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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
The Green Cloud, A Rooftop Story from Shenzhen: A “Living” Sponge Space Inside an Urban Village
用中文阅读 Shenzhen, a coastal city located in Southern China, exemplifies the idea of rapid urbanization. In just 40 years, Shenzhen has transformed from a fishing village to a bustling megalopolis. Today, about 50% of Shenzhen’s 13 million residents live in its urban villages. These urban villages are some of the few places left in the city that provide affordable housing. Urban...
ESSAY
CROSSTALK
What the Garden Belongs To: Sensorial Listening in Urban Space
On Emily Street between 7th and 8th in Philadelphia lies the Growing Home community gardens—two discrete plots of land separated by an assortment of old and new construction rowhomes that are the architectural hallmark of the neighborhood. Chainlink fences separate the gardens from the street. Through them one can see dozens of raised bed planters packed into a tight grid....
REVIEWS
REACTIONS
Nature in Korea’s Capital: The Magic Stops at the Car Bridge
A review of Min Joung-Ki, an exhibition of large-scale urban nature paintings at Kukje Gallery in Seoul, South Korea. Founded in 1982, Kukeje gallery is one of Korea’s most prolific exhibitors of international contemporary artists. Indeed, the institution is more of a small arts complex than a gallery, consisting of three modern buildings positioned gingerly within the fabric of an...
RECENT ESSAYS...
Design with Nature is not about Financial Return—It is a Recognition that Humans Rely on Nature.
There is no doubt that cities, especially since the industrial revolution, have by and large been built overriding local ecologies, obliterating topography, soils, streams, altering soils, ignoring seasons, breezes, sunlight. Nature based solutions, urban ecosystem services, however they are called, have emerged to try to remediate this historical modernist hubris which conceived of cities as technical systems to be placed...
Renewable Rikers as a Blueprint for a Sustainable City
On 29 January 2019, New York City Council held a hearing on a trio of bills collectively known as “Renewable Rikers”. Rikers is currently home to the most infamous prison in New York City—the Rikers Island correctional facility an island penal colony with one lone bridge connecting it to the rest of the City. Introduced by the Council’s Environmental Committee...
Common Trends and Conundrums in Nature-Based Solutions: Greening at the Intersection of Urban Densification and Urban Sprawl
Traditional chinampa cultivation as a way to restore water-stressed ecosystem services in Mexico City’s artificial wetland areas conquered from the sea in Tianjin Harbour … a network of bug-friendly bushes and patches of green along cycling routes in Scotland … an urban forest strategy in Melbourne promoting the plantating of 3,000 trees of diverse species. You might wonder what these...
Toronto Harbour Cleanup: The Cornerstone of Waterfront Revitalization
As Toronto grew into Canada’s largest city and a world leader in business, finance, technology, entertainment, and culture, there were unintended consequences such as water pollution and loss of habitat. Today, Toronto and Region are a leader in environmental cleanup and reconnecting people to their waterfront as a part of a city where humans can flourish as part of nature’s...
RECENT ROUNDTABLES...
National Park City: What if your city were a National Park City, analogous to what London created? What it would be like? What would it take to accomplish?
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SCIENCE &
TOOLS
Regulating the Bee Buzz
Most people would agree that honeybees need help. Concerns about their dwindling numbers and the pesticides used on the food they eat have rallied environmental activists around the save-the-bees cause. That increased awareness, combined with a...
PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
Making Connections and Feeding Relationships: Reflections from a Biocultural Axiom of Aloha
What if urban resource management and conservation reflected not just the politics and science of the day, but were rooted in creation stories, place-name stories, and personal stories about the relationships people have with place? This kind of thinking is at the heart of traditional ways of stewarding the environment in many remote and rural place-based communities around the globe,...
PLACE &
DESIGN
“Growing Place” Revisited: After 12 Years, Children’s Activity in the School Biotope Project
There has been a rapid decrease in the amount of open or natural space in Japan in recent years, particularly in urban areas due to the development of housing. Preserving these areas as wildlife habitats and spaces where children can play is a very important issue nowadays. I wrote about the creation of a school biotope project in a previous article,...
ART &
AWARENESS
Urban Landscape: Reading Nature from Big to Small Scales
Cities start, grow, expand, and usually—mainly in developing countries—exceed their limits, overflowing into rural and wild lands. This city growth applies not only to the imposition of manmade facets on geographical extensions, but to increases in the city’s complexity and dynamics. Urban phenomena start and keep mistreating nature beyond the city’s official boundaries, not just in physical terms, but through...