LATEST...
ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Positive Visions for Sustainable, Resilient, and Equitable Cities
It is beginning to feel like the anticipated future under climate change is even closer than we once thought. After a particularly harsh hurricane season in North America and following another year of record high global temperatures in 2017, many people recognize that we are entering a new climate reality. Current and projected trends in extreme weather events highlight the need for...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Trees are Breath
In the last days, with the air finally above the freezing point, and the grey silhouettes of the barren twigs dripping with fine silvery moisture against the faint morning light, I have been drawn into the forest. Every morning, I unlocked the chain securing my bike to a low metal arc between the parking cars, brushed away the water from...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
GLOBAL
ROUNDTABLE
Smart cities are coming. Can they be as much about nature, health, and wellbeing as traffic flows, crime detection, and evermore efficient provision of utilities?
4 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation
REVIEWS
PODCAST
A Bengaluru that Endures in Essence, Yet Constantly Transforms
A review of Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future, by Harini Nagendra. 2016. 214 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0199465927 / ISBN-10: 0199465924. Oxford University Press. £ 25.99 (Hardback). Buy the book. In her book Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future (OUP, 2016) Harini Nagendra suggests we draw on the “cultural imagination and capacity...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
RECENT ESSAYS...
A Sense of Wonder: The Missing Ingredient to a Long-Term Value for Nature?
“For the child….it is not half as important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.” —Rachel Carson, 1965, p.58. The natural world is essential to human survival providing food, filtering water, and...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
Westward Wandering and Wondering
Thinking of home turf as we start a new phase of the Bangkok-Barcelona journey My mind always wanders forward. Even as my footsteps ground me in the present, I can’t help but wonder what lies ahead. We’re still technically in Asia, on the side of the line that divides Turkey between two continents. After a long winter break to rest...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
Cities of Difference, Part II: Shifting Identities, Diverse Communities and Urban Nature
This article was adapted from an article by Julian Agyeman [i]. Cities of difference are places where we are “in the presence of otherness”, as Sennett puts it—namely, our increasingly different, diverse, and culturally heterogeneous urban areas.[ii] Difference is, in my opinion, a more expansive and useful concept than diversity, which has become virtually synonymous, in the United States at least,...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
What’s Under the Car Hood? Looks Like Good News for Stormwater Pollution
The literature has established that electric vehicles are better for the environment—they produce less pollution than a conventional gas vehicle, regardless of the electricity mix used to fuel the vehicle.[1] They are more efficient, and in part thanks to many state policies[2]—the costs of ownership are decreasing and the vehicles are becoming more ubiquitous. School districts are investing in electric school...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
RECENT ROUNDTABLES...
What is one thing every ecologist should know about urban ecology?
13 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation
Read This! For Every Continent, Must-Read and Continent-Specific Books About Cities
3 Comment(s)
Join our Conversation
MORE ESSAYS IN...
SCIENCE &
TOOLS
Crosstown Walk Goes Global: Reflections From a Recent UrBioNet Workshop
I have just returned from an exhilarating week spent in a workshop with a collection of UrBioNet members. UrBioNet is a network of researchers, practitioners, and students with an interest in urban ecology and biodiversity. It...
1 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
Extinction of Experience: Does it Matter?
Right after I graduated from Cornell, I took off for the North Cascades wilderness. First as a student and later an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School, I spent summers in Glacier Peak Wilderness Area, ice climbing out of crevasses, backpacking through Pacific Northwest old growth forests, and scaling ancient volcanoes. For me, this was true wilderness. In my early...
12 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
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...
5 Comment(s)Join our Conversation
ART &
AWARENESS
Finding Nature in the Walls of a Power Station
A review of Why Not Ask Again, the 11th Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China, on view through 12 March 2017. It’s not unusual by any means in the contemporary art world, but as an edifice, the Power Station of Art is just about as apathetic to nature as most any building could be. Typifying...
0 Comment(s)Join our Conversation