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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Building Practitioner Networks to Better Support Kenyan Frontline Workers During the COVID-19 Crisis: Some Learnings and Reflections
As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates and the prevalence escalates, global health care systems become overwhelmed with patients who are either confirmed or suspected to be suffering from the disease (Chen et al., 2020). Frontline health care workers (HCWs) are required to work for long and irregular hours, with heavy workloads that contribute to increased levels of stress and ultimately precipitate...
ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Antiracist Environmental Leadership in a Virtual World
Our graduate students are figuring out how to best “immerse” themselves in city spaces while staying safe during the pandemic. Students find creative ways to both learn and practice while masked and distanced from community members. A positive outcome of being online is the ability to invite environmental activists and social justice leaders from BIPOC-led organizations into our Zoom classes...
CONVERSE
RESPOND
The LEAF: Episode 4. Show and Tells from Urban Arts Collective Members
Explore with us diverse and connecting threads in urban ecological arts. In the LEAF, three FRIEC Urban Arts Collective members share something from their ideas and work for 10 minutes each, followed by Q&A. Theme: Stories that have not been told. Presenters: Bibi Calderaro, New York Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, New York Ursula Heise, Los Angeles Wednesday 20 January,...
RECENT ESSAYS...
On Privilege as Choice
Two incidents stand out particularly from my memories as a young child. In the first one, I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old—at that age when we ran out of the housing colony and into the streets to play a game of hopscotch or whatever else took our fancy. I remember playing with a child my age when another...
What is One Tree Worth?
Writing this during National Forest Week here in Canada, I’m reflecting (as I frequently do) on the urban forest. As a scientist, I often find myself collapsing the beautiful, multidimensional, urban forest into a few general measurements: stand density, canopy cover, biomass, etc. But as an urban resident, I cherish these trees as individuals, too. Not long ago, I wrote...
Quarantine Fatigue and the Power of Activating Public Lands as Social Infrastructure
This essay is part three in a series. Since 13 March 2020, our team of social science researchers has been keeping a collective journal of our experiences of our New York City neighborhoods and public spaces during COVID-19. Read the essays from spring and summer here. 1. Winter is coming: Second wave and quarantine fatigue In New York City, after...
The Hills Save Us
En español. Citizenship is derived from city, and floristry from forest or jungle. Forest and human being live a socio-ecological pact in which the forest becomes a new citizen respected in its integrity, stability, and extraordinary beauty. Both benefits, as the utilitarian logic of exploitation is abandoned and the logic of mutuality is assumed, which implies mutual respect and synergy....
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SCIENCE &
TOOLS
Dolphin as Metaphor for the Limits of Environmental Law
On January 25, 2013, a dolphin swam into Brooklyn, New York’s Gowanus Canal. Poor dolphin! Gowanus canal is a 1.8 mile long Superfund site—a toxic stew of pesticides, heavy metals and PCBs masquerading as “the waters...
PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
Stewarding Memories: Caring for People, Trees, and Land
“We will never forget.” After September 11 (2001), this claim was made in countless political speeches, memorial eulogies, bumper stickers, carved stones, tattoos, and tee-shirts. But we do forget. Time rolls on. We age. New people are born who have no lived experience of the tragic occurrences of that day. So too, does the landscape change. New buildings rise, trees...
PLACE &
DESIGN
How Tactical Urbanism “Adds Up”
A review of Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change, by Anthony Garcia and Mike Lydon. 2015. ISBN 9781610915267. Island Press, Washington. 256 pages. Tactical Urbanism: it’s one of the buzz words in the emerging people-centred planning paradigm. If you do a Google News search of the term, you’ll find articles from all the news sites beloved by urbanists: Next City Daily,...
ART &
AWARENESS
The Revalorization of Urban Nature, for Good and Ill
An image of expanding cities is associated, in most people’s minds, with the shrinking and gradual disappearance of urban nature. Yet, as life in cities becomes increasingly stressful and challenging, a gradual revalorization of urban nature is taking place across the cities of the world. The importance of urban nature is begin redefined with new values: of recreation, relaxation and, ultimately,...