LATEST...
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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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
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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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
7 August 2017
Patrick Geddes’ 19th Century “Pocket Park” Inspires Art Installation
A review of “Palm House”, a commissioned project on view at the Edinburgh Art Festival until 27 August 2017. The year is 1880; the place is Edinburgh, Scotland. Edinburgh’s Old Town is internationally known for its squalid conditions; its tenement slums plagued by poor sanitation and overcrowded housing. The medieval infrastructure has proven inadequate for the demands of the rapidly...
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RECENT ESSAYS...
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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30 July 2017
Urban-Rural Inequalities in Carbon Emissions
Cities have been recognized as key drivers toward the successful governance of resources and as the front line in combating climate change. But there is a huge urban-rural inequality in carbon emissions in the making, particularly in rapidly urbanizing developing countries. Thus, the political and economic divide between the Global North and South that historically has shaped debates on climate change could...
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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
21 April 2016
Shortcomings of the Paris Accord: We Need to Combat Air Pollution at Multiple Scales
As world leaders gathered recently in New York to sign the momentous Paris accord to curb future carbon emissions, the air in Indian cities such as Delhi continued to scale alarming heights of befoulment, and Chinese cities...
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PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
7 June 2015
Living Plans and Resilient, Happy, Included Citizens
(Una versión en español sigue inmediatamente después de la versión en Inglés.) Urban green areas and public spaces are key elements in urban infrastructure, mitigating environmental challenges, fulfilling social functions, and contributing to the ecosystems of the surrounding region. In Bogota, the concept of the Ecological Network (Van der Hammen and Andrade 2003)—green spaces integrated within and beyond the city—has...
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PLACE &
DESIGN
19 December 2012
Natural Disasters and the Nature of Cities
Environmental traumas are here. Global climate is a reality that is bringing extremes in weather as we have seen recently with the devastating impacts of Hurricane Sandy in the northeast of the USA. And in the last several years there have been massive earthquakes that have devastated cities in Japan, Haiti and New Zealand. To manage the effects of these...
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ART &
AWARENESS
31 July 2012
Cyborgs, Sewers, and the Sensing City
Cities have long been seen as the antithesis – or, at least, the absence – of nature. Yet in recent years, environmentalists started rethinking their long-held prejudices against urban areas. The rise of neighborhood-based environmental justice movements, beginning in the 1980’s, forced us to confront the human side of pollution and its relationship to urban poverty. The evolution of green building...
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