Essays Archive

I spent the last few years working on and off on a book that I tentatively titled Who Was That Major Deegan Anyway? That title reflected the book’s origin story. My husband Allen and I used to get stuck in traffic on the Major Deegan every time we tried to...

The Harrisons (Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022)) are widely acknowledged as pioneers in bringing together art and ecology into a new form of practice. They worked for over fifty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners, and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues. The works they made...

What connects all upper-middle-class houses, public institutions’ buildings, stadiums, and golf fields? A hint: it is aesthetic, it is high-maintenance, and it is a prime example of a single species use. The answer is ― the lawn. The history of lawns goes back to the late Middle Ages, and is,...

Due to urban densification processes and increasing confrontation with climate change, cities face the need to organize their public space in efficient and sustainable ways that take current needs as well as those of future generations into account. The Green Infrastructure (GI) concept is a widely used concept, introducing various...

Urban building codes and design standards play a crucial role in how a city adapts to contemporary challenges, like climate change and urbanization. I live in Montréal where, like many cities in the world, building codes largely came into force on account of two big urban phenomena: fire and disease....

  Playing games is a serious thing. Animals and humans learn how to relate with each other and with the world through games involving bodies and minds. Games provide a simplified way to understand complex issues, while at the same time broadening our perception of reality through multi-sensorial experiences. Playing...

Sometimes — for a day, a week, or a month — Paris turns into the very kingdom of walkers. That is, during transit strikes, when subway trains and buses stop running. Millions of walkers flood the streets, as the Métro and bus network release the load of crowded bodies it...

As part of The Nature of Cities Festival, on 29 March 2022, a team of practitioners and researchers at NeighborSpace, Borderless, and the USDA Forest Service – Northern Research Station organized a seed session, entitled “Caring in Public,” to explore the building blocks of social infrastructure with a group of...

A team of practitioners and researchers at the Central Park Conservancy Institute for Urban Parks, NeighborSpace, Borderless, and USDA Forest Service – Northern Research Station met from September to November 2021 to discuss research on social infrastructure and urban green spaces, with the goal of translating academic literature into practical...

Formigas-de-embaúba carries out environmental education programs to plant native mini-forests in public schools together with school communities.  If you asked someone if they could imagine growing a forest from scratch, they would most likely say no. If you then asked them if they could grow a mini-forest of 500 m²...

Urban green spaces often become entangled in notions of heritage. Multiple factors explain this convergence, from the historical origins of so many major urban green spaces, to the range of values (cultural, spiritual, etc.) that are tied to these places (see Feng & Tan, 2017; Forrest & Konijnendijk, 2005) and...

Fungi, that bizarre kingdom that includes yeasts and mushrooms, can be partnered with for healthier outcomes in urban natural areas and landscapes. Fungi, which are not plants and are more related to animals, are masters of chemistry. Enzymes created by fungi have been found to digest cigarette butts, DDT, and...

“This is a crucial and much-neglected topic. If children are not designed into our cities, they are designed out. This means that they are deprived of contact with the material world, with nature, with civic life and with their own capacities.” George Monbiot (Arup, 2020, 15) 1 Where do children belong...

Cities should be collaborative creations, no? Various professions, ways of knowing, modes of action, governments, and the people that live there, work together (we hope) to build their city from their shared and often contested values. And we need to find greener routes to built cities for them to be...

The Nature of Cities was launched 10 years ago, in June 2012. I believe it has been a success, with over four million reads and around 1,000 contributors. I believe it has been valuable in framing and propelling dialogue in its promotion of collaboration and transdisciplinarity that are essential to...

Read in English. Retrouver le sens perdu et affirmer l’identité du parc Les parcs sont aujourd’hui une collection éclectique de strates de paysages aménagés et construits issus de multiples époques[1]. Autant pour ceux qui réalisent des parcs que ceux qui les conçoivent, il est à propos de se questionner sur...

What is it? City authorities around the world are looking for policies and tools to facilitate urban greening ― in particular, the process of bringing more soil, vegetation, and water into the built environment through the development planning system. In the UK, authorities are looking at the Urban Greening Factor...

I recently had the great pleasure and privilege of a holiday on a boat in the Maldives. I had never sailed before, and am by no means an ocean-going character (indeed I took a year of swimming lessons in anticipation of this holiday), so the whole experience of being at...

Project study within the framework of the Swiss Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan Increasing building density is putting pressure on green spaces and thus on the living conditions for flora, fauna, and humans. However, the sixth IPPC report and the COVID-19 pandemic clearly show green spaces that enable recreation and the...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated existing problems in global supply chains of two fundamental commodities, namely energy and food, which in turn are leading to soaring inflation. In response, several countries are abandoning their commitments made at the COP26 conference to reduce carbon emissions and instead going back to...