Where we are able to identify a network of urban commons, or some degree of polycentricism in the governance of urban resources, we begin to see the transformation of the city into a commons—a collaborative space—supported and enabled by the state.
Elinor Ostrom’s groundbreaking research established that it is possible to collaboratively manage common pool resources, or commons, for economic and environmental sustainability. She identified the conditions or principles which increase the likelihood of long-term, collective governance of shared resources. Although these principles have been widely studied and applied to a range of common pool resources, including natural and digital commons, there has not been a serious effort to apply them to the urban commons. Can the Ostrom design principles be applied to cities to rethink the governance of cities and the management of their resources? We think they cannot be simply adapted to the city context without significant modification.
Cities and many kinds of urban commons are different from natural resources and more traditional commons in important ways. For this reason, we have surveyed 100+ cities around the world and many examples of urban commons within them. From this study, we have extracted a set of design principles for governing urban commons and cities as commons. And we are creating a website as a resource and open platform to which additional data, or case studies, can be added as we become aware of them.
The results of our research will soon be available on a digital platform. Our intention is that www.commoning.city will become an international mapping platform and open collaborative dataset for the urban commons and for cities that want to embrace a transition towards the commons paradigm. The goal of this research project is to enhance our collective knowledge about the various ways to govern urban commons, and the city itself as a commons, in different geographic, social and economic contexts. The case studies, both community-led and those that are institutionalized or “nested” in the local government, are important data points and empirical input into the larger effort to explicate the dynamic process (or transition) from a city where urban commons institutions are present to one where we see the emergence of networked urban commons.
Ostrom’s design principles need to be adapted for the urban context
In our work we have asked whether the commons can be a framework for addressing a host of internal and external challenges facing cities. More specifically, can designing the city as a commons help us address issues such as urban poverty, gentrification, climate change, migration, among others? Can the Ostrom design principles help cities to transition to more fair, inclusive, sustainable, resilient futures given existing patterns of urbanization and the contested nature of urban resources such as public spaces, open or vacant land, abandoned and underutilized structures, and aging infrastructure? In our study, we will see examples of how these resources can be governed as a commons in cities around the world. Moreover, we extract from these examples a set of design principles that are distinctively different from those offered by Elinor Ostrom.
Ostrom’s study focused mainly on close knit communities in which it was clear who was from the place and who was not (principle 1). For these communities, social control/monitoring and social sanctioning were two central pillars of Ostrom’s design principles for the governance structure that communities would put in place to manage a common pool resource (principles 5 and 6). For this reason, she thought rules of cooperation among users should be written or modified by those who would be entrusted with both the duty to obey to them and the responsibility to enforce them (principle 3).
The fact that these rules would be written by the same community of users that would apply them led to the need to leave some room for adaptation of such rules to local needs and conditions (principle 2). Of course, these structures and rules would be based on the idea that these communities right to self-govern the resource would be recognized by outside authorities (principle 4).
Ostrom realized, however, that for more complex resources this governance responsibility or power should be shared with other actors to form nested enterprises (principle 8). Notwithstanding the above, she anticipated that conflicts might arise because even the most united communities would have internal fractions and therefore require accessible, low cost tools to solve their own disputes (principle 7). These are the basic design principles which for years have been driving the study and observation of common, shared resources—namely scarce, congestible, renewable natural resources such as rivers, lakes, fisheries, and forests.
To say that the city is a commons is to suggest that the city is a shared resource—open to and shared with many types of people. In this sense, the city shares some of the classic problems of a common pool resource—the difficulty of excluding people and the need to design effective rules, norms and institutions for resource stewardship and governance. It is tempting, therefore, to impose Ostrom’s design principles onto the city and to apply them to the management of many kinds of public and shared resources in the city. For many reasons, however, Ostrom’s ideas cannot be used in the city the way they were in the nature. Ostrom’s framework needs to be adapted to the reality of urban environments, which are already congested, heavily regulated and socially and economically complex. Without such adaptation, Ostrom’s design principles will be lost in translation.
This is why, starting ten years ago, we both began to explore the governance of the urban commons as a separate body of study (first investigating individually how different kinds of urban assets, urban public space such as community gardens and urban infrastructure such as urban roads, could be reconceived as urban commons, and later jointly to conceive the whole city as a commons). We realized that we needed a different approach to bridge urban studies and commons studies and therefore to pose a slightly different set of questions for governance of the urban commons. We also needed to define a different set of design principles for the commons in the city and the city itself as a commons.
Designing and constructing commons in the city
Cities and many kinds of urban commons are different from natural resources and more traditional commons in important ways. First, cities are typically not exhaustible nor nonrenewable, although they can become quite fragile over time due to internal and external threats. Much of the city consists of urban infrastructure—open squares, parks, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, roads—which can be purposed and repurposed for different uses and users. These resources share very little with the forests, underwater basins and irrigation systems that were the subject of Elinor Ostrom’s study of common pool resources.
Second, cities are what we might call “constructed” commons, the result of emergent social processes and institutional design. The process of constructing a commons—what some refer to as “commoning”—involves a collaborative process of bringing together a wide spectrum of actors that work together to co-design and co-produce shared, common goods and services at different scales. They can be created at the scale of the city, the district, the neighborhood, or the block level.
Third, cities do not exist in a pre-political space. Rather, cities are heavily regulated environments and thus any attempt to bring the commons to the city must confront the law and politics of the city. Creating urban common resources most often requires changing or tweaking (or even hacking, in a sense) the regulation of public and private property and working through the administrative branches of local government to enable and/or protect collaborative forms of resource management. Legal and property experimentation is thus a core feature of constructing different kinds of urban commons.
Fourth, cities are incredibly complex and socially diverse systems which bring together not only many different types of resources but also many types of people. Because of this diversity and the presence of often thick local (and sublocal) politics, social and economic tensions and conflicts occur at a much higher rate and pace than many natural environments. The economic and political complexity of cities also means that governance of urban commons cannot be just about communities governing themselves. Rather, collective governance of urban commons almost always involves some forms of nested governance, and in most cases cooperation with other urban actors.
New design principles for the urban commons
Based on these differences, we began to think anew about design principles for the urban commons, taking into account what Ostrom learned about successful governance of natural resources commons. While many of her principles have clear applicability to constructed urban commons—such as recognition by higher authorities (principle 7), the importance of nestedness for complex resources (principles 8), the existence of collective governance arrangements (principle 3), and resource adaptation to local conditions (principle 2)—others are of limited utility or need to be adapted to the urban context.
For instance, communities should drive, manage, and own the process of governing shared urban resources, but we have seen time and time again that they can rarely avoid dealing with the state and the market. While this can be true of natural commons, and rural communities, we think both the state and the market are even more omnipresent in cities, making it difficult to side step them over the long run. As such, we observe that many types of urban commons tend to benefit from cooperation with other than internal community members and resource users. Rather, they need to collaborate and pool resources with other commons-minded actors like knowledge institutions and civil society organizations.
We have observed that in contexts where the State is the strongest, and markets are not as strong, local and provincial government actors can lend assistance to, and form a solid alliance with, communities to advance collective governance of urban resources. In this sense, the State generally acts as an enabler of cooperation and pooling of resources and other actors.
On the other hand, where the State is weak or weaker, either because of corruption or lack of resources, strange enough the market seems to be the only answer to enable the pooling of resources (i.e. human, economic, cognitive, etc.) needed for collective action and collaborative management or urban resources. The market could subsidize the commons if proper legal structures and participatory processes are put in place and there is sufficient social and political capital among resource users to negotiate with market actors.
In both cases, the concept of “pooling” seems to capture the true essence of commons-based projects and policies in the urban environment. For these reasons, we have identified in our work two core principles underlying many kinds of urban commons as an enabling state and pooling economies.
We also observed for instance that technology in cities plays a key role in enabling collaboration and sustainability, as well as pooling users of urban assets, shared infrastructure, and open data management. Further, urban commons-based governance solutions are cutting-edge prototypes and therefore need careful research and implementation. In other words, they are experimental; new approaches and new methodologies are constantly being developed and require prototyping, monitoring and evaluation.
These basic empirical observations are now the cornerstone of a much larger and scientifically driven research project that we established and call the “Co-Cities Project”. The Co-Cities Project is the result of a 5-year effort to investigate and experiment with new forms of collaborative city-making that is pushing urban areas towards new frontiers of participatory urban governance, inclusive economic growth and social innovation. The project is rooted in the conceptual pillars of the urban commons.
The idea of the “Co-City” is based on five basic design principles, or dimensions, extracted from our practice in the field and the cases that we identified as sharing similar approaches, values and methodologies. While some of these design principles resonate with Ostrom’s principles, they are each adapted to the context of the urban commons and the realities of constructing common resources in the city. We have distilled five key design principles for the urban commons:
Principle 1: Collective governance refers to the presence of a multi-stakeholder governance scheme whereby the community emerges as an actor and partners up with at least three different urban actors
Principle 2: Enabling State expresses the role of the State in facilitating the creation of urban commons and supporting collective action arrangements for the management and sustainability of the urban commons.
Principle 3: Social and Economic Pooling refers to the presence of different forms of resource pooling and cooperation between five possible actors in the urban environment
Principle 4: Experimentalism is the presence of an adaptive and iterative approach to designing the legal processes and institutions that govern urban commons.
Principle 5: Tech Justice highlights access to technology, the presence of digital infrastructure, and open data protocols as an enabling driver of collaboration and the creation of urban commons
These design principles articulate the types of conditions and factors necessary to instantiate the city as a collaborative space in which various forms of urban commons not only emerge but are sustainable. The concept of the co-city imagines the city as an infrastructure on which participants can share resources, engage in collective decision-making and co-production of shared urban resources, supported by open data and guided by principles of distributive justice. A co-city is based on polycentric governance of a variety of urban resources such as environmental, cultural, knowledge and digital goods that are co-managed through contractual or institutionalized public-private-community partnerships. Polycentric urban governance involves resource pooling and cooperation between five possible actors—social innovators, public authorities, businesses, civil society organizations, and knowledge institutions. These collaborative arrangements give birth to local peer-to-peer production of experimental, physical, digital and institutional platforms with three main aims: fostering social innovation in urban welfare provision, spurring collaborative economies as a driver of local economic development, and promoting inclusive urban regeneration of blighted areas. Public authorities play an important enabling role in creating and sustaining the co-city. The ultimate goal of a co-city is the creation of a more just and democratic city, also in light of the Lefebvrian approach of the right to the city.
The Co-Cities report and dataset
As part of the Co-Cities project, in collaboration with organizations like IASC, P2P Foundation, DESIS and key figures in the commons debate, we have been engaged in organizing and participating in scientific conferences, as well as identifying and evaluating commons-based projects and policies in European and American cities (where we have both worked) and in different geopolitical contexts. We have built thus far a dataset of more than 100 cities, which we surveyed over 18 months (from December 2015 to June 2017), and from which we have summarized more than 200 examples of urban commons projects and/or public policies from observed cities. The case studies we gathered come from different kinds of cities located all around the world, and include groundbreaking experiments in which we have been involved in Bologna and Turin (Italy), as well as those taking place in other Italian cities (e.g. Naples, Milan, Rome, Palermo, Bari, etc.). Our studies of various kinds of urban commons include global cities such as Seoul (South Korea), San Francisco (USA), Madrid and Barcelona (Spain), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Athens (Greece), Nairobi (Kenya), Medellin (Colombia), Bangalore (India) and many other cities (see the map below).
Among the better known recent examples considered by the scope of our research are the FabCity transition plan towards re-localized and distributed manufacturing, the Superblocks initiative, the Reglamento De Participación Ciudadana and the many other initiatives taken by the new Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the Bologna and Turin Regulation on Civic Collaboration for the Urban Commons; San Francisco, Seoul and Milan initiatives to transform themselves into “sharing cities”; Edinburgh and Glasgow as “cooperative cities”; and Naples’ regulation on urban civic uses.
The results of our research are discussed in a co-cities report to be released early in the Fall 2017 which aims to develop a common framework and understanding for “urban (commons) transitions.” These transitions include: patterns, processes, practices, and public policies that are community-driven and that position local communities as key political, economic and institutional actors in the delivery of services, production, and management of urban assets or local resources. The project focuses on emerging urban innovations and evolutions that are reshaping urban (and peri-urban) development and land use, urban and local economic patterns, urban welfare systems and democratic and political processes, as well as governmental decision-making and organization. Where we are able to identify a network of urban commons, or some degree of polycentricism in the governance of urban resources, then we can confidently begin to see the transformation of the city into a commons—a collaborative space—supported and enabled by the state.
From these examples, we have extracted the above described recurrent design principles and have identified common methodological tools employed across the globe and for different urban resources and phenomena. The report uses case studies to map where urban commons innovations are occurring, analyzes the features of each individual case, and presents the testimony of leaders or key participants in the case studies. One of the main goals in interviews with participants and leaders is to discern whether the projects captured here represent isolated projects or whether they represent a city that is experiencing a transition toward a co-city. The ultimate objective of this report is to raise awareness about the commonalities among these case-studies and to serve as guidance for urban policy makers, researchers, urban communities interested in transitioning toward a Co-City.
A map of the 100 cities surveyed as part of the Co-Cities project.LabGov students and staff with the Community for the Public Park of Centocelle.LabGov staff and students in action in the Co-Roma project.
Conclusion: An action-based platform and research project on co-cities
The developing digital platform (www.commoning.city) will contain the results of our studies as well as a map of co-cities. The platform also brings together the contributions of several global thought leaders who have been developing and refining the ideas underlying the conceptual pillars of the Co-City. On this open platform, local practitioners, local officials, engaged residents and others are able to “map” themselves by completing a simple questionnaire (available in the “Map Your Project” section of the website). Once mapped on the platform, participants will then receive access to the dataset. Those who lead policies, projects or practices will receive the text of the in-depth interview, allowing them to explain the specifics of policy, project or practice as a way of being included in the co-cities research project. In return, those participants’ projects will be analyzed and evaluated according to the design principles set out above, as well as receive general guidance and feedback on the policy, project or practice.
We intend to use the platform also as a means to establish Co-City projects in different cities (including Amsterdam, New York City, Liverpool, Accra) as a way to engage directly in the implementation of the above design principles in different legal/economic systems. We also hope to demonstrate their applicability across contexts and the particular forms of adaptation required, particularly so that we can improve and revise the overall framework and design principles. Towards this end, we are looking to work with cities in South America, Asia, Oceania that want to establish the co-city project. The ultimate goal of the research is to co-develop and improve the quality of the theoretical framework and to build a co-cities index.
Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione, New York & Rome
Christian Iaione is associate professor of public law at Guglielmo Marconi University of Rome, fellow of the Urban Law Center at Fordham University, and visiting professor of governance of the commons at LUISS Guido Carli where he directs LabGov – LABoratory for the GOVernance of the Commons (www.labgov.it). He is member of the Sharing Economy International Advisory Board of the Seoul Metropolitan Government and advisor of several Italian local governments and institutions.
Cities are melting pots. I expect we understand this metaphor best as it relates to human beings. Cities around the world grow because people keep moving into them. People move from nearby rural areas, from other regions in the same country, or from around the world. When they arrive, they bring their skills, their beliefs, their music, their food, their culture…and we end up with the beautiful mosaic of urban life. The increased movement of people and goods around the world, especially with increasingly rapid modes of transportation, is the primary way that plants, animals, and microbes get around too – either as treasured reminders of home or as hitchhikers. So cities are melting pots of all kinds of life.
Violet in a sidewalk crack. Photo: (c) Parushin www.fotosearch.com
Some of the new arrivals (the people and all the other organisms) are welcomed with open arms. But many are greeted warily or with open hostility. Family narratives and history books are full of stories about about the hard times that waves of human immigrants found in their new homes. Non-human immigrants – often referred to as exotic, introduced, or non-native species – have received a similarly cold welcome in most places. But the movement of plants and animals across the planet is both ancient and inevitable. It is also increasingly difficult to control. We face choices about which movements to resist and which to allow or perhaps even encourage. We also have the opportunity to plan as well as we can to get the most from our changing ecosystems.
Historical context for biological migration
In the pre-human past, evidence of how organisms moved around the earth is inferred from information stored in fossils (and in genes, though I won’t get into that here). The big charismatic fossils – the dinosaur skeletons, preserved leaves – are well known, but the treasure trove of information about changing distributions comes from the microfossils. Microfossils include preserved pollen grains, bacteria, foraminifera, diatoms, and other small things. They tell us not only which organisms lived where in the distant past, but they are useful in reconstructions of ancient climate, dating geological events, and other kinds of historical inference. For example, microfossils preserved in wetland and lake sediments can tell us how terrestrial ecosystems shift as glaciers advance and retreat.
Clematis pollen. Photo: (c) STEVE GSCHMEISSNER / www.fotosearch.com
For the movement of organisms throughout human pre-history we rely on the field of environmental archaeology. We can trace how crops followed people from their centers of origin around the world, we can trace which plant and animal species were important to which groups of people, and we can observe the origin of new kinds of life resulting from domestication – the hard work of generation upon generation of farmers.
As we get into the historical era, and the origin of cities, we have written records of the migration of people and their associates around the world. For example, ancient Greek and Chinese texts discuss the relationships between people and both domestic and wild animals and their movements across the landscape. Another interesting source of historical information about the distributions of organisms are the biological collections in natural history museums and botanical gardens around the world. The oldest of these institutions have collections spanning several hundred years and – when studied collectively – give a remarkably vivid picture of our changing biological landscape.
The reason I give this brief history lesson is to provide some context to what has happened since the middle of the last century. With urbanization well underway by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and with long-distance transit links becoming more frequent and much faster, people and other organisms began to move like never before in the history of the planet. We know from all the sources of evidence that I just outlined that plants and animals have always been moving around – but fast ships, trains, and airplanes and booming international commerce represented a quantum leap in biological migration. Farmers noticed a greater frequency of new weeds and pathogens, foresters and other natural resource professionals noticed an accelerated spread of new plants and animals, and scientists and conservationists wondered what this meant for the organisms in the lands and waters receiving these newcomers. A watershed moment in the study of this movement was a book by the British ecologist Charles Elton, the Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, published in 1958.
Modern perspectives on exotic species
Elton’s book not only started a new field of science called invasion ecology, it also shifted the language about this phenomenon in a militaristic direction. These new arrivals were “invaders” that would do harm to the receiving communities. The modern discourse in invasion biology frequently invokes military terminology: enemies battle each other, managers mount eradication efforts, ecosystems become overrun.
This may motivate action against non-native species to potentially good effect such as recruiting volunteers to manage parkland, but it also runs the risk of alienating some portion of the public. Some will find the talk of war distasteful, but others may question why scientists and managers are using violent terminology (and actual violence) against wild animals and plants. For people who take a “live and let live” attitude towards wildlife, efforts against exotic species can be construed as xenophobic efforts against nature.
Another serious issue with this language is that it suggests a war, but in many cases that war will not be won. Successful efforts to manage invasive species are almost always chronic rather than episodic. The best outcome for the manager is usually to keep the invader at bay; it is never really defeated. Cessation of the management effort will generally lead to reinvasion, unless all individuals of the invading species, including dormant propagules, are removed or there is a change in the environment that disfavors the invader. In cases where outright victory is unlikely (which is most of them), language about fighting to put things back the way they were is probably less useful than language about adapting to a changed environment.
Another challenge with the militaristic language on invasions is that it has led to negative feelings about introduced species generally among much of the public. Even my environmentally-aware students and neighbors often seem disappointed when I tell them that the beautiful plant they were admiring is from some other part of the world. These negative feelings are often misplaced – the vast majority of new introductions don’t lead to any serious environmental damage. Scientists and practitioners know this and are focused on the exotics that cause the most damage – but a less well-informed public concerned about nature my tend to associate all exotics with damage.
A grass flowering next to an abandoned building Credit: CasaDeQueso from flickr.com
Positive contributions of exotic species
Many of these introduced species thrive in habitats with frequent human disturbance – like so many areas in cities. They may live side-by-side with indigenous species that also tolerate the disturbance, but their presence isn’t meaningfully detracting from their neighbors. And these new arrivals may be adding something – a bit of shade, an extra splash of green or color in a concrete landscape, a morsel for the next link in the food chain. To anthropomorphize a bit, they are newcomers that are willing to settle down in rough neighborhood and do their part to improve the community. There’s something beautiful about life grabbing hold and bearing fruit in the crack of a sidewalk.
A zebra mussel-encrusted current meter near Michigan City, IN. Lake Michigan, June 1999. Photo: NOAA
The motivation behind both the military language and the negative public perceptions comes from examples of some truly damaging invasions. Zebra mussels in North American lakes have added hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of managing freshwater infrastructure, introduced rats on islands have driven many kinds of birds extinct, introduced woody plants like Myrica in Hawaii and pines in the South African fynbos have fundamentally changed those ecosystems, and introduced pathogens have devastated populations of plants, wildlife, and people throughout history. These invaders have compromised critical functions of the invaded ecosystems, eliminated other species, and borne tremendous costs to human communities.
I don’t think anyone can win an argument that says all exotic species are ok. However, the relatively small number of clearly damaging examples has led to a bias against non-native species generally and to some misguided efforts at controlling dubiously harmful species.
A group of scientists, many of whom had studied invasive species for much of their careers, published a short paper in Nature in 2011 urging conservationists to shift their emphasis from where a species originated (native vs. exotic) to the specific functions of those species in their new habitats. The authors make the point that the world’s ecosystems are changing rapidly in response to climate change, altered nutrient inputs, and urbanization, so the idea that non-native species should be managed to protect status quo communities of native species is increasingly obsolete. Many invasive species management programs are very expensive and – in the long run – unlikely to succeed. Not only is it nearly impossible to “put the genie back in the bottle”, but species composition will shift with environmental changes, just as it always has.
This paper generated significant opposition from the conservation community and from natural resource professionals who had personal experience managing damaging invasions. Many of the counter-points from this community are also quite valid – these professionals do focus on the damaging species rather than lumping all non-natives together, we have an obligation to attempt to stop extinction from damages wrought by humans, and many invasive-species management projects have been successful, at least at local scales and over short time periods.
Exotics in the city
The broader point I take from this debate for cities is that we should engage in a critical discussion about our goals in managing urban vegetation and wildlife. Cities already represent a significant change from the indigenous landscape – altered land cover, climate, hydrology, chemistry, soils, disturbance regimes, and a suite of other factors. And as much as the physical environment of cities has already changed, in most parts of the world it will change even more – and possibly more rapidly – as climate change affects the timing and intensity of storms, sea levels rise, and growing urban populations increase demands for food, water, and energy. Add to all this physical change the immigration of new plants and animals connected by global trade and human migration and you realize we are facing a future where it would be foolish to believe that our urban environments should look or function exactly like they have in the past.
This is not to say that I think we should give up on preserving native species or managing for native-dominated systems in urban landscapes. There are many good reasons to favor natives where feasible: native species may provide goods or services that we value more than exotics, species that have coexisted for long periods form complex networks that be more stable or higher functioning, we have an ethical responsibility to care for the land and its inhabitants, and there is real value the connection between people and familiar environments. Even in cases where it is hard work to protect native species, the benefits may outweigh the costs.
However, this calculus isn’t always easy.
Two examples from New York City
In New York City, one of the major invasive control programs involves removing exotic vines, largely porcelain berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata) and Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), from forested parkland. These vines, both from temperate Asia, grow vigorously in canopy gaps and prevent the recruitment and growth of trees that would, in the absence of the vines, grow up and close the gap. Forest ecologists from the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Natural Resources Group have mapped vine-dominated canopy gaps through time and found that forest succession is arrested by the presence of abundant exotic vines: vine-dominated patches tends to stay vine-dominated patches.
A canopy gap dominated by exotic vines in New York City. Photo: Tim Wenskus
As part of a citywide effort to add forest canopy, Parks has invested significant time and money to remove these vines and plant young trees. They manage these reforestation sites for years after the tree planting, primarily by removing vines that have regrown. Their expectation (and hope) is that some of the young trees will grow and close the canopy gap, reduce light to the understory, and inhibit the regrowth of the vines. Over time, urban forest canopy will increase, light and soil resources will be captured by trees and thus be unavailable to the vines, and Parks can scale back their maintenance. This intervention could shift the system from vine-dominated patches to tree-dominated patches and improve some services: more carbon storage, better stormwater management, and improved visitor access in the closed-canopy forest, but with some loss of the fruit resource the vines provided to wildlife. On the whole, this would improve the parks and could be a case of effective long-term management of exotic species.
A stand of Japanese knotweed along the Bronx River, New York City. Photo by Matt Palmer
As a second example, Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica, synonyms Reynoutria japonica and Polygonum cuspidatum) is an herbaceous perennial originally from Asia and now common to riparian wetlands, roadsides, and waste places throughout New York City. Knotweed can grow in very dense stands that displace other kinds of vegetation – a stand of knotweed is often just knotweed. The banks of the Bronx River support very large populations of knotweed and other exotic species which the NYC Parks department is beginning to manage. The primary goal of this management is to improve conditions for native plants and wildlife in and along the river. They accomplish this through the physical removal of knotweed (excavating rhizomes from soil – backbreaking work) or by spraying with herbicide. Removal is followed by replanting native shrubs and herbaceous plants. The expected return for this effort is the recovery of high diversity native vegetation, which will support both terrestrial and aquatic wildlife.
Underneath a stand of Japanese knotweed – more knotweed and knotweed litter. Photo: Jacoba Charles.
Managing the knotweed long term will be challenging. It spreads quickly by rhizomes and fragments and – unlike the vine example above – it is not clear that the establishment of native vegetation will prevent the reinvasion of knotweed. To maintain diverse native communities in this park may require a long-term commitment to removing knotweed. The protection of native plants and wildlife in high-value sites like Bronx River may be worth the effort, but I have lately begun to wonder about the broader set of functions that knotweed may provide. It can grow rapidly in a range of habitats and thrives in poor soils. Stands of knotweed are productive and the roots and rhizomes secure soil on slopes, likely preventing erosion and perhaps trapping sediment from floodwaters. Honeybees collect pollen from its abundant flowers and the young shoots are edible. Research on the ecosystem effects of knotweed invasion in Europe is mixed, showing some positive, some neutral, and some negative changes relative to non-invaded stands.
When knotweed is displacing high-value riparian vegetation, perhaps we should manage it intensively to protect native biodiversity. But when it is growing on marginal lands and the costs of invasion are lower, perhaps these benefits outweigh the costs. There is so much knotweed in New York City there’s no way we could effectively manage it all, but perhaps we should look at though a utilitarian lens rather than focusing on it’s geographic origin.
Reconciling with exotic species
The realization that cities are experiencing rapid environmental and biotic change should be forefront in our minds as we choose targets for the living infrastructure of our cities. Which biological invasions should we manage and which should we just allow to proceed? For those invasions that we choose to manage, how will know we have succeeded? Or when will we decide to stop trying? When planning a greening program, what is our target in terms of ecosystem structure and function? What suite of species, both native and non-native, will get us to that goal? When choosing species for green infrastructure, are we choosing species that will do well in the in city in 2030? What about the city in 2100?
At some level, I am disappointed by the realization of all this change. I like the indigenous biological communities of the region where I live. But I also realize that the ecosystems that will replace the preceding system will have their own appeal – both aesthetically and functionally. I take some hope in the imagery from a post by Stephanie Pincetl last summer about the riot of trees from around the world growing in Los Angeles, which sounds pretty great. The recent post by Eric Sanderson about learning from (native) species about resilience to storms reminds me that the new systems will still be based on the same template as the historic system. Exotic species only rarely result in massive changes; the more common result is an iterative revision to a functioning system – forests still grow and rivers still run. And perhaps the next version of the system will even benefit from the new arrival in the melting pot.
Human activities have direct, negative consequences on almost all the world’s ecosystems. It is known that we are in a changing era in which uncontrolled human population growth and the associated increase of urban landscapes are leading to an alteration or reduction of natural areas. The activities that humans usually do, and the lack of understanding of the consequences related to these activities, has led to new interactions between humans and some species of animals that survive or colonize the city ecosystem.
Urban birds are using garbage as nesting material—but is this strategy beneficial or harmful to their survival?
Urban development imposes several constraints and produces direct impacts on such species’ “natural” habitats. One of the biggest impacts of urban development is the fragmentation and isolation of natural habitats, which limits the species’ movements between natural patches. Additionally, the isolation between natural habitats creates small islands, where just a limited number of individuals of each species may survive. Furthermore, these islands of natural habitats are surrounded and used by people, pets, and buildings; in some cases, they are crossed regularly by vehicles. This type of use in urban spaces and their surrounding habitats is the main driver of accumulations of different types of garbage inside or on the edges of what remains of undeveloped habitats.
Rose-throated Becard (Pachyramphus aglaiae) pair building a nest using natural (dry grasses) and artificial materials (cotton rope). Photo: Luis Sandoval
Garbage is one of the consequences of human activity in urban areas. The type and quantity of these kinds of solid wastes are highly related to the level of income, level of development, and level of education in an area. For example, towns, cities, or countries with high proportions of low-income groups typically have inadequate infrastructure and garbage management services, increasing the amount of garbage around urban and “natural” areas. On the other hand, areas with high-income groups have reduced the amount of solid wastes around urban and natural areas; but even their garbage does not disappear completely.
Thus it is constantly argued that garbage availability imposes a risk for public health as well as to the environment because it contributes to the spread of diseases, to flooding, and to soil and air contamination. However, garbage is also used by different groups of animals, for example: as breeding places for vectors of human disease, as food by different type of pests (e.g., rodents) or as a new resource to include in the structures they build (e.g., squirrels, opossums, birds). How the use of garbage affects or benefits animals is poorly understand, because the diversity of waste types is high (e.g., plastic, wood, metal, polyester, and rubber), as are the forms in which each type of waste can be found in the environment (e.g., plastic bags, plastic ropes, pieces of plastic, or plastic mesh).
Despite all the negative effects that urban development produces on the natural environment, in cities, it is common to observe different groups of animals living and reproducing in what remains of “natural” habitats or within the city infrastructure. Those groups of animals are called urban species, as they can survive in the habitats modified by urbanization. Urban species may be classified as exploiters if they increase and occur in the area due to the urbanization, or survivors if they occur before urbanization takes place and continue to persist post-urbanization, but in lower numbers. Birds constitute one of the most common groups of urban animals; birds’ ability to fly allows them to move quickly between places to find refuge, food, or water inside cities. Additionally, several bird species are well adapted to urban areas because of their generalized diets (in other words, they can tolerate the majority of food resources available), large brains (allowing them to solve problems and use new resources), non-specific requirements for nesting places (can nest in the majority of available places), and small sizes (allowing larger populations to survive on small amounts of resources).
Three examples of nests built with solid waste: A) plastic fibers, and B) & C) plastic rope. Photos: Luis Sandoval
Although urban bird species may nest in the majority of available places in the cities, this group could face limitations to obtaining resources for nest building due to the small amount of natural areas where those materials occur. Therefore, some bird species are able to exchange natural materials for artificial ones usually found in urban areas (mainly, garbage) to incorporate as nesting material. For example, natural cotton materials obtained from plant seeds (e.g., bromeliads or Bombacaceae trees) or mosses may be exchanged with cotton insulation or polyester; some dry leaves may be exchanged with pieces of plastic bags, paper, or aluminum foil; and sticks may be exchanged with electric cables, plastic or natural ropes, or plastic sticks. Additionally, some other species of birds also add new and unusual materials to the nest, such as cigarettes butts or nails.
We consider the nest to be a structure built with two main objectives for birds (1) protection of the egg against potential danger and (2) temperature control that leads to adequate embryo development. We also consider that the nests we observe birds building now are the results of a long process of natural selection for the use of adequate materials to improve the rates of achievement of both objectives. It is possible that the use of new, artificial materials inside the nest would affect, in some way, one or both functions, negatively or positively. For example, one negative effect of the use of garbage for nest building could be an increase in the nest temperature when birds use plastic bags pieces, a situation that could negatively affect an egg’s embryo development. Another negative effect may be an increase in nest predation if, by being more conspicuos, artificial materials make nests more easily detectable by visual predators. It is also possible to expect a decrease in chicks’ survival because plastic or nylon ropes may attach and tangle around chicks in the nest, causing mortality. Conversely, a positive effect of the use of garbage could be a disruption of the nest image, because the use of new material may camouflage or blur the typical image of a nest, causing a decrease in nest detectability and, thereby, a reduction in predation by visual predators. Or, the use of some artificial materials may reduce the occurrence of parasites; for example, the nicotine present in cigarettes butts is known to work as a repellent against some hematophagous insects. Information about the direct consequences of garbage use as part of nest materials by birds is contradictory, and direct studies and experiments are lacking to understand whether these new behaviors are favoring the species that display them.
When thinking about the use of garbage as nesting material, it is important to remember that, within the same species (e.g., Clay-colored Thrush, Turdus grayi) in urban areas, some individuals use a lot of garbage as nesting materials, but others do not. This difference may be the result of the differences in garbage abundance around the nesting area, or differences in the abundance of the right materials for nesting. For example, the Clay-colored Thrush builds its nest with clay, mosses, and sticks in “natural” areas, but in cities, the availability of clay and mosses is reduced because the majority of soil is covered with concrete and humidity is reduced, lessening moss occurrence. Therefore, the lack of these materials for nest building may make an individual Clay-colored Thrush exchange mosses for some synthetic mosses/cotton-like materials common in garbage, such as pieces of plastic, cloth, or mesh that can be attached to the external nest structure in a similar way to mosses.
Several examples of Clay-colored Thrush (Turdus grayi) nests that include different types of solid waste: A) plastic fibers, B) ropes, C) cloth, and D) paper. Photos: Josué Corrales
It may be that intrinsic differences between individuals influence the selection of the nesting material. It is also possible to find differences in nesting material selection between individuals that nest in areas with equal amounts and availability of garbage. Given the complexity of these patterns, it is hard to show a perfect relationship between garbage availability and the use of artificial materials as nesting materials. What we do know is that, obviously, it is impossible to use non-natural materials if they are not available. Therefore, the use of artificial materials could be related to urban landscapes where garbage is commonly available, but there is an interesting individual selection of materials for nesting that is poorly understood.
Although some urban bird species may be favoring the use of new materials in the nests, other materials could reduce their reproductive success. The reduction in abundance of natural materials for nest building is probably the force incentivizing species to use artificial materials, which are becoming more, not less, available as human activities increase. For now, for those groups which use garbage as nesting material, it is necessary to determine whether the garbage is a new adaptation that improves survival and breeding success in an urban world, or if it occurs solely as a result of the lack of natural materials in urban areas. If we find that the use of garbage for nesting materials is negative, we can start making management plans for solid waste that include the reduction of garbage and the provisioning of natural material for nest building. But, if the effect is positive on the species, a provisioning of some types of “garbage” could improve a strategy to preserve urban species that are adaptively using artificial materials for nesting.
Josué Corrales and Luis Sandoval
San José, Costa Rica
Luis Sandoval is a researcher and professor at Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica. His research focuses on urban ecology, animal communication, and behavior and natural history of birds.
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.
Graciela Arosemena, Panama CityA fundamental strategy for empowering cities and guiding them towards a positive natural future is to develop a model of the city that contains the growth of the urban sprawl, through re-urbanization.
Marcus Collier, DublinWhile we desire a greening of our cities on various levels, and while we become more reliant on the services of nature for environmental change and innovation, the nature-based solution approach has a long way to go.
Marlies Craig, DurbanTrees in cities hold great potential for their cooling carbon sequestration, water absorption, biodiversity… In Durban, tree planting is also transforming the lives of marginalised and unemployed people.
Samarth Das, MumbaiWith scarcity of land becoming a go-to excuse for governments and the real estate industry to exploit “no development zone” lands for housing, mapping of natural areas will help establish what land is “developable” and what land is not.
Ana Faggi, Bueno AiresStop talking about nature in and near cities and think of the cities and their surroundings as multifunctional landscapes
Sumetee Gajjar, BangaloreA gap which needs special attention in the future, led by a specific set of actors, are city biodiversity reports which inform biodiversity planning or city greenprinting process of Asian, African and South American cities or city-regions, experiencing spatial concentration of biodiversity loss.
Gary Grant, LondonUnderstanding, embracing, and acting on the sponge city concept will be the most powerful and effective way that we can increase biodiversity in our cities, among many other benefits.
Eduardo Guerrero, BogotáWe need a multidisciplinary think tank oriented to the relationships between nature and business in cities, focused on concepts, principles, guidelines, and good practices that generate win-win initiatives for entrepreneurship and sustainability.
Fadi Hamdan, BeirutThe threat that urban growth poses on biodiversity and human wellbeing should also be seen as an opportunity to claim “our right to the city ”, to reinvent the city, based on our vision for the society we want, and our relation to nature.
Scott Kellogg, AlbanyPositive natural urban futures may be worked towards by focusing on decentralized educational-activist strategies that emphasize human-non human reciprocity, social inclusion, and the reconstruction of the urban commons.
Patrick Lydon, OsakaFor each place and person, the answers will differ greatly, but our neighborhoods and our cities must become unique representations of natural biodiversity, each one answering to the voice of nature when and where it exists.
Yvonne Lynch, MelbourneMeaningful citizen engagement for participation in decision making is the best way to empower cities to achieve their aspirations and goals for a positive natural future. Working together, city governments and communities can make rapid progress towards creating healthy, natural cities.
Emily Maxwell, New YorkJustice is about people and about places. If we invest in natural solutions in neighborhoods that need them most, we can ensure not only a natural future for cities that protects biodiversity, but an equitable, resilient, and sustainable future as well.
Colin Meurk, ChristchurchGet governing bodies to open their eyes to opening the door to not only “ecology” (everyone knows what that is, right?) but to ecologists. Afterall, we all know about health, but we do seek medical opinion when we have a broken leg!
Jean Palma, ManilaA call for consciousness in urban management and planning is a call for professionals—environmental planners, architects, landscape architects, designers, and other urban leaders—to pay respect to nature.
Jennifer Pierce, VancouverThe outcome of a bioshed party forms a directive for the city and its citizens to acknowledge their dependency on local and global landscapes, and to take responsibility for them.
Mary Rowe, TorontoEnlightened designers are making attempts to better mimic the natural patterns enabled by diversity in natural systems. We need more efforts like this, reminders of what true urbanism actually looks like: an ecosystem.
Luis Sandoval, San JoséWhat biodiversity was there before? We need this baseline to understand our local goals for biodiversity, and whether current conservation efforts are effective.
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.
For many in The Nature of Cities community, a key objective or goal could be stated something like this: to empower cities to plan for a positive natural future. There is a lot of unpack in such a statement. Indeed, almost every word in the phrase “to empower cities to plan for a positive natural future” could benefit from some discovery.
“Empower”? What’s the action? Empower whom to do what? What knowledge would ground and justify such empowerment?
“City”? Where? How big? Is there one thing we might call a “city”? Or do we mean “community”?
“Natural”? What elements of “nature” do we emphasize and value? Wild nature? Built nature? Nativeness or functionality?
And so on…
This roundtable is a follow up to a new report called “Nature in the Urban Century”, in which TNOC was a modest partner. You can see the whole report here. The emphasis of the report is on biodiversity conservation, its goals and strategies, and its emergent benefits for people.
The partners of this roundtable—TNOC, The Nature Conservancy, and Future Earth—wanted to cast a wider net of responses to this topic, so we asked a diversity of people in the TNOC community to respond: architects, artists, activists, academics and practitioners, and people from the north and south. Their prompt: What is one specific action that should be taken (when? immediately?) to achieve a “positive natural future”? And who should do it? We asked them to feel free to define “natural” as it suited their argument.
No one would be surprised to hear that from such a diverse group there are a range of responses. Some threads exist, though, and three in particular. The first is “connection”, both of people to a consciousness about nature, and of connecting urban spaces to a wider geographic sense of the idea of “nature”, for example gradients spanning city centers to rural areas. Partly this is data and knowledge, but it also involves a broader awareness. There probably isn’t one “nature”, but we need to address the idea of this word directly and explicitly with a wide range of stakeholders.
A second thread is “diversity”, recognizing both its bio- and also human expressions. This emerges from recognizing cities as ecosystems of people, natural spaces (both wild and built), and infrastructure—all of these things. A key element in recognizing and honoring diversity is in truly engaging diverse stakeholders, from real participatory actions to finding new ideas from various sources, not just the usual collection of “experts”, such as professional ecologists, planners, and designers.
Third, there is a deep thread of “equity” and “justice” in these responses. That is, in our conversations about nature and cities we must always be demanding about spreading the wealth and benefits of nature so that everyone may benefit.
In other words, If there is going to be a positive natural future, we’ll only achieve it together.
Graciela Arosemena is a Researcher and Professor of Urban Open Spaces at University of Panama, Panama, and the author of “Urban Agriculture: Spaces of Cultivation for a Sustainable City”.
A fundamental strategy for empowering cities and guiding them towards a positive natural future is to develop a model of the city that contains the growth of the urban sprawl, through re-urbanization.
Re-urbanize to naturalize cities
In cities close to natural areas, the continuous growth and urban dispersion has generated great negative impacts on biodiversity, fragmenting habitats and causing spatial interruption, and the reduction of the quantity and diversity of species.
Deforestation of tropical rain forest for the construction of a residential area of the city of Colón, Republic of Panama. Photo: Graciela Arosemena, 2015The lack of an urban model based on the containment of the growth of the urban sprawl, is causing construction projects to deforest areas of tropical rain forest. Protected area Camino de Cruces National Park, near the City of Panama, Rep. Of Panama. Photo: Graciela Arosemena, 2016.
The need to achieve a balanced coexistence between urban environments and natural ecosystems is evident. Understanding as natural, a multisensory reality, synonym of greenery, and pure air, but also of respect and a high degree of commitment on the part of the cities to conserve.
A fundamental strategy for empowering cities and guiding them towards a positive natural future is to develop a model of the city that contains the growth of the urban sprawl, through re-urbanization, which must be assumed by policy makers and urban planners, of local governments; and although its execution is developed in the medium and long term, from now on, urban studies must be started to develop it.
This strategy constitutes the process of rearrangement of the existing urban fabric that may include the accumulation and new subdivision of lots, the demolition of buildings and changes in the infrastructure of services and population density. This process is based on demographic forecasts, and the promotion of the compaction of urban fabrics, prioritizing their recycling. Through the study of the existing urban sprawl, areas of renewal of the urban fabric can be defined, leaving the natural spaces and/or those with potential to be regenerated around and through the urban fabric.
Urban forest of the towns of the Panama Canal area, maintain their ecological connectivity. Photo: Graciela Arosemena, 2018.
In anticipation of the growth of the city, there is no commitment to extend the limits of it, the re-urbanization avoids the unnecessary occupation of new land, which in many cases is natural, for urban uses, so that an effort is made to a rational and efficient use of urban land. In addition, it contributes to ordering the globalization of undeveloped land, to maintain the ecological permeability of the territory, and to avoid the isolation of natural spaces.
Toucans inhabit the urban forests of the canal villages, in the Metropolitan Area of Panama. Photo: Graciela Arosemena, 2016.
Marcus is a sustainability scientist and his research covers a wide range of human-environment interconnectivity, environmental risk and resilience, transdisciplinary methodologies and novel ecosystems.
While we desire a greening of our cities on various levels, and while we become more reliant on the services of nature for environmental change and innovation, the nature-based solution approach has a long way to go.
Is there any hope for nature in the cities of the future?
There is a lot of concern that urban dwellers in the future, especially in very highly populated cities, will have considerably less “access” to nature, especially wild, unkempt nature. Indeed, there are similar concerns on whether people will have any access to nature, wild or otherwise. The negative effects of this on humans (socially, cognitively, and physiologically) are likely to be significant with respect to population health and well-being. Considering that the urban poor will be disproportionally impacted by this may also give rise to political and social issues. So, there is a demand for more diverse nature in cities, something that The Nature of Cities has been championing for many years now. There are many other champions for nature in cities, and one of the approaches of the European Union is to stimulate the scaling out of “nature-based solutions” partly as a response to this and partly to stimulate innovation in city-making. We know that urban green infrastructure such as parks can provide valuable ecosystem services, such as flood attenuation and improving air quality. The nature-based solution approach takes this further. It sees nature as a technology; one that can have multiple environmental, ecological, social and community gains. Typically, nature-based solutions manifest themselves as living roofs or living walls, rain gardens, nutrient interceptors, etc.; engineered (nature-based) technology that essentially exploits a few billion years of natural R&D to address the complex and the ever-accelerating impacts of environmental change in urban areas. Not that we needed another reason for bringing more nature in to cities, but what “nature” in nature-based solutions are we talking about?
Current technology sees it necessary to populate your typical living wall with evergreen plants that can provide the service of intercepting noise, dust and airborne chemicals; specialist plants that are tolerant of the disrespect and abuse that city living brings. The same goes for rain gardens which are often planted with species selected to tolerate drought and flooding, sometimes on a daily basis! However, will any animal find a living or a home in this new urban and urbanised nature? What of the desire for increasing urban biodiversity? A living wall or rain garden is constructed to do a job and provide at least one service. Therefore, like their counterparts in the rural landscape, for example food crops, will the management of these service providers be similarly anti-nature, as it has been with a myriad of complex chemicals for decades? To keep our living walls doing their jobs effectively, and to ensure no competition from the more common urban botanical urchins (or “weeds”), living walls and rain gardens may need some intensive management that is counter to the intention of providing a more diverse urban nature. Following the food crop analogy, it is logical to propose that we may seek to modify our new urban nature to do its “job” better—engineering our plants to be better nutrient interceptors, carbon absorbers, air filterers, and water attenuators. And with the importation of a new community of street-wise botanical service providers into our growing, densifying cities, there is also the possibility of some of them escaping” and the invasive species debate hots up once more.
Living roofs have taken a step in addressing this. No longer referred to as green roofs (a monocrop of sedums) they are now “living” and more biodiverse in species and structure. This is great for urban invertebrates and some birds, and at certain times of the year biodiversity is colourful and soul-lifting against the grey of the city. At other times of the year, however, this new “wild” can be ugly and depressing; such as when plants go dormant for the winter. So now your expensive living roof looks more like an abandoned and unkempt weed patch. Again, the “nature” of nature-based solutions can problematic. No doubt, social opinions may change as the technology of nature becomes more and more prevalent in cities, but whatever we decide, nature in cities may not necessarily be the nature we remember fondly from the past, if we remember it at all. It may be a sort of hybrid nature, botanically selected and modified, as it always has been in parks and gardens, for tolerance, aesthetics and functions. And just like parks and gardens, over time this hybrid nature may become the new normal in cities.
So, while we desire a greening of our cities on emotional and personal levels, and while we become more reliant on the services of nature to address environmental change and stimulate innovation, the nature-based solution approach has a long way to travel.
Marlies Craig, pictured in her own indigenous city-forest-garden, is the author of What Insect are You? Entomology for Everyone. Currently she works as a science officer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Trees in cities hold great potential for their cooling carbon sequestration, water absorption, biodiversity…In Durban, tree planting is also transforming the lives of marginalised and unemployed people.
Plant indigenous trees! Everywhere, always, more!
Trees in cities hold great potential for their cooling properties and carbon sequestration, for ground stabilization and water absorption, biodiversity and biophilia, food and fuel, etc. In Durban, South Africa, tree planting is also transforming the lives of marginalised and unemployed people from some of the most impoverished and vulnerable areas.
Incheon, North Korea. Photo: Marlies Craig
So-called “tree-preneurs” collect and grow the seeds of indigenous trees. The small saplings are then bartered for credit notes, which can be used to obtain food, basic goods and/or pay for school fees. The trees are used to afforest the buffer zone of a municipal landfill site, previously under intense sugar agriculture or overrun with invasive alien plants, with fantastic biodiversity outcomes.
The Buffelsdraai Community Reforestation Project is a model of effective collaboration between local government, environmental NGOs and civil society, resulting in multiple benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity, the environment, human communities and the local economy.
Left: Ricinus communis, an invasive alien, has immaculate leaves: nothing is eating it. Right: this powderpuff mangrove (Barringtonia racemose)is what plants should look like: nibble-marks are a sign that these plants fulfil their function in the food web. Photos: Marlies Craig
Through similar mechanisms the entire city could be “greened” by planting suitable indigenous trees, shrubs or grasses on unused land, company gardens and verges, so they line roads, dot car parks, blanket suburbs.
Unfortunately, urban greening is often achieved with exotic species. Even if, according to UBHub 94% of urban plant species are native, the bulk of biomass (if you could put the plants on a scale) may not be. Johannesburg for example is known as the largest exotic forest; on satellite images it registers as tropical rainforest. Cities can be turned into carbon-dense forest-equivalents with obvious multiple benefits, but non-indigenous “urban forests” are a wasted opportunity, as they do not suitably support local biodiversity.
The beautiful Common Striped Hawk moth (Hippotion eson) eats our local arum lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica), but refused a range of common, exotic garden plants of the same family (Araceae). Photos: Marlies Craig
In the food web the vast majority of consumers are invertebrates—insects mainly. Among the vertebrates, the vast majority eat invertebrates—again, insects mainly—at least sometimes or at some stage of their life: most birds, about two thirds of mammals, virtually all amphibians, reptiles and freshwater fishes.
Biodiversity (in terms of species) is underpinned by a diverse indigenous flora sustaining a myriad of harmless insect specialists, which in turn keep the food chain going. Exotic plants benefit only a small number of generalists.
In cities, where ground space is precious, indigenous trees provide the above-ground biomass required to sustain local insect populations large enough to feed sustainable bird populations. The birds, while keeping insect pests in check, also bring in their droppings the seeds of more plants (trees, bushes, flowers) which then attract more harmless insect species, fueling a wonderful upward-spiral of biodiversity.
An area of lush coastal forest near Durban is overrun by invasive aliens (Eucalyptus spp., Melia azedarach, Ricinus communis, Canna indica, Cardiospermum grandiflorum, Solanum mauritianum, etc., right, coloured red). There is not much for local insects to eat in this “green desert” and consequently little food for many other animals. The fact that birds eat bugweed (Solanum mauritianum) seeds, or that the eucalypts provide forage for local bee keepers does not mean these plants are providing a valuable service. It only means some animals are able to eat the only food available. The same bee- and bird-food service would be provided better and more reliably by indigenous trees—if there were any. Photos: Marlies Craig
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.
With scarcity of land becoming a go-to excuse for governments and the real estate industry to exploit “no development zone” lands for housing, mapping of natural areas will help establish what land is “developable” and what land is not.
Mapping as a means of empowering Nature in a rapidly urbanizing built environment
Taking national level projects as precedents, nature—in all its forms—is severely compromised in most Indian cities. The issue is compounded several fold in the case of the urban metropolis of Mumbai. Essentially an estuary, the city has grown over the years by way of constant land filling and consolidation. This makes the city highly vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding. Mumbai city has a rich and vast extent of natural assets, measuring approximately 140 km2 including rivers, creeks, nullahs (natural storm water channels), mud flats, salt pans, wetlands, mangroves, lakes, hills and forests. We all know how important a role these natural features play in maintaining the environmental balance in and around the city—the most direct advantage of features such as mangroves and wetlands being that they help mitigate the ill effects of storm surges and high tides in extreme weather events.
Unfortunately over the years, the city’s development plan has not taken these natural features into account, which has led to the lack of their integration and consequent degradation.
Sadly, the city has turned its back and considered them as a dumping ground—both physically and metaphorically—leading to their rampant destruction and degradation. Unplanned commercialization has destroyed the natural environment considerably. The absence of a master plan for development of the waterfronts and other natural edges has encouraged the rich and the powerful to manipulate and grab land along these assets.
Map, Map, Map!
The need of the hour in Mumbai is to engage in an intense mapping process of all natural assets and areas in the city. Mapping today, goes beyond its orthodox use where it was deployed for purposes of physical surveying of land. It has become a powerful tool for analysis of current conditions, as well as in predicting future trends across various fields in which they are used. Mapping of the natural areas in Mumbai will serve a larger purpose at this point—it will establish the relationship of these resources in context to our urban environment while lending credibility and authenticity to the claims of those advocating and fighting for their protection. With scarcity of land becoming a go-to excuse for governments and the real estate industry to exploit NDZ (no development zone) lands for housing, mapping of natural areas will help establish what land is “developable” and what land is not. With the city’s new Development Plan for the next 20 years currently in the works, we are at a crucial juncture to ensure the protection and safeguarding of the city’s lungs against ill intentions of the real estate sector. Once mapped, these development plans become a basis for legal standing to challenge abuse and misuse of our natural assets which is missing presently.
This has to happen now.
To be truly effective, the mapping process will require active participation from local administrative bodies as well as from citizens in individual neighbourhoods/areas. Including the various stakeholders in the process of producing and reviewing the maps will increase the sense of ownership and responsibility towards these natural assets right from the ground up. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai will need to take the lead in this process. National and State level bodies such as the National River Conservative Directorate (NRCD), the Mangrove Cell and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF)—who govern various environmental and natural features will need to prescribe the specifics of the mapping endeavor and oversee the process to ensure that basic standards are met. This effort will ultimately need the backing of the State’s Urban Development Department which is tasked with approving and publishing the final Development Plans for the city. We can set a precedent for future administrations, and begin re-gaining lost ground in the race to protect the environment and ensure a sustainable future.
Empowering our cities to plan for a truly positive natural future will require the empowerment of the very natural assets and features that will ensure a sustainable balance between the built and unbuilt environment. Mapping is a socio-political act we must engage in to empower Nature within our cities.
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.
Stop talking about nature in and near cities and think of the cities and their surroundings as multifunctional landscapes.
I believe that to empower cities to plan for a positive natural future we should stop talking about nature in and near cities and think of the cities and their surroundings as multifunctional landscapes.
In order for these landscapes to function and be resilient in the face of recurrent and surprising changes (which characterize the Anthropocene), it is necessary that the whole community understand that the green and blue infrastructures are not options but essential elements that cannot be negotiated to continue building the city.
For this, the diverse media should address them from the ecosystem services point of view that they provide.
Green is formed by parks, squares, urban forestry, reserves, gardens, green roofs, corridors, vegetation remnants; the blue: all watercourses.
The choice of the green type will depend on the need to make attractive places to live, work or recreate, to meliorate climate and or to improve local natural habitats and biodiversity. Nevertheless, faced with these decisions of what green to create, maintain or conserve, it is fundamental to use native plants, which are found naturally in an area. This will guarantee the balance.
To mitigate the loss of biodiversity due to changes in land use, an action to be implemented would be the obligation of the municipal government to cultivate native and very especially endemic plants, which should be donated to the neighbors. This would reverse gradually, the harmful trends caused by a globalized landscape architecture which are evident in almost all cities.
Sumetee Pahwa Gajjar, PhD, is a Cape-Town based climate change professional who has contributed to scientific knowledge on transformative adaptation, climate justice, urban EbA and nature-based solutions. I currently work at the science-policy-research interface of climate change, biodiversity and vulnerability reduction, in the Global South.
My research interests continue to be focused on urban sustainability transitions, through collaborative governance, just innovations and climate technologies.
A gap which needs special attention in the future, led by a specific set of actors, are city biodiversity reports which inform biodiversity planning or city greenprinting process of Asian, African and South American cities or city-regions, experiencing spatial concentration of biodiversity loss.
The assessment titled “Nature in the Urban Century” makes a compelling case for aligning urban growth with biodiversity conservation, not only to address habitat loss and promote human connect with nature, but also for providing ecosystem services including flood regulation, climate adaptation and mitigation, and reducing disaster risks.
A suite of solutions is suggested that can help integrate nature into cities. The foremost step offered is biodiversity planning, or greenprinting, to facilitate a combination of efforts including education and communications campaigns about nature, increased direct access to nature, conservation planning and establishment of green and blue infrastructure. Critically, these require the incorporation of biodiversity and ecosystem information into urban planning, busting of institutional silos at local level, which impede integrated planning for future urban growth, and importantly, the alignment of development agendas across different levels of government. Biodiversity planning or greenprinting is presented as the first step towards the next two sets of solutions—integrating nature into the city; and managing protected areas. Nature-based solutions include green infrastructure (including human-designed parks, planted street trees, green roofs) and blue or water management infrastructure (such as bioswales, rain gardens and artificial wetlands). However, land protection is proposed as the most permanent and effective way to safeguard biodiversity.
A city greenprint would speak to urban transport considerations, zoning and affordable housing construction, water management, economic development plans and energy infrastructure. Alongside, it should strengthen disaster management and investment planning within urban areas. The authors suggest inclusion of key stakeholders who are representative of a range of decision-making processes and parallel drivers of urban expansion—both through physical development of the built environment, and population growth—as crucial for a city greenprint, as is with any type of urban planning exercise. Nature-based solutions have clear linkages with eco-sensitive building and urban design and render discernible benefits towards well-being of city residents. Moreover, implementation of particular solutions can be located in brownfield and vacant or unutilised urban plots. However, long-term locking in of land on urban fringes strictly for biodiversity conservation, with controlled human presence, primarily for education, or restricted recreation, would be a harder outcome to negotiate, even with support from higher levels of government, and despite strong evidence proving it as the most effective strategy.
The report finds that while there are several examples of current biodiversity activities by municipal governments such as urban biodiversity reports and plans, these are primarily from the UK, North America and Japan. At the same time, the assessment shows that significant impacts from urban growth on biodiversity in the period under study (2000-2030) have occurred and continue to occur in Asia, Africa and South America. Studies have also shown that biodiversity loss is spatially concentrated, and that targeting key biodiversity hotspots through local planning, could help focusing worldwide efforts on lowering the impact of global urban growth on biodiversity
Therefore, a gap which needs special attention going into the future, led by a specific set of actors, are city biodiversity reports which inform biodiversity planning or city greenprinting process of Asian, African and South American cities or city-regions, experiencing spatial concentration of biodiversity loss. It would include an assessment of current ecosystem health, mandated and approved by government, necessitating collaboration between scientists across a range of natural sciences, and urban planners and practitioners. It can also help align the efforts of citizen groups who demand protection of nature in their cities, by engaging them in the assessment process through citizen science tools, and empowering them to align their efforts, based on scientific evidence.
Authors of the assessment cite governance and capacity gaps, as reasons for why biodiversity reporting and planning lags in regions and cities, which will see the most significant impacts of urban growth on biodiversity planning. To meet capacity constraints, local governments can draw upon and join any number of existing frameworks and programs specific to urban biodiversity. They can then access and apply tools for assessing their biodiversity status, learn how to implement pilot projects and contribute to knowledge networks and platforms, such as those developed and supported by ICLEI, IUCN, and The Nature Conservancy.
Gary Grant is a Chartered Environmentalist, Fellow of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, Fellow of the Leeds Sustainability Institute, and Thesis Supervisor at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London. He is Director of the Green Infrastructure Consultancy (http://greeninfrastructureconsultancy.com/).
Understanding, embracing, and acting on the sponge city concept, launched in China in 2014, will be the most powerful and effective way that we can increase biodiversity in our cities.
The lack of soil and vegetation and absence of wildlife is largely the result of the replacement of natural features with sealed surfaces. Most people are not concerned with the loss of biodiversity and they are not usually concerned with the problem of sealed surfaces, however there will be an increasing realisation, as climate change brings more frequent and more intense downpours and heatwaves, that the great efforts that were made to pave and seal our cities, for our convenience, have left people vulnerable to flood and the consequences of extreme heat and desiccation. Even those with no appreciation or understanding of nature and wildlife have an interest in adapting to climate change.
Understanding, embracing, and acting on the sponge city concept will be the most powerful and effective way that we can increase biodiversity in our cities, among many other benefits.
Although the reasons to adopt it may take some explanation, the sponge city concept is soon grasped. It is not a technical term, it is a simple idea and can be interpreted in many ways which are largely beneficial. Just as the complete sealing of cities occurred incrementally, the reversal of that process, de-paving and the restoration of soil can also be undertaken as a series of relatively easy steps. This means that individuals can have an impact, as volunteers assisting with the restoration of ponds, wetlands or streams in public lands or as property owners making rain gardens, harvesting rainwater or fitting green roofs. A huge amount can be achieved by individuals in this effort. We can take inspiration from the efforts of individuals working in cities all over the world. I am particularly impressed with what has already been achieved in Philadelphia.
Politicians, officials and experts can do their part. Simple guidance, like the Biotope Area Factor, which came of Berlin in the 1990s and is now been adopted in various forms, for example as the Green Area Ratio in Washington DC, or the proposed Urban Greening Factor in London, can ensure that development proposals contribute towards the establishment of the sponge city. These simple ideas are not too prescriptive and encourage innovation. Where people wish to become more sophisticated about the testing of plans and designs for climate resilience through the use of nature-based solutions, they can turn to new software like the GREENPASS, from Austria, which can used climate data and 3D plans to identify problems with schemes and cost-effective solutions.
Although not all efforts to create the sponge city necessarily increase biodiversity or necessarily create the most appropriate habitats or species, a permanent increase in the volumes of soil and water, both on the ground and on buildings, create more potential for ecological restoration, better informed planting and the provision of more and improved natural services, like cleaner water, cleaner air and pollination. The sponge city will bring together a wide spectrum of people to ensure that more soil, water and vegetation is present. Specialists and enthusiasts can fine-tune the methods of planning, design, installation and maintenance.
In Littlehampton (UK), rain gardens have been installed using local schoolchildren to undertake the planting. Photo: Gary Grant
One of my own experiences with introducing the sponge city concept to a small community was in the small town of Littlehampton, West Sussex on England’s south coast. A public meeting to propose rain gardens was met with some scepticism from some older people who like piped drainage. There were concerns about a lack of funds and the authorities were lukewarm about the idea to begin with. A couple of years later, mainly through the hard work of a few champions, rain gardens have been installed using local schoolchildren to undertake the planting, an award has been won and the authorities are now actively promoting the idea in other towns.
These patterns of bottom-up activism and top-down regulation and guidance can bring about the sponge cities we need and nature needs.
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.
We need a multidisciplinary think tank oriented to the relationships between nature and business in cities, focused on concepts, principles, guidelines, and good practices that generate win-win initiatives for entrepreneurship and sustainability.
A think tank network on urban nature and competitiveness
Are cities part of nature? Is the budget devoted to cities environment a cost or an investment? Does the urban green matters in terms of the economic performance of the cities? Which kind of cities are more competitive: those actively integrating green areas and peri-urban ecosystems to the urban design or those where green and biodiversity are secondary issues? How can we integrate urban green and environmental concepts to entrepreneurship from the beginning in the business cycle?
In fact, cities are built in the middle of ecosystems and biomes, so they are part of regions and territories whose natural attributes should be integrated into urban design and urban economic plans.
In general, in their narratives urban planners and business stakeholders accept the need to reach minimal standards of green and environment quality in their cities, but in practice entrepreneurs do not receive clear policy signals and market incentives to stimulate nature-based and green businesses.
The point is that nature and ecosystems services are drivers of competitiveness in cities. And there is much evidence, pilot projects, and good practices waiting to be systematized, adapted to local contexts, and scaled up.
In rankings of competitivity, environment use to be considered as a minor factor, mostly dealing with the ability to manage hazards and the environmental governance.
Of course, ability to implement environmentally sustainable policies and mitigate the impact of natural hazards is key to cities, but it is just part of the nature-cities equation.
We propose a most constructive approach, oriented to promote synergies among nature and urban economies. When you invest in green infrastructure, sustainable building, a circular economy, urban nature tourism, urban agriculture, biogastronomy, and so on, you are both investing in sustainability and competitiveness.
We propose to arrange a think tank network on urban nature and competitiveness. The objective: to contribute to a plural, multidisciplinary dialogue on green businesses in cities by connecting university-based research capacity to business stakeholders, policy and decision makers and civil society.
There are many good examples of synergies among biodiversity and economy in cities. A lot of good practices in urban and peri-urban contexts showing that business and environmental sustainability could be mutually reinforced. Limitations and restrictions use to be just the result of rigid cultural visions, biased mentalities and poor dissemination of good practices.
Among other factors, Bogotá is a competitive city thanks to the joint work of the national agency for natural parks and the water supply company taking care of the paramo (high sierra) ecosystems that regulate water supply to the city.
If we look around the world, there are other many excellent examples of city economies increasingly based on nature and ecosystems services. In Rio de Janeiro, income from tourism mostly depends on the beauty of its natural landscape, so conservation and sustainable management of natural landmarks as Guanabara Bay, Tijuca Forest, and the magnificent Botanical Garden represent key investments.
Lima is gaining a reputation as a gastronomic destination, because of an enchanting cuisine based on a fusion of cultural and biodiversity ingredients. Nairobi with its safaris to a National Park located around the city is a suggestive destination. London’s inspirational project to be the world’s first National Park City connects very well with its well-earned reputation as a financial center. Bangkok’s ancient culture and spectacular palaces have an intimate relationship with Chao Phraya River, as Cape Town’s traditional architecture establishes a unified relationship with its coastline ecosystems.
Worldwide there is a growing trend towards responsible businesses based on the environment and biodiversity. So green business entrepreneurs need incentives and useful information, the same as authorities and planners need relevant knowledge and data.
So, my proposal is to develop a plural and multidisciplinary think tank network oriented to the relationships between nature and business in cities. Focus would be on concepts, principles, guidelines, and good practices that generate win-win initiatives and entrepreneurship in terms of both urban sustainability and urban competitiveness and productivity.
Of course, many think tanks on urban development matters already exist, but not many connecting urban nature to urban businesses and competitivity
Urban performance and sustainability indexes offer a general image about situation and trends regarding cities development. They invite us to advance from theory to practice in terms of better integrating nature to urban economies.
Who should do it? A think tank network on urban nature and competitiveness should be a synergic and multi-partner action. Maybe The Nature of Citiescould open a thematic line on these matters in coordination with regional, national and local partners and focal points, taking into account nature particular context of each city. We in Colombia would be interested in such an initiative.
Fadi has more than 25 years of international experience in analysing the interaction between development, urbanism, disaster risk, climate change, conflict, and state fragility. Fadi cooperates with various companies, cities, and countries to protect people, assets, and the environment
The threat that urban growth poses on biodiversity and human wellbeing should also be seen as an opportunity to claim “our right to the city ”, to reinvent the city, based on our vision for the society we want, and our relation to nature.
The great advantage of conserving nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing
In view of the recent publication on urban growth and conserving nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing1, it is important to put such efforts in a wider context.
Human rights-based concepts have occupied the centre stage both politically and ethically, in many cities. However, in many instances these are individualistic and do not necessarily take a collective turn2. On the other hand, thinking of what negative impact of urban growth on biodiversity we are willing to tolerate, is an opportunity to come together collectively, to decide what kind of relations to nature we want to protect and promote. In addition, thinking of how to manage the impact of urban growth on human wellbeing, and how much negative impact on vulnerable people, communities and countries we are willing to tolerate due to the loss of vital ecosystem services, is also an opportunity to decide what kind of societies we want to build, and what kind of urban social relations we strive for.
Therefore the threat that urban growth poses on biodiversity and human wellbeing should also be seen as an opportunity to claim “our right to the city”3, to reinvent the city, based on our vision for the society we want, and our relation to nature. Raising the awareness to recognise this broader opportunity, and the potential of coming together as a result of this recognition, is in my view the single most important action to plan for a positive natural future. This should be done immediately, by all rights-based advocacy and pressure groups, to pressure local and national representatives to allow for a more transparent and participatory decision making process related to the management of urban growth and its impacts on biodiversity and human wellbeing.
In addition to the above, few additional points can be made regarding the recent publication4 on conserving nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing:
In weak governance and weak environmental governance countries, empowering local governments should extend beyond providing a scientific evidence based tool for local urban planning, together with the institutional and legislative arrangements necessary for the successful implementation of such planning. It should also include an equally important aspect of freeing local governments from narrow vested interests that put the interests of the few above the needs of the many. In other words, the issue of local governance in the broadest sense of participation in the decision making process, needs to be given more attention.
The advantages of ecosystem services in climate change adaptation and reducing the impact of natural hazards, extend beyond the hydro-meteorological hazards (floods and storms) referred to in the publication, and include other hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis. For example, green cover can reduce the impact of tsunamis on vulnerable coastal communities. Furthermore, it can reduce the occurrence of landslides and soil failure after earthquakes.
The disproportionate concentration of the negative effects of unchecked urban growth on vulnerable and poorer households and communities needs further elaboration. This is particularly important as it can help raise awareness on the opportunity to reclaim our right to the city.
Notes
[1] Nature in the Urban Century, A Global Assessment of where and how to conserve nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing, The Nature Conservancy, 2018.
[2] Rebel Cities, From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, David Harvey, Verso, 2012.
[3] The Right to the City, Henry Lefebvre, 1968.
[4]Nature in the Urban Century, A Global Assessment of where and how to conserve nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing, The Nature Conservancy, 2018.
Scott Kellogg is the educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, an urban environmental education non-profit based in the South End of Albany, New York.
Positive natural urban futures may be worked towards by focusing on decentralized educational-activist strategies that emphasize human-non human reciprocity, social inclusion, and the reconstruction of the urban commons.
Ecological justice education for regeneration of the urban commons
Actualizing healthy, just, equitable, and ecologically regenerative urban transformations will require strategic diversity and polycentricism. While it is common in planning circles to favor concentrated, policy-based, and expert driven approaches, equally important and frequently disregarded is the potential of citizen-driven, grassroots, and decentralized initiatives. Although the impact of any individual vacant lot garden, rain water barrel, chicken coop, or compost pile may be small, when multiplied and scaled to a city-wide level their effect is synergistic. Together they significantly build a city’s resilience and adaptive capacity, resulting in a locale where control of resources is distributed equitably among an eco-literate population. Moreover, when sustainability tactics are simple, affordable, and culturally relevant, they are easily transferrable to other locations (Smith, 2014).
Community Composting with E-Bike and Trailer. Photo: Scott Kellogg
To those invested primarily in top-down, command and control approaches to urban sustainability governance, such ideas may be seen as trivial, unworthy of consideration, or even threatening. Their operationalization, however, is an essential first step towards cultivating positive natural futures and the resurgence of the collective urban commons (Nagendra, 2014).
Achieving this goal requires challenging the profound ecological alienation experienced by many city dwellers and the exclusion of the social dimensions of justice, access, and equity from mainstream sustainability discourse. These may both be addressed in part through education.
Studying Biocultural Diversity with Bees. Photo: Scott Kellogg
Environmental education, as conventionally taught in urban schools, frames nature as an abstract concept: something “out there” beyond the city limits that needs to be protected from ourselves. Challenging this nature-culture dualism requires reframing urban ecosystems as complex and dynamic co-evolutionary hybrids of human and non-human processes (Alberti, 2008)—not the hopelessly degraded and un-natural spaces they are commonly conceived as. Furthermore, environmental education must examine how equity, access, class, and race apply to urban ecosystems: what are the historical forces that have led to the exclusion and contamination of urban ecosystems for marginalized populations?
Issues of relevancy and justice may be addressed through an urban sustainability education paradigm named Urban Ecosystem Justice: a framework that aims to cultivate familiarity, care, respect and reciprocal symbioses between urban residents and the soils, waters, atmospheres and non-human life in the urban ecosystem (Kellogg, 2018). It provides whole-systems conceptual lens as an alternative to our educational system’s current obsession with reductionist STEM disciplines.
A few specific examples include:
Community composting initiatives—regenerating soil health with food waste
Grassroots soil bioremediation technologies—spent mushroom substrate and compost tea
Artificial Floating Islands—cleaning rivers with DIY wetlands
Urban biocultural diversity assessments—valuing ruderal and novel ecosystems
Citizen-centered air quality monitoring
Preparing a floating island. Photo: Scott Kellogg
The work of teaching socially relevant urban ecological education must be carried out in both formal, informal, and non-formal educational settings and be thought of as a form of grassroots activism. With the threats of climate change, energy depletion, pervasive toxicity and increasing inequality rapidly converging, we cannot rely solely on legislative action to bring about needed transformations.
Integral to the urban ecosystem justice approach is a critique of the neoliberal logic that is endemic in many urban planning circles. The practice of viewing cities as “growth-machine” (Molotch, 1976) real-estate investment engines rather than living communities has led to the degradation of the urban commons. Key to their restoration is the extension of the “cities for people, not for profit” (Marcuse, 2012) ethic to the soils, atmospheres, water, and biodiversity of cities.
Opportunity for urban ecosystem justice and commons restoration exists in “shrinking cities” with plateaued or negative population growth (Herrmann, 2016). On account of their reduced real-estate pressures, it is possible to advocate for both urban green space and affordable housing simultaneously—two essential components of urban ecojustice that are often mutually exclusive in hyper-capitalist cities.
In conclusion, positive natural urban futures may be worked towards by focusing on decentralized educational-activist strategies that emphasize human-non human reciprocity, social inclusion, and the reconstruction of the urban commons.
References:
Alberti, Marina. Advances in Urban Ecology Integrating Humans and Ecological Processes in Urban Ecosystems. New York, Springer Science+Business Media, 2008.
Herrmann, Dustin L., et al. “Ecology for the Shrinking City.” BioScience, 2016, p. biw062.
Kellogg, Scott. “Urban Ecosystem Justice: The Field Guide to a Socio-Ecological Systems Science of Cities for the People”. Ph.D. Dissertation. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2018. ProQuest.
Marcuse, Peter. “Whose Right (s) to What City?.” Cities for People, not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City, New York, Routledge, 2012, pp. 24-41.
Molotch, Harvey. “The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 82, no. 2, 1976, pp. 309-332.
Nagendra, Harini, and Elinor Ostrom. “Applying the Social-Ecological System Framework to the Diagnosis of Urban Lake Commons in Bangalore, India.” Ecology and Society, vol. 19, no. 2, 2014, p.67.
Smith, Adrian, Mariano Fressoli, and Hernan Thomas. “Grassroots innovation movements: challenges and contributions.” Journal of Cleaner Production 63 (2014): 114-124.
Patrick M. Lydon is an American ecological writer and artist based in Korea whose seeks to re-connect cities and their inhabitants with nature. He writes The Possible City series, is co-founder of City as Nature (Daejeon). He is an Arts Editor here at The Nature of Cities.
For each place and person, the answers will differ greatly, but our neighborhoods and our cities must become unique representations of natural biodiversity, each one answering to the voice of nature when and where it exists.
Cultivating relationships between people, cities, and nature
Though they may be bad actors at present, streets, housing blocks, and the economy are all inclusive of biodiversity, and of the troupe that we call nature. For this troupe to function properly however, requires a fundamental shift in how we see and experience our cities—and ourselves—in relation to the ecosystems in which we live.
This shift can be plainly put as two (interrelated) points:
in cities, we need to accept that urban spaces areinextricably intertwined with the rest of nature, and build them in light of this awareness
The second of these points necessarily gives birth to answers for the first.
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” — Frank Lloyd Wright
Ask our most brilliant scientists, artists, architects, and designers throughout history and you’ll find that a close relationship with “nature” is not only the common fertile ground for creativity and innovation, it is also a critical foundation for growing the kind of nature-connected solutions needed for truly regenerative* cities.
Listening to nature: it’s not just for artists and esoteric philosophers
Having personally spent much of the past decade using an artist’s lens to peer into the mindsets of ecological farmers—both in urban and rural contexts—a comparison of two different approaches to agriculture might help us understand what listening to nature actually means, and why it is important.
Consider that, in Western industrial agriculture, biodiversity most often means creating good conditions for a variety of food plants, while ensuring harmful conditions for weeds, bugs, and most other living things in, around, or downstream of the places where food is grown. At best, this view of biodiversity represents an immature relationship with the natural world. It continues to be accepted today however, even though thousands of years of history—and contemporary biological science—show clearly how harmful it is to our future.
By comparison, on natural farms throughout East Asia—refer to the recent documentary Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happinessif you are unfamiliar with the term—biodiversity has come to mean something far more comprehensive; not only does it mean growing a diversity of foodplants, it also means encouraging a diversity of all other living things in and around the farm, from weeds to bugs.
In the West we tend to question, often harshly, how one could successfully grow enough food to feed humanity without drawing battle lines and waging wars against the parts of nature that seem bothersome to us. However, the truth is that small natural farms throughout the world are growing food more productively, more sustainably, and at less cost to humans and the environment than even the most technologically advanced farms in the United States.
This way of growing food is the result of listening to nature, and of establishing an equitable relationship based on respect, trust, empathy, and acceptance—even for the things we don’t necessarily like. It is also the way to build truly inclusive biodiversity.
If city-building followed a similar prescription, the results would mean positive growth for cities, for people, and for the rest of this nature in which we dwell.
In every neighborhood, a unique representation of biodiversity
What does this mean for cities?
For each individual, each community, each microclimate, the answers will differ greatly. Yet perhaps in this is the answer we are seeking, that our neighborhoods and our cities must become unique representations of natural biodiversity, each one answering to the voice of nature when and where it exists.
Just like a natural farm, or a masterful painting, or a thriving forest.
If we wish for cities to exist harmoniously, sustainably, regeneratively within nature, there is no foundation on which to grow them other than the cultivation of equitable relationships between ourselves, our cities, and the rest of this nature.
Ultimately, it is from these relationships that our best answers will come.
* Regenerative cities go beyond the ‘less pollution, less consumption’ mantra, instead seeing the city and surrounding environment as an organism, and seeking to continually regenerate the health of the whole – people, city, and nature.
Meaningful citizen engagement for participation in decision making is the best way to empower cities to achieve their aspirations and goals for a positive natural future. Working together, city governments and communities can make rapid progress towards creating healthy, natural cities.
There is no silver bullet for developing healthy, natural cities but there certainly are some approaches that will travel further than others. Each city needs to develop its own unique approach that caters to its conditions and circumstances. Whilst city governments can learn from other cities, it is the people who reside within a city who can provide the answers, the solutions and the ideas that are appropriate for that particular place. Harnessing people’s love and passion for their place can return deep dividends for city governments.
I believe that meaningful citizen engagement for participation in decision making is the best way to empower cities to achieve their aspirations and goals for a positive natural future. Citizen participation transcends what we broadly understand to be community engagement. Oftentimes our governments deploy public relations strategies masquerading as community engagement activities. They make their own decisions and then summon the community to a town hall meeting, or similar, to discuss their plans. The problem is that there is rarely an opportunity for people to influence or shape those plans. Information provision is not true engagement.
Inviting citizens to co-create from the outset can unearth local knowledge, foster and strengthen community bonds, develop innovative ideas and build widescale community trust in government. If people have an opportunity to invest their time in planning with their governments, they develop a sense of stewardship for their cities and urban landscapes. This sense of community ownership and involvement has the power to overcome the short-term political cycles and related issues that sometimes stifle progress. Community involvement in decisions also provides government with a social licence for the bold moves that need to be made to secure positive natural futures for our cities.
Planning is perhaps the most controversial portfolio for cities. There are generally many vested interests in this arena and the big dollars are always at play. Planning regulations to both enforce increases in urban greening and to protect natural assets are critical for all cities—no exception. There are some wonderful examples of successful planning regulations which have improved development outcomes such as; the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Nature Conservation Ordinance which has resulted at least 6,739 buildings adding 220.2 hectares (2,202,099 m2) of green roofs to the city skyline since 2001; and Melbourne’s tree protection policy, which protects trees from removal and charges developers significant sums if they are removed. There’s also Berlin’s Landscape Programme and Biotope Area Factor (Biotop Flächenfaktor) which require new developments to integrate green space. Developed in the late 1980s, Berlin’s regulations have influenced several cities, including Malmo and Seattle.
However, improving urban nature in a city is not so simple as finding a good example and following the recipe. If a city government decides it wants to implement the measures Tokyo, Melbourne or Berlin have put in place, it may encounter staunch opposition. The media might convey such plans as anti-development or unnecessary. Indeed, certain stakeholders will rally against the new planning requirements before they are even made public. However, if a city government invests time to work with its community and stakeholders to tackle problems together, ideas like this may be well supported and they may even be proposed by citizens themselves.
Working together, city governments and communities can make rapid progress towards creating healthy, natural cities. Leveraging networks and partnerships with the private sector is considered important for governments. We need to value community partnerships with the same gravitas. Working together, we can achieve more than any individual effort for our cities. The timing of securing a natural future for our cities has never been more critical than now.
Emily Nobel Maxwell is dedicated to environmental justice and urban greening. She is Director of The Nature Conservancy’s NYC Program and Advisor to TNC’s North America Cities Network.
Justice is about people and about places. If we invest in natural solutions in neighborhoods that need them most, we can ensure not only a natural future for cities that protects biodiversity, but an equitable, resilient, and sustainable future as well.
Nature in cities should be treated as a matter of justice, because it is a matter of justice. By whom? By all of us.
In the United States, your life expectancy can be predicted by the zip code in which you live. While there are many factors at play, study after study shows that healthy people need healthy environments. To achieve an urban century in which all people, flora, and fauna survive and thrive, we must work in all cities and across all zip codes. We must treat nature in cities as a matter of justice—a basic human right of all people. And we must invest deeply in those communities that have been marginalized to help them protect their natural assets where they still exist.
The forces that denude landscapes and threaten biodiversity challenge all life, including and especially people. As climate change increases both the duration and intensity of heat waves, water supplies are being stressed, plants and trees are removed, and soils are compressed and paved over, exacerbating the impacts. More Americans die from heat waves than all other natural disasters combined, yet they receive relatively little public attention. In July of 1995, Chicago experienced a heat wave where 473 deaths were attributed to excessive heat. This summer (2018), heat waves killed 96 people in Tokyo, which recorded an all-time high of 106. Dozens of people were killed across the U.S. and in Canada—including 54 people in Montreal. As reported in the Guardian, “the majority were aged over 50, lived alone, and had underlying physical or mental health problems. None had air conditioning.”
Heat waves are projected to increase in length, frequency and intensity over the coming decades, and urban landscapes intensify their effects. The good news is that nature can help. Shade from tree canopies can lower surfaces’ peak temperature by 20–45°F (11–25°C), and increasing trees and vegetation can alsoimprove air quality, lower greenhouse gas emissions and enhance stormwater management and water quality.
But how do we ensure all people can access these benefits?
First, we must seek intersections between conservation, public health, and environmental justice— between those who advocate for the rights and dignity of nature and those who fight for the rights and dignity of people. And we must organize at those intersections for collective impact. We must look at the whole landscape, both physical and social. And we must reject the mythology that only certain people care about the environment.
After all, evidence shows that people who face the greatest environmental ills care deeply about the environment. To plan for a positive natural future, we must cultivate relationships with these natural allies, making clear and meaningful connections between social and ecological struggles. We need to recognize, listen to, understand, elevate, and amplify the voices and solutions of those who are on the front lines of ecological and social degradation. Ultimately, we have a duty to invite people to the table who we see are missing, then build bigger tables and join others’ tables.
Who is “we”? Of course, everyone has a role and responsibility in this but I’m focusing my recommendations first on big green organizations, like the one I work for. And as a U.S. resident, I’m writing from a U.S. perspective, though I’m keen to learn what my colleagues from other countries recommend.
Justice is about people and about places. If we invest in natural solutions in those neighborhoods that need them most, we can ensure not only a natural future for cities that protects and even restores biodiversity, but an equitable, resilient, and sustainable future as well.
Dr Colin Meurk, ONZM, is an Associate at Manaaki Whenua, a NZ government research institute specialising in characterisation, understanding and sustainable use of terrestrial resources. He holds adjunct positions at Canterbury and Lincoln Universities. His interests are applied biogeography, ecological restoration and design, landscape dynamics, urban ecology, conservation biology, and citizen science.
Get governing bodies to open their eyes to opening the door to not only “ecology” (everyone knows what that is, right?) but to ecologists. Afterall, we all know about health, but we do seek medical opinion when we have a broken leg!
Need both bottom up and top down (leadership)
I pondered the “one critical action” and know the forum will come up with many relevant things to do to make cities biodiverse and legible while supporting ecological integrity and natural character. I think many of us who were sentient beings through the 1980s and before, believed that there was a dawning if reluctant recognition of the fact that governing structures were fixated on single bottom lines. And Triple Bottom Line (TBL) was born and seen as the way forward. It was on corporate and governors’ lips but, by and large, no actual change in structure and representation took place.
Instead we have often well-meaning, intelligent, and experienced business minds still running the show—gate keepers who “don’t know that they don’t know” the ecological risks and opportunities they are continually overlooking. Somehow ecology is cast as special pleading whereas commerce, engineering, and a nod to culture are not? We recently had a visit from an inspirational Canadian speaker—Dr Enette Pauzé who coached us on mastery of leadership, partnership and stewardship, http://www.valuebasedpartnerships.com/about. The question of how governing bodies can be more inclusive (more TBL), understanding, and remedying inherent bias, was neatly unpacked and answered, but my question is how does one, from outside the tent, convince conventional governing structures in the first place to share their power with ecology, sociology, and cultural diversity? We have previously discussed the relative success of Landscape Architecture in gaining traction for urban design; and one can see how beautifully and innovatively crafted, animated depictions of some imagined landscape will appeal to governing bodies who don’t have the deep ecological insight to drill down to the functionality, sustainability, biogeography or sustainability of such designs.
So my action is to get governing bodies to open their eyes to opening the door to not only “ecology” (everyone knows what that is, right?) but to ecologists. Afterall, we all know about health, but we do seek medical opinion when we have a broken leg!
The irony is that (holistic and projective) ecology is surely the key discipline required to save the planet and yet is seldom if ever represented in decision-making except as nice to have, green fluff (or wash) sprinkled like fairy dust after the “real decisions” have been made. The professional status of ecology needs urgently to be raised as capable of rational thought and often more acutely aware of inherent biases than many other professions. The consequence of this is that design and landscaping should always be informed by professional, experienced ecologists—not just by what people think they know about this complex topic.
An example of necessary joined-up thinking is the importance of “urban wild” in bringing nature and people together even in constructed environments where the conventional tendency is to control and sanitise. A little-known fact is that Berlin (of all places) allows “weeds” to grow in footpath cracks. Like “forest bathing”, this should lead to a more relaxed and forgiving attitude, not just towards nature but to all such interdependencies—one might call it ecological literacy! And for control freaks there is always Joan Nassauer’s “messy ecosystems – tidy frames”.
To summarise: there have been decades of grass roots actions on the environment and there are many initiatives and quasi-polices spawned from this movement. But show me a Board or executive with an actual ecologist on it. We need more ecologically literate/informed governance, not just a vague notion that when “we” think we have an environmental problem we will know to come and ask.
No, we need the canaries in the mine before the disaster!
Ragene Palma is a Filipino urbanist currently studying International Planning at the University of Westminster, London, as a Chevening scholar. Follow her work at littlemissurbanite.com.
A call for consciousness in urban management and planning is a call for professionals—environmental planners, architects, landscape architects, designers, and other urban leaders—to pay respect to nature.
Inclusive urbanism in congested, developing cities
If there was one specific action to push cities for a positive natural future, it would be undertaking conscious urban planning and management that truly integrated development with the natural landscape and ecological systems—not compliance-based, not politically lopsided; just conscious.
While this is not a new approach, and while many cities around the world have made outstanding achievements towards truly sustainable planning (the Netherlands could boast of this), there would always be a different point of view from a developing country.
Cities in the Philippines have very varied levels of development, and it’s due to many reasons: island locations against landlocked areas, unequal distribution of national resources, metropolitan centrism, among many other factors. But one thing is common to our cities: we keep creating plans, yet we leave our resources unchecked, despite the knowledge that the natural environment is finite.
Captive in its own habitat. The Binturong, or the Palawan Bearcat, is safe and protected within the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Center. Ironically, it is held in captivity within a protected frontier because of its declining population. Sanctuary spaces in developing countries are cleaned regularly, but barely resemble the real natural habitats of wildlife.
Take Metro Manila, for example. Sixteen cities and one municipality are growing with a 4.4 percent urbanization rate per year, congesting the already concrete-laden capital region, and further increasing the push-and-pull dynamic with provinces. Despite decades of using comprehensive planning to supposedly manage and sustain its growth, the poor implementation has even pushed the boundaries of the metro to create Mega Manila, intoxicating the agricultural fields and fishing grounds of its neighboring regions with sprawl, resettlement, and unmanaged development. While efforts such as designed cities and climate guidelines have entered the planning arena as attempts to make sense of the confused urban fabric and increasing climate impacts, the metro remains to be mismanaged as ever.
The Philippine Eagle is one of the rarest and most powerful eagles in the world, but it is also critically endangered. This eagle named Girlie, who was blinded because of a slingshot injury, now resides in the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center in Metro Manila, and has spent years living inside a cage.
This manifests in everyday experiences in the cities. Metro Manila can hardly be called walkable or comfortable—it just shows how disoriented it is towards human-centered design; so what more for wildlife and the natural environment? If a common commuter can’t even bike across a few hundred meters without fearing for his or her life, and if going through the central business districts call for a face mask as protection against emissions, then how can we even create cities that are welcoming towards fauna? The Philippines is home to “two-thirds of the Earth’s biodiversity and 70% of the world’s plants and animal species due to its geographical isolation, diverse habitats, and high rates of endemism.”[1] And yet, we hardly drive cities to become inclusive towards nature.
The segregation of living things, which is apparent in how many of our cities are built, shows that there is a lack of consciousness and concern for the life around us. Our development is associated to a growing economy and more and more cars—malls pop up almost as fast as Starbucks and 7-11’s, and yet, our wildlife is shunned to cages, and we push back our forests and coastlines in exchange for “progress”.
How do we coexist with and plan with nature? A white feline sits beside a worker on the edge of a creek wall in Makati City, Metro Manila. In developing countries, being inclusive towards biodiversity is a long way to go, given how being people-centric in cities is not yet established.
A call for consciousness in urban management and planning is a call for professionals—environmental planners, architects, landscape architects, designers, and other urban leaders—to pay respect to nature. The how-to all of this of takes a variety of solutions, including conservation of green spaces, making open spaces permanent and multi-use and geared towards ecosystem services, and planners encouraging governments for more buy-backs in terms of property that could be transformed back for natural causes.
This also applies to already congested cities, even in the developmental setting. Some key actions that may be taken include re-integrating flora (and eventually fauna) into the pocket spaces of heavily cemented networks, re-establishing walking trails in the city that extend to rivers and metropolitan borders, and designs that integrate the built-up with the natural environments.
Jennifer Rae Pierce heads the Urban Biodiversity Hub’s Partnerships and Engagement team and is a steering committee member. She is a political ecologist and urban biodiversity planner. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on the topic of engagement in urban biodiversity planning.
The outcome of a bioshed party forms a directive for the city and its citizens to acknowledge their dependency on local and global landscapes, and to take responsibility for them.
Host a bioshed party! A bioshed party is a fun and interactive way to link the functions of your city and the day-to-day decisions of you and your neighbors with the natural systems that you depend on, connecting you and your city with the landscape. It will help you see where shifts need to occur to contribute to a positive relationship with nature.
What is a bioshed? The bioshed is all of those parts of nature that your city depends on, impacts, and stewards. It includes your city’s watershed, food sources, all the “away” places that waste goes, all the places where resources come from to the city, and all the landscapes that the city is in charge of, like parks, abandoned lots, playgrounds, private land, and development sites.
A diagram that illustrates many parts of the bioshed from The 2050 Nagoya Strategy for Biodiversity, chapter 1. Produced by the City of Nagoya, (2012, p. 3)
What is a bioshed party? It’s a fun and select gathering of people with diverse perspectives who come together to understand your city’s bioshed. The outcome of a bioshed party is a diagram of your city’s bioshed in the past, today, and in a happy future. It forms a directive for the city and its citizens to acknowledge its dependency on local and global landscapes, and to take responsibility for them.
Ingredients:
A big, welcoming space
Food and drinks
Lots of huge sheets of paper and quality markers or other artistic elements
Illustrators and facilitators
Youth and elders
Indigenous and traditional cultural leaders
Community leaders of vulnerable or oppressed groups
Technical experts in food, waste, industry, transportation, energy, construction
Ecologists and natural resource experts (fishermen, forestry experts, etc.)
Local government decision-makers and planners
An example drawing for past conditions from The 2050 Nagoya Strategy for Biodiversity, Popular Edition. Produced by the City of Nagoya, (2012, p. 3)
Create visual outputs at each step:
For each step below, create an oversize poster together.
Draw the bioshed of the past. Choose any time frame, but one suggestion is to start with the time period representing the childhood of the eldest person in the room. Include important natural elements from that time (animals, rivers, etc.)
Draw the bioshed of today.
Compare the two diagrams and list how we got from the past situation to today. What happened and how?
Draw the bioshed of a happy future
List the assets of your city today and celebrate what you have already done to move in the right direction
List what you still need to do to get to the happy future scenario
An example drawing for a connecting historical conditions to current day conditions from The 2050 Nagoya Strategy for Biodiversity, chapter 2. Produced by the City of Nagoya, (2012, p. 37)
Close with reflection and action: Set aside time for silent reflection on what participants can contribute. Call for volunteers to form a committee who will transform the resulting drawings into a pledge, which the city can host on its “Bioshed Party” web page where people can discuss and commit publicly to the pledge.
An example drawing for a future vision from The 2050 Nagoya Strategy for Biodiversity, Popular Edition. Produced by the City of Nagoya, (2012, p. 7)
What is the impact? A bioshed party encourages participants to think differently about the role of cities in conserving nature. It illustrates a vision for your city in harmony with nature. In this way, it addresses the perceived lack of connection between our urban lives and nature. Through the three drawings, participants connect the experiences of generations of the past, today, and the future. The bioshed party demonstrates how all members of the community are part of a positive solution.
Mary W. Rowe is an urbanist and civic entrepreneur. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada, the traditional territories of the Anishinabewaki, Huron-Wendat and Haudenosauneega Confederacy, and works with government, business and civil society organizations to strengthen the economic, social, cultural and environmental resilience of the city and its neighborhoods.
Enlightened designers are making attempts to better mimic the natural patterns enabled by diversity in natural systems. We need more efforts like this, reminders of what true urbanism actually looks like: an ecosystem.
Building the Natural City, one home at a time
Diversity is the underpinning of every healthy ecosystem—natural and human. It ensures cross- pollination, adaptation, course correction, efficiency, productivity, and, often, unexpected beauty. This is as true of human-centred ones as it is of ones where human habitation does not dominate. The worlds’ most resilient citiesthe ones that have endured centuries—have an elegant connectivity that enables movement, exchange, solo and communal activities. Before the industrial revolution, the urban neighborhoods that formed up were dense and idiosyncratic, adapted to the landscape, and a range of amenities seemingly emerged “organically”, close at hand. These urban forms have evolved over time, mirroring the natural ecological world in which they reside, each teeming with endeavor.
Sadly, over the decades urban development patterns in North America predominantly followed an industrial path, preferring uniformity over uniqueness in pursuit of “economies of scale” and rapid production. The more organic, human-scale development created by craft and a local labour supply sourced within a few hours walk, was replaced by mechanized, mass production dependent on automobile travel. Contemporary metropolitan regions are left with huge swaths of monotony: tall towers surrounded by half empty parking lots and 4 lane roadways, or single family “estate” residences, with multi-car garages, adjacent to private golf courses.
“Sprawlation” is the daily context for millions of urban dwellers. These artificial forms no longer mirror the intricate interactions found in the natural ecosystems from which they sprang. Units are isolated, there are no corridors or patches even of biodiversity, and a generation of urban dwellers has been deprived of those tactile reminders of the natural roots of place.
Enlightened designers are making attempts to better mimic the natural patterns enabled by diversity in natural systems to guide their plans for parks, neighborhoods, transit systems. We need more efforts like this, reminders of what true urbanism actually looks like: an ecosystem. Connected, porous, rich with feedback loops and redundancies. But faux versions: where designs are artificially imposed, lacking in connections to the vernacular elements of neighborhoods and local people, instead “dropped into place”, defeat the purpose.
This can be more than depressing for ecological urbanists, because the bad patterns of development are locked in our economy, regulatory regimes, and cultural expectations of the middle class. And as with any significant phase transition, the system needs many more disruptors than a cadre of progressive planners, urban designers and architects can catalyze.
To have any real impact on re-surfacing the natural into all aspects of our shared urban life, action must start at the most basic unit: the household. Here is my suggestion for one simple, elegant action that households should undertake, to symbolize, and concretize, a collective commitment for a positive natural future
Municipal governments should strictly limit the zoning approvals for new single-family homes to designated intensification areas, and make easy the approval of multi-unit residential development in existing built-up areas (“infill”) where services exist (and may need to be upgraded).
In addition, provincial (state) governments should levy a modest “heritage occupancy tax” on all dwellings: residential and commercial, to seed a revolving restoration fund to invest in ecological restoration and new forms of green infrastructure. (For instance, in Toronto where I currently reside, a meagre1% percent of assessed property tax would generate about $40 million dollars annually). To create more incentives for recognition and behavior change, households could be offered various ways to exempt themselves from the levy (e.g. installing alternate energy sources, use meters etc.). And the levy could be graduated to favour denser neighborhoods over sprawling ones.
This levy would acknowledge our fundamental, inherent connection to the resources, topography and history of where we live, and be a constant reminder of the natural assets upon which we depend, and their need for replenishment. Together with courageous zoning leadership from municipalities, it will curtail sprawlation.
I have only recently returned to live in Toronto, having spent a decade working in the US. Here, it is common practice to begin every public event with a land acknowledgement of whose territorial lands we occupy. It has become for me a powerful signal of our temporariness. Taking steps to more explicitly monetize the true costs of our occupancy would empower our cities to better plan for a positive, natural future.
Luis Sandoval is a researcher and professor at Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica. His research focuses on urban ecology, animal communication, and behavior and natural history of birds.
What biodiversity was there before? We need this baseline to understand our local goals for biodiversity, and whether current conservation efforts are effective.
The main goal to empower cities to plan for a positive natural future is to know what they had inside natural areas before urban development and what they have now. This information is the baseline to improve the recovery of disappeared species and survival of the remaining species. It will tell the city managers and city people, which was the impact they caused to the natural areas and species that remain inside cities.
Also it will provide knowledge to help decrease the impact of cities on natural habitats and guidance to recover some of the species that are not present now, but which were present before. It will facilitate an evaluation of whether the effort in the protection, conservation, and restoration of the natural habitats, due to management or connection between remain patches of natural vegetation, has a positive effect on species conservation.
In the recently released book Greening in the Red Zone, I and many of my colleagues argued that people who have recently experienced surprise, shock and other perturbations (such as created by disasters and war) often demonstrate a significant interest in greening and ecological restoration activities. Those of us who work in urban settings are always interested in groups of people who express interest and support for urban greening and restoration. As wars of the last ten years or more draw to a close an important group of people who have a great deal of experience in the red zone are returning to our cities. These returning warriors may represent both active, well trained and motivated future participants in greening and restoration, and may be excellent examples themselves of the value of greening and green spaces.
3.4 million United States Veterans have a service-connected disability, and they are not all men. More than 250,000 women served in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared with 7,500 during the Vietnam War. While the rate of suicide of young male veterans is reaching epidemic proportions, young women who have served in the military face a suicide risk triple that of non-veterans. Medical and public health officials are desperately seeking more effective ways to address concerns about combat veteran reintegration. Though this issue is not purely an urban issue, it relates to urban studies in both obvious and less obvious ways, and presents an important opportunity to remind us all about the power of nature in healing.
As of a couple of years ago, there were 2,266,883 people serving in the U.S. military, many of whom serve on bases in the U.S. or abroad. The majority of Active Duty members (86.5%) are stationed in the United States and U.S. territories. The next largest percentages of Active Duty members are stationed in East Asia (7.1%) and Europe (5.8%). The largest base in the US is Fort Bragg, which is home to 55,000 military and 8,000 civilian personnel. With a population of over 60,000 people, Fort Bragg is about the size of Utica, NY, a small, but distinctly urban city in the U.S. (see Note 1).
The benefits of human-nature interaction as a form of therapy are well documented. However, the value of human-nature interaction for returning combat veterans and their families and communities has been less studied. While administrators in the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs struggle to design programs to help returning combatants reintegrate into communities, programs started by veterans themselves have emerged in New York State and across the U.S. Notably, many of these programs have a focus on the healing power of interacting with nature through outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing, and through other restoration and greening activities. Examples include Wounded Warriors in Action Foundation, Project Healing Waters, Veteran Outdoors, Veterans Conservation Corps of Chicagoland, and Growing Veterans, among many others. Testimony from program participants indicates their powerful impact on vets.
Although a number of research projects are being conducted on reintegrating veterans, a recent literature review revealed only one research project on the impact of nature programs, the results of which were inconclusive. A current study on human-nature interactions among families dealing with deployment suggests that such interactions contribute to individual and community resilience among families and communities where deployment of soldiers to combat zones creates disturbances in social-ecological systems. We know of no studies that look specifically at female returning vets and human-nature interactions. The work presented in overview fashion herein attempts to move beyond these limited studies and begins to fill some gaps in terms of exploring the importance of human-nature interactions in outdoor recreation activities among returning war veterans, male and female, including those disabled in combat, and then accounting for how these interactions relate to individual, community, and social-ecological resilience.
To begin to understand these issues, I started attending events and getting to know the main players working at Fort Drum in the area of Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR), the Natural Resources group, and others working in the area of “navigating the deployment cycle.” Fort Drum is an army base in upstate New York that has seen frequent deployments of large numbers of troops in the past few years.
An initial event included one held on post where women and children were able to learn how to plant vegetables in containers. Some of these containers were sent to Afghanistan so that the women’s husbands deployed there could also garden, the idea being that this “distance-gardening” would create shared experience and “common ground” between the deployed soldiers and those left home.
Fort Drum army soldiers and wives participating in a distance-gardening activity, coordinated by members of Cornell’s Civic Ecology Lab and Jefferson County Cornell Cooperative Extension.
I also participated in and helped coordinate Earth Day festivities on Fort Drum, again, to try to get a sense of the way human-nature experiences might be similar or different among this specific community (the military community). We set up a table to attract participants with children that featured a theme of “lending a hand to the planet.” The children worked with their parents to write down one thing that they would do to “lend a hand to the planet” on a colorful cut-out of their hand and then were invited to place the hand on the larger poster of planet earth.
Children and their parents participating in Earth Day activities at Fort Drum, NY.
I later convened groups of veterans in the Fort Drum area to explore how outdoor recreation helped them reintegrate with their families and communities. I employed a method I have called “Collaborative ‘Cut and Paste’ Concept Mapping” (C3M) wherein participants are broken up into teams of 3-5 persons. They are then given a simple task to, in this case, map the multiple ways in which outdoor recreation is important to veteran reintegration. Participants are given no elaboration on the task and outcome. Participants are given a large supply of magazines ranging from general health magazines, hunting and fishing magazines, non-consumptive outdoor recreation magazines, gardening and hobby farming magazines, lifestyle magazines, and electronic industry magazines. They are also given scissors, glue sticks, sticky notes, a package of markers of different colors, and easel paper. Participants are then instructed to spend the first 15 minutes of group time “brainstorming” what they as a group feel are the important meanings and messages they would like to depict, and sketching a general schematic of how they will depict these meanings and messages on their final C3M map. Participants then begin a 90 minute period of interactivity to create the C3M map.
This method is useful both in terms of the final product, which is a visually interesting and conceptually intriguing collage, and in terms of the interaction opportunity to share with fellow veterans in a topic-focused, collaborative and creative endeavor. The following images are examples of the themes and linkages generated via this method. These are being used to better understand common themes and concepts for later use in content analysis of interview data.
So what have we learned and where do we go from here?
Whether through working with military families on installations such as Fort Drum doing gardening activities and other traditionally “earth friendly’ activities, or working with retuning combatants — many of them wounded — in outdoor recreation with organizations such as Wounded Warriors in Action Foundation, Project Healing Waters, and many others, one common theme continues to emerge in this work: the importance of interaction with the rest of nature for veterans and their families.
Work in this area is ongoing, and data gathering and analysis is underway in multiple studies. Though conclusive statements remain in the future, the evidence thus far suggests that outdoor recreation, from gardening and tree planting to hunting and fishing are uniquely powerful and multifaceted avenues for returning combatant reintegration and healing, as is depicted in this Field & Stream video portraying some of this important work.
Soldiers returning from long and protracted wars, especially with life altering injuries, often report feelings of inadequacy and of being devalued, and of feeling that their particular skill sets and competencies are not applicable in civilian life. On the other hand, returning veterans that engage in outdoor recreation and restoration activities report significant relief from these and other feelings, sometimes for short periods of time and more often for longer periods. In these reports are suggestions that reveal an intensification and specific manifestation of Kellert’s Typology of Values of Nature.
Specifically, in the case of returning veterans, the values depicted graphically by soldiers themselves as in the above images indicate the importance of rekindling camaraderie, the value of nature as solace and solitude, the potential of mission accomplishment, and the important inner work of reconnecting to and understanding the sacredness of both life and death, as represented by planting a tree, harvesting a crop, by catching and then releasing a trout, or by taking the responsibility of taking the life of an animal to provide for one’s family. These are not trivial matters, and they represent a specific manifestation of Greening in the Red Zone that may hold clues to how urban society, human society, may rediscover its ecological identity.
I conclude with the story of Chicago area based restoration ecologist Ben Haberthur, a former Marine who deeply believes that working in nature can help veterans heal their war-wounded spirits. Ben, who started the Veterans Conservation Corps of Chicagoland, was stationed in southern Iraq in 2003. Upon returning to the United States, he found that exploring coastal areas in California was a “peaceful, calming alternative to the stresses of my former military life.” He believes connecting with nature could help veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. He also said his resolve to protect and restore American ecosystems was solidified after seeing environmental devastation wrought by Saddam Hussein, including draining Iraq’s southern marshlands. The lush marshlands, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, were drained after the first Gulf War, because Hussein thought the area harbored rebels.
Haberthur obtained a $10,000 grant from TogetherGreen, which is an organization run by the National Audubon Society and Toyota, to start the Chicago chapter. He observes that military service is a place where you can readily see that your actions are having an impact and says that “once you get out of the military, people still want to have that sort of impact in their life…they want to be part of something bigger than themselves…being in nature more led to a stronger connection with nature, so it went hand in hand that I would be restoring natural environments at the same time that I was trying to bring a balance and restoration to my life.”
It is my hope that urban planners, those involved in urban ecological applied research and those involved in restoration activities will recognize and appreciate two important things; first, the great potential of the veteran community to participate in the restoration work that is increasingly an important part of what we understand to be the “nature of cities,” and second, the invaluable power of nature and the time we spend in it to heal the deepest and most destructive wounds.
Keith Tidball
Ithaca, New York
Note 1: According to the US Census Bureau, urban is defined as “all territory, population, and housing units in urbanized areas and in places of 2,500 or more persons outside urbanized areas.” See http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urdef.txt
Round tables brought together participants from around the world to discuss how we can better integrate diversity and multiculturalism into research and practice in our urban forestry work.
Over the past four years in leading the Engagement and Research portfolio at Tree Canada, I have had the opportunity to watch the organization grow, contribute to designing programs that move beyond tree planting efforts, and to create a network of knowledge sharing for Canada’s urban forests. I am pleased to share that our progress has made a significant impact in urban forestry nationwide by fostering comprehensive and interdisciplinary dialogue, by engaging in innovative projects, sharing knowledge, and convening communities. Specific programs in this portfolio include the Canadian Urban Forest Network (CUFN), Strategy (CUFS) and Conference (CUFC).
In Canada, we typically see that the curation and maintenance of urban forests is the responsibility of municipalities. Communities often seek direction from peers as well as look to provincial and federal level support. Tree Canada offers opportunities for communities to get involved through tree planting events, urban greening initiatives and grants, networking, and engagement. The outcomes of initiatives conducted within the Engagement and Research pillar strengthen overall leadership in urban forestry at the national scale and bridge communication across communities to foster collaboration and encourage diversity.
First, with respect to the Canadian Urban Forest Network (CUFN), the list membership rose from 450 individuals (between 2004-2014) to 925 members (between 2015-2017), more than doubling within the past two years. The CUFN was created to bring people together to share their stories and ideas, ask questions and learn from one another, and in some cases contest the status quo and grow. In light of recent threats to urban trees, we have seen more activity on the list with individuals vocalizing their concerns and offering support by sharing successes to overcome challenges. To this end, several recent achievements of the CUFN program include:
Conducting the CUFN member survey to capture demographic profiles of list members and to better understand participant interests (Bardekjian & Chiriac, 2018). These survey results will help guide the CUFN Steering Committee’s efforts to engage the regions in the months to come.
Facilitating the development of urban forestry action plans for each of Canada’s five regions in collaboration with the CUFN Steering Committee regional representatives, including hosting local workshops (e.g., Pacific region: October 2017; Ontario region: October 2017; Atlantic region: November 2017; Prairies region: March 2018). The goal for the action plans is to strategically guide the regions according to their needs.
Sharing knowledge by coordinating and delivering webinars and e-lectures in partnership with the Canadian Institute of Forestry on a variety of topics (e.g., best practices, planning, resiliency) as well as organizing speaker series and panel discussions at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conferences (June 2017; February 2018). Collectively, we had over 300 participants tuning in nationwide. In addition, the FCM allows us to profile urban forestry efforts and needs to a captive audience of decision makers.
Raising awareness about urban forestry issues at various conventions and events (in excess of 30 between 2014-2017) such as attending the Canadian Forest Service Science-Policy Workshop (September 2017) to discuss integrating urban forests into their 10-year Research Strategy, as well as attempting to set the Guinness World Record for the Longest Tree Hug on National Tree Day (September 2014). The outcomes of these various avenues of engagement have increased public interest in urban forestry as well membership in the CUFN.
Second, the Canadian Urban Forest Strategy (CUFS) offers guiding principles for urban forestry at the national level. In recent years, more and more Canadian municipalities have been developing urban forest management plans and tree protection policies. Feedback from stakeholders and members has evidenced the need for a national strategy supported by all levels of government; as the Secretariat for the CUFS, Tree Canada promotes its importance to municipal, provincial and federal levels. In collaboration with multiple and diverse partners, several recent achievements include:
Conducting the State of Canada’s Municipal Forests Survey (Bardekjian, Kenney, & Rosen, 2016). This study offers insights to municipal forestry practices, inventory systems, canopy cover, bylaws, budgets and social considerations.
Guiding a national-scale municipal research needs assessment in collaboration with Laval University (Larouche, 2017). From 192 responses across 167 municipalities of 5,000 inhabitants or more, this study offers insights into cities urban forest management structures, expectations and research needs in applied and social contexts;
Mapping Canada’s Urban Forestry Footprint in collaboration with the University of Toronto with support from Mitacs (Yung et al., 2018). This study profiles and maps the communities across Canada that have urban forestry departments, management plans, and tree protection bylaws;
Contributing to a labour market research project with the Career Foundation, International Society of Arboriculture Ontario Chapter, Ontario Commercial Arborists Association, and industry partners to identify the barriers and issues that prevent people from pursuing employment opportunities in the field of arboriculture (2017-2018). This study aims to increase recruitment;
Contributing to the development of an urban forestry carbon protocol supported by Environment Canada and multiple academic partners (2017-2018). This study generated the first national database of urban forest inventories from 181 municipalities across Canada and contends that a standardized national urban forest inventory and monitoring approach will support a better understanding of urban forest carbon dynamics and enable policy and management improvements;
Contributing to a literature review of peer-reviewed articles on the benefits of urban forests for public health led by Health Canada’s Climate Change and Innovation Bureau and the University of Washington (Wolf et al., 2018). This study is the first systematic review to focus on urban trees (rather than broader greenspaces, corridors and parks) as a beneficial source for human health and wellbeing;
Examining the needs of Indigenous communities with respect to urban greening projects in collaboration with the Canadian Forest Service by analyzing past Tree Canada grant recipients (Gosselin-Hebert et al., 2018). This study seeks more inclusive ways to better integrate Indigenous perspectives and knowledge into program practices;
Collaborating with various academic institutions to integrate and advance urban forestry education in higher learning. This includes contributing to the University of British Columbia’s Bachelor of Urban Forestry program and collaborating on an application to develop a professional training program with multiple academic partners led by l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) (2017-2018).
The CUFN Steering Committee, along with a secondary review committee consisting of provincial and federal government representatives, is currently in the process of updating the Canadian Urban Forest Strategy for the 2019-2024 term. This process began with public consultation workshops in autumn of 2015 in each region and has been ongoing for the past two years. The objective of the workshops was to ensure that regional voices were heard in the strategy’s redesign. The new version of the CUFS (2019-2024) will be presented at the 2018 International Urban Forestry Congressin October in Vancouver, BC. With respect to national efforts, there are three recent initiatives in the United States that are relevant and helpful to Canada’s efforts in urban forestry:
The Ten-Year Urban Forestry Action Plan (2016-2026) for the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council and the Community of Practice, offering goals, actions, and recommendations for cultivating urban forestry across the country.
The creation of “Vibrant Cities Lab” by the US Forest Service, American Forests, the National Association of Regional Councils, and others, to help city managers, policymakers, and advocates build prosperous urban forestry programs.
For a detailed overview of the above three programs, see Michelle Sutton’s article in the March/April 2018 issue of City Trees, a publication of the Society of Municipal Arborists.
Lastly, since 2014, in my role with Tree Canada, I have collaborated with several communities to coordinate three Canadian Urban Forest Conferences (City of Victoria, BC: 2014; City of Laval, QC, 2016; City of Vancouver, BC: 2018). The objective of the CUFC is to bring together the network of national and international urban forestry professionals, practitioners, researchers, students, and community groups to share knowledge and foster collaboration. In my experience working with communities on these events, the level of dedication and commitment shown by the individuals who work tirelessly to bring
participants together to create a learning commons inspires me. The next Canadian Urban Forest Conference will be held in conjunction with two other conferences that comprise the 2018 International Urban Forestry Congress. This event is being organized in collaboration with multiple partners: Tree Canada, City of Vancouver, Pacific Northwest Chapter of the ISA, City of Surrey, and the University of British Columbia. The theme of the conference is Diversity.
The Engagement and Research portfolio of programs moves beyond tree planting by recognizing, empowering and bringing together the people who work in urban forestry, and more broadly urban greening stewardship, across Canada. Moving forward in 2018, selected goals of this portfolio include:
Updating the Compendium of Best Management Practices for Canadian Urban Forests;
Building closer partnerships with academic institutions to encourage departments to include urban forestry within their curriculum; and
Contributing to the delivery of a successful International Urban Forestry Congress.
On a personal note, I recently took part in two activities that better informed my perspective on our collective urban forestry efforts in Canada—regarding how we share knowledge and foster cross-cultural collaboration.
Last summer I was invited by the US Forest Service International Programs to represent Canada in their inaugural International Urban Forestry Seminar, with 19 participants from 16 countries worldwide (Chicago & New York; June 4-17, 2017). The two-week seminar enhanced and expanded my views on international activities in urban forestry by sharing insights and learning with others. Our group dealt with a series of themes including youth engagement, collaborating with non-traditional partners, resiliency (both social and ecological) and food security (Bardekjian & Paqueo, 2018). The idea of collaborating with non-traditional partners with the specific objective to integrate diversity and multiculturalism into urban forestry practice is not as actively practiced in Canada. My main takeaway from this experience was to “look more closely, and think more deeply” (Bardekjian, 2017) about the way we do things and I have since integrated many of these lessons into my research and work with various organizations and initiatives.
The second experience I want to share that demonstrated collaborative learning was participating in the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Roundtable (October 23-25, 2017) called, “Do Rainbows Come in Green: Urban Forests and Multicultural Citizenship” organized by my mentor and academic supervisor, Dr. Cecil Konijnendijk van den Bosch, University of British Columbia. This three-day workshop explored the theme of diversity in urban forestry across disciplines from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The round table brought together participants from around the world to discuss how we can better integrate diversity and multiculturalism into research and practice in our urban forestry work. As part of this workshop, I had the opportunity to represent a Canadian perspective on a panel of international speakers with leading global experts from Finland, the UK, and the Netherlands, and co-curate a digital photo exhibit, titled, Human Faces, Forest Places (Nesbitt & Bardekjian, 2017), profiling the diversity in people and their experiences with urban trees. During this same week, the CUFN Pacific region held their fall workshop focusing on topics including climate change adaptation, shade tree management, and biodiversity strategies.
As a social scientist, and through my role with Tree Canada, and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the University of British Columbia examining gender equity in arboriculture and urban forestry, I am proud to be contributing to urban forestry interests in Canada, and I look forward to seeing how our field evolves in the coming years. There is more to be done on various scales and ample opportunity for growth and collaboration. I encourage readers to use the CUFN listserv as a tool for sharing stories, projects, successes, and challenges—ask questions and inspire others… and if you are not a member, consider joining the conversation – there is no cost. In the coming months, I will be working with the CUFN Steering Committee Representatives to share regional updates from across Canada.
Bardekjian, A. & Paqueo, L. (2018). Beyond Trees: Growing international stewards in non-traditional ways. In Green Readiness, Response, and Recovery: A Collaborative Synthesis. New York, NY: US Forest Service [in press]
Bardekjian, A. & Chiriac, G. (2018). Interests and expectations: Results of the Canadian Urban Forest Network member survey. Tree Canada: Ottawa, ON.
Gosselin-Hebert, A., Bardekjian, A., Quann, S., & Crossman, V. (2018). Urban forestry in Indigenous communities across Canada: Exploring the impact of greening initiatives. [forthcoming]
Larouche, J. (2017). Research needs in urban forestry in Canada. Unpublished master’s thesis, Laval University, Quebec, QC.
Nesbitt, L. & Bardekjian, A. (2017, October 23). Human Faces, Forest Places. Photography exhibit curated and presented at the Peter Wall Institute for Advance Studies Round Table: Do Rainbows Come in Green? Urban Forests and Multicultural Citizenship. Vancouver, BC.
Sutton, M. (2018). Zooming Out and In on Urban Forestry in the U.S. City Trees: Journal of the Society of Municipal Arborists. March/April issue. Champaign, IL.
Wolf, K., Lam, S., McKeen, J., Richardson, G., van den Bosch, M., & Bardekjian, A. (2018). City Trees & Public Health: Diverse Benefits, Diverse Beneficiaries. [forthcoming]
Yung, Y., Puric-Mladenovic, D., Bardekjian, A., & Wynnyczuk, P. (2018). Canada’s Urban Forestry Footprint: Mapping the extent and intensity of urban forestry activities. (2018). Available at: http://forestry.utoronto.ca/canadas-urban-forestry-footprint/
Have you ever noticed how incredibly adept you are at bargain-hunting in the local supermarket; beachcombing for washed up treasures; or foraging for mushrooms, nuts, and berries? Have you ever wondered why sweet melodies of birdsong and fertile meadows of fragrant flowers lull you into a serene sense of security? Or why you so readily disclose secrets to a barber or hairdresser?
Socially, we can eschew the greed and self-interest that neoliberal capitalism rewards and instead foster cultures characterised by the type of sharing and cooperation that were central to hunter-gatherer society.
Are you familiar with the rush of adrenaline, tunnelling of vision and sharpening of focus that attends the sudden tightening of a fishing line, the spotting of a stag in the mist, the aiming of an arrow, or the placement of a penalty kick? Are you familiar with that ecstatic trancelike state of mind in which your feet need neither encouragement nor instruction to hurtle up steep mountain trails in pursuit of some invisible quarry?
When a dark shadow passes overhead, do you flinch with panic as if being preyed upon? When the traffic growls beneath your office window, do you feel anxious and irritable as if threatened by wild beasts?
How easily do you lose track of time staring into the warm flames of a log fire, perhaps enthralled by a storyteller? How often do you jolt out of sleep having dreamt of falling from a high branch or cave ledge, only to find yourself lying safely on a mattress? Do you struggle to fall asleep when the moon is full?
Why do you take such an interest in nature; in observing and contemplating species and their ecological interactions—which trees bear fruit, where a bird builds its nest, when a pod of dolphins enters the bay? Why do you watch Animal Planet, book expensive wildlife safaris or read articles on The Nature of Cities?
Perhaps these feelings and behaviours are relics of our deep evolutionary past.
Try as you might, you’re no urbanite
Between 7 and 10 million years ago, our primate ancestors split from the line that led to our closest ape relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos (Hecht 2015). By 4.4 million years ago, our ancestors were walking upright, and by 1 million years ago, their brains were very much larger than those of other apes and they were able to use fire, fashion tools, hunt animals, gather wild foods and live in social groups (White et al. 2009). Agriculture appeared and began spreading merely 10 thousand years ago. It has still not reached all humans. If, 1 million years ago, our ancestors qualified as humans, then for over 99 percent of human history, we have been hunter-gatherers.
Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. We have colonised virtually every corner of the planet and may one day colonise other planets, too. However, notwithstanding several examples of recent and relatively speedy human evolution—mutations responsible for lactose tolerance, blue eyes, and malaria resistance have all appeared since the dawn of agriculture (Schaffner and Sabeti 2008)—it seems reasonable to suggest that many of our uniquely human traits are adaptations to the hunter-gatherer way of life.
According to Professor Yuval N. Harari, “Our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality are all the result of the way our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega-cities, aeroplanes, telephones and computers.” The modern world gives us more material resources and longer lives than any generation before us, but “it often makes us feel alienated, depressed and pressured” (Harari 2014). Indeed, the Paleolithic world which shaped us and which we may still subconsciously inhabit bears little or no resemblance to the modern industrialized world and least of all to cities.
The return of the hunter-gatherer
In recent years, a movement has swept through trendy urban neighbourhoods, affecting restaurants, gyms, running clubs, retail outlets and even hospitals. The growing popularity of so-called ‘Paleo-living’ has manifested in the mushrooming of self-help guides such as the Primal Blueprint (Sisson 2009), snack foods such as kale chips and coconut yoghurt, minimalist fitness crazes such as CrossFit and barefoot running, and professional bodies such as the Paleo Physicians Network promoting ‘Evolutionary Medicine.’
Proponents of Paleo claim that by emulating the eating habits, social dynamics, sleeping patterns and physical movements of our ancient ancestors, we may live longer, healthier and happier lives.
To the average urban dweller, chasing deer to the point of exhaustion, scavenging carrion from cackling hyenas, scaling lofty trees to earn a few berries, or scrabbling through soil to yank up tubers may seem like outlandish and unnecessary behaviour. Yet certain lifestyle principles can be gleaned from our hunter-gatherer past that are entirely relevant to our urban future.
With respect to our diet, we can steer clear of the artificial additives, refined sugars, industrial oils and other processed foods that pervade most grocery stores today. Instead, we can opt for foods less obviously alien to the hunter-gatherer palate. This leaves us with many options as their diets varied considerably – seeds and nuts accounted for roughly two thirds of the traditional !Kung diet, whereas the Inuit people ate little but meat and fish (Jabr 2013). We can certainly eat fresher, rawer and more varied foodstuffs; we can ‘go organic,’ espouse entomophagy, and make use of apps such as Falling Fruit to locate edible fruit trees and reap urban harvests.
Socially, we can eschew the greed and self-interest that neoliberal capitalism rewards and instead foster cultures characterised by the type of sharing and cooperation that were central to hunter-gatherer society (Hefferman 2015). We can relearn the healing powers of play and positive touch (Gray 2009). We can choose to cuddle our children and devote meaningful time to their upbringing (Newman 2010). We can refuse to discard the elderly as “economically unproductive” and rather embrace them as the ‘libraries of society.’ We can prioritize small, tightly-knit and highly-dependable friendship circles over superfluous undependable online networks (McRaney 2012).
In terms of exercise, we can escape the gym, kick off our shoes and try moving ‘naturally,’ as if fleeing a predator, tracking prey, hauling a carcass, climbing a vine, clinging to a cliff-face, hopping across boulders, or building a shelter. Exercise is not only about moving our bodies, it is about exposure to the elements, the sun, moon and stars. Erwan Le Corre, founder of MovNat, detests confined environments, insisting that “we are not meant to be disconnected from the natural world and our own true nature… chronic pain, immobility, depression and lack of vitality, these are the symptoms of the zoo human syndrome.” Similarly, Christopher McDougall, author of the international bestseller, “Born to Run,” speculates that “perhaps all our troubles – all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can’t overcome – began when we stopped living as Running People… deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way” (2009).
The birth of Paleo Cities
Readers of The Nature of Cities may wonder whether the Paleo movement holds any promise for the liveability, sustainability and resilience of cities. For instance, could the Paleo principles provide a useful framework for addressing chronic urban challenges such as nature deficit disorder, obesity, malnutrition, loneliness, inequality and ecological degradation? Could they be applied to urban design, planning and management to foster more cohesive communities, engender intergenerational friendships, induce play and collaboration, and reconnect citizens with nature?
It may still rest on slender science and bold assumptions, but Paleo-living is on the rise. Love it or loathe it, the movement merits our attention. With a little imagination, we may yet witness the birth of Paleo Cities and the return of the hunter-gatherer.
Hecht, J. (2015). Ape fossils put the origin of humanity at 10 million years ago. 2 October 2015, New Scientist. Available here.
White, T.D. et al. (2009). Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. Science 326(5949), 75-86.
Schaffner, S.F. & Sabeti, P.C. (2008). Evolutionary Adaptation in the Human Lineage. Nature Education1(1), 14.
Harari, Y.N. (2014). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Harvill Secker) at p.45.
Sisson, M. (2009). Primal Blueprint (Malibu: Primal Nutrition Inc).
Jabr, F. (2013). How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked. 3 June 2013 in Scientific American. Available at: [accessed 16 October 2015].
Hefferman, M. (2015). Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work. Presentation on TED. Available here
Gray, P. (2009). Play as a Foundation for Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence. American Journal of Play, 1, 476-522.
Newman, S. (2010). Raising Baby Hunter-Gatherer Style: Can today’s parents follow our ancestors’ parenting practices? 12 October 2015. Available here
McRaney, D. (2012). You are not so smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself (Oxford: Oneworld Publications).
McDougall, C. (2009). Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (New York: Random House Inc.).
I left Springfield to study architecture in 1974, two years after passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972. The first watershed association in the U.S. was established the Connecticut River Watershed Council two years before my birth in 1956. I can measure my return to the Connecticut River Valley some four decades later against the socio-ecological changes in the water and land of the Connecticut Valley as the result of water management following the introduction of Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, but most importantly, the social urge to abandon the old industrial centers, and build a new city within the old tobacco and corn fields of the Connecticut Valley.
As William Cronon has demonstrated in his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England,new social practices can completely alter an environment in a generation. Comparing 17th century explorers accounts of the first encounters with the Native American landscape of New England with the with descriptions of the colonial landscape at the end of the 18th century, Cronin situates historical change within socio-ecological processes tied to belief systems and economic practices. He concludes that the deep ecosystem knowledge that the Native American’s had was not recognized by the colonists bent on an attitude of “land improvement” rather than ecological stewardship.
Returning home, I felt a similar kind of urban knowledge was lost, as my parents’ “greatest generation” lost contact with the institutions, social alliances into which they were born.
This year I began an urban design research project on recent urbanization in the Mae Ping River Valley city in Chiang Mai, Thailand. My research framework is to compare indigenous and scientific practices in water management in relation to urban resilience in the face of climate change as part of a sabbatical leave generously provided by The New School. I was drawn to Northern Thailand in order to understand the famous muang fai gravity-fed weir and canal based irrigation system for wet paddy rice farming that evolved over many centuries. My home in Chiang Mai affords me an intimate view of this system along the Mae Kuang River, a few hundred yards below a community-managed weir.
For a New Englander, this flexible, adaptable and resilient water management practice reminded me both of the wetland engineering qualities of the native North American beaver, and Native American socio-ecological knowledge described by Cronin. The muang fai remain remarkable examples of community based natural resource planning, design, management, adaptation, and resource sharing, even in the face of extreme pressures of urbanization and centralized government development policy.
String of industrial mill towns along the Connecticut River in 1895: From north to south: Northampton, Holyoke, Chicopee and Springfield, Massachusetts, and Enfield and Windsor Locks, Connecticut.
This work, far afield, as has often been the case during the previous decade of my life, has been regularly interrupted as I try to return to the place of my birth and upbringing to care for my parents, aunts and uncles as the normal end cycles of human life take its toll on their generation. What started as an exploration of indigenous socio-ecological practices in Thailand has resulted in an inverted telescope looking at the American landscape from Southeast Asia, much as Benedict Anderson describes in The Spectre of Comparisons. Through this inverted telescope, I began to compare the muang fai system’s network of irrigation dams and canals to the Connecticut Valley’s legacy of beaver dams and industrial mills.
Around Springfield, alongside and replacing this concentration of early urbanization at water power sources exists a landscape of shopping malls, industrial parks and housing subdivisions, which since the 1970’s has been more and more carefully managed through the creation of point-source water pollution restrictions, wetland boundaries around non-point pollution sources. Since selling our family house in the city of Springfield, I have a close-up view of this new landscape. I now often stay on of the hotels clustered at exit 47E on Interstate 91, just over the state line from Springfield. Motel 6, Red Roof and Hampton Suites all have robust storm water management systems between their parking lots and the Freshwater Brook in Enfield, Connecticut, and the shopping malls at Enfield Square and Enfield Commons form a super-block with the fenced brook as its ecological “commons”.
Top: Rice paddy irrigated from a muang fai dam (circular inset) along the middle reach of the Mae Kuang River near Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Bottom: Freshwater Brook passes through the shopping center parking lots comprising Enfield Square and Enfield Commons, before passing under Interstate 91 and forming a mill pond at the Thompsonville hydropower dam (circular inset). Credit: Martina Barcelloni Corte
While in Northern Thailand I am studying new patterns of urbanization in relationship to indigenous water management practices based on diverting water to wet rice paddies. In New England I witnessed the development of more and more intricate water management obsessed with removing water from parking lots. While the control of non-point pollution from America’s ubiquitous asphalt parking surfaces has put us at some distance to water bodies in everyday life, it has also successfully contributed to the remarkable restoration of the Connecticut River Watershed as a whole.
However, the New England mill, like the Northern Thailand muang fai provided an example of direct engagement with water, but based on renewable energy rather than subsistence food production. Through this study I hope to develop design tools combining scientific knowledge about maintaining ecosystems, with socially resilience indigenous practices of adaptation and self-reliance.
Twin Storms
View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, Thomas Cole, 1826, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The ancient volcanic ridge of the Holyoke Range cuts across the Connecticut River between Northampton and Holyoke, Massachusetts, creating the famous oxbow scene for Thomas Cole’s seminal landscape painting View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts after a Thunderstorm. Like the river, Interstate Route 91 now cuts through the weathered ridge forming the northern edge of Jean Gottman’s Bos-Wash megalopolis, and travelers with skis strapped to their roofs know they are entering the heartland of rural New England when they pass through the Holyoke Range.
A similar feeling of arrival greets a driver from Bangkok when crossing the last ridge of mountains separating the ancient valley Kingdoms at Lampang and Chiang Mai, as one descends into the broad belly of the Ping River Valley into the domain of the ancient Lanna Kingdom in Northern Thailand. Teak forests give way to a fertile plain of villages, fruit orchards and rice paddies. A vast, intricate and indigenous irrigation network maintains a lush green carpet among a patchwork of new resorts and subdivisions, even in the dry months of the monsoon cycle.
By coincidence, cross mountain drives across both river valleys last year revealed the urgency of new design and water management practices to enhance urban resilience in the face of climate change. In August, 2011, I found myself traveling in the wake of the late season Typhoon Nok Ten, which dropped an unprecedented amount of rainfall across the already monsoon saturated mountains and plains of Northern Thailand. The storm triggered in the following months the most devastating flood in Thai history, crippling the high-tech and automobile industrial estates in the Central Plane north of Bangkok. I was back in the U.S. for less than a week when I again found myself driving in the wake of a devastating storm as I returned to New York on the tail of Hurricane Irene. Unlike Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, Irene spared the coast of the megalopolis from the feared storm surge, but like Nok Ten, Irene released an unprecedented amount of rain into the upstream watersheds, especially the Connecticut River and its tributaries.
While Cole’s painting is said to metaphorically depict the clash between civilization and nature, the scene depicting a severe thunderstorm about to descend on a peaceful agricultural valley depicts a very real event of ecological disturbance. The twin storms heightened my sense of urgency in discovering how the urbanized countryside in both Connecticut and Ping River Valleys might be designed to be more resilient in the face of unpredictable weather patterns. The initial study begins with close observations in the two sites in early spring through late summer of 2012.
This blog post takes the form of a photo-diary, beginning in April, the Thai New Year, in New England, then taking in the second-crop rice harvesting and new year planting cycle in Northern Thailand, before returning to the wet beginnings of late summer back home.
April, 2012, Enfield Commons, Connecticut, May, 2012 Ban Nam Rongkuhn, Chiang Mai
A dry spring allowed me access to Freshwater Brook, enabling me to conduct an initial survey of the various drains, catch basins, pipes, retention ponds and wetlands. A winter of snow removal and salting had ended the month before. Arriving in Chiang Mai at the end of dry season, it was time for stream dredging and embankment construction for flood control and second rice crop harvesting.
Left: Snowplows finished for the winter line up behind Enfield Commons, Enfield, Connecticut. Right: Just before the monsoon starts in earnest, the Thai Royal Irrigation Department dredges the Mae Kuang River in order to prevent flooding. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Freshwater Brook behind Enfield Commons, Enfield, Connecticut. Right: Embankment reinforcement, Mae Kuang River. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Parking lot grated drain, Enfield Commons. Right: Access to piped irrigation ditch, Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Parking lot drainpipe outlet to Fresh Water Brook, Enfield Square. Right: Muang fai irrigation canal, Chiang Mai. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Parking lot drainpipe outlet to Fresh Water Brook, Enfield Square. Right: Irrigation canal, Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Snow plowing equipment and salt storage sheds, Enfield Square. Right: Rice harvesting, Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Shopping carts at the edge of the Freshwater Brook wetland boundary, Enfield Commons. Right: Rice harvesting machinery, Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Shopping carts along the Freshwater Brook wetland boundary, Enfield Commons. Right: Burning rice fields after harvest, Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.
Top: Detail of Ban Nam Rongkuhn rice paddies along Mae Kuang River, top. Bottom: Enfield shopping centers along Fresh Water Brook. Credit: Martina Barcelloni Corte
May-August, 2012 Ban Nam Rongkuhn, Chiang Mai, August 2012, Enfield Commons, Connecticut,
With the start of the monsoon, I had the opportunity to watch initial plowing and dike rebuilding and the first diversion of water to nursery rice paddies. Next the surrounding fields were plowed, and transplanting occurred just before I left in early August. Some fields were more simply planted with a broadcasting method.
Returning to New England during a period of end of summer thunderstorms, I was able to further investigate the effectiveness of the water management techniques used in the various parking lots at Enfield Square and Enfield Commons.
Left: The wood and rock dam at Enfield Falls was built to divert water to the Windsor Locks Canal (foreground embankment) from the main course of the Connecticut River. The bridge in the background is Route 190, Hazard Avenue, which leads directly to Enfield Commons. Right: One of the ten Muang fai built across the Mae Ping River in Chiang Mai. These weirs diverted water to irrigation canals and were rebuilt of stone and bamboo annually. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: The Windsor Lock Canal is now a scenic State Park Trail and a bald eagle preserve, with only one remaining paper factory. The locks are closed and the water remains stagnant. Right: Irrigation canal diverting water from the Mae Ping River weir. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: The hydropower falls at Thompsonville, along the Freshwater Brook just west of Enfield Commons. Right: The Thai Royal Irrigation Department has improved many muang fai weirs, like this one on the Mae Kuang River near Ban Nam Rongkuhn by modernizing them with concrete. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Detail of Thompsonville Falls. Right: Youngsters use a Mae Kuang River weir as a water slide after the first monsoon rains in June. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Detail of millpond above the Thompsonville Falls. Right: Above the Mae Kuang weir villagers feed fish in floating hatchery. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: The Freshwater Brook is protected by wetland boundary regulations from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Right: A spirit house and ceremonies performed by the villagers protect The Mae Kuang weir and its water bounty. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: The forest wetland around Freshwater Brook behind Enfield Square. Right: The Mae Kuang below the weir with irrigated rice paddy beyond. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: The mouth of the Freshwater Brook where it meets the Connecticut. The pilings from the old Elm Street Bridge at Route 220 can be seen in the background. The angled north face of the pilings was to break the ice floating downriver in the spring. Right: The mouth of an irrigation canal above a Mae Ping weir. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Retention pond behind Enfield Square after a thunderstorm. Right: First nursery paddy is filled with water in Ban Nam Rongkuhn. The rest of the field has yet to be plowed. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Parking lot behind Enfield Square after a thunderstorm drains to a grassy retention pond. Right: Rice seedlings sprout in nursery paddy at Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Parking lot at Enfield Commons after a thunderstorm drains to a catch basin where the runoff is piped to Freshwater Brook. Right: Nursery paddy at Ban Nam Rongkuhn. The name of the village refers to the irrigation ditch along the road. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Curbless edge of parking lot behind Enfield Square drains oily water to a retention pond. Right: Ban Nam Rongkuhn rice field dike is rebuilt before plowing. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Snowplow behind Enfield Commons is idled for the summer. Freshwater Brook is just behind the tractor. Right: Plowing the fields around the nursery paddy at Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Reeds flourish in a retention pond behind Motel 6. Freshwater Brook is in the forest beyond. Right: Freshly plowed paddy fields at Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Bus stop and parking stalls at Enfield Commons. Right: The nursery paddy rice has matured and is ready to transplant. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Rather than a drain and a catch basin, the curb at Red Roof Inn drains water into a gravel channel and then pipes runoff to a wetland behind the sign. Freshwater Brook is in the forest beyond. Right: Irrigation channel between nursery and newly flooded paddy. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Open curb behind Enfield Square sheds water to a retention pond beyond the curb. Freshwater Brook is in the forest beyond. Right: Transplanting begins at Ban Nam Rongkuhn. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Drain, catch basin and pipe system at Enfield Commons. Right: Transplanting at Ban Nam Rongkuhn is done cooperatively and takes one day to transplant the entire nursery. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: People wait for the Mohegan Sun Casino bus at Enfield Commons after a thunderstorm. Right: Ban Nam Rongkuhn rice field. Credit: Brian McGrath.Looking at these photographs together I wonder how to make parking lots more like rice paddies. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Curb between Motel 6 and Enfield Commons. Right: Ban Nam Rongkuhn rice field curves around an uncultivated island of fruit trees. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Curb outlet between Motel 6 and Enfield Commons. Right: Rebuilt dike protects rice paddy. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Small pond before pipe at Red Roof Inn collects cigarette butts. Right: Dike also acts as a walkway and has sluice gates to control paddy water level. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: Parking lot stalls and drainage pattern behind Enfield Square. Right: Bamboo bridge over dike. Papaya trees are planted on the dike. Credit: Brian McGrath.Left: One of the last remaining tobacco drying sheds in Enfield, just above Enfield Square on Route 220. Right: Ban Nam Rongkuhn resident enjoys a smoke of locally grown tobacco wrapped in banana leaf. Credit: Brian McGrath.Gravity fed urban water system Mae Ping River Valley: Kuang River muang fai fills rice paddies with rainwater in Ban Nam Rongkuhn. The Kuang is a tributary to the Mae Ping RIver, draining to the south. (left in image). Credit: Martina Barcelloni CorteGravity fed urban water system Connecticut River Valley: Fresh Water Brook forms a wetland boundary between the parking lots of Enfield Square (north) and Enfield Commons (south). The old Thompsonville millpond and falls is east of the wetland, before the brook deposits into the Connecticut River. Credit: Martina Barcelloni Corte
Chiang Mai’s waterways are hard working elements in a productive agricultural landscape, and could use some of the care devoted to the Connecticut River and its tributaries. However, Enfield’s parking lots could learn from the intricacy of the social networks around Chiang Mai’s muang fai system. Other than Black Friday, intense day of shopping the day after Thanksgiving, the lots are rarely fully occupied.
Rather than concentrating landscaping on the periphery of the asphalt, perhaps parking areas could form paddies, sometimes filled with cars, sometimes with water, sometimes used for agriculture, and sometimes with public events. Both sites would benefit from investment or reinvestment in micro hydropower.
Water is central to the nature of cities, as a source of productivity both economically and ecologically.
More people are changing how they use green and open spaces in New York during COVID-19, but we found the perception of access to these spaces remains unequal, and reduction in funding further compromises the ability of parks managers and city officials to manage these significant shifts in use.
Urban green spaces have long been a refuge for city dwellers, especially in times of crisis, but how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the use and importance of urban green and open spaces? Are they perceived or used differently during this time? Who has access historically, but also during COVID-19? And can current and future social distancing and budgetary policies impact this access?
In cities like New York, which was hard-hit by the impacts of the pandemic early on, reports of increased park use in some areas signaled a radical shift in mobility and demand for services as communities across the region adapted to new social distancing policies and mandates. With some parks and natural areas closed, while others partially restricted, the Urban Systems Lab in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy in New York,Building Healthy Communities NYC, and the New York State Health Foundation launched a social survey from 13 May to 15 June 2020 to better understand the shifts in use, importance, and perceived access to urban green spaces across the five boroughs. Our aim was to capture a snapshot during a critical time period following some of the worst health impacts in the City, but, before New York State entered into Phase 3 and 4, when restaurants and businesses partially reopened. In total, we received 1,372 responses to a NYC survey, and 1,145 people completed over 70 percent of the survey questions used for analysis.
LEFT: Bikers wearing masks in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Photo: Chris Kennedy; CENTER: Two NYCHA open spaces in the Bronx. Photos: Nicholas Dagen Bloom; RIGHT: Social distancing signage installed by NYC Parks on the Northern entrance to Central Park. Photo: Allison Meier
The results of the survey show New Yorkers continued to use urban green and open spaces during the pandemic and considered them to be more important for mental and physical health than before the pandemic began. However, the study revealed a pattern of concerns residents have about perceived accessibility and safety, and found key differences between the needs of different populations, suggesting a crucial role for inclusive decision-making and urban ecosystem governance that reflect the differential values of communities across the City. More than this, the study highlights an urgent need for additional funding, and consistent and practical guidelines to meet shifting demands, and to ensure the safe implementation of adaptive management strategies. In this post, we highlight some of the findings from the study and discuss the crucial role urban green spaces play during extreme events. We advocate for recognition of parks and open spaces as more than an essential service, but rather a critical urban infrastructure that provides multiple benefits and ecosystem services to address the interdependent impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis as well as other threats posed by climate change and socio-economic instability. Throughout we take an inclusive approach to the term urban green space, which we refer to as any public spaces with natural or managed vegetation, including parks, greenways, public gardens, plazas, and accessible wetlands, forests, prairies, and beaches.
Variation in responses about the importance of parks and open space for mental (A,B) and physical (C,D) health across gender (A,C) and race/ethnicity (B,D) groups.
In our analysis, we found that most respondents considered urban green spaces to be very or extremely important for their health (88% for mental health, 80% for physical health) and that this held true for all groups across gender, race/ethnicity, and borough. While scholars and practitioners have known this for some time, the multiple and interdependent impacts of the pandemic have brought new meaning to the idea of urban green spaces as a sanctuary or space of psychic refuge. What we found particularly interesting in the results of our study is that respondents generally considered urban green spaces to be more important for mental than physical health. This may indicate the many different roles that urban green spaces can provide for communities especially as a documented case of ongoing “COVID depression” spreads nationwide and social isolation creates additional barriers to the kinds of cohesion and community-building needed for overall well-being. Urban green spaces in this sense may be critical for alleviating mental stress and health, and point to the necessity of providing continued access to these spaces during times of crisis to prevent further inequities in public health.
Distribution of responses to the questions “How many times have you visited a park or open space in the last week?” (A) and “How has your participation in [visiting parks or open space] changed since the start of the COVID-19 crisis?” (B).Percentage of New York City inhabitants who have access to an urban green space within 400m. Map developed by Ahmed Mustafa.
Uneven access, unequal service
Do all New Yorkers have safe and easy access to an urban green space? Yes and no. According to the Trust for Public Land (TPL), nearly all New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk to a green space. While this may appear equitable, higher rates of White residents tend to live near large parks with a greater level of desired features. This is now a national trend confirmed most recently in a TPL study published earlier this year. In contrast, low-income and communities of color are more likely to lack access to green spaces of quality and to face disinvestment in local parks, which often do not include basic amenities like bathrooms or basketball courts. Even without considering the multiple impacts of the current health crisis, access to parks and open spaces of quality are not equal for New York’s diverse communities.
However, the question of access is not necessarily the whole story. The use of urban green space depends on more than just who is within physical proximity to parks, but what amenities those spaces provide, how well they match the needs of the community, and who feels safe and welcome to use the park. In a Citywide Social Assessment conducted by NYC Parks and USDA Forest Service in 2014, researchers showed that park visitation correlates with park size, facilities, and the ability to participate in recreational activities and engage with the local environment. And, in a study analyzing NYC park usage through social media data, researchers found the key determinants of visitation are linked to park facilities, access to public transportation, the size of the park, and socio-demographics of the neighborhood.
In our study, we were interested in questions of accessibility, but also understanding resident’s “perceived access”, or ease with which people can reach desired urban parks or open space sites. And similarly, if new concerns over safety, overcrowding, or a lack of desired amenities would influence this. Overall, we found these additional concerns have made an impact, with perceived access to parks unequally distributed across the 5 boroughs, although relatively high because of the number of parks and open spaces in the City.
Approximately 75 percent of respondents said that they had “safe and easy access” to an urban green space, with access to “natural areas” significantly lower, ranging from 53 percent in Staten Island to 20 percent in Brooklyn. In our initial spatial analysis, however, we found that residents in Queens and Brooklyn have lower perceived park access, as well as receive less of their desired features from urban green spaces. This is particularly concerning as studies point to neighborhoods in Queens as disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, which are also at higher risk and incidence to conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, exposure to extreme heat, poor air quality, and heart failure. These have been identified as comorbidities that significantly increase the likelihood of patients requiring hospitalization, contribute to COVID-19 fatality, which may be exacerbated by a reduction in perceived access to produce further inequities.
Variation in features considered to be important for a park or open space visit reported by respondents across race and ethnicity.
New concerns, shifting needs
As many recent reports suggest, the increased use of urban green spaces is taking a toll on the maintenance and capacity of parks to meet the evolving needs of users. In our study, even though visitation to urban green spaces increased for some during the pandemic, we found that shifting needs of New Yorkers can also result in a decrease in park visits. While more than half of park users surveyed were concerned about issues of safety, the concerns and emerging needs also varied across locations and social groups. For example, in selected write-in comments, some Black-identifying respondents expressed concern about police presence in parks or racial profiling, while Latinx respondents more frequently selected “lack of park staff.” One survey respondent explained: “Feels like parks for white people these days and law enforcement continue to target people of color.”
Parks with desired features are key as well. Our findings indicate that people may not use the park or open space closest to them if it does not have the desired amenities or if it is too small and likely more crowded. While the majority of respondents indicated landscaping and trees, places to sit and walk, and water features as a high priority, other communities placed a different value on park features such as places to socialize and cook food within parks, wildlife habitat, or educational opportunities. Additional write-in comments also suggest that other features were necessary, such as public restrooms and open playgrounds. These results highlight the ways in which residents’ beliefs and attitudes are not necessarily uniform and an urgent need to increase the capacity of NYC Parks and other agencies to better understand shifting behaviors and to include communities authentically in decision-making processes.
Illustration from the Connect the Dots project, exploring ecologically-based design solutions for networking urban open space. Developed by Timon McPhearson, Taylor Drake, Chris Hepner, Josh Snow.
Moving Forward: Parks as Critical Urban Infrastructure
So, what are city officials and planners to do, especially in light of recent budget cuts and the likelihood of the pandemic extending into the coming year? How do we plan for equity and resilience?
Although the severity of the COVID-19 crisis this Spring was unprecedented, many of our partners point out that there are still no clear guidelines for how to translate the New York State Department of Health or recommendations from experts into practical measures for NYC’s park and open space managers. The lack of consistent messaging and guidance earlier this Spring meant that some playgrounds were required to close with reports of others remaining open, certain natural areas were closed while others remained accessible, and open spaces not maintained by NYC Parks had to determine policies in an ad hoc fashion. This absence of responsive and inclusive policies, especially in times of crisis, tend to disadvantage low-income communities, while reduced funding compromises the capacity of NYC Parks, park conservancies, and other City agencies to adequately respond and adapt.
Long-term, planners may need to think differently about how urban green spaces are supported both financially and also through engagements with the communities who use and benefit from these spaces. This requires thinking critically about parks and open spaces not just as isolated islands of ‘Nature,’ but rather as complex urban ecological networks that operate as multifunctional systems, providing ecosystem services, transportation opportunities, flood and extreme heat protection, and support local and regional economic activity. Urban green spaces in this sense are more than essential, but rather critical urban infrastructure to manage the multiple impacts of COVID-19 as well as other threats.
In New York City, linking smaller parks with larger parks, NYCHA open spaces, waterfront hubs, community gardens, open and cool streets, and natural areas through a network of urban ecological infrastructure could begin to address issues of uneven perceived access and additional safety concerns reflected in the results of our survey. As many respondents noted, urban green spaces are often fragmented and the spaces with desired amenities can be difficult to access with many traveling greater distances, adjusting their typical routines, or actually reducing or stopping their park use altogether. This suggests that access to urban green space is not necessarily about proximity to a park or open space, but rather a perception of having safe and easy access to an urban green space that meets user’s needs.
This is especially crucial in considering the interdependent and cascading risks of extreme events such as heatwaves and coastal storms, and how they may interact with COVID-19. A reduction in staffing at NYC Parks for instance already had major impacts on City services in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias which caused more than 800,000 people to lose power in New York State in August 2020. Due in part to staffing shortfalls within NYC Parks, the cleanup and recovery were significantly delayed, placing those with pre-existing vulnerabilities at greater risk. Given the likelihood of these events reoccurring with an increased intensity quite high, planning for and building resilience is key.
As parks and open spaces increasingly emerge as a “pandemic commons,” this new appreciation is not just a challenge to manage or merely a strain on resources, but also an opportunity to rethink the role parks and open spaces play in our daily experience. And, more importantly, a call to action to ensure all New Yorkers have a say in the future operations of urban parks and open spaces.
Timon McPhearson, Christopher Kennedy, Bianca Lopez and Emily Maxwell
New York
This study was conducted by the Urban Systems Lab at The New School in partnership with The Nature Conservancy in New York and Building Healthy Communities NYC. Funding for the study is provided in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (2029918) and the New York State Health Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Christopher Kennedy is the assistant director at the Urban Systems Lab (The New School) and lecturer in the Parsons School of Design. Kennedy’s research focuses on understanding the socio-ecological benefits of spontaneous urban plant communities in NYC, and the role of civic engagement in developing new approaches to environmental stewardship and nature-based resilience.
Bianca Lopez is a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Northeast Climate Science Center working at the intersection of invasion ecology and climate change to inform land management. She has also collaborated with social scientists to study people's interactions with nature and is interested in art as a way to communicate science and inspire conservation behavior.
Emily Nobel Maxwell is dedicated to environmental justice and urban greening. She is Director of The Nature Conservancy’s NYC Program and Advisor to TNC’s North America Cities Network.
In my work at the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and more recently with the Trust for Public Land, I have been fortunate to be involved at the nexus of landscape architecture, civil engineering, urban design, environmental management, park planning, and many related areas. Over the last decade, but particularly over the last five years, the concepts of sustainable design and its sub-genre, green infrastructure (GI), have entered into the design, construction, and renovation of parks. At the same time, many cities in America have taken on the challenge of managing storm surge, storm water runoff, water conservation, and water pollution reduction, increasingly through the use of green infrastructure. That challenge has become even more urgent with the advent of global climate change, and the more frequent and intense storms that have accompanied it.
Many cities face fiscal constraints that don’t allow them to build new parks, but are nonetheless obligated to manage water better—even to the point of creating major new infrastructure to protect themselves from catastrophic damage from storm surge, flooding rivers, and other damaging weather events. Parkland in U.S. cities makes up between 2.3% and 22.8% (with a median of 9.1%) of city land area. With the opportunity to build new, functionally layered landscapes that serve to process storm water, abate storm surge and serve as esthetic and recreational assets, parks and green infrastructure may be entering a prolonged, perhaps permanent, symbiotic relationship.
As to the question of whether green infrastructure can always be counted as a “park,” the short answer is no. But properly designed, constructed, and managed, GI can be a park, especially under broader definitions. For example, the 2,000 Greenstreets (i.e., greened traffic islands) created by the City of New York, prior to their being formally engineered as GI, were considered “parks” by the Parks Department. They were mostly very small properties, but what they had in common was plants and trees, and often sidewalks and sitting areas or benches. They played a small role in lowering the urban heat island effect, absorbing carbon dioxide and particulate matter, providing oxygen and habitat, and creating many small islands of beauty in otherwise bleak landscapes.
Perhaps the “mother of all GI” in New York City was the first “Bluebelt” in Staten Island, designed to capture, filter, and slowly release storm water runoff. In Atlanta, the spectacular new Old Fourth Ward Parkis a major new GI installation, and very definitely a public park. Finally, existing (“regular”) public parks can have new GI elements added to them, and new parks can contain significant GI elements (as will be detailed later in this article), and in a sense all parks that have significant green open space that absorbs storm water runoff can be looked at as a form of GI.
So the question of whether parks can be considered green infrastructure is a qualified “yes.”
What is Green Infrastructure?
Defining green infrastructure ought to be easy, but type “green infrastructure” into a Google search field, and there are 141 million entries; “green infrastructure definition” has a more modest 5 million. The Wikipedia definition, which comes up first, is quite vague and generic: “Green Infrastructure is a concept originating in the United States in the mid-1990s that highlights the importance of the natural environment in decisions about land use planning.”
The definition used by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is more specific, but also perhaps too circumscribed, defining GI as “a variety of site design techniques and structural practices used by communities, businesses, homeowners and others for managing stormwater.” On a larger scale, green infrastructure includes preserving and restoring natural landscape features (such as forests, floodplains and wetlands), and reducing the amount of land covered by impervious surfaces. On a smaller scale, GI practices include green roofs, pervious pavement, rain gardens, vegetated swales, planters and stream buffers.” Others suggest that true GI is not engineered or “built,” but is “natural” and in its simplest form consists of trees, plants, and soil.
Even among my colleagues at the Trust for Public Land, there has been a healthy debate about the meaning. Some favor the tighter definition that relates primarily to storm water management. But an argument can be made that natural systems, such as salt marshes, can provide a GI approach to storm surge abatement, and that conserving land around drinking water and watersheds to avoid pollution and the resulting need to build hugely expensive drinking water filtration plants would also constitute a kind of GI. Consider also that a medium-sized tree can absorb over 2,500 gallons of rainwater per year, and a riparian forest in the Chesapeake Bay watershed was shown to remove 89% of nitrogen and 80% of phosphorous before it reached the water.
However you choose to define it, GI is quickly becoming a major tool in designing and building sustainable cities, and increasingly as a way to both improve park design, and have GI function as parks.
What follows is neither an encyclopedic nor scientific survey, but rather a highly personal and anecdotal tour of where and how GI and parks are coming together across the US (there is also a great deal going on with GI in cities around the world, but that may be a subject of a future installment). I hope the readers will forgive a focus on projects in New York City and those in other cities being done by the Trust for Public Land, as those are some of the projects I know best.
A Short History of Green Infrastructure
By the broader definitions, parks have been part of GI systems since they were first created. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux captured storm water in an intricate system of underground drainage tiles and pipes, and directed it to the lakes and ponds in their earliest parks in the mid-late 19th century. In Boston’s Back Bay Fens, an early version of GI was first used to clean polluted waters using natural landscape typologies. But for the most part, the 20th century saw an approach to storm water that sought to get it into storm sewers as quickly as possible. The prototypical urban playgrounds of New York and other cities featured huge areas of impermeable asphalt pitched to drain the water into sewers, and even sports fields were designed to drain away as much of the water as possible. That water carries damaging pollutants into water systems, causing combined sewer systems that serve more than a quarter of major U.S. cities to overflow. And when they do, they discharge sewage waste and high levels of phosphorous, pesticides, increased concentrations of a host of metals, including mercury, nickel, chromium, lead, and zinc, as well as organic contaminants such as PCBs and PAHs. However, in recent years, landscape architects, ecologists, and horticulturists have taken a new look at park design, seeking to make parks more sustainable. Among the primary ways to make a park more sustainable was to reduce impermeable surfaces and capture the storm water runoff in enhanced and enlarged landscapes.
The American Society of Landscape Architects, following the lead of LEED, worked with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the United States Botanic Garden beginning in 2005 to develop the “Sustainable Sites” and rating systems for sustainable landscape design. And in an unusual partnership, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and the non-profit Design Trust for Public Space worked with professional peers beginning in 2008 to develop and publish guidelines for building sustainable parks, “High Performance Landscape Guidelines: 21st Century Parks for NYC.”Charles McKinney (a longtime planner, designer and administrator at NYC Parks) and Deborah Marton (then executive director of the Trust) led a team of “fellows” and peer reviewers in developing guidelines for the design and construction of sustainable parks and public spaces, with a focus on storm water management.
Sustainable Urban Development Meets Water Pollution Control
At the same time the guidelines were being developed, some cities were taking macro approaches to sustainable urban development, including Seattle, Portland, New York, and Philadelphia. Portland and Seattle were among the first cities to use GI to capture storm water runoff in vegetated bioswales. New York City’s “PlaNYC” and the “Greenworks Philadelphia” were among the ambitious plans developed under the leadership of Mayors Bloomberg and Nutter in the first decade of this century. And many of those same cities were also confronted with having to clean up their storm water runoff to address federal Clean Water Act violations and consent decrees governing the management of storm water and combined sewer systems.
Greenstreet on Nashville Boulevard in Queens. Credit: New York City Dept of Parks and Recreation (NYC DPR)
The combination of proactive plans for sustainable cities and ways to comply with consent decrees also led to cities developing plans for storm water management that included heavy GI components. In New York City, a “Green Infrastructure Plan” was developed by the Department of Environmental Protection, and $1.6 billion was allocated toward the development of GI, from green and blue roofs to water cisterns, bioswales, “Blue Belts” and even small traffic islands, known as “Greenstreets” and specially designed tree planting systems, known by the cumbersome title of “Right of Way Street Tree Bioswales.” This commitment by the city represents an unparalleled opportunity to redefine the urban landscape, especially if traditional design approaches and cumbersome regulations and procurement processes can be energized and streamlined.
Diagram of Street Tree Bioswale.Street Tree Bioswale on Dean Street in Brooklyn. Credit: NYC DPR
As city officials across the country address storm water runoff issues (there are at least 770 cities in America with combined sewer systems, and more than 60 of them have consent decrees with the EPA and/or state regulatory agencies), many are also struggling to find funds to build and maintain parks and open spaces, or to plant and care for street trees. In many of those same cities, enterprising landscape architects, park agencies, and community-based organizations are developing novel approaches to address both issues.
In New York City, landscape architect Susannah Drake and her firm, Dlandstudio, have developed a plan to capture and process storm water runoff in street end “Sponge Parks” before it enters the heavily polluted Gowanus canal—construction for the first of these should begin this year. The design itself is complex, but even more complex are the layers of governmental agency oversight and approval involved in the project (see image below). Construction is also essentially complete on a prototype system Dlandstudio developed with the help of the Regional Plan Association to capture and phyto-remediate runoff from an elevated highway in Queens above a creek that flows through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Mapping complex regulatory responsibilities along the Gowanus Canal, New York. Credit: DLand Studio.Rendering of Gowanus Canal Sponge Park.” Credit: dlandstudioLawns at Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Credit: nycgo.com Photo by Julienne SchaerDiagram of storm water management system in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Credit: Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy/ Michael Van Valkenburgh AssociatesPearly Gates Playground in the Bronx. Credit: NYC DPR
On Brooklyn’s formerly industrial waterfront, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh has designed Brooklyn Bridge Park as the ultimate sustainable park, with among other things hills constructed of stone recycled from a nearby tunnel-digging project, and a vast underground water storage system that captures storm water in the landscape for irrigation purposes (his landscape also performed admirably when much of the park was inundated with saltwater by storm surge from last fall’s disastrous “Superstorm Sandy.” In Queens’ Fort Totten Park, landscape architect Nancy Owens created a new park landscape in a vacant site of former army housing, designing a vegetated bio-swale which absorbs and channels storm water runoff away from structures, and creates an enriched park habitat. In many other projects, Parks Department landscape architects and architects are designing even humble playgrounds with a large array of sustainable elements, following the guidelines they helped develop. For example, the redesign of a classic 1940s playground in the Bronx, known as Pearly Gates Playground (so named by former parks commissioner Henry J. Stern in honor of St. Peter’s church across the street), landscape architects Stephen Koren, Nette Compton, Patricia Clark, and Jim Mituzas reduced the impermeable surfaces by at least 25 percent, using permeable pavement and bioswales to capture storm water, along with other sustainable materials including recycled glass and asphalt and high ash content concrete.
Green infrastructure goes to school
The traditional urban playground has long had its equally non-resilient twin in the urban schoolyard. In Philadelphia, where Mayor Nutter and his team have put forward perhaps the nation’s most ambitious and complex plan for a “green” city, the Trust for Public Land is working with city officials to transform traditional asphalt schoolyards and old-fashioned playgrounds into “green playgrounds.” The play areas, often not much more than huge deserts of impermeable asphalt and battered play equipment, are being transformed into beautiful new playgrounds with state-of-the-art play equipment, playing fields, and large new planting areas designed to capture not just all the rain water that falls on the playground, but also water that drains in from the surrounding sidewalks and streets. Philadelphia is also adding a range of GI elements to parks including, for example, a subsurface infiltration bed beneath a new basketball court at Clark Park to manage stormwater runoff on site, as well as from an adjacent street and parking lot; a stormwater infiltration basin at Clivedon Park; and a stormwater wetland in Fairmont Park. Using a combination of public funds (including a significant contribution from the Philadelphia Water Department) and private donations, the projects create neighborhood amenities that improve the community, expand opportunities for exercise and fitness, and also capture storm water runoff to help Philadelphia meet its ambitious goals for cleaning the adjacent rivers
A similar program is under construction in New York City, where the NYC Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Education are providing crucial GI funding for the projects that will allow the Trust for Public Land to transform similar poorly functioning, part-time schoolyards into attractive, multi-functional, fulltime playgrounds. Led by Melissa Potter Ix, the landscape design firm Siteworks partners with Trust for Public Land Project Director MaryAlice Lee to manage a three-month community design process at each site, then works to create plans that direct storm water runoff into rain gardens and linear tree pits; water is also collected using porous pavers and in synthetic turf playing fields. And each site is designed to collect the first inch of rain water from every storm, which covers most typical rain events. Cities large and small, across the nation, are now considering using playgrounds as part of their storm water management strategies, in which GI use is encouraged by the EPA and state regulatory agencies, and in some cases compelled to do so as part of the consent decrees.
Schoolyard at P.S. 164 in New York after renovation. Credit: Trust for Public LandSchoolyard at P.S. 164 in New York before renovation. Credit: Trust for Public LandPlan for playground renovation at P.S. 261K in Brooklyn. Credit: Trust for Public Land
No open space is too small to contribute environmental value. In a perfect evocation of ecologist Rene Dubos’ admonition to “Think globally, act locally,” New York City Department of Environmental Protection allocated funding to the Parks Department to transform striped and paved traffic islands into “Greenstreets.” The idea of turning formerly paved areas into small gardens is not new—it was pioneered by then-Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern and his fellow Department of Transportation Commissioner, Ross Sandler, in the 1980s, following a plan devised by DOT Deputy Commissioner for Planning David Gurin. Approximately 2,000 of these esthetically pleasing transformations were effected over the course of two decades, but the latest GI spin has the Greenstreets being designed to capture the storm water from the surrounding streets in specially designed systems with lush planting beds populated by plants that can tolerate both inundation and drought, along with the other indignities of urban street life, such as salt, contaminants, and dog waste. These hyper-performing landscapes are tiny by park standards, but they bring beauty to formerly barren corners, serve as mini habitats for insects and birds, and most of all, soak up storm water. Moreover, these steps are only the beginning of efforts to abate the increasing “heat island effect” that global warming is bringing to our nation’s cities. During Hurricane Irene two years ago, one of the first generation GI Greenstreets captured 25,000 gallons of storm water, and a corner notorious for flooding during normal rain events did not flood.
Emboldened by the success of the Greenstreets, DEP Commissioner Carter Strickland is now working with his Parks and Transportation colleagues to turn the humble street tree planting pit into a “Right of Way Street Tree Bioswale.” These planting beds are much larger than normal, five feet by twenty, and ten feet deep, with structured soil and drainage materials and infrastructure, with a tree in the middle, and a variety of shrubs and ground covers. Inlets from the street usher in the storm water from the curb, and each bioswales is designed to capture 3,000 gallons of water per rain event. Best of all, perhaps, the DEP is also funding the Parks Department crews that maintain both the Greenstreets and Street Tree Bioswales, addressing one of the essential reasons—chronic lack of maintenance funding—why many city park systems don’t embark on creating new parks and public spaces, no matter how small.
Cities across the country go green
While the GI/parks projects in New York City and Philadelphia are among the largest and most comprehensive currently under development, other cities are also embarking on ambitious projects. In a plan that will restore Olmsted’s Back Bay Fens of the 19th century, the City of Boston is in the first phase of a $93 million project to restore the 3.4 mile Muddy River and its shorelines, to alleviate flooding, restore the riparian habitat, and “daylight” parts of the watercourse that have been hidden in huge culverts for decades. And Washington, DC is commencing a $2.6 billion Clean Rivers Project, including GI/park projects, to comply with a 2005 EPA consent decree. Already Canal Parkis being recognized or its innovative stormwater management, and the National Mall too will become a GI player in the Long Term Control Plan, as the Mall is renovated for the first time in 40 years. Bellevue, Washington, was an early pioneerin a stormwater management partnershipbetween the water district and parks department, where the “Utility” purchased the land and built stormwater management features, and the Parks department built and maintained recreational facilities at each location—where a stormwater vault was built, the Parks would place a tennis court over it; and a stormwater detention basin would also function as a soccer field.
In New Orleans, The Trust for Public Land has worked with local officials to acquire a significant first portion of land that will eventually be part of a 3.1 mile “Lafitte Greenway,” a trail running from the French Quarter to Lakeville near Lake Pontchartrain. A design developed by landscape architect Dan Waggoner envisions not just a traditional bicycle path, but also a complex series of green infrastructure interventions that would help the City of New Orleans manage storm water runoff—a crucial issue for this low-lying city with a history of flooding. In Los Angeles, city officials are likewise looking at the many miles of impervious alleys to transform them into “Green Alleys”where light colored pavement could help alleviate the urban heat island effect, and planting beds could serve as rain gardens to capture storm water. And Chicago is successfully moving forward with its own Green Alley Program, introduced in 2007 to convert more than 1,900 miles of asphalt and concrete public alleys to 3,500 acres of permeable paving, with the goal of reducing stormwater by 80%.
And while green infrastructure has mostly been defined as a natural approach to storm water management, increasingly landscape architects, engineers, geophysicists, planners, and officials are considering natural approaches to creating both barriers and mitigation zones to address the effects of ocean and river storm surge. Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for example, removed a floodwall from the North Nashua River as the first of $39 million in GI in 17 cities across Massachusetts and created a riverfront park on a former brownfields site. And even before the disastrous impact of storm surge from Superstorm Sandy on New York City, ideas had been formulated by these professionals from these diverse specialties. It is been known for years that the low lying areas of New York city would be vulnerable to storm surge damage from both wave action and flooding, that it was just a matter of time before “the Big One” hit and flooded neighborhoods, highways, subway and automobile tunnels, and other crucial infrastructure.
Global climate change, rising sea level, and green infrastructure
In prescient “Rising Currents”exhibition mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, teams of local landscape architects and architects developed new approaches for addressing rising sea levels and flooding storm surges. Based on a two-year research project by the engineer Guy Nordenson, the landscape architect Catherine Seavitt and the architect Adam Yarinsky, the exhibition (curated by Barry Bergdoll) showcased what appeared to be radical thinking about how to soften the traditional hard edges of the city’s interface with its harbor waters. Among the ideas were recreating the historic salt marsh verges of the city, excavating “slips” that allowed the harbor waters to penetrate the street grid, building two-way porous streets, constructing apartment complexes in Venetian style water settings, and otherwise subverting the traditional approach to harbor waters—to build strong, rigid, vertical structures and walls, which work fine until the water goes higher than the hard edge.
Now, as the city recovers from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy and considers options for preventing or mitigating the effects of both gradual sea level rise and catastrophic storms such as Sandy, officials at the highest levels of government are considering both very expensive, gray infrastructure responses including dikes, levees and barriers, but also green infrastructure approaches, including engineered salt marshes, constructed dunes, and other “soft” systems to mitigate the flooding and storm surge damage. As with the expanded flood plains created next to rural rivers that flood regularly, these green infrastructure elements can also function as parks, greenways, and natural areas, providing public space for humans and vital habitat for animals.
Green infrastructure as part of the solution to managing that most vital and also most dangerous of all natural forces—water—will likely be an essential component of urban design for the foreseeable future. The Trust for Public Land is working with cities across the country to research, design, and construct parks using GI, and to investigate benefits and costs. As we work to create sustainable, resilient cities, green infrastructure, with appropriate planning, will be a way to create new, well-funded, multi-functional public parks and open spaces, large and small.
Adrian Benepe New York City
Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Marianna Koval, a Fellow of the Trust for Public Land, who is currently pursuing a mid-career masters degree at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and who is doing research on the use of Green Infrastructure in parks, some of which is incorporated in this piece. I also wish to thanks Cecille Bernstein, an intern here at TPL, who helped with the editing and organization of piece.
The other day, I took my two children to the park. We clambered over rocks and logs, slid down slides, and rolled down a large grassy hill.
Parks with strong “magnetism” can potentially exert forces of attraction and repulsion for people.
At one stage, I stood at the top of the hill, the city skyline before me, and the sounds of happy children all around me, and my overwhelming emotion was “I love urban ecology”. I am not usually a spontaneous tweeter, but at that moment I found myself wanting to share that emotion with the world.
The park was the Royal Park Nature Playground in Melbourne, and our visit there was a reward to the three of us for having sat through a long, boring meeting. We arrived at the park tired and grouchy, but within seconds of our arrival, all we could see were golden opportunities for fun.
Royal Park Nature Playground, Melbourne. Photo: Amy Hahs
The tension in our bodies had no chance against the joy of being out in the open, indulging in the overwhelming desires to run and move and sing and discover. It was a powerful demonstration of how important it is to have access to spaces that really MOVE you—physically and emotionally—as part of everyday life.
Because understanding the ecosystem services of green spaces is part of my job, it can be easy for the cultural services to become simply items on a list. My experience at the park was a timely reminder that I also need to be diligent about enjoying those benefits for myself. It was also an affirmation that the career I am carving out for myself actually can change our relationship with and understanding of cities. Standing at the top of that hill, I was humbled to suddenly realise: “I helped build this”. Not in any tangible, hands on, or direct way—but indirectly, through my participation in the burgeoning field of urban ecology. The research into the ecology in and of cities I have contributed to is now manifesting as beautiful, multipurpose, engaging parks such as the one I was standing in. That wonderful revelation left me feeling inspired to continue working towards creating opportunities for all city dwellers to have access to places that can have a meaningful and positive impact on their lives.
The pull and push of highly valued green spaces
I am a glass half full person, but I am also a realist. In the days that followed my visit to the park, I started to think about what goes into making a park like that. If I rolled back the turf on that fabulous big hill, what would l find? Where do those beautiful boulders come from, and what will happen if we keep gathering those rocks to use in other parks? Are there enough weathered logs to feed our desire for naturalistic playgrounds? And how can we make sure that these parks are distributed equitably now, as well as into the future? These are some critical questions that I would like to explore in the remainder of this essay.
A useful analogy to help with this discussion is the relationships between magnets and metal filings. The forces of attraction and repulsion combine to reveal the shape of the magnetic fields by creating clearly defined areas with and without filings. Some magnets have quite strong fields and produce very clear patterns, whereas others are much weaker and barely make an imprint.
If we think about parks as being magnets in an urban area, the filings are a way of visualising the impact they have on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of the urban landscape. Outstanding and engaging parks, such as the one I described, have stronger and farther-reaching magnetic fields compared to the smaller parks with fewer resources, which have only a limited effect on a smaller number of filings. However, these strongly magnetic parks also create more obviously binary landscapes, and accumulate a much larger volume of filings.
If the current status quo for parks is to deliver open areas of turf with a tree canopy, then increasing the number of large or naturalistic parks, with undulating land forms and a diversity of physical features (such as rocks), will require a far greater quantity of physical materials during the construction phase. Where will these materials be gathered from, and what is the ecological impact that results from their relocation? Are the ecological benefits of improved habitat diversity in urban landscapes dwarfed by the associated depletion of habitat elements in more “natural” landscapes? There is no single answer to this question, as it will depend on the contractors, their suppliers, the local context, and a multitude of other factors. However, the first step towards fixing a problem is recognising it exists. By questioning and tracking the net impact of a park, we can develop a better understanding of whether the construction of these spaces is truly justified by their impact on the ecology of our planet.
Social justice and equity
Magnets exert two key forces: attraction and repulsion. The simplest demonstration of these forces can be found in toy train sets, where the carriages connect through magnets. The carriages stick together through the force of attraction. However, if you take a carriage off the end of the train and try to reconnect it using the wrong end, the force of repulsion pushes the carriages away from each other, and the train no longer pulls the carriage.
Parks with strong magnetism can potentially exert the same forces of attraction and repulsion for people. A great park will draw people to it, even from larger distances. However, such parks also hold the potential to push other groups of people away. For example, the development of a “great” park may increase surrounding land and rental prices, thereby making it unaffordable to many long-term residents of the neighbourhood. In our efforts to provide better parks without creating a social justice divide, we need to identify additional mechanisms to ensure that when strongly magnetic parks are built for disadvantaged communities, the same communities will continue to be able to enjoy them into the future.
Economic forces
Too often, the things that start out as a consideration of the triple bottom line (social, environmental, and economic forces) eventually get made on the basis of the original, single bottom line: money. Parks with strong magnetism cost more to design and to build than a basic “trees and turf” park. There are also unanswered questions about how much new maintenance approaches will cost compared to the current mulch, mow, and spray approach that we currently appear to be comfortable with. If a new style of ecological parks is going to be more widely adopted, then we need to start integrating the requisite ecological maintenance into the design to minimize the ongoing costs of management. We also need to start recording the maintenance costs for the parks that are built in order to establish the business case for (or against?) a change in the type of parks we build in our cities. As the management costs increase, there may also be more incentives to engage local residents to assist in caring for the parks. This would have the added advantage of providing opportunities to strengthen social bonds within communities, and to connect more people with nature.
A deeper appreciation for parks can change their magnetism
If sustainability is about making more effective use of our existing resources, then there is a case to not only build great parks, but also to explore how we can “re-use and recycle” our current parks to raise their perceived value in the community. Is it possible to adjust the magnetic fields of a park in ways that maximise their magnetism for people and biodiversity, yet minimize the ecological and economic impacts? For example, can simple stewardship activities change the relationship that residents have with their local park? Can simple changes in park management deliver improved biodiversity outcomes, or extend the range of benefits that a park can deliver? How can the ecological or social benefits of parks be increased while the essential design is unchanged? Expanding our park networks in the most sustainable way may require us to see every park—regardless of their many and varied forms—as an asset to be nurtured, improved where possible, and more fully and universally appreciated. In our roles as professionals and citizens, exploring this dimension could be the greatest sustainability challenge of all.
Photo: Amy Hahs
If the magnetism of parks helps shape our cities, how can we use the arrangement of magnets and strengths of magnetic fields to maximum effect? Strongly magnetic parks have been used regularly to shape cities (think emerald necklaces and green spines, for example). Yet it is possible that all parks have the potential to act as magnets and contribute to shaping our cities. If this is the case, how can we use our full diversity of parks to “tune” cities and deliver positive results across the triple bottom line, now and into the future?
The focus of this essay was clearly on parks and how they contribute to efforts at creating sustainable cities. However, many of these same dilemmas and challenges apply equally to other components of our built environment, including buildings, roads, artificial night lighting, water sensitive urban design, and the plethora of other infrastructure present in cities. As I walk through my city’s streets, I now wonder about the magnetism of all of these things that I see, and think about the trails of iron filings that they have created. It affects my vision, but it also makes it even more apparent that truly sustainable cities are only possible where we minimize the detrimental environmental, economic, and social impacts, and thenactually take the time to value and appreciate the benefits. This valuing process is the essential ingredient for moving an idealistic search for sustainability into a meaningful way of life.
Story notes: The Nature of Cities was invited to create a session at the 2014 Smart Cities Expo in Barcelona: “Participation and the Role of Green and Open Space in Cities”. This Episode is a back stage conversation among the panelists after the presentations. The session, led by The Nature of Cities Founder and Editor-in-Chief David Maddox, was concerned with engaging communities for the beneficial expression of nature and open space in cities. Diverse points of view are essential and the session included multiple design and scientific disciplines: David Maddox (an ecologist and composer), P.K. Das (an architect-activist, Mumbai), Jayne Engle (an urban planner and National Curator of Cities for People, Montreal), Eric Sanderson (a landscape ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York), and Ton Borsboom (Senior Director at Philips Design, The Netherlands). The key messages of the conversation were these: public open and green space is critical to resilient, sustainable, and livable cities; today’s cities struggle with a lack of such spaces; yet tools and expanding movements exist to reclaim cities for people and create more open space for the good of nature and urban populations. It is crucial that people are involved in inclusive, not exclusive ways. We need to be better about helping people become not just consumers of their cities, but producers of them.
Public open and green spaces are declining daily in the world’s cities, largely due to population and development pressures. Yet there is broad evidence of the social, population health, and ecological benefits of open space, and a clear desire among urban populations for such space. The need for thoughtful creation of open space is critical now, as thousands of new cities will be built in the coming decades. Decisions about land use in cities—where the building, roads, and open spaces go—tend to become fixed for decades or even centuries. It is critical to get these decisions correct right from the start. David Maddox spoke about the need to articulate the attributes of the cities that we desire, and that how such cities are built is fundamentally about values—what do we think is important? P.K. Das spoke of building movements, such as Open Mumbai, around the public’s desire for more democratically created open space. Jayne Engle described a collaborative initiative in Canada, Cities for People, which was founded to experiment with advancing a movement to create more resilient and livable cities, including tests of new public engagement methods for communities and public space. Ton Borsboom presented a project in which technology facilitates information flow and dialog among the community and police to create safer public areas. Eric Sanderson illuminated a simulation model, Mannahatta2409.org, in which people can re-design and share concepts for the built and natural infrastructure of New York City and see how their designs perform in terms of of housing and jobs, carbon emissions and energy use, water consumption and stormwater management, and green space and biodiversity.
The people living in Mumbai generally associate nullahs with dirt, filth, and odor. City authorities have channelized these waterways, building impervious concrete walls along their edges, thus further severing their ecological and environmental attributes, and separating them from the people. This must change. It is changing.
As I am writing this piece, the entire state of Kerala in India stands devastated due to floods. It is estimated that more than 300 people have died, 10,000km of roads damaged and property worth millions of rupees lost (yet to be estimated). As per the Times of India report, an Indian daily, “If the National Disaster Management Agency’s (NDMA) estimates of the average loss of life and property due to floods every year in India is taken as a base, more than 16,000 people could die in floods across India in the next ten years and property worth over 47,000 crore (6.70 billion US$) may be lost. Little has been done to build disaster resilience”.
Madhav Gadgil, an eminent scientist and author of a landmark report on the conservation of the Western Ghats said in an interview, published in The Indian Express (another daily), that the scale of the disaster would have been smaller had the state government of Kerala and local authorities followed existing environmental laws. He further said that the problem was “man made”. “Unfortunately our state governments are in the grip of, and in collusion with, vested interests that do not want any environmental laws to be implemented, and the local communities to be empowered”. …“In terms of unregulated growth of illegal constructions, and creation of real estate all over, there are disturbing parallels (in Kerala) with Uttarakhand (another state in India)”. He said, …“These are not just natural events. There are unjustified human interventions in natural processes which need to be stopped”.
The understanding of nature, rather of every earth system, by most governments and their consideration in city-building endeavors is not considered important, rather deliberately ignored—submerged in the complexity of socio-political conditions that is often ridden with short-term material and financial gain. Tragically, this trend continues in spite of the devastation of land, property, loss of life and uncertainty of human existence caused due to climate change. It is people’s empowerment, participation and their movements for democratization of land and resources that would provide incredible possibilities, also being the most effective means, for the achievement of social and environmental justice.
The need for organizing participatory movements to check the ongoing destruction of natural systems and for achieving a sustainable ecology of cities is urgent and compelling. Re-envisioning cities through nature-based development plans and programs have become a priority. The Irla nullah reinvigoration movement in Mumbai is one such attempt and an example for bringing about structural changes in the way our governments conceive cities, prepare development plans and policies and undertake projects. Furthermore, this movement aspires to transform how Mumbai’s institutions approach open space and provide equitable access to ecosystem services for millions of people across the city, encompassing biophysical and social justice goals.
Mumbai is a city on the water with rich natural assets covering an area of 140km2 that define its geography. Sadly, the city has turned its back on such assets and considered these areas as dumping grounds, both physically and metaphorically. This has led to their degradation and environmental risk—such as flooding and pollution—that are threatening life and property. The central objective of this Irla movement is to revive and restore these natural assets and integrate them across the city, through participatory plans and programs, to achieve a sustainable and livable future for all.
This Irla initiative addresses the abuse and exclusion of over 300 km of watercourses, including four rivers within the city that have been turned into nullahs, or drains. These nullahs were originally natural watercourses, or rivers connected to the sea, thereby regulating ground water and assisting in dispersal of stormwater.
The people living in Mumbai generally associate nullahs with dirt, filth, and odor. Over the years there is little public knowledge of them being rivers and natural watercourses that defined the landscape. City authorities too have been apathetic towards the protection of both natural and open spaces, and have neglected their integration with the city’s Development Plan. They have channelized nullahs, building impervious concrete walls along their edges, thus further severing their ecological and environmental attributes, and separating them from the people.
This must change.
The Irla nullah movement
The Irla nullah movement was launched at the beginning of 2012 for the conservation, re-invigoration, and re-integration of a 7.5km nullah in Juhu, Mumbai. At the time, the Municipal authorities wondered why this was important. Battling such impediments, the movement continued: comprehensive plans and implementation programs were created through active citizen participation. Meetings were held in public places with posters and a Vision Juhu book, communicating the project. The gathered momentum could no longer be ignored by the city officials: the Municipal Commissioner finally approved the project eleven months later.
The central objective of the movement was to re-invigorate the nullah, including treating the waters and arresting silt formation. Although the nullah precinct and the neighborhood area contain vast number of public spaces, they are idiosyncratic, disconnected, and some are not open to the public. They are disparate in nature and function in isolation. These spaces include, the iconic Juhu beach, open spaces, gardens, parks, playgrounds, various public institutions like schools, colleges, training centers, music and dance schools, markets and health-care and community centers. There are over 20 such institutions along and in the precinct of the nullah.
These connected spaces could be further networked, as per the Vision Juhu plan, with neighborhood streets and marginal open spaces for integration and accessibility. The nullah itself physically weaves through the entire neighborhood as, potentially, a linear park, connecting various disparate spaces. Such networking of spaces realizes the high potential of networking different communities: fisher folk, slum-dwellers, hawkers, and all other classes. Almost 40% of the approximately 250,000 population of Juhu live adjacent to the nullah, while the remaining numbers reside within a 10-minute walk. Through this linear park, we could generate an active and pulsating system of public spaces, including the nullah that would form the spine of Juhu. This effort would continue to nourish community life, neighborhood engagements and participation, truly symbolizing our democratic aspirations.
Participation and the movement
The Irla nullah movement and the plan are conceived and executed through an active participatory process involving local citizens, elected representatives, officials of the government, celebrities, a host of educational and commercial institutions, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), and certain state and national government agencies. An extensive public communications campaign backed by surveys and data, have led to wider participation in the project.
[Importantly, the movement and project exemplify the need for engaging multiple and diverse stakeholders in the people’s “Right to the City”, and their key role in scripting urban growth. To claim such a right is to assert peoples’ power over the ways in which our city spaces are created, with a determination to build socially and environmentally just and democratic cities. This requires systemic change in city institutions, and how the people participate in the democratic process. The challenges are significant, and include the conservation of a variety of vital natural assets; their integration with the urban landscape; and expanding public spaces (both physical and democratic). It is a model a paradigm shift in understanding Mumbai’s sustainable ecology and use nature-based solutions to improve, with equity, the quality of life for more Mumbaikers.]
Engaging people from all sections of our society continue to challenge such movements. It is largely the middle class who continues to control and lead this project. This is in spite of the widespread campaign by the proponents to involve all people, including the slum dwellers, fishing communities, business establishments, and the rich. As the project has evolved, only a few from the leadership of the poor have continued to participate, but others did not show up in large numbers. Probably projects such as these do not seem to be their priority or they do not see nor realize any short-term tangible benefit, caught in their daily struggle for survival. Addressing social conditions such as these and overcoming them requires much greater mobilization, public campaign for dissemination of information, enhancement of public knowledge on environmental matters and their integration.
Sadly, the understanding of many such significant public interest projects are considered to be a part of the many “beautification” works that certain sections of the upper and middle class propose constantly and consider as their contribution towards the making of a better city. Governments too have been proposing and encouraging many such projects in the city in order to divert peoples attention from more significant public interest works that are kept under wrap.
In keeping with the dominant upper and middle class desire for an exclusive and beautified city, most elected representatives have developed gardens and landscaping of traffic islands or medians along important roads where visibility is of prime concern, visible manifestation being necessary to win elections. While most elected representatives have supported public gardens and other beautification works, they seldom, perhaps never, proposed or actively supported policies and works relating to the ecology the city. Such indifference is the biggest barrier in the 300km of nullah re-invigoration.
Often, due to weak social and political engagements with diverse communities, various citizens’ demands and movements are termed elite. But this is dangerous, as often experienced, in the understanding of the larger ecological and environmental battle for the achievement of sustainable development. The destruction and degradation of the ecological conditions in Juhu and the city warrants various social and political movements to understand the impact this has on the poor and marginalized communities in particular. As a matter of fact, it is the marginalized people who suffer the most due to climate change impact that has been heightened due to the continuing abuse of the natural conditions. Urban floods is just one of the many threats that we experience.
Neighborhood-based development
The nullah and related projects serve a larger objective also. Both the Irla nullah plan and the Vision Juhu Plan, of which the Irla nullah project is part, demonstrate that through a neighborhood-based development approach it is possible to decentralize and localize projects, thus breaking away from monolithic planning and design ideas that are disconnected from most people (and often serve the interests of the few, not the many). “Master Plans” for cities are generally drafted by elite groups of designers, and fail to engage with citizens on their ideas. It is through neighborhood based projects that it is possible to maximize participation of the local area people and in that process achieve a greater sense of collective ownership. Importantly, it creates the opportunity for a more collaborative approach to city and place making, as clearly realized in this case. For citizens of Juhu, this project has allowed the immediate reclamation, redesign, and re-programming of public spaces.
The current mindset of formal planning exclusive to “experts” has to be challenged. Sustainable ecology and environment has to be the central aspect of city development plans, prepared with people’s participation right from its inception. It is with the objective of participatory planning that the rejuvenation and integration of the natural areas and the wider city is set out to be our mission.
A new geography
Projects such as the Irla nullah work can help us re-envision our city with streams of open spaces and water, thus defining a new geography. We can restore these nullahs to their past glory, and contribute towards the ecological regeneration of these natural assets. We can simultaneously break away from large monolithic spaces and geometric structures of parks and gardens into fluid stream of linear open spaces, meandering, modulating and negotiating varying city terrains. We can re-design nullahs to be linear parks, accessible to many people across various neighborhoods.
Considering citizens participation as the basis and strength of such ecology movements, the Irla project demonstrates the importance of neighborhood based planning and design for the preparation of the city’s development plans and projects. Considering neighborhoods as the basis for organizing movements for effective democratization of urban planning and design is key. Such an approach facilitates local people’s active participation in matters concerning their area, which they know best, while influencing the city’s planning and development decisions.
With the nullah and the public spaces being the main planning criteria, we hope to bring about, over period of time, social change: promoting collective culture and rooting out alienation and false sense of individual gratification promoted by the market. Our experience of neighborhood actions such as in Bandra, Juhu, and the Irla plan implementation in particular, has come to confirm that such initiatives can influence long-term change in the way development of the city is understood.
De-barricading the city and its unification
There is a constant effort in carrying out public campaigns to explain the need for de-barricading the city and achieve unification, particularly its public spaces and the natural areas. This has been successful in the seafront projects in Bandra– another coastal suburb of the city, where spaces are open. In spite of the many significant social and environmental merits of the Irla movement and the project, the leadership there has gone ahead in proposing fences around the public parks and walls between the nullah and the adjoining gardens. Thus, public spaces, as much as the city, are yet again vulnerable to fragmentation and restrictions on free movement. They may have their reasons: vandals have abused and vandalized these places even during their construction.
Also, it is a constant struggle for achieving equality amongst the participants within a movement. Many significant movements that have been popular to start with have over time collapsed due to the hierarchical order within their organizations. Such social relations pose continuing challenge to the struggle for democratization of public spaces, indeed of the movements themselves.
To begin with, public campaigns as were undertaken by the Juhu residents’ movement to promote public dialogue and participation in decision-making would be necessary. Mapping of the area may follow this: documenting different conditions that exist, including the various changes that have taken place over time. People’s collaborative mapping of their own area is necessary in order to produce their own data and information that would, in most instances, differ with those that are constantly put up by the state. The issue is not limited to the production of people’s data, but evolving through that process their needs and demands pertaining to ecology, environment and development. The various studies conducted and the learning’s from the Irla movement is a telling story. The success of these efforts will hopefully propel people in different parts of the city to engage in similar movements.
Through this plan, we will generate an active and pulsating system of public spaces that would form the heart of Juhu. This will also provide a distinct identity to our neighborhood and all the people. Women, children, the aged, the young, will find opportunity to walk, cycle, play and intermingle. Groups, both formally and spontaneously, will be able to organize various social and cultural activity and get-togethers, including in the 500 capacity amphitheater built in a park adjoining the nullah, like music, dance, art festivals, and games for children, literary sessions and plays. The various schools and colleges in the area would be able to organize various students’ programmed too.
Keeping social, ecological and environmental values in place, the project has developed, with the active support of the Municipal Corporation, a forest of thousands of trees all along the first phase of the 1.5 kilometers of the nullah. This forest is a part of the larger idea of developing city-forests across neighborhoods and the city. Under this project the various forest parks that have been developed include the Kishore Kumar Baug (Kumar was a legendary Bollywood singer and actor), the Kaifi Azmi Udyan (Azmi was an eminent poet, writer and social activist) and a Children’s Forest Park. In the midst of these two parks a landmark amphitheater has been built that encourages spontaneous and formally organized cultural functions, named after Vijay Tendulkar (Tendulkar was an eminent theatre writer and director). In first phase, walking and cycling tracks and areas for children to play, pavilions for rest etc. have been developed. Good lighting and landscape have turned these places to be popular destinations. Thousands of people of all classes and communities throng these areas.
Building human resources
What this project has produced in terms of human resources is noteworthy. Through this project it has been possible to demystify and democratize the planning and design process. Citizens have actively interacted, and participated in various discussions and conferences, weekly site visits and interactions with the contractors, contributed to the formulation of design ideas and details, including the selection of materials and finishing’s. Many actively participated in the planning and design decisions from the inception. The myth of design and planning being the prerogative of trained professionals is, in more ways than one, dispelled through such collective efforts. The democratization of planning and design, and thereby of cities, has got a major thrust through this project. The mobilization of the collective to such an extent as in this project has successfully leveraged human resources at a neighborhood level. These citizens are now empowered to actively participate in decisions concerning planning and design of other projects of public interest in their area. This also reinforces the idea of participatory governance with the preparedness of an army of vigilant neighborhood residents taking ownership of their public assets.
These active citizens are now participating in meetings to discuss the forthcoming Development plan 2034 for Mumbai. Going beyond the interest of their area, they are prepared now to address matters across the city and build bridges with other citizens.
The key to the success of this pilot Irla project of addressing the issue of the watercourses of Mumbai has been the successful leveraging of all resources at a hyper-local, immediate and neighborhood scale. Residents of an area who feel strongly for their public assets can collectively assert pressure on government agencies for change; actively oppose disruptive forces to safeguard the larger interests of the environment as well as contribute towards the building of many more public assets, thereby leading to a mode of active and democratic development.
Collaboration and transparency
Fortunately, an earlier Juhu citizens’ movement for the restoration of the iconic Juhu beach and the experiences gained from it has forged for Irla nullah project important alliances and collaboration with many other neighborhoods and citywide citizens’ struggles. Such relationships generate enormous impetus to the localized movement, making it possible to sustain Irla and similar works in continuation and sustenance of initiatives in the future. As an example, Juhu citizens have participated along with other movements and projects through the form of Mumbai Nagrik Vikas Manch (Citizens Development Forum), in which over 20 citywide organizations have participated actively and engaged with several crucial city issues, like the ill-advised Coast Road, the elevated Metro and the opening of Aarey Colony, an eco-sensitive zone, for construction.
Collaboration and transparency are indeed the high point of Irla nullah. From the very inception of the plan, its execution has been possible due to the collaboration of multiple stakeholders at various levels. It is a unique story of teamwork. The list of collaborators includes the MCGM, which is the owner of the nullah and open spaces in its precinct; MHADA, the agency charged with the responsibility for its implementation; National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) which has provided designs for the water filtration and cleansing systems; PKDas & Associates architects supervised this project on an entirely pro bono basis; the Mumbai Waterfronts Centre along with Kamala Raheja College of Architecture (KRVIA) which jointly undertook the neighborhood study of Juhu, resulting in the Juhu Vision Plan along with its publication in 2006; final year architecture students from KRVIA who partook in a design studio exploring the redevelopment potential of the Irla nullah precinct in 2017; PUDDI that is currently taking further the study and primary research for the re-invigoration of all Mumbai’s watercourses; Gulmohar Area Societies Welfare Group, the citizens’ group that has spearheaded the daily supervision and vigilance of the project with the support of other local area residents associations: JVPD Housing Association, Juhu Scheme Residents Association, Juhu Residents Association, Rotary Club of Juhu, Gaothan (Village) Area Residents Association of Juhu, and Juhu Scheme Residents Association.
This movement has also seen participation of several individuals from the area that include Javed Akhtar, who’s MPLAD Funds not only financed the project, but whose active participation in contributions key decisions has lent a fresh perspective. It is also important to mention several designers who have contributed as consultants to PKDas & Associates on an entirely pro bono basis: Ganti Designs, for lighting, Enviro designers for landscape and SACPL, for structures.
The complexity of the logistics in establishing this extensive collaboration and carrying out the multiple tasks of planning and implementation on a entirely honorary basis is a testament to the transparency of the process, without which such collaborative efforts would collapse due to misgivings and communication gaps, which are common in such kinds of projects. The movement involved the publication of several booklets, public campaigns and exhibitions, round table discussions, public meetings, press coverage and constant liaison with various authorities and this effort helped to foster trust in the project.
Such processes as evident in the Irla movement highlight the dedication shown by all collaborators equally and these have not only contributed to the success of the project, but have also reinforced the values and importance of such endeavors for larger public interest works within our cities. The Irla nullah movement and the project has demonstrated the need and significance of participatory, collaborative and co-operative endeavors as the foundation for building a robust, resilient and sustainable city.
P.K. Das
Mumbai
with input from Darryl DeMonte and Samarth Das
There is huge potential to incorporate mycelium into urban natural systems and infrastructure. To brainstorm this potential in the Portland area, we have created a loose network of interested ecology professionals called the Mycelium Net-Working Group. This epistemic network will serve as a starting point among government and NGO land stewards.
Fungi, that bizarre kingdom that includes yeasts and mushrooms, can be partnered with for healthier outcomes in urban natural areas and landscapes. Fungi, which are not plants and are more related to animals, are masters of chemistry. Enzymes created by fungi have been found to digest cigarette butts, DDT, and wood. They can transform wood into soil and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into less toxic molecules. Working with fungi has almost limitless possibilities to improve plant health, break down urban toxins, and produce food and medicine from waste products. Mycorrhizal fungi, fungi that partner with tree roots, are integral to plant and ecosystem health. Fungi grow outward similar to plant roots but then can reconnect their hyphae (or strands of fungal tissue) moving nutrients in changeable directions. Their adaptable forms and networks are also a good model for a biophilic city. The mycelium, or the webbed collection of hyphae, can form vast networks. Using mycelium as a model for relationships, we humans can work in collaboration with fungi. Mycorrhizal relationships demonstrate that many species prosper with more connection and collaboration and that our world is mostly NOT a battle between opposing forces Partnering with fungi and soil has multiple benefits for our shared future.
Microscope photo of intertwining mycelium: Citation: Cartabia, M.; Girometta,C.E.; Milanese, C.; Baiguera, R.M.; Buratti, S.; Branciforti, D.S.; Vadivel, D.; Girella, A.; Babbini, S.; Savino, E.; et al. Collection and Characterization of Wood Decay Fungal Strains for Developing Pure Mycelium Mats. J. Fungi 2021, 7, 1008. https://doi.org/10.3390/jof7121008 Creative Commons
Mycorrhizal networks
Mycorrhizal fungi intertwine with tree roots, exponentially expanding their nutrient capture capacity by ten to a thousand times. These fungi also connect to other plants creating an extensive and adaptable network in the soil, which can move nutrients from one plant to another creating a resilient web. In addition, mycorrhizal fungi produce glomulin, a sticky protein that helps bind soil particles together and enhances soil stability and health. This network is the foundation for ecosystem resilience and has been coined “nature’s internet” by mycologist Paul Stamets.
Approximately 95% of all vascular plant species form mycorrhizal relationships. This partnership has been seen in fossils of the very first land plants, dating back to about 460 million years ago. The fungi are the reason that the plants first survived at all on land, as the fungi produce enzymes that break down rocks and other substances into usable nutrients for the plants and themselves.
Drawing: (Used by permission, 33rd New Phytologist 33rd Symposium logo courtesy of the New Phytologist Foundation/Promotional Gods)
Research by Dr. Suzanne Simard and many others reveals how these fungi intertwine and entangle the whole ecosystem. “Mother trees”, as Dr. Simard calls them, are the pillars of the forested ecosystem. And it is the mycorrhizal network through which the wisdom of these oldest trees is able to communicate messages about pests, water, and nutrients. Mother trees are able to direct nutrients to their offspring via the fungal network and fungi can stimulate the growth of other microorganisms to protect the plants. When trees are connected to these networks die, they will transfer carbon and other nutrients to their neighbors via the fungal hyphae. Amazingly, this sort of shuttling of nutrients can happen between tree species, such as passing nutrients in the summer from a birch tree in the sun, to a Douglas fir in the shade, and then, in the winter, the Douglas fir will move nutrients back to the birch.
The interconnectedness of the plant-fungi relationship also expands to numerous wildlife. Maser et al, in “Trees, Truffles, and Beasts: How forests function”, explain how many forest mammals in present-day Australia and the United States are so dependent on mushrooms, specifically the underground reproductive structures produced by hundreds of species of mycorrhizal fungi called truffles, for their diet. Where I live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the western flying squirrel is one such truffle-seeking mammal (and it eats up to 100% of its diet in fungi during certain seasons). It digs for truffles in the soil and then glides its way from tree canopy to tree canopy using its wing-like skin between its legs. As these and other mammals and birds dig out and consume truffles, they are unknowingly dispersing the mushroom’s spores and further enhancing the mycorrhizal network.
Western-trained ecologists have for a while now known about the existence of these complex fungal networks, and we are finally realizing how a healthy network is so key to healthy forests. With this knowledge, there needs to be a shift in our frameworks of how we think about and steward the ecosystem, to one that promotes mycorrhizal network stewardship as a main driver. We can learn to team up with fungal networks to benefit our living systems, especially in urban areas that have experienced the most habitat degradation.
Fungi Practices in Urban Areas
Cultivating healthy fungal networks, rather than focusing solely on plants, is a paradigm shift that will take some experimentation and advocacy. There are large industries built on growing and nurturing plants, but only a few are dedicated to building mycorrhizal networks and building soil health. In landscape projects, soil is often neglected and rarely tested for its texture, compaction, or heavy metal composition. And testing for soil fungal and microbial community structure is possible but rare. Plants that thrive on a given site long term are matched not just with the microclimate but are an expression of the health and composition of the soil. The fungal and bacterial communities in the soil are an expression of soil health.
If the goal for an urban natural area is to establish native plant communities — this has been a major goal for most of my career — we need to put more value on the soil properties along with healthy fungal and bacterial communities. There are practices to improve the soil food web, but many of them have yet to become common practices in restoration.
Miguel Lopez decompacting soil and incorporating biochar and compost. Photo by Toby Query
Threats to mycorrhizae
The mycorrhizal network is dependent on living plants as well as soil organic matter. The disturbance of either one will result in hurting the mycorrhizae. Dense soils from vehicles and equipment compaction also damages soil health. This reduces the availability of space between soil particles for roots and mycelium to breath and grow, and also for mammals to burrow and dig. Herbicides, such as glyphosate, are also fungicides that can disrupt soil fungi.
Making a morel spore slurry Photo by Toby Query
Repairing soil
Healthy soil generally means high organic matter (usually 3-4% or higher), good aeration, a balance of nutrients as well as the right mix of sand/silt/clay along with abundant beneficial microorganisms. On a few of the sites I steward, I’ve been adding organic matter in forms of woodchips, biochar, and compost to amend soils. To loosen up imported soils, I’ve been using Dave Polster’s “Rough and Loose” technique. In landscaping and natural area projects with construction components, engineers and designers should treat soil and their mycorrhizae as critical for project success and continue to develop associated specifications.
Arbuscular mycorrhizae can be cultivated and many species are promiscuous as to what species they associate with, meaning one species of fungi can form connections with many different types of plants. It is possible to purchase mycorrhizae spores, but it could be an added benefit to cultivate spores from species that thrive in urban environments and magnify their abundance. Many techniques incorporate magnifying fungi, often times moving soil from healthy forests to newly planted or cultivated areas.
Korean Natural Farming is a technique that actively cultivates “indigenous microorganisms” to benefit crops by bringing mycelium and microorganisms from the forest into a farm field. We often transfer plants from more wild places into the city. Why not transfer mycelium the same way? Soil food web scientist Elaine Ingham promotes compost tea and other techniques to amplify microbial soil life. Rather than spraying weeds with pesticide, what if land stewards sprayed beneficial organisms on desirable plants? We are experimenting with using morel mushroom spore slurries and spawn to inoculate constructed beds of sawdust. Our hope is that the morel mycelium will feed on the sawdust substrate and gradually form a symbiotic relationship with surrounding trees, expanding the food web for the trees and expanding the mycelial network. And if this trial does succeed, who is going to be against having a harvest of morels?
Non-mycorrhizal fungi can also enhance soil quality and improve plant health. The Queen Stropharia mushroom (Stropharia rugosoannulata) is widely available and can produce large edible mushrooms weighing up to 2.25 kg grown on wood chips and straw. Woodchips can be used as a mulch around plantings and the fungi can benefit surrounding plants. This species breaks down toxins, reduces levels of E. coli, and shoots out spikes, called acanthocytes, that impale nematodes! This fungus feeds on both wood and animals! Many nematodes eat plant roots, so this fungus and other nematode-consuming fungi (like the oyster mushroom) can keep nearby plants healthy. Inoculated chips can regulate water and temperature around plants as well, improving growth. Queen Stropharia beds are easy to construct, a way to build soil and produce edible mushrooms for humans. If humans or other mammals don’t consume them, fly larvae will feed on the mushrooms which will in turn feed insectivorous birds or other creatures.
Photo by Toby Query: Mixing straw and woodchips with Queen Stropharia spawn to make mushroom bed.
Although many mushrooms are edible, one should NEVER eat mushrooms that grow near roads or that are exposed to air, soil, or water pollution. Fungi can break down various toxins but can also hyper-accumulate heavy metals in their fruiting bodies. Fungi used for remediation purposes should never be consumed, but mushrooms grown on non-contaminated substrate will be safe. Mushrooms used for remediation should never be consumed, their mushrooms should instead be harvested and disposed of if found to have heavy metals.
Inoculating Dead Wood
Blown down trees or pruned limbs can be converted into mushrooms. I’m experimenting with drilling myceliated wooden dowels into dead wood. This will help break down the wood and add medicinal and edible mushrooms to the landscape. Matching the fungi strain with the wood species is important as is the time of year and care of the fungi. As mushroom foraging increases in popularity, why not have landscapes and nature trails in the city cultivated with mushrooms?
Cultivating fungi on dead wood can be part of fire reduction plans, as inoculated wood might break down faster than left to natural fungi for decomposition. Dead wood often develops mushrooms without cultivation and species like turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) and the split-gill (Schizophyllum commune) are common and medicinal.
Beaver-chewed tree inoculated with myceliated dowels-Photo by Toby Query
Mycoremediation: Fungi for remediation practices
Fungi produce enzymes that are sent outside of their body to break down and digest surrounding materials. Lignin, the principal component of wood, is extremely hard to digest for most of the world’s organisms, but some fungi actually rely on lignin to survive. Because lignin has a chemical structure similar to some persistent human-created toxins such as PAHs, and PCB, we can use inoculated wood chips or straw as filters to break down road runoff or in other areas known to have toxic inputs. There is also mycoremediation potential for wastewater treatment systems where fungi can be used to break down pharmaceuticals and other hazardous chemicals that are usually not treated by conventional processes. There is a need for mycologists to be integrated into stormwater and wastewater treatment design to transform toxins into less toxic molecules for cleaner urban watersheds.
Fallen tree inoculated with oyster mushroom mycelium last year is fruiting in January 2023
Fungi for the climate
Trees are often thought of as the natural carbon storage vessels of our planet, but soil-dwelling fungi play a huge role. Fungi produce compounds that are more persistent at storing carbon in the soil than any other organisms and their importance should not be overlooked. Fostering tree-to-fungi-to-tree connections can help support canopy health in cities. Climate resilience of urban trees is ultimately a collaboration between soil microorganisms, soil texture, hydrology, and tree selection.
As I shift my own awareness and focus to be a land steward for all Portlanders, fungi can be part of this equity work. My own shift includes humans as nature: we are part of nature and rely on its abundance. Part of stewarding land can be harvesting foods, medicines, and materials to reconnect to the land. Edible and medicinal fungi can be part of this stewardship and mushrooms like reishi, lion’s mane, oyster, and shiitake can be cultivated in natural landscapes. These mushrooms could be available to the lucky human or squirrel. Medicinal and edible mushrooms are already harvested by the public in cities. Why not add to their abundance?
The Future is Fungi
To shift to prioritizing fungi in natural landscapes, we need more mycologists. The City of Portland has a very detailed and vetted plant list, but no fungi list. Fungi have been a forgotten taxa for species lists, identification, and conservation, and developing a species list is a good place to start. Intentional mycological landscapes and mycoremediation projects have been created by interested community members, but it is time for governments and educational institutions to build up their own knowledge and experience. Ecologists, landscape designers, and land stewards can begin to learn about their biology as well as simple techniques to work with fungi.
Selfie of Toby Query holding first flush of Queen Stropharia mushrooms from inoculated wood chips
There is huge potential to incorporate mycelium into urban natural systems and infrastructure. To brainstorm this potential in the Portland area, we have created a loose network of interested ecology professionals called the Mycelium Net-Working Group. This epistemic network will serve as a starting point among government and NGO land stewards to brainstorm potential uses of fungi, advocate for mycology projects, set up trials, share results, and educate ourselves and the public. Ideally, this will spawn innovative projects that lead to healthier and more inclusive urban natural systems and create a hub for resilience building. Not unlike a mycelial network! Community connections will be vital and learning the desires for medicinal or edible fungi in landscapes from different communities will need to be integrated into decision making. It is time to start building this infrastructure and I incorporating the fungal kingdom into our stewardship practices. It should be done in reciprocity, giving respect to the fungi and partnering with them to heal landscapes and communities. Working with fungi is a way to reconnect to the cycles of growth and decay and the web of the natural world. Changing our focus to protect mycorrhizal networks and encourage beneficial fungi will support resilient communities.
Like many great Tree for All projects, the Paseos Verdes program began with a conversation about what the community wanted and how we could work together to achieve it.
Since its beginning fifteen years ago, the landscape conservation program called Tree for All (TFA) has found a home for more than 10 million native plants in the 750 square mile Tualatin River Watershed of Northwestern Oregon. Over 700 projects have been completed along 140 river miles across 30,000 acres.
The Tualatin River Watershed
TFA owes its success to more than 30 partners who have recognized the importance of creating a healthy and resilient watershed for humans and wildlife. Key to this success is the notion that solving wicked problems like climate change and rapid urbanization is dependent on our ability to create diverse transformational partnerships. These transformational partnerships bring with them the human and financial resources needed for solving some of our most challenging and complex problems. Reflecting on these 15 past years, I have witnessed many great stories where partners have come together to create transformational projects that feed this landscape conservation program. For me, new programs often start with a walk in the woods with my friend Kirby.
Quiet reflection and connecting with nature
It is an hour before sunrise on a cool fall morning in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. My alarm clock is going off with the usual thump, thump, scratch, scratch outside my bedroom door. Yep, Kirby the rescue dog is letting me know it’s time for our daily “Paseo Verde” (“Green Walk”). The hour before dawn is a very special time for both of us as we stretch our legs and clear our minds. A few humans are stirring but it’s the local wildlife and natural world that inspires us.
Kirby ready for his walk. Photo: Bruce Roll
Our walk begins in a typical suburban neighborhood, with cul-de-sacs, quiet sleepy streets and dark houses. Soon, however, I take a footpath that travels a mile along an urban stream planted with native vegetation. It’s dark, but we find our way with the help of my trusty headlamp and it’s not long before Kirby is saying hello to four sets of glowing eyes as we watch a mother raccoon herd her children home along this wildlife corridor. They look well fed as Kirby sniffs remnants of last night’s dinner, looks like crayfish was on the menu. It’s not long before we reach a local high school ball field where hundreds of Canadian geese spent the night. It is a safe stopover on their way south and they will be gone before sun up, leaving behind nourishment for the grass.
We are now three miles into our Paseo Verde when we enter the last segment of our journey, a 30 acre natural area with abundant foot paths and another opportunity to say good morning to Mother Nature. This time it’s 80 foot Douglas Firs and Red Cedars, with large Sword Ferns covering the forest floor. Owls and coyotes have left their calling cards beneath trees and along the trail. This stand of trees was here long before the surrounding houses. I wonder how many generations of wildlife have spent time in this forest. I have visited this park many times in the hour before dawn when it’s just me and nature. I wonder how many people are connecting with nature in this park.
Photo: Michael Nipper, 2015
Upon leaving the park, my walk is soon over and the sun is rising as I prepare for work. I saw some interesting wildlife, and, like me and Kirby, they appear to be well fed and happy. Clean air, water, and native vegetation seems to make us both happy. My mental health and moments of quiet reflection are tied directly to this daily Paseo Verde. It’s not the idea of lowering blood pressure and weight that stimulates my interest in these daily walks, but rather the experience I have of walking with a good friend and witnessing Mother Nature just before dawn.
I am fortunate to live in an area where Mother Nature is a few steps away from my home. Having worked throughout Washington County, Oregon, I also know that not everyone has this same opportunity. When I think about underserved communities, I often ponder how my job with a public utility might provide opportunities and access to nature. Creating such connections is not that difficult when we are able to step back and rethink how we connect our clean water regulatory requirements to a broader set of community values. Values like human health and wellness, access to nature, clean water, and sense of place. By pairing utility needs with the needs of local non-profits and governments, a broader set of values can be addressed and a richer outcome is achieved.
The creation of Paseos Verdes
A dozen plus years ago I was fortunate to join forces with the Audubon Society of Portland and Bienestar, a local community development corporation that provides affordable housing for Latino farmworkers and lower income families, on a program called Explorador Camp. The Explorador Camp program provides summer nature-camp activities and field trips to school-age residents of Bienestar housing. At the same time, the Tree for All program was busy restoring thousands of acres of public lands in the Tualatin River Watershed. We had a target audience and many great places to visit and learn about watershed health and stewardship. As the program flourished, we began to ponder how to expand upon the program and this partnership with the local Latino community.
In 2017, amid the burgeoning research linking nature with improved health outcomes, we were inspired to create a program that harnessed our existing partnerships to enhance human health outcomes alongside all of our efforts to enhance the health of the Tualatin watershed.
This seed of an idea was planted into the existing partnership with Bienestar and the Audubon Society of Portland, and the result was Paseos Verdes (Green Walks). The program, now in its fourth year, connects underserved community members to natural areas in Washington County through guided walks in the Tualatin Watershed. The walks engage families to learn about watershed health, water management, and wildlife. These experiences promote environmental stewardship while providing the health benefits of being active in nature and the outdoors.
The Paseos Verdes program began with a dialogue about what the community wanted and how we could work together to achieve it. We learned about the barriers that many community members face to accessing our local natural areas, and followed their lead in designing a culturally relevant program. Community members told us that they wanted a multi-generational, family-friendly program that accommodates the full spectrum of bilingualism. We also learned that transportation is a significant barrier to accessing local natural areas for many community members. Working with Bienestar, we developed Paseos Verdes and piloted the program in the summer of 2017.
A Paseos Verdes walk in action. Photo: Lorena O’Neill, 2019
The first year of Paseos Verdes, we started with three partners and one walk location. The program was a great success, and the response from the Bienestar community was overwhelmingly positive. Program participation exceeded our expectations and families were eager to sign up again and again. Walks were held at the Fernhill Wetlands, a cutting-edge natural treatment system and natural area. Along the trail, participants could often be heard exclaiming “I live nearby and I have never been here before!” while planning their next visit together. On one walk, children lined up excitedly to observe great blue herons and bullfrogs through a bird-spotting scope while marveling over the fact that their bathwater could end up in such a beautiful place. On another occasion, a delighted grandmother spotted wild chamomile growing alongside the trail and taught the group about the plant’s various uses in her native Mexico. This two-way teaching and learning model, in which both participants and naturalists learn from each other, is an important part of the program. Participants often teach the naturalists and the rest of the group about cultural uses for plants or alternate names for migratory birds they encounter on the walks.
A Paseos Verdes participant teaches the group about how this plant is used in basket weaving.Photo: Lorena O’Neill, 2019
In 2018, we brought on another partner, the Tualatin Soil and Water Conservation District, and joined forces with Hillsboro Parks and Recreation District to hold walks at the Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve. We also developed a Bilingual Naturalist Training Program. A cohort of five Washington County residents was recruited to participate in trainings and lead the walks. Participants learned about plants, animals, and habitats through classroom learning and field practice, while developing organizational and leadership skills.
The excitement of spotting a barred owl eating its prey. Photo credit: Lorena O’Neill, 2019
Paseos Verdes post-walk evaluations consistently tell us the same story: participants feel happier, less stressed, and more relaxed that they did before the walk. The children become fast friends as they walk the trails and marvel over a barred owl eating prey and families make plans to come back together the following weekend. By providing culturally competent and engaging opportunities for Washington County residents to connect with the Tualatin Watershed, Paseos Verdes is improving community health while fostering the river stewards of tomorrow.
Like so many TFA partnerships, Paseos Verdes started with a conversation between local governments and non-profits wanting to engage in a new partnership. In this case, it was the local Latino community and a walking adventure that brought together health care providers, parks districts, local cities, non-profits and a utility that was able to work within a broader set of community values. As we watch local health organizations join the program, we see new wellness investors joining forces with local restoration efforts. For me, helping create Paseos Verdes was one of the richest and most rewarding experiences of my career. I learned so many new things watching and listening to our new partners. Partners who add a sense of place and a cultural heritage that strengthens our community.
Imagine the world of productive potential beneath your feet.
In previous TNOC posts I wrote about two apparently different topics: urban agriculture and living underground. Let’s combine them now into a new urban object: Farming underground. You may very well think that I am playing smart-aleck here, and that this paper is just a piece of bravura, since farming may appear incompatible with underground place, if only because there is scarce natural light down there. Well no, it is not. Underground farming exists already and develops steadily throughout the world. An example is the Plantlab three floor underground farm in the city of Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, with plants cultivated without sunlight by a private company—PlantLab. Another is the network of World War II shelters under the city of London used to grow crops. And you can find similar places in South Korea, Tokyo, and Sweden.
Traditional mushroom farming in Saint Germain-en-Laye near Paris. Photo: Wikimedia
And it is only natural, since living underground is a huge economic issue: there are masses of unused underground infrastructure (ancient quarries, tunnels, shelters etc.). In fact, farming underground is not such an original idea if we consider that mushrooms have been massively cultivated in ancient quarries for centuries.
But there is a fly in the soup, the same fly I was talking about in my former posts on plain soil level urban agriculture. What kind of underground farming are we speaking about? Are we going to reproduce conventional agriculture in the first place? And then, thinking of my last post about living underground, how would underground citizens interact with farming? Underground farming has already a solid financial agenda and may ultimately become even more industrialized than surface conventional one, which may very well lead to a social and environmental nightmare. But, we can also imagine reproducing kitchen and community gardens underground, so as to foster more inclusive societies.
There are some places in the world where this type of underground farming exists already. Let’s consider the Chinese village of Zhongdong in the province of Guizhou, where people have been living and farming underground for a long time.
On the way to Zhongdong. Photo: Wikimedia
In southwest China, at an altitude of 1.800 meters, is a huge natural cave tucked into hazy green mountains. Carved over thousands of years by wind, water and tectonic activity, this cave is 115 meters wide, 50 meters in height, and 215 meters under the surface. Today, Zhongdong is a village of more than 100 inhabitants tucked into this cave. In fact, Zhongdong means, “Middle cave”… How original! Well, maybe this truism is not so obvious after all: if there is a “middle cave” today, there were probably villages named “upper cave” and “lower cave” in the past, which means that this lifestyle was much more common then. And indeed, there are two other caves nearby: the first one is too damp to be habitable (local climate is characterized by heavy rains and high-level moisture) and second one is uninhabited.
The villagers belong to the Hmong ethnic group—which number about ten million inhabitants in China. This people live officially in the cave since 1949. They supposedly moved there to protect themselves from the chaos of the Chinese civil war. But in fact, there were there probably far a long time before that — we’re speaking of hundreds of years. The elders—among them people born long before 1949—remember that they had always lived there. Besides, the oldest village structures still in place in the cave date back over a century. The soil stratum also testifies to centuries of human occupation. In other parts of China people live in houses tunneled out of hillsides, but Zhongdong is the only place where people live year-round in a natural cave.
Zhongdong – a cavemen’s village. Photo: Carsten P.
It is not only a village: it is a whole world in a cave, a little universe. At first look, the village is formed of scattered shanty shacks with no roof. They do not need them, since they are deep inside the cave. But a clutter of food stocks, fuel wood, fodder, laundry drying on clotheslines, surround every house. There are also many farming lots. The inhabitants grow corn, rice, some vegetables for everyday use, and raise chicken and pigs—there are even a few cows. In order to make farming possible, the lots are located in places receiving enough daylight, nearby the cave entrance or under natural light shafts, and water is collected from dripping walls and guided to the fields. Recently wells have been drilled and nearby springs have been diverted to irrigate crops, water livestock, and for drinking and other domestic uses. They are vital, especially during the dry season when water supplies are limited.
The only connection linking the cave to the outside world is a narrow trail high above a river that winds through bumped countryside of Guizhou’s province. It means one hour trip walking from the nearest human settlement, followed by an hour up a steep, rough stone path to buy the things the villagers can’t make or grow, like toothpaste and soap, clothes, and to sell their cattle and crops.
An elementary school opened inside the cave in 1984: wooden classrooms against the cave walls with a schoolyard on the front side and a sport court. According to the teachers, acoustics were perfect, and the school’s environment was ideal for practical work in geology or biology (lizards, bats, and swallows). More than 200 children attended the school, some coming from hamlets of the neighborhood.
At the very beginning of this century the village got connected to electricity and landlines and cell phones started working. In the wake of these improvements a medical dispensary opened. So, yes, underground farming can be associated with a micro-society—here, a cavemen’s village—and is not inconsistent with opening up to the world.
Entrance to the parking lot. Photo: ParisculteursFarming in La Caverne.
When considering underground farming past meets up with future. Zhongdong can be seen as a reference—or at least an ancestor—for a project in Paris: an underground car park underneath a social housing complex of 300 households—quartier de La Goutte d’Or—has been converted by the inhabitants into a kitchen garden of 3,500 m2 named La Caverne (the cave). 500 m2 are already cultivated and the place produces more than 40 tons of organic vegetables, mushrooms and microgreens per year for the use of the local community (inhabitants of the complex and neighbors), recycling 20 tons per year of microbrewery dregs, coffee ground, and compost as fertilizer. Thus, La Caverne also turns urban biowaste into bioresources.
How did La Caverne happen? Paris City Hall launched a contest—named Parisculteurs— to develop urban agriculture and more generally active revegetation in the city. A collective gathering the housing complex’s inhabitants applied with the support of both their social landlord ICS La Sablière and Cycloponics, and their project—La Caverne—won the contest. Cycloponics is an environmental activist company that intervenes in disadvantaged districts to help people initiating participative urban underground organic farming, as a means of giving the inhabitants access to healthy food but also of building social inclusiveness and developing economic activities. The company already helped creating an underground farm —Le Bunker Comestible (the edible bunker)—in an ancient 1880s bunker near the city of Strasbourg.
The Bunker Comestible near Strasbourg.
As a co-op organization, social cohesion is also an objective of La Caverne. Right at the entrance of the staircase that leads to the farming lot is a direct sales kiosk where surplus production is sold to any passers-by. They also sell products from other Parisian urban and peri-urban micro-farmers.
You could be this passer-by. Pay a visit to La Caverne while in Paris. This activity provides jobs to unemployed people from the housing complex. La Caverne is succeeding in turning a social housing complex into a kind of village.
Urban Design practices have always been created in response to emerging and overlapping city models and the disciplinary contexts designers find themselves in. I have found that the urban ecology framework of Patch Dynamics has been key in allowing me to see how city models such as the megalopolis and the megacity interact and generate urban ecosystem change [see Note 1, at the end of the blog]. Your first though about a patch may be that of a shape that changes. However, the concept of a patch in this case describes a set of patches or a mosaic that changes over time. My search is not to find or create the best patch mosaics, or those that function in the most resilient ways. Instead, it is a project of creating urban design practices and strategies for a diversity of urban actors to engage their patches and democratize the resilience cycle in their own ways.
This post is partly a how-to-draw-a-patch guide, and partly a reflection on Patch Dynamics, an ecology framework that is being re-engaged by colleagues and myself as a shared tool between urban ecologists and urban designers. There are two recent papers that describe the ecological and urban design theory for the development of this work to date [2]. This post will not attempt to summarize that work but rather will spiral out from it. It reflects on what patches, as the basis of a drawing system for professionals in urban social-ecology, stewardship, resilience, sustainability, policy, design and planning, as well as informed citizens, can and cannot do. This post is illustrated with examples of how the author has been engaging patches in urban design research in India, China, and at The New School in New York [3].
Patches here are engaged as an experiment toward the design of an adaptive mosaic approach to urban change [4]. This is an approach that seeks to maintain a diversity of future options rather than targeting specific outcomes. In this post, patch drawings are shared as a tool that can generate a discursive space. They act to visually communicate the way urbanization intensifies and ages in patchy and complex spatial patterns with biodiversity changes lagging behind or moving ahead in similarly fragmented ways. They aim to foster ways that people can recognize, not just experience, what Steward Pickett describes as the ecology of the city, not ecology in the city.
Patch drawings also point toward a system that permits a diversity of research questions to emerge from, overlapping, adjacent and quite similar urban landscapes; it allows for contesting views and practices to co-exist and as Lily Ling suggests, to “chat” with each other, allowing democratic politics to arise quietly and incrementally through urban ecosystem change [5].
Imagery
Learning from the examples described below, including commissioned flyover, the commissioned satellite, do-it-yourself satellite mapping, oblique aerial imagery, and informed by the release of Google Earth historical imagery in 2009 and advanced printing on Google Earth Pro, this patch guide engages creative use of aerial imagery as an urban design tool [6]. In addition it explores open source approaches, given that imagery may not be free forever or openly available in some countries [7].
Gwynns Falls, Baltimore Flyover imagery comparison: Left 1960 (approx), Right 2006 Credit: BES LTER
In 2003 Laura Kurgan purchased data from Quickbird-2, a high resolution Earth-Observation satellite that only collects images if requested to do so. Her project titled Monochrome Landscapes was both a political and environmental activist statement as well as an innovative use of satellites as drawing tool. She selected four sets of co-ordinates of four spots on earth in which almost nothing but snow, water, trees or sand is visible. The satellite went there, collected imagery data that was later exhibited as a set of Cibachrome prints in a gallery [10]. In her words “they are photographs: information, surface, pattern, change encounter, event, memory field of color” and “they were also places that were contested, fragile, and subjected to an increasingly through surveillance apparatus.”
In 2010 Jeff Warren, the founder of grassrootsmapping.org led a balloon and kite aerial mapping workshop for students of Street Life and Mapping the City at The New School. Grassroots Mapping, which is now part of Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, has designed a range of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. They have built a global community of mappers who are engaged in civic issues with low-cost mapping tools like balloons, kites, and remote-control airplanes. Lessons include how to hack a cheap camera, how build a crash proof housing out of a soda bottle, and tape it together into a giant tetrahedron made out of mylar survival blankets. This type of do-it-yourself satellite creates high-resolution imagery of a local area that can be “orthorectified” or “georectificied” and shared. The charismatic balloon attracts everyone who walks by and therefore could be itself a type of social research apparatus.
Animation of images taken from the balloon camera at Union Square, NY. Credit: Colin Macfadyen and Grasrootsmapping.orgUnion Square collage of the urban space generated by the charismatic balloon. Credit: Victoria Marshall, Martin Seck and Grasrootsmapping.org.
In 2010 an installation, titled Backwater Frontwaters, used oblique aerial imagery to bring forward two overlooked backwaters of the Hudson Raritan Estuary—Minetta Brook beneath Greenwich Village and the Newark Bay Wetlands under Newark Liberty Airport and Port of Newark. As part of the Living Concrete/Carrot City exhibition at the Sheila Johnson Design Center the project was a study of patches at two scales: the watershed and the block. Patches were individually arrayed in long vertical strips of paper that were hung from the ceiling like a curtain. In between each patch strip were student projects that engaged the watershed space, engaging memory, microclimate rhythms and everyday life patterns repeated over time in many extremely local experiments—e.g., tree pits, roof top planters, community gardens and new urban form. The installation aimed to demonstrate an approach to urban design where fine grain patchiness makes a difference. Land-cover patches change shape regularly in relation to flows of people, matter and information. The Backwater Frontwaters projects were designed as agents of change within these dynamic patches, altering and responding to moving patch boundaries in conscious and imaginative ways.
Rooftop Patch Study: 13th and 14th St, between 5th and 6th Ave, NY. Credit: Elinor Mossop and Victoria MarshallYardscape Patch Study: Ironbound, Newark NJ, Credit: Elinor Mossop and Victoria Marshall
Patch guide
Patchguide is a simple PDF that will show you how to create a patch drawing. In it you will find instructions on how to save and arrange your base imagery in Google and then create a layered file in Adobe Illustrator. You will then learn how to draw lines, how to create narratives, and then how to save your patch maps. This is a system of making that anyone who is familiar with the Adobe Creative Suite will recognize. For sure there are better ways to do this, for example it could be more high tech and automated (excluding some people) or it could be lower tech using printouts and pens for example (more inclusive).
First, patches are based on land cover, not land use. Its about what covers the land, not how it is defined as being used or anticipated to be used by strategic land use zoning categories such as residential, commercial etc. In other words land cover doesn’t confound the complexity of the city by mixing structure and function. The land cover types are buildings, pavement, bare soil, fine vegetation, coarse vegetation.
Second, a patch boundary is a line that marks differences in the mix of land cover types. In other words, a boundary is located where the heterogeneity of land cover mixes change.
Third, patches change shape and they do so in two ways. First the boundary can stay the same and the contents change. Or, the boundary can move, either becoming bigger or smaller as patches around it or inside of it change (see below.)
Finally the size of a patch depends on your research question. For example you can draw the patches of your block, neighborhood or your watershed.
Kunming, China. Land cover examples: buildings, pavement, bare soil, fine vegetation, coarse vegetation. Credit: Victoria Marshall and Colin MacfadyenKunming, China. Patch boundary examples. Credit: Victoria Marshall and Colin Macfadyen
Kunming, China. Patch change examples. In the middle of each set there is a village which mostly stays the same patch shape, while everything else around it changes. The duration for each sequence is 1999, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010. Credit: Victoria Marshall and Colin Macfadyen
There are two things to keep in mind while you are in the middle of the drawing process: When you determine your minimum patch size consider it a rule, make notes and follow it. Later if others work with your drawing to add more patches they will be able to follow your rule. For example, a road cannot be a patch, unless it’s a wide highway, or a building cannot be its own patch, unless it’s a gigantic shopping mall. Going the other way, when you find that you are left with a big heterogeneous patch, you will need to make a decision to leave it or to break it up into smaller patches.
Second, as you finish one layer and then move to the next e.g. 2005 to 2007, you will find that you will need to go back and edit some previous patches. This can take time; however this slow process is an important stage in which you learn the particularities of your site. New patterns emerge the longer you look however there is a moment when your rules read evenly across every layer and you can shift to making narratives.
Kunming, China. Narrative #1. A patch change narrative of village edges changing. The rule here is every patch that is adjacent to a village patch is shown. What this reveals the transition whereby villagers change livelihood and lifestyle from agriculture to something else, while staying in place. This narrative is the base for the patch boundary samples shown above. Credit: Victoria Marshall and Colin Macfadyen
When you create your narrative there are many possibilities for example you can ask an objective or a subjective research question (see below.) It may come from your disciplinary expertise and capacity or it may come from the place. One is not better than another. The key is that the patch drawing system can accommodate many questions. For example, you may be interested in the bird diversity in the patch where you live, your neighbor may also be interested in the same patch but in relation to storm sewer flows. Someone else may be researching your neighborhood patch type in comparison with similar types in other cities around the world. In this way patch dynamic narratives provide the basis to share multiple ways of seeing, imagining, and monitoring.
Kunming, China. Narrative #2. A patch change narrative focused only on bare soil dominant patches. The lake is also shown as a reference. In this rapidly changing part of the city, bare soil is a transition phase for patch change from one land cover type to a completely different one. In other cities bare soil may be a mining site or desert, for example. In this narrative the patches change in response first to individual parcels and then later to the highway construction project. The lake gets smaller, due to sedimentation. The duration for all narratives is 1999, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010. The earth in Kunming is red; therefore bare soil is easily seen by satellite. Credit: Victoria Marshall and Colin Macfadyen
Here are some harder things to understand about patch dynamics. As mentioned above, it is a framework that can be applied at any scale. In this way it is similar to the ecosystem concept. When it is applied to the world it becomes a model. The scale, at which it is applied, depends on your research question. So you ask, how big is a patch? The answer is, it depends on your question. For theKunming patch drawing, this area was chosen, as it appeared to be the most heterogeneous part of the city. A commitment was made to study a large area as the author hadn’t visited China at that stage and wanted to learn as much as possible through drawing, first. On reflection, this drawing was sometimes too big to “hold.” It may therefore be better to do many smaller drawings, faster.
Kunming, China. Narrative #3. A patch change narrative of how road edges change. The rule here is every patch that is adjacent to a road (pink line) is shown. What this reveals the transition whereby a local road is eclipsed by a ring road, and a connection to a new international airport (out of frame.) In making this drawing I wondered about the people who use the road. Does this type of drawing resonate in any way with their lived experience of witnessing this change as a commuter? Later when I visited Kunming (also called ground truthing) I felt like I was inside this drawing. I “knew” the area in a strange way, and of course it was completely alive in incredibly detailed and sensorial ways that can never be learnt remotely. Credit: Victoria Marshall and Colin Macfadyen
There are three things that patches don’tdo
First, patches explain land cover change, however they need to be correlated with other data sets such as social groups in order to learn how the heterogeneity within the city interacts with the social heterogeneity of the city and how together, they function.
Second, for this drawing method at least, Google doesn’t work at the close up scale. Similarly at bigger scales the imagery contrast of different flyovers creates ‘fake’ patches and zoomed out imagery creates ‘muddy’ city-regions.
Third, the patch classification doesn’t include water as a class, however it certainly could. For example, the daily rhythm of satellite circumnavigation of the earth has the potential to visualize urban seasonal change, in particular the monsoon cycle of Asian coastal regions, where most urbanization is taking place.
Kunming, China. Ground Truthing. Top: Dusty Village Street. Middle: Life on the bus. Low: Kunming Urban Planning Museum. Credit: Victoria Marshall
Kunming, China. Ground Truthing. Top: New highway gradient. Mid: Village life under the unopened highway. Low: Red earth. Credit: Victoria Marshall
Conclusion
Kunming is the largest city in Yunnan, a province of northwest China. It is located on the northern edge of the famous Lake Dian. Today this lake is extremely polluted, a legacy of filling in wetlands, which accelerated during the political campaign of spring of 1970, overfishing, a shift to the sanitary city (without constructing the waste treatment facilities,) and the more recent effects of the shoreline flower industry, the largest in China. The area in this patch drawing is on the northeastern edge of the city, upstream, in an area located between the new ring road and the new international airport. It wasn’t chosen because for its rhetorical potential as a new urban form, or a site of innovative social change. It is actually a somewhat unremarkable area and was simply chosen as it was heterogeneous, changing fast, and therefore easy to draw using satellite imagery.
Kunming, China. Location map with study area in orange and Lake Dian in white. The dimensions of the white square are 17 miles x 17 miles. Credit: Victoria Marshall.
Drawing the patches of a city-region is not a search for an ideal patch type, or an ideal urban form, rather it is to learn about the dynamics of the mix. For urban designers and urbanists the next step is to design an urban practice that is responsive to the mix and aims toward a more resilient dynamic. Patches bring everything into the field of view and allow for sorting as a creative and democratic act. They are a type of granular sketch that is shareable and updatable and could be used to create a model as well as new urban design practices.
But first, there is simply the project of learning how to draw and in the process to see urban change remotely and in the street. Making the most of new media and new technology this post shares this drawing system as a tool that contributes to the design of an adaptive mosaic approach to urban change, and as an urban designers contribution to the emerging field of urban ecology.
Victoria Marshall, with M.L. Cadenasso, Colin Macfadyen, Brian McGrath, S. T. A. Pickett
M. L. Cadenasso
Associate Professor
University of California Davis, Department of Plant Sciences [email protected]
Colin Macfadyen
Artist and Integrated Designer
colinmacfadyen.info [email protected]
Brian McGrath
Associate Professor of Urban Design
Urban Design Research Chair
Parsons the New School for Design [email protected]
S. T. A. Pickett
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Director, Baltimore Ecosystem Study [email protected]
Notes
1 — Haar, S. and V. Marshall, 2013. Mega Urban Ecologies. IN Urban Design Ecologies Reader, B. McGrath (ed.). London: Wiley.
2 — Cadenasso, M.L., S. T. A. Pickett, B. McGrath and V. Marshall. 2013. Ecological Heterogeneity in Urban Ecosystems: Reconceptualizing Land Cover Models as a Bridge to Urban Design. IN Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design: Linking Theory and Practice for Sustainable Cities. S. T. A. Pickett, M. L. Cadenasso, B. McGrath (eds). Dordrecht: Springer.
Cadenasso, M.L.. 2013. Designing Urban Heterogeneity. IN Urban Design Ecologies. Brian McGrath (ed). London: Wiley.
3 — Research in China is supported by the India China Institute http://indiachinainstitute.org/; Research in Patch Dynamics is supported by the Urban Design Working Group, at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. http://www.beslter.org/
4 — F.S. Chapin et al. 2011. Earth Stewardship: Science for Action to Sustain the Human-earth System. Ecosphere. Vol. 2 (8), Article 89.
5 — L.H.M. Ling, (forthcoming.) The Dao of World Politics: Towards a Post-Westphalian, Worldist International Relations. London: Routlege.
6 — McGrath, B. and G. Shane. 2005. AD:Sensing the 21st Century City: Up close and remote, Vol. 75 (6).
7 — As an alternative to Google Earth, the patch guide includes notes on Open Street Map, which is an open source platform. http://www.openstreetmap.org/
8 — Cadenasso, M. L., S. T. A. Pickett, and K. Schwarz. 2007. “Spatial heterogeneity in urban ecosystems: reconceptualizing land cover and a framework for classification.” Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 5:80-88.
9 — McGrath, B., V. Marshall, M. L. Cadenasso, M. Grove, S. T. A. Pickett, R.A. Plunz, and J. Towers. 2007. Designing Patch Dynamics: Baltimore. New York: Columbia University.
11 — Cadenasso, M. L., S. T. A. Pickett, and K. Schwarz. 2007. Spatial heterogeneity in urban ecosystems: reconceptualizing land cover and a framework for classification. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 5: 80-88.
A review of “Palm House”, a commissioned project on view at the Edinburgh Art Festival until 27 August 2017.
In the late 19th century, Geddes proposed an interconnected network of small green spaces, acting as the ‘green lungs’ of Edinburgh’s cramped medieval-era Old Town. Many of these so-called ‘pocket parks’ continue to be used today.
The year is 1880; the place is Edinburgh, Scotland. Edinburgh’s Old Town is internationally known for its squalid conditions; its tenement slums plagued by poor sanitation and overcrowded housing. The medieval infrastructure has proven inadequate for the demands of the rapidly urbanizing population. Many of the city’s elite had relocated to the Georgian New Town in years before, leaving behind the city’s lesser fortunate residents in the Old Town. It is clear that improvements need to be made, but the city’s leaders are uncertain how to proceed.
Cue Patrick Geddes, a Scottish polymath who had recently taken on a lectureship in Zoology at Edinburgh University. During these last two decades of the 19th century, Geddes would address the challenge of revitalizing Edinburgh’s infamous slums. This would set the foundations for his most seminal works in city planning, from pocket parks to early bioregionalism, which had profound influence on our sense of ecology in urban planning, and on later thinkers such as Lewis Mumford.
Bobby Niven, ‘Palm House’ (2017). 2017 EAF Commission. Courtesy of Edinburgh Art Festival, 27 July to 27 August 2017
Rather than employing a drastic redevelopment scheme of razing the old buildings to make way for new, Geddes proposed small changes for the Old Town through a “Conservative Surgery” method. Geddes believed that this method of redevelopment would allow the Old Town to retain its character, while also improving living conditions for the area’s residents. One of the key strategies in enhancing liveability for the city’s poor was the introduction of public green spaces within the dense fabric of tenement buildings. The lack of space in the over-crowded Old Town did not hinder Geddes’ vision; the planner proposed an interconnected network of small green spaces, as this configuration would be more accessible and feasible. Acting as the “green lungs” of the city, many of these so-called “pocket parks” continue to be used today.
Johnston Terrace Wildlife Reserve is just one of Geddes’ former gardens; run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, it is also Scotland’s smallest wildlife reserve. Nestled into a hillside in the shadows of an unyielding castle, the garden is easy to miss. The space is accessed from the steps of Castle Wynd, a busy pedestrian corridor for the millions of tourists that visit Edinburgh each year. A raised boardwalk path takes visitors through a meadow drift; paths converge at a cleared gathering space towards the rear of the site.
Bobby Niven, “Palm House” (2017). 2017 EAF Commission. Courtesy of Edinburgh Art Festival, 27 July to 27 August 2017
While the gate to the garden remains locked to the general public for most of the year, Johnston Terrace Wildlife Reserve can be visited this August during the 2017 Edinburgh Art Festival. The festival, which runs from 27 July- 27 August, features a collection of four new commissions which celebrate the centenary of Patrick Geddes’ forward-thinking work, The Making of the Future: A Manifesto and Project (1917). One of these commissions, artist Bobby Niven’s “Palm House”, resides within and responds to the context of the Johnston Terrace Wildlife Reserve.
“Palm House” is envisioned as a social sculpture, a space for the exchange of ideas and community gathering. The structure provides shelter from the elements during Edinburgh’s particularly wet month of August, but the work does not turn its back on the open-air context in which it is sited. Constructed with green oak timber framing and transparent acrylic siding, the small hut closely resembles a glasshouse, a clear artifact from the artist’s research into the glasshouses used to cultivate palm trees at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. The line between indoor and outdoor is blurred, due not only to the construction materials utilized but also the abundant collection of potted plants within the shelter. Sculptural elements of the structure include wooden hand-shaped supports, a recurring symbol throughout Niven’s work. The double meaning of the work’s title, “Palm House”, references both the concept of the structure as a glasshouse (i.e. a palm tree house), but also the symbolic motif of these hands.
“Palm House” will also accommodate a series of four week-long artist residences across the month of August. The artists selected for the residencies (Neil Bickerton, Alison Scott, Daisy Lafarge, and Deirdre Nelson) will have the opportunity to produce works in this ‘off-grid’ urban oasis. The intention of holding these residencies in-situ is to gather a collection of ideas and responses to the histories and environment of the site, with the structure acting as a space for growth of both plants and creative practice.
As a project, “Palm House” responds to the ecological and seasonal nature of its surrounding; the work will always be changing and evolving through the month of August, creating its own ecology of collaborative production and exchange of ideas. Within the first few days of opening, the project has already proven to be a popular refuge amid busy festival hubs and corridors. Many visitors happen across the site by chance, and the experience of both the garden and the work has been a pleasant surprise for many.
Whereas other exhibitions in the festival—and in the field of contemporary art in general—may make the visitor feel like there is an underlying message or a concept to “get” in order to truly understand the work, this project simply allows viewers to enjoy being within a space and place, and to allow their own experience to take precedence over any preconceived notion of what the work “is”.
In his pamphlet, The Making of the Future, Geddes envisioned a re-construction, re-education, and renewal of society. He advocated for a post-war society where civic life is improved in a combined interdisciplinary effort of “Art and Industry, Education and Health, Morals and Business”. These ideas of interdisciplinarity and civic participation are activated in Niven’s work, which appeals to visitors of many backgrounds and perspectives. In the instance of Palm House, the combined experience of art and nature has the powerful effect of making people stop, observe, immerse themselves, and react to something previously unnoticed.
More broadly, employing Geddes’ vision from The Making of the Future: A Manifestoand Project as a curatorial concept has bold implications. In the age of international art fairs and biennials acting as a reigning force in the contemporary art world, selecting this theme for the 2017 Edinburgh Art Festival commissions suggests an antithesis to the loud and commercialized aspects of such events. This theme, and the commissioned works that it has evoked, insinuate a worldview that leans towards anti-capitalism rather than profit, and a democratization of art rather than self-referential exclusivity.
The theme also provokes a sense of localization above globalization during a festival season that could easily be criticized for being insensitive to its context and the heritage of Edinburgh. In the month of August, multiple festivals put on thousands of shows, exhibitions, and events in Edinburgh; an ephemeral whirlwind of performers and nearly 3 million visitors from across the world gather in the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site. The Edinburgh Art Festival’s commission concept is specific, celebrating context and locality in a way not frequently seen during Edinburgh’s festivals.
Though the choice of theme for the Edinburgh Art Festival may not seem like an immediate association for a series of contemporary art works, the fruition of projects like Palm House prove that the theories championed by Geddes maintain their cultural relevance today.
In a world of mass media and internet virality it can be quite easy to think globally.
But it takes intention and subtle confidence to act locally.
The contributors to this round table, including artists, curators, environmentalists, landscape architects, and scientists, have all reflected on what they learned from meeting and working with the Harrisons.
The Harrisons (Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022)) are widely acknowledged as pioneers in bringing together art and ecology into a new form of practice. They worked for over fifty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners, and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues. The works they made in various places from the second half of the 1970s stand as proposals for putting the well-being of the web of life first. The Harrisons’ visionary projects have, on occasion, led to changes in governmental policy and have expanded dialogue around previously unexplored issues leading to practical implementations variously in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
In writing and inviting people to contribute we sought advice and received extensive help from both the Harrison Studio/Center for the Study of the Force Majeure (CFM); from Kai Resche and Petra Kruse, curators and editors with the Harrisons (and also the Berlin branch of CFM), as well as from David Haley (who was the project manager for Casting a Green Net and Associate artist for Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom (2007-09).
We offered the following passage from one of the Harrisons perhaps less well-known works as a prompt, encapsulating their approach
Trümmerflora, or rubble plants and trees, are a special phenomenon unique to heavily bombed urban areas. The bomb acts as a plough, breaking brick, mortar, metal, and wood into fragments and, in a single gesture, mixing these with earth from below. The earth often contains seeds, dormant from the time of first construction on the site, that may have been buried for a century or more. These seeds come to light, and those that can live in this new and special earth, grow and flourish. Other seeds, dropped by wind and by animals, also survive in limited numbers in this new soil, this rubble. Hence the name Trümmerflora, or loosely translated, rubble flowers.
Harrison and Harrison 1990 ‘Trümmerflora: on the Topography of Terrors’ in Polemical Landscapes California Museum of Photography pp 12-13
This 1988 work by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison during a period of residency in Berlin emerged in response to overlooking the derelict site that had been the headquarter of the Gestapo, Storm Trooper, and Secret Service Operations, i.e. the bureaucratic center for the Death Camps and Labour Camps of the Nazi regime. Earlier attempts by others to create an appropriate monument or memorial to the horrors of this urban site had failed. As Jewish people, this site was hugely significant. However, the Harrisons characteristically turned their attention to a possibility of healing brought about through an ecological understanding of the site, creating a proposal that enfolds this history, the destruction of the infrastructure of terror reducing it to rubble, lending itself to new life through the forces of nature.
The contributors to this round table, including artists, curators, environmentalists, landscape architects, and scientists, have all reflected on what they learned from meeting and working with the Harrisons. For some, this starts with Portable Fish Farm: Survival Piece #III which caused a furore when it was exhibited at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1971. A number of others were involved in various ways (curator, environmentalist, scientist, artist, and project manager) with the Harrisons’ work Casting a Green Net: Can it be we are seeing a Dragon? (1998) made as part of ‘ArtTranspennine98’, a major regional collaboration between the Tate Gallery Liverpool and the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust. Others have much more recent experiences of Newton Harrison as he continued the practice, including curating an exhibition Eco-art Work: 11 Artists from 8 Countries for Various Small Fires in Los Angeles in 2022, and developing the work Sensorium.
Contributors reflect on how working with the Harrisons in various different ways informed, changed, and developed their practices. Some talk about having the strictures of their respective disciplines and working practices lifted and their thinking transformed. Others talk about the love, the love between the Harrisons, and the wider empathy reaching beyond human-centredness that they engendered.
Leslie Ryan’s contribution touches specifically on the Trümmerflora piece as she was working with the Harrisons as a studio assistant during this period. She describes how, having studied Landscape Architecture and encouraged by the Harrisons scepticism of the profession to question of the limitations of her discipline, she was taken on a journey that profoundly changed her understanding of that practice, including “always looking beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of here and now.”
Lewis Biggs, who was one of the curators of ArtTranspennine98, is one of two contributors who had experienced Portable Fish Farm in 1971. He too comments on the dynamic between Helen and Newton, but he also notes “being impressed with how the artists would pounce on specific words that emerged in the public workshops, and highlight them for further discussion” and their “their Rorschach process to ‘discover’ iconic images from maps.”
The other contributor who saw Portable Fish Farm is Simon Read. Simon Read offers one of the counterpoints or serious questions based on his experiences during the Greenhouse Britain project. Coming from a place-based practice he is somewhat troubled by the Harrisons’ willingness to develop a response to a place without having inhabited it. That being said, he acknowledges the point made by a civil servant at the time, that the Harrisons were “refreshing in that they feel able to unabashedly talk about the big idea.” As authors who also worked on Greenhouse Britain, it is interesting to reflect that the Harrisons’ focus was on the question of climate adaptation and how to draw attention to that, when all policy at that time was focused on mitigation. We worked for 2 years on the project, and the Harrisons visited the UK eight or ten times, each visit lasting perhaps 2 weeks, during that period. The project had been instigated by David Haley through a series of workshops held from Aberdeen to Devon. But in the context of the Lea Valley, one context that was featured in Greenhouse Britain, we knew it far less well than Simon did as a result of his three or more years focusing on it during the Hydrocitizenship project (2014-17).
The various contributions from people involved in Casting a Green Net open up the process. They include Lewis Biggs, curator; Les Firbank, ecological scientist; David Haley, artist and project manager; John Hyatt, artist and educator; Jamie Saunders, futures and policy maker, Richard Scott and Richard Sharland, environmentalists. Casting a Green Net was pre-emptive planning for the area across the North of England, recognising the diversity of soils and making a case for developing diversity of species and landscape types across the region. The work is archetypal of the Harrisons’ practice in the scale (addressing a region), in the timescale (understanding the Romans as part of the story of becoming), and in the ways that different sometimes conflicted voices are brought to bear on the issues. The refrain in the work is also a beautiful example of their poetry,
I said
If not here then elsewhere
You said
If here
then elsewhere will know how to proceed
Les Firbank, a scientist acknowledges not really ‘getting’ the way the Harrisons worked with maps, having students remaking them by hand at scale, until he saw the audience engaging. His observation of the way audiences physically responded to the large-scale maps, moving in and out, very engaged, is what persuaded him that this work was significant.
Richard Sharland, an environmental activist also involved, comments on the Harrisons’ differentiating ‘discussion’ from ‘dialogue’, and their consistent intention to keep the process open. But he goes on to say that planners invited to discuss the work “were surprised and intrigued that these artists from California had much more data about the unsustainability of human life in northern England at their fingertips than they did.”
Richard Scott, with a particular interest in wildflowers and meadows, highlights how the Harrisons’ approach related, amplified, and helped develop the approach of his organisation, Landlife, to developing sites for wildflower meadows.
John Hyatt, who was a Professor of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) at the time, draws out the importance and functionality of the title of the work, the conversations and propensities that led to it, and suggests what it did for people, adults, children, experts, who encountered the work. David Haley, just finishing his MFA at MMU at the time, became project manager for the project, weaves the narrative across decades, linking Casting a Green Net with Greenhouse Britain as well as explorations in Taiwan and Central Europe. He positions the term ‘post-disciplinary’ as encapsulating this form of practice.
The issues which drive the need for approaches such as post-disciplinarity are picked up by Jamie Saunders, a policy maker and ‘futures’ practitioner. He talks about the importance of the “preferable, probable, possible, plausible”.
The dynamic between Helen and Newton comes to life in various ways across several pieces. Yangkura talks about a conversation with Newton in 2019 not long after Helen had passed away, a conversation that centred on the power of love to ride both good and bad times. Leslie Ryan and Barbara Benish both draw out the complex and sometimes fractious dynamics—the weaknesses as well as the strengths, Benish remembering, “Newton’s occasional amnesia towards female autonomy or ‘otherness’ in the room, [when] Helen would gently, or forcefully, pull him back in”. David Haley, reflecting on working with the Harrisons over many years, comments that this friction was sometimes performed, allowing an audience to recognise that the issues are conflicted and that disagreement is allowed. Benish describes the deep intergenerational dynamics of the Harrisons’ way of working that has led to the development of art Dialog/Art Mill, a not-for-profit organization working in sustainable education via the arts and sciences in the Czech Republic.
Ruby Barnett, the Harrisons’ Studio Manager, and Senior Researcher from 2017-2021, opens up the Harrisons’ process of ‘morning conversations’, a practice they developed from Adelbert Ames Jr – Ames believed that you should set yourself a problem before going to sleep and that your unconscious mind would work on it providing a solution in the morning. The Harrisons developed their practice of ‘morning conversations’ as part of their process of collaborating—Work Place was their contribution to Arlene Raven’s 1983 exhibition ‘At Home’ documenting ten years of West Coast Feminist art. Work Place was an installation representing the front room of the Harrisons’ own house. They inhabited the installation, beginning “…their day at the museum just as they normally do in their home in San Diego – with a ritual of coffee, meditation, and dialogue”. Ruby Barnett’s contribution also hints at the ways in which the Harrisons understood how, as Donella Meadows put it, dance with systems.
Some of these themes are picked up by Beth Stephens, who with her wife Annie Sprinkle, are artists, academics, and ecosexuals and who worked with the Harrisons on Green Wedding to the Earth (2008). The Harrisons provide the ‘wedding homily’ for this performative wedding. They came together to explore the potential of a Ph.D. program focusing on environmental art but Stephens predominantly recalls the experience of exploratory conversations that connected them in a process of give and take across shared interests.
Another aspect is picked up by Petra Kruse and Kai Resche, curators and editors of The Time of the Force Majeure, the career survey and Harrisons’ autobiography published in 2016. Petra Kruse and Kai Resche adopt the approach the Harrisons used to explain an intertwined story from two perspectives. While some contributors met the Harrisons and had their world re-framed, Kruse and Resche found in the Harrisons’ approach something they had been seeking.
Newton Harrison’s particular turn of phrase is captured in Janeil Engelstad’s contribution. Newton was involved with Billy Klüver’s Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) initiative at the end of the 1960s (as well as with the Los Angeles County Museum’s Art and Technology project in the early 1970s). Engelstad was co-curator on 9e2 Seattle, a programme revisiting the key questions and ambitions of 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, the one of the iconic parts of E.A.T. Engelstad included a discussion with Newton Harrison reflecting on Billy Klüver’s initiative, during which she reports, “He had it all wrong… and I told him thus…”
Ranil Senanayake is perhaps the longest collaborator who has contributed, having met the Harrisons in 1974. Senanayake introduced the Harrisons to the crab Scylla Serrata indigenous to Sri Lanka’s lagoons. The crab becomes the central ‘character’ of the Harrisons’ seminal work, The Lagoon Cycle, and Senanayake excerpts key passages from that work to narrate his relationship with the Harrisons during that period. He goes on to tell us about working with Newton again in Korea in 2021 and how their approach has informed his work in ‘analog forestry’, an approach he developed, which uses a synthesis of traditional and scientific knowledge to optimize the productive potential forestry. He also highlights EarthRestoration, a blockchain approach to supporting local farmers to grow trees. Using a tradeable digital ledger NFTs are issued providing farmers with an income for incorporating living photosynthetic biomass into their farms.
Aviva Rahmani, another contributor who knew the Harrisons from the early 1970s, highlights their ability to deconstruct power at scale, their support for an interest in her works over a lifetime. Rahmani was one of the artists Newton chose to include in the exhibition he curated for Various Small Fires. Other contributors to the same exhibition had only gotten to know Newton in the past 3 or 4 years. They included Salma Aratsu and Terike Haapoja. Both found their practices shifted by the experiences despite the short period of acquaintance. Arastu attributes to the Harrisons her own development in creating a feminist environmental position that can bridge science, art, and faith. Working with calligraphy she has become able to see a connection between the energy in natural systems and that of the lyrical poetry and patterns of Islamic art and the Qur’an. Haapoja focuses on Newton’s understanding of empathy as ‘feeling for’ and ‘solidarity with’ the more-than-human, particularly evident in the work Apologia Mediterraneo (2019), a work in which Newton addresses the increasing levels of industrial pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. She builds her understanding of empathy through Newton’s early experience of hearing the earth screaming in response to industrial forms of excavation.
Even scientists like Johan Gielis found that Newton Harrison in his late eighties knew the right questions to ask, in this case, whether the study of relations between individual organisms could inform continuity. Gielis, a Belgian mathematician-biologist, works on encoding the shapes and connections between organisms in search of a unified description of natural forms. They shared a starting point in holistic thinking in relation to the web of life, challenging and redirecting the ecocidal direction human society was and is currently taking. Gielis, like the Harrisons, works with metaphor [“switching between [heart] as a cylinder (for transporting blood) and a Möbius strip, a one-sided body for exchanging oxygen in the lungs and cells”], displacing old metaphors for new more appropriate ones. For Reiko Goto-Collins, working with her partner Tim Collins, it is Harrisons’ insights into metaphor as a dynamic critical tool that most struck her about their work. In particular, she retraces their pathway from dysfunctional metaphors, ‘flipping’ these to open up choice in the way we relate to the world around us, here explored through Collins and Goto’s research into the Scots Pine.
Ruth Wallen and Brandon Ballengée, both artists, outline the various ways they have learned from, been inspired by, and worked with the Harrisons. Ruth Wallen’s work for a residency at the Exploratorium in San Francisco was inspired by the Harrisons’ approach. She had followed their Masters and she also raises the importance of metaphor in their work. For example, Serpentine Lattice (1993), seeing a forestry practice as a lattice, identifies crucial points to begin processes of restoration. Ballengée’s current work Memory of a Cajun Prairie uses the same approach as the Harrisons’ Future Gardens works, asking what can adapt and what supports adaptation. It was developed in dialogue with Newton Harrison and embeds ecological research into the process of imagining what ‘scaffolding’ adaptation might mean in the Louisiana context.
Several contributors speak about the Harrisons as teachers in various ways. Tim Collins contributes a piece of writing originally developed in 2000 with the Harrisons, Jackie Brookner (1945-2015), Ruth Wallen (another contributor), and Josh Harrison. This text is a pedagogical proposal focused by the challenge of involving artists in civic discourse. It highlights in particular a lack of capacity in the languages and processes of ecology, politics, and sociology. This pedagogical proposal outlines in broad terms the challenge, “the emerging biological revolution is all but abandoned to the sciences” and outlines the requirements for a new approach to visual art education that would equip artists to participate in the global environment challenges. Twenty years on and whilst there have been multiple attempts at establishing such courses, they remain outliers and many have closed.
The character of this challenge is well articulated by Cathy Fitzgerald, an environmental scientist who has ‘transferred’ to the arts. She sets out her experience and the role of the Harrisons both as models and as empathetic and timely supporters. The lack of interest in the biological revolution and the unwillingness to recognise the value of engaging with the languages and processes of ecology and politics was a challenge for Fitzgerald throughout her studies at Masters and Doctoral levels.
Jo-Ann Kuchera-Morin, a composer and artist working in complex systems research, and her team including Dr. Gustavo Rincon, Dr. Kon Hyong, and Myungin Lee, met Newton in 2021 through the development of Sensorium. Their technology, AlloSphere/AlloLib has developed significant immersive environments engaging the public in matters of concern. Their work with Newton on Sensorium provoked thinking around how such an environment could function as a pre-emptive planning system, among other functions including education. Together they nurtured a culture of respect between researchers, one science the other arts “investigating the lifeweb from true empirical inquiry and truthful interrogation.”
Wu Mali was the instigator of the work that the Harrisons did with David Haley in Taiwan in 2008. Wu, as co-curator of the Taipei Biennial in 2018, included Newton Harrison’s On the Deep Wealth of this Nation, Scotland as a centrepiece of the exhibition. She comments, “many works pointed out the difficulties and challenges faced by the contemporary world, but the Harrisons demonstrated how we could apply wisdom to allow species to coexist and prosper.”
Tatiana Sizonenko, curator of the 2024 exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, which will form the keystone of the fourth iteration of Getty’s Pacific Standard Time, highlights how the Harrisons’ approach informs her curating. Sizonenko had previously curated Art as Agency which combined the Harrisons work Peninsula Europe IV with works from younger artists influenced by them.
We have written extensively on the practice of the Harrisons, but this process of hearing the many different perspectives of artists; curators; landscape architects, environmental activists and policy makers; and scientists, has opened up new aspects of their practice. One of the fascinating aspects in the enduring connectivity over very extended periods involving ongoing dialogues as well as collaborations on multiple projects woven through this collection.
The other aspect that becomes clear from these different responses is the ways in which the Harrisons opened up their process to others. From the various contributions we can begin to understand how this enabled individuals to find themselves by being invited into the practice and being involved in the work. The pretty consistently recurring sense is that across the arts and sciences, even those who questioned the Harrisons’ approach, were able to engage with it and understand it, and able to develop their own approaches.
In one of the last published interviews with Newton Harrison he is asked what he would say to younger artists. He offers the following,
Let us forget originality. Let us forget our signature on our work. Let us begin to do what we do best, which is improvise with a new culture that will be covalent with the life web itself, and let’s get together and create. (Harrison, N., and KUPPER, O., 2022. Newton Harrison: Force Majeure. Autre Magazine, 13 Biodiversity. p.257)
Chris Fremantle and Anne Douglas
Ayrshire and Aberdeen
Anne Douglas is a Professor Emeritus, previously Chair in Art in Public Life at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen Scotland. She has focused, over the past 25 years, on developing doctoral/postdoctoral research into the changing nature of art in public life, increasingly in relation to environmental change.
Every month we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
show/hide list of writers
Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Salma Arastu, BerkeleyI hear his voice when I read Channeling the Lifeweb again and again. The words echo in my mind every day and night.
Brandon Ballengée, ArnaudvilleThey encouraged me for decades to continue, to go deeper into the research and ask the question ‘how big is here?’, then to follow fearlessly what I discovered.
Ruby Barnett, Santa CruzThe work of the Harrisons caused a shift that has enabled me to embrace complex systems in a more visceral, thorough way than in my previous work.
Barbara Benish, Santa CruzTheir understanding of the consequences of ‘framing’, of giving humans a vision of the earth’s crisis in a way that is not catastrophic but regenerative, was the Harrison’s gift to us.
Lewis Biggs, ShanghaiWe were all impressed with the quality of the research that went into the production of the various maps, and how very thought-provoking their synthetic approach (art-science-text-image) could be. That for me is their significant legacy.
Tim Collins, GlasgowArtists have always critiqued and revealed belief systems, the program we are about to describe will teach artists to be effective agents of change. We seek to define the pedagogy of engagement.
Janeil Engelstad, SeattleAt the center of their work was love and perhaps this is the greatest legacy that the Harrisons leave.
Les Firbank, LeedsOur art/science dynamic was based on mutual respect and talking through different approaches to common questions, rather than the more usual multidisciplinary approach of artists seeking to illustrate the science.
Cathy Fitzgerald, Hollywood ForestFor me, this is the most profound legacy of the Harrisons’ work – understanding how creativity is an essential driver for holistic ecopedagogy across all education.
Johan Gielis, AntwerpenWhat matters is not the individual forms, but how they are connected. Newton’s specific question was whether this would also teach us about ecosystems and continuity. He challenged and inspired me to look more deeply and broadly at ecosystems and our planet.
Reiko Goto Collins, GlasgowThrough this conversation I have learned three things: 1) metaphor can be physical, 2) physical metaphor can be dysfunctional, and 3) a metaphorical flip informs how we understand a functional metaphor.
Terike Haapoja, New YorkFor Newton, this kind of awakening had happened early in life, when he was driving along a highway in California, seeing the broken landscapes under constant, violent human excavation. Suddenly, he said, he could hear the earth screaming.
David Haley, Walney IslandThrough working, touring, and engaging with Helen and Newton, my ecological arts practice continues to be found and like them, I hope to enable others to seek their ecological arts practices.
John Hyatt, LiverpoolI was interested, amongst other things, in how they kept all parties engaged, brought them together, and kept them involved: the creation of an ecology of collaboration.
Petra Kruse, BonnFrom the very first moment the two of us met with Helen and Newton, we were convinced of their ways to work, and felt it to be very similar to the way we wanted ― and finally achieved ― to work.
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Santa BarbaraWhat I have learned from the brief time of working with Newton and viewing the work that he and Helen have accomplished is the collaboration of two bio-eco artists who were interested in investigating the life web from true empirical inquiry and truthful interrogation, using their expert artistry and scientific inquiry.
Aviva Rahmani, New YorkWe had parallel interests across many years, but they understood far better, how to platform and establish visibility for those interests.
Simon Read, LondonI can see a lot of connections and regret that I was never to follow up an acquaintance with the Harrisons since they seemed to be operating in a parallel area both conceptually and technically.
Kai Reschke, BonnFrom the very first moment the two of us met with Helen and Newton, we were convinced of their ways to work, and felt it to be very similar to the way we wanted ― and finally achieved ― to work.
Leslie Ryan, Santa CruzListening to the Harrisons talk about repairing our relationship with the land and working ― always ― to advantage of the life web was a watershed moment for me, a siren call that changed everything.
Jamie Saunders, LeedsTheir work stands as a guide. When I remember, when I am provoked, they hold fast to more than the immediate concerns and less-than-life-enhancing work of day-to-day living. The life-web: see it, breathe it, hear it.
Richard Scott, LiverpoolTheir practice was enabling and real and embodied timeless wisdom for people and nature, and these principles and their artworks will stay with me.
Ranil Senanayake, DavisFrom creating a lagoon in a tank with Helen and Newton, I moved on to create a forest in a garden.
Richard Sharland, AltarnunBoth Helen and Newton had this wonderful gift of memory for stories and information and ideas, which they drew upon to evolve their work, to help others to evolve.
Tatiana Sizonenko, San DiegoNewton’s impact, along with Helen’s, on the field of environmental art practice and research, and socially engaged art more generally, is incalculable.
Beth Stephens, Santa CruzNewton and I were friends. Unlikely friends, but friends, nonetheless. Even though we could not have come from two more radically different worlds, we somehow connected and got a deep kick out of each other.
Ruth Wallen, San DiegoWorking in collaborative partnership, the Harrisons’ use of dialogue, with stories unfolding as they augmented or interrupted each other, amplified the generativity and generosity of their metaphors while spawning more.
Mali Wu, KaohsiungThe Harrisons demonstrated how we could apply wisdom to allow species to coexist and prosper. This is what we should learn anew, and that art can contribute to.
Yangkura, CityAfter I encountered Harrison Studio’s works, I was able to redefine my works with an omnidirectional view. I learned that I must be in a position where I can communicate and collaborate with various types of people who have similar thoughts and integrate them.
Chris Fremantle is a producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. He produces ecoartscotland, a platform for research and practice focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers.
In Berlin, the Harrisons characteristically turned their attention to a possibility of healing brought about through ecological understanding, creating a proposal that enfolds the destruction of the infrastructure of terror, reducing it to rubble and then lending itself to new life through the forces of nature.
The Harrisons (Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022) are widely acknowledged as pioneers in bringing together art and ecology into a new form of practice. They worked for over fifty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners, and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues. The works they made in various places from the second half of the 1970s stand as proposals for putting the well-being of the web of life first. The Harrisons’ visionary projects have, on occasion, led to changes in governmental policy and have expanded dialogue around previously unexplored issues leading to practical implementations variously in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
In writing and inviting people to contribute we sought advice and received extensive help from both the Harrison Studio/Center for the Study of the Force Majeure (CFM); from Kai Resche and Petra Kruse, curators and editors with the Harrisons (and also the Berlin branch of CFM), as well as from David Haley (who was the project manager for Casting a Green Net and Associate artist for Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom (2007-09).
We offer the following passage from one of the Harrisons perhaps less well-known works as a prompt, encapsulating their approach:
Trümmerflora, or rubble plants and trees, are a special phenomena unique to heavily bombed urban areas. The bomb acts as a plough, breaking brick, mortar, metal, and wood into fragments and, in a single gesture, mixing these with earth from below. The earth often contains seeds, dormant from the time of first construction on the site, that may have been buried for a century or more. These seeds come to light, and those that can live in this new and special earth, grow and flourish. Other seeds, dropped by wind and by animals, also survive in limited numbers in this new soil, this rubble. Hence the name Trümmerflora, or loosely translated, rubble flowers.
Harrison and Harrison 1990 ‘Trümmerflora: on the Topography of Terrors’ in Polemical Landscapes California Museum of Photography pp 12-13
This 1988 work by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison during a period of residency in Berlin emerged in response to overlooking the derelict site that had been the headquarter of the Gestapo, Storm Trooper, and Secret Service Operations, i.e. the bureaucratic center for the Death Camps and Labour Camps of the Nazi regime. Earlier attempts by others to create an appropriate monument or memorial to the horrors of this urban site had failed. As Jewish people, this site was hugely significant. However, the Harrisons characteristically turned their attention to a possibility of healing brought about through an ecological understanding of the site, creating a proposal that enfolds this history, the destruction of the infrastructure of terror reducing it to rubble, lending itself to new life through the forces of nature.
The contributors to this round table, including artists, curators, environmentalists, landscape architects, and scientists, have all reflected on what they learned from meeting and working with the Harrisons. For some, this starts with Portable Fish Farm: Survival Piece #III which caused a furore when it was exhibited at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1971. A number of others were involved in various ways (curator, environmentalist, scientist, artist, and project manager) with the Harrisons’ work Casting a Green Net: Can it be we are seeing a Dragon? (1998) made as part of ‘ArtTranspennine98’, a major regional collaboration between the Tate Gallery Liverpool and the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust. Others have much more recent experiences of Newton Harrison as he continued the practice, including curating an exhibition Eco-art Work: 11 Artists from 8 Countriesfor Various Small Fires in Los Angeles in 2022, and developing the work Sensorium.
Contributors reflect on how working with the Harrisons in various different ways informed, changed, and developed their practices. Some talk about having the strictures of their respective disciplines and working practices lifted and their thinking transformed. Others talk about the love, the love between the Harrisons, and the wider empathy reaching beyond human-centredness that they engendered.
Click here for a more in-depth reflection regarding this roundtable.
Anne Douglas is a Professor Emeritus, previously Chair in Art in Public Life at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen Scotland. She has focused, over the past 25 years, on developing doctoral/postdoctoral research into the changing nature of art in public life, increasingly in relation to environmental change.
Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1927-2018) were artists that pioneered art and ecology, developing an approach that characterised them also as educators. In their artworks, the Harrisons collaborated with planners, scientists, and communities on bioregional scale projects addressing ecosystem health in the context of climate change and the need for adaptation. Helen brought a perspective from her deep knowledge of literature, psychology, and education. She had held senior roles in Higher Education before beginning to collaborate with Newton. He had studied visual art and was already an acclaimed artist before beginning to collaborate with Helen. Their life's work wove together these different knowledges and experiences, generating a unique and appropriate aesthetic that addressed the wellbeing of the web of life.
Scotland becomes the first country in the history of countries
to intentionally give back more to the life web than it consumes
when the deep wealth of the country is understood
to be in part a vast commons, with the topsoil as vital
The wealth becomes magnified when the topsoil is attended to
beginning by transforming all organic waste into humus
and continuing the regenerating of carbon in the topsoil mat
while banning all inorganic fertilizer
The deep wealth of the country is maintained
by the oxygen that trees give forth
and the COy the trees and all green growing things sequester
When COg sequestering lowers the atmospheric CO2
and the oxygen production is greater than the consumption
the wealth in the atmospheric commons of the country grows
True for all culturally generated CO2 production
but also true for the breath of the 5.3 million people in Scotland
that requires some 1500 square miles of open canopy forest
Assuming 70 trees per acre or 30 trees per person
to compensate simply for the privilege of breathing
Breathing in the country and the consumption of oxygen
and the production of COy equalize as the forest matures
Thereafter wealth grows as the forest commons grow
The moment is urgent….if business as usual continues
Scotland as usual will continue to have
a carbon footprint over three times its physical size
to do nothing risks the death of the life web
to do too little risks near death and a sixth extinction
to do enough we cannot know without the doing of it
The wealth of the country is in its waters especially the rainfall
about 113 cubic kilometers fall a year on average on these lands
If the excess waters that form the aquatic commons of the nation
are redirected into an array of estuarial lagoons
or into drought ridden farming areas
or into bogs and small lakes and wetlands
The redirection expressed in new food that is produced
also the biodiversity of the country increases
and the cost of flood control decreases
So increases the deep wealth of the nation
When the wealth of the Scottish nation becomes great enough
to trade for what it cannot produce
and this wealth springs from the life web in such a way
that the web’s overproduction is harvested
the harvest preserves and can even enhance the system
It is in this way that Scotland becomes
the first nation in the history of nations
to generate its deep wealth ecologically
tuned to the original peoples’ life ways
and the delusion of an invisible hand disappears
The deep wealth of this nation can grow exponentially
when agreement is found in a majority of its 5,300,000 population
to gain a collective responsibility for the well working of the life web
sufficient to stimulate the web to overproduce
in ways that advantage the web and advantage the human community
Scotland has this opportunity
appearing most clearly in the relationship of a modestly sized educated population
to the 30,000 square miles of land variously available
coupled with an initial unity of beliefs at work
Scotland can become the first modern country to stimulate
then put to work the overproduction of the life web as vast public good
In so doing also becoming the first people in modern history
to reach an ecologically informed commons of mind itself a Meganiche
among the multimillion species that nest within the great web of life.
Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1927-2018) were artists that pioneered art and ecology, developing an approach that characterised them also as educators. In their artworks, the Harrisons collaborated with planners, scientists, and communities on bioregional scale projects addressing ecosystem health in the context of climate change and the need for adaptation. Helen brought a perspective from her deep knowledge of literature, psychology, and education. She had held senior roles in Higher Education before beginning to collaborate with Newton. He had studied visual art and was already an acclaimed artist before beginning to collaborate with Helen. Their life's work wove together these different knowledges and experiences, generating a unique and appropriate aesthetic that addressed the wellbeing of the web of life.
From Peninsula Europe: The High Ground – Bringing Forth a New State of Mind 2002
Is Peninsula Europe at a bifurcation point?
At a point of change and self-transformation?
After all, from the Romans through the Middle Ages
through the Renaissance
the Enlightenment
from Modernity to the Now,
that territory we call Europe
has many times rebuilt its landscape
economically, politically, culturally.
It has rebuilt its belief systems
and rebuilt its ecosystems.
Now we imagine a new set of emergent properties
suggesting that this is indeed a bifurcation point in a state of
becoming
a point of reorganisation of its own complexities
into a new form of entityhood.
If so Peninsula Europe becomes the center of a world.
Peninsula Europe moves towards entityhood
when its boundary conditions become
more permeable
to what it understands
as contributing to its wellbeing
and
less permeable
to what does not.
Peninsula Europe moves towards entityhood
when its discourse
can focus on the carrying capacity of its terrains
for industry, farming, fishing
information production
and cultural divergence.
Peninsula Europe moves towards entityhood
as it transforms its wastes
into that which is useful and valuable
while successively reducing the wastes
that are damaging to itself
and when
its organic waste disposal
becomes a vast topsoil regenerating system
insuring green farming
remodeling its food production systems
on natural systems.
Peninsula Europe moves towards entityhood
when its river systems, estuaries, ocean edges,
forests, wetlands, meadowlands, and eco-corridors
are valued sufficiently
and enabled to co-join
into a complex biodiverse life web
self-sustaining in nature
an eco-net of the whole
and its high ground, grassland, and forest communities
contribute ecological redundancy, continuity, and mass
at a continental scale. Peninsula Europe moves towards entityhood
which its diversity of cultures is protected
and they are valued for themselves
and are encouraged to be seen as self-creating entities
adding improvisation and creativity
diversity and uniqueness to the cultural web.
Entityhood happens when each part feeds value to the whole
and the whole complicates itself
following the natural laws of self-organization
and creating a complex entity.
Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1927-2018) were artists that pioneered art and ecology, developing an approach that characterised them also as educators. In their artworks, the Harrisons collaborated with planners, scientists, and communities on bioregional scale projects addressing ecosystem health in the context of climate change and the need for adaptation. Helen brought a perspective from her deep knowledge of literature, psychology, and education. She had held senior roles in Higher Education before beginning to collaborate with Newton. He had studied visual art and was already an acclaimed artist before beginning to collaborate with Helen. Their life's work wove together these different knowledges and experiences, generating a unique and appropriate aesthetic that addressed the wellbeing of the web of life.
From Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom 2007
The news is not good and it is getting worse
And for this island
Which is a much loved place
the news is not good and is getting worse
For instance
The Greenland Ice Shelf is breaking up
more rapidly than anyone thought
and this alone could cause an ocean rise
of up to 7 metres
Looking at the first two metre rise
Looking at the storm surge thinking about protection
thinking about where monies might come from
to protect land and people
The news is not good and it’s getting worse
animals are on the run plants are migrating
if the temperatures on the average
rise above 2 degrees Celsius one scenario predicts
Europe, Asia, America, and the Amazon
will lose 30 percent of their forests with concomitant extinctions
Looking at the 4 metre rise
Looking at the shape of the storm surge
we examined what a 5 metre ocean rise might mean
and we are looking at
about a 10,000 square kilometre loss of land
with about 2.2 million people displaced
…
Finally understanding
that the news is neither good nor bad
it is simply that great differences are upon us
that great changes are upon us as a culture
and great changes are upon all planetary life systems
and the news is about how we meet these changes
and are transformed by them or in turn transform them
As a woman, artist, and mother, I work to create harmony by expressing the universality of humanity through paintings, sculpture, calligraphy and poetry. Inspired by the imagery, sculpture and writings of my Indian heritage and Islamic spirituality, I use my artistic voice to break down the barriers that divide to foster peace and understanding.
I hear his voice when I read Channeling the Lifeweb again and again. The words echo in my mind every day and night.
I met Newton in March 2021 through my friend Heidi Hardin who was a student of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison at UC San Diego in the early 70s. I was working on my project ‘Our Earth: Embracing All Communities’ which was inspired by the ecological verses from Quran. I published the book and Heidi Hardin arranged a Zoom meeting presentation about my book and invited pioneer Eco Artist Newton Harrison. I felt honored and was very grateful to learn that he has agreed to attend the Zoom meeting! I thanked Heidi Hardin for this great opportunity to join in conversation with Newton Harrison in this important talk “Women and Web of Life“.
After that first introduction and hearing his encouraging comments, I emailed him my thanks and mailed a copy of my book too. He replied “Very interesting talking with you. I think you have an opportunity to engage your whole country using the Quran’s environmental positions to support your own or what you discover.” He shared his work, and we continued our communications through emails. He kept encouraging me by saying Female empathy and compassion must advance to save all life on Earth. He related an inspiring story of Helen’s compassion and dedication. He offered me to participate in the exhibition Eco-art Work: 11 Artists from 8 Countries at Various Small Fires in Los Angeles which was a great honor for me. I was given another honor to attend his surprise 89th birthday party on November 20th, 2021 with his close friends and that day I told him that I would like to visit him and meet in person. After that, he tried to schedule the time for my visit on March 24th, 2022 and, unfortunately, the cancer diagnosis happened, and the situation changed. I treasure his last email dated 5/17 when he sent me the image of his last work with these words:
“Thanks for your concern and good wishes. My treatments for the cancer have slowed me down. They are radioactive with added chemo. The course of treatment should end in about 2 1/2 weeks, and about 2 weeks after that I might be civil. Don’t want to lose contact. Very much hope things work out with your work and our gallery. Give me a call in about a month and I’ll see if I can’t make an afternoon with you. I am attaching a draft of my most recent work where I briefly become the voice of the Lifeweb, perhaps channeling in such a way that some of the stuff that I said surprised me after the fact.”
All the best, warm regards,
Newton
I hear his voice when I read Channeling the Lifeweb again and again. The words echo in my mind every day and night. My work after our meeting in March 2021 is totally impacted by his teaching. I have followed all projects executed by Helen and Newton Harrison, in particular through their book The Time of the Force Majeure.
I have found myself immersed in research to gain deeper knowledge in science and faith to find remedies to save our planet and its ecosystems. I have found underground network of mycelia that is regenerating, activating, and healing the damaged state of our environment and invisible tiny benefactors Microbes who are an integral and essential part of the web of life. Bridging Science and Faith creates a visual discourse that bridges science, religion, Islamic diversity and diaspora, language engaged with the plight of humanity, the soul, and the soil. Now my artworks juxtapose the ecological phenomena of interconnectedness through mycelial flow with concepts from the Quran as expressed through Arabic calligraphy and Islamic patterns. The new series mirror contemporary issues with possible solutions based on science and spirituality expressed through moving lyrical lines.
Brandon Ballengée (American, born 1974) is a visual artist, biologist, and environmental educator based in Louisiana. Ballengée creates transdisciplinary artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research. Since 1996, a central investigation focus has been the occurrence of developmental deformities and population declines among amphibians and other ectothermic vertebrates.
They encouraged me for decades to continue, to go deeper into the research and ask the question ‘how big is here?’, then to follow fearlessly what I discovered.
Helen and Newton inspired me to open my mind to the possibilities of art moving beyond objects and ideas toward concrete actions that benefit communities ― ecological, biological, and social, and that connection of their special way of viewing challenges with systems thinking.
They also encouraged me for decades to continue, to go deeper into the research and ask the question ‘how big is here?’, then to follow fearlessly what I discovered. Along these lines, Newton encouraged the creation of Atelier de la Nature. Here in 2017, my wife, children, and I purchased heavily farmed land in rural Louisiana. Since this time, we have worked to regenerate the ecosystems from soybean and cane sugar fields into a nature reserve and eco-campus.
As a component of the restoration, Newton along with soil scientist Dr. Anna Paltseva have started a living artwork called Memory in the Life of a Cajun Prairie with the planting of 2.5 acres of native Louisiana “Cajun Prairie”. This type of prairie ecosystem is found nowhere else in the world and is considered an “endangered” habitat with less than 150 intact acres remaining today.
Memory in the Life of a Cajun Prairie is a living artwork that poses three questions. Is Cajun Prairie an effective means of sequestering carbon? As recent studies have shown prairie grasses work better than trees to sequester and store carbon in the soil. How do different types of disturbances affect biodiversity? There is a body of evidence that grazing and annual burning may change species interaction and diversity. Through this kind of collaborative art and science project, can we increase awareness? Can we inspire larger-scale Cajun Prairie habitat restoration?
Memory in the Life of a Cajun Prairie came about through discussions between Newton and me, and our desire to work together on something at the Atelier de la Nature. Between 2017 and 2021, the soil for Memory in the Life of a Cajun Prairie began to be worked by rebuilding topsoil and removal of nonnative species. In February 2022, we seeded over a dozen native prairie plants and took soil samples to record pre-prairie carbon levels. Over the next nine years, the plots of Memory in the Life of a Cajun Prairie will be experimented with by reseeding, carrying out various disturbances to monitor species diversity, and recording the effectivity of carbon sequestering.
Helen and Newton’s ideas will continue to bloom through Memory in the Life of a Cajun Prairie as well as in all of us they inspired so much.
Ruby (Ruthanna) Barnett, Studio Manager and Senior Researcher at the Harrison Studio and Center for the Study of the Force Majeure from 2017-2021. After earning her Ph.D. in Linguistics, she provided advocacy in housing and homelessness, debt, employment, and welfare. As a lawyer in Oxford, she specialized in immigration and human rights.
The Harrisons – Greater than the Sum of their Parts
The work of the Harrisons caused a shift that has enabled me to embrace complex systems in a more visceral, thorough way than in my previous work.
I worked with Newton from 2017 until 2021. In those first months, Helen visited the studio daily and I had the privilege of witnessing their deep love and tenderness. I traveled extensively with Newton and there is an inescapable intimacy accompanying a person in their 80s on long-distance travel. I prepared slides for talks, checked on his insulin supplies, laundered his clothes, drafted abstracts for conference proposals, and made sure his nose was moisturized.
Newton Harrison 11-1-19
Spending time immersed in the works of the Harrisons, as well as being part of the development of new works, has affected me deeply. My perception is forever changed. Newton liked to use Cezanne‘s Mont Sainte-Victoire series to speak on perspective but, for me, the work of the Harrisons caused a shift that has enabled me to embrace complex systems in a more visceral, thorough way than in my previous work. The form and non-form; the category of both-and; creating momentum, energy, from the oscillation between polarities. Understanding humanity as only one small part of the web of life, while at the same time comprehending the value of my own self-realization as an individual. The difficult and the charming. The tolerance and impatience. The compelling use of beautiful metaphor (“every place is the story of its own becoming”) contrasts with stark truths (“a tree farm is not a forest and tree farm floor is not a forest floor”). The duality is often shown as a conversation between elements—sometimes Newton and Helen themselves (Serpentine Lattice, Greenhouse Britain) or between others (the Lagoon Maker and the Witness in The Lagoon Cycle, the male and female voices in the Sacramento Meditations).
Inspiration for these arose from Helen and Newton’s ‘morning conversations’, developed after reading the Morning Notes of Adelbert Ames Jr., a scientist whose work was in vision and later in perception, developed a practice of setting a problem in his mind before bed, allowing his unconscious mind to work on it overnight and finding often that a solution had come to mind by morning. Helen and Newton experimented with this, conversing over coffee each morning to further elaborate ideas. In the later works, after Helen’s passing, Newton sought to call in her thinking, her voice, since they had actively worked to “teach each other to be each other” in the years prior, knowing that one may eventually be required to carry on the work alone.
The Harrisons knew that we can interfere, manage, or guide the life web only in limited aspects and that there may be unintended consequences. At the same time, choosing to take on the work, the only work of value in our urgent times, is balanced by knowing that all work addressing the continuing of the life web will by its nature be ennobling. It will change, benefit, and grow the one seeking to act. Helen and Newton’s fearless approach allowed them to face the stark reality of our likely future, and to plan pre-emptively, accepting some outcomes as inevitable. They maintained deep love, delight, and playfulness enabling them to model their vision and invite us to learn to “dance with the rising waters”. Helen and Newton’s lives and works embodied the whole being greater and other than the sum of its parts.
Barbara Benish is a California-born artist, who moved from Los Angeles to Prague in 1992 as a Fulbright scholar. She founded ArtMill (est.2004) in rural Bohemia, an international eco-art center. From 2010-2015 she served as Advisor for U.N.E.P. in Arts & Outreach, and since 2015 is a Fellow at the Social Practice Arts Research Center, (University of California, Santa Cruz).
Their understanding of the consequences of ‘framing’, of giving humans a vision of the earth’s crisis in a way that is not catastrophic but regenerative, was the Harrison’s gift to us.
Helen and Newton arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2009, the same time I did. When the mandatory faculty luncheon serendipitously had us seated next to one another on that warm fall day, overlooking the Monterey Bay, I felt elated to re-meet the pioneers of environmental art, surprised to find them in Northern California. It was an auspicious meeting, as I started a six-month Artist-in-Residence and teaching position at UCSC. We would become friends during that period, sharing Czech meals, (after learning of Helen’s Czech roots), but mainly talking about plants, rivers, maps, and things of the earth and sea. The Harrison’s were always willing to come to speak in my classes, generous with their time, and anxious to connect to the younger generation who would inherit the earth. They were natural teachers, both in and out of the classroom.
Helen and Newton Harrison with Barbara Benish
Their understanding of the consequences of ‘framing’, of giving humans a vision of the earth’s crisis in a way that is not catastrophic but regenerative, was the Harrison’s gift to us. Keenly aware of the connections of western capitalistic extraction, loss of natural resources, and culture, they kept the dialogue poetic and not didactic. During the times of Newton’s occasional amnesia towards female autonomy or ‘otherness’ in the room, Helen would gently, or forcefully, pull him back in. They were not a duet, but created a symphony between them, with their deep love and understanding of the natural world that was contagious.
Newton came to Prague at the invitation of our organization, ArtDialog, to lecture to several rapt audiences in 2019. We’d shown the Harrison’s work at our space, ArtMill in the Czech Republic, taught it in my lectures at the University, and skyped him in for Q and A’s over the years. He connected with my eldest daughter, Gabriela, who is now running our NGO, and listened to him talk since she was 13 years old. Over the past two years, ArtMill has been hoping to expand the Future Gardens project for Central Europe, working closely with Josh Harrison and the Center for the Force Majeure. Fittingly, the next generation will realize that dream.
Helen and Newton Harrison with Barbara Benish
The last visit with Newton, was on his porch in Santa Cruz, California, not far from our home here. It was summer and we were discussing our upcoming show at VSF in Los Angeles which he was curating. He would show his ‘obituary’ piece, an image of which he printed out on his xerox machine to show anyone stopping in. He knew he was dying, and yet still liked a good joke. When he called me to come over on the phone, he said “and bring me some of your cheesecake” (a forbidden treat due to his diabetes). When we talked about the plans for Future Gardens of Central Europe, which he originally wanted to name after Helen (Helenovice, “Helen’s Village”), home of her ancestors, he raised his hand for me to be quiet. “I’ll consult with the Life Web” …. and he closed his eyes. We were silent for many minutes, and it seemed the yarrow in the front yard was breathing with us. “Yes,” he smiled when he opened his twinkling eyes, “it will be good”.
Lewis Biggs is Distinguished Professor of Public Art at Shanghai University (since 2011), and an independent curator (Artranspennine 1998; Aichi Triennale 2013; Folkestone Triennial 2014, 2017, 2021; Land Art Mongolia 2018). He is also Chairman of the Institute for Public Art, a global network of researchers concerned with place creation through culture / art-led urbanism, and supporting the International Award for Public Art.
We were all impressed with the quality of the research that went into the production of the various maps, and how very thought-provoking their synthetic approach (art-science-text-image) could be. That for me is their significant legacy.
I first became aware of ‘the Harrisons’ as a result of the controversy sparked by their contribution commissioned for the exhibition 11 Los Angeles Artists at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1971. Chiefly I recall a curator for whom I had great respect remarking that the artists were ‘charlatans’, which struck me forcibly. Had I paid insufficient attention to my own (still very youthful) enthusiasms for art in deciding which people involved were charlatans and which were not? Where is the line between shaman and charlatan? What is the role of authenticity in art? Is acting an art form? Portable Fish Farm: Survival Piece #III elicited many reactions that were more extreme than ‘charlatan’, and so contributed to the considerable expansion of the frame of reference for art in the following 20 years.
So, when Robert Hopper, with whom I was curating Artranspennine98, suggested in 1996 that we commission Helen Mayer and Newton to contribute to our exhibition, I was delighted to agree. The exhibition invited its audience to travel across the North of England from coast to coast (Hull to Liverpool or vice versa) experiencing around 40 mainly newly commissioned / site-specific artworks or exhibitions in 30 different locations. It was an invitation to artists and audiences to engage with the history and geography of the birthplace of the industrial revolution, the place where the modern understanding and appreciation of ‘landscape’ was invented.
Helen Mayer and Newton were accommodated at Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool, where Bryan Biggs (no relation) the Director was a very welcoming collaborator and host. They were invited to collaborate with local people to explore the possibilities for regeneration in the area and to exhibit the resulting maps at the Bluecoat and on the internet. They proposed that all the rivers should be cleaned, and woods and meadows expanded. That the geological timescale of re-establishing flora and fauna to ‘health’ could be speeded up through better use of existing ‘wastes’ and spoil heaps. The project was titled Casting a Green Net: Can It Be We Are Seeing A Dragon? The image they found in the coast-to-coast map of the country showed the body of the dragon through the industrialised lower ground and valleys, the wings of the dragon in the Pennine hills.
I’m not sure what or whether they contributed to a shift toward social consciousness about the environment. I remember being impressed with how the artists would pounce on specific words that emerged in the public workshops and highlight them for further discussion. A process of simplification presumably resulting from their many years of practice with workshops and focus groups. Bryan remembers how they constantly bickered with each other, and I remember thinking that their approach was aggressively ‘direct’ in that un-English way. But we were all impressed with the quality of the research that went into the production of the various maps, and how very thought-provoking their synthetic approach (art-science-text-image) could be. That for me is their significant legacy, plus the fact that they were gifted communicators: I think of their Rorschach process to ‘discover’ iconic images from maps every time I’m faced by an artist who struggles to find an image or a metaphor that expresses their project.
The Collins + Goto Studio is known for long-term projects that involve socially engaged environmental art-led research and practices; with additional focus on empathic relationships with more-than-human others. Methods include deep mapping and deep dialogue.
Art and Change: The emerging social and ecological impetus
Artists have always critiqued and revealed belief systems, the program will teach artists to be effective agents of change. We seek to define the pedagogy of engagement.
A Dialogue from 2000 – with some edits and approval to publish from 2023.
Original Authors: Jackie Brookner, Parsons School of Design, New York Tim Collins and Reiko Goto STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University Newton Harrison, and Helen Mayer Harrison Emeriti, University of California, San Diego Ruth Wallen, Artist and biologist, San Diego Josh Harrison, Director, Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, UC Santa Cruz
In 2000, we were engaged with the Harrison’s traveling to their home in San Diego with some regularity. Everyone involved in this discussion was struggling with adjunct, temporary, and year-to-year academic contracts. The Harrison’s proposed a dialogue which we might use to shape our individual and collective futures.
Art and Change Pedagogy
Philosophy: Nature as model, as measure, as mentor
Foundation Concept: Symbiosis and the biological imperative
Program: Ecologically engaged, Politically engaged, Socially engaged.
Emerging Issues: The public realm (social and natural) is in need of interventionist care. The visual arts with a history of value based creative-cultural inquiry are best equipped to take on this role. The long term goal, is to develop a cultural discourse which will:
1. expand the social and aesthetic interest in public space to the entire citizen body,
2. re-awaken the skills and belief in qualitative analysis (versus professional-quantitative analysis), and
3. preach, teach, and disseminate the notion that everyone is an artist.
The Problems: Artists are unprepared to take a productive role in civic discourse. Students graduate without the tools and bridging experience to allow them to learn the languages and process in the areas of ecology, politics, and sociology, and are therefore unable to enter into effective creative communication.
While information technologies is a burgeoning area of technical expertise, theory, and expression in the university setting, the emerging biological revolution is all but abandoned to the sciences. There isn’t a single department in the country with a program area which addresses the changing meaning of nature, restoration ecology, and bio-technology.
The traditional subject matter of art as well as the teaching methods taught in US art schools need an additional layering of information and training to expand the efficacy of an artists voice into these complex realms. Artists have always critiqued and revealed belief systems, the program will teach artists to be effective agents of change. We seek to define the pedagogy of engagement.
An Eco-Cultural Engaged Art: We propose a rigorous program of engagement training, providing artists with the theoretical and practical skills allowing them to productively engage the civic realms of politics and society with a primary focus on ecology/biology. In affect, we seek to transfer the language and skills which will allow artists to engage their colleagues in the professions of planning, design, and policy with equity and efficacy. Furthermore, to meet the challenges of a public realm increasingly challenged by private interests and legacy impact, the position of the artist will be defined in relationship to civic discourse rather than primary authorship.
The proposal includes a Graduate Major structure, an Undergraduate Minor/Concentration and a University Level Interdepartmental Credit Foundation Course. This was classic Newton, as he thought through the economics and the progression of creative/intellectual development which would be necessary for this new course of study. We can ‘hear’ both Helen and Newton’s voices throughout this proposal. We can also feel the love and care they put into this.
Janeil Engelstad is the Managing Director of the Global Innovation and Design Lab and an Embedded Artist and Lecturer at University of Washington, Tacoma. The Founding Director of Make Art with Purpose, Engelstad produces Social Practice projects that address social and environmental concerns around the world.
Helen and Newton Harrison: Re-imagining the Context of Art
At the center of their work was love and perhaps this is the greatest legacy that the Harrisons leave.
The following text recounts one of many experiences I had with Newton and Helen Harrison, as well as a sketch of their creative process. The Japanese term, kenzoku, which literally means family and the presence of the deepest connection, expresses our relationship and exchange.
In October 2016, Newton Harrison came to Seattle to participate in 9e2 Seattle (9e2), a festival that marked the 50th anniversary of 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering (9 Evenings). Produced by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver, the original 9 Evenings was the first of several art and technology projects that would evolve into the non-profit group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). 9 evenings consisted of hybrid art performances and video, created by ten recognized artists working with some 30 engineers from Bell Labs performed at the New York City 69th Regiment Armory, from October 13 – 23, 1966. The performances were as much about the new technologies the artists employed to realize their work as the themes being explored.i In contrast, 9e2 examined contemporary themes impacting the way people experience life on Earth, such as climate change, AI, and social justice.
Conceived and produced by Seattle writer and cultural producer John Boylan, 9e2 was organized by a curatorial team from the arts and technology fields. Boylan’s purpose was three-fold: to teach and inform (the history of 9 Evenings was little known among the local tech and creative communities); to build connections between local, national, and international artists and technologists; and to explore ideas about how artists, technologists, and other creatives function in the world. “Underpinning this purpose,” Boylan recalled “were the questions: What are you doing? Why are doing it? How are you doing it and, to an extent, what does new art mean?”ii
As a member of the 9e2 curatorial team, I organized a handful of projects and programs, including a conversation with Newton. He was thrilled to participate, for this was an occasion for him to publicly reflect on his conversations with Billy Klüver around the time that E.A.T. was being organized.iii “He had it all wrong,” Newton recounted, “and I told him thus: artists and engineers should not be focused on creative experiments exploring the impact of technology on the individual and society. Rather they should focus on how technology can be of service to ecology and the planet.”iv The growing impact of climate change, Newton believed, had proved the relevance of the environmentally focused work he had produced with his wife and creative partner, Helen Mayer Harrison and the misdirection of Klüver’s focus.v Additionally, Newton appreciated that the larger purpose of 9e2 connected to the Harrisons’ inquiry into the meaning of art and art making in the latter half of the 20th century, as the impact of commerce, industry, and development on the Earth’s eco-systems were becoming more and more evident.
Throughout their careers, Helen and Newton cultivated a wide creative and scientific community and I would wager that almost everyone in this community could tell dozens of anecdotes like the one I shared about 9e2. Long-time academics, Helen and Newton naturally imparted their experiences, ideas, and wisdom through storytelling and conversation. They were also skilled at asking questions that moved and transformed ideas and thinking into deeper reflection and expanded consciousness.
At the forefront of environmental art and interdisciplinary, collaborative design and production, the Harrisons imagined and were utilizing design thinking before companies like Ideo and Stanford’s d.school brought the process into the mainstream. Making Earth, Then Making Strawberry Jam (1969-1970) begins with Newton’s growing ecological awareness and empathy for earth. Through his research, Newton learned that “the topsoil was in danger in many places in the world. So, I took the decision to make earth . . .,” he wrote about the project.vi
The Harrisons would invest months and sometimes years in the empathy phase of their projects. Researching and meeting with people who had expertise in the history, ecology, and politics of the place and/or problem that a project might address. They sought information and expertise from noted professionals, as well as people on the edges of mainstream thinking and from Indigenous people before it was politically correct to do so. Practicing deep listening, they had conversations with the Earth itself. Then, they would define problems in poetic texts that framed their initial research into inquiries, conversations, wonderings, and proposals, which they sometimes called think pieces, such as Tibet is the High Ground:
Thinking about the greening of Tibet approximately 772,000 square miles
Which is eighty percent of the 965,255-square-mile Tibetan Plateau
We imagined a domain that was about eighty percent savannah
And twenty percent open canopy forest
For a productive, self-sustaining & complicating landscape to develop
Bold experimentation becomes an absolute requirement
For instance with glaciers retreating
We imagined assisting the migration not so much of species
But of species ensembles that form the basis
For a succession ecosystem to form
That follows glaciers uphill
We then imagined a water-holding landscape
Where terrain was appropriate
And subtly terraformed so that rains
Stayed on the lands on which they fell
In order to locate species groupings
that would form the basis for generating
a uniquely functional future landscape
Where harvesting preserved the systems
Also, drawing botanical information from the recent Pliocene
When the weather was the same
As that predicated in the near future
Taking on the problem of inventing an edible landscape
Which will be self-seeding and perennial
A landscape unique in its food-producing qualities
As the harvest preserves the system
And this kind of designing as endlessly repeatable
A green plateau can sequester 3 gigatons of carbon a decade
Tibet is the High Ground, 2005vii
Rich with ideas, metaphors and instructions, Helen and Newton’s texts offer tutelage in communion; setting out on a course of action; prototyping, testing, then putting into place projects around the world; a handful that will continue well into this century.
At the center of their work was love and perhaps this is the greatest legacy that the Harrisons leave. Love of life, love of each other, love of people, and love of the planet. This value fueled courage and gave them the freedom to let go, experiment, and knowingly create work that would come to fruition after they passed. This letting go of ego, creating work where Earth was the client, was critical for the Harrisons and should be for all of us who wish to advance solutions that lessen the impacts of climate change and improve life for humanity and the planet.
* * *
i While a few performances, such as Robert Rauschenberg’s Open Score, were an indirect commentary on contemporary issues such as the Vietnam War, Klüver did not position his curatorial work on the impact of technology on society until the organization of E.A.T. About 9 Evenings he wrote: “It is important to realize (understand) that 9 Evenings was a realistic event. It wanted to achieve very specific practical and social goals. Its development was coincident in time with the spreading mysticism about technology, the McLuhan concept that the communication means were extensions of the body, the psychedelic experience as an element of art! 9 Evenings was none of that. (The artists and the engineers) were rigorous, energetic, and authoritarian and would demand completely controlled situations. That the forces behind 9 Evenings should have converged at that time, must have been separate from political developments of the global art, psychedelic kind of situation.” (foundationlanglois.org)
ii J. Boylan, personal communication, February 2023.
iii One of E.A.T.’s first activities was to organize loose, international groups of artists and engineers, by geography, to potentially collaborate with each other. Newton was an early member of the United States’ West Coast group.
iv N. Harrison, personal and public communication, October 2016.
v N. Harrison, personal and public communication, October 2016.
vi Harrison, Helen Mayer & Harrison, Newton. (2016). The Time of the Force Majeure. Munich, Germany: Prestal
vii Center for the Study of the Force Majeure. (2018). The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure. [Pamphlet]. Center for the Study of the Force Majeure.
Les Firbank is a British ecologist specialising in the sustainable management of land, with a particular focus on European agriculture. He collaborated with the Harrison while working at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and then at North Wake Research, both in England. He has recently retired from his chair in sustainable agriculture at the University of Leeds, and is a member of the European Food Safety Authority panel on genetically modified organisms.
Our art/science dynamic was based on mutual respect and talking through different approaches to common questions, rather than the more usual multidisciplinary approach of artists seeking to illustrate the science.
For me, it was about the process and not the product, it was about the collaboration and not the outcome. I’m a professional ecologist (now retired) and first came across Helen and Newton when one of their helpers phoned me up one Friday afternoon to ask for access to some landscape data I had access to. If I had been busier, or if it had been another time of the week, I would have pointed her to our website and left it that. But I was intrigued, Why did you want them? She didn’t know but would get the project leader to call back. Newton called from Manchester and explained they were mapping the north of England. Quite why a Californian artist duo wanted to map England from a base in Manchester baffled me, so I went down to meet them and their team. They were working on the ArtTranspennine98 piece entitled Casting a Green Net: Can it be we are seeing a Dragon? piece, re-imagining the area between Liverpool and Hull. The eventual outcome was a series of hand-coloured large-scale maps of the region. Each showed a different aspect of the area, one with planned housing developments, one with nature areas, and so on. I wasn’t too impressed until I went to the exhibit, and watched people react to the work. They moved in closer and back out, walking from map to map, getting a sense of their area and what was nearby. It was like a GIS but required physical interaction and engagement. For me, the work was the fun. I met with people from the industry, regulators, and the arts, but unlike in most of my meetings, people were able to be open and honest about their thoughts, as it was ‘only’ an arts project. This allowed a level of communication not possible in more formal settings, where the participants have their ‘party lines’ to protect. Communities of practice were set up that persisted long after the project ended.
Gabriel, Helen Meyer, and Newton Harrison on Dartmoor, 2007. Photo by Les Firbank (copyright L. Firbank)
I worked with them again when I moved to Devon in 2007, where with David Haley we started a pilot project to design a sustainable village in the area. We set up a week-long workshop based in an agro-ecological research station in the region, enlisted an environmental GIS specialist Bruce Griffith, and set about our work. We made a good start to the work but, for various reasons, it did not really develop. The story can be found in a book chapter we wrote ‘A story of becoming: landscape creation through an art/science dynamic’ (Firbank, Harrison, Harrison, Haley, and Griffith. In Lobley and Winter (eds)2009, What is land for? Taylor and Francis). Again, the pleasure was the discussions that addressed key questions which academics tended to shy away from, they were too broad. What do we mean by sustainability? How much carbon should one household have access to? Do we need livestock (yes!)? Was this really art? Before I had met the Harrisons I would have said no, this was ecology. But they taught me that anyone has the right to ask these questions and to seek and present answers, framed as they see fit. I framed my work in scientific papers, they used works of art. I used statistical tables; they used poetry and images. They are complementary, reaching different people.
Our art/science dynamic was based on mutual respect and talking through different approaches to common questions, rather than the more usual multidisciplinary approach of artists seeking to illustrate the science. Such questions have since become more widely asked, but tend to be answered too quickly, lacking in rigor. But I have tried to retain this questioning attitude and to pass it on to my students.
Dr. Cathy Fitzgerald, Founder-Director of the global online HAUMEA ECOVERSITY. Empowering creative, cultural, and business professionals for wise, compassionate, and beautiful creativity.
Consultant, international speaker, advisor, and mentor on ecoliteracy & accredited ESD transformative learning Earth Charter educator and Research Fellow on Art & Ecology for the Burren College of Art.
For me, this is the most profound legacy of the Harrisons’ work – understanding how creativity is an essential driver for holistic ecopedagogy across all education.
Helen and Newton Harrison’s work has powerfully influenced my thinking and creative practice since the late 90s. I still clearly remember the afternoon coming across a summary journal article about their work in the library of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland. I recall feeling intense relief at finding a comprehensive articulation of the multi-constituent aspects of ecological art practice and over time it shone a light on a path for me to develop similar creative ecological endeavours. The Harrisons’ reflections on their dialogical, participatory, question-led practices helped me understand why integrated, more holistic practices are a radical departure from the conventions of modern art, and why they have the social power to inspire people to live well for place and planet. Today, largely inspired by the Harrisons’ practice over many decades, I would argue ecological insights must inform and guide creative practice—and all our activities—for personal, collective, planetary, and intergenerational well-being.
However, with little college or peer support, my progress to develop and articulate a similar practice to the Harrisons was very slow. Around the late 90s, I was also reading art critic Suzi Gablik’s Re-enchantment of Art and Conversations Before the End of Time. For many years afterwards, I was mystified why the Harrisons’ and Gablik’s work was rarely discussed in my undergraduate or postgraduate art studies, or even during doctoral research that I completed in 2018. Looking back, I believe I came to this topic earlier than most because I had previously worked in science and environmental advocacy. It also took me time to appreciate that illiteracy around ecological understanding, common in current art education, profoundly precludes many from understanding the gravity of humanity’s predicament, and correspondingly why ecological insights insist on a paradigm shift in contemporary art and the dominant culture as a whole.
My difficulties to develop an ecological art practice continued through my doctoral studies; I found it difficult to push past artistic conventions and disinterest that the ecological emergency was a crisis of the dominant culture. Even with my background in science, I had to persist to explain my audacity to explore creative practices that crossed disciplinary boundaries and lifeworld experience. Here the published journal articles on the validity and importance of the Harrisons’ pioneering prescient practice, with others following in similar ways, literally gave me permission to continue my practice and research. I will always be grateful, remembering a particularly difficult time around 2011 when I was considering abandoning my doctoral studies, when Helen and Newton wrote to me out of the blue ‘Dear Cathy, from our perspective, very good work!’
Professor emeritus Newton Harrison with Dr Cathy Fitzgerald in San Deigo, in March 2022. Newton invited Cathy to share her research on the relevance of the Harrisons’ ecological art practice for emergent holistic sustainability education at his workshop for The Web of Life
Today, I feel the relevance of the Harrisons’ work is stronger than ever. I can also confirm that the importance of their journey to develop and articulate ecological practice extends beyond the contemporary art world to contribute to envisioning best practices in broader sustainability education. These realisations arose recently after an unexpected opportunity to learn with leading international sustainability educators at Earth Charter International, which hosts the UNESCO Chair of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Looking at their key research insights of emergent holistic education for sustainability —integrated approaches to advance wisdom on how we must live well with others and the wider Earth community— I realise that the Harrisons’ real-world ecological art practices, facilitating communities to creatively question and embrace many ways of knowing, exemplify developed participatory, multiconstituent ecopedagogy. Additionally, the Harrisons provide much insight to sustainability educators on how creative practices, in particular, are essential to make sustainability learning inclusive and inspiring to diverse communities. As our society and the art world becomes more ecoliterate, I believe the Harrisons’ (and similar creative-led ecological practices) leadership will be more appreciated. For me, this is the most profound legacy of the Harrisons’ work – understanding how creativity is an essential driver for holistic ecopedagogy across all education.
Johan Gielis (1962-) is a Belgian mathematician-biologist, originally trained in horticultural engineering and landscaping. He has worked in plant biotechnology for over 25 years, with special focus on mass propagation and molecular and physiological aspects of tropical and temperate bamboos. In 1997 he discovered the Superformula, based on observations in bamboo.
What matters is not the individual forms, but how they are connected. Newton’s specific question was whether this would also teach us about ecosystems and continuity. He challenged and inspired me to look more deeply and broadly at ecosystems and our planet.
My time with Newton Harrison was brief but intense. He had learned of my unified description of natural forms and phenomena and contacted me on December 28, 2021. As an artist, he had worked with Feynman, Murray Gell-Man, and Bohm, so I was surprised that he approached me, a biologist. Initially, he invited me to review his new work in progress Sensorium but, in our email correspondence, we also tried to find common ground (which we both expected might take months or years).
My work, which has its origins in botany, shows that shapes as diverse as starfish, flowers, squares, and cacti, the shape of atomic nuclei, and even our universe itself can be encoded in a geometric transformation called Superformula. So far, we have studied over 40000 individual biological samples, all of which are described by the Superformula; interestingly we found no circles or straight lines, the basic tools of our sciences. Our methods have now become a complete scientific methodology, with surprising new insights into how nature works and speaks to us. The attraction of the Superformula may lie in humanity’s need for a unified and continuous approach to life, nature, and our universe, as opposed to the discrete, random nature of our scientific worldviews.
What matters is not the individual forms, but how they are connected. Newton’s specific question was whether this would also teach us about ecosystems and continuity (he did not think the term sustainability should be used). He challenged and inspired me to look more deeply and broadly at ecosystems and our planet. How can we use these insights to “reshape and redirect the suicidal and ecocidal direction in which our Western civilization has taken us,” as Newton put it.
This is the direction I am currently pursuing with my mathematical friends. It is indeed possible to describe complete systems. The heart, once thought to be a pump, turns out to be a simple helical structure. Furthermore, the entire circulatory system combines the functions of transport with those of exchange, switching between a cylinder (for transporting blood) and a Möbius strip, a one-sided body for exchanging oxygen in the lungs and cells. These models should also work for ecosystems, translating holistic views into precise mathematics, as a language for the sciences and, he hoped, for the web of life.
Like nature, science is a never-ending endeavour, and what is cutting-edge today will be fossilized in the not-too-distant future. The Superformula is seen by many as the linchpin in this evolution. Another realization is that mathematics in its current state is a poor substitute for our deep knowledge. Mathematics is known as the language of science, the science of patterns. It is bad because it fails, as I call it, in its task of describing both patterns and the individual. With the Superformula, we can now study both the general and the particular, and link the discrete and the continuous.
After the publication of my article in the American Journal of Botany, many were excited by the idea of a unified description of the large and the small. This happened earlier in the sciences when the work of Kepler and Galilei inspired Isaac Newton to develop his System of the World half a century later. The American Mathematical Society wrote: “A botanical Kepler waiting for his Newton.”
How fortuitous it then was when Newton H. contacted me. It was not the Newton who would develop an updated world system or theory of everything based on my work. Instead, I got the opportunity to know Newton Harrison, a great artist and human being. However brief, our communication left a deep impression and will continue to be an important inspiration for my work in the sciences.
Goto employs an experimental practice of empathic exchange with people, places, and things. She earned her PhD in Ecology and Environmental Art in Public Places in 2012. Collins is driven by the pursuit of transformative experiences and ideas that can empower people, places and things. He received his PhD in Art, Ecology, and Planning in 2007.
Through this conversation I have learned three things: 1) metaphor can be physical, 2) physical metaphor can be dysfunctional, and 3) a metaphorical flip informs how we understand a functional metaphor.
During my Ph.D., I interviewed Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison Bristol, 2008. The text below is a segment of the conversation.
Helen Harrison: Our normative cultural behaviour, and then you see if there is some way that you can reverse it. When people see the flip, and the reverse, they understand.
Newton Harrison: Let me give you an example. Flood control is a metaphor. Now, what is flood control? Flood control is defined by dams and dikes that hold the river, keep it from flooding and wrecking a town. But the dikes also destroy the river.
Helen Harrison: Flood control is also the destruction of flood plains. Flood plains are meant to be flooding.
Newton Harrison: And the destruction of river life – a lot of destruction in that metaphor. If you flip the metaphor, flood control is the spreading of waters – then you give me the twenty million dollars that you were going to put in the dikes; I will go and buy land above; and a whole load of design will happen which we call ecological design.
Helen Harrison: We will return the flood plain to the river. We will have removed …
Newton Harrison: Reiko is not understanding how one got to begin at the beginning again.
Reiko Goto: Hey, dikes are not metaphor – they are real structures!
(Goto Collins, 2012, p.70).
Through this conversation I have learned three things: 1) metaphor can be physical, 2) physical metaphor can be dysfunctional, and 3) a metaphorical flip informs how we understand a functional metaphor. A metaphorical flip’ is like ‘light and shadow’, ‘pull and resistance’, and ‘joy and sorrow’. It reveals or creates a dual reality.
A dual reality is not imagination, it is also found in the natural environment. For example, Caledonian pine, known as Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), grows differently in different environments. In forest plantations the competition makes them grow tall and straight.
In open areas, the branches spread out to catch more sunlight.
Both natural events and human actions affect the shape of the tree. The dual reality of the pine tree has two different values: straight-utilitarian value and curvilinear-aesthetic value. Understanding two different values of Caledonian pine can give us choices in how we relate with the tree.
Image left: A small pine forest near Applecross, Scotland. Digital image: Collins + Goto Studio, 2012. Image right: A Caledonian pine in Black Wood of Rannoch, Scotland. Digital image: Collins + Goto Studio, 2013.
Terike Haapoja is a visual artist based in New York. Haapoja’s work investigates the existential and political boundaries of our world, with a specific focus on issues arising from the anthropocentric world view of Western traditions. Animality, multispecies politics, cohabitation, time, loss, and repairing connections are recurring themes in Haapoja’s work.
For Newton, this kind of awakening had happened early in life, when he was driving along a highway in California, seeing the broken landscapes under constant, violent human excavation. Suddenly, he said, he could hear the earth screaming.
Like many, I was introduced to Helen and Newton Harrison’s work in art school. In the early 2000s, when I studied, ecology wasn’t yet trending, and their work seemed like fresh air for someone like me who felt that the most urgent question in the world, the environmental crises, was surrounded by a numbing silence. My own work, however, was video-based and centered on the figure of the animal, and while our works sometimes ended in the same shows, we never met in person.
Then, on one dark evening in 2019, I saw a message request on Facebook, and when I clicked on it I found a message from the legendary Newton Harrison. He had encountered one of my works somewhere and wished to connect. I was delighted and honoured, and we started an exchange that evolved into emails and Zoom calls and lasted until his passing.
One of the first works he sent me was a meditation on sea ecologies called Apologia Mediterraneo. The ten-minute video combines found footage and Newton’s voice-over, reciting a poetic letter addressing the sea and the troubles and pains it has to endure. Newton’s voice radiates empathy and solidarity with the Mediterranean Sea, and this empathy towards and solidarity with the more-than-human world always characterised his attitude and our discussions. He would passionately side with the web of life in our conversations on environmental justice: he wanted to be responsible and accountable to it directly, not to a human political system that represented a species he called ”an ungovernable exotic” that always hoarded resources to ”the human reproductive machine”.
We discussed empathy and what awakens it in people. We agreed that it had to be an embodied, particular experience because one can not convince another to feel for an animal, or an earthworm, or earth itself by rational arguments. For Newton, this kind of awakening had happened early in life, when he was driving along a highway in California, seeing the broken landscapes under constant, violent human excavation. Suddenly, he said, he could hear the earth screaming. From then on, earth was someone, not something.
He talked about his career becoming huge at the age of 88. There was no sign of slowing down, on the contrary: he didn’t want to make compromises or to scale his ideas down, but for the world to change, and his work to become more than a representation of what life on earth could be. He wanted it to be the real thing. Helen’s Town, a homage to Helen in the form of an eco-village with a production timeline of hundreds of years (because that’s how long it takes for trees to grow) was a serious dream and his frustration with curators who instead wanted something gallery size was palpable.
In 2020, when the pandemic had locked all of us in, I invited him to contribute a dialogue with me to a small exhibition I made about art, love, and relationality. My premise was that as artists our practice is always impacted by the relations that carry us, and our muses, whether they are human or more-than-human. In our dialogue he talked about his lifelong work with Helen and their mutual excitement towards their work and life together, and how it was her who had initially led them to the question of climate change. And how everything that he did was and would be informed by her and their work together, and how her perspective still acts as a moral compass to Newton. Because, he said, ”Helen had the best ethical sense of anybody I ever met in my life, with one exception: Eleanor Roosevelt. So I put the bar high.”
I remain grateful for that Facebook message and that I had the honor of befriending this pioneering ecological thinker for these last years. In an email on the 10th of March, 2020, Newton wrote: “If possible I would love to democratize a little bit of hope in what
appears to be an ongoing and increasingly intense array of
catastrophes.”
David makes art with ecology, to inquire and learn. He researches, publishes, and works internationally with ecosystems and their inhabitants, using images, poetic texts, walking and sculptural installations to generate dialogues that question climate change, species extinction, urban development, the nature of water transdisciplinarity and ecopedagogy for ‘capable futures’.
Through working, touring, and engaging with Helen and Newton, my ecological arts practice continues to be found and like them, I hope to enable others to seek their ecological arts practices.
Seeking An Ecological Arts Practice
Seeking an ecological arts practice, my Masters in Art As Environment course at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) concluded in 1996 with an invitation to project manage and lead the research for Helen and Newton’s Artranspennine98[1] project, Casting A Green Net: Can It Be We Are Seeing A Dragon? The project gave me the opportunity to develop arts-led, practice-based processes of research that opened new ways of questioning the Countryside Information System of The Institute of Terrestrial Ecology[2], and led to my Ph.D.. Mapping the ecosystems of Northern England became a ‘whole systems inquiry’ that included the environmental terrain, agricultural, cultural, and economic contexts, as well as the map-makers intentions. Satellite and field study data was supplemented by many car journeys back and forth, between Liverpool to Hull, to see the terrain and talk with many people from different disciplines and walks of life. Thanks to Professor John Hyatt, the project itself and the production of the six large maps was based at MMU’s Department of Fine Arts. We had regular ‘Open Studio’ events to generate conversations with academic, industry, and civic experts, and arts and design students.
Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison giving the keynote lecture at Evolving the Future conference, Shrewsbury, 2005. Photo: D. Haley
The exhibition opened at Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, and in 2000, thanks to Richard Scott of the National Wildflower Centre, was shown at the Society for Ecological Restoration’s (SER) first World Conference, at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. The Harrisons gave a keynote presentation with the work, in the hotel’s capacious lobby. My relationship with SER, as Ecoart Symposium Coordinator/Chair culminated with their World Conference in Manchester in 2015.
In 2005, I was commissioned to curate Evolving the Future, an international three-day conference as part of the Charles Darwin bicentennial celebrations in Shrewsbury. At the end of The Harrisons’ closing keynote lecture, I invited them to consider a project that would focus on mainland Britain as one ecosystem under stress from climate change. We toured the length and breadth of Britain, for a year, meeting many people, to develop a project proposal for potential funders. Finally, Chris Fremantle made a successful application to Defra UK[3], as the Harrisons and I flew to Budapest for a conference. We appointed Chris as Producer and I became Associate Artist. Gabriel Harrison designed and produced the exhibition and the project became Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom. It toured six UK venues (2007-2008) and several in the USA (2009-2010), before becoming integrated into the Harrisons’ Force Majeure (2010) works.
At one point, Defra nearly withdrew Greenhouse Britain’s funding, as they perceived the work to have exceeded the Government’s climate change remit of ‘raising awareness’ to include ‘behaviour change’. We renegotiated the terms of the project to comply with the restrictions, letting the poetics carry the impact further. Meanwhile, a friend from Casting A Green Net, Professor Tony Bradshaw, called me one evening, concerning sea level rise mitigation: “…, but the Environment Agency are developing plans for managed retreat.” I explained that ‘managed retreat’ used engineering and military metaphors, while the Harrisons had coined the phrase, ‘graceful withdrawal’ – metaphors of becoming and acquiescence. And this insight chimed with the Tai Chi concept of ‘yielding’ that has grown through my practice – Yield: give way to gain (Haley 2018). Greenhouse Britain also contained several sub-projects and initiatives including, ecological development of the Lea River Valley, a charrette with Professor Paul Selman’s landscape research students at the University of Sheffield, flood strategies for the River Avon and the River Thames; and opportunities for contained ecological housing/food production to protect the headwaters of all the rivers rising in the Pennines. However, the final UK exhibition at London’s City Hall (2008) met with resistance from the incoming new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who saw our work as challenging his proposed Tilbury desalination plant. After a week’s stand-off, Boris Johnson backed down when he realised that the Guardian newspaper was writing an article that depicted his first act as Mayor being the banning of an ecological arts exhibition that offered opportunities to save the Capital from sea level rise.
Helen Mayer Harrison & Newton Harrison: Pendle Valley, researching Greenhouse Britain 2007. Photo D. Haley
Through 2007, while working on Greenhouse Britain, the Harrisons and I toured Taiwan to develop the unrealised Greenhouse Taiwan. However, as we toured, we developed the idea of ‘Post-disciplinarity’ ― around a roundtable, all the disciplines sit with equal status while maintaining the integrity of their discipline. Then, the most urgent problem/question of the day is placed at the centre of the table for all to address, together.
We didn’t always agree. And that was one of the ways we learned from each other. They didn’t always agree. And that was one of the ways they learned from each other. Through working, touring, and engaging with Helen and Newton, my ecological arts practice continues to be found and like them, I hope to enable others to seek their ecological arts practices.
References
Firbank, L. Harrison, H. M., Harrison, N., Haley, D. Griffith, B. 2009. A Story Of Becoming: Landscape Creation Through An Art/Science Dynamic in eds. Winter, M. & Loby, M. What is Land for? The Food, Fuel and Climate Change Debate. Earthscan, London.
Haley, D. 2018 Art as destruction: an inquiry into creation, in ed. Reiss, J. Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene. Vernon Press, Wilmington Delaware, and Malaga, Spain.
[1] Artranspennine98 was an initiative between Tate Liverpool and the Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, to create a corridor of artworks between the two cities. The Harrison saw the ecological opportunity of ‘rhyming the Humber and Mersey estuaries.
[2] The Institute of Terestrial Ecology merged with other environmental research agencies to become the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
[3] Defra UK is HM Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
John Hyatt is a painter, digital artist, video artist, photographer, designer, musician, printmaker, author and sculptor.
As an artist, Hyatt has exhibited in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Portugal, Japan, the UK and the USA. He has a long and varied career and involvement in cultural practices, pedagogy, industry, urban regeneration, and communities. A transdisciplinary theorist, he is a polymath with an interest in arts and sciences.
I was interested, amongst other things, in how they kept all parties engaged, brought them together, and kept them involved: the creation of an ecology of collaboration.
In 1997, I was Head of Department and Professor of Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University. I arranged for the Art School to host Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison whilst they were making work for Art Transpennine ’98, a large exhibition across the Northwest of England, curated by Lewis Biggs, Director of Tate Liverpool, and Robert Hopper, Director of the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust in Leeds. I had worked with Lewis previously when, as an artist, I made a large eco-art, climate change installation for New North at the Tate in 1990 and with Robert when I was Henry Moore Printmaking Research Fellow at Leeds Polytechnic 1988/89. Art Transpennine ’98 spanned the M62 corridor: a development zone identified by the EU, which morphed into later development notions, such as The Northern Powerhouse.
The Harrisons worked with us for some months. They used the school as a central space for a region-wide investigation, inviting all sorts of experts to collaborate and contribute to an evolving, largely unspecified ecological art/science inquiry. I was interested, amongst other things, in how they kept all parties engaged, brought them together, and kept them involved: the creation of an ecology of collaboration.
I assigned an eco-art Ph.D. student of mine, David Haley, to look after the Harrisons’ needs and to interface with the participating students. The project began with drawing practice. Drawing is a research methodology common to both art and science. Large O/S maps of the area were coloured and re-drawn with the assistance of MA Art as Environment students. The colouring in was to change the emphases of the maps. For example, one map was altered to show only water and watercourses. Through this process, a second stage emerged. The shape of the geographic area of inquiry was made visible and I remember Newton, in front of a wall-sized altered map in the Holden Gallery, chatting with me about whether we were “witnessing a Green Dragon”. The maps created a place where the question could be legitimately asked. They became scenery for an enactment of dialogue. This new, greener dragon flew to the north of the territory of the Welsh Red Dragon. It was anchored in and extended historic cultural narratives. These early stages evolved into the final project title, still interrogative – Casting a Green Net: Can it be we are seeing a Dragon?
The primary drawing stage can be interpreted as ‘Casting a Green Net’. The image of the net came from Helen. She imagined a giant standing at the mouth of the Mersey throwing a fishing net across the Northwest. I always presumed the net was a philosopher’s net made of curiosity.
Illustration by John Hyatt
The second part of the title, ‘Can it be…’ sets up an open invitation to create with no right or wrong answer: a new receptacle. ‘we are seeing…’ invokes a communal act of perception. ‘… a Dragon?’ makes a metaphorical transference of map shape to mythic beast and is pure art, disarmingly naïve seeming, that invites multiple perspectival input from wherever it may derive art or science. It does not require a subject expertise to engage. It is available to children or adults, amateur or expert. The title question created and still creates a level playing field for access to the project.
I just want to dwell on this naming of the project out of these fundamental stages. It seems like a simple thing and so it is. It is also incredibly sophisticated and complex. What this question did going forward was act as a ‘strange attractor’ in the sense of how the term is used in Chaos Mathematics. A ‘strange attractor’ is a simple equation or fractal set that is a root for a complex structure and the pattern of behaviour of a whole (eco) system. Here, there are characteristics of the solution/response already carefully embedded in factors of the equation/question: greenness, community, imagination, and power. The imagist, folkloric question, ‘Casting a Green Net: Can it be we are seeing a Dragon?’, was an auto-generative, immaterial centre around which the fields of inquiry could find their overlapping shape determined by greenness, community, imagination, and power.
I have taken this experience into my own practice. For example, the regeneration of a derelict district of Liverpool by re-drawing it and naming it the Fabric District, emerging from its history, and organising an art/science festival in 2018 for the new District around an open non-intellectual/intellectual concept, Time Tunnel 1968-2018, asking, in a city known for its history of cultural radicalism, What has happened since May 1968?
Looking back down my own time tunnel, I remember the Harrisons with affection and respect.
Since 1984 work as art historian (PhD) and editor for various publishing houses and museums, among others, as deputy director of the German Bundeskunsthalle (Federal Hall of Fine Arts); responsible management of numerous international projects; since 2001 development of concepts, project management, budgeting, editing, design and production of exhibitions and books for public and private institutions worldwide together with Kai Reschke.
From the very first moment the two of us met with Helen and Newton, we were convinced of their ways to work, and felt it to be very similar to the way we wanted ― and finally achieved ― to work.
Having known, been friends, and worked with the Harrisons for almost 30 years, we discussed, developed, and implemented many projects with them ― exhibitions as well as books: The most important one was probably The Time of the Force Majeure: After 45 Years Counterforce is on the Horizon, a comprehensive retrospective of Helen Mayer Harrisons and Newton Harrisons work (published in 2016).
Wedding ceremony in San Diego: Kai & Petra and their witnesses Helen & Newton, Nov. 7, 2001
Thereafter, we took part in the activities of the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, joined the board of directors, and founded a European branch of the center.
Newton & Kai on board the historic sailing vessel »Stella« working on the Sensorium project, June 23, 2019Newton & Petra in Santa Monica, in the background the Harrison’s piece »The California Wash – Terminus of Pico Boulevard at the Santa Monica Promenade (1988), Dec. 29, 2019
I, Petra, had the pleasure to meet Helen and Newton in 1994, when they designed ― together with their son Gabriel Harrison ― the initial Future Garden project Endangered Meadows of Europe.
The exhibition opened in 1996 on the rooftop of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. As a leading member of the museum’s team, I had the privilege to accompany the process of developing this highly complex project from the very beginning up to its realization and the successive projects that derived from it.
To me, this work seems programmatic for Helen’s and Newton’s systematic approach, and it opened my eyes to the complexity and understanding of ecological systems:
Since an increasing number of agricultural areas are being maximized with regard to productivity or turned into building sites, meadows are one of the most endangered biotopes. A 400-year-old meadow from the Eifel area, which would have otherwise been destroyed, was rolled up, transported to Bonn, and unrolled on the museum’s roof. Collectively, the meadow contained 164 species of plants, among them several from the red list of endangered species, where normally there would be 30 to 35.
The roof garden of the museum had been mowed twice a year so that hay and seeds could be harvested which were then applied to more than 10,000 square meters of a meadow area along the Rhine and other places in Bonn: A Mother Meadow for Bonn: Future Garden 2 was created.
Since then, the concept spread, and many Future Gardens of different kinds were and are still being established all over the world.
I, Kai, first met Petra at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn, where she was deputy director and I curated an exhibition on Alexander von Humboldt, the great 19th-century holistic scholar. She introduced me to the Harrisons in 1999 when the project Peninsula Europe appeared on the horizon.
There was no time to think about the exhibition itself but the development of a catalogue concept seemed practicable and above all most challenging:
The works conceived by Helen and Newton had so many entirely different formats that they could not possibly be squeezed into one book with a defined size without losing their integrity and comprehensibility.
Consequently, we developed a publication which, at first glance, looked like a book but when opened up consisted completely of adjustable foldouts with an individual size for each work.
The Harrisons were enthusiastic, the bookbinder was not ― and the result was convincing.
So was my first encounter with Newton. A vague feeling of being interrogated soon faded into the notion of having found some kind of ‘brother in spirit’ while studying and contemplating Humboldt’s theories and their essence that “everything is interrelating”: A true holistic thinker considering the arts as important as the sciences for communicating the central issues of human interaction with nature.
Petra and I had both reached a point of cognition with former projects where we had purposely been seeking interdisciplinary advice, but never in such a consequent methodical way as the Harrisons did combining a diversity of disciplines with different knowledge, perspectives, and approaches to collaborate and actually provide the basis for perceptions and results which an isolated individual could not generate.
From the very first moment, the two of us met with Helen and Newton, we were convinced of their ways to work, and felt it to be very similar to the way we wanted ― and finally achieved ― to work:
The permanent dialogue between the two of them;
The ability to find advisors, scientists, politicians, and other collaborators or supporters and form and maintain a powerful team;
To start a discussion and continue it without an end in sight;
To integrate new information into an existing concept;
To change plans, if necessary, without losing the objective;
To be convinced of and devoted to this objective;
To remain open and curious;
To never say: It is not possible.
Thus, a mutually beneficial relationship between the four of us started, developed, and remained more than close ― as Newton put it: We were their friends, designers, editors, and thinkers.
Since 1982 work as curator, consultant, designer and organizer of exhibitions on numerous large-scale projects worldwide, many of them emphasizing on arts and ecology; since 1993 lecturing on
book and exhibition design, planning, production, technology, didactics, and evaluation in collaboration with various national and international government agencies and universities; since 2001 development of concepts, project management, budgeting, editing, design, and production of exhibitions and books together with Petra Kruse.
Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin Composer, Director, and Chief Scientist of the AlloSphere Research Facility, is Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on creative computational systems, multi-modal media content, and facilities design. She created and was Chief Scientist of Digital Media for the University of California.
What I have learned from the brief time of working with Newton and viewing the work that he and Helen have accomplished is the collaboration of two bio-eco artists who were interested in investigating the life web from true empirical inquiry and truthful interrogation, using their expert artistry and scientific inquiry.
I first met Newton Harrison very recently in the fall of 2021, when we were both invited to speak at a National Academy of Sciences Salon regarding our research and creative practice involving the Getty Pacific Standard Time 2024 Biennale integrating Arts and Science. Newton was discussing his and Helen’s work regarding their Sensorium World Ocean Project. The project had gathered a vast amount of information concerning the world’s oceans and the condition that our current environment is in due to the pollution from the land into ocean runoff as well as from the thousands of ships on the ocean floor polluting the waters and the plastics and other pollutants in the sea. The project’s current state at that time was an art installation that also had much science involved due to the tremendous amounts of scientific data that they had collected over many years.
In Newton’s own words, he wanted the Sensorium to become a “fully interactive 3-dimensional human-centered interface, where the floors, walls and even the ceiling act as ‘live’ surfaces, connected to real-time data, information, and modeling/simulation tools. Newton wanted the Sensorium to have a series of functions including education and holistic decision-making, and to allow people to interact directly with the ocean through the interface. Most significantly, Newton wanted the Sensorium to operate as a generalized pre-emptive planning environment where oceanographic problems, mostly of human creation, can be seen and acted upon because their interconnectivity is understood at one glance and all together.” This is exactly what my research and creative practice entail. I am a composer/media artist working on complex systems research and have made a fully interactive/immersive instrument/laboratory called the AlloSphere and complex system software AlloLib that investigates multi-dimensional complex problems through visualization, sonification, and interaction, building immersive installations for artistic/scientific discovery.
Sensorium Project as displayed in the AlloSphere instrument.The beginning for the Sensorium Project as displayed in the AlloSphere instrument.
The AlloSphere instrument can be designed in any shape and size to accommodate any installation space, laboratory, or situation room, and the AlloLib software can scale accordingly from the AlloSphere current size of a three-story 2000 square foot lab that houses 26 projectors, 54 channels of sound, completely multi-user and interactive, to museum-size installations, the desktop, and immersive VR helmets.
Sensorium, developmental sketches, 2023, Courtesy of the Newton and Helen Harrison Family TrustSensorium, developmental sketches, 2023, Courtesy of the Newton and Helen Harrison Family Trust
The AlloSphere instrument and Laboratory is located within the California NanoSystems Institute, where we work with physicists, chemists, biologists, and other scientists in visualizing, sonifiying, and using interactive computation to explore complex systems. My AlloSphere Research Group is now working closely with Newton’s organization, the Center for Study of the Force Majeure, to make a unique and compelling immersive installation for the Getty Pacific Standard Time (PST) 2024 initiative as well as taking this artistic/scientific research to the next level integrating experimental and simulation models into a laboratory dedicated to ocean world research.
What I have learned from the brief time of working with Newton and viewing the work that he and Helen have accomplished is the collaboration of two bio-eco artists who were interested in investigating the life web from true empirical inquiry and truthful interrogation, using their expert artistry and scientific inquiry. They viewed the system holistically and have paved the way for systems solving not just problem-solving.
I include the following media artists/researchers from my AlloSphere Research Group, who are currently working on the Sensorium for the World Ocean Project.
Some of the members of the AlloSphere Research Group:
From left to right: Dr. Gustavo Rincon, Dr. Kon Hyong Kim, Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, and Myungin Lee.
Dr. Kon Hyong Kim (is Post-Doctoral Researcher with the AlloSphere Research Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. With a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Cornell University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from UCSB, he focuses on generating various mixed reality environments and high dimensional mathematical artwork. He is the lead Graphics researcher on the Sensorium Project.
Myungin Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Program in Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research includes digital signal processing and visual/sonic machine learning for interactive computational design. He is one of the lead designers of the content of the Sensorium Project working with the Ocean Health Index database of ocean scientist Dr. Ben Halpern at UCSB.
Dr. Gustavo Rincon Ph.D. Media Arts and Technology, M.Arch UCLA, MFA, CalArts) is a media artist, sculptor, and graphics immersive artist. His research focuses on spatiotemporal architectures and structures, extending from the virtual to the material. As a member of the AlloSphere Research Group his research focuses on shaping spatial structures through self-organizing algorithms. He is the lead in architectural design in the Sensorium project.
Dr. Timothy Wood is Research Director at the Center for Research and Electronic Arts at UCSB and AlloSphere Media Systems Engineer. His research looks at new ways of utilizing human computer interactivity, virtual worlds, and somatic movement practices to deepen and empower our relationship to the body and nature. Dr. Wood received his M.S and Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology and was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at University of California, San Diego. Dr. Wood is working on human computer interaction for the Sensorium Project.
Dennis Adderton is the Technical Director of the AlloSphere Research Facility and works with Dr. Kon Kim, Dr. Wood and Myungin Lee on hardware systems design.
Aviva Rahmani began pioneering ecological restoration as transdisciplinary artmaking in 1969. She authored, "Divining Chaos," and co-authored, "Ecoart in Action" in 2020. Her "Blued Trees" (2015- present), focuses on how legal insights, expressed as art, can resist ecocide. Rahmani lives and works in Manhattan and Maine and is an Affiliate with the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder. Her undergraduate and graduate work was at CalArts and her PhD is from the University of Plymouth, UK.
We had parallel interests across many years, but they understood far better, how to platform and establish visibility for those interests.
Newton and his life partner Helen taught me how to deconstruct power at scale. I met them both early in our careers, not as a student, but as an equal in the late sixties in San Diego. What I saw was how they took the necessary steps to go from an eco-art point of view to policy implementation. What I saw over the decades was how valuable it is to understand power. We had parallel interests across many years, but they understood far better how to platform and establish visibility for those interests. As a younger, lone woman, without institutional support, I couldn’t break into the discourse, or find support for radical ideas as easily.
Newton and Helen 1979
I think the practical strategies I was testing, for how far simple ideas might become models for reciprocity and collaborative change, intrigued and inspired Newton. They both helped my career at many crucial turning points. Helen gave me my first job in the UCSD Extension in the late sixties and early seventies. In 1969, Newton asked me to form an ill-fated Dance Department at UCSD. He was an ardent supporter, assembling Eleanor and David Antin, and Pauline Oliveros to promote the project until politics shot it down. Newton and I had a more extensive and complex relationship than I had with Helen. Early on in my career, Newton sent me to connect with seminal art figures, whose collegial interests have remained my aesthetic lodestones in the extended art family I inhabited long after they all passed away: the collector, Stanley Grinstein, Allan Kaprow, who gave me a job as his TA and scholarships at CalArts and remained my mentor till his death, and the legendary gallerist Ronald Feldman. In our sometimes-volatile friendship, I was slowly provoked to aggressively carve my place in the art world.
Newton had a sculptor’s eye for form, which Helen deepened into a poetic narrative, serving them brilliantly in gallery and museum settings to frame concepts. He had a shrewd businessperson’s gift of the gab to narrate compelling visions to donors who allowed him to advance groundbreaking ideas in the art world. This, partnered with Helen’s pragmatism and diplomacy, also enabled advances in policy circles in Europe and the UK. Newton, and in a more muted way, Helen blended fierce competitiveness and professional generosity. Newton was intensely interested in two works of mine, Synapse Reality (1970), which made a social sculptural experiment of a small farming commune in Del Mar, California, and Ghost Nets (1990-2000), which restored a degraded former coastal town dump to flourishing wetlands on Vinalhaven Island, Maine. In 1970, Newton taught a class at UCSD on Strategies, anticipating the need Joseph Beuys also foresaw by forming the Green Party, to engage artists in international environmental policy.
In 2022, after decades of participation in the eco-art dialog (1990-present), I had co-founded, Newton curated and arranged the group show, Eco-art Work: 11 Artists from 8 Countries at Various Small Fires in LA. His hope then was to catalyze a market for the burgeoning international eco-art genre which might carry on the hopes they both had to change the world with art. It was only then that Newton seemed to me to be acting on understanding that the change they sought could only come from a larger community in which they were a part but not the center. It was a project that reflected an understanding of how complex the human parts are that might fit together to save humanity from itself.
Simon Read is a visual artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Middlesex University. His practice relating directly to his current coastal and estuarine work, started in 1993 through the offer of a residency upon the Upper Thames leading in 1996 to the public commissioned work for the Thames Barrier: “A Profile of the River Thames from Thames Head to Sea Reach”.
I can see a lot of connections and regret that I was never to follow up an acquaintance with the Harrisons since they seemed to be operating in a parallel area both conceptually and technically.
My first introduction to the Harrisons was Portable Fish Farm in the ‘11 Artists from Los Angeles’ show in 1971 when I was a 2nd year student of Fine Art at Leeds University.
At the time, I was utterly non-plussed by the work since I had little concept of how it was compatible with my understanding of sculpture. I would have been unaware of the prescience of the work despite knowing European contemporaries such as Hans Haacke. However, at the time, I took more away from other artists in the show in particular Larry Bell, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, William Wegman, and the odd man out, Richard Diebenkorn. I think then I would have been looking more at studio work that was heavily influenced by conceptualism and artists’ use of the photograph. I was probably interested in the different schools of thought coming out of New York and California, where the Californian experience was so much more sensual.
I was very aware of the furore caused by Newton’s fish farm, due mainly to my then professor, Lawrence Gowing, who was vice-chair of the Arts Council and who took some responsibility for the show and wrote a spirited defence of the work in (I think) The Times.
After then, there was a long period when I was not so aware of the Harrisons until the Greenhouse Britain project in 2007 and my amazement at their securing funding from DEFRA. At that time, I had been collaborating with the arts consultants Haring-Woods on another project in Peterborough, who invited me to Gunpowder Park in Enfield to discuss further involvement with the Bright Sparks programme and was currently supporting the Harrisons’ work in the Lea Valley.
Admittedly, my response was sceptical, although I found the principle of a walk-through type of map environment absorbing, I was sorry to have missed the benefit of their presence to animate the project. I was sceptical because I reacted in an Anglo-Saxon way against the somewhat evangelical tone of the project and the belief that you could parachute in and propose a solution for a specific geographic location for which I felt there was insufficient prior knowledge. Although I am instinctively distrustful of proselytising, I can fully appreciate the response of a DEFRA representative that the Harrisons are refreshing in that they feel able to get straight to the point and unabashedly talk about the big idea.
So, upon reflection, I can see a lot of connections and regret that I was never to follow up an acquaintance with the Harrisons since they seemed to be operating in a parallel area both conceptually and technically. My difference lies in the belief that everything must come from somewhere and that the best solutions should be homegrown. This is what lies behind my desire to get under the skin of a project/location and community to be confident that whatever I propose is appropriate to the situation. So, a fundamental difference I’m afraid.
Since then, I have found their Lagoon Cycle project and the watershed works inspiring for their scope and sense of scale and the audacity that it is possible to conceive a project on a continental scale without having to implement it.
I know that Helen had acknowledged the idea of context and influence by saying that the ‘force majeure’ aspect of their operation justifies the use of any strategy, no matter where it comes from. My academic training says that the aspects of culture that you are exposed to and the cultural context that you operate within have a huge bearing on the range of possibilities that you access in the formal strategies that you take. Obviously, nothing is absolutely original and we all pass the same messages around but how we interpret them is crucial.
I was interested to learn that Newton’s early experience was as a painter, just as it was for me, but he was taught by early exponents of abstraction, if not abstract expressionism, and would have been aware of Clement Greenberg’s belief that the autonomy of the artwork was fundamental and that you should not need to look beyond the work itself for justification. Newton would have absorbed the sense that the phenomenological and behavioural characteristics of an artwork were the only narrative necessary to engage with it. I know that there is a strong means and ends argument here but the departure from the artwork as a vehicle for meaning in favour of the integrity of the work itself is also intrinsic to the Harrison’s belief in the primacy of natural processes and the living landscape itself.
There is also no way that Newton will have been unaware of the influence of conceptualism, which would have been a key justification for putting forward impossible ideas on a colossal scale because there is a cultural context to do so. The idea that the idea is sufficient and does not need to be activated is a basic tenet of conceptualism and indeed is the Harrison’s justification for proposing ambitious or even outlandish projects with such panache and certainty.
The early works such as the fish farm were shown in the context of a group of artists who we know had come directly from a conceptual (albeit Californian) mould. Even the pragmatic use of the unadorned paraphernalia of a fish farm allowed for the absence of a necessity for aesthetics and, as in other artists’ production, the opportunity to colonise criteria other than directly aesthetic for the organisation of material. Even with the context of this show, however, it would be fair to say that Newton Harrison’s work comes over as an outlier and already was on a journey somewhere else, clearly as a result of his alignment with Helen’s thinking.
Leslie Ryan is the lead design-researcher for the Future Garden climate-adaptation projects within the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, a research and educational center established by Helen and Newton Harrison. She is a registered landscape architect and long-time consultant and collaborator on the Harrisons’ projects.
Listening to the Harrisons talk about repairing our relationship with the land and working ― always ― to advantage of the life web was a watershed moment for me, a siren call that changed everything.
When I met Helen and Newton Harrison I was fresh out of school with a degree in landscape architecture. The Harrisons didn’t think too much of landscape architects. As a profession, we were too literal, too focused on staying within property lines, and too beholden to clients, all of which tended in their view to alienate us from the natural world rather than foster respect and caring.
Listening to the Harrisons talk about repairing our relationship with the land and working ― always ― to advantage of the life web was a watershed moment for me, a siren call that changed everything. Their art practice modeled what landscape architecture could and should be: recognizing the land and the more-than-human others on the planet as partners with agency, rejecting framing nature as a set of ecosystem services that cast the natural world as a servant in service to human needs, and always looking beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of here and now.
I soon left the landscape architecture office and joined them as a lowly graduate student and studio assistant in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. Their support would become instrumental in my receiving the American Academy of Rome Fellowship in Landscape Architecture (1995), and Harrison refrains such as “how big is here and how long is now” and “pay attention to the costs of your beliefs” would reverberate throughout my research project while a Master of Environmental Design student at Yale, Newton’s alma mater.
The Harrisons threw me in the deep end when they asked if, for my first project as their assistant, I would draw the rubble flowers for Trümmerflora: On the Topography of Terrors (1988). I didn’t know which plant species would make sense, the site was haunted by a terrifying past, and the thought of nature improvising with the detritus, seeds, and memories buried in the rubble was overwhelmingly beautiful. Spontaneous urban vegetation has since become a significant field of study and the subject of books, papers, and thesis projects in landscape architecture, but at the time it was uncharted territory. There are common threads running through Trümmerflora and Future Gardens, one of the Harrisons’ final projects, as both focus on adaptation to change, natural regeneration, and the emergence of new ecological assemblages. As part of the Center for the Force Majeure, I continue to carry forward the Future Gardens work, with discussions underway for climate-adaptation projects in Central Europe and closer to home at UCSD/Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The Harrisons’ work mirrored what they saw in natural systems ― an inherent inventiveness and sustained improvisation and play with what was at hand (the practical and the playful were ever-present in their work). I see the Harrisons’ art as a type of rematriation. The fundamental rule of giving back is that what is returned cannot be broken or polluted, and what has been damaged first must be repaired. Indigenous cultures were a constant model for the Harrisons of cultural practices that work with nature rather than against it and how taking from nature could be done in ways that preserved the system.
Harrison porch in Santa Cruz
Each person at Newton’s memorial service in Santa Cruz had their own stories to tell. The Newton I knew was like the god Jupiter, bellowing from a mountaintop and tossing lightning bolts. Helen matched his thunder ― more than once I had to crawl out of sight as those two clashed. And then it would be dinnertime and only salads would be tossed. While the breadth of the Harrisons’ practice isn’t readily distilled into simple guidelines for living well on earth, there are a few elements that stay with me: the importance of invitations, of scale shifts and scanning for information, of redundancies and multiple perspectives, of imagining the potential consequences of our actions and then acting for the benefit of the life web.
A resident of north Leeds in the Aire Valley, Jamie has worked in a northern local authority since 1992 as a public servant in local government working in strategy, sustainability and regeneration. He is a former trustee of the Permaculture Association (Britain) and a qualified futurist (MA foresight and futures studies, Leeds Beckett University)
Their work stands as a guide. When I remember, when I am provoked, they hold fast to more than the immediate concerns and less-than-life-enhancing work of day-to-day living. The life-web: see it, breathe it, hear it.
It took the eco-artists from far away, the spirited and determined advocates to reveal, remind and offer encouragement… to recentre on what really matters.
A life force for the life-web…
So, where to begin? With Newton, with Helen, with the Harrison Studio, with those ‘agent provocateurs’ and allies of those of us fortunate to have known them.
I can’t remember the first meeting, though this matters so much less than the essence of Newton, with Helen, through David Haley, creating connections across the Pennines. Teasing out a more ecological, more humane, and more progressive future for the North. A counter-point to the ‘business as usual’ of sprawl and expansion, into places and communities that could be woven back into ‘becoming’ as part of the life-web – as the Harrisons said, “every place is the story of its own becoming”. There it is again, that ‘life-web’. From ArtsTranspennine98 we saw a dragon emerging.
And I was ignorant of it in so many ways. It took the eco-artists from far away, the spirited and determined advocates to reveal, remind and offer encouragement—and some serious challenge to personal choices and professional practice—to recentre on what really matters. “How big is here?” they asked. For a north in need of thinking deeply about the future ahead, and not playing catch up with that there London and the South or creating a ‘global mega-city region’ of 15m people, this continues to be a critical question.
We meet again many more times than I realise or really thought likely. Each time adding layers to thinking, linking the long past with the deep futures ahead: preferable, probable, possible, plausible. Trying to better understand the best and worst of the bureaucracy of local administration, of localised politics, of siloed and constrained professions and disconnected communities.
Putting stewardship of place into place to work at the scale necessary for ecological regeneration and care.
Taking on ‘post-disciplinary practice’—with and alongside others—to do the research, to be commercial, to be life-enhancing. To do the work.
And gladly hosting Newton for an English Sunday lunch. And watching from away—as the global-local work of the Harrison Studio expands; from the glaciers, to the watersheds, from the meadows, to the cities, from the uplands to the top of the world. And back from the Pennines to the British Isles as a whole, responding to #astheseasrise. Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom—beyond the cleantech and the vested interests and out into the world of deep adaptation, of civic futures and the ‘force majeure’. Getting to grips with what co-evolution really means, over centuries, eras, epochs not just quarterly results, annual reports, and election cycles.
Albion, of many isles, is surrounded by water. As the fundamentals shift and we slowly, furiously, adjust to what is becoming. For our children, our grandchildren. To be more than good ancestors. At the heart of ‘sustainability’—reclaiming the concept from ‘financial viability’ and ‘sustaining the now’ to legacy and the global majority and the ‘more than human world’; of habitats, species, and dynamic complex adaptive systems.
So much more to be grateful for. So much more to reflect on, to embrace, and to share. Far more than ‘artists’, beyond ‘marketable self’ and galleries. Beyond ‘land art’ and environmentally-informed practice. Deep ecological advocacy of the living world. Of a world that will, as Gaia suggests, recalibrate with or without wiser human co-evolution. The American dynamism and bloody-mindedness are challenging, generous, and impatient with many. In later life, an elder when so many need such wisdom for their villages, towns, cities, and places to be post-industrial, post-colonial, post-normal. To be places where we live within the natural world; living well, with health, with care, and with a spirit that speaks to the best of us.
The world is a lesser place for the passing of Helen and Newton and their co-creation and collaborations with family, friends, and strangers. Their work stands as a guide. When I remember, when I am provoked, they hold fast to more than the immediate concerns and less-than-life-enhancing work of day-to-day living. The life-web: see it, breathe it, hear it. It is all around and in conversations, images, poems, and a deep body of work. The echoes and the opportunities remain.
Working through the ethos of life-web advocacy and stewardship may mean we can find the practical, imaginative, creative, collective means of living well in place. Testing out co-existence, beyond the ‘anthropocene’, and living more fully in the ecocene/symbiocene. The eco-art of Newton and Helen is as critical now in guiding those that follow in deep adaptation. Humane, bioregional, and planetary scales would be a fine continued legacy.
Richard Scott is Director of the National Wildflower Centre at the Eden Project, and delivers creative conservation project work nationally. He is also Chair of the UK Urban Ecology Forum. Richard was chosen as one of 20 individuals for the San Miguel Rich List in 2018, highlighting those who pursue alternative forms of wealth.
Their practice was enabling and real and embodied timeless wisdom for people and nature, and these principles and their artworks will stay with me.
At the 1999 Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) Conference in San Francisco, a special art group was formed. David Haley from Manchester Metropolitan University proposed and went on to curate The Harrison Studio to contribute to the 2000 SER Conference in Liverpool. The work they presented and spoke about, Casting a Green Net: Can it Be We are Seeing a Dragon? was the first artwork I had seen that visualised and projected landscape-scale restoration within the context of climate change, poetically describing the need for us to “gracefully withdraw”.
The Harrison’s work was so playful and was the first time I’d seen artists enhance and translate classic ecological methodologies, signaling how we need to be bold. The Dragon highlighted the green East-West corridor between the river estuaries of the Humber and the Mersey. The Ordnance Survey maps hung splendidly on the wall of the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool and made for a very memorable piece because the shape of the biodiversity across the North of England equated to that of a dragon, sparking imagination. Significantly it almost exactly mirrored the original outlines of the proposed new Northern Forest (2018), and it definitely influenced the ambition of our thinking about the Northern Flowerhouse.
Craftivist Peter Carney’s -Weeds to Wildflower Banner- a talisman for sowing. Image Jane McNeil
As the organisation Landlife was closing, our vision for wildflowers as infrastructure and the locally coined ‘Northern Flowerhouse’ took shape, and the Singh Twins designed it up for us. Their art is doubly powerful, as they strengthen each other’s resolve and knowledge base, in the way they depict historic and current exploitation and the way in which they share traditional cultural practices and meanings. Working with my partner, Polly Moseley, enabled me to access and understand more of the calibre and potential of artists on Merseyside and to understand how important the Harrison’s partnership was over time.
In a video conversation, Newton said, “Overburden yourself, reflect and compose and look for original avenues” He talked of “playing catchup”, and spoke of big backyards and massive change ― accommodating the air, the land, the soil, and area ― above all avoiding ‘tower’ thinking of academia, and connecting with and through the citizen. Their work always included messaging, which was accessible and layered, like the messaging through Peter Carney’s banners, which have become our wildflower totems at events. Landlife (1975 – 2017)’s tenet which we attempted to embody was “creative conservation”.
Their Force Majeure “framed ecologically” was about articulating an evolving and boldness of vision ―this theme keeps appearing― and bold vision, and it reminded me of the simple advice from great gardener and writer, Christopher Lloyd, when he witnessed our wildflowers project in Liverpool in 1999, “Be bold” he said. The Harrisons always were direct and unapologetic with their work, including the Endangered Meadows of Europe. They understood the power and symbolism of moving meadow to cover an acre and a half rooftop on the top of the largest and most visited museum in Bonn, Germany, including an opening speech delivered by Angela Merkel. In Liverpool, we have positioned our landmark and gateway sites, around the Everton Lock Up badge, or along much-used trunk roads, and the Mersey Tunnel to achieve visibility, paving the way for a mosaic of habitat, urban or rural. It is about what we can do in different places, together, with real communities of interest, and heart and soul principles, be it Merseyside, Manchester, Cornwall, Morecambe, Dundee, or Auchterarder. And with the irony and humour reflected in Jamie Reid’s “Nature Still Draws a Crowd” (Suburban Press 1977). We worked with Jamie to create a large Ova in a huge field of wildflowers at the Lost Gardens of Heligan last summer. I think the Harrison’s would have approved.
Everton Park- Liverpool fans walk past the meadows on the way to a European Cup match. Image Richard Scott
The Harrisons to me were intriguing, curiosity-raising, and pragmatic. The more you found out about their work, the more depth it offers. Some were shocked by it. Spike Milligan ― a patron of Landlife the charity I worked for for 26 years ― was one. Spike arrived outside the 11 Los Angeles Artists exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1971 and smashed the Haywards’ glass front doors with a brick! The Harrisons were exhibiting a Portable Fish Farm an ecosystem that could be harvested and eaten. This triggered headlines, Arts Council anxiety, and questions in Parliament. When I discovered this, “Blimey” I thought.
The Harrisons’ philosophy avoids despair and wasting energy. For example, noting Scotland has a million foragers, and every person could have one hectare of land, points towards land reform with poetry and chutzpah. For me, the currency of seed and what you can do with it, experimenting with soil and substrates, and signaling massive change are all vitally important. As ecologists, we should take heart in reflecting on the work of the Harrison Studio, their belief in the power of the spoken word and bardic mystery, and their intolerance of technocracies. With wonderful dialogue of the possible, they brought attention to detail and employed simplicity. For example, in the recreation of Hog Pasture:Survival Piece #IWilma the Pig in 2012, how the Harrisons restaged that with joy, again, featuring meadow pasture and a pig (the pig had been denied by the art gallery the first time round).
Last year in 2022, I launched the Cultural Soil Charter (which grew out of discussion with the Chartered Institute of Ecology and soil advocates across the UK) at the World Congress of Soil Science in Glasgow, and was thrilled this coincided with the British Soil societies staging of Newton Harrison’s On The Deep Wealth Of this Nation, Scotland. I checked back and reflected on Making Earth (1969-70) when Newton made topsoil in front of his studio, and this connected in my mind with Glasgow CCA’s 2022 exhibition of tonnages of live soils. The Eden Project would do this as the origin of their own journey in building a theatre of plants and invite others to observe and participate, to show what we want to do with circular economies for soil, urban substrates, and what we can grow on them.
The Harrisons read this piece on ‘Mixing Mapping and Territory’ (2013):
Where would you begin? Where the terrain permits and the will exists. Choose Your Mountain. That is to say you can begin anywhere.
Their practice was enabling and real and embodied timeless wisdom for people and nature, and these principles and their artworks will stay with me, as Scouse Flowerhouse develops as a co-operative, and the National Wildflower Centre’s creative conservation work grows, in many ways, we will continue to honour and riff off their work.
Ranil Senanayake is a Systems Ecologist trained at U.C. Davis, He has developed Analog Forestry as a rural response to the critical need of restoring the worlds lost forests functions. He has served as Executive Director of the Environmental Liaison Center International in Nairobi, Kenya and as the Senior Scientist for Counterpart international, Washington D.C.
From creating a lagoon in a tank with Helen and Newton, I moved on to create a forest in a garden.
I began my relationship with Newt and Helen in 1972 while I was an undergraduate at Berkeley, my first time in America. My name had been given to them as an aquarist and they invited me to San Diego. That meeting led to a multi-year relationship much of it captured in their work The Lagoon Cycle. I moved from lagoons to rice fields to forests and today look at the Global Commons as the widest canvas.
Extracts From: The Lagoon Cycle’ – Helen Mayer Harrison/ Newton Harrison 1985
From The First Lagoon –
Lagoon Maker and Witness
He said
he knew of a creature a crab
and supposed that it could live under
museum conditions
… He said he was from Sri Lanka where the estuaries the lagoons and the ocean are amongst the richest in the world and if you want to know about lagoons you should go there and see them
From The Second Lagoon – Sea Grant
It was August The first shipment of crabs arrived from the marketplace in Colombo….
…… Those we ate were delicious, those we experimented with were hardy
The Third Lagoon – The House of Crabs
(of human behaviour)
While he expected the information gained to be privileged as he expected the information gained to become profit and we expected the information gained to become public as we expected the information gained to be public and he hoped the crabs would behave more reasonably from his point of view which they did not and as he hoped that we would behave more reasonably from his point of view which we did not and as we hoped he would behave more reasonably from our point of view which he did not the lagoon developed a life of its own about which we knew nothing at all
The Seventh Lagoon – The Ring of Fire, The Ring of water
Sometimes I dream of the water buffalo in its wallow in Sri Lanka the one that ran afoul of the gasoline engine and is being replaced by the tractor Now that the tractor does not replicate itself freely nor provide milk nor utilize the weeds as fuel nor produce fertilizer and fuel with its dung
… though the tractor is not graceful on the land and the buffalo will yield to that tractor although the buffalo finally is more efficient and its dialogue with the land more lucid
Clearly there is something about technology that does not like that which is not itself
Yet this is not
a necessary condition
this unfriendliness
to the land
From creating a lagoon in a tank with Helen and Newton, I moved on to create a forest in a garden where the structure and function of the original forest were used to design for restoration. Analog forestry is the methodology with which to design forest-like human ecosystems that provide the functions that the forest once did.
Looking at forest function, it soon became evident that the entire structure was fundamentally dependent on Primary Ecosystem Services provided by the photosynthetic biomass (leaves) of plants. This is the primary act of life, the Force Majeure, if you may. Meeting Newton again in South Korea; this was serendipitous, I designed a project entailing ‘seed clouds’ from the South to the North with the autumn winds was designed for the DMZ. Because wind is an irresistible force, beyond the control of a state. These ideas have progressed to ‘smart contracts’ to valorize PES into the Global Commons.
The Global Commons, as we discussed so often, was the stage for the Force Majure ignoring it was a reason for the ecological collapse today. In our work, to create value and restore the commons, a new value system to power Biocurrency, driven by the living world (www.restore.earth) is now being generated.
Richard Sharland has worked as an artist, community worker and environmental leader in the U.K. since 1975. Manager, Derby Community Arts ( 1982 - 1985), Director of Lancashire Wildlife Trust (1985 -1994), Director Groundwork St Helens (1994 -1999), National Director then COO at Groundwork U.K. (1999 - 2009), Director, Climate Change Planning, Manchester City Council (2009 - 2013) , Director, Terre Verte Gallery (2015 - current )
Both Helen and Newton had this wonderful gift of memory for stories and information and ideas, which they drew upon to evolve their work, to help others to evolve.
I first met Helen and Newton Harrison towards the end of the last century when they created a piece of work for the Art Transpennine exhibition in Manchester/Liverpool/Leeds/Hull. At that time, I was leading a local environmental organisation focused on ecology, wildlife conservation, and climate change: my background as an artist and community development worker informed an approach to my work that was open to innovation and prioritised engaging people and organisations in different ways. I worked with Art Transpennine as a local environmental leader and was part of Helen and Newton’s relationship networking on their project; subsequently, I met up with them when they were working on one or two other projects in the U.K. and in Aachen.
During one of our first encounters, Newton and Helen and I talked about the difference between ‘discussion’ and ‘dialogue’, and I was warmly reminded of the value of open-ended relating, of taking journeys of ideas whose destination is unknown. I say ‘reminded’ because I was already familiar with this from my youth, particularly from my childhood, but it was not the kind of conversation I had often in my workplace, where ‘adult conversations’ were often linear and closed, rather than open, enquiring and wondering.
“We don’t do discussion. We do dialogue ― you know, from the Greek.” I remember Newton saying, as we conversed. Discussions tend to be narrow and linear, they travel toward a conclusion, something fixed that has been determined as the conversation is begun; dialogue, on the other hand, can evolve in a more organic way and often travels to topics and views not envisaged at the outset. As I began to get to know them, I noticed how much Newton and Helen lived their lives and made their work with this approach, always evolving. There was always this creative interplay around them, in how they related ― to each other, to people in conversation, when talking about their work, when doing and being their work. It seemed to me that this made their art not just a response to a place in the world but also manifestly a living extension of themselves, somehow inseparable from them, and thus always itself unfixed, still growing.
So, when I am asked, “what did you learn from the Harrisons?” I first think of this, this way of being, and of connectedness. For me, this lay at the heart of them and their work. It is something fundamental to ecology, that everything somehow relates to everything else, but it often gets forgotten … even though it is ‘the big picture’. Helen and Newton lived alongside and amongst a lot of linear thinking, as we all do, yet they evolved a way of working and being that manifested ecological thinking, that always ventured into the big picture. And that way of being and working seemed to suffuse their approach to everything, particularly their work, the way it evolved, and the way it related to people. I am still learning from that.
Their northern England project of that time ―– Can it be we are seeing a Dragon? ― was rooted in four large wall maps of the region, each adapted to explore aspects of a more sustainable ecological future. I recall inviting a group of environmentally minded town planners in the region to the studio space where the maps were exhibited to meet Helen and Newton. Newton suggested to them that they were artists just like him, but that his mapping was steered by possibility and an imagination shaped by understanding the limits and opportunities of the ecology of the area, while their mapping was steered by the abstract requirements of policymakers or politicians. In the dialogue that ensued, the planners were surprised and intrigued that these artists from California had much more data about the unsustainability of human life in northern England at their fingertips than they did.
Both Helen and Newton had this wonderful gift of memory for stories and information and ideas, which they drew upon to evolve their work, to help others to evolve. It isn’t something we can all be as gifted in, but the encounter with the planners wasn’t the only one which illustrated their preparedness, their presence. It is something captured by a line from Dylan’s song ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ ― “know your song well, before you start singing”.
Tatiana Sizonenko is an art historian and award-winning curator working across the Renaissance, Modern, and Contemporary periods. She received her Ph.D. in Renaissance art history from the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego while also developing expertise in contemporary art. Ms. Sizonenko currently serves as the project curator for Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work at the La Jolla Historical Society, a project funded by Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time, Art + Science 2024.
Newton’s impact, along with Helen’s, on the field of environmental art practice and research, and socially engaged art more generally, is incalculable.
I am the curator of the exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, organized by La Jolla Historical Society and funded by the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time Art + Science 2024. This exhibition will explore the juncture between art and science, art and ecology, and art and social activism in the work of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison and will be displayed in four locations around San Diego simultaneously: La Jolla Historical Society (organizer), California Center for the Arts in Escondido, San Diego Central Library Art Gallery in downtown, and Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego.
Newton with Peninsula Europe in the background
I met Helen and Newton in 2015, at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, during the lecture-presentation on their recent Force Majeure projects. My collaboration with Newton started two years later when I first invited him to participate in the Agency of Art exhibition at the historical Mandeville Gallery of Art at UC San Diego. This exhibition highlighted Newton’s role as the founding member of the Visual Arts Department and the Harrisons’ impact on the multi-disciplinary art practice in the Visual Arts program. The Agency of Art juxtaposed the Harrisons’ Peninsula Europe (2000-7) with works of younger artists from the program. Starting as an assistant professor of painting in 1967 at UCSD, Newton would soon completely change direction and embark on making ecological art in the early 1970s in collaboration with his wife Helen. They then collectively made the decision to do no work that did not benefit ecosystems. During his time at UCSD, Newton was a hugely influential teacher and advisor, mentoring artists such as Martha Rosler and Alan Sekula among many others. He also influenced generations of environmental artists and scholars such as Lauren Bon, Tim Collins, Reiko Goto, Ruth Wallen, and many others. His impact, along with Helen’s, on the field of environmental art practice and research, and socially engaged art more generally, is incalculable. Peninsula Europe was chosen to feature the Harrisons’ approach to visual art as complex objects designed to reframe and re-imagine the critical problems of the environment and society today and so to improve the world and our interactions with it and one another.
Retiring from UCSD in 1993, the Harrisons never stopped working on ecological art projects. In 2009, Newton and Helen, as research professors, founded the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure at UC Santa Cruz’s Digital Arts and New Media Program. After Helen’s death in 2018, Newton continued to work until the last moment of his life. Just two weeks before his passing away, I visited his studio to make final selections of work for this next exhibition. Span across four venues and over the fifty years of their collaboration, 1968-2018, Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work will offer a critical reappraisal of the California-based works and will highlight the Harrisons’ approach to art and ecology often guided by the question “How big is here?” Working with Newton on California Work since 2019, I also encountered in practice their other main guiding principle for making art and establishing a truly ecological society that can be summarized as “listening to the Web of Life.”
The Harrisons proposed to use complex system thinking to treat nature as self-complicating, self-renewing, and self-continuing, a living partner to humans—thus the Web of Life. In our conversations, Newton emphasized that transformative thinking is exciting and works of art can change the world for the better, not just by enriching the life and spirit of those who love it but by proposing new solutions to problems revealed through an artist’s way of seeing combined with science, engineering, and social critique. The Harrisons’ commitment to the Web of Life, which they labelled, rather bluntly, a “Dictatorship of the Ecology,” led them to produce works of art that could act as just such social agents to reshape the world in which we live.
The Harrisons’ intention and guiding presence for listening to the Web of Life will be terribly missed. California Work intends to highlight how the Harrisons used the exhibition format in several ways, often in the sense of a town meeting, but always with the intention of seeing their proposals moving off the walls into planning processes, and ultimately resulting in interventions directed towards social and environmental justice.
San Diego as the Center of a World, Part II and Part IV (1974), photo by the author. Courtesy of the Harrison Family Trust
Elizabeth Stephens, Ph.D., is a filmmaker, performance artist, activist, and theoretician. Stephens gained her MFA at Rutgers in 1992 and completed her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at UC Davis in 2015. She is the Founding Director of the EARTH Lab (Environmental Art, Research, Theory, and Happenings) at UC Santa Cruz.
Newton and I were friends. Unlikely friends, but friends, nonetheless. Even though we could not have come from two more radically different worlds, we somehow connected and got a deep kick out of each other.
Newton, how could you have died on us? It still doesn’t seem possible that you are gone. Who is going to watch over the World’s Oceans, or the Life Web or the High Ground? You reminded me, on a regular basis, that everything is connected but that it is human hubris that destroys these connections; self-interest, capitalism, always looking for a profit instead of a reciprocal give and take. But you allowed for those rare human creatures, that act on behalf of the Earth – and of those, you and Helen were champions.
I initially met the Harrisons in 2007 when I was the chair of the UC Santa Cruz art department. Newton called and told my department manager that he wanted to talk to me. At the time, I was aware of the work of the Harrison Studio, but I didn’t know their work nearly as well as I would. Newton was interested in helping the art department form a graduate program, and Helen was firmly retired from being involved in the UC system. My department had its sights set on creating an MFA—which we have since done—however, Newton and I became convinced that we should create a Ph.D. focused on Environmental Art. I even earned a Ph.D. from UC Davis because the UCSC administration told us that we couldn’t launch a doctoral program because no one in the art department had a doctorate. What a fun adventure!!
The first creative encounter I had with the Harrisons was in Green Wedding to the Earth, (2008) part of a larger collaborative project I created with my wife/collaborator Annie Sprinkle. This performative wedding took place in UCSC’s Shakespeare Glen. Newton and Helen delivered the wedding homily. They instructed me and Annie, at the end of their oration, “And now let us go to the mountains!” I did go to the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia where I grew up. There I made my first environmental documentary, Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2012). That film has had a long and fruitful run. In fact, this morning, someone from Paris emailed me to see if they could screen it. Of course, I said yes.
In addition to work-related memories, I have fond memories of dinners with Helen and Newton, first at their son Gabe’s house. I was astounded and completely impressed when Newton told me he was building a new house at the age of eighty. He designed his house with wide accessible passageways, heated floors, a walk-in tub, spacious art studio, and a room for a caretaker. He built that house for Helen—and I remember the day he told me that Helen suffering symptoms of severe memory loss—likely Alzheimer’s. I watched as he took care of her, powerless to ease her suffering as she entered the last phases of her life. I admired the fierce but tender care that Newton gave to Helen, and I appreciated that he made it possible for her to stay home until the very end. The house that Newton built for Helen accomplished its job. It sheltered her until her death, and it accommodated her caregivers. It allowed Newton to keep doing the work he was compelled to create ― to try to help everyone see and understand the necessary steps to assist our ailing planet and to continue to nurture the “life web.” There I spent hours talking to him about the ideas embedded in his projects, entropy, saving the world’s oceans, and finally, channeling the Earth itself. Although we did not agree on everything, and sometimes we disagreed mightily, we were always able to move beyond our differences, come back to the table, and resume our talks again and again. That house also sheltered Newton in his final days.
Newton and Beth
Newton Harrison was brilliant, and I recognize the huge contributions that he and Helen made to the art world, and especially to environmental art. But honestly, it was those moments of eating together or hanging out on his front stoop, chatting with his neighbors, and petting various dogs that I miss the most. Newton and I were friends. Unlikely friends, but friends, nonetheless. Even though we could not have come from two more radically different worlds, we somehow connected and got a deep kick out of each other. We recognized in the other the desire to try to make a better world than the world that we had inherited, through art. As we watched the Earth sending out increasingly urgent distress signals our mutual recognition created a bond that we recognized and appreciated as we sat together on his stoop and watched his front-yard meadow grow. In a world where the electrifying speed of our lives is exhausting beyond measure, to have a stoop, a little meadow, and a friend to visit, and talk to about art, life, and the state of the Earth, is nothing short of a miracle.
Ruth Wallen is a multi-media artist and writer whose work is dedicated to encouraging dialogue around ecological and social justice. Her interactive installations, nature walks, web sites, artist books, performative lectures, and writing have been widely distributed and exhibited. She was a Fulbright scholar and is currently core faculty in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College.
Working in collaborative partnership, the Harrisons’ use of dialogue, with stories unfolding as they augmented or interrupted each other, amplified the generativity and generosity of their metaphors while spawning more.
“Somebody’s crazy, they are draining the swamps and growing rice in the desert…” “What if all of that irrigated farming isn’t necessary?”[i] I first heard Helen and Newton Harrison speak about their work at a lecture at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1977.
As a part-time art student, supporting myself working as an environmental specialist for the National Park Service planning office, the Harrison’s approach, distilling in-depth research into art-into metaphor, story, and performative activism―deeply affirmed my intuition to turn to art to promulgate an ecological ethic. They offered an enormously powerful example of employing art to raise crucial questions, spark imaginations, re-envision, and revitalize relationships between fragmented systems, and pose novel, ecologically sound approaches to environmental planning and policy.
Informed by their work, I received my first commission as an artist-in-residence at the Exploratorium. When I wrote to the Harrisons thanking them for their inspiration, they responded most generously, inviting me to come visit. Eventually, I moved to San Diego to study with Helen and Newton in the MFA program at the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) and stayed in dialogue with them ever since, as mentors became dear friends, a relationship for which I am forever grateful. Of all that I learned from the Harrisons, perhaps the most important was the use of metaphor as a tool for thought. Influenced by the work of Lakoff and Johnson, the Harrisons understood that human thought is largely metaphorical and that the artistic imagination is crucial to identifying metaphors that can transform ecologies. Indeed, when I was a grad student, the creation of metaphor was a central concept taught in introductory art courses at UCSD. As ecological artists, Helen and Newton identified potent metaphors by listening to the wisdom of place, being attentive to the systems within which the place was embedded, and by naming the patterns that emerged, the configurations of relationships often exposed by studying maps. Maps revealed watersheds, the circulatory systems of the earth, a major subject of the Harrison’s work. Metaphors such as the Serpentine Lattice, or Peninsula Europe served as powerful devices to spark provocative narratives, shift conversations, and guide environmental policies. The Serpentine Lattice not only made visible the network of watersheds of the coastal rain forests draining into the Pacific from Alaska to northern California but through the lattice form identified crucial points to begin processes of restoration. Conceiving Europe as a peninsula highlighted the importance of revitalizing the mountainous spines that housed vital sources of fresh water. Working in collaborative partnership, the Harrisons’ use of dialogue, with stories unfolding as they augmented or interrupted each other, amplified the generativity and generosity of their metaphors while spawning more. The serpentine lattice could be funded through an “eco-security system,” like the social security system of the US. It is not surprising that the voluminous compilation of their work not only presents each project but tells the story behind its creation. Both the work itself and these stories contribute to the process the Harrisons termed “conversational drift,” which envisions their work alive in the world, seeding discussion. A visit with the Harrisons was always an invitation to think in larger terms. Indeed, their naming of the “force majeure” and the development of a center dedicated to its study, came out of their continuing quest. But having named the problem of our times, Newton’s last piece comes back to the simple principle that must guide human actions: “Every species, without exception, must give back as much or more than they take” ― a maxim that the Harrisons certainly took to heart.
[i] Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, “Sacramento Meditations, 1977,” The Harrison Studio, accessed October, 2022. https://theharrisonstudio.net/sacramento-meditations-1977.
Mali Wu is a socially engaged Taiwanese curator, installation and conceptual artist. She is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Art at the National Kaohsiung Normal University (NKNU), Taiwan.
The Harrisons demonstrated how we could apply wisdom to allow species to coexist and prosper. This is what we should learn anew, and that art can contribute to.
When I co-curated the Taipei Biennale in 2018: ‘Post-Nature—Museums as an Ecosystem’, we immediately thought of inviting the Harrisons, a pioneer couple of ecological art, to participate. During the contact process, we unexpectedly learned that Helen had passed away. And now, to our astonishment, Newton has also left us. While I try to remember some opportunities in meeting with them, I also deeply admire and appreciate very much having them as role models in the art.
On the Deep Wealth 2018
The 2018 Taipei Biennale presented On the Deep Wealth of this Nation, Scotland. One can see Harrisons’ consistent working methods. Through the research, cooperation, and dialogues with experts from different fields, to comprehensively understand the natural resources of a place, then, based on the needs of the developments, and from the perspective of environmental ethics, they provide suggestions for the adjustment of the land use and planning.
This creative method that is both scientific and rational, but also full of ecological care and connective aesthetics is different from the traditional way we used to regard art simply as perceptual expression and object production. Through art, they propose a more integrated, cartographic perspective, trying to reverse the way we build the world. This way of creation not only presents images of an ideal world but also uses art as an intervention, expanding our understanding of art. In “Post-Nature”, many works pointed out the difficulties and challenges faced by the contemporary world but the Harrisons demonstrated how we could apply wisdom to allow species to coexist and prosper. This is what we should learn anew, and that art can contribute to.
Newton, Mali, and Helen at Susan’s house in San Fransico 2005
I knew the works of Harrisons from the development of land art, and thanks to the arrangement of Suzanne Lacy I visited San Francisco in 2005 and met many eco-conscious artists from the West Coast of the United States at the house of Susan Leibovitz Steinman. Artists, including founding members of the Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD) and Harrisons et al. It was only then that I realized that these artists paid attention to how art, especially ecological art, can respond to real-world issues, rather than simply seeing art as an expression of opinion. Inspired by this, in 2006, I developed an art project By the River, on the River, of the River – a community-based eco-art project, inviting ecological experts, cultural workers, and community colleges to collaborate with and have public discussions.
In 2007, with the help of David Haley, Helen, and Newton were invited by the Taipei Cultural Foundation to give a lecture and exhibit documents of their projects at Taipei International Artists Village. At the same time, they were also invited to Dapu Township, Chiayi County, where the Zengwen Reservoir, the most important water source in southern Taiwan, is located, to conduct a two-day’s Master Workshop. Through the detailed explanation of their projects over the years and the recitation of the poems they created, we could better understand their extremely cross-discipline, integral, educational, dialogical, and poetic methodologies. And these events have brought significant impact and inspirational approaches for Taiwan in the field of contemporary/ecological/public art.
Today, because the climate emergency is being taken seriously, more and more artists in Taiwan are devoting themselves to environmental art. There is no doubt that the Harrisons have set a benchmark for us.
After I encountered Harrison Studio’s works, I was able to redefine my works with an omnidirectional view. And I learned that I must be in a position where I can communicate and collaborate with various types of people who have similar thoughts and integrate them.
Compared with my studies, which are about the ecological society of the area around the Korean Peninsula where I live, the Harrisons Studio’s ecological society has presented enormous research and scientific information over a considerable amount of time and an incomparably broader perspective.
There are so many people who do research, act, and study for the future environment and ecology. However, the target point of all of them is different and this makes for gaps.
Newton Harrison
For example, some say that trees should be planted for the future, while others say that rescuing dying animals and extinct creatures is more important. We know both are important, but this gap sometimes causes significant friction. I think this friction is because of their situations: they are surrounded by limited budgets and time. In other words, the various kind of limitation seems to make friction. So, I feel it’s quite hard to reach the common ideal goals.
Me, as an artist who deals with environment and ecology, which point should I look at? Where should I stand?
After I encountered Harrison Studio’s works, I was able to redefine my works with an omnidirectional view. And I learned that I must be in a position where I can communicate and collaborate with various types of people who have similar thoughts and integrate them.
I want to share a story that is still inspiring me.
The first time I met Newton Harrison was in 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jeju Island, South Korea. I invited Newton Harrison to the exhibition that I curated about ocean environments.
After our successful exhibition opening, we had a tea break and conversation while we were on the way to the airport. It was not a long break. But, in that short time, Newton Harrison and I shared a very romantic story and I think this was the most important story that Newton could tell me as a senior artist.
It was the story of the first meeting between Newton and Helen. How the love began—the first feelings—Newton said that he felt 100% sure of love when he first met Helen. And he told me about both the good and hard times of living together as artists.
There were good times when they were spotlighted and invited to a lot of exhibitions. There were also hard times, of course, when there was no work at all. With all these times, being without consciousness of the outside world is important. This was possible because of being with Helen.
Although this was a very brief conversation, I felt that Newton Harrison had very happy and beautiful memories of his longing for Helen and all the things he’d had with her.
This short conversation at that time became the most important message for me, who was struggling with irregular anxiety while living life as an artist. The most important thing is love which is with a soul mate and Newton proved this. I want to live sincerely and faithfully like Newton Harrison’s words and actions.
Ostrom’s study focused mainly on close knit communities in which it was clear who was from the place and who was not (principle 1). For these communities, social control/monitoring and social sanctioning were two central pillars of Ostrom’s design principles for the governance structure that communities would put in place to manage a common pool resource (principles 5 and 6). For this reason, she thought rules of cooperation among users should be written or modified by those who would be entrusted with both the duty to obey to them and the responsibility to enforce them (principle 3).
As of a couple of years ago, there were 2,266,883 people serving in the U.S. military, many of whom serve on bases in the U.S. or abroad. The majority of Active Duty members (86.5%) are stationed in the United States and U.S. territories. The next largest percentages of Active Duty members are stationed in East Asia (7.1%) and Europe (5.8%). The largest base in the US is 
The benefits of human-nature interaction as a form of therapy are well documented. However, the value of human-nature interaction for returning combat veterans and their families and communities has been less studied. While administrators in the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs struggle to design programs to help returning combatants reintegrate into communities, programs started by veterans themselves have emerged in New York State and across the U.S. Notably, many of these programs have a focus on the healing power of interacting with nature through outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing, and through other restoration and greening activities. Examples include 
So what have we learned and where do we go from here?
Soldiers returning from long and protracted wars, especially with life altering injuries, often report feelings of inadequacy and of being devalued, and of feeling that their particular skill sets and competencies are not applicable in civilian life. On the other hand, returning veterans that engage in outdoor recreation and restoration activities report significant relief from these and other feelings, sometimes for short periods of time and more often for longer periods. In these reports are suggestions that reveal an intensification and specific manifestation of 
Second, the Canadian Urban Forest Strategy (CUFS) offers guiding principles for urban forestry at the national level. In recent years, more and more Canadian municipalities have been developing urban forest management plans and tree protection policies. Feedback from stakeholders and members has evidenced the need for a national strategy supported by all levels of government; as the Secretariat for the CUFS, Tree Canada promotes its importance to municipal, provincial and federal levels. In collaboration with multiple and diverse partners, several recent achievements include:
The CUFN Steering Committee, along with a secondary review committee consisting of provincial and federal government representatives, is currently in the process of updating the Canadian Urban Forest Strategy for the 2019-2024 term. This process began with public consultation workshops in autumn of 2015 in each region and has been ongoing for the past two years. The objective of the workshops was to ensure that regional voices were heard in the strategy’s redesign. The new version of the CUFS (2019-2024) will be presented at the
The second experience I want to share that demonstrated collaborative learning was participating in the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Roundtable (October 23-25, 2017) called, “
As a social scientist, and through my role with Tree Canada, and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the University of British Columbia 
Try as you might, you’re no urbanite
The birth of Paleo Cities
Story notes: The Nature of Cities was invited to create a session at the 2014 Smart Cities Expo in Barcelona: “Participation and the Role of Green and Open Space in Cities”. This Episode is a back stage conversation among the panelists after the presentations. The session, led by 
Public open and green spaces are declining daily in the world’s cities, largely due to population and development pressures. Yet there is broad evidence of the social, population health, and ecological benefits of open space, and a clear desire among urban populations for such space. The need for thoughtful creation of open space is critical now, as thousands of new cities will be built in the coming decades. Decisions about land use in cities—where the building, roads, and open spaces go—tend to become fixed for decades or even centuries. It is critical to get these decisions correct right from the start. David Maddox spoke about the need to articulate the attributes of the cities that we desire, and that how such cities are built is fundamentally about values—what do we think is important? P.K. Das spoke of building movements, such as 
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