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ESSAYS | POINTS OF VIEW

  • Highlights from The Nature of Cities 2025

    Highlights from The Nature of Cities 2025

    Cities are, at their best, collaborative masterpieces, aren’t they? They take shape through the interplay of many professions, ways of knowing, forms of action, institutions, and—above all—the desires of the people who live in them. They are cultural, ecological, human, and more-than-human all at once. Together (and sometimes in tension), these forces shape cities consistent…

  • The Art of Growing Back: Why Regeneration, not Sustainability, is the real logic of abundance

    The Art of Growing Back: Why Regeneration, not Sustainability, is the real logic of abundance

    I often think that culture has always been regenerative. It just forgot how to name itself that way. Every artist who reuses materials, every community project that heals a derelict space, every curator who invites new voices into the conversation are all, in essence, regenerating. They are restoring life, meaning, and relationship where something has…

  • Decolonizing the New York Mind

    Decolonizing the New York Mind

    Our city is called New York. Our state is called New York. But who or what is York? As most readers of TNOC might know, it refers to the City of York, in northeastern England. But like with most city names, the name itself starts in nature. In Old Brythonic, the name was Eburākon, the…

TNOC’S MISSION

Cities and communities that are better for nature and all people, through transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.

We combine art, science, and practice in innovative and publicly available engagements for knowledge-driven, imaginative, and just green city making.

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ROUNDTABLES | GLOBAL DISCUSSIONS

PROJECTS | ART, SCIENCE & ACTION, TOGETHER

TNOC FESTIVAL 2026

The journey to greener,
more inclusive cities
continues…

SPROUT POETRY JOURNAL

ISSUE 4: CARE
This latest issue includes works that interrogate the modes of engaging with others in (urban and natural) space that can speak to the interrelated dimensions of care.

NBS COMICS: NATURE TO SAVE THE WORLD

26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity
Now a global project with over ONE MILLION readers, we invite comic creators from all over the world to imagine comics about how people and nature might thrive together. Nature-based Solutions (NBS) Comics empowers creators to combine science and storytelling.

STORIES OF TNOC: VOLUME 2

Cheeky monkeys, vertical farms, climate change, and tree tribunals. Our latest collection features 49 short stories from 20 countries that radically re-imagine city life.

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THE NATURE OF GRAFFITI

This is the nature of graffiti. It facilitates speech. It speaks to us. It stakes claims and makes statements. It tells stories.
The Nature of Cities hosts a public gallery about the graffiti and street art that motivates us in public places.

REVERBERATIONS EXHIBITION

Close your eyes. What do you hear?
An exhibition exploring the elements through art, science, and sound, with over 30 contributors from various disciplines in a multimedia experience. Produced by the USDA Forest Service and The Nature of Cities.

THE JUST CITY ESSAYS

The Just City Essays
26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity
Produced by The Nature of Cities, together with The J. Max Bond Center, and Next City, we ask what would a just city look like, and what could be strategies to get there? We raised these questions to architects, mayors, artists, doctors, designers, scholars, philanthropists, ecologists, urban planners, and community activists. Their responses came to us from 22 cities across five continents and myriad vantages.