Place attachment can either hinder a community’s ability to evacuate after a natural disaster, or it may serve as a fundamental building block to improve evacuation procedures, which in turn can contribute in the creation of resilient communities.
To plan resilient cities is a complex task. It involves making decisions that involve the built, social, economic, and environmental development of a territory, including unexpected changes, such as those caused by extreme natural events. The effects of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and fires, among other disturbances, need to be studied, anticipated and included in the planning process of cities, in order to plan for the proper adaptation of human settlements, and for being better prepared to cope in a future disastrous event.
This issue takes more relevance in countries which have made a commitment to follow the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which among other things, makes a call to build resilient communities. Chile, among 187 other countries, signed this protocol. However, and regardless of the many efforts made to be better prepared for future disasters, the planning of resilient cities in Chile has not been properly addressed. Various studies, laws, norms, building codes, and reconstruction plans have been developed for this purpose, but these plans target mitigation strategies and the reduction of vulnerabilities only, instead of addressing community resilience.
Planning resilient cities becomes even more complex if we want to include the perceptual dimension of resilience. This dimension relates to how people perceive their territory and the extent that perception influences their actions. A key factor in the perceptual dimension of resilience is the concept of place attachment—that is the affective feelings that people develop towards where they are born and where they live. These places fulfill a fundamental function in the life of the people (Hernández et al. 2007). Place attachment is particularly relevant in disaster prone environments in particular, because it has been proven to influence people’s decision to evacuation in the event of a disaster (Berroeta et al., 2015; Dominicis et al., 2015).
Based on previous research developed in the Landscape and Urban Resilience Laboratory (PRULAB), we created a game called Metropolis under Emergency. The objective of the game is to explore how to plan resilient cities in the Chilean coastal environment subject to extreme tsunamic events, and considering in particular the perceptual dimension of resilience. In this essay we report on how the game works and the planning ideas resulting from its application.
The game
The objective of the game is to improve place attachment to security zones of coastal resilient communities, or the site where people should go to in case of a tsunami alert. It is important to mention that most of the security zones in Chile are located within natural environments 30 meters above sea level, without easy access for the community (which is mostly located at sea level), and lacking of any kind of built infrastructure. The action of the games emerges from the observation that after a tsunami, and regardless of the many trials and education programs given to the community on how and where to evacuate, most people have difficulty arriving at the security zone: they do not follow instructions provided in case of a real event. People either stay at home or prefer to use other sites for security, obstructing the role of emergency institutions which, in turn, affects the adaptation capacity, or the resilience of the entire community. Increasing place attachment to the security zones could improve evacuation procedures and adaptation capacities; thereby improving the resilience of cities. Hence, the objective of the game is for the players to include infrastructure and activities in the security zone, in order to build attachment to the security zone, which in turn, will assure a good evacuation process. The players are experts in emergency and land use planning who have the duty to plan the location as well as the characteristics of security zones.
Figure 1a. The game in process. Photo: Paula VillagraFigure 1b. The game in process. Photo: Paula Villagra
The game took place after a seminar called Applied Resilience: Approaches and Implications of Risk Perception and Place Attachment to Urban Planning and Design, which was focused on the role of perception in the planning of resilient cities. During this seminar, participants learned about what it means to plan resilient cities and the specific role of place attachment on the adaptive capacity of the community. Coastal planners, urbanists, architects, environmental psychologist and sociologists lead presentations and discussions on various topics with the participants. The game was applied during a four-hour session right after the Applied Resilience seminar (Fig 1a,b).
During the game, participants were provided a tight budget to be used to buy a set of goods and services to be incorporated into the security zones of costal towns for the purpose of increasing place attachment. The goods and services were identified by the local community of each town in previous studies and included a wide variety of topics, from more participation and education on emergency issues, to the construction of specific infrastructure, and new security areas. Measures of place attachment to the security zones were also identified in previous studies and were provided to participants for reference (Fig 2).
Figure 2. Example of the information sheet given to each team (Town of Mehuín). It includes a map of the town with the oficial evacuation routes and security zones. The graph in the upper part, shows the security zones in the x axis and the goods and services in the y axis. The wider the icon representing the goods and services the more important for people. In the same graph, the mean place attachment value is provided for each security zone (the scale is 1 to 7, considering 7 to be the highest value). To the right hand side, some demographic, emergency and socio-economic information is provided. Image: Paula Villagra
During the game, three teams were formed of four to five professionals each, from different emergency and planning institutions. Participants were from the National Emergency Office (ONEMI), the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (MINVU), Rescue Teams (SAR), local municipalities and psychologists involved in emergency procedures. A moderator, familiar with the study sites, was assigned to each team. In addition, a treasurer, in charge of managing the budget, and a supplier of goods and services, were assigned to each team.
The towns were coastal areas under tsunami risk: Mehuín, Queule, and Puerto Saavedra. These towns include urban, rural and indigenous communities and have a Civil Protection Plan in case of Tsunami, which identifies the location of the safety zones. (See the Example of Mehuín here.) A map of each town was given to each team for allocating the goods and services in places they think best for creating attachment to security zones.
An important consideration for the game is that the budget given to each team was not enough to buy all goods and services required in each town; hence, the challenge of the game was to select what to include in the security areas in order to obtain the greatest possible benefits for the resilience of the towns and the place attachment to security zones. For this purpose, an interdisciplinary discussion was encouraged among the members of each team. Considering that all participants came from different areas of emergency planning, such a discussion would lead on one hand, to justify why certain actions are priorities over others, and on the other hand, to use the resources in the most efficient way possible to increase the place attachment measure in the security areas.
Resilience planning ideas
From the strategies proposed by each team, two of them stand out because they are able to increase city resilience and attachment to security areas at the same time. One refers to ‘planning for multifunctionality’ and the other to ‘planning for social capital’.
Figure 3. Example of the distribution of goods and services in three security zones located in a natural environment near the town of Mehuín. The team decided to equip them with basic infraestructure (toilets and water), to improve the acces road and the ground of the sites, and to include fascilities to improve familiarity with the area (e.g. lookouts) and emergency education on site (e.g. shelter). In addition, accesibility among them is provided by a walk through the forest. Photo: Paula Villagra
Planning for multifunctionality means equipping security areas with various functions and infrastructure and at the same time, generating an interconnected system of security areas that allow people to move between them in the search for satisfying the specific needs that arise in the event of a disaster (Fig. 3). With the multifunctionality strategy, each security zone does not have to be equipped with all types of infrastructure, because among all of them they can meet the community needs after disaster. Regardless of this, at least two security zones need to have similar functions. In this manner, resilience can be achieved through the redundancy of security zones, because if one security zone collapses, another can fulfill its role.
At the same time, multifunctionality involves considering a temporal dimension. The security areas and the paths among them should be accessible during daily life—for example, by implementing a network of walks and lookouts in a natural environment—as well as in case of an emergency. In this way, place attachment can be ensured by building familiarity with these areas and by incorporating equipment considered ideal for a security area by the community.
This strategy is particularly relevant for towns characterized by having more urban areas in which the access and familiarity to natural environments is uncommon for their community.
Planning for social capital means strengthening the social fabric of communities. It refers to generating strategies that point to the interaction among emergency agencies, and between them with the local community. In this way, an informed and interconnected social group is generated to improve the adaptation to the disaster. The social capital strategy put emphasis on the activities that take place in the security areas, and based on these, it is determined what infrastructure is needed. For example, it is suggested to generate emergency education programs and informative talks about the disasters, to educate about how disasters originate and how to behave after them. Security areas should be equipped to host these activities, for example, by having social headquarters or shelters equipped with multifunctional rooms to congregate the community in non-emergency situations.
In this way, place attachment forms over time, by associating concrete activities of survival with the security areas. Also, resilience is addressed as increasing social capital leads to the improvement of community responsiveness in the event of a disaster. The greater the social capital, the greater the ability of the community to adapt after a major disturbance. This strategy is particularly useful in rural and indigenous areas of Chile, where built infrastructure is lacking as well as the services provided by emergency institutions before, during and after a disaster (Villagra and Quintana 2017).
The outcomes of the game presented here are interesting in two ways. First, it was possible to find planning strategies that address both, city resilience and attachment to security areas. This was possible by considering two resilient variables that are widely discussed in the literature; these refer to the multifunctionality of urban spaces (Allan et al., 2013; Villagra and Dobbie, 2014) and social capital (Aldrich, 2011; González-Muzzio, 2013). Second, today it is more common to find studies that suggest how to plan resilient cities than finding applied examples in a specific environment. In this manner, this game can be thought of as a contribution to the application of research findings and theory into the planning of resilient cities, considering the perceptual dimension of resilience, which is often neglected during planning processes. Considering that the game is easy to and cost-effective to implement, we encourage its use as a platform for putting research into practice.
I would like to thank CONICYT Project N.1150137 for funding this initiative, and also thank you to Silvia Ariccio, Carolina Quintana and Isabel Guerrero for their enthusiastic collaboration during the creation of the game.
Aldrich, Daniel. 2011. ‘The power of people: social capital’s role in recovery from the 1995 Kobe earthquake’, Natural Hazards, 56: 595-611.
Allan, Penny, Martin Bryant, Camila Wirsching, Daniela Garcia, and Maria Teresa Rodriguez. 2013. ‘The Influence of Urban Morphology on the Resilience of Cities Following an Earthquake’, Journal of Urban Design, 18 242-62.
Berroeta, Hector, Alvaro Ramoneda, Viviana Rodriguez, Andres Di Masso, and Tomeu Vidal. 2015. ‘Apego de lugar, identidad de lugar, sentido de comunidad y participación cívica en personas desplazadas de la ciudad de Chaitén.’, MAGALLANIA, 43: 51-63.
Dominicis, Stefano De, Ferdinando Fornara, Uberta Ganucci Cancellieri, Clare Twigger-Ross, and Marino Bonaiuto. 2015. ‘We are at risk, and so what? Place attachment, environmental risk perceptions and preventive coping behaviours’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 43: 66-78.
González-Muzzio, Claudia. 2013. ‘El rol del lugar y el capital social en la resiliencia comunitaria posdesastre. Aproximaciones mediante un estudio de caso después del terremoto del 27/F’, EURE, 117: 25-48.
Hernández, B., M. Hidalgo, M. Salazar-Laplace, and S. Hess. 2007. ‘Journal of Environmental Psychology’, Place attachment and place identity in natives and non-natives, 27: 310-19.
Villagra, Paula, and Meredith Dobbie. 2014. ‘Design aspects of urban wetlands in an earthquake-prone environment’, Journal of Urban Design, 19: 660–81.
Villagra, Paula, and Carolina Quintana. 2017. ‘Disaster Governance for Community Resilience in Coastal Towns: Chilean Case Studies’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14. Doi: 10.3390/ijerph14091063
Small-scale urban spaces can be rich in biodiversity, contribute important ecological benefits for human mental and physical health (McPhearson et al., 2013), and overall help to create more livable cities. Micro_urban spaces are the sandwich spaces between buildings, rooftops, walls, curbs, sidewalk cracks, and other small-scale urban spaces that exist in the fissures between linear infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, tunnels, rail lines) and our three dimensional gridded cities.
But most of these micro_urban spaces are overlooked, unrecognized, and even invisible parts of our urban lives. Perhaps our inattention to these spaces is because they so often exist in between our more highly valued built spaces such as large parks, plazas, waterfront promenades, urban forests, rivers and much loved neighborhoods. One of the great biodiversity challenges for urban ecosystems is to solve the problem of high levels of habitat fragmentation in cities.
What if the micro_urban were the missing piece to solving the connectivity puzzle in our fragmented urban ecologies?
An example of a durational micro-space titled “Permeable Futures” by students from the Temporary Works class in the BS urban Design and BFA Integrated Design program at Parsons the New School for Design, taught by Adam Brent. Credit: Sophia Jose, Josh Snow, Eliot Benis, Kayla Paeglis, David Braha, Ashley Padget. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk54Eun0SSU
These elements and experiences remain underutilized in ecological urban design practice yet are a ubiquitous feature of our urban infrastructure. Even low-level investment in these micro-spaces could provide new grounds for ecosystems to establish, for urban dwellers to socialize, and contribute to both well-being and community resilience to the many dynamic changes affecting social-ecological attributes of our urban lives.
A networkedurban ecology
One of the critical biodiversity challenges in cities is dealing high levels of habitat fragmentation. Creating corridors between fragmented green patches in highly heterogeneous landscapes is difficult in older cities with dense built and technological infrastructure. And yet cities have immense potential for linking urban parks, wild spaces, and small green patches through green roofs, green roadways, and other corridor infrastructure that could provide species greater ability to move and migrate while increasing more equitable spread of ecological space throughout cities.
Micro_urban takes this idea further. Rather than a corridor approach that links already existing big green fragments we have been talking about how micro-spaces in any neighborhood with or without parks and with or without corridorscould be networked or clustered to provide a networked ecology in cities. By seeing green roofs, green walls, sandwich spaces between buildings, and durational spaces together we have begun to imagine how people in cities could beginning greening well beyond new parks or retrofitted railways. How might micro_urban habitats that are networked throughout the city; up, over, around, and through our built and social infrastructure then make a difference in the social and ecological well-being of a city?
Walking
Recently, at the invitation of Mary Miss, we developed a guided walk for the City as Living Lab (CaLL) project. We took participants on a tour through the Garment District in New York and we asked them to recognize the potential for these micro_urban spaces to make a difference in the lives of both human and non-human species. We then went to the roof of the Port Authority Bus Terminal parking lot and through a simple drawing exercise we let each participant’s own desires and goals drive their own ideas of the micro_urban.
CaLL walk participants meeting at the corner of 39th and Broadway in New York. CaLL. is an initiative spearheaded by artist Mary Miss to establish a platform for artists, working in collaboration with scientists, urban planners, policy makers, and the public, to make sustainability tangible through the arts. CaLL asks: by what means can we foster roles for artists and designers to shape and bring attention to the pressing environmental issues of our times?
We took our inspiration for both the location in the Garment District and a way to focus our ideas on micro_urban from ongoing micro_urban research on Fourteenth Street in lower Manhattan (see references at the end of this essay) and from a visiting Parsons School for Design student, Yanisa Chumpolphaisal, a 2013 Graduate from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and a visiting student in the Parsons BS Urban Design program. She created a project titled “The Art of Capital” where she mapped the billboard corners, sandwich spaces, and the landscape of setback roof spaces in the Garment District.
The colors on the map can be read as follows: Light Blue – billboard corners, Dark Blue – sandwich spaces. Numbers mark the height of the buildings. Yellow border is the historic district where many setback roof spaces are found – a response to the 1911 zoning code that set building height and bulk limits in order to provided for light and air in the street canyon – creating a ‘wedding cake’ urban form. Credit: Yanisa Chumpolphaisal.
This map served as the launching point for the CaLL Walk we developed. As you can see from Yanisa’s drawings, once you start to look for these small overlooked, underutilized spaces you find that they are evenly scattered throughout the city, by accident, by design, and by history; nearly everywhere in this area.
A billboard corner is typically a one or two story building that has a giant billboard on top of the roof. A sandwich space is typically found in the middle of a block and is a small and narrow building adjacent to very tall buildings. A setback roof space is typically found both on the street side and the inner-block side of a building. Credit: Yanisa Chumpolphaisal
Yanisa’s familiarity with soi (small alleys in Bangkok) helped her imagine this area with new eyes Her images reveal how she started imagining what could be done with these spaces. How they could have positive impacts on the lives of local residents if they were reimagined as ecological and social space, and be an opportunity for improving the Garment District as a support system for artists.
Yanisa expanded on the way urban residents in Thailand and New York take advantage of every opportunity for socializing, and for small business. From this she drew possibilities between the social life and micro-spaces in the Garment District in New York. Right now those billboard corners, sandwich spaces, and setbacks are virtually bare of anything living.
Indeed, the more you look you begin to realize that the unmet potential is vast.
“The Art of Capital” project engages horizontal and vertical spaces as opportunities for imagining new possibilities for ecological and social life in the city. These urban welders foster the co-existence of artists, manufacturers, small and mass retailers, to create a cycle of development within which these different cultures can nurture one another. She writes, “I am interested in blurring economic and cultural capital. Like anti-monuments how can these scattered parcels create an urban form that is a reflection of power, rather than a symbol of it?” Credit: Yanisa Chumpolphaisal
One of the main thrusts of urban ecological research and practice is to understand how ecological spaces can be co-designed, managed, and engaged in ways that improve the lives of both human and non-human species. These micro-spaces are opportunities and the locus for focusing the imagination of the artists, designers, and scientists who joined us on our CaLL walk.
On October 25th 2014 we gathered a group of urban ecology enthusiasts on the corner of Broadway and 39th Street in New York City and walked up to and along West 40th street toward the Port Authority Bus Terminal, observing the sheer number and possibility of the micro_urban.
We motivated our group in two ways. First, we focused on three urban forms: the sandwich, the billboard corner and the setback. Second, we observed social-ecological interactions and spaces to imagine a networked ecology of the micro_urban.
As seen here from the roof of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, there several overlooked, underused spaces that could be green roofs, connected to green walls, connected to the belly of the block and the street, and from there other micro-passageways, corridors, walls, roofs, and other micro_spaces. Photo: Victoria Marshall
In our walk, we first, observe these spaces, and second imagined the opportunities that exist over the space of just a couple blocks.
Ecologically, the fundamental idea is that soil, microbes, plants, invertebrates, birds, and other urban adapted organisms can exist in spaces we don’t traditional consider as ecological habitat. What if building owners, their tenants, the business improvement district and other urban actors intentionally managed these spaces to foster more diverse and healthy ecosystems? How might active engagement with the micro_urban help solve the connectivity puzzle in our fragmented urban ecologies?
Drawing
Eventually we took our walk to the roof of the Port Authority, seven stories up, where we conducted a drawing exercise to allow each person to reimagine how these spaces could be used to change the Garment District. Everyone was given simple tools and a method of tracing (acetate on clear plexiglass and markers, developed by Jose DeJesus). We asked participants to use their imagination to draw how these three kinds of spaces, the sandwich, the billboard corner and the setback, might become more biodiverse. In simple terms, we asked them to look out, and look up, and to draw soil as a starting point for urban ecological change.
Credit: Victoria Marshall and CaLL. Drawing soil
Our own goal in this project was very simple: to convey an understanding of the unique urban form of the area, to explore the potential of unused surfaces to become biodiverse.
We were also interested in the value and sociability of those spaces as ‘borrowed and collective views’ rather than gardens directly inhabited by humans. This more complex level—inclusive of insect diversity, microbe diversity, pollinator diversity—engages how these diversities might also begin to create new social spaces in a neighborhood undergoing rapid and dynamic change. It is at this point that were able to introduce the idea of people as part of green infrastructure—as a support system for biodiversity.
Our group was already highly engaged in thinking about important ecological problems in micro_urban spaces. For example: Could mirrors be employed to move sunlight into otherwise dark spaces? How might vegetation be encourage on vertical surfaces through creative use of novel growing substrates? Why is there moss here? How can water move differently on those surfaces? Who might build this? How might they work together? And so on.
Credit: CaLL Walk drawings.
Everyone chose a different scene to draw—some went to the far end of the roof, some drew the roof, and many drew the area we had just walked. Then we asked people to share what they had drawn. As members of the Walk presented their ideas at the end of the hour we were struck by how many different ideas there were, the sheer diversity and creativity, and overall how much is truly possible once you start seeing social-ecological opportunity in the micro_urban.
Credit: CaLL Finished drawings. Ideas included nurse logs, beekeeping, growing food for restaurants, ‘weeds’ to feed birds, kite flying contests, and extensive mini-ledge gardens.
The metacity and the micro_urban
Often roof gardens are designed in a very high-tech way with many pleasurable amenities for people that increase the value of a property, such as chairs, colorful flowering plants and grasses, kitchen gardens, dining areas, and even swimming pools. We offered our CaLL walkers a more simple approach. What if it is OK that people can’t go on the roof? What if only soil was added, after which plants, insects, birds and other species colonized these spaces naturally. They may already be there—seeds move with the wind, and with birds that are flying around searching for places to perch.
McGrath and Pickett (2013) describe a nested mosaic framework as a metacity approach to modeling cities. They engage the term meta not as bigness but as a spatially extensive ‘system of systems’. Through the walk, the drawing exercise, the discussion, and our reflection on this experience we found that a soil-based imagination to this high density neighborhood afforded a metacity spatial understanding for action that could increase biodiversity, create a shared sociability for deeper engagement with natural processes in our cities, and greater well being through neighborly interaction above, and in addition to, crowded and contested sidewalks.
Our earthy micro_urban approach to the garment district was informed by the urban heterogeneity of this Manhattan neighborhood. It was also informed by walking as a base for engaging people as part of green infrastructure. There are other types of movement. For example, consider the difference in the sociability of the stroll, promenade, ramble, commute, parade, ceremony, game, festival, or protest. Each is a type of social space where action in relation to and with ecological spaces might be engaged with intention.
What micro_urban approach does your neighborhood afford?
Timon McPhearson and Victoria Marshall New York and Newark
Victoria Marshall's design practice is called Till Design. She is a registered landscape architect and is trained in both landscape architecture and urban design. Marshall is currently a President’s Graduate Fellow at the National University of Singapore where she is pursuing a PhD in the Department of Geography.
Clearly, business as usual is no longer an option and, if we are honest with ourselves, it never really was. In a world of finite resources, the doctrine of perpetual economic growth has long been chafing against the laws of physics.
Things fall apart
Standing at a crossroads, looking into the eye of a perfect storm, these are anxious days for humanity. The full social, humanitarian and economic fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic may have barely come to pass but it already makes the 2008-09 global financial crisis look like child’s play. Predictably, it is the poor, informal, and marginalized communities who have been most adversely affected.
In the midst of this crisis, many cities we had come to know as centres of power and influence, as beacons of civilisation or simply as “smart” have revealed themselves to be awkwardly vulnerable, inequitable, impuissant, and in some cases, wholly unfit for the future. Urban people who might once have taken food, water and energy for granted are now acutely aware of just how easily supply chains can be disrupted.
COVID-19 has rattled our cities and changed the way we view them. We can only hope it will change the way we design, build, and manage them. As public budgets are reassigned and stimulus packages deployed, it is imperative that we seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to expedite the “Great Green Transition” and build a better world for all.
At a junction in Paris. Photo: Russell Galt
Against the grain
We can no longer ignore nature’s warning shots. The Ebola virus is named after a river in the Congo Basin while the namesake of the Zika virus is a forest in Uganda. COVID-19 is not the first zoonotic disease thought to have been triggered by ecological disturbance and wildlife exploitation. Nor will it be the last—at least not until we stop grating against the wilderness.
Three-quarters of the planet’s land surface has been “significantly altered” and one million species of plants and animals are thought to be at risk of extinction (IPBES, 2019). Populations of wildlife have declined by 68% since 1970 (WWF Living Planet Report, 2020) and, of the 20 international biodiversity targets agreed by governments a decade ago, none was met in full (GBO5, 2020).
Despite a “lockdown lull” over the past year, global greenhouse gas emissions have resumed their dizzying ascent (UN, 2020). Capping a decade of scorching temperatures, 2020 was the hottest year on record. Ice sheets are thinning, glaciers are retreating, and permafrost is thawing. From the lithosphere into the atmosphere, methane is fizzing skyward. Bonfires larger than countries are laying sacred forests to ruin. Oceans loaded with toxins and junk, are acidifying and advancing inland. Extreme weather events are seeming less and less extraordinary (NASA, 2020). The evidence is crystal clear: our planet is in trouble and therefore, we are too.
The Sumatran orangutan has been pushed to the edge of extinction. Photo: Russell Galt
Tempering lions
We have long known that cities are central to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite occupying a tiny fraction (2-3%) of the Earth’s land surface, they account for the lion’s share (75%) of natural resource consumption and contribute disproportionately (75%) to global greenhouse gas emissions. Their impacts are felt almost everywhere, even in the remotest remnants of wilderness. For the surging majority of us, they are also home.
At IUCN, we recognise that the survival of the natural world is contingent upon the sustainability of the unnatural world: our cities. This is why we are mobilising our Union to play a more proactive role in shaping our collective urban future.
We want to help cities become nature-positive. How? By protecting critical ecosystems from conversion to human settlements; by promoting compact integrated development and curbing urban sprawl; by adopting nature-inclusive design principles to accommodate urban wildlife; by deploying nature-based solutions to address pressing urban challenges; by enhancing the efficiency of urban utilities to minimise waste and pollution; by greening supply chains to shrink ecological footprints; and by fostering pro-environmental attitudes grounded in ecological literacy.
In times of crisis, people find solace and fortitude in nature. Urban parks are essential public infrastructure. Photo: Russell Galt
Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration…
With the support of Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, and at the behest of our 1,400 Members—States and government agencies, NGOs large and small, Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, scientific and academic institutions, and business associations—we have formed the IUCN Urban Alliance. As a diverse coalition of IUCN constituents chaired by IUCN Global Councillor Jonny Hughes, we are united behind the vision of “a world in which nature thrives in urban areas, delivering solutions to multiple social, economic and environmental challenges.” Pursuant to this vision, we are creating a platform for debate and knowledge exchange; catalysing new projects and partnerships; and developing new tools and guidelines. We are building a global movement for greener cities.
In cooperation with the World Bank, we recently launched the PANORAMA Thematic Community on Sustainable Urban Development and Resilience comprising hundreds of inspiring, impactful, and scalable solutions drawn from across the conservation and development sector. These include, for instance, the establishment of “water funds” to restore catchments around drought-stricken cities; the use of “land value capture” to finance sustainable transport infrastructure; the retrofitting schools to ensure earthquake-readiness; the creation of pollinator habitats on high-rise rooftops; and downtown “bioblitzes” involving scores of citizen scientists. We encourage practitioners to use the platform to share and reflect on their work, source ideas and insights, and connect with and learn from each other.
In Cape Town, South Africa, non-profit organisation Urban Harvest works with vulnerable communities to build skills, find employment and grow healthy food. Their story is one of many to be found on the PANORAMA Solutions portal. Photo: Ben Getz
We are also developing a new knowledge product, the IUCN Urban Nature Index, to help cities measure and track their ecological performance across three realms: urban, bioregional and global (i.e., tele-coupled). The Index is intended to enhance environmental transparency and accountability, facilitate goal setting and catalyse local action. Under the guidance of our esteemed IUCN Technical Expert Group and with the dedicated support of Urban Biodiversity Hub, we will soon commence beta-testing the Urban Nature Index in five pilot cities. We shall launch the product at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, September 2021, where we will run the Urban Planet Pavilion together with a dozen partners.
Finally, we are gathering support for a Manifesto for Ecological Urbanism, articulating imperatives and pathways for bringing the built environment into balance with nature, and issuing a rallying call for concerted global action. On the road to Marseille, we will invite our Members and partners to help shape and promulgate it. In the spirit of our partnership with Edinburgh College of Art—through which postgraduate students have already produce a series of stunning experimental short films exploring the theme of ecological urbanism—we will continue collaborating with artists, activists and culture-makers to give creative expression and emotional resonance to the Manifesto.
Elegance and injustice
Our efforts are intended not only to conserve nature but to help communities prosper. In recent years, IUCN has worked to popularise the concept of nature-based solutions defined as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems, that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.” Last year, we launched the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions—the result of an extensive consultative process involving 800 experts. It offers clarity, credibility and quality assurance to the concept.
Examples from around the world attest that nature-based solutions can cost-effectively and elegantly enhance the sustainability, resilience and liveability of cities. Trees mop up pollutants, dampen noise, and cool the air; wetlands and raingardens reduce flood risk; mangroves and marshes buffer storms; greenspaces facilitate exercise, spiritual nourishment and community interaction; and greenways support active travel.
Yet in most cities, the provision of nature is inadequate or distributed unevenly, along lines of affluence. Stark inequities persist. Far too many people are denied nature’s benefits. We can and we must do better.
Still from the experimental short film, ‘Confluence’, directed and produced by Scott Hunter and Ana Parrodi in the framework of a partnership between the University of Edinburgh and IUCN Urban Alliance.
Nature never rusts
2020 dispelled many myths of separation: between humans and nature; between our actions and their consequences; between the haves and have-nots; between the living and the yet-to-be-born. Spanning oceans of time and mountains of space, the great web of life binds us together in “a single garment of destiny”.
Clearly, business as usual is no longer an option and, if we are honest with ourselves, it never really was. In a world of finite resources, the doctrine of perpetual economic growth has long been chafing against the laws of physics.
As banks wave their magic wands, miraculously conjuring vast sums of money, and as governments build up debts so heavy that they must be shouldered by our grandchildren, we should pay close attention. Decisions on economic stimulus measures are quietly determining the fate of our planet and by extension, the health, wellbeing and security of generations to come.
One can already hear the engines of growth, extractivism and denialism, revving up for a return to normalcy. Make no mistake: they are not roadworthy. A green recovery must have nature and people at its heart. Its guiding lodestar should be shared prosperity within the limits of Earth’s living systems. Investing in the restoration of our planet’s health—in fortifying the great web of life—is surely the kindest and wisest investment in our common future.
The ecological restoration of the Water of Leith has brought beauty and joy to city of Edinburgh. Residents include kingfishers, woodpeckers, otters, and trout. Photo: Russell Galt
Certainly, these are anxious days, but the winds of change bring hope and opportunity. I firmly believe that this public health crisis can mark a positive turning point in our history: a chance to reset our relationship with nature; to reign-in our bloated economies to within planetary boundaries; to reimagine our cities as regenerative systems; to build a truly ecological civilisation. A genuinely green recovery means nothing less than transformative change; the promise of transitioning from a world of artificial scarcity to one of natural abundance. From that lush and flourishing future, we all stand to gain.
Every month we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
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Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Pippin Anderson, Cape Town Two areas where I would spend my limited budget: on research towards really understanding the workings of biodiversity in cities, and then in exposing more urban citizens, in particular the young, to urban biodiversity.
Peter Werner, Darmstadt Bring citizens more in touch with urban nature and urban biodiversity using components and methods — including values, incentives, demonstrations, etc. — that match urban lifestyle.
Andre Mader, Montreal Cities are new competitors for the finite pots of global biodiversity funding.
Bram Gunther, New York In New York City, the single most important biodiversity program recently has been the creation of the Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC), a non-profit that works in partnership with the New York City Parks Department.
Ana Faggi, Buenos Aires Recently Buenos Aires has begun a significant transformation in order to revert the lack of green spaces and the reduction of its natural capital.
David Maddox ,New York The single most important need isn’t in science, but in communication.
John Kostyack, Washington Sustainability no longer quite captures what is most needed in today’s urban environments.
Pippin Anderson
We know biodiversity in cities is a good thing. For example we have research that shows a diversity of plants provides a similar variety of livelihood options to the urban poor, some sequester carbon with a close-to-source efficiency, and others retain soil. Multiple options allow for more choice for gardens for functional and aesthetic ends. Biodiversity provides a diversity of services. We also know that people in cities govern the globe and are responsible for a sustainable future, one hinged on the preservation of global biodiversity, so it is critical that people in cities value biodiversity. Here is what we don’t know so well. We don’t know the exact workings of many of the functions or services provided by biodiversity in cities. We know some, but in truth we are just scratching the surface. We also don’t know how to really give biodiversity traction with the people who live in cities, especially in the face of significant development pressures. So, these are the two areas where I would spend my limited budget: on research towards really understanding the workings of biodiversity in cities, and then in exposing more urban citizens, in particular the young, to urban biodiversity. If the budget was really limited I would go for the second as my single action. We are sentimental creatures and hold dear what we were exposed to as children. If all we achieve on our limited budget is a growing urban population coveting biodiversity the money for the rest will follow.
Peter Werner
My message is to bring citizens more in touch with urban nature and urban biodiversity using components and methods — including values, incentives, demonstrations, etc. — that match urban lifestyle. And, urban nature provides a lot of opportunities for such components. If you present nature in cities in a way that people only links it with a rural lifestyle, with sanctity, with closed borders, and so on, then you have no chance in urban areas because urban life is the opposite of that. Here is a list of words with which the citizens of a city can be connected with urban nature and urban biodiversity: perception, awareness, appreciation, literacy, curiosity, enjoyment, excitement, surprise, astonishment, emotion, spontaneity, freedom, encouragement, integration, inclusion, involvement, participation…Wording is critical in the dissemination of messages. Notice the words I am not using in this context After the wording, activities have to follow, and here too, activities are needed which represent the sense of urban life. The new media do that best. The challenge is to include urban nature in social networks, video portals, and games (serious games) and to produce urban events and performances about urban nature, not at the edge but in the center of a city, where more people can experience them. If urbanites discover and include urban nature as part of their life, then you save public money, because biodiversity in the urban matrix will be ensured and the governance can concentrate its activities on special nature conservation projects in which rare and endangered species will be protected.
Andre is a conservation biologist specializing in subnational implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, seconded to the Secretariat for a third year by ICLEI.
FULL BIO
Cities are new competitors for the finite pots of global biodiversity funding. Funding is still undoubtedly lacking elsewhere, but biodiversity in cities deserves special attention due to its extraordinary “investment” potential to influence every aspect of biodiversity conservation at every scale by affecting, en masse, people’s (voters’) attitudes. I therefore believe that the biggest bang for biodiversity buck is through the opportunity, in cities, to reach multitudes of people with a subtle but concentrated conservation message. Nothing can do this in a more reliable way than the good old zoo (and/or, in many cases, the aquarium or botanical garden). These institutions can be accessed by unprecedented numbers of people, who have flocked to them for centuries knowing that they can expect an entertainment-intensive experience. There are also “bad old zoos”, and it is critical that entertainment is subtly embellished with messages so that the experience is also an education-intensive one. Of course zoos offer the additional function of ex-situ conservation and possible reintroduction. Not insignificantly, due to their proven popularity, they are also among the few conservation options that can be net money makers and it is therefore not hard to get the private sector involved. Zoos are therefore worth the considerable cost of their establishment and even more worthwhile investing in when all that’s required is to enhance existing ones with improved interpretative facilities and improved accessibility by all sectors of the citizenry. Local governments, which commonly own or manage these institutions, would do well to consider these options, and many already do to great effect.
Bram Gunther, former Chief of Forestry, Horticulture, and Natural Resources for NYC Parks, is Co-founder of the Natural Areas Conservancy and sits on their board. A Fellow at The Nature of Cities, and a business partner at Plan it Wild, he just finished a novel about life in the age of climate change in NYC 2050.
In New York City, the single most important biodiversity program recently has been the creation of the Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC), a non-profit that works in partnership with the New York City Parks Department (Parks). Parks’ Natural Resource Group is the oldest urban conservation unit in the nation, started in 1984. The management of natural areas has become critical as the City faces climate change and seeks to increase public health. The City, however, will always have limits on conservation funding. In its organization and business model, the NAC capitalizes on present-day concepts of collaborative governance and the flexibility and effectiveness of public-private partnerships to enhance and expand current conservation work. The fundamental principle of the NAC is to increase the quality of the information flow between land management and design, researchers, and decision-makers. To this effect, the NAC is funding the first ever citywide ecological and social site assessments of Parks’ natural areas, data that will be used to guide and prioritize our conservation endeavors. NAC is expanding programmatic work by funding a hydrological engineer, additional foresters, and the expansion of our Native Plant Center to grow marshland and beach plants which will be used to make our coastlines more resilient. The NAC represents a significant change in urban natural resource management, from a focus on isolated plots to a single unified ecosystem and administrative whole. The NAC is emblematic of how urban ecological management will be done in the future: public/private partnerships.
Ana Faggi graduated in agricultural engineering, and has a Ph.D. in Forest Science, she is currently Dean of the Engineer Faculty (Flores University, Argentina). Her main research interests are in Urban Ecology and Ecological Restoration.
Recently Buenos Aires has begun a significant transformation in order to revert the lack of green spaces and the reduction of its natural capital. The City Council worked a territorial model towards 2060 for a healthy and livable urban fabric with strategies to strengthen and recover the relation between Nature and the City. These includes the creation of new parks, squares and green corridors and the improvement of existing green areas including the rehabilitation of a 370 hectares big urban reserve located down town. In scarcity times of remnant areas with potential to become parks, as well as money that can be applied to the creation of new spaces, the local administration should make possible that vacant private lots could be at least temporarily used as new green community spaces. These could be designed, built and managed by NGOs, schools, universities, groups of pensioners, etc., devoted to urban agriculture or environmental education until the owner decides the lot construction. When this happens the builder should mitigate at the place the loss of nature with green terraces or walls. Buenos Aires’ strategy is to connect new and existing public green space through a structure of green corridors is adequate, because it regenerates permeable urban surface and increase biodiversity. Nevertheless, the attention should be placed not only on trees, but on shrubs, herbs and vines to preserve the Pampas ecoregion characterized by herbaceous components. This could apply to covered part of the sidewalks in order to increase groundcover today nonexistent in the city.
David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director.
I was in a meeting a few months ago and someone put up a picture of a bioswale and said: “What’s this? It’s not a park. It doesn’t function like one!” Well, the bioswale is functioning exactly as designed: to collect stormwater. It does other things too, such as be a pretty patch of green and support biodiversity. But my colleague, who is a design professional, wasn’t aware of this. Many of us agree that nature in cities is good for cities and people. Biodiversity and nature provide formal ecosystem services and less tangible biophilic services. The professionals — mostly — know this. We have made the case less well with urban dwellers more broadly, who are rightly concerned about jobs, safety, transportation, livability, walkability and so on, maybe in that order. Many, even most, think of nature as irrelevant to their everyday lives. Others think of nature as “somewhere else”. To me, the single most important need isn’t in science, but in communication. We need to better make the connection between people and urban nature. Such awareness would trickle sideways to other residents, upwards to policy-makers, and akimbo to design professionals. How do we do it? We need to collaborate more with artists, exhibit designers, and media minds to make real use of demonstration projects, art installations, and pop-up messaging. How about a pop-up demonstration ecosystem in a city square? Paris’ City Hall did one recently. Washington, D.C. storm drains have painted signs that tell you that the site is part of the Chesapeake Bay drainage. How about a sculpture of a fish swimming through a building, as in Portland? How about an explanatory sign on the bioswale? Most fundamentally we need not to just “educate”, but engage, to find ways to reach beyond the groups we usually talk to and expand the dialog to include people who might not see things the same way. To do this we’ll have to find new ways to communicate, and find new collaborators outside our disciplines, and maybe outside our comfort zones.
John Kostyack is VP for Wildlife Conservation at the National Wildlife Federation. His focus is restoring ecosystems to help reduce harmful climate change impacts.
FULL BIO
Resiliency is the Hallmark of Local Leadership, Wildlife conservationists should celebrate leaders, such as those in Curitiba, Brazil, who have achieved conservation results under the banner of sustainability. Champions of sustainability measure their success by the triple bottom line of environmental, economic and social progress- an approach to conservation more likely to produce fair and politically-viable outcomes that one focused solely on biodiversity. That said, sustainability no longer quite captures what is most needed in today’s urban environments. Today, the most important idea for advancing conservation in the city is resilience. Resilience – making people, communities and systems better prepared to withstand catastrophic events- incorporates all of the concepts of sustainability while highlighting the need to confront the looming threat of climate change. In the past decade, we have seen disasters such as Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina send shock waves through U.S. cities. Yet many refuse to acknowledge that these extreme weather events are part of the “new normal” of rapid climate change. This denial of climate change reality puts both people and wildlife at great risk. Adopting resiliency as the new hallmark of local leadership would help reverse this dynamic. Leaders would be expected to know the most effective strategies for coping with intensified heat, drought, floods and storms. They would need to know how to rebuild oyster reefs, wetlands and other natural features to protect communities from harmful climate change impacts while supporting healthy fish and wildlife populations. Greater attention to resiliency and climate-related risks would also lead urbanites to become stronger advocates for forward-thinking climate policy. On their agenda would be two ideas essential to the future of their cities: a tax or similar market-based limit on the carbon pollution driving climate change and, under the principle of “polluter pays for its damage,” a requirement that at least some of these tax revenues be used to help cities cope with inevitable climate-related disasters.
A review of The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria. By Marwa Al-Sabouni. 2016. Thames & Hudson, New York. ISBN-10:0500343179. 208 pages. Buy the book.
I have been reading an extraordinary book by Marwa Al-Sabouni: The Battle for Home: the Vision of a Young Architect in Syria, who posits the critical importance of urbanism for the nature of a city—its feeling, its generosity, its openness to all regardless of difference. She argues that a generous city, that has fountains in the streets, benches to sit on, and cool shade from trees that give joy year-round with their fragrances and fruits, creates a model for residents to follow. In writing about the old Homs, her home, she says, “This generosity was a model for residents to follow; it was the womb in which a shared morality gestated” (pg. 68).
The relationship between urbanism and nature is one of mutuality: they make each other.
In the nature of cities, we often forget the significant role of urbanism: the buildings, the architecture, the morphology of the city. The ways buildings juxtapose, set up social relationships, and create open spaces and paths for circulation orchestrate the nature of a city. How the built part of the environment can be either welcoming or forbidding, for both people and fauna and flora, is largely derived from urbanism. It is also important to realize that urbanism is not the same as urban planning; urbanism encompasses creating the feeling of a city, its atmosphere, its emotional quality and tone. Urban planning is certainly a component of urbanism, but urbanism also includes parks; open spaces; the relationship between the city and the countryside; civic culture and private spaces; and, ultimately, place making.
Al-Sabouni’s argument for paying attention to the relationship between city morphology, urbanism, and well-being is one that has been put forward before, but in thinking of nature in the nature of cities, we have not given this other relationship enough attention. It points directly to the relationship between the hard mineral surfaces humans construct, their form and layout, and the position and location of urban elements like parks or trees, or gardens and court yards: destinations, interwoven in daily pathways, privatized in yards, and so forth. Her argument for a generous city also resonates through housing: its accessibility, affordability, grace, and disposition on the landscape that can facilitate or encourage natural elements as well as amity among residents—in fact, those elements may be essential to the nurturing of civility and cordiality. The types of public spaces, their arrangements and relationship to buildings, are important, too, in making an open and inviting city. As Al-Sabouni writes of the old Homs where she grew up, “[T]he buildings, streets, and trees were not just the components of the urban environment; they were the very soul of the community, creating the faces we saw, the shops we bought from and the shape sound and feel of every footstep we took. In sum, such things shape our shared experience of belonging and the collective conscience of the city. . . . [to] make our coexistence into one existence” pg. 68 (italics in the original).
She writes about the double ravaging impact of state imposed modernist architecture, with its zoned districts, income, ethnic segregation, and high rises, and the devastation wrought on the old Homs, from the war. The old Homs was formed of Muslim and Christian dwellers, a small city behind a wall, with a history of harmonious coexistence imprinted on every stone and in every corner. It was a city where Muslims and Christians lived undivided and shared everything, from common house walls to shops, alleys, and even a church/mosque. People lived, worked, and worshipped together.
I was struck by this discussion and how relevant the concepts of urban form and urbanism are to the nature of cities. What makes a generous city? How segregated are we from one another by race and ethnicity, from work, from play, from parks, and from people who are in a different class? How is this also reflected in access to open spaces; to the benches, fountains, and fragrant trees that elicit joy and a desire to be out, outside of our personal space? In the U.S., there seems to be greater and greater emphasis on the individual, on the self, in uneasy tension with the equal rise of shared spaces, shared rides, co-working spaces. These tensions are reflected in the built environment, and in access to what makes cities livable—our open spaces, squares, trees, walkability—and our attitudes toward the homeless, the low income, and people who are not like ourselves. Generosity toward others needs to be intertwined with how we integrate natural elements in cities, how it can echo the ecosystem in which the city finds itself, in an increase of a sense of belonging.
A public garden between apartment buildings in New York City. Photo: David Maddox
Urban open spaces, parks, yards, courtyards, and planting strips are intimately married to the built environment, shaped by that built environment, enhancing it, or introducing danger. It is the disposition of the built spaces that creates opportunities for sociability, vegetation, and water elements, organizing open spaces to function as oases of vegetation and fauna, beautification, and tolerance. Of course, an ancient city like Homs was the cumulative outcome of incremental decision-making, of traditional building materials, human and animal labor that enforced a certain modesty. As Al-Sabouni writes about the buildings: “Their coarse textured facades, moderate heights, and low wide doors welcomed every visitor humbly into their wide and simple interiors, and for that reason they were loved, becoming—in their own way—instruments of reconciliation between communities” (pg. 36). Such cities were built in those ways in good part out of necessity—but, as she reveals, Homs was quite different than Damascus, and thus there was intentionality in its construction.
Today, we have immensely powerful fossil fuels to build our cities, from the extraction of materials, to their processing, to manufacturing and distribution. Italian, Chinese, and Brazilian marbles travel the world to satisfy customer demand; timber is harvested from Russia, Scandinavia, Canada, and the tropics, then traded and processed for construction, creating various degrees of devastation in the process. Our cities’ construction materials, apart from concrete, can come from far-flung places, subsidized by cheap fossil fuel energy. We use these materials without regard for consequences in their places of origin or global greenhouse gas impacts, and with little attention to their relationship to the places in which they are utilized or to place making. While the ancient cities of the Middle East are, in some senses, vestiges of the past and perhaps not good models for the relatively newly developed West or for developing nations, many are still vibrantly inhabited, valiantly resisting the temptations of a hegemonic modernism, and in full throttle of contestation of space with the increased polarization that has occurred, perhaps most pointedly in Jerusalem.
Still, there are lessons to be learned about an urbanism that results from constraint—constraints of space, labor, wealth, materials, and energy. In moving toward a post-carbon world, these cities show the beauty and joy that can emerge from a generous urbanism. Importantly, a post-carbon future may also enable the renewal of craft skills, a trend that is already incipient in the maker and shared space movements. Integrating these movements into a new urbanism of place that emphasizes common open spaces and access to the nature of a particular place is an aspirational goal. This new urbanism can be built on an understanding that there is an urgent and immediate necessity to shift to a post-carbon, new normal and that this move necessarily entails a different urbanism, a generous urbanism of inclusion and modesty.
Al-Sabouni comments about the social importance of a way of production that creates handmade objects. She notes that this mode of production far exceeds its economic benefit and that its true value is greater for the producer than the consumer. She argues that craft production is essential for any flourishing society, as it broadens our sense of the universe as an arena for inspiration and creation. It educates us to strive for commitment and allows us to know what it is to contribute. This can and should include horticulture, the making and maintenance of gardens, parks, common small spaces, and food production. Artisanship has been lost in the race to the bottom of price and consumption made possible by cheap fossil fuel energy. The power of accomplishment of craft, of making, provides a sense of identity and, as Al-Sabouni argues, is a key measure of acceptance among disparate social groups and communities. It engenders respect. But how do we create those spaces where not only craft production can occur, but cities are built to create intimacy we experience with one another? Cities where we live next to the “other”, where we live with the artisans that, in a post-carbon world, are fashioning what we need from recycled materials, local materials, and some more precious ones from faraway places? Cities where the natural environment becomes a primordial partner not only in survival, but in well-being?
Some might argue from an apocalyptic view that these changes in our status quo will happen as our impacts far exceed the planet’s capacity to absorb them. But this will likely be an impoverished and mean adaptation. Rather, we need to drive a new urbanism based on values that encourage generosity, and a shared and civilized identity. Al-Sabouni again has something to offer: “If a place offers architectural details that give pleasure to the eye as well as moral values implicit in their creation, order and configuration, then the inhabitant will experience joy and consider that place to be their accomplishment; their identity.” (pg. 129). And the thing is, this form of participation does not have to be exclusive to class, race, ethnicity, religion, or other distinctions. The quest for a shared home needs to be engaged in democratically and unstintingly, in the knowledge that the future of the planet depends on it.
This work will engender pride that will unite the collective self and an identity based on the sharing of a place to which all belong. A new, post-carbon urbanism based on remaking cities that can more harmoniously depend on the resources available, including recuperating and recycling what has already been expended locally; embracing the nature of the local environment and inviting it in to make beautiful and livable places; and neighborhoods that welcome diversity—of people, activities, thought, and creativity—needs to be an urgent priority. The relationship between urbanism and nature is one of mutuality: they make each other. “The fabric of our cities is reflected in the fabric of our souls” (pg 175). We need to be more intentional and open hearted in this relationship to place and urbanism, realizing our inescapable dependence on the Earth. Al Sabouni has important insights to help us reconsider our current trajectory. Stephanie Pincetl
Los Angeles
As we homogenise and sterilise our rural landscapes with intensive agriculture, and disconnect our populations from nature in shining metropolises, it is more pressing than ever to maximize the potential for urban areas to support wildlife.
With a new stream of studies adding to evidence revealing disturbing declines in global populations of insects (Hallmann et al. 2018, Lister & Garcia 2018, Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys 2019) and reports of an ecological catastrophe on the scale of a sixth mass extinction, there is an urgent need to do more to conserve these species that underpin our ecosystems. Urban areas have the potential to provide a safe haven for many rare and declining species that have been extirpated from our rural landscapes by intensive agricultural practices (Benton et al. 2003). But only if we manage those safe havens appropriately!
In our last essay at TNOC we discussed the phenomenon of ecological gentrification—“blandscaping” that excludes substantial proportions of biodiversity that urban areas can potentially support. We proposed a mechanism to combat this effect; taking more inspiration from nature and natural systems through a locally contextualised approach to urban greenspace design. We included examples of innovations that are pushing the boundaries in terms of embedding ecological functionality into greenspace design. A year on, the innovation in this field continues to grow. It is inspiring to see more and more examples of an ecological approach to green infrastructure, with nature-based solution projects that put locally important biodiversity at the heart of the design of multifunctional greenspaces.
A recent research project has given us a timely reminder, however, that innovative urban greenspace design also needs innovative management if our nature-based solutions are to sustain diverse populations of biodiversity in urban areas:
This summer we were commissioned to survey one of our old favourite monitoring grounds. Our scope was to investigate how effective the design and management of the site was in supporting invertebrate biodiversity. As part of the original green infrastructure masterplan for the site, planning included preparation of a Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) that identified key species and habitats for the site, and set out targets for their conservation and enhancement. Monitoring progress towards these targets was also a key aim of the BAP. The outcome of this masterplan process was a multifunctional exemplar that unites the social, economic and environmental value of greenspace and marries it with design for wildlife.
We have previously been contracted to survey individual areas on the site, and each time we visit we record rare and interesting species, expanding understanding of the diversity of wildlife that can be supported in semi-formal landscaped urban areas. There can be no question that the design of this greenspace includes an innovative blend of social and ecological functionality, and that the result is an attractive space that meets many of the Biodiversity Action Plan’s objectives. You may have noticed though that up to this point our focus has been on design innovation. In contrast to previous years, this summer we expanded to monitor both ground-level biodiversity hotspots and green roofs. This gave us the opportunity to compare these two types of nature-based solutions on a single site. In so doing, it brought the impact of management of these respective areas into stark focus.
The ground level areas of the site we surveyed comprised a series of wildflower meadows, some combined with scrub and young woodland areas, others with a more open pasture-inspired design. These meadows were distributed across the site in a variety of situations, for instance bordering amenity grass areas and river corridors, and included different topographies and aspects. This created a mosaic of environmental niches for nature to exploit. The green roof we were also surveying had comparable habitat complexity in many ways. This included a variety of aspects (created by a high barrier dividing a central infrastructure area from the green roof), substrates, and structural diversity generated by different hydrology and shading regimes. Both the ground-level and roof-level habitats embodied some of the principles of ecomimicry that can be so valuable when designing for nature in cities.
The wildflower-rich areas at ground and roof level were the main target for our surveys. Whilst not directly comparable in terms of area and the sampling effort used across habitat patches, the same survey techniques were adopted on the different levels (direct observation/hand-searching, sweep net surveys and pitfall trapping). Repeated sampling methods were adopted, enabling comparison of patterns in each area across the survey period (early to late summer). It was also possible to compare the proportion of rare and scarce species in relation to the total catch size by calculating a Species Quality Index (SQI) for each area. Survey results were positive, with nationally rare and scarce species recorded in all areas surveyed, including 4 of the Park’s 7 Biodiversity Action Plan target invertebrate species. A diversity of more common species from groups such as butterflies, bumblebees, dragonflies and damselflies were also recorded, providing an oasis of nature for local communities to enjoy.
Despite these positive results for both roof and ground level habitats, when patterns of species abundance and the representation of scarce species were interrogated in more detail, it was apparent that not all areas were equal. During the early summer survey, there was a predominance of nationally rare and scare species at roof level compared to ground level habitats. This is perhaps counter-intuitive to what one would expect, due to the relatively greater range of habitats and niches associated with the ground level sites. By the second survey the comparatively greater value of the green roof for rare and scarce species had declined slightly. This decline appeared correlated with the effects of the very hot dry summer in London this year. By the time of this second survey, the green roof was clearly drought-stressed, with only a small proportion of plants managing to survive in moister habitat niches created by the roof’s novel habitat mosaic design. Whilst the ground-level meadows also suffered during the prolonged heatwave, their deeper substrates offered greater resilience to the drought. As such, they continued to flower longer, and thus improved comparatively to the green roof in terms of species abundance and total scarce species recorded.
At the time of the last survey in September however, a real lightbulb moment occurred. When we returned to the site for our final visit, two of the three ground level meadows had been strimmed to within an inch of their lives. Coinciding with this management, our survey results showed that the number of invertebrate species (and proportion of rare species) on these areas had plummeted. This pattern of late cutting, an appropriation of a management technique used in arable situations, is an all too familiar practice in both urban and rural areas in the UK. This approach perhaps stems from a clear conservation message that us ecologists have been promoting over the years. In the face of global declines in pollinators, there has been a strong driver to turn amenity grass areas into wildflower meadows, with an equally strong management message not to cut meadow areas when they are in flower, so that we don’t remove pollen and nectar resources for our valuable bees/pollinators.
A really positive outcome of this has been the creation of networks of pollinator meadows that now criss-cross our urban landscapes. Unfortunately, pressure to “tidy up” these pollinator havens is great, often driven by a desire to make urban greenspace look managed and neat. The consequence of this is that, as soon as the flowering season is coming to an end, the wildflower meadow is assumed to have no further value. The entire vegetation resource is then removed by a wholesale strim in late summer once flowering has diminished.
This is happening across our urban landscapes on a grand scale, and with almost choreographed timing. We see examples of it not just at this survey site, but as standard practice across the streets and parks where we live. Even on our university campus (where we have our own Biodiversity Action Plan and have restored nature to provide staff and students opportunities to experience wildlife), the landscape managers follow the same prescription: one day pocket meadows full of architectural stems and attractive seedheads, and the next, mechanised destruction that leaves nothing standing across almost the entire campus.
This blanket, almost generic, approach to urban grassland conservation management has an enormous impact on the ability of many species to persist in these areas. Countless species, including some pollinators, rely on resources provided by these meadows beyond just the pollen and nectar offered by flowers. Seeds provide food, thick grass swards are used for nesting, and seed heads and stems for overwintering. If these resources are removed, the species associated with these resources disappear too. And this was the pattern observed on our survey site. Despite the nature conservation objectives of the Biodiversity Action Plan, blanket removal of grassland areas following flowering prevents a broad diversity of species, including some of the rare and scarce target species, from being able to persist in the habitat that has been created for them.
The negative impact from this cutting management was demonstrated by the results of our surveys. We saw dramatic declines in the total number of species recorded on the cut areas, particularly for scarce conservation priority species. The SQI score for each survey area followed a similar pattern. Values for the areas managed using blanket cuts were substantially lower than for the green roof, also lower than the one meadow area that was left uncut. It would be expected that an opposite pattern would be seen with appropriate management, due to the greater habitat diversity on and around the ground-level meadow areas and their greater resilience to the summer drought. This finding highlighted to us the profound impact inappropriate management can have on innovatively designed urban greenspace.
This effect of blanket management on areas designed to be wildlife refuges is one we encounter frequently. Lessons on how these areas could be managed can be taken from some of the more industrial areas of our urban landscapes. As detailed in our previous essay, brownfield (post-industrial) sites can host some of the most rich and diverse populations of wildlife found in our urban areas (Gibson, 1998; Bodsworth et al., 2005). Whilst part of their biodiversity value is due to habitat heterogeneity created by the diversity of substrates, topography and contamination typical to these sites, another key aspect is their management or, more precisely, lack of it. Rather than regimented, intensive management, biodiversity-rich brownfield sites tend to have sporadic and localised disturbance. This enables wildflower resources, beyond just nectar and pollen, to persist, and therefore support the diverse array of wildlife that depend upon a continuity of resources.
Numerous species can only persist (and by persist we mean to successfully complete their life cycle) if the wildflower resources necessary for their entire life cycle are left intact over appropriate spatial scales. If habitat areas are subjected to blanket cuts, these species disappear. Lack of intensive management means that high quality brownfield sites have become a valuable reservoir for many of these species. Examples include:
The Diptera species Acinia corniculata (UK Red Data Book (RDB) 1 – Endangered species) that develops in the dry fruit heads of black knapweed (Centuarea nigra) only if they are left in-situ throughout the winter.
One of our survey site’s Biodiversity Action Plan targets, beetle Mordellistena neuwaldeggiana(RDBK), that uses dead stems in tall grassland for over-wintering and larval development.
Another Biodiversity Action Plan target beetle at the site, Olibrus flavicornis(RDBK), the larvae of which probably develop in the flower heads of Autumn Hawkbit (Scorzoneroides autumnali) (Harvey 2018).
The blue carpenter bee Ceratina cyanea(Red Data Book 3), which nests and overwinters in hollow twigs and stems (McGill 2017).
And it isn’t just invertebrates that suffer from this habitat loss. Many declining bird species such as linnets (Carduelis cannabina) and sparrows (Passer domesticus) are dependent upon the bountiful seed sources provided by uncut wildflowers and grasses during autumn and winter. Both species forage on fallen seed and standing seedheads and will feed on invertebrates overwintering in plant tissues. These important food sources that are crucial to keeping birds alive throughout winter are now generally confined to unmanaged brownfield sites in the urban landscape. Hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) also suffer from this need to tidy (remove standing dead plant material) and simplify (cut everything in one go) our urban greenspaces. During the day and during winter hibernation, hedgehogs sleep in specially built nests. These are often hidden in long, overgrown vegetation and the nests themselves are constructed from dead plant material. Over-management of greenspace resulting in the loss of suitable nesting vegetation is a key threat to declining hedgehog populations in the UK.
Presumably, within the context of our survey, one of the key reasons the green roof performed so well for rare and scarce species (SQI 9.5–equivalent to national significance for nature conservation) was because it wasn’t subjected to this standardised management intervention (with summer drought-stress providing a natural process to suppress dominant species and maintain a diverse sward). As such, conditions on the roof mimic those on biodiversity-rich urban brownfield sites. The less frequently cut meadow area also scored similarly highly. If we want to avoid extirpating these species from our urban areas through ecological gentrification, then we must not only take a mosaic approach to how we design our greenspaces, but also to how we manage them. This means staggering the timing of cuts of wildflower areas to ensure that a continuity of resources is provided, and, most critically, leaving some areas uncut for longer durations.
There are examples of innovation in this approach to management too, whereby sections of meadow are cut at different times and patterns are cut in the sections to create interesting borders for areas left uncut. This has the double advantage of ensuring that the areas look managed (and therefore not abandoned) and are visually interesting. Such a management approach can also have the added advantage of being more cost effective as less cutting is needed annually!
As we homogenise and sterilise our rural landscapes with intensive agriculture, and disconnect our populations from nature in shining metropolises, it is more pressing than ever that the potential for urban areas to support wildlife is maximised. We must therefore strive for and share innovation in the design and management of urban greenspaces, so that ecological gentrification becomes a thing of the past and our declining species can flourish in our cities.
Bodsworth, E., Shepherd, P. & Plant, C. (2005) Exotic plant species on brownfield land: their value to invertebrates of nature conservation importance. English Nature Research Report No. 650. Peterborough: English Nature.
Gibson, C.W.D. (1998) Brownfield: red data – the values artificial habitats have for uncommon invertebrates. English Nature Research Report No. 273. Peterborough: English Nature.
Harvey, P. (2018) Anchor Field 2016 invertebrate survey report. In: Connop, S., Gardiner, T., George, B., Gibson, C., Harvey, P. and Knowles, A. (Eds) (In Press) The Essex Naturalist: Journal of the Essex Field Club, No 35 (New series), ISSN 0071-1489.
Lister, B.C. & Garcia, A (2018) Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (44) E10397-E10406.
McGill, J. (2017) Invertebrate survey at the Ripple Nature Reserve, Barking London. Report to Barking Riverside Limited.
WWF (2018) Living Planet Report – 2018: Aiming Higher. Grooten, M. and Almond, R.E.A.(Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
Caroline is a Research Assistant in the Sustainability Research Institute at University of East London, working primarily on biodiversity and urban green infrastructure design
“We need to re-establish the link between city and land.”
At the opening ceremony of the Economics of Happiness conference, we were happily greeted with this statement from the event’s director, Dr. Helena Norberg-Hodge, who called for everyone present (governments, NGOs, activists, and local citizens) to re-establish the link between city and land, and in turn, as we understand, to use this link as a basis for how we go about our economic and social activities.
Dr. Helena Norberg-Hodge gives the opening keynote at the Economics Of Happiness conference in Jeonju, South Korea.
Norberg-Hodge called for all activists to be “big picture” activists, united by a shared vision for social and ecological wellbeing. “How do we get there?” she asked the audience “re-connect to others and re-connect to nature.”
It’s a sentiment that we’ve all seen echoing not only through activist circles, but also through professions from architecture and urban design to politics and law. Bringing individuals from such professions together, the Economics of Happiness is a global initiative, bolstered by the success of the recent film of the same name. Through the film and the parent nonprofit organization Local Futures, which Norberg-Hodge directs, it would seem that a global cultural phenomenon is slowly taking root in cities and communities around the world.
Global though it may be, Economics of Happiness is perhaps more appropriately described as a global collection of local initiatives, all of which are united by a shared vision rooted in things like compassion and connection. The conference was uplifting—as you might expect a conference on the Economics of Happiness would be—and filled with advice and success stories presented by speakers from the USA, UK, Japan, and South Korea.
Of particular interest to The Nature of Cities readers, the conference was supported largely by Jeonju city’s Mayor Seong Su Kim, who wants to use it as a blueprint for building a happy, sustainable city, one that looks at a more “useful” measurement than GDP and per-capita income in order to gauge the wellbeing of its citizens. Speakers chimed in to this effect through multiple viewpoints including law, industry, public service, and—perhaps most pervasively—the subjects were sprouting directly from the social and ecological ground in which they are planted.
“The roots of all our major problems are intertwined” noted Keibo Oiwa, author of Slow is Beautiful, and founder of Japan’s Sloth Club, a movement for slow living amidst one of the most fast paced countries in the world. By the acknowledgment that all of our problems are intertwined, we also come to see that the solutions, too, are intertwined.
As in nature itself, sharing one success broadly and across disciplines and borders, will ultimately lead to more success.
A common theme at the conference, Oiwa asked us to look to nature, saying that “Nature seems to know where to stop its growth and progress… how to take just enough”, further suggesting that the major deficiency in the way we think of and carry out “progress” is that this process is fundamentally disconnected from nature, from reality, and often from other people.
Oiwa’s philosophy also pushes us to see how re-connecting to nature and each other as the basis of our design and building process does not necessarily mean stopping progress.
All we have to do is look at the progress of nature itself for a case study, at how fast nature grows and re-generates and innovates; we can have a sustainable progress that is connected to and informed by nature, giving us amazing progress and beauty side by side.
Speaker Janelle Orsi took the concept of ‘connection’ from a social angle, giving a sharp yet witty critique of the “sharing economy.” A highly contested term in urban areas, the “sharing economy” is most often identified, ironically, with highly lucrative business models like Uber and AirBnB, which claim “sharing” as their philosophy.
Orsi, who is co-founder of the Sustainable Economies Law Center in Oakland, California, gave the conference attendees a different take on the meaning of a sharing economy, calling for us to look more deeply at what sharing means, and whether we can morally justify profiting wildly from others and still call it sharing.
The “real sharing economy”, Orsi says, is seen in projects such as community gardens, worker-owned businesses, car shares, and collaborations. She gave a convincing argument for a new local economy, one based on four levels of increasing scale: relationships (such as borrowing and sharing on a temporary basis), agreements (such as co-owning and space sharing), organizations (such as a food co-op), and universal systems of support (public transit, basic income, universal healthcare).
Janelle Orsi explains her ‘legal wedge’ in altering legal structures to encourage local economic activity.
Being a lawyer by trade, Orsi is engaged with “fixing” the restrictive laws we find—perhaps most often at state and local levels—which prohibit a true sharing economy from emerging. “We need different laws and regulations”, said Orsi, suggesting a set of laws for what she calls “extractive” commercial entities, and a different set for “generative” entities like co-operatives and non profit organizations.
The intent is to be more restrictive on profit driven organizations, which tend to “extract” wealth from a local economy, and to be more encouraging for those organizations which generate wealth and wellbeing for the people.
Reflecting strongly the thoughts of the late economist E.F. Schumacher, another constant theme throughout most of the conference was the call to be small. Schumacher’s 1973 book, “Small is Beautiful”, continues to be a highly influential call for economic thinking which puts people and the environment as central concerns.
Smallness encourages better relationships between people and the environment, and better relationships between people and the environment give us a framework to take development actions that have sustainability and wellbeing built into their core. Schumacher’s concepts are statements of absolute simplicity and clarity at once.
Speaking to this point, Neil McInroy, from the U.K. based Centre for Local Economic Strategies, gave a plan to “bring the economy back home” by building out a full, diverse, and resilient local economy that merges “commercial, public, and social” economic sectors.
Perhaps most surprising was Jeonju’s Mayor Kim’s very sincere call to action for building a happy and sustainable city, much of it surrounding ecological and agriculture-related themes.
Mayor Kim, who was a huge champion of bringing the Economics of Happiness event to his city—and who insisted that the organizers make it an annual event going forward—gave a very daring strategy which, he noted, goes against the national agenda in South Korea. This is not easy territory for a South Korean mayor to tread, even in a mid-sized city like Jeonju.
One of Mayor Kim’s main points was ecology, where he highlighted efforts by the city to invest in local biodiversity, reforestation, and cutting river pollution. Of these, the call for biodiversity is one of the most critical, yet is only beginning to take form in public forums.
Mayor Kim might be happy to know, however, that such topics are well discussed here on TNOC:
It’s good to see that biodiversity is now a major target for Mayor Kim and Jeonju City.
In the area of food and agriculture, Kim noted that only 10 percent of food consumed in Jeonju city is from local sources, and he made a call for the city to aim for food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty!
Those are big words, and the Mayor backed them up at least in part, by highlighting the establishment of a city “food charter” which will mandate the use of locally-produced organic foods in schools and city-government organizations. This is only a small gesture compared to what would need to happen for food municipal sovereignty, but the momentum is moving in the right direction.
How will the Mayor go about true food sovereignty? Rather than focusing on urban agriculture, the Mayor primarily pointed to focusing on the broad areas of agricultural land that he is fortunate to have surrounding the city.
Mayor Kim has a year to get to work before the next Economics of Happiness conference, and though none of us reading this are likely strangers to empty promises from political figures, in his corner, the Mayor had a good few hundred citizens in attendance at the conference and related workshops.
One of the small community-oriented breakout sessions at the conference, which worked to engage more local voices.
Immediately following the conference, there were local workshops, and the Mayor implemented a distributed network of small neighborhood support centers to deal with social economy and urban regeneration, instead of just having a central development office. Small is Beautiful.
Small, local, connected to the environment and to each other: it’s an enviable framework that is taking root both here in Jeonju, and in cities around the world where local governments and citizens are mobilizing to take local actions.
All of that local legwork could add up to some big global changes.
Through exclusion, the environmental field has taught about environmental issues in a lopsided and limited way. Racist practices, embedded deep within our institutions, have severely limited the extent of our knowledge and knowing about the world.
This article is a statement of gratitude for experiences that have moved me toward antiracist environmental education. The last 20 years of my life have been a story of reckoning and awakening to pervasive racism and its effect on the environmental field. I was never taught the history of enslavement, or the racist legacy embedded in U.S. systems and institutions. I am beginning to understand its impact on environmental education.
Over the decades of my professional life, I have watched mostly white men and women enroll and graduate from the Antioch University Environmental Studies graduate programs. It is no wonder that most environmental organizations are predominately White, as that is what our educational system has cultivated. Through exclusion, the environmental field has taught about environmental issues in a lopsided and limited way. Racist practices, embedded deep within our institutions, have severely limited the extent of our knowledge and knowing about the world.
We must look at how this country was founded on the attempted genocide of Native people and the enslavement of African people. This legacy was institutionalized in all aspects of our society and continues to create racialized impacts born from structural policies, practices, and procedures, often unintentionally. In fact, race is consistently a primary indicator of a person’s success and wellness in society. — https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/RSJI/why-lead-with-race.pdf
I am a White environmental educator whose life radically changed as a result of her BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color) students and colleagues. I hope to inspire others to take the risks, develop the relationships, and meet the necessary challenges to disband racism head-on. Social and environmental justice depend upon it. Climate action and environmental integrity depend on it. It is critical that each of us find the courage to lift the veil and closely investigate our values, our assumptions, and the underlying historical foundations that seem to exclude the BIPOC experience. The impact of racism on environmental education, conservation, and urban planning runs deep. For many of the graduate students, UEE classes are the first learning experience in a mostly BIPOC cohort and the first time learning with a BIPOC professor. The conversations that emerge are unique, essential, and rich with new perspectives.
In a recent NPR podcast, Dr. Ayana Johnson, a Black Woman Climate Scientist, captured the need to enlist, recruit, train, and engage BIPOC environmentalists and scientists:
Here’s the rub: If we want to successfully address climate change, we need people of color. Not just because pursuing diversity is a good thing to do, and not even because diversity leads to better decision-making and more effective strategies but, because black people are significantly more concerned about climate change than white people (57 percent vs. 49 percent), and Latinx people are even more concerned (70 percent). To put that in perspective, it means that more than 23 million black Americans already care deeply about the environment and could make a huge contribution to the massive amount of climate work that needs doing. Even at its most benign, racism is incredibly time-consuming. Black people don’t want to be protesting for our basic rights to live and breathe. We don’t want to constantly justify our existence. Racism, injustice, and police brutality are awful on their own, but are additionally pernicious because of the brainpower and creative hours they steal from us. Consider the discoveries not made, the books not written, the ecosystems not protected, the art not created, the gardens not tended. — Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878941532/the-inseparable-link-between-climate-change-and-racial-justice
My interest in collecting the stories and curating the narratives of how BIPOC environmental educators navigate and challenge the existing environmental field was sparked 20 years ago. NPR’s ‘Living on Earth’ host, Steve Curwood, invited me to participate in the development of a new radio program. We gathered environmentally based stories from urban youth across the country. I was thrown into multiple urban centers, landing in high schools in order to train teachers and students to record their perceptions of place, to document the environmental state of their neighborhoods, and the ways they wanted to change things. I found myself walking the streets and visiting schools in Camden, NJ, in Crenshaw HS in Los Angeles, in South Boston, two schools in South Chicago, and one on the edge of Harlem in New York City.
Mostly Black and Brown high school students took me into their neighborhoods. We began to document the ways that discrimination, red-lining, inequitable policies, and actions left the environmental quality challenged, their water poisoned, air polluted, and unhealthy food choices. This is where the intersectionality of environmental issues and social justice became crystal clear. Some of the students felt helpless, yet there were a significant number of students in each place finding ways to heal and repair their neighborhoods. They wanted to gain the skills and find opportunities to increase their knowledge and pursue careers in the environmental field.
“Living on Earth” was a watershed experience.
First, I came to know that Urban had to be added to how we think about and prepare environmental educators.
Second, Communities of Color had to be invited into the conversation — we needed to learn how to listen without bias and without a “savior” mentality.
Third, Environment is where we all live…not just Nature, or the pristine preserved land outside of city boundaries.
Our work at this moment in time is to understand how racism has shaped our approaches to educate about the environment. Who have we left out? What could we learn from them? How do we become better at inclusion? The NPR stories from youth showed their deep interest and concern in their home environments. We heard from South Boston students who did research on how their increased rat population was tied to the wealthier communities getting new trash cans financed from city government…to Camden, NJ students who discovered lead in the water of school drinking fountains … to NYC Harbor School students actively rebuilding oyster beds in NY harbor. I knew that these students needed access to higher education and skills to follow their passion, find their voice, and make a change.
Cohort 2016. Birmingham on a Civil Rights tour.
As a result, many years later I was given the opportunity to create a graduate program that works at the intersection of social justice and environmental issues. Traditional models had to be rethought and remodeled so that BIPOC colleagues and students felt welcome and important contributors. Recruiting a multicultural diversity of students and faculty was critical. We’ve managed to maintain at least 65% BIPOC student cohorts each year and 75% BIPOC faculty over 8 years. (https://www.antioch.edu/seattle/degrees-programs/education-degrees/masters-in-education-ma-ed/urban-environmental-education/)
I started collecting stories from the BIPOC students after graduation in order to capture their multicultural perspectives and their experiences with environmental work. I’d like to highlight a few of their narratives here to support the richness that BIPOC voices bring to the conversation. In order to be inclusive and relevant and effective, environmental education has to change in response.
Rasheena Fountain
Rasheena Fountain was in our second UEE cohort. She is a powerful writer and musician and now a Ph.D. student in creative writing at the University of Washington. She moved to Seattle from Chicago where she learned about Nature from her grandmother’s garden. This article was written for Medium in February of 2019 and is entitled, “Working to Decolonize our Environment for Environmental Progress.”
It is the job of those in the environmental movement to join in on this important work of decolonization to break down barriers preventing communities of color from thriving in the environment. My experiences along with other people of color’s experiences highlight what I see as a key to environmental progress — the important work of decolonizing our environment.
As someone who has an environmental graduate degree, I find myself harkening back to a time before the education and before I discovered the othering of my experiences. I long for a time when curiosity, connection, and knowledge were not constrained by the supremacy of dominant westernized environmental views.
Every time I hear someone say that they want to increase the access to the environment or educate communities of color about the environment, it makes me wonder if they truly understand this statement or what this truly entails. I wonder if they understand that access to our natural lands for people of color has never been about choice or due to a lack of education. Our history is rooted in colonization — colonization that meant ripping Indigenous people from their natural lands. Progress is not necessarily about educating these communities; it is about access and repair. White folk that overwhelmingly make up the environmental field need to unlearn the dominant environmental narratives and to acknowledge white supremacy as a continuous barrier for people of color.
Around the world, no land is free from stories of pain and the forcible removal of people from their lands. With pressing issues like climate change, water pollution, and other environmental degradation, there is a growing awareness that diversity within the environmental movement is essential to solving these issues. Yet, oftentimes, steps toward this type of inclusion are done in a way that negates the history of colonization that still shapes communities of color’s relationships with the land, where white supremacy and barriers still exist. Without this historical lens, communities are approached with a savior complex that negates the knowledge and history of these communities. Acting as saviors when approaching communities is not any different than the ideas behind colonization, and it only perpetuates historical tropes. I intend to build upon the work of my ancestors, enslaved and ripped from their land. I will continue to use the access my parents worked hard to give me a generation before to resituate my relationship with the land. The environmental movement needs to join in on this important work of decolonization to break down barriers preventing communities of color from thriving in their environments.
James King came into the UEE program in 2015 and graduated in 2018. He was actively engaged in outdoor education and an interpreter for the National Park Museum in Atlanta honoring Martin Luther King.
James King
It took me three years to complete a higher education degree. Undergraduate institutions failed me by leaving my history and my Color out of the instruction. I didn’t finish my BA until I went to Antioch U. for my Master’s degree. I thrived in the environmental field by introducing urban youth to environmental issues through outdoor experiences. The Natural Leaders program (Children and Nature Network) elevated my connection with diverse groups of young people who also wanted to be outside and become civic leaders. I was able to bring my Black perspective to the participants in any outdoor event.
My environmental work was mostly based in Atlanta…in the city and beyond. That’s where I found my calling to become an environmental educator…at the base of the famed Stone Mountain, a tribute to the Civil war and White Supremacy. I thought this reminder of our history was an important place to start programs that focused on getting People of Color into Nature. The question that followed me into all of my work was “How do I bring system change to the world that includes a broad scale of perspectives?” I was inspired by John Lewis who told me to always make ‘Good Trouble’. I knew that I would need a higher degree to become an ‘accepted’ leader in this work.
I was recruited by the UEE program in Seattle. The UEE cohort helped me gain the confidence to move into the world as a change-maker and fight for those who deserved to be heard. I’ve learned how to bring everyone to the same table, to listen and be heard, and to be part of the solution. Now, I am officially a qualified environmental educator who is prepared to jump over the hurdles of racism and inequity to work as a community advocate and bring people together for environmental change. The link between social justice and environmental work makes so much sense to me.
I recently accepted the position of Executive Director for the Central District Community Preservation and Development Authority (CDCPDA). I work with a historically Black community. It is Black because of ‘red-lining’ which excluded Black people from owning property in certain parts of Seattle. Their environmental issues are connected to this history. To make change happen one has to Know the history of exclusion and how it influences the present. I will help community members apply for grant money, direct money to the right folks, and help them use their funding well. I do a lot of community organizing by being on the street and listening deeply. One of the most important skills I learned in UEE was how to listen, to step back and be quiet but attentive, and when to express concerns. And, more importantly, I learned how to understand my influence as a Black man in those situations and make space for others.
Niesha Fort
Niesha Fort is an educator who transitioned into a community organizer working with immigrant populations of Color and working to make urban communities healthier through environmental integrity.
Learning how to recognize systems of power and decision-making was the most essential learning for me. As a Black woman, I had to better understand the maze of systemic racism in order to unwind it and prepare to succeed in overturning inequitable decisions that impact Communities of Color by the mostly White folks in power. Environmental work is all about the health and well-being of communities for me…clean water, access to healthy food, clean air, and places to sit in Nature…like parks, gardens, or intact tree canopy.
The UEE program provided me with essential information and ways of thinking about the built environment, health, and the intersectionality of housing, transportation, planning, and environment. Even though I’m not doing traditional teaching in the classroom like I used to, I am doing it in a different way. I manage the ‘Connectors’ program with the city of Burien and Tukwila. I am working with different ethnic groups to help them better understand the systems and policies that will influence their communities (environment) and to educate them on how city governments work. Instead of the city using them, I want them to understand that they can work in partnership with city governments to make changes for their community. My analogy is that communities should stop playing checkers…and instead play chess.
This is how a community can make change. It is about building relationships and trust. I also work at Global to Local as their Leadership and Engagement Program Manager. We develop community-led programs to improve health and provide resources for communities. Health equity is the goal, we work with health disparities among women, people of color, those in poverty, immigrants, and refugees. The organization looks at the intersection of the built environment, our ecosystem, tree canopy, and individual health as it relates to chronic illnesses and access to care. We consider how those issues intersect with race, income, transportation, housing.
Even in the aftermath of 9-11, Mr. Rogers maintained his fidelity to the principles that drove him: love your neighbor and love yourself. And, in invoking tikkun olam, he tied those principles to ecological restoration, restoration of the community as described by Aldo Leopold.
I recently watched the much acclaimed two-hour documentary on the life and accomplishments of Fred Rogers, the beloved host of the popular children’s TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”. The film reflected on Rogers’ legacy of kindness and the profound and lasting effect his innovative approach to television had on millions of people, myself included (see the trailer here).
Among the many important and moving messages in the film, one stood out in particular to me as relevant to my current work. It came later in the film, during the passages depicting the return of Mr Rogers to television audiences after the tragedies of September 11th, 2001. In the passage, Mr. Rogers says:
“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be Tikkun Olam—repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy, and light, and hope, and faith, and pardon and love to your neighborhood and to yourself.”
For some reason, when I heard Mr. Rogers say those words, I thought of Aldo Leopold, who some would argue forever changed the way we view our ecological impact on the environment around us. In his essay “Thinking Like a Mountain”, Aldo Leopold wrote:
“We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness … A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is what is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world.”
To think like a mountain means to have a complete appreciation for the profound interconnectedness of the elements in a system. Was Mr. Rogers thinking like a mountain after 9-11? I was struck with the connection of this Leopoldian thinking and the concept of tikkun olam, in the context of something as horrible as 9-11. With these thoughts swirling in my mind, I wanted to better understand what Mr. Rogers was thinking when he invoked that Hebrew concept, and what it might mean to me.
Mr. Rogers and X the Owl who lives in the oak tree at the center of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe
According to MJL, Tikkun Olam (תיקוןעולם, Hebrew for “world repair”) has come to connote social action and the pursuit of social justice. The phrase has origins in classical rabbinic literature and in Lurianic kabbalah, a major strand of Jewish mysticism originating with the work of the 16th-century kabbalist Isaac Luria. Tikkun olam has been reinterpreted since the 1950s to mean that humans are responsible for the perfection and maintenance of the world. Rabbi Lawrence Troster, of GreenFaith: Interfaith Partners for the Earth, believes that originally tikkun olam was a minor rabbinic concept of amending laws for the betterment of the world. It was altered by Lurianic Kabbalah into a mystical doctrine of salvation, the human repair of the breach in the universe left over by the process of Creation itself. Thus, according to Troster, it became an “eschatological practice actualized in meditation and prayer”.
In his excellent essay Tikkun Olam and Environmental Restoration: A Jewish Eco-Theology of Redemption, Troster further argues that the use of tikkun olamin modern Jewish social justice theology creates an eschatology that sees human freewill, not divine action, as the chief means by which the world will be perfected, and then Rabbi Troster asks … “what do Jewish environmentalists imply when they use tikkun olam? What kind of Jewish environmental perfection are we seeking?” These are important questions, because even though we may see the repair or perfection of the world as merely a symbolic and non-literal goal, “the concept of redemption we choose will shape the way we seek to achieve it … while Jewish environmental theology has, in part, dwelt on Creation theology, little has been done regarding what a Jewish environmental theology of redemption would look like”.
This resonates with me as a midwesterner in the United States with a Judeo-Christian upbringing, in that faith-based understandings of nature tended to be of the “hath dominion” variety rather than “resident of a neighborhood called nature”. The concept of redemption we choose will shape the way we seek to achieve it.
The author at Gazelle Valley(עמק הצבאים) in Jerusalem (2012), an example of redeeming or restoring an urban area to a more ecologically healthy state.
Today the environmental movement is rightly criticized for presenting almost exclusively apocalyptic views of possible future environmental disasters, and is accused of failing to present positive visions of a sustainable world. Arguably, an exception could be be found in the work of the Civic Ecology Lab at Cornell University. Positive dependencies upon nature are rarely identified, and negative interactions are recycled and reified by news cycles and the internet. Yet, in Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture environmental historian Steven Pyne wrote:
“The real future of environmentalism is in rehabilitation and restoration. Environmentalists have told the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall from grace over and over again. But we haven’t yet told the story of redemption. Now we need to tell that story”.
Which brings me to one of the pillars supporting my own work. Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic” requires us to enlarge
“…the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, animals, or collectively: the land… In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such” — Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac.
This land ethic, Troster notes, might contribute to a refinement or redefinition of tikkun olamas ecological restoration. Ecological restoration, as defined by Eric Higgs, is “the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed” (Higgs, Eric. Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration, p. 110). Thus, ecological restoration must be a process, not simply an end product. It relies upon what Higgs calls a “genuine conversation” between restorationists and natural processes in order for it to function. This conversation ensures that the interests of both people and ecosystems are both deeply understood and appreciated; a social-ecological systems approach. This kind of conversation occurs when those people engaged in restoration take the time to fully understand the place as it is and “listen” to the ecosystem. As Higgs points out in the same book, “The loud, garrulous humans will always dominate unless specific attention is given to the soft-spoken ecosystem…”.
Thanks to Mr. Rogers and Rabbi Troster, I have a new way to think about my work to better understand how to amplify recruitment of citizen conservationists and resulting development and proliferation of a 21st century land ethic. As I have written often, this conservation ethic often emerges in places and time periods characterized by violence, conflict, disaster or war. So, my work often focuses on nature in “hot spots” or “red zones” such as both the time period and place of September 11th. Even in the aftermath of 9-11, Mr. Rogers maintained his fidelity to the principles that drove him: love your neighbor and love yourself. And, in invoking tikkun olam, he tied those principles to ecological restoration, restoration of the community as described by AldoLeopold. Holding Leopold’s notion of community in mind, how inspiring are the words of Mr. Rogers after September 11th:
“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be Tikkun Olam—repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy, and light, and hope, and faith, and pardon and love to your neighborhood (community, in the Leopoldian sense) and to yourself.”
Alarming construction and concretisation of land areas coupled with short-sighted development agendas and paucity of soft measures is leading Mumbai towards a state of permanent ecological fracture.
There is no dearth of global reports discussing the impacts of global warming and its direct impact on sea level rise, rising temperatures in cities, and irregular and extreme weather events such as cyclones and rainfall combined with severe water shortage and drought. These events are no longer what can be or should be expected, rather what we are already experiencing the world over through major climate events since the last decade. News of these extreme weather events is now commonplace. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has been a steady reference for reports related to this issue ― especially since it comprises scientists from all over the world who evaluate papers to create referenceable reports that can be used by policymakers to create strategies against climate change. It is well known that IPCC’s previous assessment report of 2014 provided the scientific basis for the significant Paris Agreement in December 2015 which was adopted by 200 states including India at COP21.
Flooding in Mumbai, India in 2017 Photo: Paasikivi
India is one of the global hotspots identified in IPCC’s latest Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II, which warns that a lack of immediate efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate change could lead to dire consequences. Climate events are impacting villages, towns, and cities across the geography of the country. However, owing to the intensity of habitation, energy resources along with complex infrastructure systems and built environment, cities ― especially coastal cities ― face the greatest challenges in order to limit losses to human life as well as nature in the wake of climate change events. Mumbai city is one of the top 10 megacities cities globally at risk of severe impact from climate change. Mumbai’s flood risk makes the city a “high risk” place for climate change vulnerability and its high population density, high poverty rates, and poor sewage and drainage systems heighten the risk posed by climate-related events like flooding. The water level in the Arabian Sea adjoining Mumbai’s western coastline is set to rise, by a conservative estimate, by approximately 3 cm in the next 10 years. This 3 cm rise in water level at the coastline would translate to around 20 meters of land area along the entire coastline to be submerged under water ― adding up to an estimated 28 km2. out of Mumbai’s 480 sq.km total land area. Looking further, McKinsey India had released a report in February 2020 stating that by 2050, Mumbai will see a 25% increase in the intensity of flash floods and a 0.5 metre rise in the sea level which will affect 2-3 million people living within 1 km radius of the coastline. Mumbai is also sinking at the rate of approximately 3 mm per year owing largely to land subsidence caused by groundwater extraction, reclamation of natural wetlands, ecological disturbances, and infrastructure developments. This subsidence, coupled with sea level rise, will ensure further coastal as well as inland flooding.
On the other hand, as discussed by Climate Scientist Roxy Mathew Koll of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), the Arabian Sea’s surface temperature increased by 1.2-1.4°C between 1982 and 2018 — the fastest among tropical oceans. This increased temperature of the water is linked to over 60% of all cyclones emerging from the Arabian Sea. The increased temperatures also means that the air can hold more moisture, leading to increased humidity levels which in turn contributes to a far higher perceived air temperature. Notably, 2010-2020 was the hottest decade in the history of the city. In fact, currently, before the onset of the monsoons, Mumbai has seen temperatures as high as 38°C which feels like 43-44°C due to the high humidity levels of over 75%. Due to such conditions, heavy rainfall events have also intensified in Mumbai over the years, where rainfall expected through the monsoon months of June to September is now received over a handful of days in that period leading to flash floods and inland flooding that our network of stormwater infrastructure systems are unable to cope with. In July 2005, when a meter of rain fell in a single day, flooding cost the city about $1.7 billion in damages. While this data is being updated constantly ― for Mumbai and India ― the fact that threat levels are increasing instead of reducing demonstrates clearly that climate change has become the most serious threat to our existence.
It is interesting to note that approximately 45% of Mumbai’s total area is covered by open spaces and natural assets ― based on a mapping conducted by Mumbai-based architectural practice PK Das & Associates. A quick glance at these numbers would suggest that Mumbai should not be suffering from inland flooding or rising temperatures owing to the large quantum of unbuilt land. However, despite these open areas, flooding and heat island effects are only increasing with each passing year ― which gives us several clues as to the true extent of the problems that have been created.
Parts of Mumbai that are prone to coastal flooding by 2050. Image: Climate Central
The British — through the municipal corporation — had set up most of the public administrative departments of Mumbai, and even though it has now been 75 years since Independence, the legacy of the colonial rule continues within our administrative setups. One of the key aspects of this legacy is that a majority, if not all, of the departments within the municipal corporation are staffed, run, and led by civil and mechanical engineers ― those who approach/mitigate/deal with issues through the particular lens of hardscape engineering tactics and solutions, abetted by enlisted contractors who push for increased use of concrete so they can make more money.
While such approaches might provide short-term benefits, the lack of a comprehensive plan for the future will result in catastrophic failure of all our systems that are currently functioning in the city. Comprehensive planning must entail equal attention to the un-built areas of the city. Hard infrastructure plans have limited lifespans especially since the elements they are designed to respond to are highly volatile and erratic ― as has been discussed earlier with regard to increased intensity of climate change events. At a broad glance, Mumbai has been working on alleviating two primary risks ― namely sea level rise and inland flooding. The measures that are being adopted are limited to (1) tidal flood gates that prevent inflow of water during high tides and heavy rain events; (2) channelising and training water streams with impervious concrete bund walls to prevent water from spreading through neighbouring areas during peak flow times; and (3) increasing/upgrading the stormwater system networks within the flood-prone areas of the city. One does not need further research to determine the limitations of these measures, mainly because their negative effects are already in plain sight to be seen. It is a well-known fact that flood gates that prevent inflow of water from the sea only safeguard limited areas within their radius of topographical influence, but the ingress of water stopped at one location will always find its way inland from another. Not surprisingly, these interventions have caused increased water levels and repeated flooding in lower-income, indigenous communities like the Kolis (fisherfolk) who live by the waterfronts. These urban villages are now witnessing flooding on an annual basis that has not been seen since they were established decades ago. As in most world cities, the underprivileged are the first to face the brunt of inequity in climate responses by civic administrations.
The pros of creating impervious concrete bund walls along Mumbai’s watercourses and their limited short-term advantages of reducing inland flooding are far outnumbered by the cons that lead to further degradation of the environmental health of the city. Mumbai has over 300 km of inland watercourses, popularly referred to as “Nullahs” running through most neighbourhoods of the city. These natural water courses have, over time, either disappeared completely due to ill planning, landfill, and mindless construction or have been narrowed down and trained into concretised canals, thereby severing their natural connection to sub-surface water and soil systems. This condition, in fact, furthers the inland flooding issue since the surface water from the neighbourhoods that earlier seeped through the soil and/or flowed naturally into these water courses cannot follow those routes any longer. This in turn puts further pressure on man-made systems of stormwater drains and gutters that direct all of this water out into the sea.
By doing this, we prevent effective recharging of groundwater systems and drying up of sub-surface soil leading to their reduced capacities of holding water leading to flash floods during heavy rain. In areas where the stormwater systems have been reinforced with larger/ wider networks of gutters, the issue of inland flooding still remains when heavy rainfall coincides with high tides of the sea, where the water from the drains is pushed back into the city. We must give room to our watercourses and rivers ― which would include tactical infrastructure solutions that combine hard interventions along with softer measures such as re-building porosity within our city’s hardscape areas, regeneration of vegetation, and creating retention basins inside the city while making them multi-functional throughout the year. Green infrastructure initiatives that rely on the use of plants, soil, and other natural materials to remove pollutants and allow stormwater to absorb back into the ground will also help prevent flooding and reduce the amount of water that goes into the city’s storm drains. Interestingly, the city spends millions in transporting fresh water from as far as 170 km away to cater to the daily need of approximately 3750 MLD. (Million litres per day). By pumping all of this fresh rainwater out to sea through our stormwater and wastewater systems, we are essentially wasting millions of gallons of fresh water which otherwise could be treated and reused for the city’s water supply.
At a time when climate risk is garnering widespread attention the world over, environmentally insensitive, and illogical projects/policies continue to be floated or formally proposed in Mumbai. To give a brief example, we can discuss two similar and interlinked policies that shed light on the symptomatic issues at the planning level that the city is facing.
The first such policy allows the development/allocation of the mandatory open, recreational space in the development of a layout on top of constructed podiums/decks rather than on mother earth. This policy had in fact been challenged in the Supreme Court of India after which the court had ruled against the policy provision and insisted for these open spaces to be provided on land rather than on top of decks. Unfortunately, subsequently, this order has been overturned by way of the Government of India passing a law that allowed the policy to be reinstated.
The second policy allows the development of underground public parking facilities under public parks and gardens in an attempt to address the growing shortfall of public parking for vehicles throughout the city. Parks are the few remaining open spaces in Mumbai, which has one of the poorest open spaces per capita ratios anywhere in the world (1.1 m2 per capita). Our natural parks and gardens serve a multitude of functions: they act as large sponges for rainwater amidst increasing impervious and concrete developments thereby mitigating further flooding risks, they help reduce the CO2 in the air amidst the rapidly declining air quality and they help mitigate the compounding urban heat island effects thereby forming an oasis for people in dense neighbourhoods. Creating an impervious concrete slab for an underground parking lot would require decades-old rain trees to be cut and thereby compromise the parks’ ability to perform any of the above functions, rendering it useless. Projects and proposals arising from such policies will pave the way for similar ideas and developments across the city which would be disastrous, to say the least. This is an example of the dire consequences of the hardscape-only engineering approach to land management in Mumbai.
Even though the policy for underground parking under parks has been a part of the city’s development control regulations for a few years now, it has recently received a renewed push by elected representatives of government along with civic officials in certain parts of the city. Two such proposals have been mooted in the suburbs of Juhu and Bandra in Mumbai. People living in these neighbourhoods have a rich physical, social, and emotional attachment to parks which are home to some of the oldest rain trees in the area. The announcement of inviting tenders for the construction of parking lots below these parks by the civic administration has faced stiff opposition from concerned citizens in the area and across the city and has given rise to strong citizens movements against these proposals who have since mobilised public meetings and workshops, art and sports events, outreach programs to civic officials and elected representatives combined with online petitions and letters of concern to decision-makers as well as helped run a sustained media campaign regarding this issue in the local newspapers and online platforms.
The online petition on Change.org started by the author opposing the underground parking below parks policy has accumulated close to 8000 signatures.
In fact, with the consensus of the citizens at large, local architects and planners have even gone the length to suggest viable alternatives to addressing the parking issues for consideration. These efforts have proved successful in the case of the park in Juhu where the proposal has been cancelled, and in fact, the alternate suggestion for a parking lot that was proposed has been accepted and is being taken forward. Unfortunately, in the case of the second park located in Bandra, elected representatives and civic officials have remained largely adamant and continue pursuing the parking proposals by way of publishing public notices for inviting tenders for the construction of these facilities. Three members of the local community including an environmental activist, an architect, and the author of this piece have now moved a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against this proposal mooted by the civic administration and its concerned relevant departments in the High Court of Bombay. The case has already been heard twice in the High Court, and the next hearing of the case is now awaited.
In the present scenario, there are countless large-scale infrastructure projects that are being built across the city. To name a few, these are the Coastal road along the western coastline, the trans-harbour sea link connecting Mumbai’s eastern coastline to the mainland, the Navi Mumbai International Airport (which is being built almost entirely on a landfill and needed a major river to be trained and diverted as well as a natural hill to be blasted and levelled), the Metro rail project (one of the world’s largest metro networks, of which a substantial portion is being built overground), and incessant building construction fuelled by current re-development policies. What is most concerning is that these projects are being carried out by various authorities without an overall comprehensive understanding of their ill effects in the short and long term on the ecology and health of the city. In light of such widespread construction, land subsidence is only going to increase at a rapid rate, and with increased concretisation leading to less porosity of our land, flooding is only going to increase.
Plans like which include citywide climate change vulnerability assessment, updated climate projections, and an outline of strategies to address extreme heat, stormwater flooding, and coastal flooding from sea-level rise and storms set a good example of critical decision-making being effected on the ground. Singapore too has led the way in climate action and mitigation. Mumbai’s Climate Action plan revealed late last year is a soft launch for a similar strategy, but needs a far more comprehensive approach (find a detailed article about this issue on TNOC by this author here) if we are to see effective implementation of its ideas.
As a way forward, one of the key demands is to develop a comprehensive action plan to tackle and, more importantly, adapt to climate change. This process must be set in motion by identifying implementable measures such as (1) risk assessment and mapping to gain a holistic understanding of the situation today; (2) developing flexible and adaptive approaches that comprise of non-typical solutions for varying situations witnessed across the city; (3) capacity building ― both in civic administration as well as within communities; and (4) phased implementation of long term plans that take into cognisance the immediate demands to mitigate risk as well as address permanent change that is required over time.
Above all, we as a people must change how we approach dealing with water. We must change our approaches and solutions from those that fight water to those that embrace living with water instead. We must aim to rebuild a truly sustainable and balanced biosphere ― one in which we ensure that systems work in harmony with each other as they do in nature. This would mean an inclusive and holistic approach towards the natural and the built environment ― both of which are necessary if we are to sustain ourselves amidst the rapidly changing climate of our planet. The push for unnatural engineering solutions must be curtailed while discussing and implementing practical solutions and tactical measures that are primarily soft in their approach and thereby complement nature. We understand that these measures also might take many years to complete, however, in the larger, long-term interest of ensuring a truly habitable city in the future these must be set in motion immediately.
My enchantment began on a Saturday morning, shortly before solstice and not long after I’d moved from Anchorage’s lowlands to the city’s Hillside area. Lolling in bed, I glanced outside. And there, before me, were several black-capped chickadees flitting about a backyard spruce. Wonderful, I thought. Here’s a chance to meet some of my new neighbors. Inspired by their presence, I put a bird-feeder on the middle deck, where it could be easily observed from the living and dining rooms. My first-ever feeder wasn’t much to look at: an old, slightly bent baking pan. Still, it held plenty of seeds and sat nicely on the railing. Nothing happened that first day. But Sunday the birds returned. Seated at the dining room table, I watched a tiny, fluffy, winged creature land on the pan.
Black-capped chickadee. Photo: Wayne Hall
The chickadee grabbed a seed and zoomed off to a nearby tree. Then in flashed another. And a third. For each the routine was similar: dart in, look around, peck at the tray, grab a seed, look around some more, and dart back out. Nervous little creatures, full of bright energy, they somehow penetrated the toughened shell of this former sports reporter and touched my heart. I laughed at their antics and felt an all-too-rare childlike fascination.
Common redpoll on a feeder. Photo: Wayne HallRed breasted nuthatch. Photo: Wayne Hall
Within days, the chickadees were joined by several other species, most of which I’d never seen (or noticed) before: red-breasted nuthatch, common redpoll, pine siskin, pine grosbeak, downy woodpecker. And what started as mere curiosity bloomed into a consuming passion. I found myself roaming bookstores in search of birding guidebooks, spontaneously exchanging bird descriptions with a stranger, and purchasing fifty-pound bags of seeds.
All of this seemed very strange to a forty-four-year-old who had never been intrigued by birds (except for charismatic raptors) and previously judged bird watchers to be rather odd sorts. I didn’t know what it meant, except that a door had opened.
And I passed through…
I recount this encounter from the early 1990s because it became a turning point in my life. In the years since, birds have enriched my life in unexpected ways, including—and perhaps especially—they add cheer to my days during Alaska’s longest and harshest season.
Waxwings on mountain ash. Photo: Wayne HallWaxwing on a snowy mountain ash. Photo: Wayne Hall
Winters in America’s far north can be hard on a person, even one living in the city, along the relatively mild coast of Southcentral Alaska. Here in Anchorage, it’s not the cold that’s a problem (in January, our coldest month, the average high and low are 22° and 8° Fahrenheit, respectively), nor the snowfall (mid-winter rains are more depressing than a foot or two of snow). The biggest problem, it seems, is darkness. And one of the best solutions, as I’ll describe below, seems to be getting outdoors and paying attention to the brightening presence of birds and their voices.
Long hours of darkness wear on many Alaskans, even in Anchorage, which on the winter solstice receives slightly less than 5½ hours of daylight. And from late November to late January, nine weeks in all, we get less than seven daylight hours. (By the time this is posted in late February, we’ll be relishing nearly ten hours of daylight, with hints of the longer and brighter days at the end of winter’s long, dark tunnel, the spring equinox now less than a month away.)
Making matters worse are the abundance of heavily overcast days, which in my journals I frequently describe as “dreary.”
Waxwing on an ash. Photo: Wayne HallWaxwing eating a mountain ash berry. Photo: Wayne HallMountain ash berries, a favorite waxwing food. Photo: Wayne HallBoreal chickadee at a feeder. Photo: Wayne Hall
I simply cannot imagine living in the arctic, with daily light measured in minutes or not at all, for weeks or even months at a time. I’m amazed that people can survive, let alone thrive, along Alaska’s northern coast, where, for instance, the community of Barrow goes more than two months without seeing the sun (Nov. 20 through Jan. 23).
Based on my own experience and conversations with many friends and acquaintances, I feel safe in saying that winter’s darkness tends to take a cumulative toll, at least for those of us who grew up in more southerly locales and moved to Alaska as adults. After 15, 20, or 25 years of northern life, extended darkness weighs heavier on people, especially those who can’t easily get outdoors during the season’s short days. Or maybe it’s simply part of the aging process; one study conducted in Fairbanks concluded that seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, was more prevalent among people older than 40.
Looking back, it seems I somehow intuitively recognized my personal need for substantial daily winter doses of sunshine soon after moving from Southern California to Anchorage in February 1982, even if thick layers of clouds dimmed that natural light. Though I kept the long and sometimes crazy hours of a sports writer my first years in Alaska, I made it a point, whenever possible, to get outside during the day’s brighter hours, preferably for an hour or more.
Scheduling outdoor time became easier in the early 1990s, after I’d chosen the life of a freelance nature writer. It became part of my self-imposed job description to spend time “out in nature,” whatever the season or weather.
Following my life-changing introduction to the neighborhood chickadees, birds became another reason for me to more closely explore Anchorage’s landscape, throughout the year. And because not many birds stick around during winter—at least in large numbers—I quickly learned the more common resident species.
Anchorage’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) participants have recorded as many as 52 species, but less than a dozen are likely to be regularly observed at feeders or along the city’s trails. And while a handful of raptors and a few water birds inhabit the city in winter, my favorites remain songbirds, especially the ones drawn into feeders, which I’ve been able to study and admire up close.
Mountain ash in autumn colors. Photo: Wayne Hall
Both at home, as a feeder watcher, and on my walks (and occasional skis), it soon became part of my routine to look for, and listen to, my avian neighbors. And this became another way, an important way, that I could endure—or, better yet, embrace and occasionally delight in—Anchorage’s six- to seven-month-long winter season.
Besides the common feeder birds, a few other passerine species have brought me special delight: brown creepers, which often hang out with chickadees and nuthatches but rarely, in my experience, visit feeders; American dippers, impressive in their frigid, depth-of-winter swims; ravens, which in their raucous way enliven the city, many of them visiting during the daylight hours to hunt food and play, then head for the hills to roost for the night; and bohemian waxwings, which don’t stay the entire winter but help to brighten the city during winter’s darkest days.
The presence of waxwings seems especially worth mentioning here, not only because they bring such pleasure and amazement to many of us human residents of Anchorage, but because their temporary occupation of the city in enormous numbers is a relatively recent phenomenon that’s directly tied to an increase of other, introduced species. This local connection is another example of the issues that Matt Palmer explored in his TNOC posting, “Our Changing Urban Nature: Time to Embrace Exotic Species? (Or at Least Some of Them)”.
Bohemian waxwings are rarely, if ever, seen in Anchorage’s highly developed downtown and midtown areas from spring through fall. But in early winter—usually sometime in mid- to late October—they begin to appear, initially in small and easy to overlook numbers. But by year’s end, thousands of them inhabit the city.
It’s remarkable, really, that birds which normally avoid Alaska’s urban center suddenly invade it in such huge numbers. What draws them here (as you might expect) is food. In recent decades, locals have planted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fruit-bearing trees in yards and along Anchorage’s streets. Over time, waxwings learned that when food becomes scarce in their normal habitats—the forested lands beyond Anchorage—there is still plenty to eat in the city. Singly, in pairs, and small groups, these wide-ranging “gypsy birds” head into town for an amazing feast.
Roaming the city, they swoop and dive in synchronized flight while they move from neighborhood to neighborhood and street to street, descending on yards and greenbelts to strip ornamental trees of their fruit: mountain ash berries, chokecherries, crab apples.
As the days and weeks pass, small groups coalesce into ever-larger flocks, until by December multitudes of the birds swirl through the sky. A few years ago, participants in Anchorage’s CBC tallied more than 22,000 waxwings. One serious birder told me he’s seen as many as 3,000 in a single flock and knew of others who’ve watched 5,000 or more in flight.
Once the food is gone, the birds depart. Most years, Anchorage is again largely waxwing free by late January or early February.
Chokeberry blossoms. Photo: Wayne Hall
At least one group of the fruiting trees that pull in waxwings, all commonly called chokecherries, has proved itself a troublesome invasive. The European bird cherry or Mayday tree has especially become a problem. Local foresting experts say this chokecherry is displacing native vegetation, pushing out understory plants like Canadian dogwood, willow, and alder. In 2011, municipal forester Scott Stringer told local TV station KTUU that the Mayday tree “has taken over the entire creek corridor along Chester Creek,” one of the main streams that pass through Anchorage.
Besides displacing indigenous plants, chokecherry trees have killed moose. As reported in the Anchorage Daily News in February 2011, a state wildlife veterinarian determined that three moose calves had died from cyanide poisoning after eating the frozen buds, branches, and berries of Mayday trees. It’s likely that some portion of other winter-kill moose have similarly been poisoned over the years, but the attention given to those particular calves’ deaths, plus the increased and substantial evidence that chokecherries are supplanting native species, has led to an effort to control them. Besides agency efforts, the public has been recruited. During the summer of 2011, for example, more than 100 volunteers participated in a “weed smackdown” to remove chokecherries from Anchorage’s Valley of the Moon Park (the event reported by KTUU).
Given the chokecherries’ popularity with both waxwings and humans (in early summer the trees have beautiful, fragrant white flowers and they ornament many yards around the city), it’s likely the chokecherry is here to stay. But forestry experts hope that continued removal programs—including occasional smackdowns—and efforts to get nurseries and homeowners to stop planting new trees will limit the invasives’ spread.
However much chokecherries are cut back, there are enough other fruiting trees spread around town to keep waxwings returning to our city.
There’s one way, in particular, that Anchorage’s winter birds brighten my days: with their voices.
Even when I can’t see my avian neighbors, as sometimes when walking through the woods, I can usually hear them. In fact their voices are often what alert me to their presence. Every day when I step outside my house, whether it’s to retrieve the newspaper or mail, to shovel snow, or go walking, I listen for birds. Whether it’s the chatter of black-capped and boreal chickadees, the nasally yank, yank, yank of nuthatches, the chirping of redpolls, the warbled songs of grosbeaks, the cawing of ravens, or the soft trills of waxwings, their voices add some measure of brightness to my day and this is no small thing.
There are times when I’ll hear the faint voice of a chickadee or redpoll or waxwing, and stop to see if I can find the bird. And in my stopping I’ll begin to see several of them, occasionally (with redpolls and waxwings) even dozens, that I hadn’t noticed only moments before, perhaps because I was lost in my own thoughts or worries or plans. And I’m reminded how even in the city we’re surrounded by wild creatures and other forms of life, which we so often ignore or take for granted.
Bird song is more likely to get our attention in spring and summer, when dozens of species mark the nesting season with their loud and often lovely voices. But though less abundant and less diverse in winter, the songs and chatter remain important to me and, I’m sure, to others who pay attention. I was reminded of this while reading Tim Beatley’s TNOC posting, “Celebrating the Natural Soundscapes in Winter,” which inspired me to write a commentary for a local online news journal, the Alaska Dispatch, “The noise and the fury: Snowmachines in Kincaid Park?”.
Our cities have plenty of obnoxious noise. But they also have their share of pleasing, relaxing, and delightful sounds too, most of them, in my experience, provided by nature.
Here I’ll return one more time to the waxwings and their brightening influence.
Bohemian waxwing. Photo: Wayne Hall
The presence of breathtakingly huge flocks, and their sudden descent upon neighborhoods, is only one of several great delights that bohemian waxwings bring to Anchorage residents. They are among the handsomest birds to inhabit the far north, their bodies mostly covered by a gray suit of silky feathers, tinted russet about the head. Their feathered finery is further decorated by a tail brightly edged in yellow, a black eye mask, and white-striped wings that bear the small red “wax” bars that give the birds their name.
Beyond that, waxwings sing and talk among themselves in soft, reedy trills that are pleasing to the human ear. When a flock visits the neighborhood, I often stand silently a while, simply to enjoy the music in their voices.
It is an amazing and unforgettable thing, to stand among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of birds as they swirl through one’s own neighborhood, trilling softly yet brightly. To be surrounded by such abundant, spirited life is an absolute treat, a flash of brilliance and hopefulness during the north’s longest, harshest season. No wonder, then, that the waxwings’ short but intense presence here—and my increased awareness of them—has become one of my great pleasures, and comforts, during Alaska’s long winters.
This past summer in Beijing, my coworker initiated a zero waste campaign for the office. Under the campaign, we pledged to live zero waste (or, at least, to consciously minimize our waste to the most practical degree) for as long as we wanted to or could. Zero waste is an ideology that strives to avoid any waste generation that would lead to dumping, landfill or incineration by promoting waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. My coworker was committing to zero waste for a year, a task daunting even to waste reduction believers like myself. I signed up for one week.
Over the course of the week, I collected the disposable trash that I created in a bag. The idea was that a visible volume of waste that we claimed responsibility for would drive us to minimize our waste. This motivation worked. Many interns and I began to bring our own bowls and chopsticks to the convenience store, Lawson’s, to get lunch, instead of using the store’s eagerly distributed plastic containers and disposable chopsticks. We consciously avoided disposable items—or at least delayed them. It took some guilty but practical planning to refrain from counting the large packaging waste from the air filter I had just bought, because I timed my zero waste week to officially start after the purchase, and to withhold from buying pre-packaged items until after the week ended.
The concept of zero waste reinforces the notion that waste must be reduced by consciously changing consumption and resource use patterns.
In the meantime, we tested our creativity and resolution as we wrapped food stall pancakes with handkerchiefs and obstinately said “no” to waiters intent on delivering wrapped utensils and paper napkins. (For suggestions on living zero waste, see blogs such as Trash is for Tossers, Zero Waste Home, Zero Waste Millennial and No Impact Man.) At the end of the week, my bag of disposable waste consisted mostly of tissues and plastic wrappers. I conveniently chose not to include food scraps, which I allotted to our office vermiculture composting bin; nor did I include recyclables, which I trusted the office recycling collection system to sell to recycling companies. Had neither of these systems been in place, my task of waste reduction would assuredly have been more difficult.
My bag of one week’s worth of waste. Image: Briana Liu
The greatest difficulty of our zero waste experience was in our ability to assert the creed of zero waste over the reality of living in an industrial, manufactured world. We watched videos demonstrating how to create toothpaste from baking soda and recalled NGOs organizing citizens to craft soaps from recycled oil. But while quirky and quaint, these DIY activities were neither appealing nor sustainable in the long term. Can we truly reject the convenience and effectiveness of industrial products for homemade ones, especially without undesirable costs of time and energy?
Some zero waste practitioners do commit themselves to self-manufacturing and almost absolute waste avoidance, even at disproportionate costs to efficiency. This is akin to interpreting zero waste in a puritanical sense. But instead of a strict adherence to purging waste altogether, zero waste could be seen as a goal to actively renounce waste whenever possible. Efforts conducted in a zero waste spirit can substantially reduce waste, even if they cannot eliminate waste altogether. Simple actions such as reusing grocery bags, buying in bulk, limiting cleaning products and bringing a reusable bowl to Lawson’s are neither time-consuming nor difficult. They just require a basic awareness of resource consumption, which should prod the brain to spend a few extra seconds contemplating a more sustainable alternative.
Thus, while impractical if taken at face value, the zero waste movement is unequivocally important. Like most movements, beyond behavioral change, a main objective of zero waste is to build awareness. The concept of zero waste reinforces the notion that waste must be reduced by consciously changing consumption and resource use patterns, and not just diverted into various streams of processing, be they recycling or disposal. Whether one decides to commit to zero waste or “a little bit of waste” or “as little waste as possible,” the zero waste ideology will have effectively succeeded in its aim.
A fellow zero waste week participant bringing her own bowl for lunch. Image: Briana Liu
Zero waste as a platform for less waste—and less consumption
As citizens, waste reduction and reuse are the only areas over which we exercise direct control. Once our waste hits the curb or trash can, it is out of our hands. Even in developed countries, we cannot guarantee that our waste is actually recycled in a safe and environmentally friendly manner. Millions of tons of recyclables (frequently mixed with nonrecyclable or hazardous waste) are shipped to China and other developing countries every year, where the voracious appetite exists to recycle and remanufacture them into new products. The conditions under which these waste materials are disassembled, sorted, cleaned, recycled, burnt and disposed are often atrocious, with severe and widespread damage to human health and the surrounding environment. The alternative to recycling is worse. In China, incineration plants and landfills often lack enforcement or formal management. Landfills suffer from overcapacity and insufficient treatment, and incineration plants trudge through the coal-powered burning of large proportions of wet organic matter. The result is a toxic waste system staggering from glut.
Zero waste, as a philosophy and set of life practices, empowers people to exert less strain on this overtaxed system. It encourages people to act within their scope of control and responsibility. By focusing on areas of waste management in which they have direct control and can see tangible impact, people place higher value on waste reduction and reuse. This represents a fundamental shift from the American environmental movement’s widespread obsession with recycling alone.
Critically, attentiveness to the reduction of waste may progress into much needed awareness on limiting consumption. Consumption and waste are, by default, two sides of the same coin. What may seem an obvious solution to the waste problem—consume less—is constantly averted in favor of ways to hide, contain, export, burn and convert waste. But waste and its byproducts don’t just disappear. Recycling waste, no matter in what form, always costs more to the environment and to people than if the waste were not generated in the first place. Similarly, consuming products, no matter how “green” the design, always damages the environment more than if they were not produced for consumption to begin with. This is especially true if our consumption is seen holistically as an intensive process creating huge amounts of waste at each stage in its life cycle, from extraction to manufacturing to distribution to disposal.
Taken more broadly, the concept of zero waste should by no means be limited to its current framing as mostly a municipal solid waste issue. Waste is the residual product of the severely extractive and destructive industry of consumption on resources and life on this planet. Whether waste manifests as municipal solid waste, energy inefficiency, urban sprawl, cancers and extinctions, greenhouse gas emissions, diminishing soil fertility or decay of natural habitat, it is but a product of the unrelenting demands of possession, expansion and consumption that humans make on their environment. I suspect that this aspect of consumption may be overlooked even within the zero waste movement. With so much emphasis on finding less wasteful alternatives and indeed on the tangible end product of waste itself, zero waste enthusiasts may neglect the consumption that begets waste in the first place. The natural and logical extension of zero waste ideology is a critical reevaluation of the necessity and desirability of the consumption rampant in our lives.
Culture and values control the creation of waste
I spent many years of my childhood and young adulthood in Beijing. Living with my grandparents, I learned that nothing should be wasted. We reused old socks as cleaning rags, refashioned corn husks as oil absorbents for dirty plates, and refilled jars with jams or spices unrelated to what was advertised on their labels. Occasionally, peddlers would stop in the courtyard and we would bring them some newspaper or cardboard, which they would carefully weigh and collect, giving us a few yuan in exchange for the bundle. This was the face of recycling in China.
This form of household reuse and informal recycling constituted an important pillar of waste management in urban China. Since then, cities have exploded in size, and people’s pockets have grown heavier. So, too, have the piles of waste weighing on city infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, people are not only buying and throwing away more, they are also growing increasingly reliant on disposable goods. What is more troublesome than growing rates of unrecyclable and unrecycled trash is the tendency for people to no longer regard throwing out reusable things as wasteful. It is this change in attitude that has, more than anything, created the slew of waste in which we currently live. My grandfather balks at the plates of food left to waste on restaurant and cafeteria tables. Most don’t bat an eye. I remember a campaign that I started on Peking University’s campus two years ago, where people pledged to commit to one environmentally friendly practice. There was a board with suggestions, including many surrounding resource efficiency and waste reduction. It was remarkable that many people, after glancing it over, concluded that they already do most of the practices in their everyday lives. Their comments reflect that though the average Chinese level of waste is nowhere close to American standards, the baseline for what is considered wasteful is rapidly changing. With plastered slogans and advertisements calling loudly for citizens to conserve more and waste less, one wonders if people truly know how to take those actions anymore.
A site for imported waste from developed countries in the countryside near Foshan, China. Image: Briana LiuA credit card—the key to consumption—now reduced to waste. Image: Briana Liu
Waste institutions depend on people
Many would call for government to take a greater role in establishing a system for waste reduction, reuse, composting and recycling. This is no doubt essential. Cities such as San Francisco, the city closest to achieving zero waste, and Capannori and Contarina, two Italian cities making remarkable progress towards zero waste, treat waste management as a system that takes into account the whole of the product life cycle. However, for governmental efforts to succeed, it is critical that citizens accept responsibility for their waste and act upon this responsibility. They can choose to reduce wasteful consumption, or to at least try to recycle and properly dispose of waste. Waste institutions founder without citizen engagement and support. The success of zero waste thus hinges on civic advocacy and education about waste. It is a task that most developing country governments are hard-pressed to accomplish. From international organizations such as the Zero Waste International Alliance to local NGOs carrying out initiatives on community recycling, the nongovernmental sector has been struggling to fill the leadership void in reversing the tide of unsustainable consumption and waste disposal. Central to this struggle is redefining our notion of what is waste. What can be reused or recycled, and what is needed in the first place, stems from our very perception of objects and resources. Zero waste proves its value in forcing us to reevaluate the materialism in our lives—and in challenging us to do without.
A review of Ecological Mediations, by Dr. Karan R Aggarwala, Xlibris, 2010.
The sciences meet the arts in the poetic renderings of Dr. Karan Aggarwala’s 2010 collection, Ecological Mediations(Xlibris). An optometrist by training, Dr. Aggarwala’s poetic view of the world reflects years of science met with a holistic ecological view of the mechanisms of our world. His inspiration draws clearly from personal experiences and stories of his family. He writes his heart on the page, without frivolous language or construction. This clear-cut style serves as the connecting force for the wide-reaching themes of the collection.
I am a man the day I feel
responsible for my thoughts, feelings, and actions;
my past, present and future.
(excerpt from “Twenty-one”, pg. 169)
One of the interesting highlights from this collection is the way that Aggarwala views humanity and the human experience as not only a connection between family, friends, and other physical beings, but also as an ephemeral experience that questions the role of spirituality and religion in the position of humans in the natural environment. Aggarwala’s style does not lean toward pushing religious agenda but gives pause and consideration to the way that spirituality can connect people with their purpose, their family, and their environment. Each poem in the collection holds its weight as a stand-alone story that paints a picture of moments in a person’s life. They don’t have to be connected, or even feel related, but Aggarwala’s words paint the picture of a whole, holistic life through unrelated experiences that continue to build a full picture of what it means to be human in an ecological environment that calls for cooperation and coexistence that is constantly taken for granted. This collection does not take that connection lightly and works to build moments into the collection that remind the audience of a forgotten connection to their peaceful and tenuous world.
Given was I instead,
a universe of inter-related cells and tissues,
that work in harmony only so long
as I want them to.
(excerpt from “My territory”, pg. 28)
Aggarwala’s medical background shines through as a new view on a very essential connection between the human experience and the natural world. The structure of the poems in this collection highlight the harmony of the human body in a world that can be affected by beauty, disease, climate, and physical breakdown. Poems such as “Confused with” and “My territory” connect the ideas of the ethereal found in religion with the relation of cells and physical beings. The medical technicality of Aggarwala’s clear knowledge does not weigh the piece down and instead builds an interesting view into physical action and movement that could easily be missed by everyday readers. Highlighting these biological moments adds another layer to the hope and the connectivity that holds the collection together as a body of work.
Ecological Mediations is a conglomeration of many themes and feelings that ring true for our current world that thrives on corrupting our ecological beauty and resources. Aggarwala is able to commiserate with and appreciate the natural world, both for the way that it truly is and for the way that humans sometimes trick themselves into believing it is.
The style of these works, as a whole, plays with the line between attract and destruction as humans interact with their surroundings in a way that creates ecological and emotional drain. Each poem creates an individualized space to question what it means to be human, to interact with the natural world, and to search for meaning through interpersonal relationships and connections to a feeling of world religion.
Good things there are
many more to do;
for some of these callings
we are relying on you.
(excerpt from “Message for Jyoti”, pg. 132)
With the state of the world as it is, I find comfort in reading the original spaces that Aggarwala has created as a selection of independently impactful poems. The collection does not feel like it is meant to be read from start to finish as a narrative parade of poems. Instead, Aggarwala’s attention to sculpting individual spaces serves as a reflection of the way humans feel multiplicity, always searching for a new way to see, imagine, and connect.
The right of people to freely move, interact, work, and associate should not be at the expense of wildlife to thrive. It should complement their right to a clean, safe, and productive environment.
Since 2013, the government of Kenya has laid out extensive expansion plans for the city’s transport infrastructure. Nairobi County’s strategy lays out a progressive framework that has seen the introduction of Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRTS), the standard gauge railway, connectors, and the expansion of several other feeder roads. The 2006-2025 Master Plan of the Nairobi Metropolitan Area also portrays Nairobi as a globally significant and accessible city with modernized transport systems. The World Bank reports indicate that Nairobi residents spend an average of one hour to commute to and from their workplaces, a delay the government approximates costs 58 million Kshs (about 5.8M USD) per day. About 12 percent of the residents use private cars while the rest prefer public means, which puts pressure on the city’s transport systems. To increase efficiency and minimize related economic strain, the government has rolled out various road infrastructural projects throughout the city. Most of these, however, cause immeasurable ecological harm to available urban green spaces.
The most recent development in this quest for an interlinked, faster, and efficient movement of people and goods within the city is the construction of a four-lane thoroughfare aimed at connecting Nairobi’s Westland area and the iconic Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The 62 billion Kshs (about 6.2 million USD) expressway activated by the China Road and Bridge Corporation will also serve residents of Mlolongo and fasten the time taken to reach the international departure station. The construction follows a green light from the country’s National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), which conducted an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment of the then proposed urban infrastructure. Once completed, the expressway will ease the flow of traffic as travelers will not have to go through the city’s central business district to catch their flights. However, the environmental harm caused by this project is large-scale and somewhat irreversible.The environmental and social impact report of the enhancement of road A104 from James Gichuru road junction to Rironi indicated that contractors needed to clear trees and other vegetation for the multimillion-dollar project to take place, resulting in loss of habitat and biodiversity. Other negative environmental impacts of the road construction outlined in the report included contamination of soil and water resources, soil erosion at road reserve, and increased waste generation.
Road developers of the Nairobi Express way from Mlolongo to James Gichuru earmarked sections of vital public green spaces like Uhuru Park and Nairobi Arboretum, and trees that host birds around Westlands and Nyayo stadium roundabouts, for clearance. In a set of conditions provided by NEMA in March 2020, the authority advised the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) to mitigate the damage by planting trees in all affected spaces. The CRBC was also expected to clean the areas of the Nairobi river over which the road would cross. NEMA did not, however, give clear communication on whether the Chinese contractor should replace the mostly indigenous trees with similar ones. My common observation over the years has been that road builders often replace indigenous vegetation with exotic grass and trees species, and ornamental plants.
To the astonishment of conservationists and concerned residents of Nairobi, the Kenya National Highway Authority (KeNHA) had confirmed last month that it would uproot an iconic fig tree that that has been sitting pretty at the crossway between Waiyaki Way and Mpaka Road for over 100 years. This news elicited demonstrations from groups of environmental activists, calling the government to consider biodiversity in its quest for modernization of the transport systems. In a news conference held on Wednesday this week, the director general of the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS), General Mohammed Badi, assured the public that the iconic tree will stay put in its current place. While visiting the site where the gigantic tree exists, General Badi said he was working on a Presidential declaration to preserve the famed tree.
The spectacular tree, estimated to be the height of a four-storey building, will be adopted by the Nairobi Metropolitan Services. The Nairobi boss further instructed the environmental department to erect a fence as a protection measure to ensure Nairobian continue to enjoy its presence. He also vowed to “recover Nairobi’s lost green spaces”. While this breathed a sign of relief to many and a clear show of a battle won, many other green areas in the city have already gone under the wrath of builder’s axe and irreversible damage witnessed.
Growing up, I was always welcomed to Nairobi with extensive roadside green spaces full of trees and life. The stretch between Uthiru and Westlands had well-preserved tree lines that truly depicted Nairobi as the Green City Under the Sun. It was always refreshing to have this feeling before you go deep into the noisy and busy estates that form the city. The story of the Nairobi green reception area has since changed. The expansion of the Nairobi-Nakuru
Highway has entailed massive vegetation loss with minimum to no replacement done so far.
Such unprecedented habitat fragmentation has a far-reaching contribution to biodiversity loss. Isolation of animal and bird species often makes them vulnerable to predation. Displaced animals may also find it hard to adapt to new surroundings. Woodland-dependent species of animals may find it difficult to settle in fragmented patches of landscapes. Subdivision of breeding areas also disrupts natural mating patterns, which eventually affects the flow of genes within a species. Residents of Nairobi are denied their fundamental right to access to a clean and healthy environment when ecosystems are destroyed or fragmented, as they are unable to function optimally.
Nairobi’s river ecology is not spared. The Express Way will traverse over rivers Nairobi and Ngong. In its impact assessment report, NEMA indicated that the road contractor should ensure that sections of the river over which the road will pass are cleaned. While this sounds like a glimpse of the right thing to be done, it is unclear whether the “cleaning” process will mitigate all the harm caused by construction on the rivers’ structure and functionality.
Nairobi’s population, which is about 4.4 million people, is expected to double in the next 50 years. The projected increase dictates the need to conserve the few green spaces available in the city. Conservation organizations such as the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network, Wangari Maathai Foundation, Natural Justice, Wildlife Direct, and the Green Belt Movement have been at the forefront of opposing the construction of the expressway as initially planned, citing the adverse impact on the city’s ecological spaces. In June 2020, a petition was filed in court under the umbrella of the Daima consortium, propelling NEMA to adequately involve the public before approving the construction of the expressway.
An initial statement released by the government in 2019 indicated that Uhuru Park, the largest, historical, and most preferred public spaces, was to lose about a 23 meters thick stretch to the road. We will keep a keen eye on it to see if the current construction will tamper with this central park. Our freedom fighters and environmental defenders like Professor Wangari Maathai fought to have these spaces protected from degradation, grabbers, and encroachment. The milestone makes Uhuru Park a national symbol of freedom and the power that people have in standing for their ecological rights. We must fight to ensure that the legacy is maintained and that future generations enjoy their right to the ecosystem services provided by these spaces.
The Kenyan presidential declaration on the iconic urban tree, in the possession of the author.
The four million Kenyans who currently live in Nairobi depend on forested areas such as recreational parks to relax, appreciate the city’s beauty, and catch some fresh air. Nature lovers find green spaces such as the Nairobi Arboretum, City park, Karura forest, and Ngong Road forest perfect hideouts and ideal for cycling, birdwatching, and meditation. Living in one of the busiest, hence polluted, cities in Africa, these green spaces absorb a considerable amount of smoke, dust, and other harmful air particles.
The $467M Southern Bypass that left sections of the once pristine Ngong Road Forest cleared is another visible case of how Nairobi lost some of its urban biodiversity. Ngong Road forest, a once continuous and thriving urban natural ecosystem with endless varieties of trees and a host to a myriad species of birds and animals, was fragmented into five sections. The forest is the only true indigenous forest in the county and hosts the near-threatened African Crown Eagle as one of its key bird species. There have been efforts by multiple role players to recover the tree cover lost due to the construction of the Southern Bypass. However, the conversion of interior habitats into road-edge habitats means the ecosystem can no longer function as efficiently as it used to. The 30 km road has had visible habitat fragmentation that points to an immediate impact of wildlife dislocation and isolation, and an undocumented probability of local extirpations.
Development that is informed by the density of cars in the city is unsustainable. Nairobi’s population will continue to steadily rise, creating an endless need for additional infrastructure and other social amenities. Young people, together with other stakeholders, should help the government urgently explore mechanisms of improving road transport using the available space, without the need to put pressure on existing green spaces. Contractors must urgently prioritize innovative ways of maintaining the integrity of green spaces, reducing dependency on private cars, and incorporating sustainability into road plans. It is becoming increasingly important for commuters to consider carpooling to access work, recreation, and shopping. Fewer cars on the road will always reduce demand for the expansion of road infrastructure. I encourage the use of more sustainable modes of transport, such as cycling, that do not need large spaces of land.
The construction of a standard gauge railway (SGR) right through the Nairobi National Park is another clear illustration of how the government of Kenya has its priorities twisted. Nairobi National Park, an extensive natural space of its kind in the world is now battling a myriad of challenges, including invasive species. It is estimated that the park lost about 100 acres of conservation land to the multibillion gigantic transport project. This is a considerable amount of conservation land to lose, considering the park is only 117 km2. The already vulnerable ecosystem was divided by the railway line into two sections. The deliberate disruption of the continuous flow of the park poses a threat of confining animals in certain areas, an element that is likely to promote inbreeding and ecosystem imbalance. Reducing the size of the park will escalate human-wildlife conflicts.
The Environmental Impact Assessment report, conducted only after a public outcry, did not adequately cover the potential ecological impacts of the project in the park. Efforts by environmentalists against the railway line passing through the park were unsuccessful. One of the most memorable moments in my life was taking a signed petition to the national parliament of Kenya and the headquarters of the Kenya Railway Corporation. We also held demonstrations to urge the government to consider re-routing the railway line. All in vain.
The right of people to freely move, interact, work, and associate should not be at the expense of wildlife to thrive. It should complement their right to a clean, safe, and productive environment. Nairobi’s urban infrastructure development has proven that political priorities are more economical than ecological, which could affect the city’s functionality in the long term. The County Government of Nairobi should evaluate their infrastructural development priorities and consider the sustainability of its green spaces.
What we choose to name and the names we choose to remember, for the places, people and things around us, says a great deal about what is important to us. It is commonly said, and accurately so I believe, that we will not care about what we do not recognize.
That we increasingly lack the ability to recognize and name the common species and plants and animals around us is commonly acknowledged. My own work confirms this, as for several years we administered a “what is this” slideshow to my students that generated disappointing outcomes. Very common species of birds, trees, and plants went largely unrecognized. Only a handful were able to recognize a silver-spotted skipper, a very common and visually distinctive butterfly, but many proclaimed it to be a Monarch butterfly (which I came to conclude was virtually the only species of butterfly that Americans seem to know, if incorrectly, and can come up with).
Red Banded Hairstreak. Photo: Tim Beatly
Native Virginians taking my visual survey had a hard time recognizing their state insect (only a handful could), the visually spectacular and quite distinctive eastern tiger swallowtail, and only a few could identify the female of our state bird, the cardinal (not the bright red of the male that most everyone knows). What’s important is not that the images are of species that are in some way “official” flora or fauna, but that they are so common. These students had a good chance of having seen these animals on the way to the class in which they took this quiz. While many respondents (they were largely students) generally didn’t do very well in recognizing the plants and animals, they were themselves sweetly alarmed at this. On the answer form I had a number of students express some sense of being sorry or being disappointed in themselves for not being able to recognize these images. I had comments like “I’m embarrassed about how few birds I can identify,” and “I’m sorry, I just don’t know.” There was not a blasé attitude about this, but, encouragingly, a sense of genuine concern about how they fared on this unusual test.
Photo: Tim Beatly
Other studies have reached similar conclusions about our limited ability to identify common species of flora and fauna (e.g. Cassidy, 2008). Andrew Balmford and his colleagues at Cambridge famously designed a flashcard experiment that found children much better able to identify Pokémon characters than native species of plants and animals, leading them to conclude: “it appears that conservationists are doing less well than the creators of Pokémon at inspiring interest in their subjects: during their primary school years, children apparently learn far more about Pokémon than about their native wildlife and enter secondary school being able to name less than 50% of common wildlife types” (Balmford, et al, 2002). “People care about what they know,” Balmford et al conclude, something I agree, and these findings do not bode well for future conservation, urban or otherwise.
Perhaps this paucity of natural history knowledge is just a symptom of the times, of our profound disconnect from place, land, history. Our knowledge of the natural environments and landscapes in which we live is limited to nil and our direct experience of it ever more infrequent. We have limited understanding of where and how food is produced, how and from where water and energy arrive at our homes, and little sense of where the many wastes that we generate end up. We buy houses and make real estate investments, but we don’t join communities or neighborhoods. We don’t understand ourselves as creatures of actual places, embedded within and caring about landscapes and communities, but rather as temporary occupants, in a kind of ephemeral “holding in place pattern”, with seemingly little interest in or commitment to where we actually are. Contemporary American culture makes deep understanding of actual places and the people and nature that inhabit them difficult, to be sure. Children seem especially disconnected today, suffering from what Richard Louv has termed “nature-deficit disorder.” Kids today are more likely to know about African elephants or Bengel tigers than local flora and fauna, and better able, moreover, to recognize the ubiquitous corporate symbols (McDonalds, or Target) than an indigenous species of dragonfly or wildflower (I have written extensively elsewhere about this trend in Beatley, 2005).
Similarly, other forms of local knowledge seem supplanted by the more generic, the more general, the globalized and universal. Few here in Central Virginia know much about our traditional regional foods, for instance, apple butter or sourwood honey. “Is there really more than one kind of honey?” is not an unusual view to hold. Our understanding of place histories appears in most cases shallow indeed, and where at least some of the contours of this history (geologic, economic, cultural) are widely known, often lacking is an appreciation for the complexity and nuanced nature of that history. Historical knowledge is shockingly limited, simplistic and often just plain wrong.
The value of naming?
Why should we worry about the ability to name birds and trees and plants? What does knowing the name of a common local species indicate or suggest. Why does it matter at all?
I think there are several important reasons to hope for an urban populace and citizenry that can at least recognize common species. Partly I am concerned because naming implies claiming—not in the private property sense, but in the sense of seeing and perceiving something as being profoundly a part of the community of life of which we are a part. For something to exist in our human field of perception, it must be nameable.
The ability to attach a name to something seen in the landscape is critical for a number of reasons. Naming and recalling names implies a profound familiarity, and a recognition. To make the human parallel, my calling you by your name imparts a familiarity, an intimacy, and attaches a level of significance, importance, or attention that without a name is diminished.
A booklet of plant species names. Photo: Tim Beatly
A species common name often carries with it its own built-in trigger to stimulate the next set of questions, such as “how does this species live?” Trap door spiders indeed construct tunnels with camouflaged and silk-hinged trap doors that they can swing open to capture prey in response to insect vibrations. The biology of this fascinating creature, while of course more complex, is conveyed by its common name.
The words we attach to things are important on many levels. They signal the ways we interface and interact with the things—animate and inanimate—around us. Just as our ability to call a person by his or her name personalizes that individual, indicates a level of care and familiarity, our ability to name things in our larger place community must have the same psychological effect. The naming patterns of native peoples contrasts significantly with the Western European settlers, with a high density of names and naming that captures and conveys a special depth of knowledge and nuance.
When I visit a favorite nearby forest, and hear the lovely trill of a Northern Flicker, there is an emotional connection from that recognition that should not be undervalued. I know when I hear that distinctive rattle, I look around, searching for that wonderful, magical living creature with which we share the audible and physical spaces of the city.
Learning as much as we can about the nature around us is also arguably an element of basic citizenship—a necessary step in learning about and respecting the co-inhabitants of a biodiverse city.
Recalling names may be important for other reasons. Being able to recall the name of a species of fish, a type of rock, a valley or landscape or a human-designed structure, helps us to organize and remember information about these things: details and stories, and recollections, that further deepens our connection and ultimately our caring about them. Names then are sort of like place-holders; they provide us the opportunity to share and call forth additional texture and meaning.
Naming adds immensely to our enjoyment of the natural areas we visit in cities, and in the process of naming and recognizing, there is the development of a kind of nature competency that is at once rewarding and enjoyable, and imparts an important element of meaning to life.
Names as passwords to our hearts?
I’m certainly not the only one to wonder what limited knowledge and limited ability to identify things might bode for the future of community and environment. Paul Gruchow, a notable Midwest writer and essayist, has been one of the most eloquent of observers. He tells the humorous story, in his book Grass Roots, of the local town weed inspector who arrives at his home, in response to a neighbor’s complaint about an unkempt yard, only to be unable to identify any of the offending plants and shrubs in the yard (all of which Gruchow knew, and knew well).
More disturbing to Gruchow was the nature walk to a nearby lake he took a group of high school seniors, with similar inability to name or recognize the most common of Midwestern plants. Gruchow eloquently connects this to love, that essential thing that binds and connects us to one another and to the places and natural environments that make up our home.
“Can you,” Gruchow asked those high school seniors, “imagine a satisfactory love relationship with someone whose name you do not know? I can’t. It is perhaps the quintessentially human characteristic that we cannot know or love what we have not named. Names are passwords to our hearts, and it is there, in the end, that we will find the room for a whole world.”
Passwords indeed. They have become mysterious, unknowable passwords, that unlock intimate relationships that we have lost and are losing.
Now there are certainly many obstacles here and I am aware of the practical limitations of recognizing and naming more species. There are more than 10,000 species of moths native to North America, for instance, many quite small and hard to distinguish from one another, unless you are an amateur or professional lepidopterist. Much of our biodiversity in cities is difficult to see, of course, because it is very small, or is nocturnal. There are typically on the order of 40 or 50 species of ants in a typical American city, with a few common species that residents are most likely to come in contact with, but closely watching ants, and with an ability to analyze their anatomy sufficient to identify them can be challenging.
And we have been a culture that celebrates mobility and moving-on: the species and biodiversity of Los Angeles will be different than in Louisville, making it difficult to build up a deeper competency and personal knowledge base if one moves around a lot.
There are many other ways in which our contemporary approaches to names and naming raise questions about connections with nature in cities. We name many things in the human world, from sports arenas to automobiles, and often there are missed opportunities to name in ways that foster connections and impart knowledge about our natural environments. I have often thought that more could be done to tie our naming practices and protocols to the actual environments and landscapes in which we live.
Go Blatterworts!
Several years ago, in an effort to understand how schools tend to select the names of their mascots, I went in search a few statewide lists of high school mascots, to see the range of mascot choices, and if there were some more frequently chosen than others. A full list of high school mascot names for Illinois, for instance, was quite telling. There are some 27 high schools in Illinois (at least at that time) with “eagles” as their mascot, 23 that are the “tigers.” Most use one from a small pool of common mascot names—trojans, titans, hornets, lions, cougars, to name a few—that often have no particular connection to place, and no reference to native fauna or flora. Many of these choices represent species (if they are real at all) that are rather unlikely to be sighted locally. A sampling of Chicago area high schools includes cobras, golden tigers, mustangs and dolphins. One is (hopefully) not likely to encounter a cobra on a patch of green anywhere in the Chicago region, but perhaps has the desired effort of instilling fear in one’s basketball or football opponents.
Some of these Illinois mascot names are, to be sure, distinctive and some rather humorous—the Coalers from Coal city, the Appleknockers from Cobden, the Cornjerkers from Hoopeston. But there’s still a missed opportunity.
In recent presentations I have been challenging my audiences to imagine school mascots that might build on local biodiversity, especially plants, as a way of moving us towards a new nature and place sensibility. I usually offer some tongue-in-cheek examples: perhaps the Charlottesville hooded pitcher plants, or the Potomac painted trilliums, or the Albemarle Eastern Blue Curls, or perhaps the Lexington long bristled smartweeds. My all-time favorite imagined mascot is the Herndon Horned Blatterworts. “Go Blatterworts,” I’m not sure how this would sound at a track meet or incorporated into a cheerleading cheer, but it would certainly attract some attention, and I suspect residents would (begin) to at least know something about this plant. Would athletic jerseys be able to accommodate the “Johnson City Jack-in-the Pulpits.” This is not clear, so maybe this is a problem I need to work through.
While these suggestions for mascots usually get some laughs, there are legitimate and real issues here for us to consider. Partly out of expedience, and partly from a lack of imagination, many schools end up with bland (safe?) emblems and names that help to further extend and expand the patterns of sameness.
The names we choose for new buildings and public facilities are often equally telling. And what a different message this name sends than what is the increasingly common practice of naming dorms and buildings after large university donors. Everything in the modern university seems a commercial opportunity to raise money in these cash-strapped times. I find much in Michael Sandel’s critique of the application of market values to every aspect of our lives (see his terrific book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, 2012), including the naming of buildings and public spaces, notably sports arenas. While naming a dorm after a millionaire alumnus, or increasingly after a corporate sponsor, might serve to generate cash in hard times, naming after a local plant seems to help in not insignificant ways to counterbalance the otherwise ubiquitous messaging of what is valuable and important in the world.
Some interesting, though not perfect, examples can be cited of efforts to seize these naming opportunities on behalf of the natural world. When I issued my challenge about naming a school mascot after a plant at a recent talk in Arizona, I received an email on efforts there (Arizona State University) to rename the buildings in a dorm complex after local native plants. ASU students were given some options and asked to vote on possible plant names. Eventually the following seven were chosen as dorm names, all native flora: Chuparosa, Fluffgrass, Jojoba Bush, Wooly Daisy, Devil’s Claw, Fairy Duster and Golden eye. A positive and helpful step to take, especially in a city and a part of the world that in particular has lost any real connection to its natural setting, the effort has been belittled a bit by the students. Writing in the ASU newspaper, student Christopher Drexel has a humorous take, yet a serious concern about the chosen name (Drexel, 2006):
“But does anyone really want to live in Wooly Daisy Hall? It sounds funny on paper, but think of the poor saps—no pun intended—that will actually have to call the buildings home. What if you’re hosting your buddy from out of town and show him around old Chuparosa? What about if you’re bringing a member of the opposite sex back to your pad to hang out, only your pad is called Fluffgrass? What if your parents come in for family weekend and find you sleeping in Jojoba Bush. It would be embarrassing, plain and simple.”
This particular student, furthermore, rails at the University’s rule, the idea that such a practice of the Arizona-specific naming of buildings would be mandated. I must say that my immediate response to the student’s plea above is to say emphatically, “Yes, I would love to live in Wooly Daisy dorm”—it would sure beat many (most) of the alternatives.
Cynically, today much of the practice of naming buildings is about money: who has given it, and what it can buy. At a typical university today, the stadium, or dorm, or even a single classroom, often carries a donor’s name. That kind of recognition may or may not be deserved, but the message is clear—money and wealth are important, this is what we prize and honor and value, and will acknowledge. Such accolades and attention, moreover, are buyable and salable. The ecological naming practices that I have in mind send a different kind of message, I believe.
Sometimes, of course, efforts to apply names of natural and landscape features to built projects falls flat and seems hollow. Naming that new housing subdivision after the farm or forest that was destroyed to build the neighborhood is more an exercise in cynicism. But sometimes names like this can send helpful place cues that educate and orient. In my own city, there is a 1960’s shopping area Meadow Creek Shopping Center, a reference to the stream that runs through and around this site, and can still be found in a more open form just a few hundred feet away.
Photo: Tim Beatly
Understanding our local flora and fauna, being able to recognize and identify it is important indeed, recognizing the value of it to us, the importance and the esteem with which we hold it, are valuable alternative messages, made the more potent in this era of hyper-materialism. And if the dorm name elicits a “giggle,” so be it. It provides a point of conversation, a learning opportunity, a chance for some to point out the need to better understand the other creatures and life forms that co-occupy the landscape with us and upon whom we depend for so much.
I also wonder if a shift away from naming practices that celebrate the predatory and violent in nature, towards the deeper fascinating biology of place, would help in other ways. Perhaps one less high school supports team imagining victory and success in some other way than through gladiators and titans, in this way, the eastern grey tree frogs, or wooly daisies, might help to foster a gentler, less violent society (though to be sure, nature has its share of predation and fury). So much of the treatment of nature in the popular press is sensationalist and single-dimensional—emphasizing the fear of animals, whether bats that might carry rabies, or sharks or coyotes. The messaging is be careful, fearful, there is danger here, not wonder, not fascinating life-cycles or biology.
Not long ago I had the great privilege of interviewing Vandana Shiva, prominent Indian scientist, activist and environmentalist. She strongly believes that the language we choose sends important messages, often as at a deep psychological level. Our words send clear messages, and influence how we think as well. Shiva says: “Language shapes your imagination, not just communication.” She does not like the word “food chains,” for instance, because it reminds her of slavery, and so she prefers food webs, which better conveys the interconnected nature of our food relationships. She observes the brutal, violent names that companies like Monsanto give to their herbicides: “machete,” “squadron,” “avenge.” Our choice of names sends signals, but also shapes us and our relationships to nature in deep ways.
They are very important for many reasons, and part and parcel of our larger concern about (and remedies to) our disconnection from place and environment. Place and building names convey, or have the potential to convey messages, societal cues and signals about what is important.
An urban culture that values seeing and recognizing the nature around us?
What can or should be done to help kids and adults alike to advance or foster a culture and urban context within which we recognize (many) local species and are able to add them to our personal realm of community?
Starting at an early age, and conveying (parents, grandparents, neighborhoods) the message wherever we can, that recognition of and ideally knowing at least the common name of local species is valuable, important and rewarding—something worth doing, for a host of good reasons, including lifelong personal enjoyment and satisfaction.
Truth be known, it is less important to know the name than to recognize the species, and most important to care about and show interest in the nature around us—evidencing the spirit of wonder and curiosity (though again the former helps to cultivate the latter). In this way I agree with Rachel Carson’s eloquent call for parents to demonstrate this interest in nature even when they may lack the specific knowledge about the species and its biology. As she says so eloquently,
“It is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow” (Carson, 1956, p.46).
There are many things we might do to make this recognition easier. Clever and effective signage in parks and other public spaces would be helpful. We should also extend these educational and interpretative opportunities beyond the usual places—what might one see while waiting for the bus, or walking to the grocery store, or in the neighborhood cemetery?
Schools could play a greater role here. Several years ago I had the chance to visit an impressive elementary school in Western Australia, where birds and plants and other indigenous flora and fauna had been integrated into the curriculum of the school. At Noranda Primary School, several things stood out. First, it had behind it a rather large, restored bushland, an area of native gums and grass trees, and a place where students were likely to visit at some point during the day during their math or science classes. Many students there were even more deeply involved, participating in an after-school club called Bush Wardens. And most impressively students in all grades were exposed to a curriculum that involved learning about (and recognizing) the native plants and animals around them. I was surprised in seeing the guidebook used by the teachers that students would be expected to recognize common species of trees and birds, many of which would be typically seen on a stroll through the school’s backyard bushland park.
Photo: Tim Beatly
Being able to recognize and differentiate different species of gum trees is viewed, in this school anyway, as a necessary and important competency for students to develop. And the school had another important asset in in this task, the small area of natural bush behind the school where students and classes frequently visit, and where lessons in many subjects from mathematics to science to English find useful application in the bush.
Every city must provide abundant opportunities to participate in outdoor nature activities that help to build up interest and competencies and knowledge of the species around them. From birding clubs to neighborhood nature family adventure clubs to Bio-Blitzes that engage children and adults alike in the discovery and recording of nature, there are many news ways in which kids and adults alike can develop these recognition skills. Active assistance and coaching are helpful, as in programs like the Seattle Aquarium’s Beach Naturalist Program—some 200 citizen volunteers who, once having gone through training, spend time on the City’s shoreline parks, during low-tides, helping citizens to recognize and understand the amazing marine life that appears then. In the spring and summer of 2012, according to Janice Mathisen, who runs the program, these volunteer naturalists, wearing distinctive vests and red hats, provided information in more than 37,000 contacts with park visitors.
New citizen science initiatives further help in this way. For instance, the School of Ants, which encourages the identification and collection of ant species around the country, something greatly aided by a terrific online guide to identifying ants. The latter, a kind of flow chart for identifying key physical differences between common ant species, becomes an important tool for moving beyond simply “ants” to a richer, fuller understanding of at least some of the different species of ants, that co-occupy urban spaces.
Perhaps every home or apartment ought to come equipped with an insect aspirator—a funny device with a tube for sucking ants or other insects into a plastic or glass cylinder, making their identification much easier. And what else do we need? Certainly a good set of guidebooks near the window, perhaps a microscope at the ready.
Indeed this is one important measure, I believe, of a biophilic city—the extent and diversity of the opportunities and enticements to enjoy and learn about the nature around. From official fungi forays to classes in animal tracking, there are many ways that cities can foster and facilitate these intimate connections with the natural world.
Photo: Tim Beatly
New technologies and applications may of course help us here as well. I-birds and I-trees that make it easier and quicker to identify birds and trees. Sound-recognition apps might make it possible to wave a phone and immediately recognize the organism creating a sound, whether a bird or a snail. But one wonders, of course, about the overreliance on these new technologies, and if they will make it too “easy”, in a sense, something like the way GPS has made it easier to bypass learning about actual geography and physical orientation of a place.
There will be particular moments in life when people may be much more open to listening and watching, and learning the names of species around them. Moving to a new home, and a new neighborhood, might be one of these opportunities and I have long advocated for a kind of “ecological owner’s manual” that new occupants would be encouraged to read at least as closely as the manual about the new dishwasher or the garage door opener. These are opportunities when it might be possible to convince people that they should understand their new “home” in a broader sense—in terms of its biology and biodiversity, in terms of the watershed in which the house and yard sit, and, yes, in terms of an ability and to recognize and name the fellow creatures, those other neighbors, who are as much a part of your new home.
How many highways are named for the things they ruin? And how many places in New York are named after people made money from slavery? A lot, it turns out.
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 visit my parents in Pennsylvania.
Photo of Maj Deegan Expwy by Rebecca Bratspies
I would grumble (ok, curse) and ask, “who was that Major Deegan anyway.” Finally sick of my whining, Allen said “why don’t you find out.” Out of that casual challenge, a hobby was born—finding out about the lives behind the names that adorned so much infrastructure in New York City. Major Deegan was first, but I soon became hooked on this whimsical pathway into the history of the City I love.
One thing led to another, and I became a local world’s expert on New York City’s named roads, bridges, and institutions. People would ask me questions, and before I could stop myself, I would be giving mini-lectures on New York history. Nobody likes a know-it-all, so I learned to focus on the soundbites. Did you know that the Outerbridge Crossing was named after a person named Outerbridge? That the New York Times called Van Wyck “the most corrupt mayor in New York City history“? That the Holland Tunnel was named after its Chief Engineer? That Gracie was business partners with Alexander Hamilton? That Peter Cooper invented Jell-O? There are fascinating life stories behind each one of the names that have become New York City’s urban short-hand for traffic jams, culture, and recreation.
I started this book in 2014 after Allen suffered a catastrophic cardiac arrest. He was in the hospital for 6+ months, with the first month in a coma hanging between life and death. I had no emotional energy for my usual environmental scholarship, but desperately needed a project to keep me mentally engaged as I sat by his bedside. Working on this book was a way to connect with our past as I waited to see if he would recover. That story has multiple happy endings. Although he has limitations, he made a truly miraculous recovery and is even able to compose again. And. . . I wrote a book.
I was having a hard time starting this blog post. Since the academy is all in a tizzy about AI, I asked ChatGPT to write an essay about the sustainability lessons from how we name infrastructure in New York City after famous people. Here is how the AI post began:
“New York City is one of the most iconic cities in the world, and as such, its streets, monuments, and landmarks have been given names that reflect its history, culture, and values. From the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, the names of many of New York City’s most famous places commemorate the individuals and events that have shaped the city’s history.”
Not a bad start. Sort of. If you ignore that, unlike so much of New York City’s infrastructure, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building are not actually named after individuals or events.
Rather than relying on technology, I preferred to rely on my network of friends and colleagues.
His brother, author and artist Jeff LaGreca made the book’s fantastically silly trailer.
Environmental reporter Andy Revkin and environmental educator Lisa Mechaley graciously consented to be among the book’s earliest readers. For a book blurb, Andy wrote:
“In the rush of daily life, we tend to traverse our communities with little awareness of the visions, struggles and travails of those who shaped vital structures or whose lives are memorialized in their names. For the world’s greatest metropolis, Rebecca Bratspies has helped fill that awareness gap by crafting an illuminating guide to the people behind New York City’s transportation, recreational and institutional landmarks.”
He and Lisa shared that they “always joke ruefully about how many parkways are named for the things they ruin.” Their examples—the Hutchinson River Parkway and the Sawmill River Parkway—both of which cut off community access to the rivers. Moreover, the salting of these roads, not to mention the traffic they create, contributes significantly to air and water pollution that drives a host of health impacts in the surrounding community.
Aside from the fact that my friends are far more talented and insightful than any AI could ever dream of becoming, this project taught me two important lessons about urban sustainability.
First, that no amount of road construction will ever solve the problems of congestion. The justifications for the Holland Tunnel, the Goethals Bridge, and the Pulaski Skyway in the 1920s, and for the Van Wyck in the 1950s was to alleviate congestion from automobiles. These names are now synonymous with congestion. This lesson is critical as we consider the role of public transportation, and ongoing proposals to expand the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the New Jersey Turnpike leading to the Holland Tunnel―you guessed it, to alleviate congestion. Initiatives to reduce private automobile travel through congestion pricing are far more likely to succeed. After years of wrangling, New York finally seems poised to implement congestion pricing for parts of Manhattan. And, of course, the best way to reduce congestion is to invest in more and better mass transit and to continue to build the protected bike lanes that have proven immensely popular.
Second, profound economic transformation is possible. It was educational (read: shocking) to discover just how much New York infrastructure is named for those who participated in and profited from the slave economy. From its earliest days as New Netherlands, until it was finally made illegal in 1827, slavery was “part and parcel” of New York’s economic organization. Among those I write about in Naming Gotham, Alexander Macomb enslaved 12 Black persons, the Rikers family enslaved at least 10, and Lennox enslaved 4. Even after the formal end of slavery in New York, trade in goods that were made by enslaved persons continued to enrich a generation of New Yorkers. The names of these enslavers are familiar, even if their association with slavery is not. There is still tremendous work to do to acknowledge that history, and to grapple with what these names mean going forward. Yet, there is an additional lesson to learn. The visionary campaigners who fought against the evils of slavery were often derided as impractical dreamers who were unable to face economic facts. Nevertheless, they persisted. And they won. It was a long, hard, and bloody struggle, one that faced resistance every step of the way from those whose fortunes rested on the enslavement of others. But we ended the economy that put enslaved labor at its core. This gives me hope that we can do the same for the economy built on fossil fuels.
Imagine what New York City will look like if we learn both lessons at once. We can eliminate our dependence on congestion-creating private vehicles while we simultaneously replace fossil fuels. We can have city streets that are safe for pedestrians and bicyclists, with rapid, non-polluting mass transit. Not only can we do this, we must! The IPPCC’s latest report makes that abundantly clear. What then of New York City’s network of roads, bridges, and tunnels that all have congestion as their rationale? And most importantly, what will we name our new, more sustainable infrastructure?
Every month we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
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Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Méliné Baronian, VersaillesThe place of nature must not be limited. Let us change and adapt public services based on nature’s skills and know-how.
Maud Bernard-Verdier, BerlinIs Berlin already a national city park in everything but the name? Perhaps integrating such bottom-up initiatives into the overarching plans developed by city planners and experts may be what a Berlin national park would be all about.
Ioana Biris, AmsterdamIn 2025 Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary. This could be the perfect moment to join the family of National Park Cities and act together with other cities around the world to the common purpose of creating greener, healthier and wilder urban environments.
Timothy Blatch, Cape TownThe more I consider the idea for Cape Town, the more I see its potential to provide an umbrella under which actions by a diverse range of stakeholders can increasingly contribute to co-shaping a collective urban future that is rich and sustainable.
Aletta Bonn, BerlinIs Berlin already a national city park in everything but the name? Perhaps integrating such bottom-up initiatives into the overarching plans developed by city planners and experts may be what a Berlin national park would be all about.
Geoff Canham, Tauranga The National Parks City Movement is a reflection that nature is a basic human right. It also serves as a vehicle to ask what is it that we need from our landscape, what does a city need from nature to sustain itself?
Samarth Das, MumbaiEven though Mumbai is one of the few cities in the world that has a National Park within the municipal limits of the city, we argue that instead of having one “Central Park” in the city that everyone travels in order to access and enjoy, having smaller and more accessible neighbourhood parks promotes healthier and active lifestyles. This is why the London National Park City initiative is such an exciting prospect.
Gillian Dick, GlasgowI’d love the Glasgow conurbation to think about being a national park city. But it needs to be a co-production that all interested stakeholders can comfortably sign up to. Not something that is foisted on the city because of a bright shiny campaign.
Luis Antonio Romahn Diez, MeridaWe achieved a connection between public spaces and community, which is one of the main ingredients in a National Park City. With all these actions we start to gradually diminish the biggest challenge; engaging people with the resources of our city, coexisting in harmony.
Ana Faggi, Buenos AiresEven if efforts were made to increase public green space, the surface area of green would not be sufficient to house populations of native fauna. That is why we believe that the National Park label would be inadequate.
Eduardo Guerrero, BogotáNational Park City and Biodivercities in Colombia are necessary evolutions of traditional paradigms in urban and peri-urban planning. In cities, nature conservation and citizens wellbeing are part of the same equation, not contradictory goals.
Sue Hilder, GlasgowIn Glasgow, we need to create a grassroots groundswell of support across a broad demographic by sharing our passion; by being generous with our time and knowledge; by amplifying and celebrating the work of our partners; and by being inclusive and open to new ideas and alternative pathways.
Mike Houck, PortlandAt a time of transition in Portland’s greening movement, I believe a “gap analysis” regarding how both London and Portland have evolved our respective urban greening efforts over the past thirty years would be a significant value-added effort.
Sophie Lokatis, BerlinIs Berlin already a national city park in everything but the name? Perhaps integrating such bottom-up initiatives into the overarching plans developed by city planners and experts may be what a Berlin national park would be all about.
Scott Martin, LouisvillePerhaps in the National Park Cities framework we will find the vocabulary of shared values necessary to address the urgent urban ecological and health crises that elude, frustrate, and imperil us all.
Sebastian Miguel, Buenos AiresEven if efforts were made to increase public green space, the surface area of green would not be sufficient to house populations of native fauna. That is why we believe that the National Park label would be inadequate.
Gareth Moore-Jones, Ohope Beach The National Parks City Movement is a reflection that nature is a basic human right. It also serves as a vehicle to ask what is it that we need from our landscape, what does a city need from nature to sustain itself?
Rob Pirani, New YorkThe US National Park Service has a planning process for managing national parks. It is founded in purpose, significance, and fundamental resources and values. Can New York articulate these elements? Absolutely.
Julie Procter, StirlingIn Scotland, we already have a strong and supportive policy framework. We now need the ambition, imagination, and confidence to think and do things differently, to break out of traditional sector and organisational silos, to work in ways which are collaborative and empowering.
Tom Rozendal, BredaBreda likes joining the movement of National Park Cities because it is in line with its ambition to become a city in park.
Snorri Sigurdsson, Reykjavík Reykjavík is well suited to be a National Park City—it has all the elements and already many projects that could fit in to this kind of premise. But Icelanders are deeply independent, and any NPC effort will only succeed from the ground up.
Lynn Wilson, VictoriaDaniel Raven-Ellison made it happen for London, but each city will need its own leader(s) to emerge who can inspire and motivate enough people to make it happen in their particular circumstances. Who?
Daniel is a guerrilla geographer, National Geographic Explorer and led the successful campaign to establish London as the world's first National Park City.
Cities are constellations of green, blue, and grey spaces. Some cities have more green and blue space than others, but in just about every city such spaces are an idiosyncratic mix of some big parks, small parks, neighborhood spaces, open spaces both formal and informal, community gardens, private gardens, ivy covered walls, flowerpots, and window boxes.
Cities are also our habitat, places where 70% of the world’s population will live by 2050 and where green, blue and grey spaces are home to a surprising diversity of life. They lie at the frontier of the crucial relationships between people and nature that will enable responses to climate emergency and nature loss.
Often we think of spaces in cities as individual, administered differently, distinct. But just like aggregations of street trees, private trees, and park trees can add up to an “urban forest”, so too can the broad constellation of urban green, blue, and open spaces “add up” to something bigger: a city-scale park.
The London National Park City idea is both a formal recognition of the scope and benefits of the macro-park that is all London’s open spaces, and also a call for London’s population to see and get engaged with their myriad green spaces.
London’s communities have recognized and celebrated the role of the network of green and blue spaces in the life of the city in the form of a grassroots campaign to make London the first National Park City—asking “what if” questions to create a vision where spaces and our relationship with them have value that is more than the sum of their parts. What if you didn’t have to choose between city or nature? What if nature started on your doorstep? What if the sights, smells, sounds, and colours of the city were not just of humans and machines but also of nature? What if everybody could lose themselves in nature?
The six year campaign saw London National Park City launched in 2019. Other cities will follow. The idea is both a formal recognition of the scope and benefits of the macro-park that is all London’s open spaces, and also a call for London’s population to see and get engaged with their myriad green spaces. It is a place, a vision, and a city-wide community that is acting together to make life better for people, wildlife and nature. A defining feature is the widespread commitment to act so people, culture, and nature work together to provide a better foundation for life. Because it’s about the city’s entire landscape, everybody can be involved every day and it has the potential to exist forever.
Can this idea be applied in other cities? How? We asked a variety of people involved in parks and open space around the world. Some are in cities actively contemplating such a national park city approach. For others, it was a new idea. We asked: What if your city were a National Park City, analogous to what London created? What it would be like? What would it take to accomplish?
We are interested in your thoughts on this question also, so please take moment to answer some short questions, below.
Special thanks to several people who helped put this roundtable together: Neil McCarthy (World Urban Parks), Ingrid Coetzee (ICLEI Africa), Dominic Regester (Salzburg Global Seminar). This roundtable is an outgrowth of the TNOC Summit Session “Spreading the London National Park City idea”.
Alison has spent over 20 years of her professional life in roles linking the natural environment with people, currently as the Chief Officer at New Forest National Park Authority. Alison is an elected Fellow of the Landscape Institute and the RSA and is a Trustee of the National Park City Foundation.
Méliné Baronian is an Energy Engineer for the City of Versailles. She has been in charge of implementing the PCAET (Plan Climat- Air- Energie Territorial) of the urban community. This project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy dependence, while promoting adaptation to climate change.
The place of nature must not be limited. Let us change and adapt public services based on nature’s skills and know-how.
What if we imagined a national park city as a continuity of green and blue spaces? Currently these spaces are interspersed with grey spaces. What if it were the other way around? We want a return of nature to the cities, after we have made it disappear in favour of mineral cities. A national park city must therefore be able to give nature all the necessary space and in all its forms. When we open a map, we should be able to see this continuity and create not grey interconnections. but green interconnections.
A national park city must allow:
To enhance the diversity of its blue and green spaces, in size and type (large parks, small gardens, neighbourhood space, ).
To optimize available spaces and brownfield Each city currently has its own urban planning constraints. But they all deal with the same environmental issues. Acting in a standardised way is not the solution, only appropriate actions can be effective.
To enhance these green and blue spaces at the centre of urban policies in order to preserve all the benefits they can bring to reduce the impact of grey nuisances (noise, pollution, difficult access, etc.) that could reduce the benefits of these places.
To achieve this, it is necessary to build on existing initiatives, connect stakeholders, facilitate their implementation, and disseminate results.
We often think that we have to reinvent ourselves to move forward when there are already many materials available before our eyes. The awareness and awakening of citizens is very important. They are the ones who appropriate, discover, and enjoy these places. They are in the best position to provide an informed opinion on the necessary improvements and, above all, to contribute to the success of the project.
Full stakeholder engagement is crucial. No approach, no project can succeed when we do not have the same objective. The methods can sometimes diverge, but it is dialogue and co-creation in respect of others that will make it possible to find the best compromises.
Also realize that each action, regardless of its individual scope, has a significant impact. It resonates beyond its expectations and contributes to creating more livable cities.
In an increasingly complex and regulated society, we are trying to frame a phenomenon that does not need us to accomplish itself: to let nature expand again. It is time to remove all the administrative and regulatory obstacles that sometimes penalise relevant and favourable actions. Common sense and simplicity must be restored to enable these many initiatives to be carried out.
To contribute to the creation of a national park city, the place of nature must not be limited. Let us change and adapt public services based on nature’s skills and know-how. Public lighting, roads, public buildings, stormwater management, waste treatment would become the driving force for improving the well-being and health of the inhabitants.
The city of tomorrow may be greener, more liveable and, finally, less dense because its natural spaces will no longer be only recreational spaces. They will also be spaces capable of guaranteeing the public services of tomorrow. By building cities inspired by nature, connectivity and human-nature interactions would only be enhanced. This will help us to become aware of the services and benefits that nature brings us, and also to better preserve it.
Ioana Biris is a social psychologist and co-owner of Nature Desks, a social enterprise that promotes urban nature, work and wellbeing. Nature Desks redesigns our relation with the urban green through events, content, products and placemaking.
In 2025 Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary. This could be the perfect moment to join the family of National Park Cities and act together with other cities around the world to the common purpose of creating greener, healthier and wilder urban environments.
Three years ago I accidentally read about a plan which immediately captured my imagination: London National Park City. “A city as a national park.” A combination of words I would never have thought of. It sounded big, crazy, and impossible, but awfully inspiring. Initiator Daniel Raven-Ellison embarked upon a 500km walk across all 32 boroughs and across the city of London campaigning for his plan. A large paper folded map of green London was crowdfunded, designed, and printed. Around the same time, Esri Nederland—a specialist in maps technology—created a StoryMap of the greenest cities in the Netherlands. They measured the percentage of land use which is considered “green”. At the top of the list was Breda (61% “green”). This southern city is still a frontrunner in green ambitions. The local authorities are strongly committed to make Breda the first European “City in a Park”. The numbers 8, 9 and 10 in the list were The Hague (31%), Amsterdam (29%), and Rotterdam (19%).
Another study shows that the amount of green in Amsterdam has decreased constantly over the last years. The capital is growing in terms of population and housing but the number of “green” square meters in the city is not growing at the same pace. Looking at the positive side, the water of Amsterdam (almost 25% of the city’s land use) has never been cleaner, a “green” local government was elected in March 2018 and—for me personally the most relevant fact—the bottom-up civil movement promoting a healthy, sustainable, and green city is continuously growing. People organize themselves and find each other, share information, are proactive, have great ideas. The community is involved.
My city is—just as all other cities in the world—so much more than its streets, buildings, culture, or economic activity. Amsterdam is a unique green and blue urban landscape which we unknowingly share with more than 10,000 species of flora and fauna. There are now more than 873,000 residents. By 2040 this figure will rise to 1,000,000. The dynamic infrastructure of the city is under immense pressure to accommodate this influx. We will have to maintain the right balance between growth and wellbeing, while at the same time respecting the quality of urban nature around us.
Can Amsterdam become a National Park City? Yes, the city has the right ingredients to make this happen: the authorities are currently developing a “green vision” and there is a strong bottom-up civil movement. Can we build a better relationship with the nature? Definitely. Do we want a greener, healthier, and wilder city, that is connected with the surrounding nature? Surely.
You might be familiar with the unique Delta Works construction which was created in the southwest of the Netherlands after the North Sea Flood of 1953 to protect a large area of land from the sea. In 2014, a new Delta Programme was announced. The Dutch government will invest 20 billion euros over the next 30 years to protect the country from flooding, mitigate the impact of extreme weather events, and secure supplies of freshwater. It is now the time for a new Delta Programme: the “Delta Plan for Biodiversity Recovery”. This amazing new plan was presented in December 2018 after scientific research showed that the biodiversity is rapidly declining. “Farmers’ organizations, food supply chain partners, researchers, nature and environmental organizations as well as a bank have joined forces for the first time to reverse biodiversity loss in the Netherlands and embark on the road to recovery”.
And event was organized in Amsterdam in November 2019 where local government, bottom-up initiatives, (nature) organizations, artists, and other stakeholders were asked to make a local contribution to this national Delta Plan for Biodiversity Recovery. A manifesto will be presented soon.
In 2025 Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary. This could be the perfect moment to join the family of National Park Cities and act together with other cities around the world to the common purpose of creating greener, healthier and wilder urban environments. Do you recall the information I shared about the greenest city in the south of the country? Breda will possibly be the first Dutch city to aim for a National Park City status.
Timothy is an urban development professional with a background in the social sciences and city and regional planning. In his role as a Green City Consultant at AIPH, the world’s champion for the power of plants, Timothy is responsible for progressing strategic partnerships within the Green City programme and for coordinating the AIPH World Green City Awards.
The more I consider the idea for Cape Town, the more I see its potential to provide an umbrella under which actions by a diverse range of stakeholders can increasingly contribute to co-shaping a collective urban future that is rich and sustainable.
As an urban planner and nature-based solutions professional in ICLEI’s Global Cities Biodiversity Center, an organisational partner of the National Park City Foundation, I am passionate about nature in cities. I am also passionate about the National Park City concept. However, this has not always been the case. Personally, the concept has lead me on a long journey from staunch opposition to eventual support for the movement. If you had asked me a year ago whether the concept would work in South African cities, my answer would have been a confident “no”. Since then, however, my opinion has shifted to believing, and even hoping, that it would.
When I first heard about the idea, it seemed an exciting next step for developed cities who are already committed to living in harmony with nature. But I was certain it would be impossible to replicate in the African urban contexts within which I am more accustomed to working.
As a Zimbabwean living in Cape Town, the concept simply did not seem transferrable. This was partly because open spaces, and even urban parks in the cities I have lived in have never been places that have typically been desirable for urban residents. In many cities in Africa, parks are crime magnets and are generally perceived as unsafe and undesirable. Their value in urban quality of life and human wellbeing is poorly understood and horribly taken for granted. Furthermore, the maintenance of these spaces has also typical been neglected, rendering them forgotten remnants of an inherited urban form that are fast disappearing under the pressure for development.
However, the Cape Town example is an exceptional one, in the sense that it is already a national park city, although not in the same way London now proudly defines the movement. The City of Cape Town has historically developed around the perimeter of the base of Table Mountain National Park. Table Mountain rises prehistorically at the heart of the city, and is home a large part of the unique, abundantly biodiverse, and largely endemic Cape Floristic Kingdom that the region is famous for.
However, the Cape Town you see in the picture above is only a small part of the city’s story. The majority of the Cape Town population are still affected by the racially motivated spatial dynamics that were characteristic of the Apartheid era, and do not enjoy the same level of access to the city’s rich natural resources. You see, the majority of the city’s population do not live in the areas the picture above depicts, and many still live in less than favourable conditions, with little access to even the most basic of services.
With much competition for a diminishing public fiscus, trade-offs are essential and the provision of housing and sanitation are understandable priorities. The idea of igniting a wave of change around a contextually nice-to-have concept only seemed possible among a small percentage of the more affluent Cape Town population. Pitching the idea to the critical mass necessary to meaningfully say there was sufficient buy-in to a national park city in the way London, and the Universal Charter define it, seemed a futile exercise in the face of the reality that faces many Cape Town residents.
So, although Cape Town has a number of national parks within the metropolitan boundary, it is only a national park city in so far as the protected areas legislation defines it to be, and not necessarily in the socio-ecological sense. Coupled with this is the fact that the very notion of a national park has a complex history in South Africa and the very word “national” has loaded contextual implications for local implementation.
As I started to become more familiar with London’s ambitious vision, I was encouraged by its flexible nature and bottom-up approach. Even though I am certain that it would look very different in the South African context, my thinking has evolved in the sense that a vision for a greener, wilder, and healthier city is a vision that every city should strive to achieve.
I spent many hours wondering and dreaming of how this concept could be made a reality in Cape Town. It would take a lot of awareness-raising. It would take years of work to mainstream nature-based solutions and build the capacity for strong governance and prioritisation of nature. It would take public participation and collaboration on a massive scale. It would take a whole-of-society approach that we often talk about, but somehow defies our best efforts to achieve.
However, more and more, I am convinced that it is possible. The more I explore the city, the more I am awakened to the many initiatives that are taking place to bring nature into the daily experiences of residents. Small collective action has the power to trigger large scale impact, and I am constantly reminded of this through my work with cities around the world. The national park city movement has certainly triggered a longing for what may be possible and has stirred up interest in the idea of experiencing nature all around us in our urban lives. Nature has the power to transform our cities, and the need for transformation is critical in Cape Town.
The more I consider the idea for Cape Town, the more I see its potential to provide an umbrella under which actions by a diverse range of stakeholders can increasingly contribute to co-shaping a collective urban future that is rich and sustainable. The concept has every likelihood of succeeding in the long-term, only if we are able to ensure just and equitable access to nature and its benefits in Cape Town. Similarly to how my approach to the concept has shifted favourably over time, I hope that with sufficient investment, will, and passion, the readiness to achieve such an ambitious vision might shift favourably, too, in South African cities. In the same way that we protect the Kruger National Park to ensure the highest quality habitat for the species who call it home, surely we should also aim to ensure our human habitats, which are increasingly urban, are healthy places for us to live and thrive in. The national park city concept offers us a solution, and London has demonstrated that it is indeed possible to achieve.
Geoff is a Principal Parks and Recreation Specialist and Accredited Parks and Recreation Professional (ARPro). Geoff runs GCC, a specialist parks and recreation consultancy.
The National Parks City Movement is a reflection that nature is a basic human right. It also serves as a vehicle to ask what is it that we need from our landscape, what does a city need from nature to sustain itself?
The forefront of the Parks’ movement occurred approximately a 150 years ago and was a similar one to the National Parks Cities movement. In the 1800’s, what we know to be the parks sector began as leaders and communities fought to ensure that areas of green and wilderness where we lived and some beyond that were saved from being lost (then, to the Industrial Revolution). It was reflected that these lands needed to be saved if we were going to survive and enjoy life ourselves. Then, the focus was setting aside specific areas and having something left. Land was saved or repurposed as “Parks” and the setting aside of “National Parks” was set forth from that time.
Parks are democracy. Parks are the best expression of democracy, community, and society, and one that transcends politics, issues, and the negative side of our species more than anything else. But why “ring fence” these areas at all or away from where we live, why disassociate our species from the settings where we perform the best?
The National Park City Movement honours parks perhaps more than National Parks themselves. The National Parks City Movement seeks to ensure that people don’t have a detrimental effect to the environment but through individual and collective actions, and positive impact, leave the environment better than when they found it. The National Parks City Movement achieves a range of existing environmental goals: e.g. carbon zero, various environmental initiatives, etc. Indeed, the statutory National Parks could learn a thing or two from National Parks Cities Movement. In National Parks people are removed from the setting or the Parks are curated as a place where nature is at best conserved and attempted to be preserved. In actual National Parks there is an uneasy relationship with human visitors where they are excluded, managed, regulated and often kept at arms’ length with a range of additional policies that probably best suited to where we live as opposed to where we visit.
Waihi Beach, coastal area of Bay Of Plenty National Park. Photo: Geoff Canham
The National Parks City Movement is a reflection that nature is a basic human right. It also serves as a vehicle to ask what is it that we need from our landscape, what does a city need from nature to sustain itself? It is a platform for leaders to share a vision for a good future. It’s a reminder that people don’t follow ideas, they follow feelings. When ‘feels good’ to people, people will do it again. The appeal and power from National Parks City Movement is that it’s “bottom up”, it’s about sharing the vision for a good future, it’s about optimism and hope.
At the international launch in London July 2019, many speakers reflected that if we are to have a future we need to look to leaders and some of the things we need to be repeating to our communities. We need to find leaders to remind us not to fear nature but look to engage with it through this optimism of hope. To paraphrase Nelson Mandela, we are a people that make better choices when we make those choices reflecting our hopes, not our fears. Another one of the speaking points was that the National Parks City Movement is in effect a collective and enlightened self-interest. The National Park City Movement is another way of engaging with people that lets them relate to their surroundings and if it feels good then people will follow.
In New Zealand we would use a Maori proverb and to date a number of presentations have been given where this has resonated:
“Na to rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi”. “With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive”.
Pataka (Community Food Sharing Stand) at Kopeoeo, Allandale School Te Puna te Taiao (Combined Park and School) Whakatane, New Zealand. Photo: Geoff Canham
Aotearoa/New Zealand is a country that people have settled in over the past 700 or so years, either escaping over-population of smaller lands, or to simply find more resources. I can report from the other end of the globe from London that this is it; there is nowhere left to go next. We have to make the best of what we have and as it is, most of us live in cities anyway. Even in New Zealand, compared to the rest of the world, where around 83% of the world’s population live in cities, here 87% of us living in urbanised cities. This is good news for the land where the food needs to come from but highlights that National Park Cities is the future. We are the only species that wants to better ourselves, the only species that tells stories, the only species that can turn imagination into something-it’s time we got a better story.
If you’ve seen some of the bigger trilogies recently, you’ll know New Zealanders love a quest. Our quest with Bay of Plenty National Park Region is to take a group of small cities close to each other and the small towns nearby, in an already beautiful area known as the Bay of Plenty bordered by National Parks, and to create the first National Park Region.
Gareth has been involved in the sector for 30 years and has been CEO of NZ Recreation Association, National Sport & Recreation Manager for NZ YMCA, interim CEO of Outdoors NZ, and as public health planner in the health sector .
Samarth Das is an Urban Designer and Architect based in Mumbai. Having practiced professionally in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and subsequently in New York City, his work focuses on engaging actively in both public as well as private sectors—to design articulate shared spaces within cities that promote participation and interaction amongst people.
Even though Mumbai is one of the few cities in the world that has a National Park within the municipal limits of the city, we argue that instead of having one “Central Park” in the city that everyone travels in order to access and enjoy, having smaller and more accessible neighbourhood parks promotes healthier and active lifestyles. This is why the London National Park City initiative is such an exciting prospect.
Mumbai city—with an area of 480 km2—has over 320 documented and listed gardens and parks and over 1200 recreation and playgrounds covering a mere 13.7 km2 of area. With a population of over 13 million, Mumbai has one of the poorest ratios of open spaces to people compared to any city in the world. But what makes the city unique in many ways is the rich diversity of natural assets that are found interspersed across the city’s ever expanding fabric. A city that has all the elements in place to transform itself into a world class Natural Park City. Our natural assets include over 140 kilometers of coastline—which are one of the most bio-diverse zones of the city—16 kilometers of beaches; 40 kilometers of rivers; over 70 km2 of creeks, mangroves and wetlands; 50 kilometers of “nullahs”—open storm water channels—and almost 58 km2 of hills and forests. In order to transform Mumbai into a National Park City the very notion of how open spaces are defined needs to go beyond gardens and parks to include these incredible, vast, and diverse natural assets.
Mithi River running through the heart of the new business district of Mumbai. Image: PK Das & Assoc.
Unfortunately, owing to unplanned and ad-hoc development, these natural features and assets have been neglected, abused, and misused, thereby rendering them as backyards. Even the city’s development plan has failed to recognise the importance or potential of these natural assets. Apart from their undisputable role in protecting and shielding the city from in-land flooding, sea level rise and storm surges, these natural areas can be integrated into the neighbourhoods to become the forefront of public realms that are accessed, enjoyed and protected by one and all.
Picture this: Preservation programs such as those in Jamaica Bay (New York), nature trails through biosphere reserves like those in Sian Ka’an in Mexico, walking and cycling paths along the canals of Amsterdam, boardwalks of KRKA National park in Croatia, leisure and recreation opportunities seen in Central Park in New York City and Hyde Park in London; remediation of water bodies like the ongoing efforts in Gowanus Canal in New York city; along with outdoor classrooms promoting active learning through planting programs and nurseries, bird viewing galleries along wetlands; and programs engaging locals in art amongst other means of interacting with their natural surroundings. All of these would constitute integral elements of a larger vision of Mumbai as a National Park city, a vision constantly under works and one that is continuously evolving.
Through our professional practice, PK Das & Associates, and several of our community-led initiatives, we have successfully implemented neighbourhood-based projects in the city that aim to achieve precisely these objectives. The Irla Nullah Rejuvenation Project in the western suburb of Juhu in one such project which aims at re-appropriating a neglected and dirty open storm water channel into an accessible public space with several parks and gardens along its edge, thereby bringing the several communities that live along it together geographically as well as programmatically. We hope for many more such initiatives across the city.
The Irla Nullah Rejuvenation Plan, Juhu. Image: PK Das & Assoc.
In Mumbai the primary challenge has always been the enforcement of policies and ensuring the safeguarding of our natural areas. With the city unable to provide adequate housing and cope with the speed of population growth over the years, informal settlements sprung up in the most neglected areas of the city—which most often tend to be the edges and buffers of these natural areas. The idea of the National Park City concept demands attention to not just our natural areas, but also a more comprehensive and holistic approach that integrates infrastructure solutions for housing and amenities with neighbourhood based planning, builds in new non-motorised modes of transport into our mobility plans, and most importantly, creates a transparent and open platform for local advocacy groups that can demand definite time periods for responses/ actions taken by local and state machinery to address grievances and complaints. Nature, in our city, is in an advanced state of degradation and it is an immense challenge to reconcile with and rejuvenate these sensitive ecosystems in order to bring them back to their past glory.
Even though Mumbai is one of the few cities in the world that has a National Park within the municipal limits of the city, we argue that instead of having one “Central Park” in the city that everyone travels in order to access and enjoy, having smaller and more accessible neighbourhood parks promotes healthier and active lifestyles. This is why the London National Park City initiative is such an exciting prospect: it allows for every individual, regardless of age and gender, to participate equally in their surroundings while also being able to voice their opinions when needed!
I’d love the Glasgow conurbation to think about being a national park city. But it needs to be a co-production that all interested stakeholders can comfortably sign up to. Not something that is foisted on the city because of a bright shiny campaign.
The idea of Glasgow as the next National Park City is gaining momentum. A campaign group of knowledgeable individuals have been set up and they are gathering support from third sector organisations who think this is a good idea. But how does it feel from the point of view of an employee of the City that is the target of this campaign?
For London to become the first national park city a movement was created around a campaign to get all 32 boroughs and the London Assembly to sign up to the concept and then to agree a shared charter. For Glasgow to become a National Park City it would only require possibly eight councils to get on board to create a shared vision for a liveable, sustainable and green city. It could be argued that the Council’s in and around Glasgow are already working on a shared vision through their individual Development Plans; Open Space Strategies and colloborative work on the City Region and delivery of the Central Scotland Green Network. As Council officials we are already working collaboratively with partners, whether governmental, community or third sector to provide great places that allow the community to live, work and play.
Whilst welcoming the campaign, there is a real risk that it could distract from the good work that is already ongoing within the City and the surrounding Councils, and bring an added layer of complexity that is difficult to deliver. Conversations with the campaigners have identified that they are developing a vision that they would like campaign supporters and possibly the City Authority to sign up to.
But the campaign doesn’t start from an understanding of what the baseline for open space is for the City or Scotland. There appears to be an assumption that the City doesn’t understand fully what open space can deliver for its communities. The campaign doesn’t appear to acknowledge the difference between legally protected open space and development or vacant and derelict land that has naturally greened. It doesn’t do anything to recognise the limited resources that are available within Cities and the evidence base that is being worked on to try to raise the profile of open space as a key asset for Local Authorities (here and here).
The ideas that fed into the campaign in London are already being worked on in Scotland. The recent Planning bill has made the creation of open space strategies a statutory requirement for all Scottish Councils. The development and use of the Place Standard and the Place Principal are emphasising the health benefits of open space. As a front runner city for the H2020 Connecting Nature project www.connectingnature.eu is developing the ideas of nature-based solutions that deliver great spaces with multiple benefits for society, economy, environment, and health and wellbeing. Early conversations are being held at a national level about updating the typologies for open space; for example, how you measure their quality and whether they are fit for function and how you judge there accessibility for all. Community empowerment is encouraging more citizen science and citizen engagement in our places and spaces.
It’s very easy to campaign today. All you need is a phone and internet access for your voice to be heard. It’s really easy to shout at people and say you should be doing this and look at all the people who also think that you should do this. It’s easy to say there are only a few of us doing this in our spare time, we’re not a big noise.
But it only takes one voice saying something that captures the imagination. In the UK we know this from the political climate we are currently living through. It is far harder to be part of the solution. It would be better to spend energy working collaboratively with the eight Councils that cover the Glasgow area and other supporters to co-produce a vision for what calling Glasgow a national Park city would actually mean in reality. Imposing a vision upon the city employees to implement, without due regard to the political landscape that we are working in, is not collaboration. In fact, it could create conflict and difficulty, and runs the risk of polarising views.
I’d love the Glasgow conurbation to think about being a national park city. But it needs to be a co-production that all interested stakeholders can comfortably sign up to. Not something that is foisted on the city because of a bright shiny campaign. Because at the end of the day, it will not be the campaigners that will implement any designation. It will be the folk that work for the Councils and Scottish Government who will have to make this happen. Please work with us and stop shouting at us.
Disclaimer: the views expressed in this response are those of the author, and not necessarily those of her employer.
He is the president of the National Park Association of Mexico, leader of the World Urban Parks for Latin America, vice president of the World Parks Academy and member of the City Parks Alliance Board of Directors in the United States.
Luis is the author of the book “Building My Park - From citizen participation to the administration of public space”. He has worked for the last 9 years in urban park projects and public spaces in the world through models of participatory design, community building and financial sustainability.
We achieved a connection between public spaces and community, which is one of the main ingredients in a National Park City. With all these actions we start to gradually diminish the biggest challenge; engaging people with the resources of our city, coexisting in harmony.
The definition of a National Park City includes many characteristics, including a place, a vision, and a community of the whole city that acts together to improve people’s lives, wildlife, and nature. With this idea, we believe it is one of the most important new ideas, but also a great challenge. How do we get people involved with the fauna, flora, nature, and all the resources that your city has to offer?
People who enjoy public spaces most of the time do not have the opportunity to give their opinions and understand the process and, with this, those who are in charge of making these places happen do not have an idea of what works for the community and, more importantly, its true needs. The role of public servants in the development of the parks of our cities is transcendental—they have the capacity to make decisions that improve our environment.
For this reason, we need public servants committed to public space and their support in conjunction with citizens. At the National Association of Parks and Recreation of Mexico (ANPR Mexico), we have been involving people in their communities through our process to design, build, and maintain our public spaces.
The ANPR Mexico promotes the creation, revitalization and maintenance of urban parks and recreation in our country to improve the quality of life of all citizens through public spaces. Our efforts are reflected in developing information into better content for the training of professionals dedicated to urban parks and public spaces. These activities range from monthly webinars, our parks magazine, educational content, blogs, and the star of the show: our annual urban park congress.
Together with our mission, we have been collaborating with professionals to achieve, in the short and long term, the best place for people who live in it. The design principles and processes for parks are extremely important, since they should be considered for the attractions that will take place within the site, the activities that can be done and its equipment, as well as what happens around it.
Taking into account that, cities are composed of elements and initiatives that make them unique. The importance of play in children, specific socio-cultural characteristics, recreational bicycle projects, resilience, among many others are some issues on which we work continuously from both sides. When the projects begin, we go directly to the people and with this, they begin to develop a sense of belonging and take the public space as their own.
In the end, we achieved a connection between public spaces and community, which is one of the main ingredients in a National Park City. With all these actions we start to gradually diminish the biggest challenge; engaging people with the resources of our city, coexisting in harmony.
Although in our city many people realize the importance of our public spaces, in some areas we still lack the commitment of all the parties involved, from government to the people who benefit from these. As we know, it is a timely cultural choice, a commitment to a sense of place and way of life. We are involving people in the decisions, with their health, with the community, with nature and more. Every action requires time and slowly we are walking towards making our city a National Park City in the future.
Ana Faggi graduated in agricultural engineering, and has a Ph.D. in Forest Science, she is currently Dean of the Engineer Faculty (Flores University, Argentina). Her main research interests are in Urban Ecology and Ecological Restoration.
Even if efforts were made to increase public green space, the surface area of green would not be sufficient to house populations of native fauna. That is why we believe that the National Park label would be inadequate.
Buenos Aires as a National Urban Park? It is a fantasy for a city like Buenos Aires that is characterized by the little green, polluted rivers and streams, noise, and high traffic. A great challenge that could arise for the future as the increase of green in quantity and quality in its different types of parks, squares, urban reserves, bio-corridors, urban trees, remnant areas would mitigate environmental urban evils with a significant improvement in the life of the population.
Going back to reality, if we take the case of the green infrastructure, the quantitative deficit of total area of public green space per inhabitant is known and also poorly distributed. Official statistics say that there is an average 6m2 while international standards set minimums of 10-15 m2 (WHO 2012).
Many of these green areas have insufficient vegetated and absorbent soil, and the vast majority of the vegetation that we find in squares and in the trees along the streets of Buenos Aires is exotic. The absence of elements of the typical Pampas vegetation limits the presence of the possible 200 species of birds and 100 species of native butterflies that we could observe in the original landscape.
In Buenos Aires, by the late nineteenth century, green spaces began to be relevant urban areas in social life. Large public parks arose under the influence of French and English landscaping models, coinciding with the hygienist movement in its attempts to relieve the burden of urban living. Many private gardens have low biodiversity and are getting smaller and smaller, as single-family homes are demolished to build multistory buildings (image below).
Block of the Belgrano neighborhood in Buenos Aires with absorbent surfaces invaded by constructions today. Private gardens are small and unconnected. Credit: Emiliano Fernandez
Even if efforts were made to increase public green space, in the areas that are generated today by coastal filling in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, or creating new parks on vacant areas of the railroad, the surface area of green would not be sufficient to house populations of native fauna. That is why we believe that the National Park label would be inadequate. However, visioning the future, we could strive to reach situations that could be framed in a conservation figure such as a Nature Biosphere Reserve with cores of greater conservation value that dissipate towards the edges. This would be a chance for the city to understand and manage changes and interactions between social and ecological systems what is currently missing.
Biosphere reserves are areas comprising terrestrial, marine, and coastal ecosystems, promoting solutions that reconcile the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use. As defined by United Nations they have three interrelated zones that aim to fulfill three reinforcing functions:
The core area is devoted for the conservation of landscapes, ecosystems and species.
The buffer zone surrounds or adjoins the core areas, and is used for activities compatible with sustainable practices and a transition area where the greatest activity is allowed.
In Buenos Aires, the current trend that raises the new building code is to increase the built surfaces in a compact and high way. To increase green infrastructures, this height development should require that new buildings in both the public and private domain have a greater proportion of internal courtyards with absorbent and green surfaces that mitigate the effects of climate change and become local biodiversity shelters. Vegetation of terraces and walls should be added.
In turn, the city should allocate the hundreds of thousands of square meters of sidewalks and public urban interstices that have the possibility of becoming absorbent soils, small landscaped spaces and green corridors. They should also consider that part of the remaining sites could become re-wilded, areas that are still very little present in Buenos Aires, as we described in a previous roundtable. This would significantly improve the environmental conditions of the city, especially in the pedestrian and at the neighborhood scale.
At the ground level of a city block, the transition zone built up by green corridors, absorbent surfaces and walking and bike roads, can encourage mixed uses programs. At the high level: canopies of trees and green urban roofs, crossed ventilation and exposure buildings to sunlight can mitigate heat. At the underground level, the development of urban infrastructures as water storage and parking may create a better city for pedestrians (image below).
Redefinition of the city block following the new planning code to improve the Belgrano neighborhood by creating a homogeneous ground level at +6.00 m with green roofs (5) and internal limit line of constructions to guarantee crossed ventilation and exposure to sunlight (1, 2, 3, 4). The area of a connected green infrastructure is increased, which allows greater abundance and richness of species on private gardens. Credit: Emiliano Fernandez.
In coincidence with the ecological urbanism mentor, Salvador Rueda, who proposes to create ecological urban links at the three levels of a neighborhood, we believe that the idea of a Biosphere Reserve is possible (image below).
Road section in the Belgrano neighborhood applying the principles of “ecological urbanism”. Increased afforestation and rain gardens on the sidewalks. Credit: Emiliano Fernandez.
Reference: World Health Organization. Health Indicators of Sustainable Cities in the Context of the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. WHO; Geneva, Switzerland: 2012.
Architect and Master Architectural Design (University of Buenos Aires). Director Bio-Environmental Design Lab (University of Flores- Buenos Aires). Professor and researcher at Catholic University of Salta (UCASAL). Principal at Sebastian Miguel Architects & partners (Buenos Aires). Member of Argentinean Association of Renewable Energies and Environment (ASADES)
Eduardo Guerrero is a biologist with over 20 years of experience in projects and initiatives involving environmental and sustainable development issues in Colombia and other South American countries.
National Park City—similar in spirit to the Colombian initiative Biodivercities— are necessary evolutions of traditional paradigms in urban and peri-urban planning. In cities, nature conservation and citizens wellbeing are part of the same equation, not contradictory goals.
Is there nature within a city? Of course, yes. Even more: is there wild nature in a city? The answer is, again, yes. Not pristine wild nature but nature transformed by human society, which shows many ecosystem attributes and functions.
When you arrive by plane into a city, what you see from the air is a city inserted in a regional landscape. The ecosystem matrix of Colombian cities is quite diverse. Some urban centers have been built inside Andean or Caribbean ecosystems, other Amazonian, or within the Orinoquia region or in the middle of the Pacific tropical rain forest.
A city is not an isolated landscape from its regional surrounding territory. On the contrary, cities are immersed into biomes. From a broad landscape perspective, they are patches of transformed soil in the middle of natural ecosystems. So, the question is: should we plan cities as part of nature or aside nature?
Under this perspective, what’s the role of urban protected areas? What’s the role of designed green spaces and green infrastructure? Should urban metropolitan parks, pocket parks, street trees and urban protected areas be part of the same functional ecological network?
In Colombia we have positioned the concept of main ecological structure, that is the natural resources base, as a tool to integrate protected areas and other green spaces to land use planning. With the support of Ministry of Environment and regional and local environment authorities, many cities have identified their main ecological structure trying to link these with regional ecological networks which support socio-economic development.
There is a discussion dealing with the official status of urban protected areas. The National System of Protected Areas does not include them, despite local authorities have declared many. The National Parks agency recognizes them under a secondary figure named “complementary conservation strategy”, related to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s concept of “Other Effective Area–Based Conservation Measures (OECM)”. Debate is opportune and important because it stimulates a reflection about urbanization, nature, and sustainable development. Even if small and transformed, urban protected areas and other green spaces have a key function, not only in terms of ecological connectivity but also in terms of social and economic sustainability.
In the real world, regardless of formal recognition, many of these urban protected areas show remarkable conservation achievements thanks to effective synergies among authorities and citizens.
A Colombian initiative analogous to London’s National Park City campaign
Beyond the name, I share the vision which inspires the National Park City idea: to make cities where people, places and nature are better connected.
In that sense, the example of London is quite motivating. I like such an initiative driven by a collective partnership of citizens, NGOs, and local authorities to convince cities and their residents to be greener, healthier, and wilder.
National Park City initiative challenges the classic concept of National Park. A National Park City is not seeking to be declared as an official National Park under the national protected areas systems. Official or not, what is important is the campaign itself and its effectiveness mobilizing a city around a powerful idea.
Coincidentally, in Colombia, national government is developing an initiative called “Biodivercities”, aiming to integrate biodiversity and the main ecological structure as the foundations for a sustainable urban development.
Under the logic of this initiative, an urban center is aimed at the adopted and adapted concept of “biodivercity” when planning, organizing its territory, and managing its social and economic development in a sustainable and innovative way in harmony with its natural resources base.
A valuable element of the initiative is the synergy between conservation, innovation, and green entrepreneurship. A “biodivercity” not only must conserve biodiversity to preserve ecosystem services. It is also expected to promote bioeconomy, science, technology, and innovation as structural axes of sustainable development and, at the same time, use natural resources efficiently, with a focus on circular economies.
Ideas such as “National Park City” or “Biodivercity” (the Colombian initiative) challenge the conventional and traditional approaches to urban nature. The point is that we need a paradigm evolution in urban and peri-urban planning. In cities, nature conservation and citizens wellbeing are part of the same equation, not contradictory goals.
Simon Bolivar Metropolitan Park, Bogotá. Photo: Eduardo Guerrero
Sue is an outdoor access specialist, currently at Glasgow City Council, with a background in conservation volunteering and environmental sculpture. She is passionate about greenspace and ecology, and believes both in the intrinsic value of species and habitats for their own sake and in their importance for the physical, spiritual and mental health and wellbeing benefits they offer to the people and communities that live alongside them.
In Glasgow, we need to create a grassroots groundswell of support across a broad demographic by sharing our passion; by being generous with our time and knowledge; by amplifying and celebrating the work of our partners; and by being inclusive and open to new ideas and alternative pathways.
Everyone with an interest in, or a passion for delivering, a greener, healthier, wilder city, from a child growing cress on a windowsill, to a major organisation developing a nature park, would feel they were part of a big, inclusive, positive movement. Glasgow National Park City would be as much a network of people communicating with, and supporting, each other, as a network of physically connected green and blue spaces.
What would it be like?
If Glasgow were a National Park City, there would be an extensive network of engaged, empowered and passionate individuals and organisations working together to achieve a future Glasgow:
where nature is thriving and spaces and places are connected;
where everyone has the opportunity to be engaged with nature and the outdoors;
where every child has the chance to learn and have fun in nature every day;
where the air is clean and healthy;
where communities are enthused, confident and have the skills to make their neighbourhoods greener, more resilient more environmentally just;
where people are proud of their natural and cultural heritage;
where everyone has access to green, healthy, sustainable travel;
where health and wellbeing statistics are a matter for celebration, rather than despondency;
where excellent design delivers buildings and spaces that respond to the needs of people and nature;
where everyone feels empowered to create, and entitled to expect, a greener, healthier and wilder city.
What would it take to accomplish?
We (Glasgow National Park City Group) know that there’s no magic wand and no undiscovered funding pot. A Glasgow National Park City will only be achieved by developing trust, and sharing knowledge, skills, and ideas, amongst people and organisations who are already committed to, or at least interested in, delivering greener, healthier, more resilient, and more biodiversity rich neighbourhoods. We need to create a grassroots groundswell of support across a broad demographic by sharing our passion; by being generous with our time and knowledge; by amplifying and celebrating the work of our partners; and by being inclusive and open to new ideas and alternative pathways. There is no value in a top-down approach; this has to be achieved by “infection”.
Our small group of volunteers needs to grow into a bigger team, and we are inviting people to join us through our website and social media channels, by running and speaking at events, and by word of mouth. We’re realistic about the time it will take to promote the idea and get people on board, and at the same time we will do what we can to take advantage of amazing opportunities like the COP26 climate summit coming to Glasgow in 2020.
Mike Houck is a founding member of The Nature of Cities and is currently a TNOC board member. He is The Urban Naturalist for the Urban Greenspaces Institute (www.urbangreenspaces.org), on the board of The Intertwine Alliance and is a member of the City of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission.
At a time of transition in Portland’s greening movement, I believe a “gap analysis” regarding how both London and Portland have evolved our respective urban greening efforts over the past thirty years would be a significant value-added effort.
Given our long history of urban greening connections with London, I couldn’t resist David Maddox’s call for a response to his Roundtable discussion response to discuss the relevance of London’s recent designation as a National Park City and the National Park City movement in general to our work in the Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Washington USA metropolitan region. We have benefited tremendously from London’s efforts to protect, restore, and manage green spaces, dating back to the mid-1980s under the leadership of Dr. David Goode and his colleagues at the London Ecology Unit and later at the Greater London Authority. Likewise, we’ve learned from more recent urban greening efforts such as Dusty Gedge’s habitat-focused green roof designs.
I spent a couple months visiting Camley Street Natural Park and other sites in and around London in the late 1980s, after having met Goode at a “wildlife in the urban environment” event on the east coast of the United States several years previous. Subsequent to the London foray, Dr. Goode to spoke several times in Portland, once to our City Club and several times to local park professionals, park advocates, and elected officials. On his multiple visits Goode, as an “outside expert”, validated what many of us had been working on for decades to elevate the importance of integrating the natural and built environments locally and regionally. It is not an exaggeration to attribute what successes we have had with protection, restoration, and management of urban nature largely to examples Goode brought to Portland over a decade of collaboration.
All that said, while the tenets and actions advocated by London’s National Park City movement are in direct parallel with our own work, we have worked for years on our own “marketing” campaign, making adoption of the National Park City moniker unnecessary. The City of Portland did recently join the ranks of Biophilic Cities via the Biophilic Cities Network. Likewise, we have benefited greatly from our relationship with The Nature of Cities community.
Expending energy on an additional international campaign would be far less effective and efficient than working to implement elements of both Biophilic Cities and the National Park City movements than expending the political capital it takes to get agreement on joining yet another international organization. I do, however, agree that we would continue to benefit by London’s example as we have in the past by expanding our work through The Intertwine Alliance in the 3,000 square mile Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region. At a time of transition with our own greening movement, I believe a “gap analysis” regarding how both London and we have evolved our respective urban greening efforts over the past thirty years would be a significant value-added effort.
What would take for us to be a candidate National Park City? In my opinion, building more social capital, addressing issues related to equity, racial and ethnic disparities, and capitalizing on the increasing attention to the nexus between human physical and psychological health and access to nature. While we have always understood our work embraces all of these issues the connections have been largely implicit. Of course, access to nature improves human health. Of course. social and environmental justice and equity issues should be integrated into our ecologically-focused work. However, there are those perceive our work as being led by organizations and institutions viewed that are the “white-dominant, mainstream environmental movement”, and inherently tone deaf with regard to racial disparities, social and environmental justice, and cultural diversity.
From my viewing London’s National Park City blogs, articles, and videos it is clear that it explicitly promotes a culturally specific, multiethnic, and environmentally just urban greening movement. London’s highly creative and socially focused efforts provide a template that might inspire us to be more creative in our marketing and to broaden our focus from what heretofore has been principally a biodiversity and ecosystem-based vision. To be fair we, have, in fact, begun efforts at the local and regional governmental levels and through the non-profit sector including The Intertwine Alliance to achieve that goal. That said, we would of course continue to focus on responding to climate change through mitigation and adaptation programs; continue to institutionalize urban green infrastructure as a mandated feature of urban planning; and continue to integrate efforts to protect regional biodiversity through acquisition, restoration and management of parks, trails, and natural areas, but with an explicit goal of building social capital.
Maud is a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany. Her research spans community ecology, invasion ecology and evolutionary ecology, with a special focus on novel ecosystems.
Maud Bernard-Verdier, Aletta Bonn and Sophie Lokatis
Is Berlin already a national city park in everything but the name? Perhaps integrating such bottom-up initiatives into the overarching plans developed by city planners and experts may be what a Berlin national park would be all about.
Berlin is sometimes referred to as the “greenest capital in Europe”, and while cycling through the forested Tiergarten, past a pack of young boars, you might agree.
While there may be cities with even larger areas of greenspaces, nature and urban wilderness are surely part of Berlin’s identity. It was always important for Berlin to keep urban parks as “green lungs” for air cooling and air pollution control as well as for recreation during times of enclosure by a wall. In addition, derelict railway tracks owned by the former GDR Deutsche Reichsbahn offered places for nature to reclaim their place during the Cold War times. Today, between its endless oaktree alleys and overgrown wastelands, urban life pulsates. It thrives, enlaced by meandering rivers and lakes, where on occasions dead fish and beer bottles wash up on the shore. Sometimes you will spot a kingfisher or catch a glimpse of a diving beaver. Berlin, indeed, has a great potential to become a National Park City.
A divided city grows together
Berlin’s history is unique, and so is its nature. This November (2019) marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Information plates on contemporary history alternate with those on plant and animal life along a 160km long cycle track around former West Berlin: the Mauerweg, path of the Berlin wall. In its central northern section, the Mauerweg connects an aggregation of half a dozen small to large scale parks and nature areas, mainly former railway areas and freight yards. These wild urban nature areas are invaluable—and novel—ecosystems. Whereas the distribution of green spaces in Berlin are usually highly correlated with socioeconomic status of the neighbourhoods, a fact that fosters environmental and ecological injustice among inhabitants, the Green Belt stretches right through the densely populated northern centre of Berlin, granting access to nature to residents of all income.
A capital of urban ecology science and grassroots movements
The Berlin Green Belt is a striking illustration of an urban planning that is rooted in a long tradition of urban ecology research in Berlin. The story goes like this: from 1961 to 1989, ecologists and naturalists in West Berlin, trapped behind the wall, turned to study the only nature they could access, thereby pioneering the field of urban ecology. Post-war Berlin was a pockmarked city whose many open abandoned areas and ruins welcomed a new growth of wild urban nature. Since reunification, reconstruction and rapid densification of the city has progressively reclaimed the green areas, but some remnant open spaces, such as the Mauerweg, have been actively protected.
The integration of nature conservation in urban planning goes back to the 1980s with the launch of the Landscape Program in 1988. This ambitious program was developed by leading urban ecologists such as Herbert Sukopp, in concert with landscape and city planners, originally for the isolated western sectors of the city. After the reunification of the eastern and western halves of Berlin, it was extended to encompass the whole city area and later joined by additional policies, including the Berlin Strategy for Biodiversity Preservation in 2012 and the Berlin Pollinator Strategy early 2019. What made the landscape program so special was that it was preceded by detailed ecological assessments of habitat types and went hand in hand with a strategy on biodiversity conservation. Therein, the Stadtbrachen—the wild, vacant and entirely novel ecosystems so typical for Berlin—were granted special conservation priority.
“Stadtbrache” Berlin Südgelände, one of several former railway areas that have been transformed into parks that integrate cultural life, recreation and biodiversity conservation. Credit: WikiCommons
So, is Berlin already a National Park City in everything but the name? Some decades ago, efforts to transform the areas surrounding the city into a national park were halted when the population protested that they did not want live in a reserve. How would the citizens of Berlin welcome the whole city being granted special National Park City status? Berlin inhabitants have already demonstrated their strong commitment to urban nature and protecting open spaces. The recent community-led referendum to protect the Tempelhofer Feld is testament to the citizen’s wish to maintain wild and open places in busy urban centres—the former airport field is now transformed into a gigantic open grassland and recreational area, despite being situated in a sector with the highest increases in property values. There is a strong and growing commitment of Berlin citizens and environmental and conservation organizations to conserve and even restore urban nature within the city realms. In a time where many people are disconnected from nature, also termed “extinction of experience”, urban nature attains a special importance. Indeed, in Berlin we see a thriving, creative community garden scene, a rejuvenated interest in allotments by young and old, as well as movements like Mundraub to enjoy edible natural cities, many initiatives to promote insects, e.g. Berlin Summt!, or citizen science projects such as the NABU Insektensommer to reconnect to nature by learning-by-doing.
In addition, nature-based solutions to climate adaptation, such as air cooling through street trees and other larger urban green and blue spaces, will be essential to safeguard citizens in a warming climate. Already, we can see a striking urban heat island effect with differences of up to 10°C in hot summer nights from Alexanderplatz to Grunewald, and promoting urban green and blue spaces can contribute to a climate resilient city. In addition, urbanisation has been linked to a rise in mental health issues, such as depression, and biodiverse urban nature can serve as a natural medicine—it will be important that citizens can actively enjoy nature in their daily life.
Perhaps integrating such citizen-led bottom-up initiatives into the overarching plans developed by city planners and experts may be what a Berlin national park would be all about? Berlin could set an example how daily life can be linked with nature. Conservation of our city nature would serve as active investment into the liveability of Berlin—ultimately a National Park City would not only enhance biodiversity but also public health and wellbeing.
Aletta Bonn is professor of ecosystem services and works at the German Centre of integrative Biodiversity Research. She is interested in the complex interactions of people and nature and employs participatory research methods, including citizen science.
Sophie Lokatis is a phD candidate at Freie Universität Berlin. Her main interests lie in biodiversity research, urban ecology and education for sustainable development.
Scott has worked for over 25 years on urban park and conservation teams across the United States. He is presently Director of a Louisville (Kentucky) regional NGO at work creating a new 600-acre urban park system on the banks of the Ohio River. He also serves as a board member with World Urban Parks.
Perhaps in the National Park Cities framework we will find the vocabulary of shared values necessary to address the urgent urban ecological and health crises that elude, frustrate, and imperil us all.
I live in the Louisville (Kentucky)/Southern Indiana area with 1.3 million neighbors. We live in a remarkably diverse deciduous forest along one of the continent’s largest rivers, the Ohio. Four distinct seasons are experienced each year. Brisk, sharp winters with infrequent snow, brilliant springs highlighted by an explosion of green, humid and hot summers, and lingering autumns beautifully articulated by orange, red, purple, and yellow foliage define our trip around the sun. These seasons also make our exceptional bourbons possible.
Given these seasons, the incredible diversity of plant and animal species found throughout our forests, and the wonderful Fredrick Law Olmsted-designed system of parks and parkways throughout the city, my neighbors and I should be among the most active and “nature aware” urban residents across the globe. This is not the case.
The Trust for Public Land’s 2018 Park Score ranks Louisville #81 out of the 100 largest US cities for the four characteristics of an effective park system: access, investment, acreage, and amenities. Because of high heart disease and diabetes rates, conditions that are closely related to obesity, Louisville was ranked the fifth-unhealthiest city in America by the American College of Sports Medicine. Perhaps most dangerous of all may be our urban heat island. In 2012, Georgia Tech University analyzed urban heating in the fifty largest cities in the States, and Louisville came out on top—above even Phoenix. Phoenix created a city in a desert. We created a desert in a forest.
Our inability to mobilize solutions to these known challenges, acknowledged across the political spectrum, suggests that is isn’t our leaders’ fault. The fault lies in our imagination. We need a new approach. Thus, the National Park Cities provocation matters.
The implementation of a National Park Cities framework introduces a new vocabulary for place; it provides us with a “string theory” for the urban ecosystem. It provides language that people can understand and quickly personalize. This new vocabulary may allow us to outgrow the adolescence of urbanization where we fought so hard to separate the built from the wild.
So, what could happen if my city became a National Park City? What would be different if we woke up one day with the awareness that we share a special, valuable, and unique urban green space?
We listen to the wisdom of our elders and the traditional owners who thrived here.
We celebrate the annual return of migratory songbirds and understand with whom we share them.
We sustain space for wildlife and healthy corridors for people.
We walk and bike more.
Our private development and public conservation communities collaborate to green our cities, neighborhoods, and urban core.
We thoughtfully give our waterways room they need to flood.
Our students learn about oaks.
Our rich and diverse bodies of faith strengthen their believers’ connection to Creation.
Our burgeoning tech sector deploys platforms that engage people daily with the outdoors just out their doors.
Our couches and gyms empty. Our parks and trails fill.
Nature is reflected in the work of our visual and performing artists.
We demand good answers to questions like, “What if the Ohio River was clean enough to swim?”
Local proteins and produce are found in our home kitchens, restaurants, schools, and senior centers.
Local plant stores and nurseries sell native plants that sustain our wildlife.
Any citizen from any community can register for any recreation program in any city.
We build aerial highways for flying squirrels through our neighborhoods.
We demand buildings with windows that open.
We intentionally incorporate time outdoors into every single day of the year.
We make space in our yards, parks, and buildings for wildlife. We then experience their stories of life, and death.
In doing so, we recover small bit of our humanity.
We make the choice to be better than we were.
We inspire the youngest among us to do more than we ever did.
Could Louisville become a National Park City tomorrow? Certainly. I believe our local elected officials would sign the charter as presently written. We would also see short-term rallying to the cause. However, I don’t believe this will be enough.
The Charter challenges us to recast our thinking, our expectations, our understanding of interdependence, and our accountability to one another to deliver lasting change. Organizing ourselves to its objectives across diverse city landscapes requires changing what it means to build, operate, live in, and sustain our very urban (and nature-divorced) lives.
Frankly, I don’t know if my city is ready for that leap. While the signatures will be easy, finding the ability to foster, in a culture that celebrates consumerism and industrial-level consumption, the awareness and vulnerability necessary to sustain stewardship and collective accountability to the Charter’s objective will be much more difficult. And that’s ok because real, lasting, big change should be hard.
The National Park Cities idea, as now expressed in the Universal Charter, provides the framework, a vocabulary if you would, that elevates the possibility of what our urban environments can do to support healthier people and sustainable ecological communities. That these values are shared in cities across the globe only strengthens my resolve that this work matters.
Robert Pirani is the program director for the New York-New Jersey Harbor & Estuary Program at the Hudson River Foundation. HEP is a collaboration of government, scientists and the civic sector that helps protect and restore the harbor’s waters and habitat.
The US National Park Service has a planning process for managing national parks. It is founded in purpose, significance, and fundamental resources and values. Can New York articulate these elements? Absolutely.
How is a city a park—and can we make it more so?
London calling! And their bold declaration promises that considerations of nature in the whole will elevate all the fragmented bits and pieces in our midst. The idea of a National Park City makes for a wonderful and I believe effective campaign and marketing strategy. And it encompasses a host of sound landscape conservation and recreation management practices as well. The trick of course is getting the specifics right.
To think about how application of the National Park City idea might play out in New York, I turned to the planning process deployed for management of National Parks in the United States. The four steps deployed by NPS are to identify the park purpose, its significance, the fundamental resources and values that speak to that significance, and the interpretive themes that will resonate with visitors. To be clear, the mandate is not the same and the analogy not perfect. But the premises and process used by the National Park Service offer the right questions for anyone seeking to improve and celebrate place.
So here are my considerations for nominating New York as a National Park City (with acknowledgement to the recent Management Plan established for our local Gateway National Recreation Area):
The park purpose is a specific reason why a park was established. The National Park Service starts with the premise that that units of the national park system reflects the diversity of the nation and that, as a whole, the National Park System tells America’s story through these cultural and natural resources. The purpose statement provides the most fundamental criteria against which the appropriateness of all planning recommendations, operational decisions, and actions are tested.
Any city can offer testimony to its own purpose and role in shaping a nation’s character. Here is an appropriately modest one for New York:
Park Purpose:
New York City is the heart of the nation’s largest metropolitan area, regional economy, and cultural center. Its forests, beaches, marshes, waters, scenic views, and other public spaces offer critical habitat and resource-based recreational opportunities to a diverse public. Its parks and public spaces include notable examples of the most significant design and management innovations of the last 200+ years.
Statements of significance define what makes the park/city unique—why it is important enough to warrant designation as a park and how it differs from other places. These statements are tools for setting resource protection priorities and for identifying appropriate experiences. Every park—and every city—contains many significant resources, but not all these resources contribute to why the park/city might be designated. The notion is to identify three or four statements that capture the essence of a place.
Here is one example that—again immodestly—captures one feature makes New York as Park significant. My own thinking is that this would be one of four statements; the other defining characteristics of New York National Park City would be Recreational Resources for a Diverse Population; Streetscapes and Urban Mobility; and Parks and Public Space Innovation.
Significance Statement: Ocean & Estuary New York City lies in one of the world’s greatest estuaries. The interaction of the Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean support an important assemblage of coastal ecosystems, including oceans, beaches, barrier islands, bays, tidal rivers, and maritime uplands. The habitats and rich biota that compose these ecosystems are rare in such highly developed areas. These features provide opportunities to restore, study, enhance, and experience coastal habitats and ecosystem processes for a diverse urban population.
Fundamental resources and values are the park/city’s attributes—its features, systems, processes, experiences, stories, opportunities for visitor enjoyment, etc—that are critical to achieving the park’s purpose and to maintaining its significance. These fundamental resources provide a focus on what is truly most important, and where to focus effort and funding.
Relative to the significance of its Ocean & Estuary, New York City’s fundamental resources and values are the variety of coastal and estuarine ecosystems and the most important places and habitat, like the Rockaway Peninsula or the lower Hudson River. But it should also include unique experiences like walking on a sandy beach, kayaking down an urban stream, or witnessing the spring migration of fish and birds.
These resources and values are communicated through the park’s interpretive themes. These themes are based on the park’s purpose and significance and connect resources to relevant ideas, meanings, beliefs, and values. They describe the key stories and concepts on which educational and interpretive programs are based. Here is one drawn right from the Gateway Management Plan that might also fit New York City as whole:
The Natural Wonders, Dynamics, and Challenges of an Urban Estuary. The natural resources of [New York City] are remarkably diverse given their location in the nation’s most densely populated urban area. The mosaic of coastal habitats is a refuge for both rich and rare plant and animal life intrinsically governed by the rhythms, processes, and cycles of nature, yet also continually shaped by people and the surrounding built environment. These resources provide unique and surprising opportunities for experiencing the wildness of the natural world while within the city’s limits, and a model for studying, managing, and restoring urban ecosystems.
It is easy of course for one person to get through this four-part test; not so simple for a room (or city) full of diverse and valid opinions.
So, back to our prompt question: Would management of New York City’s natural and cultural resources truly enhanced by considering the city as whole?
I think so. Considerations of the whole City frames decisions and investments in ways that speak to ecological process, whether it is watershed conservation, creating connective greenways, or restoring guilds of representative species. Creating personal experiences that speak to whole city landscapes—like art that celebrates buried watercourses or massive, collective citizen science efforts that capture a day in the life of the Hudson River—can help reveal nature in our urban midst. The challenge would be defining which processes, and which experiences, are most important to elevate.
Julie Procter is Chief Executive of greenspace scotland. With over 25 years’ experience working in the environmental sector, she is passionate about the importance of greenspace close to where people live and the many benefits it delivers for people, places and communities.
Julie Procter
In Scotland, we already have a strong and supportive policy framework. We now need the ambition, imagination, and confidence to think and do things differently, to break out of traditional sector and organisational silos, to work in ways which are collaborative and empowering.
When Scotland becomes a nation of National Park Cities…
Our parks and public greenspaces will no longer be caged like animals in a zoo. Green fingers, fronds and tendrils will reach out across the city, as street trees, rain gardens, green roofs and walls colonise our streets and neighbourhoods.
Children will no longer be imprisoned in classrooms and nurseries. Every day they will enjoy and be inspired by learning and playing outdoors and experiencing nature at first hand.
Local food growing will break free from the shackles of allotments and soon we will be sowing and growing everywhere—from pop-up gardens at the bus stop and vertical growing up the office wall, to edible playground planters and tasty community street orchards.
Commuters will be liberated from the cars as walking, cycling and active green travel is now the easiest way to get around the city.
Escaping from the car we will connect again at a human scale—noticing the flowers blooming, the wind blowing through the leaves, the sweet sound of birdsong and breathing clean air.
Communities will no longer be entangled in red tape when they want to take action to make their homes, streets, and neighbourhoods cleaner, greener, and healthier or simply enjoy a community event in their local park.
Once again, we will enjoy the sight and sound of children playing outside…and make time to stop and chat with neighbours and friends.
All of this adds up to a greener, healthier, happier city where people, places and nature are better connected, where communities thrive and we all enjoy longer lives, better lived.
Realising the ambition of a National Park City is as much about changing mindsets as it is about changing the fabric and the infrastructure of the city
In Scotland, we already have a strong and supportive policy framework where national outcomes are aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our national outcomes include: people value, enjoy, protect and enhance their environment; people live in communities that are inclusive, empowered, resilient and safe; people are active and healthy.
Research already provides a strong and growing evidence base on the multiple benefits of green and blue space for our health, communities, economy and environment.
We now need the ambition, imagination and confidence to think and do things differently, to break out of traditional sector and organisational silos, to work in ways which are collaborative and empowering. We need to be bold and ambitious about how we want to live our lives and shape our cities.
Then we can realise a Scotland that is a nation of National Park Cities, where our green and blue spaces are our natural health service, our children’s outdoor classrooms and our cities’ green lungs.
Breda likes joining the movement of National Park Cities because it is in line with its ambition to become a city in park.
Breda, National Park City?
The city of Breda is inspired by initiative and words of Daniel Raven-Ellison that made London the first National Park City of the world. Breda, a city in the southern part of the Netherlands, has for 2030 set three big ambitions on the themes green, hospitality, and a borderless city. For green this is translated: in 2030 Breda wants to be the first city in Europe that lies in a park. This ambition was chosen together with the inhabitants of the city Breda. Residents and organisations agree that the power of Breda is partly located in the green nature and water that is present in large amounts both in the city and the outer area. From this strong position, the municipality wants to work together with residents and interest groups to further strengthen the green. The emphasis is placed in particular on connecting nature reserves through built-up areas. In addition, Breda will strengthen the green already present in the city of Breda.
Breda is a historic city in which nature occupies an important position. The city originated on the River Mark. Breda is committed to making the river visible again in the city centre. In the final phase, bringing the river back must be combined with nature development. Especially on the outskirts of the city we find nature reserves whose origin goes back to the 12th century. Together with the National Forestry, the municipality of Breda wants to make the green an even more prominent. Based on the figures of Esri-Nederland, 61% of the area of the municipality is green. Breda believes that a green city contributes to solving problems such as heat stress, climate change, and health problems.
Breda also wants to be an attractive city for its residents and businesses in particular. Due to a good location climate, people would like to live in Breda and stay here. Companies are increasingly choosing Breda to settle. Visitors to Breda combine their day of shopping in a historic centre with a day outside in nature. In short Breda profiles itself as a green city where its inhabitants feel at home and who can be proud of their city.
Breda likes joining the movement of National Park Cities because it is in line with its ambition to become a city in park. Breda is also convinced that it can learn from other cities when it comes to involving residents and parties from the further greening of the city. It is also prepared to share the knowledge it has with other cities. For a good future for our children and grandchildren, it is not enough that only Breda will turn green; all cities should be moving in this direction.
Breda has already invested a lot in the further strengthening of green and nature. Especially in the outer area, the city has made great advances. In the coming years, the municipality will work to mobilise other parties that can contribute to our ambition. In the “week of the future”, residents and organisations are challenged to think about with how this ambition can be shaped—ot only by the municipality but also the partners who are already committed. Furthermore, meetings are organized with architects and Breda is one of the organizers of the “Landschapstrienale”.
Together with our other two ambitions—hospitality and a borderless city—Breda becomes a city in a park and a National Park City.
Dr. Snorri Sigurdsson is a biologist, who has worked for the Department of Environment and Planning in the City of Reykjavík, Iceland for the last six years.
Reykjavík is well suited to be a National Park City—it has all the elements and already many projects that could fit in to this kind of premise. But Icelanders are deeply independent, and any NPC effort will only succeed from the ground up.
London National Park City is a fantastic initiative. Its immediate strength lies in the fact it is a movement and a collective spurred on by partnership and breakout ideas and projects. Even though the „national park“ title may allude to a rigidly governed institution, which is surely not the case here, it also signifies a status of importance and value. That this value is being shared via communal use and ownership of London‘s multitude of green spaces and natural heritage is a real triumph. Hopefully, this fabulous concept will be happily received and supported by the citizens and guests of London.
View over central Reykjavík.
It‘s a no-brainer to imagine this idea being applied in other cities. The City of Reykjavík, where I live and work, is truly rich in nature, with pristine habitats of great diversity and value. It is a coastal city, surrounded by the vast blue stretches of the North Atlantic, colonies of breeding seabirds and visiting migratory shorebirds fill the skies and waters and the crown-jewel is a glorious salmon river right in the middle of the city. In addition, as to be expected in Iceland, the geological heritage is rich, with lava fields, volcanic pseudocraters, glacial sediments and rock formations scattered through-out the city landscape. This rich nature is very accessible to the citizens, in easy walking distance for most.
Reykjavík has grown fast in the last decades, and only recently has the rapid sprawl of development been halted by city officials with focus on densification in the name of climate-friendly sustainability. While the positive environmental effect of this strategy is obvious, there has been a conflict when densification occurs in green spaces. One positive impact of the previously dominating sprawl city growth is that green spaces in Reykjavík are numerous and widely spread. Not nearly all are renowned parks or natural areas, some are nameless plots that happen to be vegetated and utilized by people living by them. Thus their use for densification has been protested and remains a contentious and difficult topic for the otherwise very “green-minded” politics ruling the city council.
City Hall by Reykjavík Pond on a foggy day– one of many natural areas in the city.
A new city-run project called the Reykjavík Green Net aims to strengthen the status of the green spaces in the city, with focus on improving connections between green areas by adding various types of green infrastructure, walking and biking lanes as well as blue-green solutions for surface water runoff where applicable. Green spaces also feature highly in projects aimed to improve citizen involvement. “My neighborhood” is a citizen participatory platform where people vote for various features and events in their neighborhoods such as installations for sport and recreation. The vast majority of the features usually voted for are in green areas.
Reykjavík is well suited to be a National Park City—it has all the elements and already many projects that could fit in to this kind of premise. It could be a great opportunity for city officials to kickstart such a project and improve the dialogue about green areas. What makes the NPC concept so inviting is the creation of a platform of true partnership. But this could be its greatest challenge in Reykjavík. Despite there being no bounds to creative examples of collaboration in Reykjavík, there is a strong sense of independence in the typical Icelandic mind-set. Being told what to do, especially by politicians or officials, is never likely to lead to success. Therefore, the NPC concept would have to be introduced ground-up from community organizations, private or NGOs, even youth movements, to really gain traction. Following that, the city council would undoubtedly gladly support the idea.
Puffins are among the bird species breeding in Reykjavík.
Daniel Raven-Ellison made it happen for London, but each city will need its own leader(s) to emerge who can inspire and motivate enough people to make it happen in their particular circumstances. Who?
Who can argue that a National Park City isn’t a great idea? When you look at the National Park City website it is full of colorful and catchy images and words that make it virtually impossible to not want your own city to become one. The idea of a National Park City is framed to be accessible and inviting and easily understandable to everyone—all can participate, no matter your background, socio-economic status, zip code, or other markers of life in the city. As posited, a National Park City is a vision, a movement, and a community that you can join. At its core, it’s about getting people in touch with the nature around them, improving the green and blue spaces embedded into a city’s fabric, and promoting the “brand” value of being such a city to the rest of the world. Being a National Park City has cachet, and it certainly promises increased visibility, attention, and status to the network of cities that eventually join its ranks.
While the pull of becoming a National Park City will certainly be strong for many global urban centres with already well-developed green and blue infrastructure, there are serious things to consider before going down this path. One that immediately pops out is the value that a city might place on being identified as a “national park” city—with its inherent identity politics in relationship to a federal government. While we may think that national park systems elicit inherently positive attitudes, this may not be true in every circumstance. Not all citizens have a positive view of their national governments, and the idea of giving the national government “credit” for the best parts of their city by branding it as a National Park City might not sit so well with some. Along those lines, many communities, cities, and regions possess a strong sense of “local” with already well-developed global brands that work for them. In such cases, will the layering on of a National Park City label only serve to dilute these well-established identities?
Another very important consideration about becoming a National Park City is the fact that each city will need a “champion” like London’s National Park City idea originator, Daniel Raven-Ellison, who worked tirelessly for years to bring about his vision. His success is inspiring for so many, but it shows that to become truly successful, a National Park City requires vision, time, commitment, energy, resources, as well as a bit of luck and magic to make it happen. Daniel Raven-Ellison made it happen for London, but each city will need its own leader(s) to emerge who can inspire and motivate enough people to make it happen in their particular circumstances.
It is clear from the London National Park City website that key components of realizing their vision includes the creation of a governing charter, the establishment of a partnership (comprised of groups and organizations) led by a steering group, and the development of a foundation to provide the leadership, fundraising, partnerships, and administration necessary to undertake the day-to-day work to keep it all going—which is to say that a lot of hard work and persistence are required to see this through. A key question for those considering joining this movement is the extent to which this necessary formula can successfully be replicated elsewhere?
That being said, and on balance, I truly believe it is worth endorsing the idea of National Park Cities because the vision is so compelling and timely, the motives for undertaking the work are so pure, and the potential benefits so critical to the continued health and well-being of humans and nature alike. After all, who wouldn’t benefit from living in a healthier, wilder, and kinder city of the type promoted by the National Park City movement? To this end, I, for one, sincerely hope that 25 cities will find what it takes to become a National Park City by 2025.
I think my own city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada would be an excellent candidate for a National Park City. We enjoy a stunning natural environment, we’re continually investing in our blue and green infrastructure, and we’re passionate about preserving and sharing our high quality of life on beautiful southern Vancouver Island. Now is the time for a local Daniel Raven-Ellison to emerge who will lead the charge and inspire us to become Canada’s first National Park City. If this happens by 2025, it will be truly amazing!
According to the United Nations, the second biggest problem for humanity after global warming is disorganized urbanization—urbanization without planning and integration of natural environments. Since 2008, for the first time in history, the majority of people live in urban areas, and this pattern is expected to keep increasing in the oncoming decades, until 5 billion people are living in cities in 2030. In general, urbanization occurs at fast rates in tropical countries relative to temperate countries and it is expected that the biggest increase of urbanization will occur in Asian and African countries.
Changes in the structure of the surrounding environment affect the occurrence of native species in remaining natural habitat fragments in cities.
Urbanization reduces natural habitats (such as forest, grasslands, and wetlands), creates new habitats (such as parks, lagoons, and gardens), increases the levels of contamination and species introduction, favors disease dissemination, and produces changes in temperature, wind currents, and the water cycle. Aside from contamination, fragmentation is probably the most influential issue for preserving natural habitat and the species that inhabit it; because fragmentation separates populations, it prevents species movement between patches, reduces the area available to inhabit, changes wind currents and temperature levels, increases temperature and noise levels, and allows alien species to colonize the patches, just to mention a few examples.
Each of the previous effects of habitat fragmentation (and others) may act alone or as a part of a set of effects to cause that native species to go locally extinct. For example, if a fragment starts to be noisy due to the occurrence of more people and traffic, animals that use acoustical signals to attract pairs, defend territories, or announce predator presence—such as crickets, frogs, or birds—must change the structure of their vocalizations (e.g., frequency and duration) by singing at higher volume or changing the periods of singing (e.g., diurnal species singing at night), to allow the message in its vocalizations to arrive at the receiver without degradation caused by the additional, new noise. If individuals of the species cannot change the acoustical properties of their vocalizations or their behaviors, the species is likely to be driven locally extinct from the habitat fragment. Likewise, if the remaining fragments are more open than the original, continuous habitat, the fragment is likely to be brighter and drier because light and heat will arrive more directly to the understory and ground. This will cause species adapted to dense and dark habitats, such as fungi, mosses, understory plants, some insects, insectivorous birds, and newts, to locally disappear or to be reduced in abundance.
Fig. 1. Modification and fragmentation of natural habitats create new structures that may be used by alien species to reproduce, as this White-winged Dove (Zenaida asiatic a), which has invaded many fragments of montane forest in the Costa Rican Central Valley, the most urbanized area of the country.
These two examples of habitat fragmentation and modification illustrate how changes in the structure of the surrounding environment affect the occurrence of native species in remaining natural habitat fragments. But, these are not the only problems that face the remaining native species in fragmented habitats, because when the native species cannot survive in the new fragment conditions, other species more adapted to these conditions—such as pioneer plants, open-area animals, and introduced species—arrive and colonize the empty space. Those species are named alien species and could have two possible origins: (1) species that naturally inhabit the country, state, or region but inhabit other habitats and ecosystems different from the fragmented one, or (2) could be introduced species from other countries or continents by humans. Under this scenario, native species start to compete and interact with the alien species in a war that determines which species will survive and flourish in the fragmented habitats.
In the Neotropics, fragmentation of natural habitats allows dry forest species to colonize what were once more humid habitats. In this case, although dry forest species are native to several countries, they are alien to humid forests. For example, Hoffmann’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes hoffmannii), White-winged Dove (Zenaida asiatica), and Rufous-naped Wren (Campylorhynchus rufinucha), which are Mesoamerican dry forest species, have colonized more humid habitats after fragmentation in the Caribbean rain forest or Pacific rain forest. Hoffmann’s Woodpecker started to increase its distribution along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica in approximately the last 10 years (Sandoval & Vargas 2007). It was able to compete for nesting substrates with the native Black-cheeked Woodpecker (M. pucherani) because both species use the same type of substrates for nesting and are territorial against other woodpeckers. Based on its actual occurrence on the Caribbean coast (using data from the citizen science-based app, eBird), Hoffmann’s Woodpecker is pushing Black-cheeked Woodpecker out from urban places. This pattern is apparently occurring with other dry forest species, which are pushing out the native species of humid fragmented habitats (Biamonte et al. 2011). For example, in Mexico, after cloud forest fragmentation, the most common species in the remaining fragments are Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) and Brown Jay (Psilorhinus morio), which are alien species associated with disturbed habitats. Insectivores and large frugivores are now less common or have disappeared from small fragments (Rueda-Hérnandez et al. 2015).
Introducing alien species into fragmented habitats, where they compete, parasitize, or predate native species, occurs more commonly by human intervention. For example, house cats (Felis catus), both pets and feral, occur in all urban environments and are one of the biggest predators of wild birds in fragmented habitats around urban areas. Researchers estimate that between 1 and 3 billion birds are predated each year by house cats in the United States (Dauphine and Cooper 2009, Loss et al. 2013), between 350,000 and 1 million in Canada (Blancher 2013), and approximately 27 million in the United Kingdom (Woods et al. 2003). A more detailed study showed that house cats are responsible for 47 percent of nest predation in Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis); house cats are directly affecting the recruitment and population growth of the species (Balogh et al. 2011). However, house cats also predate rodents, lizards, and large insects, locally reducing or extinguishing a large set of native species. In this case, it is necessary for humans to intervene to avoid local extinctions and to control the species dynamics inside natural habitat fragments.
Fig. 2. Rock Pigeon (Columbia livia) is an alien species common in the majority of parks around the world, where it competes with native pigeons, doves, and other birds for nesting sites and food.
These few examples represent scenarios in temperate and tropical habitats where native animal species are losing the war against alien species in fragmented habitats inside urban areas. How native plant species respond to the occurrence of alien species is less well-understood because, in some cases, a single individual or small population can persist several years in a place completely isolated from other individuals of its own species, giving a false perception of a lack of harm by alien species to the occurrence of native species. It is important to remember that fragmentation affects the occurrence of native species at several levels by changing the structure of remaining habitats and allowing the occurrence of other, better-adapted alien species in the fragmented habitats. I recommend the development of studies that evaluate how native and alien species interact in fragmented habitats inside urban areas throughout the world, if we want to understand whether those fragmented habitats are working as a reservoir of native species or as a black hole where natives will be replaced by alien species in the near future.
Good management of residual natural habitats inside cities will aim for the preservation of native species because native species (e.g., animals, plants, mushrooms, and bacteria) interact to keep populations and their surrounding ecosystems balanced. For example, a bird species that eat insects (e.g., flycatchers or wrens) keep insect populations under control, preventing them from becoming a plague. Similarly, native plants provide nectar for nectarivorous animals; these animals pollinate flowers, allowing fruit production.
However, to help native species win the war against alien species, it is necessary to consider whether the natural habitat fragment inside the urban area is recent, old, or intermediate in age. The age of the fragment will influence how possible it is to manage and preserve the native species within it, as well as avoiding or reducing the occurrence of alien species. Recently-created fragments will have more native species and less alien species; in this case, with the correct management and relatively low costs, it is possible to preserve the habitat and maintain a large diversity of native species. On the other hand, older fragments that have gone unmanaged probably will have more alien species than native species. In those cases, the cost to help return and maintain the native species could be very expensive and require a lot of management. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the age of fragment creation and the proportion of each type of species (native and aliens) before deciding whether it is prudent to actively manage the fragment.
Balogh, A. L., T. B. Ryder, P. P. Marra. 2011. Population demography of Gray Catbirds in the suburban matrix:sources, sinks and domestic cats. J Ornithol (2011) 152:717–726.
Biamonte, E., L Sandoval, E Chacón & G. Barrantes. 2011. Effect of urbanization on the avifauna in a tropical metropolitan area. Landscape Ecology 26: 183-194.
Blancher, P. 2013. Estimated Number of Birds Killed by House Cats (Felis catus) in Canada. Avian Conservation and Ecology. 8(2): 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ACE-00557-080203
Dauphine, N., and R. J. Cooper. 2009. Impacts of free-ranging domestic cats (Felis catus) on birds in the United States: a review of recent research with conservation and management recommendations. Proceedings of the Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics 205-219. [online] URL: http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/pif/pubs/McAllenProc/articles/PIF09_Anthropogenic%20Impacts/Dauphine_1_PIF09.pdf
Loss, S. R., T. Will, and P. P. Marra. 2013. The impact of freeranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications 4:1396. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380
Rueda-Hénandez, R., I. MacGregor-Fors, & K. Renton. 2015. Shifts in resident bird communities associated with cloud forest patch size in CEntral Veracruz, Mexico. Avian Conservation and Ecology 10 (2): http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ACE-00751-100202
Sandoval, L. & E. Vargas. 2007. Melanerpes hoffmannii (Aves: Picidae) en el Caribe central de Costa Rica. Brenesia 68: 87-88.
http://www.unfpa.org/urbanization
Woods, M., R. A. McDonald, and S. Harris. 2003. Predation of wildlife by domestic cats (Felis catus) in Great Britain. Mammal Review 33:174-186. http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2907.2003.00017.x
Those engaged in the native versus non-native debate should perhaps avoid becoming too polarised. While some non-native plant species certainly have proven highly invasive and damaging to native habitat, the impact of the vast majority appears to be (so far at least) relatively benign. Indeed, many non-native species can be beneficial for native wildlife and provide other functions.
When evaluating or seeking to enhance the biodiversity interest of an urban greenspace, a key attribute to consider is its floral composition. Floral composition can be native, non-native or a variable mix of the two. A species is defined as native to a given region or ecosystem if its presence is the result of only “natural” processes; that is to say, not by human agency. A non-native species by contrast is one that has been introduced by human action, either accidentally or deliberately, outside of its natural range.
The relatively high prevalence of non-native species is a key defining feature of urban floras (McKinney, 2006). Non-native plants are valued in residential gardens and urban parks for various reasons including colour and foliage qualities, flower size, culinary and cultural attributes, and sometimes also as discussed here, their value to wildlife. However, in seeking to maximize biodiversity value, there appears to be growing momentum behind selecting native over non-native plant species when designing both public greenspaces and residential gardens (McKinney, 2006; Hulme et al., 2018). In favouring native species, it is also argued that various potential adverse impacts associated with non-native planting can be avoided. In this respect, the harmful effects resulting from the introduction of non-native species that then become invasive is claimed to be one of the most significant threats to global biodiversity (IUCN 2000; Simberloff, 2015). The IUCN further asserts that urban centres and ornamental horticulture are principal pathways for the introduction and spread of invasive plant species (Ham et al., 2013).
Award-winning linear wildflower meadow (biannually managed), created in Crest Nicholson’s Harbourside development in the heart of Bristol, UK; design by Grant Associates and Biodiversity by Design. Photograph courtesy of Grant Associates.
Nevertheless, a scepticism about the scale of this impact has been simmering for some time, and quite recently has been emphatically reemphasised by a relatively small but vocal element (Hobbs et al., 2009; Davis et al., 2011; Luscombe & Scott, 2011; Pearce, 2015). In their opinion, long-established place-based management approaches that focus on maintaining historical floral and faunal assemblages need to change. They contend there should be greater recognition of emerging “novel ecosystems”, often consisting of many non-native plant species, which better respond to climate change, as well as various environmental transformations occurring due to urbanization, including micro-climatic variation, compacted and contaminated soils, and altered drainage patterns. These commentators assert that the risks associated with non-native species are overstated, and that a more balanced approach is needed that embraces them alongside native species as an integral element of the urban landscape.
This article is concerned primarily with the pros and cons of native and non-native planting, specifically with respect to their biodiversity value within publicly accessible greenspaces (excluding large-scale urban habitat restoration projects) and residential gardens. The relationships that native and non-native plants have with pollinators and phytophagous insects is particularly emphasized. The former insect group is, inter alia, critical in providing pollination services, while the latter is crucial in conveying energy up the food chain to a multitude of birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
It is recognized that landscape designers and gardeners aim to achieve many other goals when devising planting schemes, including providing aesthetic/visual interest, a sense of place, multicultural appeal, ground-cover, multi-seasonal colour, legibility, and ease of management. Discussion on these additional aims is abundant elsewhere in the literature and so is not discussed further here.
Relatively formal courtyard planting, consisting of ornamental but nectar-rich herbaceous cultivars, within the Crest Nicholson Centenary Quay development in Southampton, UK; design by Allen Scott Landscape Architects and Biodiversity by Design.
The case for native planting
Opportunities for native insect fauna
It is frequently claimed that native plants generally support greater faunal diversity and biomass than non-native planting. For example, a US study by Burghardt et al. (2008) found that caterpillar and bird abundance and diversity was significantly higher in urban gardens with predominantly native planting compared with gardens dominated by non-native planting. Many birds of course rely on caterpillars for feeding their nestlings.
The apparent preference of native fauna for native flora is often explained by their long history of association, the two having coevolved over millennia. While plants have evolved a variety of physical and chemical means to defend themselves against attack by insects (and other species), those insects that have co-evolved with them are believed to be much more likely to have the specialized behavioural and physiological adaptations to overcome these defensive barriers, allowing them to consume, grow and reproduce on their host plants (Tallamy, 2004).
While both a greater diversity and abundance of herbivorous insects are generally considered beneficial from an ecological perspective because of their importance in the food web, many people, if not most, appear to consider such species as pests, revealing an awkward philosophical contradiction in wildlife gardening. Unlike plant-devouring insects, however, pollinators appear universally cherished (although some species can both pollinate and consume plants dependent on their life-stage). A number of studies have found a negative association between the degree of urbanization and both pollinator abundance and species richness (Hernandez et al., 2009). While the high coverage of impervious surfaces in urban areas is important in explaining such relationships, it is also suggested that the high proportion of non-native species might also be a key contributing factor.
While a co-evolutionary explanation may again partly explain the apparent differences in pollinator preference between native and non-native plant species, the degree of horticultural modification of the latter might also be important, as selective breeding can result in reductions in floral reward or changes to flower structure that inhibits pollinator access (Comba et al., 1999). For example, the double-flowered trait constrains access for insects to pollen-bearing centre parts, and in some cases is produced at the expense of reproductive floral components such as anthers or carpels.
Invasion by non-native flora at the expense of native flora
The close relationship between native plants and co-evolved herbivorous insects is believed to partly explain the “invasion paradox”. This is the ability of exotic plants to colonize and spread more readily than native species, contrary to intuition that would suggest that native species would be better adapted to local conditions. Certain alien plants are believed to proliferate in their new environments partly because they have become unshackled from coevolved herbivores and other natural enemies—the so called “enemy release hypothesis” (Tallamy, 2004).
An additional factor that might cause non-native species to spread beyond their intended confines relates to the reduced competition that they face from native species in urban sites that have experienced high levels of anthropogenic disturbance, such as brownfield sites (previously developed land that is not currently in use), and along transport corridors and watercourses (McKinney, 2006). The disturbed early successional conditions found in such sites are often highly unrepresentative of those occurring across the wider landscape and thus may be inhospitable to many localized native species and communities (hardy native ruderals being an exception).
It has also been suggested that the ‘high performance’ traits of invasive non-native plant species, which for example relate to physiology, various size characteristics, growth rate, fecundity and adaptiveness, confers an advantage over many native species, thereby helping them to rapidly colonize such environments (Jauni et al., 2015). Plant breeders may have specifically selected for such traits in many invasive ornamental species to facilitate ease of cultivation.
In spite of such processes seemingly favouring the spread of non-native plants, Williamson (1996) has estimated that only 1% of alien plant species are self-sustaining outside of cultivation, while only 0.1% can be considered invasive. However, such estimates have not gone unchallenged. Certainly, where non-native species do become invasive, they have potential to dramatically transform native biodiversity, many examples of which are provided by Ham et al. (2013). Simberloff (2015) also argues that because modern invasion biology is still in its infancy, many non-native species have yet to be studied in detail and therefore it is premature to assume their effects are only benign, particularly as global warming unshackles species that are currently being contained by climatic limits.
Biological Homogenization
The proliferation of invasive non-natives is also said to be causing ‘biological homogenization’, i.e. the same urban-adapted plants are becoming progressively dominant in towns and cities across the world (McKinney, 2006). The high number of invasive species shared between cities is in part related to people’s shared preferences for particular ornamental species. While an influx of non-native plant species may diversify local biodiversity, global biodiversity is said to be reduced by these species as they outcompete more uncommon localized plant species.
Native plantings can be effective analogues of more valuable semi-natural or natural habitats
While most wildlife gardeners face spatial constraints, park managers have more opportunity to establish native plant species together in large numbers to form recognizable native plant communities, thereby contributing to local biodiversity strategies (Plate 1). While complicated large-scale urban ecological engineering projects are not discussed here, it is relevant to reference the opportunities for smaller-scale native habitat analogues that can be achieved relatively easily. In the UK two-thirds of publicly-managed urban green infrastructure consists of amenity grassland, i.e. regularly mown (virtual monoculture) grassland (Forestry Research, 2006), while in Chicago in the US, amenity grassland (or “turf grass” as Americans refer to it) covers 21% of the city (Davis et al., 2017). In many cases, relatively substantial areas of amenity grassland have potential for conversion to native wildflower meadow (or other native habitat types) without unduly compromising sporting and other amenity interests, which in turn has been shown to increase the abundance and diversity of pollinating insects (Garbuzov et al., 2015).
The case for non-native planting
Enhanced opportunities for insects
Influenced by the various studies discussed above, the consensus in invasion biology and ecological thinking more generally, has been that non-native species are generally harmful, impoverishing biodiversity and even upsetting the benign “balance of nature”. As with a great many things, consideration of the research in its entirety actually reveals a more nuanced picture, with some research challenging ecological orthodoxy regarding the relative ecological benefits of native and non-native planting, and also the underlying causes behind the patterns.
Studies suggesting a negative relationship between the abundance of non-native plant species and the prevalence and diversity of pollinating insects are often based on a limited sample of plants and certainly do not tell the whole story. There are thousands of plant varieties available to landscape designers, a large number of which are not double-flowered and are in some cases rich in pollen and nectar, and thus highly beneficial to insects (Garbuzov & Ratnieks, 2014) (Plate 2). Indeed, in the UK the Royal Horticultural Society operates the “Perfect for Pollinators” certification scheme, championing wildlife friendly cultivars on sale in plant nurseries.
Some studies have found that certain non-native planting can actually attract a greater abundance of pollinators than many native species (Morales & Traveset, 2009; Matteson & Langellotto, 2011). It is even suggested that some non-native plants may be too effective at attracting pollinating insects, reducing visitations to native plant species and thereby threatening their reproductive success (Bjerknes et al., 2007).
The success of some ornamental plantings might partly be explained by the fact that many species have been selectively bred to have extended flowering periods and large flowers, features that are associated with increased nectar and pollen production (Matteson & Langellotto, 2011). Possibly due to these enhanced qualities, some studies are suggesting that bee species-richness might actually be higher across urban areas compared with neighbouring countryside (Baldock et al., 2015). In adjoining intensively farmed rural landscapes, crop species are only in bloom for a limited period, many trees and hedgerows have been removed, and herbicides have greatly reduced the abundance of wildflowers.
Such urban/rural comparisons of species richness can depend heavily on the specific nature of the sites being compared. Certainly, brownfield sites that are often rich in non-native species, can help sustain a high-level of biodiversity, clearly surpassing that of many neighbouring farmland areas. In the longer term such novel ecosystems can also set the stage for ecological recovery, helping to gradually repair degraded soils and ultimately lead to the re-establishment of more recognizable native habitats (Ewel & Putz 2004; Pearce, 2015). Pearce (2015) further contends that non-natives generally do not compete with or displace native species from established habitats but instead fill empty niches in disturbed environments that may be unsuited for colonization by localized native species and/or communities.
Other research from the UK is indicating that there is little difference in pollinator abundance between native and near-native plant mixes, which is perhaps unsurprising given that many of the UK’s native pollinators are also present on the European continent, and so will have coevolved with and readily identify many near-native plant species as a feeding resource (Salisbury et al., 2015; Brodie et al., 2017). Smith et al. (2006) suggests that a much larger proportion of native phytophagous insects could be utilizing non-native plants as hosts than previously recognized for the same reason.
Climate change adaptation, disproportionate cost, low extinction risk and risk of botanical xenophobia
Those objecting to the focus on ‘nativeness’ further assert that: non-natives could be nature’s saviour as climate change renders conditions unsuitable for many native species; that estimated eradication and confinement costs for non-natives are greatly exaggerated and that such programmes are sometimes unjustified; non-natives generally pose a negligible risk of native species extinction (island populations being the main exception); and the militaristic style of language used in describing non-native species, e.g. as ‘alien invaders’, is non-scientific, pejorative and even xenophobic. All of these additional objections are in themselves sizeable topics for debate and so readers are directed to Davis et al. (2011), Luscombe & Scott (2011), Pearce (2015) and Thomas & Palmer (2015) for further discussion, but also to Simberloff & Strong (2013) and Simberloff (2015) for robust counter arguments.
Conclusions
When designing greenspaces to enhance biodiversity, a key consideration relates to plant species selection and the particular mix of native and non-native species. This article has focussed on the respective values of native or non-native plants to insects, which perform various critical ecosystem functions, including pollination and providing a primary food source for other taxa. While some of the evidence is contradictory and there are confounding factors, on balance a preference for native species in planting schemes is likely to achieve the greatest benefit for biodiversity. Large scale planting (or seeding) of native species into recognizable communities can also create impressive habitat analogues that can make important contributions to biodiversity targets.
Moreover, some non-native plant species have proven highly invasive and damaging to native habitat, and so care must always be taken to assess invasion risk when designing planting schemes, especially when adjoining habitat is closer to natural than semi-natural, or next to river corridors.
However, those engaged in the native versus non-native debate should perhaps avoid becoming too polarised. It should also be acknowledged that a great many non-native species are also valuable for wildlife and provide other functions. The vast majority of ornamental plants appear, so far at least, to have had little negative ecological impact, and where they have spread it is frequently as opportunists, filling gaps in disturbed environments unsuited to many local species and/or communities. Often novel environments such as brownfield sites, including heady mixtures of both native and non-native ruderal species, can develop into rich and valued havens for native fauna.
While there are many opportunities for including more native plants and communities in urban planting schemes, some pragmatism is also required amongst conservationists, recognizing that unadulterated native habitat creation is not always optimal in many urban contexts. Non-native plant species will have a continued role to play in planting schemes, bringing vibrancy and joy, and sometimes also considerable value to native fauna.
This article is an abridged version of a chapter included in Routledge’s forthcoming Handbook of Urban Ecology. [Douglas, I; P. Anderson; D. Goode; M.C. Houck; D. Maddox; Harini Nagendra; and T.P. Yok (Editors). 2020. Handbook of Urban Ecology, 2nd Edition. Abingdon: Routledge Press. In press.]
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In Russia, few home gardeners use native species and they are not available in nurseries. In creating Recollections of the Meadow, we hoped to test-run the approach where native plant species would be used to build a flower bed, and we intended to share the resulting algorithm with everyone willing to follow suit.
Last year in spring, we came up with an idea of creating a flower garden that would only feature native plant species. Why is that both difficult and important? And what conclusions can we draw after a full year of watching the flower garden grow and seeing how both community and specialists respond to it?
Plants and pollinators have been evolving together for millions of years and depend on each other. For example, Moscow is home to the red bartsia bee (Melitta tricincta) which only visits red bartsia. And the small tortoiseshell caterpillar feeds almost exclusively on common nettle, a stinging plant considered a weed.
But the share of indigenous plants in the cities has been decreasing across Europe, and that has been dragging along insect and even bird biodiversity. Over the last 150 years and by the end of the 20th century, the share of indigenous species in European flora decreased from 88% to 68% (Kent, 1975). The majority of the deleted species, 27%, belonged to meadow communities. Meanwhile, the share of alien species has been on the increase. Popular in landscape gardening, they “escape” their cultured environments and invade local communities displacing wild species. Lupin (Lupinus polyphyllus) and Canadian goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) have already made it among Russia’s top 100 most dangerous invasives occupying huge territories of natural ecosystems, while 7 species of Moscow’s native and very common bellflower have already been listed as threatened (Red List).
One can speculate about the need to promote “proper” landscape gardening and use only native plant species that can support pollinators. Let’s actually do it. What would we have to face? Last year in spring, our “Architects of the Meadow” team which consists of landscape architects and biologists took the chance to recreate a meadow with wild grasses in an ordinary Moscow yard, so that it could both compete with other flower gardens in beauty and stand out significantly in terms of how it “benefits” wildlife. We wanted to make a point that, in Russia, native species were undeservedly forgotten and raise this awareness among both professionals and local residents.
A month ago, our “Recollections of the Meadow” was awarded a prize by Moscow Urban Forum, Russia’s main architectural forum—the flower garden was put up for voting by an independent jury, and the winner was determined by Moscow residents in a month-long voting session at the main city website. But the road to victory and attention was bumpy.
Photo by Michael ScheglovPhoto by Michael ScheglovPhoto by Michael Scheglov
No planting material in plant nurseries
Before starting the work, we made a list of 46 plant species that we would like to grow in our flower bed and divided them into 5 groups—to be planted in blocks, to form the core of the flower garden, to create a structure, to support the middle layer, and early bloomers to decorate the flower bed in early spring. This way, our garden would turn out diverse and as attractive as possible in every season of the year. Eventually, plant nurseries could only provide a third of the list, which meant 14 plant species. But we decided to go ahead with what we managed to find while asking local residents to bring those species from our list that grew on their own on their countryside plots. They are still common in the countryside, whereas in the cities, trimmed lawn prevalence has already made them a rare find.
Native plants are not easily found for sale in Russia. Landscape nurseries hardly ever grow them as there is no customer demand, while consumers do not want to pay for something that is perceived as a weed, is mown off, and grows for free. As a result, even landscape gardening specialists—landscape architects—have little knowledge of the local flora, the names of those plants, and their bloom potential. So, it turns out there is no one—neither a customer nor a contractor—to initiate planting a native flower in a flower bed.
Professionals surprised by plant “character traits” in a flower bed
Working with native species was a professional challenge for landscape architects who were responsible for drafting the flower garden concept. The way plants would behave in a flower bed could mostly be imagined in theory only — knowing how they bloom and grow in the wild is one thing and having them in a closed area of a flower bed is quite another. Eventually, we were in for both pleasant and unpleasant surprises. For example, field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) grew so big that it even tipped some of the other plants to the side by twining around them. On the other hand, common mullein (Verbascum thapsus) was so grateful for fertilized soil that, instead of being predictably noticeable, it grew incredibly gigantic and could not but be a real pleasure for the eye.
Constant need to educate local residents
From the very beginning, we decided to build the flower bed in a community where locals would support the idea and be ready to tend the flower garden on their own. As this is a volunteer project for us and many team members live far from where the flower bed was built, we knew we would not be able to either water it every day while the plants take root or ensure other types of regular care. Eventually, we did right by relying on the community. More than 50 people helped us plant the flower bed (which is no less than 200 square meters big!), more than 100 people participated in the crowdfunding efforts to finance its creation, and the garden was regularly watered throughout the hot summer. We started a chat that was joined by the most active gardeners. It seemed that everyone was on the same page exchanging photos of the blooming plants while in the chat and pie recipes while around the flower bed. But then winter was over, spring was late, and it became clear that not many residents understand and, most importantly, accept the natural concept of their yard’s central flower garden. Plant nurseries did not have early bloomers in stock, so our mini garden did not have them either, and after the snow melted, it was first russet, and then bright yellow dandelion heads started covering it—either their seeds had been brought by the wind or their roots had been left intact. And Moscow residents associate dandelions with the most aggressive weeds—that is, if you are fond of even lawns.
So, despite our belief that this yellow-colored meadow was pretty, discussions started sprawling across community chats suggesting the flower bed needed other flowers as the existing ones were not decent enough. We understood that a one-off educational session on the mini garden’s natural concept was not enough and that regular educational activities had to be included in such projects. When offered an explanation of why this very type of flower garden has been created and what its benefits and advantages are, former critics embraced the idea. And knowing the exact months when the plants in the flower bed are going to blossom—and that they simply need some time—makes other opponents come to terms with it too.
As a result, discussions about the lack of decorative value in our flower garden had subsided by early June when many garden’s plants reappeared and began blossoming in all their natural glory. July, in its turn, would be a downright fabulous time to endlessly enjoy the garden’s colors.
Photo by Michael Scheglov
When creating Recollections of the Meadow, we hoped to test-run the approach where native plant species would be used to build a flower bed, and we intended to share the resulting algorithm with everyone willing to follow suit—featuring places where flowers can be found and ways to plant them to get a beautiful and useful result. But we have to admit it turned out we still haven’t a ready and simple scheme for doing this, even though a lot of Moscow residents who care about nature would like to implement a similar project in their yards. One cannot foresee what choice plant nurseries will be able to offer (especially given the low demand for native species) and what the soil or lighting of the plot will be like, meaning that each similar project will be individual and labor-intensive—and consequently, poorly scalable. On the bright side, people’s eagerness is scalable, judging by the interest our project sparked in social and mass media, by the feedback from people seeking advice or help, and eventually, by the prize we received. And that means one day the plants native to the city will be able to return there as “residents” in their own right.
Al-Sabouni’s argument for paying attention to the relationship between city morphology, urbanism, and well-being is one that has been put forward before, but in thinking of nature in the nature of cities, we have not given this other relationship enough attention. It points directly to the relationship between the hard mineral surfaces humans construct, their form and layout, and the position and location of urban elements like parks or trees, or gardens and court yards: destinations, interwoven in daily pathways, privatized in yards, and so forth. Her argument for a generous city also resonates through housing: its accessibility, affordability, grace, and disposition on the landscape that can facilitate or encourage natural elements as well as amity among residents—in fact, those elements may be essential to the nurturing of civility and cordiality. The types of public spaces, their arrangements and relationship to buildings, are important, too, in making an open and inviting city. As Al-Sabouni writes of the old Homs where she grew up, “[T]he buildings, streets, and trees were not just the components of the urban environment; they were the very soul of the community, creating the faces we saw, the shops we bought from and the shape sound and feel of every footstep we took. In sum, such things shape our shared experience of belonging and the collective conscience of the city. . . . [to] make our coexistence into one existence” pg. 68 (italics in the original).
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