Getting Beyond Plant PR: Accounting for Both Services and Disservices of Urban Green InfrastructureHow do the benefits of urban green infrastructure stack up against the costs? We need to better understand the services and disservices generated by urban green infrastructure in order to build better decision support tools for improved planning and management of urban ecosystems that support human health and well-being.
Urban…
by Timon McPhearson
Though There is Method, There is Madness In It: How Silos of Methods Impede Cross-Cutting ResearchI have three jobs—lecturer, facilitator of academic research, and mother of two nature-engaged kids. My three experiences lead me to think we have a core problem in urban social-ecology: that we let our fealty to discipline-specific methods get in the way of true multidisciplinary work that is key to real…
by Pippin Anderson
The Sensori-Motor CityHow can we measure the ways in which we perceive, are affected by, act and reflect on the nature of the city? The human body is a sensor-motor apparatus within a mutually moving nature-culture continuum. This sensori-motor apparatus has a vast capability of quickly evaluating vast amounts of information and…
by Brian McGrath
The Cities We Want: Resilient, Sustainable, and LivableResilience is the word of the decade, as sustainability was in previous decades. No doubt, our view of the kind and quality of cities we as societies want to build will continue to evolve and inspire a new descriptive goal. Surely we have not lost our desire for sustainable cities,…
by David Maddox
Rock, Tree, HumanAs a Brooklyn (New York) resident for over 15 years, I’ve never thought much about whether or not I was living on high ground, within a floodplain or an evacuation zone, or how I might secure my windows during a storm. Recent hurricanes in my city have changed my perception…
by Erika Svendsen
The Bicycle is a Catalyst for Nature ConservationEvery time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race. —H.G. Wells
Fast, efficient and individualistic, the bicycle is no ordinary mode of transport. It’s a church, a gym, a community creator, a cash printer, a protest placard, a dopamine generator,…
by Russell Galt
Mechanisms of Resilience & Other ‘Re-Words’ in Urban GreeningI recently gave a talk at the Horticulture Society of New York’s annual Healing Nature Forum: Planting the Seeds of Health and Sustainability. As could be expected, there was a lot of talk about Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath, and the role of greening. This, of course, is of great interest to…
by Keith Tidball
Windows with a Biodiversity ViewThree books inspire me greatly. They are (a) ‘Biophilia’ by E.O. Wilson, (b) ‘Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity’ by Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, and (c) ‘Biophilic Cities’ by Tim Beatley.
Written almost thirty years ago, the first postulated that it is imprinted in our DNA that…
by Lena Chan
Parks as Green Infrastructure, Green Infrastructure as Parks: How Need, Design and Technology Are Coming Together to Make Better CitiesIn my work at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and more recently with the Trust for Public Land, I have been fortunate to be involved at the nexus of landscape architecture, civil engineering, urban design, environmental management, park planning, and many related areas. Over the last…
by Adrian Benepe
Patch ReflectionUrban Design practices have always been created in response to emerging and overlapping city models and the disciplinary contexts designers find themselves in. I have found that the urban ecology framework of Patch Dynamics has been key in allowing me to see how city models such as the megalopolis and…
by Victoria Marshall
