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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
From Biocultural Diversity to a Nature-Culture Alliance
Since I was invited to start writing about biocultural diversity for The Nature of Cities in 2015, there have been a number of developments in both policymaking processes related to biocultural diversity and, recently, to the concept itself. Some of these developments have happened around the Fourteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity...
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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Mr. Rogers, Tikkun Olam, and Thinking Like a Mountain
I recently watched the much acclaimed two-hour documentary on the life and accomplishments of Fred Rogers, the beloved host of the popular children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”. The film reflected on Rogers’ legacy of kindness and the profound and lasting effect his innovative approach to television had on millions of people, myself included (see the trailer here). Among the...
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GLOBAL
ROUNDTABLE
What I mean when I talk about collaboration. What is a specific experience collaborating on a project with someone from a different discipline or “way of knowing”?
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REVIEWS
REACTIONS
French Landscape Painters and the Nature of Paris
A review of Masterpieces of French Landscape Paintings from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Moscow, an exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Art in Osaka, Japan. If we learn anything from an exhibition such as “Masterpieces of French Landscape Paintings”, it might be that French landscape painters have a thing or two to teach us about urban nature...
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RECENT ESSAYS...
Whose Park? The Forty-Year Fight for Justice in ‘The People’s Park’ under Copenhagen’s Evolving Urban Managerialism
In the last three decades, Copenhagen has shifted from an obscure Nordic capital to a leading global city. It is known for progressive environmental policies, an enviable public transportation and cycling network, and numerous public green spaces, earning it the European Green Capital Award in 2014. Moreover, Denmark is repeatedly pointed to as one of the happiest countries in the world...
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Mosaic Management: The Missing Ingredient for Biodiversity Innovation in Urban Greenspace Design
With a new stream of studies adding to evidence revealing disturbing declines in global populations of insects (Hallmann et al. 2018, Lister & Garcia 2018, Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys 2019) and reports of an ecological catastrophe on the scale of a sixth mass extinction, there is an urgent need to do more to conserve these species that underpin our ecosystems. Urban areas...
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Historic Urban Public Parks: Are They Being Incrementally Spoiled?
Urban public parks are under constant siege; and the issue is an increasingly global matter. Typically created as public recreation spaces and local community green spaces within cities and towns, urban parks are increasingly impacted by incremental changes to original designs brought on by, for example, overshadowing by tall buildings, the addition of new structures and billboards and, on occasion...
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The Beaver, Cottonwoods, and Lucy: Preservation Is Not Enough
In a previous essay, Size Doesn’t Matter, Really, I made the case that even small scraps of urban green, such as Portland’s one-square-block Tanner Springs Nature Park can provide significant benefits to a community. Located in the city’s intensely developed Pearl District, Tanner Springs provides access to nature to thousands of nearby apartment dwellers and contributes to urban biodiversity as...
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RECENT ROUNDTABLES...
Our goal is to empower cities to plan for a positive natural future. What is one specific action that should be taken to achieve this goal?
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SCIENCE &
TOOLS
Resilience is Not Always Good
Many practitioners and scholars have emphasized the importance of strengthening urban system resilience. However, a less explored area of work is the resilience that affects urban areas but in adverse ways. Weak governance, conflicts and lack...
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PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
Uses and Abuses of Preservation
The current system of zoning and planning is wrongly fixated on maintaining state instead of preserving good patterns, and changing this fixation will be the key to making growth beneficial to all civic stakeholders. The most contentious issue in North American urbanism today is preservation. More than transportation, more than usage-zoning, more than health and safety, more than growth, which...
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PLACE &
DESIGN
Community Participation in Parks Development: Two Examples from Berlin
On a Friday night at the end of November 2014, nearly 200 people arrived in the departures zone of Berlin’s former Tempelhof Airport for five hours of presentations, working groups and community-led exhibitions. A projection screen stood on the baggage carousel, and former glass-walled airport offices held bulletin boards and tables of sticky notes for brainstorming sessions. Exhibition boards in...
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ART &
AWARENESS
Social Media Sharks and Tell-Tale Vultures—Connecting to Nature in a Digital Age
Nature is being lost all around us. It is alarming in its implications for both livability and sustainability. How can we better connect to nature in a distracted digital world? Although it may not be intuitive, these are also promising times because of all the digital tools and technology we now have at our disposal, and the hope they hold...
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