{"id":6461,"date":"2014-06-22T20:34:14","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T00:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=6461"},"modified":"2015-06-01T15:54:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:54:55","slug":"the-rhythms-of-city-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2014\/06\/22\/the-rhythms-of-city-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rhythms of City Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend once told me about the time he started finding dry dog food pellets mysteriously appearing in his pockets every time he put\u00a0on a freshly laundered and dried pair of pants. Dr. Will Turner had a dog, of course, and recognized the pellets as the same kind he\u00a0offered his dog in a bowl out on the porch every morning. But he wasn\u2019t in the habit of carrying them around in his own pockets, so\u00a0how did the pellets end up there, day after day? It took him a few days of detective work to figure out what was going on.<\/p>\n

A graduate student of urban ecology, and living in one of the burgeoning cities in the American Southwest, Will was conscientious\u00a0about his environmental impact. So, among other things, he relied on the desert air to dry his laundry rather than using an electric\u00a0dryer like too many urban dwellers in these energy hungry western cities. A clothesline in the yard, an oddly oft-forgotten bit of\u00a0technology, is after all lighter both on the city\u2019s energy supply and a grad student\u2019s wallet. Will\u2019s clothesline stretched across their\u00a0yard, off the porch with the bowl of dog food.<\/p>\n

\"ScrubJay-Peanut\"It took a few days of clothesline- and bird-watching to solve the mystery of the pellets in his pockets. Among the various wild\u00a0creatures who shared Will\u2019s yard was a Scrub Jay, a consummate city slicker of the not-so-wild American West. This bird, like so many of its\u00a0Corvid cousins in cities all over the world, is a generalist and opportunist with a not too picky appetite for the veritable smorgasbord\u00a0served up by us, both purposefully through bird feeders and wastefully when we throw out food and organic garbage. Dog and cat\u00a0food make for delightful morsels for these omnivores, and it didn\u2019t take long for my friend to notice that his Scrub Jay neighbor\u00a0regularly pilfered the pellets out of his dog\u2019s bowl on the porch.<\/p>\n

Scrub Jays are particularly intelligent, even among Corvids, and have even been shown to be capable of planning for the future. They\u00a0do this by caching away any extra food tidbits they find, to be eaten later during lean times in the wild. They cache acorns all over\u00a0their native Oak savannah habitats, for example, digging them up to eat months later during the winter. This ability to cache food,\u00a0and then to remember the locations of hundreds of cache sites, has evolved as an adaptation to the unpredictable nature of food\u00a0supplies in their drought-prone semi-arid native country. An experimental study a few years ago found them capable of tracking day-to-day variations in food availability, and caching preferred foods based on what they might (not) get for breakfast the next morning\u2014a form of mental time-travel and planning for the future not seen in too many non-human species. This level of intelligence and\u00a0opportunistic flexibility of behavior may well be the key to this species\u2019 success in the relatively new cityscapes that have displaced so\u00a0much of their native habitats.<\/p>\n

Will\u2019s Scrub Jay friend had gotten into the habit of not just eating the dog food pellets when hungry, but also hiding them away for\u00a0potential later use. In the wild, a Scrub Jay caches each acorn carefully, usually in a separate location to minimize the risk of losing\u00a0them all to potential thieves, parasites, or decay. Seeds may be buried in the ground, or stuck in the crevices of rocks or trees,\u00a0relatively stable places that are somehow marked down in the Jays\u2019 mental maps for later retrieval. Unsurprisingly, they continue to\u00a0cache food in the city, finding all kinds of novel hiding places. Such as the pockets of pants hanging on clotheslines conveniently\u00a0located near bowls of magically refilling dog food pellets. For that was how the pellets were ending up in the pockets of Will\u2019s pants,\u00a0as he discovered after a few days of yard birdwatching.<\/p>\n

Pants, however conveniently they may hang near food sources, can hardly be reliable caching locations. Yet this bird continued to\u00a0stuff the pellets into the pants, as if driven by sheer habit, even though the cache kept disappearing along with the pants on a daily\u00a0basis. You can find Scrub Jays use a similarly bewildering variety of odd, unstable locations to cache foods in the suburban jungle.\u00a0Putting extra food away for a non-rainy day is evidently a habit that has become hardwired into their behavior. Never mind if the\u00a0cache location itself is ephemeral and unreliable. After all, there is enough food available to these birds in the city that they don\u2019t\u00a0really depend on their caches so much any more. Caching, then, is rather like how we often put extra food away in the fridge after a\u00a0big meal, only to throw it away days or weeks later. Who wants to eat leftovers when fresh meals are readily available?<\/p>\n

I remember this story, and retell it here, because it illustrates one of the key features of urban habitats for many species: they are\u00a0relatively predictable habitats offering a reliably steady supply of food. Yes, we build cities by ripping out and paving over more\u00a0natural habitats, destroying most of the natural food sources for the native creatures. Yes, we shatter the landscape into too many\u00a0fragments in a patchwork of green\/brown\/grey which can be transformed over and over at our whims. Yet, amid this increasingly\u00a0heterogeneous, dynamically patchy space, we do seem to reduce variability in time, establishing new rhythms of renewal of food and\u00a0water in the urban ecosystems, often to suit our own daily cycles. Any other species that can survive on our excess food subsidies, and\u00a0find a way to fit into the urban landscape matrix, is free to come along for the ride.<\/p>\n

\"BonnetMacaque-CandyFloss\"So what is the ecological rhythm of life in the city, for species that share our urban spaces with us? Dr. Ajith Kumar, one of my\u00a0professors at the Wildlife Institute of India, while teaching us the methods of documenting and measuring primate behavior in the\u00a0wild, made the observation that the daily time-budget and diet of monkeys\u2014Bonnet Macaques\u2014in Chennai (and other South Indian\u00a0cities) consist of hanging around people\u2019s kitchens and eating\u00a0idli\u00a0(steamed rice-and-lentil cakes) for breakfast. Just like the human\u00a0inhabitants of those cities. Nearby, House Crows watch people keenly and dart into kitchens through open windows in sudden snack\u00a0attacks that startle the human inhabitants but seldom draw more than a frustrated yell or an expertly dodged broom thrown in\u00a0retaliation. Like their Scrub Jay cousins in California, and other corvids around the world, these Chennai residents have figured out\u00a0when and where to obtain food reliably in the urban maze.<\/p>\n

\"teaHouse Sparrows in many a quaint European city start their mornings\u2014and likely spend the rest of the day too\u2014hanging around the\u00a0outdoor tables of streetside cafes, waiting for crumbs of croissant or baguette (maybe bagel for their cousins who\u2019ve settled across the\u00a0Atlantic) dropped accidentally or on purpose by the patrons. Meanwhile in Tempe. Arizona, in the xeriscaped backyard of Dr. Dave\u00a0Pearson, an entomologist at Arizona State University, large flocks of birds show up every dawn like clockwork. These mixed flocks\u00a0include non-native city slickers like the House Sparrow and Inca Dove alongside Sonoran Desert natives like Abert\u2019s Towhee, House\u00a0Finch, White-Winged Dove, Cactus Wren, and Curve-billed Thrasher. And they all wait patiently (but not for long) every morning for\u00a0Dave to bring out bags of birdseed to replenish the feeding stations at designated spots throughout his yard.<\/p>\n

Sea gulls fly deep inland from the California coast during the winter to survive on urban garbage dumps and roost on the wide lawns\u00a0of local schoolyards and parks. Alongside migratory and resident geese who honk at passersby, especially in the public parks,\u00a0aggressively begging for food handouts not unlike the squirrels nearby or the more remote monkeys of southern India. Raccoons and\u00a0Skunks come out at dusk, patrolling back alleys especially on nights before garbage collection days. Bears too, come rooting through\u00a0garbage cans, and in some places have found that food supply steady enough through the winters to allow them to give up\u00a0hibernating altogether. Its a year round party in the city if you know where and how to find it, and aren\u2019t too picky about what you\u00a0eat.<\/p>\n

\"Gulls-GamlaStan-Stockholm\"Examine the city from an ecological perspective, as an ecosystem built for humans, and a few features about the rhythm of city life\u00a0stand out. We built cities to escape the vagaries of nature, its seasonal cycles and annual and decadal fluctuations which make life\u00a0challenging. In the city, we shelter from extremes of climatic cycles, insulating ourselves in increasingly climate-controlled indoor\u00a0environments. Outdoors, cities even create their own local climate bubbles, heat islands which mitigate the northern winters and\u00a0herald a globally warmed up future. We have now altered the flow of food and water across the planet, funneling much of the\u00a0products of plant\/animal\/human labor into cities that blanket the lands as busy hubs in an ever tightening web of highways and\u00a0railways. Our network of cities in this globalized world is thus the culmination of our millenia-long quest to free ourselves from the\u00a0contraints of nature\u2019s cycles. So we can now eat mangos and cherries in the middle of a northern winter, and never seem to be too far\u00a0away from an all-you-can-eat buffet of foods fast and slow. In harvesting so much of the Earth\u2019s primary productivity for ourselves,\u00a0we have succeeded in raising and flattening out the fluctuations in natural cycles of nutrient flows. Where our ancestors (and some\u00a0increasingly small indigenous communities even now) flowed across the landscape keeping a close eye on the flushing of leaves,\u00a0blooming of flowers, ripening of fruits, and the local or long-distance migrations of fish and bird and mammal, worrying about where\u00a0the next meal was coming from, we now mostly worry about when the bakery around the corner opens in the morning so we can get\u00a0in line before the fresh bagels are sold out. The ebbs and flows in our food supplies have been replaced by a more steady stream, and\u00a0the rhythm of food availability now pulses to a new urban beat, set more by the convenience of our social arrangements rather than\u00a0the rotations of the planet or its cycling around the sun.<\/p>\n

While we bask in this triumph\u2026 yes, I know, it is hardly an unmitigated triumph given the litany of environmental damage in its\u00a0wake as often documented on this very blog; and I know that this steady flow of food and resources is not equally available to all\u00a0humans even in the cities let alone outside; but, despite those persistent knotty problems, we have nevertheless triumphed over\u00a0nature\u2019s vagaries in large parts, uneven and ephemeral as our triumph may turn out to be. So\u2026 while we bask in this triumph, it\u00a0shouldn\u2019t surprise us to notice that many other species have also been watching our success and have been riding our tailcoats into\u00a0the new Anthropocene Earth. It shouldn\u2019t surprise us that the list of species hopping on to our urban gravy train is still growing, as\u00a0more species respond to the changes wrought by global urbanization, and succumb to the evolutionary challenge of adapt or go\u00a0extinct.<\/p>\n

In the wild, successful species must evolve finely-tuned physiologies that track the regular beat of the seasons and the pulses of\u00a0tropical storms and the less regular longer rhythm of El Ni\u00f1o cycles which shape the availability of water and food. So the\u00a0wildflowers and cactuses of the Sonoran Desert or the Namib wait for the unpredictable \u201cmonsoon\u201d winds to bring rain which triggers\u00a0quite an immediate dance of life that ripples quickly across these desert ecosystems. And so the bears and the frogs hibernate\u00a0through temperate winters while herds of large mammals (used to, still try to) flow across Alaska and Africa, and the birds fly across\u00a0oceans and mountains, chasing seasonal peaks of sunshine and rain captured by plants and turned into food cascading through\u00a0complex food webs. Once we began to figure out these nutrient flows, however, and learned to capture and control and divert the\u00a0planet\u2019s primary productivity to ourselves, we inevitably drove many other species, our competitors and predators, to extinction\u00a0locally and globally. In the process, we also changed the pressures of natural selection acting on these species. Those species that\u00a0didn\u2019t go extinct began to evolve adaptations allowing them to fall through the cracks into our own habitats which we don\u2019t really\u00a0control as well as we think we do. Extinction, while inevitable, is only one of two choices every species must face in life. The other\u00a0option is to adapt, and many species have and are adapting to the rhythms of urban life.<\/p>\n

Evolutionary consequences of our action are, if you think about it, quite inevitable. Set up feeders in your suburban yards to feed the\u00a0poor birds starving through an English winter, and don\u2019t be surprised if some of those birds change their migratory behavior and\u00a0begin to split into new species. Such is the tale of the European Blackcap Warblers, which evolved to exploit the continent\u2019s spring\u00a0flush of insects and fruits to raise broods in the summer before heading south to warmer climes in the winter. When bird fanciers in\u00a0England and Ireland started setting up bird-feeders, a few of the Blackcaps found they didn\u2019t need to undertake the arduous risky\u00a0migration towards Africa after all; much easier to hang out in the British gardens where the bipedal primates with the funny hats\u00a0keep up an endless supply of bird food. That way, not only does a warbler have a better chance of surviving over-winter, it can also be\u00a0among the first to fly back to its nearby German breeding ground and be in prime position to make the most of the continental\u00a0summer. The longer-distance migrants arrive later, and must mate among themselves. Thus a few individuals who perhaps flew the\u00a0wrong way, and who might in the past have simply died in the winter, have now grown into a distinct population thanks to the\u00a0predictable generosity of human bird feeders. Since migratory behavior, including direction of migration, and choice of mating\u00a0partners, are all part of the genetic legacy passed from parent to offspring in these birds, the European Blackcaps are now well on\u00a0their way to splitting up into two distinct species: the German traditionalists who continue to migrate south, to Mediterranean villas\u00a0or African woodlands for the winter, versus modern urbanists who simply hop across the channel into English and Irish gardens. The\u00a0new rhythms we have introduced into the cycles of nature sure can alter the age-old evolutionary dance.<\/p>\n

Ask humans about the rhythm of city life, however, and they will tell you it is not the same everywhere. New Yorkers, Mumbaikars,\u00a0Londoners, and Edokkos (or Tokyokkos) have a faster cadence to their walk to the subway stations, and get impatient if their coffee is\u00a0not served fairly quickly, while Kolkatans and Parisians prefer to linger in their coffee houses, and the lazy beach bums of Los\u00a0Angeles and Rio de Janeiro lounge in the sun and sand. These rhythms turn out to be more than mere cultural stereotypes. My\u00a0Fresno State colleague, the psychologist Dr. Bob Levine, who studied the geography of psychological time across human cultures,\u00a0measured how fast people walk in different cities and found that walking speed correlates quite well with these cultural stereotypes.\u00a0More recently, physicists Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt of the Santa Fe Institute took a big data approach to document the\u00a0social, economic, cultural and energy metabolism of cities worldwide, and also found patterns confirming the cultural stereotypes:\u00a0there are indeed fast cities and slow cities, their different rhythms seemingly driven as much by population density and economic\u00a0activity as by cultural practices and preferences. While many cities aspire to the faster trajectories of the more conventionally\u00a0successful metropolises, others, like in Italy, are banding together in a new Slow Cities campaign to augment the Slow Food\u00a0movement.<\/p>\n

What does this cultural variation in the rhythms of city life, urban metabolism, mean for other species that are adapting to our\u00a0habitats? We are only just beginning to appreciate, measure, and understand the evolutionary adaptations of the slowly growing list\u00a0of species that constitute our urban wildlife. As I described above, the overarching trend of steadying food and water supplies to make\u00a0them predictably available year round is allowing many species to adapt to our perennial smorsgasbord. Yet, in the finer details,\u00a0these adaptations must also be tuned to the culturally driven rhythms of who puts out food for birds or monkeys when and where,\u00a0how and how often garbage is collected and disposed off in different cities, and whether people in desert cities can stop growing lawns\u00a0to plant more water wise gardens.<\/p>\n

Having passed a rubicon recently by having a majority of humans living in cities, are we now also on the threshold of another\u00a0profound planetary change where human culture sets the dominant beat defining the natural rhythms of food availability for other\u00a0creatures? Or have we already passed that threshold too, obliviously? In the recent alarming declines of House Sparrows in Eurasia,\u00a0we are already seeing the consequences of rapid technological and cultural changes, which can destabilize even our most seasoned\u00a0companion species. In drawing other species into the vortex of urbanization with our predictable food subsidies, are we setting up\u00a0more of them for longer-term evolutionary failures? Or can we learn quickly from their successful adaptations and figure out how to\u00a0enjoy the benefits of a culturally diverse city life which also includes a fair bit of biological diversity?<\/p>\n

The answers to these questions lie in our own cultural adaptability and flexibility. We have the ability to develop this new\u00a0understanding of the evolution of species in urban environments, and harness it towards improving the quality of life for all species\u00a0concerned. We also have the capacity to carry on blindly with ingrained cultural habits, much like the Scrub Jay stuffing dog food\u00a0into pants pockets without realizing the futility of that caching effort. The answers to these questions, and how quickly we find them,\u00a0could be keys to how the music of urbanization unfolds across our planet, into a life-sustaining harmony or a cacophonous crescendo\u00a0that either slows down or accelerates the pace of the sixth mega-extinction we are now wreaking in the history of life on Earth.<\/p>\n

Madhusudan Katti<\/strong>
\nFresno<\/p>\n

On\u00a0The Nature of Cities<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend once told me about the time he started finding dry dog food pellets mysteriously appearing in his pockets every time he put\u00a0on a freshly laundered and dried pair of pants. Dr. Will Turner had a dog, of course, and recognized the pellets as the same kind he\u00a0offered his dog in a bowl out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":6469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300,273,298],"tags":[43,401,73,34],"coauthors":[158],"class_list":["post-6461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-art-and-awareness","category-essay","category-essay-people-and-communitites","tag-awareness","tag-biodiversity","tag-biophilia","tag-experiencing-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6461"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}