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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
20 August 2017
Ostrom in the City: Design Principles for the Urban Commons
Elinor Ostrom’s groundbreaking research established that it is possible to collaboratively manage common pool resources, or commons, for economic and environmental sustainability. She identified the conditions or principles which increase the likelihood of long-term, collective governance of shared resources. Although these principles have been widely studied and applied to a range of common pool resources, including natural and digital commons,...
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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
16 August 2017
Turning Rio Upside Down! The Baixo Rio Neighborhood Project
Leia uma versão em português aqui. About fifteen years ago I fell in love with watersheds. Then, my passion extended to the forests and ecosystems that sustain them. Then, I discovered the urban waters and biodiversity, and consequently urban ecology, when I started researching on urban blue-green infrastructure and how people related to their environment. From then on, the complex...
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GLOBAL
ROUNDTABLE
16 August 2017
Imagine an “ecological certification” for urban design. What are such a certification’s key elements?
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REVIEWS
PODCAST
21 August 2017
Green as a Color, a Philosophy, and a Marketing Strategy
A review of: Paradoxes of Green, by Gareth Doherty. 2016. 216 pages. ISBN: 9780520285026. University of California Press. Buy the book. Greening cities has become an internationalized norm in urban sustainability initiatives. Increasing open spaces and urban vegetation are widely seen as positive improvements for the quality of life of city residents, and contributing to the improvement of urban environmental performance. Doherty’s explorations...
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RECENT ESSAYS...
13 August 2017
For the Sake of the Common Good? “Gentrifying Conservationism” and “Green Evictions”
The “common good”—what an ambitious expression! As far as environmental protection is concerned, governments want us to believe that it is always performed precisely for the sake of the “common good”, or “public interest”. However, things are not that simple. From a socially critical viewpoint, environmental protection remains a dangerously vague expression, as long as the questions regarding which environment...
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9 August 2017
Black Cockatoo Rising: The Struggle to Save the Bushland in the City
Protecting remnant swathes of nature is not easy, and may often require concerted, vigorous community efforts. There are many threats: the most common of which seem to be highways and development, which are often backed by considerable financial resources and lots of momentum. So one takes notice when something unusual happens and a community effectively and doggedly organizes itself to...
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6 August 2017
Shutting Down Poletti—An Urban Environmental Victory
In 2013, the New York Power Authority razed the Charles Poletti Power Plant in Astoria, NY. In doing so, Power Authority removed what local elected official Michael Gianaris had characterized as a “symbol[] of pollution that haunted [the] neighborhood”. The characterization was an apt one. The Poletti Plant had for years been the single-biggest polluter in New York City. In...
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2 August 2017
Wall Watching in Iran
We walked approximately 1,500 kilometers in Iran, and something was noticeably missing: Graffiti. Scribbled names or tags, spray painted symbols, and thought-provoking political commentary were absent in cities, towns and villages from Sarakhs on the Turkmenistan border to Astara on the Azerbaijan border to the sprawling capital of Tehran to the desert gems of Esfahan, Shiraz and Yazd. Instead, nature-based...
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RECENT ROUNDTABLES...
Jun,2017
Are cities ecosystems—analogous to natural ones—of nature, infrastructure and people? Does thinking about cities in this way help us think about urban design?
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May,2017
To whom does a city’s nature belong? Is it a common pool resource, or a public good? And who decides?
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MORE ESSAYS IN...
SCIENCE &
TOOLS
14 June 2015
How Can We Engage Residents to Conserve Urban Biodiversity? Talk to Them
If you are like me, when walking in some neighborhoods, you see the endless yards of turfgrass and exotic plants and you think to yourself, “How can I reach people to change their landscaping practices?” Or...
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PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
16 November 2016
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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PLACE &
DESIGN
23 October 2015
Defining the Just City Beyond Black and White
When I think about the just city, it’s always black and white I was born in Chicago the evening before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. Growing up on the south side of Chicago meant that on an average day, I rarely saw or interacted with a person who didn’t look like me. All...
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ART &
AWARENESS
13 November 2016
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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