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Making Spaces for Edible Gardens in Compact Cities: the Taipei Case
Edible urban gardens have gained increasing popularity in the Global North within the narrative of nature-based solutions for cities and as parts of urban green infrastructure, which reintroduce greenspaces and associated functions into built environments, with the aspiration of leading to a socially and ecologically more sustainable city. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, edible gardens have seemed to become an even...
ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Green Recovery’s Missing Piece: Engagement with Future World Leaders!
This essay advocates for a unique “Youth Empowerment Based Green Recovery Programme” to be developed and adapted by governments to enhance long-term societal resilience. As we have collectively moved towards unlocking the lockdowns and quarantines that had been in effect since March 2020, the world’s attention has been gripped in managing the looming economic crisis that has inflicted severe socio-economic...
CONVERSE
RESPOND
Stories of the Nature of Cities 1/2 Hour—Episode 4: Oasis
Episode 4: Oasis “Happy Hour at the Green Man” by Kate Wing, read by Lucy Symons A small bar in the middle of the city has a portal to an ancient ghost forest. “Where Grass Grows Greener” by Jenni Juvonen, read by Nora Achrati The narrator explores a forest and meets a fox. The stories are read, and then authors Kate...
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Highlights from The Nature of Cities 2020
Today’s post celebrates some of the highlights from TNOC writing in 2020. These contributions—originating around the world—were one or more of widely read, offering novel points of view, and/or somehow disruptive in a useful way. All 1000+ TNOC essays and roundtables are worthwhile reads, of course, but what follows will give you a taste of 2020’s key and diverse content. Which is not entirely about...
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...
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...
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...
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SCIENCE &
TOOLS
Invisible City Life: The Urban Microbiome
Microbes play a key role in the function of ecosystems. They contribute to biodiversity (Fierer et al. 2012), nutrient cycling (Fenchel et al. 2012), pollutant detoxification (Kolvenbach et al. 2014), and human health (Gevers et al....
PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
Connective Tissue Matters in the Nature of Cities
The TNOC Roundtable for October 2014 focused on green corridors in cities to support nature, and the ‘natural’ ecology that resides in the city. I am focused on the ecology of the city. The aim of ecologists and scientists to strengthen the capacity of the city to connect nature within and across it, is the same instinct that those of us...
PLACE &
DESIGN
Increasing the Native Plants of Colombian Cities
I remember when I was a child growing up in Bogotá, the capital and largest city of Colombia, located in the cool, high-altitude environment of the Andean mountain range. Street and park trees were almost all of a few widely planted species: eucalypts, pines, cypress, acacias and ash. In a city that, at that time, had more than 4 million...
ART &
AWARENESS
Formes pour vivre: An Experiment in Ecological-Environmental-Scientific Poetics
In this short essay my aim is modest and two-fold. First, I would like to share with you a story about an experiment in ecological-environmental-scientific-poetics that worked out beautifully. It worked so well that I believe it is worth sharing. Second, in the spirit of sharing, so that others can try out this recipe, I will make explicit the elements of...