{"id":60174,"date":"2026-01-12T23:05:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T04:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/?p=60174"},"modified":"2026-01-12T23:22:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T04:22:01","slug":"hopes-for-my-hometown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2026\/01\/12\/hopes-for-my-hometown\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopes for My Hometown"},"content":{"rendered":"
Perhaps \u201cWhy not here\u201d is the question we should all be asking as we re-imagine urban nature in the places we love. As we contemplate a greener urban future, our cities needn\u2019t be constrained to the mythologies that have characterized their past.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

\u201cCities have mythologies\u201d, a colleague mentions offhandedly.<\/p>\n

There are the smart cities<\/em><\/a>, turning to technologies to improve essential services and respond to challenges. The global cities<\/em> serve as pivotal nodes in economic networks. There are cities that view themselves as superior<\/em> \u2015 the ones that nobody wants to leave, but that can overlook their own problems, because \u201cthat could never happen here<\/em>\u201d. There\u2019s the scrappy, grassroots urbanism of my own adopted city of Montreal, with its preponderance of small public spaces and local greening projects<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re having this conversation in Windsor, Ontario, Canada\u2019s southernmost city. And maybe it\u2019s Windsor (the \u201cAutomotive capital of Canada\u201d)\u2019s gritty, blue-collar mythology that led so many of my fellow Windsorites to question my choice to leave and study ecology almost 2 decades ago. \u201cThe environment? Really? Not a lot of jobs for that down here,\u201d was a common refrain during visits home, my first few years of university. (I was studying in nearby Guelph, and squarely in line with that <\/em>city\u2019s \u201chippy\u201d mythology, I had arrived a med-school hopeful, and emerged a few months later as a vegetarian, buy-nothing-day-organizing, environmental biology student). A historically significant hub for the car industry with a rich industrial and manufacturing heritage, Windsor isn\u2019t necessarily a sought-after destination for environmentalists. Indeed, the Windsor region<\/a> consistently scores near the bottom of the country in measures such as tree cover and access to nature, feeding the well-meaning concern that my chosen degree wasn\u2019t exactly opening a lot of pathways back home.<\/p>\n

To my detractors\u2019 credit, I never did move back after my decision to leave 18 years ago; I am happily settled into a career as an urban ecology professor in Montreal. A choice, however, that has more to do with the vagrancies of the academic job market than either Windsor or Montreal per se. And on this recent visit to my southern Ontario hometown, I was thrilled to discover that the narrative is changing\u2026 I think\u2026 I hope. The Windsor mythology I grew up with seems to be fraying, just ever so slightly, at the seams.<\/p>\n

Or maybe it\u2019s me who\u2019s changed, and years of studying the nature of cities have simply allowed me to look at this one with new eyes.<\/p>\n

I visit my hometown frequently, but this trip was my first in a professional capacity \u2015 at least since I worked here as a summer research assistant at 20 years old (a job involving a lot of processing of fish samples in a basement lab\u2026 which surprisingly was still not enough to turn me off of my environmental trajectory). I\u2019m here on a brief stop during a year of research leave, visiting the Windsor Law Centre for Cities (C4C)<\/a> and colleagues from the University of Windsor\u2019s National Urban Parks Hub<\/a>. It\u2019s over lunch at the C4C that we discuss mythologies \u2015 part of a wide-ranging conversation around housing, nature, and the importance of mid-sized cities<\/a> for moving the needle forward on urban sustainability.<\/p>\n

Windsor\u2019s mythology has certainly never revolved around nature, evidenced by the lack of green space for a city located in one of Canada\u2019s biodiversity hotspots<\/a>. But coming back here wearing my urban ecology hat, I can\u2019t help but wonder why<\/em> that is. Because amidst the roads with too many lanes \u2015 I borrowed my dad\u2019s car to drive to that university lunch on an 8-lane \u201cstroad<\/a>” \u2015 and the sprawling new housing developments popping up in former agricultural fields, I\u2019m struck by the incredible natural gems hidden throughout this southern Ontario border town. The Windsor-Essex region is one of North America\u2019s best bird-watching locations and is home to stunning monarch butterfly migrations. It\u2019s situated in the increasingly rare and incredibly beautiful Carolinian forest region. Why isn\u2019t the local nature more central to the city\u2019s vision of itself?<\/p>\n