway. Amazing scenery, jets, cars, submarines and spaceships. A sense of saving the world and a global perspective in the guise of International Rescue. The best bit was always the choice of vehicle to tackle that episode’s challenge. Would it be the Mole or Thunderbird 1? Would it be Brains or Lady Penelope? In each case, the right person or device or combination of all was deployed to save the day. Teamwork was fundamental to every episode.
How great it would be if we could tackle the challenges of ecological city planning and design with such clarity. A wise client selecting the right professions and process to tackle each new challenge. An ecologist cracking a specific species conservation strategy or outlining the principles for a neighbourhood-specific ecosystem alongside a landscape architect shaping a space that lifts the spirits and creates another functioning piece of the city. Always a future-focused team, but with the right emphasis for each challenge. That would be almost perfect. We just need Tracy Island as our base.
Dr Amy Hahs is an urban ecologist who is interested in understanding how urban landscapes impact local ecology, and how we can use this information to create better cities and towns for biodiversity and people. She is Director of Urban Ecology in Action, a newly established business working towards the development of green, healthy cities and towns, and the conservation of resilient ecological systems in areas where people live and work.
Over the past few years I have had the privilege of working with landscape architects on various projects that seek to integrate ecology with design. In every case, I have been lucky to collaborate with passionate and knowledgeable people who share my ambitions to develop more ecologically informed design. Our curiosity, respectful discourse, and willingness to listen to and explore the nuances of each other’s disciplines have been fundamental to the success of our projects, as well as making the experience an enjoyable one.
Now, the largest barriers to cooperation between the disciplines are the practicalities of trying to overcome current business as usual limitations and constraints.
Yet within our own professions there are also diverse approaches to practice. While the landscape architects I have worked with have had an impressive basic knowledge of ecological concepts and principles, they may not represent the majority of people within the profession. Similarly, within ecology there are a range of views and opinions, each with their own inherent biases. Open and frank discussions, such as this roundtable, are required within and between these two disciplines to ensure that we continue to make progress and push our fields further along the path to new discoveries. Encouraging and promoting knowledge-transfer and collaboration with other disciplines will also ensure that the ecologists and landscape architects of tomorrow have a broader vernacular at their disposal, and a firmer foundation for future collaborations.
There are a growing number of initiatives that demonstrate how the disciplines of ecology and landscape architecture can support each other. One example is the Society for Restoration Ecology, Australasia’s National Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration in Australia, which was developed in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (or AILA). These National Standards also form the foundation for the recently released International Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration, which was released at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 13th Conference of the Parties in Cancun, Mexico at the end of 2016. Another example is The Sustainable SITES Initiative, which includes the SITES Rating System and certification process. Indeed, there are a large and growing number of inspiring projects that have been delivered through collaborations between landscape architects, ecologists, and others who share the same vision for an alternative future; and these examples are expected to continue to grow into the future.
This leads me to believe that we are now at a point where the critical barriers are no longer related to how ecologists and landscape architects might work together, or even related to what we need to do and how to do it. Rather, the largest barriers are now the practicalities of trying to overcome current business as usual limitations and constraints. Adjusting management and maintenance practices may require contract adjustments, new machinery, or alterations to existing policies or guidelines. New approaches to construction are also being developed that need to be tested and refined. Therefore, finding the right clients, and sympathetic champions within government, industry and other organisations is one of the largest outstanding challenges we currently face. However, this is where the differences between ecology and landscape architecture become strengths, as there are a broader range of frameworks, understandings, terminologies, and networks that can be called upon than would be possible if either discipline had been working on their own. Ecologists can draw upon scientific methods to document and test the strength of the ecological outcomes, while landscape architects can create a design and scope of works that turns abstract research outcomes into physical, deliverable realities. Our individual vocabularies become just as important as our shared understandings, showing once again that diversity is a strength.
I’m shy, but I think we have a lot to offer each other. You designers know so much and have so much to offer to the public. Space maker’s designs satisfy so many programming needs for the public. I can complement your skills in new ways, and I think we’d be a really attractive couple.
I know we haven’t grown up together or even gone to school together, you over there in the design school and me stuck with the scientists across campus. but invite me to the public works dance, please.
I can bring so many ecological services to your side. These are recognized more and more as valuable to people and even save on budgets for public officials. I know you’re interested in stormwater management and the joy of cultural services, the aesthetic thrill of walking in a modern, designed landscape. I can add cleaner and cooler air, the sounds of nature, and the binding of soil to keep your waterways clear. My work can even add pollinators, enhancing the urban agriculture that so many folks are interested in these days. In this way, our partnership can make you seem more fiscally responsible and folks will really like that. I can help you on so many scales, giving you an ecological foundation for all your work. From a roadside planting to a green roof to a grand-scale public park. I know there are ecological perspectives that can be plugged in to make your work even better. So often, ecological features are really seen as engineering tools, cutting down on runoff or using green insulation keeping buildings cool. There is so much I can do, if you give me a chance.
I know you may have heard some bad things about me and I know some people are fearful of hanging out with ecologists. Sure, there’s rumors of ecological disservices, parts of my perspective that people fear: biting insects in public parks, funny odors, critters that might carry diseases; who needs them, some people say. I talk about thickets of native shrubs on the landscape, and people are nervous that muggers may hide there. But with communication and understanding, I can explain to people that these things are overblown and the value of having me around much outweighs these irrational fears. We know these communication gaps can be a real problem, but with time and honesty, we can overcome them.
I know we haven’t grown up together or even gone to school together, you over there in the design school and me stuck with the scientists across campus. Nevertheless, if we do meet, I think we can have a swell time together. I’d like to be with you from the very beginning of a project, when we lay out design features and the interplay of all the elements that are on your mind. If we meet later in the process, too much is set in stone, literally, and there is no room for me in your life. If we meet early, when the proposed project is young, we can grow it up together and be real partners. So many RFPs don’t even mention me. They see a public work as needing architects and engineers and traffic consultants and lighting specialists. People like me who think about food webs and biodiversity and natural heritage are rarely invited to the table of public work design. Let’s try some small projects together, talking about landscape on a coffee date or on a quiet walk through an industrial park that’s being redesigned. That’s not a big commitment, and I think it could lead to some really great times together. Then, people will start wanting us to attend a big public work events.
I’ve been hugging trees for a long time, but earning a general affection by the public will take a long-term courtship, I’m afraid. Give me a call and let’s see if we can get this relationship going.
Many cities globally still have rather large natural remnants within the cities. What I refer to as remnant nature in this text includes woodlands or urban forests. These remnants do sometimes have unique prerequisites for biodiversity. Meaning, these urban woodlands have additional values that forests outside cities do not have.
Building parks seems deeply rooted in planning, but there are major and important differences between parks and natural remnants.
These values are linked to the fact that forests in cities are not under timber production command and have different aged trees, shrubs, and dead wood—things that are removed in production forest, but which are important for biodiversity. Thus, urban woodlands can have as high biodiversity as other forests but also provide unique habitats for hole-nesting birds, for example, due to older trees and dead wood. Sweden has high coverage of forest, with 55 percent coverage, but out of these, 97 percent of the forests is for production. This means that most forests in Sweden are monocultures of one species, with equal ages in large areas and almost no dead wood. This also means that deciduous species are lacking in the landscape since coniferous species have higher production values.
In cities, however, woodlands are mostly left for future expansion or for recreational purposes and not for production. This allows trees to get old and also allows for a mixture of species. In Sweden, urban woodlands in the urban fringe have more dead wood than the forests outside cities, and deciduous bird species are in higher abundances in cities. However, these urban woodlands are threatened. The main threat is the densification trend of cities where forests are removed. Often, the previous forest are totally removed and replaced by a smaller park. It is very unusual that the already old and existing trees—nature remnants—are kept for the new area.
The second threat is what I refer to as “parkification”. This is when dead wood is removed for safety and aesthetic reasons; saplings are removed, and thus the understory of the woods is cleared (also for safety and aesthetical reasons) and some unwanted trees are removed, such as large coniferous trees. In the end, the forest looks more like a park than a natural remnant.
Here comes the interesting link between the ecologist (me) and landscape architects. Because when I worked at the municipality of Uppsala (4th biggest city Sweden), my landscape architecture colleagues said that parks where the same as nature. And my colleagues influenced the strategic planning map of the whole municipality. Thus, when a natural remnant was removed on the strategic municipal plan and replaced by a park, it was marked as green on the map—the same green colour as the nature parts in the city. At least, this was done on the bigger official maps. It then looks like nature has been kept in the city, although forests have been “changed” to parks. I had real trouble with this, since I believe that there are major and important differences between parks and natural remnants. This might be self-evident to most of you, and maybe my writing is one case of a problem in a small Swedish town, without similar perspectives elsewhere. But travelling around in cities on all continents, it is striking how parks dominate in the city and also how they all look the same, with lawns, some trees that are not indigenous, and some flower beds.
Thus, parks dominate cities, although new research shows that there are higher aesthetic perceptions in natural remnants than in parks. Also, biodiversity per se increases positive perceptions of urban settings, e.g., many native bird species that sing increase positive perceptions more than only a few species. These birds thrive in urban woodlands, but they don’t flourish in the same diversity in parks. Further, it is very common that parks to a large extent have lawns. Lawns are mostly monocultures, reducing the number of pollinators. Given these factors, biodiversity may be considered to be highest in natural areas. Interestingly, new research shows that many people, though not everyone, prefer meadows with large flowerbeds rather than lawns. Meadows have a much higher variety of flowers and allow a diversity of butterflies. It is possible to keep urban woodlands or meadows that are safe and provide high aesthetics.
Why do we then continue to build parks with lawns when natural areas provide biodiversity and well-being in higher extent than parks? Building parks seems deeply rooted in planning. It is also somewhat provoking, for me at least, that parks are considered to be nature. The urban green areas in cities, and especially in mega-cities, may be the only “nature” people experience. Experiencing nature in cities has been demonstrated to lead to a deeper understanding of nature elsewhere. So, with an ever increasing proportion of humanity living in cities, it is important to provide natural settings, not only for health and higher aesthetic experiences, but also for an understanding of the natural environment outside cities. In a majority of Sweden, you can easily still reach forests in the urban fringes that resemble virgin forests, but for how long?
Scientific references:
Ignatieva M, Eriksson F, Eriksson T, Berg P, Hedblom M. 2017. Lawn as a social and cultural phenomenon in Sweden. Urban Forest & Urban Greening. 21:213-223.
Nielsen AB, Hedblom M, Stahl Olafsson A, Wiström B. 2016. Spatial configurations of urban forest in Denmark and Sweden – patterns for green infrastructure planning. Urban Ecosystems. DOI 10.1007/s11252-016-0600-y
Ode-Sang Å, Gunnarsson B, Knez I, Hedblom M. 2016. The effects of naturalness, gender, and age on how urban green space is perceived and used. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. 18: 268–276.
Gunnarsson B, Knez I, Hedblom M, Ode Sang Å. 2016. Effects of biodiversity and environment-related attitude on perception of urban green space. Urban Ecosystems. DOI 10.1007/s11252-016-0581-x
Hedblom M and Söderström B. 2008. Woodlands across Swedish urban gradients: Status, structure and management implications. Landscape and Urban Planning. 84:62-73.
Sarah Hinners is a landscape and urban ecologist focused on bridging the gap between academic research and real-world planning and design applications. She is the Director of Research and Conservation at Red Butte Garden and Arboretum in Salt Lake City, Utah.
About 20 years ago, I was sitting in a group of students from various fields who were gathered in a month-long course to learn about ecological design. One young woman, a student of landscape architecture, was presenting with enthusiasm a project in which she and her mentor were working with the ecological concept of “edge”. Edges, they undersod from ecology, are places of very high biodiversity, because they are places in the landscape where different habitat or community types meet and there is a mingling of species from both ecological communities. Taking a normative leap, they then concluded that since biodiversity is “good”, then edges are desirable in landscapes and they were putting much creative effort into designing landscapes that maximized edge.
In treating ecology as “the right way”, people fail to recognize that the world—and the field of ecology—are in a state of constant change.
Indeed, the landscapes she showed us were beautiful—rendered in watercolor and full of curves and spirals. However, at about the same time, ecologists were publishing numerous studies showing that landscapes that are dominated by edge habitat are landscapes that do not support the vast biodiversity of “interior” species, species that cannot or will not live in edge habitats. Edges favor generalist, highly adaptable species, whereas much of the world’s biodiversity consists of specialized species that cannot tolerate edge conditions. As human influence spreads across a landscape, we tend to create more and more edge, and leave less and less interior, ultimately causing interior species to go locally extinct. Thus, the well-intentioned designs of these landscape architects may actually have promoted the opposite effect than they were trying to achieve. They “knew just enough to be dangerous”.
I fear this example to be illustrative of a broader (though surely not universal) phenomenon within the design fields. There is a desire to design ecologically, to be “green”, yet for landscape architects, ecology is only one of many subjects covered in their training, and they may draw bits and pieces from it without the deeper contextual understanding and questioning that comes from training and practice as an ecological scientist. A part of this is pedagogical: ecology is taught as a static field of knowledge and theory, with general principles and classic case studies. (I myself teach an ecology class like this to urban planning majors—mea culpa.) So if you are applying those principles, you must be designing “ecologically”.
There are two fundamental and related aspects of ecology (and science more generally) that, I believe, fail to be communicated to students of landscape architecture (and to the general public, for that matter). First, ecology is often attributed a normative function in terms of representing “the way things should be”. Actually, ecology is an objective science that seeks to understand how the world works, but it does not attribute value to one state of a system over another. As a result of holding up ecology as a normative frame of reference, some landscape architecture goes little further than using an ecological concept (such as edge) as creative inspiration for design, assuming that this is sufficient grounding to make it “ecological” and therefore “right” and “good”. The relevance, applicability, or consequences of this choice in context are not assessed. (A similar example would be the universal acceptance that “connectivity” is a good thing, whereas ecologists could certainly list examples of cases where connectivity promotes outcomes people probably don’t desire, such as the spread of disease or pests.)
In treating ecology as “the right way”, people fail to recognize the second critical aspect of ecology, which is the profound understanding that the world, and the field of ecology along with it, are in a state of constant change—some slow, some fast. It is a common misperception that ecologists “know” ecology. Scientists, in fact, are not trained to know, but to ask questions. This is one of the common frustrations of non-scientists with trying to get answers from scientists—they will never commit to certainty about anything! Through asking questions, and collecting data addressing those questions, scientists accumulate understanding, but to call it knowledge implies that it is static and fixed. In fact, ecological “knowledge” is a landscape of shifting sands in which our understanding of the world is constantly changing, sometimes in small ways where new phenomena are revealed, and sometimes in radical ways that force us to shift our entire paradigm. Ecology’s understanding of the world has shifted radically over the past several decades, but there is little opportunity or mechanism for landscape architects to keep up with the scientific literature in ecology. By perceiving ecology as a static pool of knowledge, rather than as a process for accumulating knowledge, designers end up with a piecemeal, value-laden interpretation that is out of date.
I am not arguing here for more or different ecological training for landscape architects—I don’t believe that many single individuals can be both good scientists and good designers in a single lifetime. Rather, I would like to see more direct and long-term collaboration between ecologists and landscape architects in the form of a mutual appreciation of the expertise that each has that the other lacks and a willingness to do their own thing, together. It means embracing humility (we don’t know the “right” thing to do), inquiry (what should we know and how could we find it out?), caution (we have the potential to do harm rather than good), investment (I am willing to have a relationship with this landscape and learn from what happens here), and turning to a friend to help navigate a path forward. On the ecologist’s side, I advocate for accepting that people manipulate the natural world and recognizing an opportunity to learn from this manipulation by working with landscape architects to build processes of inquiry into design projects, thereby co-producing both landscapes and knowledge.
In the realm of urban landscape design, ecologists (such as myself) frequently ask these conservation questions about a landscaping plan: Does it sequester/store carbon? Provide wildlife habitat? Filter water and improve water quality? Is it energy efficient and does it reduce C02 consumption? Provide opportunities for pollinators? Does it limit exotics and particularly invasive exotics? In summary, ecologists think in terms of ecological functionality or ecosystem services. Architects and landscape architects tend to think in terms of aesthetics and functional use by people: Is the landscape beautiful? Can people use and have a quality experience in the place?
Real ecological functionality needs to be, and can be, embedded in landscape design. And the public would be OK with that.
Can these two disciplines find “win-wins”? Sustainability has become more popular and the landscape urbanism movement (architects and landscape architects included) has begun to incorporate ecological principles into vertical and horizontal infrastructure, but I still see a disconnect, as aesthetics dominate most efforts. Below, I discuss two examples as an attempt to demonstrate how something is still missing.
First, a recent blog by Kevin Sloan on a concept called “One Landscape” explores an idea where buildings and other hardscapes match natural elements such as trees, hedges, and lawns. In the design of suburban megacities, Sloan states “. . . the future will, in fact, be One Landscape where nature, either cultivated or ‘wild,’ co-exists with diffuse patterns of civilization that feather across density and nature layers”. Initially this sounded good to me, but what does this design concept mean? Loosely translated, this means where landscapes and buildings “reciprocate.” As an example, evenly spaced trees replicate the columns and walls of buildings (see illustrations in blog).
To me, the One Landscape concept is an example of a landscape architecture idea that lacks discussion about ecological functionality or ecosystem services. Taking the example above, planting trees in an even spaced line, particularly if they are the same exotic/ornamental species, is a disservice to biodiversity. A monoculture of exotic/ornamental trees is not good habitat for a variety of wildlife and insect species. Biodiversity thrives at the edges of and in the thick of “chaos.” Symmetrical and even designs limit biodiversity, not to mention what these highly maintained landscapes mean for energy consumption and water consumption. A more natural landscape requires much less maintenance and is better for wildlife. Overall, I would argue designing with such symmetry would not conserve natural resources and any “win-win” scenarios are lost between aesthetics and ecological functionality.
Next, Joan Iverson Nassauer’s original study on homeowner preferences proposed a concept called “cues to care.”. She presented homeowners with photos of yards varying from highly manicured to more natural in appearance, asking them what they thought about these yards. The take home message from the study results were: “They [results] suggest that to be publicly acceptable, ecological practices must be designed to pay special attention to vernacular cues to care. Design that maintains aesthetic quality should include prominent mown areas in front of patches of indigenous plants. As a general guideline, mown areas should cover at least half the front yard.”
This is a study of a suburban community in Minneapolis-St. Paul—and it is supposed to represent the entire U.S. culture? I have heard this study, which is relatively old and can be found only as a technical report, used as a rationale for having a landscape that is highly manicured. I argue that this study has been widely misinterpreted, and is not a representation of landscaping preferences among people living in the United States. The study and the interpretations of it are fundamentally flawed on several levels. First, it is a non-random sample of a small residential community in only one city—hardly a representative sample of most Americans (or even of Minneapolis-St. Paul). Second, the residential participants for this study (about 167 in total) had come from neighborhoods with highly manicured landscapes. It is inherently a biased sample. These participants already were exposed to a neighborhood “norm” of mowed lawns with little indigenous vegetation, so of course they would select manicured lawns as desirable. I wager that if homeowners were interviewed from a much older residential neighborhood that had little or no lawn, their opinions would be much different because the neighborhood norm is quite different. In this hypothetical example, I suspect results would be skewed more towards yards with less lawns (and more native vegetation) as more desirable. In this case, the “cues to care” may actually mean a more ecologically-minded yard with less lawn.
I have worked with a community in Gainesville, Florida, (called Madera) where mowed lawns actually stick out like a sore thumb. Native vegetation and a lack of mowed areas are the “norm.” I bet if we were to do the exact same study on this neighborhood, the results would be quite different and lawns would be less preferred. Perhaps starting off with a neighborhood design that minimizes the amount of lawn would create an initial norm that would carry into homeowner awareness and preference.
In summary, I think city/residential landscapes can be both aesthetically beautiful, functional for people, AND ecologically functional, providing many ecosystem services. I do understand the position that peoples’ values play a significant role in landscape design, but I think we need to revisit aesthetics and what actually are norms in different situations. We just need more examples of ecologists and landscape architects working together, and creating properties where the highly manicured portion of a city landscape becomes the smallest part of the landscape. If this came to pass, I believe residents would be much more accepting of “messy” landscapes that are more sustainable.
Yun Hye Hwang is an accredited landscape architect in Singapore, an Associate Professor in MLA and currently serves as the Programme Director for BLA. Her research speculates on emerging demands of landscapes in the Asian equatorial urban context by exploring sustainable landscape management, the multifunctional role of urban landscapes, and ecological design strategies for high-density Asian cities.
It’s a matter of redefining working scopes and creating a more open design process
Looking beyond traditional boundaries of landscape architecture as a single discipline, we know that an integrated approach is essential for successful landscape projects. This approach requires in-depth intellectual inputs from associated fields in the sciences and humanities such as soil science, geomorphology, climatology, biology, hydrology, geography, anthropology, environmental psychology, and social studies.
We must redefine the scopes of landscape architects and involve ecologists from the beginning of the design process.
There is no doubt that these “layers of landscape” have contributed to creating a more complete understanding of diverse environmental functions and human demands on the landscape. However, integrations with other fields are challenging in practice. In order for landscape architects to integrate the work of ecologists, we might, for example, need longer term studies and more opportunities for piloting experimental designs to account for unpredictability and complexity in dynamic human-natural ecosystems. This rarely works with the linear project development process and the limited understanding of ecology in the built industry.
Moving towards the practical implementation of an integrated design approach under given limitations, I would rather like to speculate on redefining scopes of landscape architects and involving ecologists in the design process. To what extent does the scope of landscape architecture design work need to be expanded in design projects in order to implement ecological knowledge effectively? When are the appropriate timings to invite ecological inputs from experts throughout the design processes? These questions have been explored to be answered through design studios, which I have conducted for the last couple of years in Singapore on the transformation of secondary forests into new residential towns. This is a common land development pattern that has far-reaching impacts, as these developments typically do not account for the ecological, biophysical, and socio-cultural values of these forests.
[Redefining working scopes]
Landscapearchitecture is generally regarded as a profession that focuses on tangible experiences of space where developers or clients ask them to design, but there are other notable issues when the necessary working scope extends beyond property boundaries. In the cases of the design studios, we regarded the assigned site as a “landing point” so that the boundary of site was more loosely redefined. When proposing a few-square meter backyard garden near forest edges or a few-hectare size nature park, for instance, we extended the range of working scope from fertility of soils, micro fauna, and the life cycle of single plant species up to mega fauna movement and ecological networks in a city island scale outside of the designing area and immediate surroundings. This approach is aligned with one of the fundamental urban ecological principles that urban landscapes are functioning ecosystems connected at nested scales.
[Creating a more open design process]
The core duties of ecologists for deforestation management projects are to identify areas that contain biodiversity conservation potentials and to highlight wild habitats to be saved. In many projects of Singapore, those environmental consultancies with environmental impact assessment reports are used as “AFTER” processes to seek formal support for developing on secondary forests, where planners and developers havealready determined to construct high-density housing estates. The inputs of ecologists should come at the initial stage, when beginning to review and prioritize the potential sites—“BEFORE” decision-making. The design studios I have conducted have highlighted multiple critical moments when ecologists’ timely involvement is needed in the design processes, including during the aforementioned stage of policy/ land use planning, contracting to determine the direction of site development, evaluation, design, construction, operation, and management in the post-occupancy period.
Maria is working on the investigation of different urban ecosystems and developing principles of ecological design. Her latest FORMAS project in Sweden was dedicated to the lawn as cultural and ecological phenomenon and symbol of globalization.
We all know that at the broadest scales, everything is a metaphor, and we can all agree that “green” is good. We all agree that Stockholm, Helsinki, and Copenhagen are green cities. It is at the narrow scales, at the site or neighborhood—at the action scale—that we discover we don’t mean the same thing about the quality of green.
How can we ensure that “green” spaces are truly green and sustainable?
The modernistic design of urban green areas, even in very “green” cities, primarily employs intensively managed lawns (as a major “matrix” of neighborhood green space), with some scattered trees and decorative shrubs and perennials. The tidiness and clear visibility of management are the main pillars of today’s vision of urban green areas in a majority of cities. The question of “quality” of green features and the place of biodiversity in this “green” space, as well as the design of sustainable ”green” space, is very complicated. The “quality of green” also incorporates different meanings for different people. For ecologists, truly “green” might be rich urban meadows and shrubs with berries which attract pollinators and birds, whereas for private garden owners, just a piece of grass is likely to be perfectly “green” and satisfactory. Likewise, for a landscape architect, tidy, prefabricated design will probably be in favor.
How can we make practicing ecological design and working with natural processes more popular, shifting this pattern from novelty and curiosity into the mainstream? How to convince your own colleagues—professional landscape architects, urban planners, or city gardeners—to be more open in using alternative, biodiverse, rich lawns-meadows or groundcovers instead of conventional lawns that need constant mowing? Why are the most artificial, expensive, resource and energy consuming elements, such as lawns (or groups of trimmed exotic decorative shrubs) seen as real and truly “green”? Is it possible to appreciate nature as it is in urban environments (without improving it by colorful and unusual flowering species which will please urban dwellers’ eyes)? Can we switch to a new paradigm of use and appreciation of local nature? What needs to be done in education and how can we work with neighborhood communities and local politicians to achieve these goals?
There are already quite a few theoretical and practical experiences and solutions of working with green spaces at finer scales, such as at the site level. These include enriching biodiversity in naturalistic herbaceous plantings and alternative meadow like lawns, low-impact design (green roofs, green walls, swales, and rain gardens), and integrating ecological planning and design in different countries. Nature-based solutions, especially those which are popularizing native plants, are even given priority in some countries due to deep environmental crisis and dramatic loss of native biodiversity. This tendency corresponds with a search for local identity and shifting from global to local contexts. However, the ecological merits of such pure “nativism” are also debatable, even among ecologists and landscape architects. Can the “golden mean” ever be achieved in this ongoing, native-exotic species debate? Should urban nature’s green space be of hybrid origin, reflecting ongoing urban ecological process and centuries of horticultural experiences and achievements?
We encourage you to share your visions, experiences and thoughts. Let’s discuss: what does the “quality” of green mean? Who questions the quality, and what does the word quality mean?
I took my first Ecology course 25 years ago when I was a fledgling undergraduate Landscape Architecture student. This was the first time I’d been exposed to many of the ecological principles, ideas that are woven into my work today. While the texts unlocked new secrets, it was hard to comprehend this new, foreign language and reconcile this to the visual and design work I was learning in studio. It wasn’t until my professor recommended that I read Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel “Ecotopia” that things finally clicked for me. Before you laugh at my nostalgia for what is admittedly a pretty bad book in terms of fiction, the underlying message to me was clear. This was not ecology as an abstract principle, but a coherent vision for an integration of humanity and nature. I’ve been hooked ever since.
We need to better align the key strengths of each discipline—focusing scientific analysis to achieve accessible, applied solutions and integrating design synthesis that achieves cultural goals and rigorous, measurable ecological outcomes.
The disciplines of Ecology and Landscape Architecture are linked together by their shared focus on the environment and the subsequent interactions that occur on these spaces. The challenge today is not one of shared values, but rather on our difficulty in how to apply these values towards a compelling vision of what ecologists and designers, together, can co-create.
To achieve these shared goals, we need to better align the key strengths of each discipline—focusing the scientific analysis to achieve accessible and applied solutions, while integrating design synthesis that achieves cultural goals and rigorous, measurable ecological outcomes. There are many good examples of collaborations that result in positive urban habitat for flora, fauna, and people, often emerging from interdisciplinary efforts. However, integrated design/science firms and even the inclusion of scientists on development teams is still relatively rare. The disciplinary boundary gaps continue to perpetuate this disconnection between science and design and, more, notably between academia and practice. The bulk of scientific research is often inaccessible or hard to apply beyond very specific conditions, offering little to designers. Many design solutions that privilege aesthetics goals and are not built on scientific research offer shallow, “ecologies” lacking function.
When thinking initially about this question, I was reminded of an essay by Davis and Oles “From Architecture to Landscape: The Case for a New Landscape Science” (Places, October 2014), where the authors pose the idea of a hybrid, Landscape Science, to redefine this mode of practice to better tackle the world’s big problems. The difficulty I have with their argument is the difference between inherently analytical operations (i.e. Ecology) that study systems using scientific methods, and generative operations (i.e. Landscape Architecture) that synthesize with a goal of creating an applied physical design. This is not to say that Ecology has no creative dimension, nor does it imply that Landscape Architecture has no analytical modes. However, ecologists are not designers and landscape architects are not scientists—nor do we want to remove the generative role of design.
To tackle these wicked problems, Landscape Architects don’t need to be become scientists, but need to better understand and speak the language of science. And we need scientists to help by making these principles more accessible. One great example of this on the shelves of many landscape architects is the slim volume Landscape Ecology Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land-Use Planning (by Dramstad, Olson, and Forman), which uses a visual approach to core concepts like patches, edges and boundaries, corridors, and mosaics, which are presented in this format. This is a simplified summary and by no means complete, but offers enough information to inform practice, and, more importantly, begins to frames a shared language for future conversations. Another isPlacing Nature: Culture and Landscape Ecology (edited by Joan Nassauer), where I first discovered the approach of her seminal essay, “Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames” which has continually influenced my thinking on how to integrate the art and the science of landscape architecture. Together, we can better integrate this interdisciplinarity into all work, by polling designers as to research needs and possible collaborations, and by making ecology and design part of the standard operating procedure on all planning and design projects.
We must continue to redefine the role of landscape architecture to tackle climate change, resource depletion, and species extinction, and encourage science to value urban and human in their ecological research. I’m heartened by the continuing theoretical explorations of Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism to expand our potential in an interdisciplinary manner. And this is easier to apply to projects through more rigorous applied ecological principles that have permeated innovative certification systems, such as the Sustainable Sites Initiative and Salmon Safe. This strength means science that is connected to and generating research by ecologists that can be understood by designers and integrated with rigor in designs by landscape architects—with results that truly work for people and ecosystems.
Ecology + Design: From Marriage (Therapy) to Music (Metaphor)
Our work here in the big chorus of TNOC centres on the intersection of cities and nature; both big, messy joyful cacophonies of life, teeming and pulsing with energy. Ecologists (and other environmental scientists) and landscape architects (along with planners, architects, and urban designers) are all focused on making and shaping healthy habitats—homes—for all. So why do our professions continue to compete rather than collaborate, or repel more than we attract? I wonder why in my professional world that acknowledges complexity, values diversity and embraces uncertainty, do we continue to struggle with both the concepts and the practices of synergy, integration, hybridity?
It is precisely within creative tension of multiple perspectives that we find the possibility and the promise of a more resilient, convivial future.
Let’s consider a simplified set of traits we select (and train) in our respective professionals. Ecologists are trained first as observers of the natural world. We learn and practice the formulae for careful, systematic and empirical observation. We test these observations through repetition and replication. We value the accuracy of our observations that cumulatively and collectively build knowledge and establish facts about how the world works—facts based on evidence, tested through peer review. We are also skeptics, cautious advisors of policy—not in spite of, but because of—the urgent need for advocacy and action as the world’s natural habitats and biodiversity declines, and the climate changes (as the evidence tells us). Designers value creativity, emergence and intuition over objectivity and empiricism; we champion freedom and unfettered expression. We are trained in the arts and in technical modes of representation, and we often (in my experience) tend to be optimistic futurists. After all, if you have the power to shape the future, you may not feel so gloomy about it, despite evidence which suggests we have less control than we aspire to have.
However, designers do rely on carefully honed powers of observation, and that is arguably poorly understood, in part because the design community hasn’t cultivated methodological scholarship or invested in it to the same depth and extent of the sciences. In methodology, designers often appear as poor cousins of the sciences. If scholarship doesn’t show it, the evidence of practice does: designers are indeed trained to finely-tune their observation skills for detailed, meticulous and technical representation—from the patience of photographing or sketching a tree though the seasons, to the dynamism of human life drawing, or animation. A designer’s observation abilities are reflected in technical skills (either by hand or computer) which are needed for adept visual communication; these abilities are built through repetition and experience, and are not unlike the rigour of or investment in an ecologist’s empirical training for systematic experimentation. The designer’s repertoire of observation is ultimately deployed as the springboard for inspiration, as a companion to intuition, and the pollinator for imagination that is essential to envision a desired future. In short, whether ecologist or a designer, we all value observation and narrative—the power to tell a story.
But we rely on different ways and scales of knowing, and we look in different directions: ecologists see what is, and designers see what could be. Both these perspectives—the objective and the subjective, the normative and the conditional—are fundamental to creating a shared story, and from this, making legible the landscapes we live in. These are not binary skills in competition, or singular in isolation. Rather, they are improved in collaboration and enhanced in creative tension. The paradox is that neither approach is especially useful in the work we do without the other!
Ecology, nature, environment, cities, all rest on the central notion of oikos, home; not merely a house, but a home, which implies a certain kind of bond, whether communal, familial, or just familiar. And like a home, (or as Steven Handel cheekily reminded us here, like a marriage), we know it is not a constant place of peace, love and harmony—there are times of dischord and dissonance, and others of comfortable resonance. The point is that there are many melodies possible. So maybe there is power in a music metaphor as well as marriage therapy! The nature of cities—like life itself—is a symphony: complex, diverse, and much more than the sum of its parts. We need our diversity of perspectives, integration of voices, and scales of observation, both dissonant and resonant. It is precisely within this creative tension that we find the possibility and the promise of a more resilient, convivial future—one in which we collectively honour both the culture and the nature that sustains us.
Thames Riverfront (London, Ontario, Canada) is re-imagined as a public landscape designed for forest and flood, across the seasons (shown here in winter). Credit: Stoss with Dillon Consulting 2015. Website: http://www.stoss.net/projects/48/thames-riverfront/Orongo Station Conservation Master Plan, by NBWLA’s Conservation Agriculture Studio integrates biodiversity conservation research and agricultural restoration practice in a large landscape in New Zealand. Credit: Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBWLA) 2016. Website: http://www.nbwla.com/projects/farmCaption: Landcape Architect Forbes Lipschitz interprets catfish farming as an ecological and economic activity, integrating field study and agricultural methods. credit: Forbes Lipschitz and Justine Holzman 2016 via Landscape Architecture Magazine. Link: https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2016/10/11/catch-of-the-day/
As an ornithologist that has developed into an urban ecologist, I have worked with birds as models for studying urban ecological patterns (and starting to untangle some of the related processes) for over a decade now. Birds are a fantastic group to work with because they are diverse, melodious, and beautiful, but also because they are quite informative from an ecological perspective with (often) less field effort needed than many other wildlife groups.
Architects, engineers, urban managers, and planners all need to know the problem, raise awareness, and contribute to reducing the effects of bird-window collisions.
Birds form complex communities throughout cities (comprised by different species and in different numbers, both varying in relation to the nature of sites), and they have been one of the most studied wildlife groups in urban areas as bio-indicators (focal groups). As John T. Emlen stated in a pioneer urban ecology study back in 1974, “The new [urban] synthetic habitats lie open to invasion and colonization by any birds that can reach them, utilize their peculiar constellation of resources, and survive their special hazards” (The Condor 76, p.184). This idea has been highlighted in more recent publications: some of the most important drivers of urban avian diversity are related to cities’ resources and hazards.
Regarding an important urban hazard for birds that has passed largely unnoticed (or has been somehow ignored), are clear and reflective panes (both glass and plastic; referred to as “windows” hereafter). Bird-window collisions have been identified as one of the most important anthropogenic causes of avian mortality. Recent studies have suggested that they represent the most important anthropogenic mortality cause for birds after cat predation. In the U.S. and Canada alone, an estimate of 624 million—yes, million (624,000,000,)—birds are killed on a yearly basis through window collisions. Although these are estimates and real numbers are unknown, the magnitude of the evidence stresses the importance of the issue. These types of collisions occur basically because birds are incapable of recognizing windows as obstacles. They behave as if windows were invisible to them, attempting to reach “the other side” behind clear panes or striking the reflected image of vegetation and/or sky on mirrored panes. Diving a bit more into the tragic reality of the phenomenon, Prof. Daniel Klem Jr.—the leading worldwide expert in the topic—clearly states that “Casualties die from head trauma after leaving a perch from as little as one meter away in an attempt to reach habitat seen through, or reflected in, clear and tinted panes.” (p. 244). Besides birds being killed outright, avian window collisions can also result in debilitating injuries that make surviving victims highly vulnerable to predation or threaten their ability to recover, among other aspects that have not been considered in the shocking available estimates.
A handful of scientists, mainly from temperate-upland developed countries in North America and Western Europe, have explored this complex human disturbance; thus, little is known and much needs to be fundamentally discovered from tropical and subtropical cities, where urban growth, economic disparity, and biodiversity meet. Although people relate bird-window collisions with the height of tall buildings, they also occur in single-story residences. Birds are vulnerable to this threat regardless of their sex, age, or resident status; yet, scientists have identified some variables influencing the probability of collision, among which the size of the window, its height, and association with surrounding vegetation have shown to be the most important.
Well, this phenomenon is really worrisome, but what can be done to prevent such an amount of unintended causalities? Scientists have suggested some evidence-based solutions (as well as some educated guesses) to try to mitigate this involuntary massacre. Although it is believed that falcon silhouettes (or any other figures) are effective in preventing bird-window collisions, evidence shows they are not. Only if the elements/silhouettes/figures uniformly cover the entire window, separating the elements of a pattern by 5–10 cm., will collision prevention be effective, Given the complexity of the phenomenon, both short-term and long-term actions have been suggested to prevent collisions. Regarding short-term solutions, two head the list: (i) covering windows with nets/screens/decorations facing outdoors and (ii) setting bird feeders within 1 m of windows. In relation to long-term solutions, scientists are working with window-makers to apply coatings to windows, or to modify their outdoor finishing, to make them visible obstacles that birds will avoid. Although UV signals—which often alert birds to items in their environment in different ways—have been thought to prevent collisions, results of studies differ, and thus their effectiveness is still to be proved. One promising path is to modify window finishing using nanotechnology, as to alert birds with signals that are imperceptible for our eyes.
We, regular urbanites, do have options to join the cause! Architects, engineers, urban managers, and planners all need to know the problem, raise awareness, and contribute to reducing the effects of this unnecessary, unintended, and unwanted source of bird mortality though their creative talents. I am confident that a feasible long-term solution will be soon found through hand-in-hand collaborations between scientists, practitioners, and technologists.
Dr Jala Makhzoumi is an Iraqi architect and academic who specializes in landscape design, with expertise in postwar recovery, energy efficient site planning, and sustainable urban greening.
Ecologists and landscape architects: Meeting the challenge
To get ecologists and designers working together efficiently in the service of better cities, the first step is to acknowledge the differences in the way the two approach cities. Ecologists are scientists; their approach is analytic, their logic guided by a step-by-step data gathering and analysis process organized to understand the structure and function of living systems. Design thinking is heuristic, seeking answers to a specific problem, learning through creative discovery, a process that is not in the least predetermined. The descriptive approach of ecologists elaborates complexities of the existing landscape, while the prescriptive skills of designers addresses the needs of people and their aspirations for quality living.
Successful collaboration between ecologists and designers should accept that an ecological reading of a landscape, especially at the urban scale, cannot be “handed” to the designer as packaged information.
These two approaches are complementary. Fruitful collaboration, however, necessitates bridging the communication gap that results from the different modus operandi of ecologists and designers. Just as important is the logistic of such collaboration: when does the work of one discipline stop and the other begin? Or is such clear allocation of roles unrealistic altogether? A parallel can be drawn with the collaboration of architects and landscape architects, the latter often being called at the last stages of the design to “beautify” the building site rather than contributing early on to help forge a holistic framing that embraces open and built, natural and manufactured elements. Nor is it acceptable for landscape architects to seek ecological assessment at the early stages of the design project to free them to get on with the business of “designing”. Ecological assessment is an ongoing process. The challenge, therefore, is the same as in other transdisciplinary collaborations, which necessitate breaching disciplinary boundaries to forge a new language and find a shared modus operandi, a middle ground for working together.
Implicit to the breaching of this disciplinary divide is the questioning of scope and method. Ecology has evolved to embrace schools that range from the reductionist focus on ecosystem energetics and trophic-dynamic analysis to the holistic, integrative approach of landscape ecology, a younger branch of the science. Design thinking since McHarg’s Design with Nature is similarly expanding beyond the analysis-synthesis paradigm, broadening the way designers conceptualize nature beyond what is visible to embrace invisible processes that regulate the world we inhabit and underlie our very existence. Ecological design is one example of such shifting paradigms, where design thinking is shaped by the holistic and dynamic understanding that is rooted in ecology (diagram). Landscape ecology influenced my practice in landscape architecture, informed my design approach, and liberated my professional intellect and creativity. Above all, landscape ecology tempered my inclination to bound landscape in time and space, prompting me to search for continuities and contiguities.
Designers set boundaries so they can focus on the problem at hand and come up with answers/ solutions. Patterns and processes however are shaped at different levels of the spatial hierarchy (from ecotope, the smallest to the ecosphere, the largestand) just as they flow across the temporal scale. Although I still set spatial limits in research and practice, however, I do so knowing for a fact that long-term, enduring solutions can only come from a hierarchical, evolutionary knowing of the landscape.
Diane Pataki is a Professor of Biological Sciences, an Adjunct Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning, and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah. She studies the role of urban landscaping and forestry in the socioecology of cities.]
Scientists today are worriers. These days, when we look into the future, more often than not, we wonder, “what will go wrong”? It wasn’t always like this; there was a time when, like designers, scientists wondered, “what if” and saw a magnificent world of possibilities for technology, for cities, and for the way that people might live in the coming decades.
More than just providing performance monitoring, scientists are hoping to work with landscape architects to test critical pieces of the urban ecosystem puzzle with every new project.
But things have changed after the many mistakes that have been made. Science and society have failed to anticipate the worst consequences of technological advances such as combustion engines, mass production, the widespread use of impervious surfaces, and modern highway systems. The result has been ever-increasing concentrations of pollutants, degraded water systems, cities clogged with traffic, and divided communities. We are seeing political and social ramifications of the dawn of the Internet age and social media, not all of which are positive. Our cities are dependent on massive imports of energy and materials, leading to waste products that have nowhere to go except into landfills and the local air and water supply.
Scientists worry so much, but design can help
There’s much hope that nature in cities can rectify some of these mistakes. If paving over large areas of land caused many of the environmental problems of the 20th century, won’t restoring nature reverse the trends? And yet, scientists worry about this solution, since we have miscalculated before. History has shown that the places we created are complex and dynamic. Cities are ecosystems and the great lesson of ecology is that most ecosystems are unpredictable: try to push them in one direction and they may take off in another. When we tried to fix the problem of urban infectious disease we created “sanitary” water conveyance systems that concentrated pollution; when we revitalized neighborhoods with new parks and amenities we displaced poorer residents through gentrification. In fact, the list of unanticipated consequences of large-scale programs to “fix” cities is perhaps rather longer than the list of anticipated consequences.
So we worry. Many people ask: what could go wrong in large-scale efforts to bring nature back to cities? Here are some of the issues that give us pause:
1) Scale: The simplest concern is that small scale greening projects are not up to the task of absorbing and mitigating the dramatic emissions of pollutants and other transformations of the urban environment. It’s likely that most green solutions to urban problems must be implemented on a very large spatial scale to really make an impact. But honestly, in most cases we don’t really know the scale that’s necessary to achieve the desired impact—that’s a fundamental knowledge gap. This shouldn’t prevent us from engaging in small-scale projects. However, to really solve critical urban problems, we must get a handle on scale and advocate for the right scale in the right place.
2) Altering systems that we don’t really understand: Large scale change comes with the possibility of making large scale mistakes. Neither science nor society has a great track record of reliably predicting the outcome of dramatic land transformations. I live in a desert city, and worry in particular about water resource and climatic consequences of efforts to shift vegetation and greenspace in one direction or another. Desert cities in the U.S. tend to use quite a lot of water to manage urban greenspace. It’s a worthy goal to reduce this water consumption, but many other ecosystem components are tied to water including local climate, human thermal comfort, energy use, and downstream water supplies such as groundwater. When we consider changing one part of the system, we must carefully consider possible cascading effects.
3) The right project for the right place: This is an old axiom, and yet, the devil is in the details. I have found that ecologists and landscape architects have much to discuss about why and how particular projects are suitable for a particular city, landscape, and site. In my city, located in a unique high desert region, there is much discussion about what a climate appropriate landscape looks like, and how it might provide needed shade and aesthetic properties while minimizing water and maintenance requirements. Which imported design types work here? Which plant types balance resource use, aesthetic, and functional criteria? Why or why not? There is still much discussion, a few points of agreement, and many uncertainties.
The scientific tendency to focus on uncertainty can be frustrating for people who need to act now. As scientists, we don’t want action to grind to a halt just because we don’t know all the answers yet—far from it. But as a compromise, we propose to build uncertainty into action. This can be done with projects that are “safe to fail” and by providing mechanisms to plug knowledge gaps with each new design project. More than just providing performance monitoring, scientists are hoping for opportunities to work with landscape architects to test critical pieces of the urban ecosystem puzzle with every new project. In many cases, we know what we don’t know, or at least can take a good guess. Can we build projects together that fill the many holes in our understanding of how cities work? This might make the future of cities much more predictable, with fewer mistakes and consequences that we can more fully anticipate. We might worry a lot less, and together start imagining again a great future full of new possibilities.
Kevin Sloan, ASLA, RLA is a landscape architect, writer and professor. The work of his professional practice, Kevin Sloan Studio in Dallas, Texas, has been nationally and internationally recognized.
Well, it may surprise the panel, but my private practice in landscape architecture and planning, Kevin Sloan Studio, consistently enjoys energetic and positive collaborations with ecologists, environmental engineers, and, on occasion, scientists. The reason our design work “reaches across the aisle”, I suspect, originates from a particular design view that was taught to me by two great mentors.
“Facts and Ideas”: when landscape architecture is seen ONLY as art, problems arise.
Werner Seligman was a young European architect in the mid-1950s who was hired and implanted into the School of Architecture at the University of Texas-Austin, along with a group of other European educators, to pioneer a new architectural curriculum for the 20th century. While Edward M. Baum wasn’t one of the “Texas Rangers” (a nickname given later to the UT-Austin Europeans), he was an academic colleague of Seligman’s and the Dean at the UT-Arlington School of Architecture. When I relocated from New York to North Texas, Werner told me to “look up Ed Baum”. What they both gave me was a “new set of eyes,” especially about how to see and understand the task of design and how it interacts with many other hands.
Urban Reserve. Photo: Russell Buchanan
Architects and landscape architects bring facts and ideas together to direct the production of places and spaces. The “facts” of a project can include the specific needs of a location, a finite budget in money and time and/or the facts of horticulture and the climate of a particular region. Other facts might include lessons drawn from the great reservoir of history to imbue a contemporary assignment with content and depth. Then there are ideas, such as organizing principles, conceptual frameworks, patterns, theories, and metaphors that guide a landscape architect to artfully imagine possibilities that reconcile the facts and their problems.
When landscape architecture is seen ONLY as art, problems arise, potentially when they are working in collaboration with other fact-driven disciplines, such as ecology.
Noguchis California Scenery. Image: Kevin Sloan Studio
The work of an artist is treasured because it offers a personal and singular view of the world. Since ecology, and other related disciplines, such as horticulture and botany, are based on science and repeatable phenomena, the priorities of an artist can, on occasion, be exclusive and intolerable to the pragmatism of those who speak for nature, ecology and science.
In addition to facts and ideas, the design work of Kevin Sloan Studio aspires towards the standards set by great design precedents. One in particular, the round barn at Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts, is a unique and appropriate example for the roundtable because it demonstrates a perfect synthesis of landscape architecture, architecture, ecology, farming, and agriculture. When the round barn is fully understood, it’s difficult to assert whether it is a metaphor, a machine, an instrument, or something even more profound.
Round Barn Exterior.
The Shakers clearly knew archetypes and architectural history, since the round form of the barn is not only temple-like, but is prominently located in the village as if it was in fact a place of worship. At the time, a round building was also the ideal form for feeding an entire herd of cattle using only a single farmhand. This was the functional objective.
When the farmhand would appear, the cattle would instinctively begin moving towards the barn where a round building was, again, a perfect form to face and gather the herd from all directions. Once they entered through a set of equidistantly spaced doors, the interior layout queued all the animals to vertical wood slats that lined an interior circular hallway.
The farmhand would then take a pitchfork of hay from the center mass and place it in front of the animal who was on the other side of the corridor—take three steps—then, repeat the process, around and around. Each animal left the queue when they were full. When the last animal walked out of the building, the herd was fed.
But the more profound aspect of the design is how it ultimately became a “time machine.” As political and religious separatists, the Shakers were a society devoted to energetic celebration. A barn that allowed them to feed the village herd with one brother would give the rest of the congregation a maximum amount of time for “shaking.”
Our office hopes that someday we will produce a design that is as effortless, brilliant, indestructible, and profound as the round barn at Hancock Shaker Village.
Christine Thuring is a plant ecologist who integrates her love of life into creative collaborations and educational dialogues. While her expertise is expressed particularly in the built environment (green roofs, living walls, habitat gardens), she is passionately practical and enjoys restoring peatlands, mentoring students, leading interpretive walks, and advocating sustainable and healthy lifestyles.
Yin and Yang: Urban Ecology and Landscape Architecture
Dear Landscape Architecture, We’ve been together for several years now, and they’ve been the most exciting, fruitful and creative years of my existence. As a team united by shared values and interests, we have combined our skills, perspectives and knowledge towards projects that are beautiful and functional, both ecologically and culturally.
One of my weaknesses, as an ecologist, is to get bogged down by the everything I don’t know. I could take a lesson in confidence from a landscape architect. Who, in turn, needs to get out from behind the computer screen.
For creating healthy and beautiful cities, we both love nature and adore using planting design as a medium. Your expertise is on people and design, while I seek opportunities for natural processes and biodiversity. Both approaches are essential, and perhaps our relationship in this context can be seen as a reflection of yin and yang. If unified feminine and masculine energies have positive effects, does the same apply to the balance of wild and managed landscapes, soft and hard?
Sadly, we are not in a balanced place at the moment. Our therapist, David Maddox, has suggested that we communicate our discontent and seek reconciliation by identifying the gaps between us. Specifically, he suggests we reflect on the following: How can we get landscape architecture and ecology better integrated in the service of better cities? After some venting, I will reflect on the inadequacies of my profession in this light and will conclude by outlining some approaches that, if we both adopted, could help create better cities and landscapes.
When we first got together, we used to go for vivid walks that elevated our powers of observation to child-like ecstasy. Do you remember? Whether in the natural environment, sculpture parks or beautiful cities, the outdoors is definitely where we fell in love, because we love the same things. Our poetry sang the praises of natural shapes and forms, admired the intricacies of blossoms, and mused upon dramatic contrasts. We were constantly learning from each other, and took turns exchanging field guides and sketch books. Or at least this is how I remember it.
Nowadays, you’re only ever behind your screen or at the drawing board and rarely come outside. It seems that you trust your notes and photographs to the extent that you don’t need to visit the site again. Working at plan view is such an abstract and technical exercise! I don’t want to challenge your practice, but I am concerned that you are limiting yourself (and your gifts of creativity and sensitivity) to a 1-dimensional plane. Is it time pressure/ time management? Or have you lost touch with your inspiration?
If there wasn’t so much at stake, I wouldn’t mind. But your studio-/ screen-based process also seems to have shifted your priorities away from “life” and increasingly towards “living”. You take such delight in geometry, sculpture, and clean surfaces that little time remains to consider other forms of life. What about birds and bats, who need homes, food and water? Given so little thought, designed features like lollipop trees will offer little benefit to particular species who need our help. Your colours and patterns are beautiful, but will the species lists actually benefit insects, pollinators, or birds? How will they affect local and regional food webs?
On the other hand, I really admire your ability to move forward on a project in spite of incomplete knowledge or understanding, as I realise this is a hindrance of mine. As a plant ecologist who dabbles in landscape design, I am hindered by my ideal to thoroughly know a site and to predict how an installation will establish and develop. One of my weaknesses, personally and professionally, is to get bogged down by the knowledge of the knowledge I lack. I could take lessons in confidence from you, since my holding back does not serve the world.
I have faith in our connection, and believe that we can accomplish much more together than we could alone. Following are a few points that I think could help create better cities and landscapes. These may resonate with you, but perhaps with other professions, too. At the very least, I hope they help us better understand each other and our relationship to making the world a better place.
The urban ecologists approach to landscape design:
Observation: prioritise observing the site (or other sites with similar qualities) at various times (day/ month/ year);
Consequential yields: plant selections will impact food webs and trophic structures, so choose your plants wisely;
Bird’s-eye view: consider the role of the site/ project to regional corridors, networks, populations, communities, etc.
Think global, act local: identify local qualities and features that are relevant to the site and its context (e.g., cultural heritage, green space networks)
80-20: aim to spend 80% of your time/ energy on the survey, analysis and design, and 20% on the implementation and maintenance;
Ethics: regenerative and sustainable designs can be achieved when they take into account the needs of local communities and people, the potential of local ecosystems, and create conditions for abundance;
Patterns: design from patterns to details;
Collaborate: there is always more to learn (and it’s fun!);
Stay informed: science and practice continue to churn out valuable information and knowledge;
Down-to-earth: if you start feeling overly conceptual, get outside and refresh.
I suspect most ecologists are well aware of the things I’d like to share about landscape architecture. Because you, ecologists, interact with the impacts of our work long after we’ve fulfilled a construction contract. How does the large plaza and pier on a new riverfront impact the river ecosystem ten years after the ribbon cutting ceremony? Ask an ecologist. How does a designed “forest” in a local park impact bird populations over time? Ask an ecologist.
Try as we might to act on behalf of all living creatures and systems, a landscape architect’s work is anthropocentric. It is shaped by human constructs: ownership of land, commodification of space, and human timescale.
Ownership of Land: Landscape architects most commonly work for clients who own land. While natural systems and non-humans disregard these legal definitions of who owns what, we are bound by and to them. Water flows, soil is porous, and birds, animals, insects, and plants move fluidly across property boundaries, while we create islands according to them.
Try as we might to act on behalf of all living creatures and systems, a landscape architect’s work is anthropocentric.
Commodification of Space: Landscape architects are often asked to quantify how a project will increase capital, in order for it to happen. Metrics tell us that landscape architecture can raise surrounding property values, increase human health and productivity, reduce crime, and attract people who then support nearby businesses. Other less commodifiable value propositions, such as ecosystem health, are acceptable so long as they don’t decrease the commodification of a space; what keeps landscape architects employed.
Human Timescale: Landscape architects plan and design with the goal of implementation. To implement a plan, we construct it, and to construct it, we have contracts to manage liability. Contracts operate on human time, which is usually about maximizing profits and often at odds with ecological time which is about maximizing change and resilience. The images we create to communicate with clients and the public represent contract time because they illustrate what a landscape will look like as a result of construction. Sometimes built landscapes get frozen in contract, or human, time because maintenance keeps them looking like the static images that convinced people to build them. As we’re learning from erratic and increased weather events, human time landscapes are less resilient than those with the ability to change with and adapt to a changing planet.
Ecologists, can you see how much we need you? You know how the islands of our work within property boundaries impact natural systems beyond. You know what is the highest ecological value we could embed into our commodified spaces. Now that we are in the Anthropocene, whereby humans are the greatest geologic force on the planet and nothing remains untouched by us, we need your feedback loops. Since we work on human time, and you on ecological time, we must put our heads together to bridge the two for more resilient communities, and planet.
Dr Mike Wells FCIEEM is a published ecological consultant ecologist, ecourbanist and green infrastructure specialist with a global outlook and portfolio of projects.
The question is a vital one, but just one example of a wider phenomenon and problem related to design in its entirety, that of “disciplinary myopia”.
In vocational education in landscape architecture and ecology, as in many other disciplines, what those in other disciplines care about and why has been given too little attention. In depth investigations of the historic canons of knowledge and thought underpinning spheres of endeavour other than one’s own have been given little emphasis. The sheer burgeoning of knowledge and expectation in each profession has compounded the problem by focussing energies for study too myopically.
There is a pressing need for us all to develop a much deeper knowledge and respect of each other’s disciplinary lineages and value sets.
This phenomenon of not caring to find out what others care about—and why—leads to a second phenomenon of professional tribalism: when trained professionals engage together to undertake real projects. Pressures of budgets, timetables, and project team structures, themselves, often strongly militate against the provision of interdisciplinary explorative space. Far from a constructive collaboration, there is often inter-disciplinary competition based on different starting premises and “professional territory” (and feeding different egos). Small wonder that so many design teams founder on the jagged rocks of mediocrity when delivering what is supposed to be a multidisciplinary creative endeavour! Of course there are great exceptions, but it is sadly so often true.
Professionals with different lenses on the world
One might think that the professions of landscape architecture and ecology would be the exceptions—that the divide between them would be less marked than between other professions given their “common currency” of nature. But the fact is that landscape and ecological professionals often care differently about the same things and also care about different things. They have been taught different languages, and different philosophies (whether explicit or implied) based on different starting premises. They use different lenses on the world.
Ecologists that I know, by and large, appear to have entered the ecological profession driven not only by their love of nature but by their deep moral indignation at the damage done by man to nature in all of its innocence and incapacity to fight back. The theory and practice of nature conservation evaluation elevates to importance those features in the world that are rarest, take the longest time to develop naturally, and display the least influence of Homo sapiens. Ecologists frequently focus on our being at one with nature by somehow “going back” to it; they often jibe that when we, like the Oozlum Bird or the Easter Islander, disappear from the globe on a wave of our own greed and ignorance, “we will not be missed”.
This focus, however, underrates the many achievements and values of civilization and culture, and can cause disengagement from the pressing challenges posed by our ever-increasingly urban existence—challenges for which ecological thinking is vitally required if we are to find proper resolutions, not only for us but for all nature within and beyond the urban realm.
Landscape architects instead generally focus notably more on the merits of Jacob Bronowskian Ascent and Kenneth Clarkian Civilisation in our relationship with nature. They reason that as the only know civilised and self-reflective being, we are clearly here to take a different path to the rest of nature. So, exerting control upon it, simplifying it, abstracting from it, recombining it, and improving on it—all hold significant allure for the landscape architect, both emotionally and intellectually; indeed, these actions might even be considered to encapsulate our very purpose on Earth for landscape architects.
Such a focus, however, can create a blind eye to (or much reduced focus on): the concepts of natural limits on resources, the different responses and capacities of different parts of ecosystems to absorb anthropogenic environmental change, and our whims of intervention and on the intrinsic value of non-human life.
Seeking synergy
Many who read this will be, like me, passionate believers in the merits of humankind and the “ascent of man”. We will revel in the achievements of culture, the arts, fine landscapes, fine music, fine food and drink, fine buildings and astonishing technologies—in short, appreciating all the best in human creative endeavour. We will wish for this “ascent” to continue.
Many of the same readers will have hearts that bleed at the pollution of the seas, the felling of the forests, and the mindless eradication of natural wonders and genetic libraries by human action and will want to reverse these depredations.
To achieve both goals, true synergy is needed between ecologists and landscape architects—and all other professions involved in both protecting and embellishing our world as a place of wonder and delight.
And for that to happen there is a pressing need for us all to develop a much deeper knowledge and respect of each other’s disciplinary lineages and value sets.
Peter Werner
Give urban biodiversity a chance!
Private and public green spaces and structures planned and designed by landscape architects have a main impact on the biological diversity of cities. Many landscape architects do a good job and plan and realize good, attractive, and ambitious urban green. But, from my view, I miss some essentials with respect to maintaining and improving urban biodiversity.
It is necessary that landscape architects grapple with scientific knowledge about urban biodiversity through education and collaboration with ecologists.
What is it that I miss? The landscape architects construct green areas, which show richly structured vegetation; the vegetation is aesthetic and it considers the needs of the people. Many of these landscape architects believe that they make a contribution to species richness and diversity, both quantitative and qualitative. As a rule, however, they use a superficial understanding of the meaning and mechanisms of what constitutes urban biodiversity, aligning it with visual perception. Those planning and designing do not realize that such an approach can realize the potential of a location for the protection and development of diversity and for the perception and experience of nature by the dwellers but, possibly, can counteract biological diversity. Some examples for the latter: if the construction material stone is used excessively in green places, even when stone is present in abundance in cities; if the extensive offer of flowers attracts pollinators, but the blossoms are modified or infertile, that pollination is not possible; if the landscape architects share the sentiment, without analysis, that wild places, like wastelands, are ugly and have no value.
I think it is necessary that landscape architects grapple with scientific knowledge about urban biodiversity. The responsibility for the protection and improvement of biological diversity should be become an integral part of the education and training of landscape architects and, in this context, they should be taught which processes influence biodiversity in urban areas.
Who of the landscape architects knows the essential components of the local and regional species pools? What are the biogeographically typical species, which can be part of the urban biodiversity in order to mirror the regional biogeography? How well do landscape architects know the impact of their planning and designs on the diversity of animals and plants? Which landscape architect is aware that each planned and designed green space influences the structure of the metapopulations in the city? Or, is aware of the contributions of the green space to the local food chain? Etc. etc. Experts in the local and regional species pools are not always able to present sufficient answers for the specific plan, but they can give an orientation.
And, another point. Do not forget common species. They contribute to regional identity, because the common species of the surrounding landscape are often species that are able to enter and survive in urban areas, too. They are also fundamental for the occurrence of rare species in urban areas, because they support the nutrition cycle, are essential parts of food webs, act as shelter for other species, and ensure a great extension of the ecosystem services. Last but not least, they provide the biggest potential for nature experience in urban areas.
Landscape architects make important contributions to the valuation of urban green. Therefore, they should visualize that apparently ugly places, such as wild, unpleasant waste areas settled by a variety of plants and animals, are of value. Good planning concepts and the placing of remarkable symbols, but also the use of interesting information, can produce a shift in thinking, such that the former ugly place becomes a new beauty.
What would be helpful?
First: The topic of urban biodiversity and the scientific background and knowledge of that topic should become an essential part of education and advanced training of landscape architects
Second: Local and regional knowledge by experts and laymen (citizen science) about the occurrence—in past and present—and diversity of species and their habitats should be considered in planning and design of urban green.
Third: Landscape architects are important stakeholders conveying awareness about values of green spaces and structures. Landscape architects, ecologists, and environmental economists should come together to discuss and work out the valuation and improvement of urban biodiversity.
My vision for a just city is one where design and its power as a tool against inequality is leveraged for the benefit of all residents. As the director of design programs at the National Endowment for Arts, and one of the U.S. government’s primary advocates for good design, I spend a lot of time with mayors and other leaders advocating for the power of design. In the words of Charleston, South Carolina Mayor Joseph Riley, a mayor is “the chief urban designer” of his or her city. Even so, most mayors require education on what design can do—and what it cannot do.
The rewards for human society of maintaining natural systems, apart from giving it additional capacity for long-term survival, includes the promise of a bold new urbanism, the aesthetics of which transcend the architectural fashions of the day and possess the gorgeous fractal messiness of nature—that messiness which confuses eyes and sensibilities trained by years of seeing orthogonal space and threatens minds crated up in cubicles, fed from cartons and boxed in by built environments. A radical urbanism, perhaps like that imagined by Street Farm over four decades ago as ‘alive rather than inert’, in which ‘a profusion of sprouting, breathing, photosynthesising, living things surround and entwine human dwellings’ (p.102 Stephen E Hunt in 
Katrine Claassens
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