Sweet by Nature: African Cities and the Natural World

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

Spring in Brussels. Balmy weather, traffic jams, helicopters hovering in skies of pale, duck-egg blue. Politicians, policy-makers and lobbyists rub shoulders with the G4S security personnel tasked with their safety. The guards outnumber their charges, and by some margin. The hotels and train stations are full. Lufthansa is on strike. 

At the tail-end of the 4th EU-Africa Summit, April 2014, some forty-odd people have gathered to talk about — and to imagine — the African city of the future. It’s a bold move on the part of the organisers to bring together at least four distinct groups: academics; architects/planners; artists and politicians to swap ideas, share experiences and collectively imagine a better, brighter future for the continent’s beleaguered urban centres. In the organisers’ own words, ‘the objective of the meeting is to define priority interventions that need to occur in cities in order to contribute to a more sustainable,  inclusive and creative urban environment, based on cities’ architectural, cultural and spatial capital. How can cultural, architectural and spatial capital contribute to social cohesion and inclusiveness, and to economic prosperity in African cities?

tnoc.image.01Over several hours of intense discussion, a broad range of ideas and issues emerged, for the most part centred around those old ‘staples’: education, infrastructure, funding, policy. But, every now and then, a word or a sentence – a description of a park, an open green space, the village square, a desire? – emerged and although ‘ecology’ as a distinct category wasn’t a specific topic on the agenda, two things struck me again and again as I attempted to moderate the discussions: one, that the question of the nature of African cities is still very much up for grabs and two, possibly more interesting, that the culture, history and role of nature in African cities is hardly ever discussed. In and of, of and in. Two sides of the same, particular coin. 

Note: The ‘Sweet’ in the title refers to the West African colloquialism, ‘sweet, paa,’ meaning ‘deep’, ‘profound’, ‘meaningful’.

Root(s)

The word ‘root’ has multiple and myriad meanings. Amongst those that are of interest (or relevance) to me, are:

  1. (noun) the essential, fundamental or primary part or nature of something (your analysis strikes at the root of the problem);
  2. (noun) origin or derivation, especially as a source of growth, vitality or existence (plural) a person’s sense of belonging in a community, place, especially the one in which he/she was born, brought up;
  3. (noun) an ancestor or antecedent;
  4. (verb) to take root: to put forth a root, to establish and begin to grow;
  5. (verb) to take root: also to become embedded or effective;
  6. (adverb) entirely; completely; utterly; radical; complete.

In the sense of 2) and 3) above, origins and ancestors, the following short story perfectly encapsulates a now almost forgotten sense of the importance of nature in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, West Africa.

‘As a child, I knew how far I could stray outside our family compound by the trees. That tree, yes, that one  . . .  I don’t know how you call it. In our language, it’s called awiemfosamina. That tree, they plant it at the edges, the edges of properties. So, you see  . . .  when you go roaming as a child, when you see that tree, you know you are at the edge of something, maybe your family’s compound, maybe somebody else’s property, maybe the edge of the area. That tree is a signal, a sign. Yes, a sign.’
— 
© Lesley Lokko, PhD Dissertation, 2007, Out of Africa: Race, Space, Place

Its crown is umbrella-shaped and can reach heights of up to 45 metres. Both fresh leaves and fruits are reddish in colour, hence the name albizia ferruginea, referring to the Latin word for ‘iron’, or ‘rust-coloured’. The wood is moderately durable, resistant to fungi and termite attacks. It is suitable for building construction, carpentry and railroads, but also for toys, furniture and musical instruments. Its leaves can be eaten by goats. Parts of the tree are used to treat dysentery.

A tree that marks an edge. Amongst many other things. 

www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de
www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de

Awiemfosamina’s pods also be cracked open, boiled and applied to mud walls as a sealant, keeping the natural iron-coloured pigment intact. 

House Lokko, Accra, Ghana
House Lokko, Accra, Ghana

In our conversations in Brussels last week, we seldom mentioned the words ‘material’ or ‘matter’, as though the stuff of our cities matters less than its form. Yet the relationship in most tropical climes between the natural and the manmade (for want of better terms), is profound: heat and humidity combine to ensure a fecundity that is fierce, almost fearful. Inert matter — concrete, glass, metal, wood — must fight nature in order to survive, maintain, remain. Things rot, disintegrate, weather and decay at a rate that far exceeds anything more milder climes contend with. Nature’s vitality is evident everywhere. Yet we speak little of nature, even less about it. It seems to me that there’s a missed opportunity somewhere to think deeply and creatively about what nature means to us, and to translate those narratives into built/grown/planted/managed form. The program of a park (recreation, respite, respiration) might be one such example but I suspect (hope) there are others. In a context and culture(s) where the very term ‘nature’ and the word ‘natural’ might have radically (see 6 above) different meanings, the opportunity to come up with new programs, new forms, new landscapes of leisure and pleasure is perhaps more visionary than we’ve been prepared to accept.

Radi(c)al City 

Similarly, although speaking to and with a different audience (students rather than politicians) ‘ecology’ and ‘nature’ aren’t specific topics on the list at many schools of architecture — much less African schools of architecture — but in my present role as coordinator of final year (Masters-level) students at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, the question of nature has emerged in their theses topics in interesting and somewhat unexpected ways. I’ve only just started in my new job, and, as a way of quickly getting to know my new students and the ways in which they think/draw/read/explore their immediate built environment, I asked them to ‘name’ their city — Johannesburg. I was fully expecting terms such as, The ‘Disconnected’ City; The ‘Migrant’ City, The ‘Broken’ City, adjectives that have been in vogue in South African urban discourse(s) for many years. Somewhat to my surprise, however, they came back with other adjectives, new ways of describing the spaces and places they inhabit. The ‘Natural’ City; ‘Rehabilitated’ City; ‘Landscape’ City, ‘Greenway’ City, pointing to a fascination (and possibly new affinity) with nature that goes beyond the historical and colonial obsession with land as a way of binding oneself to inconveniently hostile, already-inhabited territories. Of the thirteen projects I’m currently guiding, four stand out, in different ways and for different reasons.

The Frontier City, by Tiffany Melles 

A barren ridge in the centre of Johannesburg. A cluster of people dressed in white sit on a rocky outcrop. A man stands, addressing his followers: women on the right and men on the left. Over time, his speaking ceases and the sitting people join together in song, their hands pressed together in a gesture of prayer. A solitary nun, dressed in her full habit, kneels, hands clasped tightly in prayer. Nearby, on the roof of an abandoned building, a line of Muslim men stand bowed over, facing Mecca, reciting the Quran. Clapping and singing can be heard from all around. Amongst the gatherings there are large puddles of wet earth and broken glass, marking areas where prayers have been released. There are numerous ‘frontiers’ — forgotten gaps — in Johannesburg’s urban fabric, empty ‘natural’ landscapes where people gather for different purposes. Some gatherings are religious, some social, some a combination. This dissertation will attempt to describe the narrative and spatial stories of a number of these ‘frontier’ sites, and develop an appropriate architectural response.

Tiffany’s main site — the Wilds — is a 16 hectare nature reserve, adjacent to Houghton, one of Johannesburg’s oldest suburbs. Her project, although in its early stages, attempts to marry the contradictions between religion, ritual, leisure and recreation to suggest an architecture that is neither entirely ‘natural’ nor entirely manmade.

Her drawings, which combine a number of different techniques: mapping, siting, coding, and land-marking, suggest a new relationship between program and site. In an area prized for its ‘wild’ nature, new forms of use and occupation have sprung up outside the city’s formal planning strictures. These ‘traditional’ forms of worship are not bounded and housed in the same way as other major religions: here there is no ‘church’, no altar, no mosque, no temple. The spiritual and natural worlds exist in the same dimension and space, where ritual and use establish the hierarchies of worship: preaching and prayer, hearing and listening, cleansing and purifying.

Dialogical Landscape & Timeline, drawings by Tiffany Melles © 2014
Dialogical Landscape & Timeline, drawings by Tiffany Melles © 2014

The Connected City, by Zoë Goodbrand

Zoë’s strapline, Reclaiming Johannesburg’s Natural Environment, speaks directly to the issues of ecology, nature and parklands that most of us are already familiar with. What is potentially interesting in her project is the juxtaposition of normative (read: Western) notions of parklands, the management of ‘nature’ by city municipalities for the enjoyment of city dwellers and the potential for ‘other’ cultural readings of nature, leisure and recreation that could influence and shape her chosen site and program. Her reading of the site sits within a traditional Eurocentric perspective:

public parks are utilised primarily for recreational use and to provide people with social locations that offer opportunities for them to meet with friends, observe other people and be seen. Crime, a history of spatial segregation and a lack of infrastructure have rendered the area under-utilised and abandoned. It is a sad fact that many Johannesburg residents’ experience of outdoor space and nature is often limited to that which exists in their backyards. People often travel to and from work without ever coming into contact with nature, placing a disproportionate importance on private gardens as a way of connecting people with their natural environment. One possible way to link the domestic ‘garden’ and its somewhat sanitized version of the ‘natural’ world with broader ecological themes, is through ‘linking spaces’, green linkages between home/park/work/local services and the ‘wilds’, of particular importance to suburban dwellers who, in themselves, exist in a twilight state between the ‘real’ urban and the rural.’

‘Humanity currently exists in a dysfunctional relationship with the natural world and auto-bound cities are both symptom and cause of this dysfunction.’

As Johannesburg’s suburban population becomes increasingly reliant on private motor vehicles as a mode of transportation, we enter deeper and deeper into this dysfunctional relationship. This is a result of the fact that middle-class, suburban Johannesburg was created on the assumption that every middle-class household would own a car, with blocks too large and facilities too separated to enable people to walk, replacing pedestrian movement with vehicular movement. In this scenario, it can be argued that the private vehicle is as a major source of social alienation, creating a city of disconnected strangers.

Zoë’s proposal sits at the intersection of these concerns: our growing disconnectedness from our natural environments; the dislocation of the suburb from both nature and the city and the risk of even greater social alienation.

SiteLines 1 & 2, drawings by Zoë Goodbrand © 2014
SiteLines 1 & 2, drawings by Zoë Goodbrand © 2014

Like Tiffany, her use of the techniques of mapping and coding allow her to grasp, digest and manage the vastness of her site, which stretches almost the length of the city. By identifying infrastructural elements (bridges, power lines, tunnels, roads, malls, leisure facilities) alongside ‘natural’ elements (plants, gardens, views), a conversation starts to emerge between the two worlds: instead of a strip shopping mall, she proposes a garden centre; a drive-in movie theatre that makes use of nature, rather than suppressing it. The speed at which one cycles or walks through a landscape profoundly alters one’s view of it: her careful analysis of surfaces — tarred, rough, smooth, paved, grassy — provides opportunities to stop, savour a view or a scent, take in the city from a distance, see something new/different/’other’.

The Forgotten City, by Gabi Coter

This thesis looks at open landscapes across Johannesburg that were left behind and forgotten within suburban areas of the city as a result of white flight, urban sprawl and the establishments of buffer zones between residential areas. This thesis aims to imbue such forgotten landscapes with dignified means of ‘memory’ and/or ‘remembering. Rietfontein Farm (in Johannesburg) sits like an urban island within the suburban areas of Edenvale, Linksfield and Rembrandtpark. This fifteen hectare site lies unused and forgotten, primarily because of the Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital situated in the centre. When the hospital was first opened in 1895, the open land around it was configured as a buffer zone between the ‘unhealthy’ grounds and surrounds of the hospital, and the neighbouring suburbs. Just outside the hospital grounds, a number of cemeteries were created to bury victims of smallpox, tuberculosis and bubonic plague. Although many of these graves are unmarked, it has been established that over 6,000 bodies lie buried within the site’s boundaries in unmarked and unnoticed graves. This site, which has adapted and reinvented itself many times over, can be read as a ‘third’ landscape, following Clements’ description of ‘landscapes having been formed primarily due to the rapid growth of cities and the effects of urban sprawl.’

Gabi’s drawings, which map and explore the site at a number of different scales, see nature as a healing force within the city-scape, not only for its restorative powers in terms of growth and re-growth, but for its ability to protect and prolong memory. Using the notion and programme of a clinic, it is her intention to rehabilitate this third forgotten landscape through sensitive landscape interventions and restore its ecological and cultural dignity.

Augmenting Dumps, drawings by Gabi Coter © 2014
Augmenting Dumps, drawings by Gabi Coter © 2014

Junkspace City, by Rachel Wilson

‘We no longer live life, we consume it.’

A consumer-driven approach to the economic ‘health’ of a society tends to focus solely on growth (GDP), employment and urbanisation. As a result, ‘softer’ measures of development such as water and natural landscape preservation tend to fall by the wayside. In Africa, this is particularly endemic where ‘progress’ and ‘development’ focus almost exclusively on ‘hard’ data and more nuanced and culturally-sensitive/appropriate responses to the environment are dismissed or under-played. This unbalanced approach to development has led to the destruction and scarring of many urban landscapes which teeter on the brink between potentially productive spaces (in all senses of the word) and perpetual abandonment. These marginalised and often unseemly landscapes are what I call ‘junkspaces’, and are the focus of this year’s investigation, a potential buffer-zone or no-man’s land between spaces of consumerism and extreme urbanisation and ecological preservation. 

Rachel’s dissertation explores the breakdown in society between extreme consumerism and the fragile eco-systems of Johannesburg, proposing an Institute of Political Ecology which mediates between the worlds of finance, development and politics, the ‘real’ world of policy and governance, and the ‘natural’ world of ecology, sustainability and landscapes. It’s a challenging, complex architectural brief with the potential to weave together systems, materials, programs and possibly even forms from a number of different spheres. Her ‘Endoxene’ drawings below are a hybrid transplant of Johannesburg into the rural landscapes of Kigali, Rwanda, showing the communication connections that bind diasporic communities together and playing on the notion of the nostalgia for the ‘homeland’ that is often experienced by those who have left home (back again to the notion of ‘roots’, see 1-4 at the beginning of this essay).

Ecological Chasm, drawing by Rachel Wilson © 2014
Ecological Chasm, drawing by Rachel Wilson © 2014
Endoxene 1-­4, drawings by Rache  Wilson © 2014
Endoxene 1-­4, drawings by Rache Wilson © 2014

Root and Rhizome(s)

7. to root for (verb) to encourage a team or contestant by cheering or applauding enthusiastically. To cheer, cheer on, shout for, applaud, clap, boost, support.

8. rhizome (noun) in botany and dendrology, a rhizome (from Ancient Greek: rhízōma ‘mass of roots’,from rhizóō ‘cause to strike root’)

Embedded (perhaps subconsciously) within these four student projects are complex ideas about ‘landscape’, ‘nature’ and ‘ecology’, particularly in South Africa where conflicting material interests in the ‘natural’ world — from ideas about how and what to farm (subsistence vs. industrial farming practices, for example) to the ‘spoils of nature’ — minerals — which have driven and dominated South Africa’s wealth for centuries — collide. Questions of ownership still dominate the discourse around ‘land’ and ‘landscapes’:  who ‘owns’ the land, on whose terms, in whose image, according to whose beliefs and practices? We are accustomed to the idea that culture, social practices and religion are the common fault lines in any given society: what these student projects demonstrate, albeit tentatively, is that ‘nature’ itself is every bit as rich, complex (and, yes, fraught) a belief system as anything and everything else.

The schism between the natural and the man-made, or between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ (culture being what we do to and with nature), is site-specific and culture-specific, and not universal in any sense. In today’s global, multicultural and highly cosmopolitan urban environments, where radically different views about ‘nature’ often predominate, how do we explain, explore and exploit these differences in ways that hold meaning for us all? (see 7 above). The radical feminist Audre Lorde’s phrase, ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’ is pertinent: now, more than ever, in societies that are literally ‘made up’ of sometimes contradictory and opposing views, the ability to think outside our normative boxes, disciplines, ways of seeing and working, is not just visionary, it’s required. It’s sometimes said that culture is the sum total of the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. For many Africans, whose spiritual, ritual and material connections to the ‘natural’ world run deep, the absence of a sustained, creative and critical discourse around ecology and nature in our exploding urban centres is a dangerous void, one that we will struggle to fill.

Origins. Ancestors. Roots. Rhizomes. 

To root for: to cheer, to cheer on, to support and applaud.

Lesley Lokko
Johannesburg

On The Nature of Cities

 

 

Swift Action Needed

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

The swifts have gone. They left about a week ago and the sky is silent over British towns and cities. By now they will be well on their way south, quartering marshes in the south of France and Spain, making for Gibraltar where they cross to Africa; airborne now until they return next May.

They are not with us for long, but for many people the screaming flocks around the rooftops are the very essence of summer. They are as much a part of urban life as we are, for these birds are totally dependent on buildings for their nest sites. Some colonies in older towns and cities depend on individual buildings, or old walls, which have been occupied for many years. The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is thought to be the oldest known site of a colony. Ancient city walls of Siena in Italy have supported colonies of swifts for several hundred years. This is typical of many European towns dating from the medieval period with old buildings and town walls still supporting substantial colonies within the urban fabric. Roof spaces of imposing 19th Century buildings such as museums and City Halls, along with housing of the same period, are also favoured nesting locations.

Swift returning to the nest with a bulging throat pouch full of food. Photo David and Jackie Moreton
Swift returning to the nest with a bulging throat pouch full of food. Photo David and Jackie Moreton

The colony of swifts that occupies the roof of the University Museum of Science in Oxford provided the basis for one of the most extraordinary ornithological studies, described by David Lack in his book Swifts in a Tower in 1956. He and his wife Elizabeth produced a detailed account of the life history and ecology of swifts that is a model in the literature of urban ecology.

Although we know a great deal about the intricacies of their lifestyle it has been difficult to make accurate estimates of their population both nationally and locally. During the 1980s and 90s most assessments assumed the UK swift population was relatively stable.  However, since 2000 a number of surveys suggest that there has been a substantial decline in numbers. The British Trust for Ornithology estimates that over the period 1995 to 2010 numbers fell by 38% in the UK and by 46% in the Republic of Ireland. Following this the swift was put on the Amber List of species that are cause for concern.

As long distance migrants wintering in southeast Africa we can expect that swifts will be susceptible to ecological changes affecting their wintering grounds and migration routes.  Current research is pinpointing these areas with remarkable accuracy, but we are a long way from knowing whether significant ecological changes are taking place. The reason for declining numbers may lie much closer to home. We know that great changes are affecting traditional breeding sites in urban areas of the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and it is now widely accepted that these changes could be responsible for declining numbers.

The fact is that new townscapes offer fewer opportunities for swifts. Modern buildings of glass and concrete have no suitable holes for nest sites, and older buildings especially private houses that were at one time suitable are increasingly being re-roofed in ways that make them inaccessible. Modern construction techniques are creating new urban landscapes with no room for swifts.

But need this be so? The lack of provision for swifts is not intentional. Their needs simply do not figure on the radar of most architects and developers who are more concerned with the functional and aesthetic qualities of new buildings. But since 2000 a number of new organisations have been set up to raise public awareness about what is happening and to promote the use of artificial nesting chambers in new buildings. Swift Conservation promotes action plans for swifts in many towns and cities, which have proved to be very successful. It has also tackled the building industry head-on to promote the use of nesting chambers in new developments.

A great variety of swift-bricks and nesting boxes are now available, designed to be incorporated into new buildings or added to existing ones. Swift bricks are standard sized building blocks, with a hole leading to an internal nesting chamber. The nest is entirely self-contained and there is no danger of any mess inside the building. The only external sign is a small hole in the wall. Other kinds of boxes can be fitted under the eaves of existing domestic and commercial buildings. Successful schemes using swift bricks include a number of notable buildings such as London’s police HQ at New Scotland Yard and the 2012 Olympic Village. In 2011 South Cambridgeshire District Council won the Best Practice Award from the UK Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management for a village project called Saving the Fulbourn Swifts, which involved fitting nest boxes to a large number of modern houses. This was particularly significant because architects and developers gain prestige from such awards

It seems that advice provided to businesses and other organisations by Swift Conservation has led to a significant shift in attitudes within the development industry. There is now a willingness to act when pressure is applied. The widespread adoption of such schemes might be precisely what is needed to reverse the current decline in numbers of swifts.

But some people are going a step further with the construction of swift towers akin to dovecots which can be erected anywhere in the built environment on car parks, commercial business estates and even on rooftops. Once the need is identified the possibilities are endless.

David Goode
London

On The Nature of Cities

Abridged from Nature in Towns and Cities by David Goode 2014 Published by Harper Collins

Swiss Green Roof Standards: Experiences and Exchanges from Three Years of Practice

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
Biosolar Roof in Lausanne, Palais de Beaulieu—taking a break & contemplating —European goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) Photo: Antoine Lavorel (2017)

Some weeks ago my colleagues (from the University of Applied Sciences in Geneva and the City of Lausanne, Nature and City Department) and I organized a half-day event: an exchange of experiences on the Swiss green roof standards practice with the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) in Lausanne.

It is easier to continue pretending that nature-based solutions can’t work than to take a new step which is not based on economic gain, but is instead based on ecology and the promotion of biodiversity.

“The SIA is Switzerland’s leading professional association for construction, technology and environment specialists. With 16,000 members from the fields of engineering and architecture, the SIA is a professional and interdisciplinary network whose central aim is to promote sustainable and high-quality design of the built environment in Switzerland” (http://www.sia.ch/en/the-sia/).

“The SIA and its members stand for quality and expertise in architecture and construction. The SIA is well known for its important work on standards. It develops, updates and publishes numerous standards, regulations, guidelines, recommendations and documentation, which are of vital importance for the Swiss construction industry. Some 200 committees are responsible for further developing these standards” (http://www.sia.ch/en/the-sia/).

The standards SIA 312 were published and printed in November 2013. The goal of this event in Lausanne was to see, after more than three and a half years, if these “practices“ are used and if they are an instrument to achieve requirements.

Standards in general

In this article, I discuss technical standards within the construction sector. There are various standards, meaning technical requirements that apply to various systems. Although not a legal tool, the standards insure that there are certain tested applications and practices which should guarantee a good quality planning, application and maintenance.

What is special about the standards SIA 312 “green roofs”?

SIA 312 is a highly technical document, which leads with very precise and short sentences, taking the reader from the main chapter of project study, through materials and implementation. I was a commission member when the project started in 2008, and the challenge of creating these standards was to integrate ecological parameters in order to achieve green roof quality as well improve biodiversity. Quality in terms of creating well thought out projects: planned wisely to achieve the desired vegetation, consideration of the life cycle of materials to be used, and the fauna and flora to be established in the long term. For the first time, ecological compensation matters and requirements were integrated in such a document in Switzerland.

The commission members represented all stakeholders involved in the building sector: architects, engineers, green roof companies, waterproofers, substrate producers, seeds and plant nurseries and city authorities. So, the points of reference were appropriately broad.

A brief overview of our federal law.

One key element is that the law incorporates the idea of ecological compensation. Ecological compensation is a collective term for measures that serve to maintain and restore the function of the habitats and their networking, especially in intensively used or densely populated landscapes. The Federal Act on the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage (NCHA) requires the cantons (federal states) to provide ecological compensation (Article 18b (2) NHG, Art. 15 NHV). One of the goals of ecological compensation is the promotion of indigenous biodiversity.

The following measures are suitable ecological compensation:

  • Strengthening and re-creating natural areas
  • Biodiversity support areas (formerly ecological compensation areas)
  • Ecological improvement in urban areas (cities etc.)
  • Measures in the forest (for example by natural forestry, old woodland, forest reserves)
  • Habitat connection and networks

The goals for ecological compensation can be subdivided according to quantitative, qualitative and disposable criteria, which are explained in the Swiss Landscape Concept.

Digging into the law itself can be very helpful, and reveals other requirements for the purpose of protecting the environment. Specifically, with regard to the green roof standards, there are the following:

2.7.1.1 Where ecological compensation measures are required, the following criteria shall be considered:

  • thickness of the substrate (variation). This means two things: 1) mix natural or recycled substrates (the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached) like sandy-graveled, excavation soil, gravel, sand, compost, crushed bricks, crushed ceramic etc. and 2) vary them in thickness for the application all over the planned surface (builds more micro habitats)—the minimum is 100mm thickness.
  • type of vegetation (plant associations), combination of species, depending on the environment you want to establish. For example, a dry meadow—open spaces with low and scarce vegetation, mixed perennials etc., this has to be considered in the planing process.
  • distribution of the substrate (variation): designing various landscapes on the surface.
  • storage of meteoric waters: the more variation in substrates thickness the more retention and buffer of meteoric waters / rain waters.
  • structures and networks for animal species (fauna), like wood logs, stones, piles of branches
  • seeds species and seedlings (local & indigenous species); choose local species and support the local flora and fauna (genetic diversity as well).

2.7.1.2 The following local conditions have an influence on the success of the greening of a roof; They are therefore to be taken into consideration during the study:

  • solar radiation (drop shadow, reflection, thermal radiation)
  • precipitation (sites that may be sheltered from rain)
  • wind regime (exposed roof, protected roof, turbulence, suction effects)
  • emissions (exhaust air, dust, gas)
  • quality of the surrounding nature.

2.7.1.3 The requirements for ecological compensation shall be classified as follows:

  • basic requirements (Table 2),
  • high requirements (section 2.7.2),
  • special requirements (section 2.7.3).

Within this classification we offer three choices, as well as the option to go directly to the utmost classification (special requirements). In the standards only the high and special requirements are described in detail. The basic requirements are included in the general information found within the standards (like 2.7.1.1. and plant species details).

2.7.2.1 High Requirements:

  • basic requirements as a function of climate
  • variable distribution of the vegetal layer: shaping of the vegetal layer on surfaces (From a static point of view, e.g. Minimum thickness of the vegetal layer of 80 mm, 120 mm and 150 mm, distributed for each thickness on 1/3 of the total area.)
  • plant class 3 (Table 6 within the standards).
Lausanne Service de Parcs et Domaines (SPADOM), different type of biodiverse green roofs. Photo: Nathalie Baumann (2017)

2.7.2.2 In addition four other criteria are to be defined according to the following list:

  • use of two or more substrate types (mixes)
  • use of topsoil or earthy materials of local origin, provided that their quality (permeability, part of clay, etc.) is appropriate, or of mineral substrates produced locally
  • Biodiversity-improving structures (facilities): sandy areas
  • Biodiversity-improving structures (facilities): gravel areas
  • Biodiversity-improving structures (facilities): dead – wood (piles of branches)
  • Biodiversity-improving structures (facilities): dead – wood (logs)
  • Biodiversity-improving structures (facilities): stone pile / mount
  • Biodiversity-improving structures (facilities): for target species, etc.

The list is extensive, providing specifications for plant associations and species. Of course you can also find  information on extensive and intensive green roofs, plant species and vegetation methods (seeds, seedlings, plugs and hay mulch/dry meadow cut grass) water retention, grey water usage, biosolar (combination of biodiverse green roofs and solar panels) in this document.

What is the connection between a standard or a norm and nature in the city?

Standards are a tool or instrument, which can be used to require from any stakeholder in the construction environment, “standards” for ecological measures, on how to implement biodiverse nature in the building environment, in order to be sure that nature and biodiversity can be improved. Cities normally add to the base standards, providing additional documentation with graphics and photos in order to provide greater detail about the topic.

Another possible method of communicating standards is a demonstration installed by the city of Lausanne a year ago; a green roof exhibition square. The exhibition features different types of green roofs, including combinations of different natural substrates (mixtures), different vegetation methods (local & indigenous plants) and projects from biosloar roofing to urban farming on roofs.

Green roof exhibition, Lausanne SPADOM, Photo: Nathalie Baumann (2017)

The event we organized welcomed approximately 80 visitors; from private companies to public institutions, politicians, and stakeholders from the construction and building sector, coming from the whole Swiss French-speaking region.

Welcoming the participants at the SIA event and explaining the exhibition square of green roofs. Photo: Nathalie Baumann (2017)

We started with a visit of the exhibition square, one year after it had opened, to show that this demonstration is an additional feature that can accompany the written standard SIA 312. It serves as an excellent tool for the purpose of education and communication.

After the introduction, presentations and discussion, architects, waterproofers and the University of Applied Sciences in Geneva, demonstrated their experiences, their actual research, and best practices with regard to using this tool in implementing the SIA 312 standards.

All the presentations showed fabulous improvement either in research or in planning and/or installation of green roofs (including biodiverse and biosolar ones).

Background, a biosolar roof. Foreground, a modular box on wheels for expositions (mobile box), Lausanne, SPADOM (exhibition square). Photo: Nathalie Baumann (2017)

It demonstrated that with the help of an exhibition square, a different perception and awareness was awakened; as was an interest in changing practices and learning new ways of creating nature based solutions.

Looking back on this event, a number of questions arise. Why don’t we embrace these projects more readily, even though we know, that they are possible and easy to do? Why is there a kind of “fear”, that it is not going to work, despite the decades of work documenting good and best practice? Why is there disbelief in it?

My hypothesis is that it is easier to continue pretending that it (nature-based solutions, discontinued reliance on industrialized products, protection of resources, etc.) can’t work than to take a new step which is not based on economy or gain / turn over but instead is based on ecology and the promotion of biodiversity. We come back to the old and ongoing discussion about human beings and their relationship to nature. In my opinion, this remains paradox and represents the ongoing fight between the desire to control nature and wanting to keep it at a distance.

I was very pleased with the progress made within three years, knowing very well that such changes normally don’t come quickly. However, in the case of Lausanne, changes in the French speaking part of Switzerland have come quickly. With good tools, motivated and engaged people who want change, good communication and education actions,  it is possible to change awareness among different professions and stakeholders in a short time frame.

Conclusion

What is the essence of this “standards story” for non-Swiss citizens? What is it for?

The idea behind this essay was to provide an example of something that could take place in any country and city in the world. But how can I be sure that this can happen everywhere? The key, in my opinion, is to find personalities in politics, urbanism, and the construction business and persuade them of the benefits and positive impacts of biodiverse & biosolar green roofs to both the environment and to people. Is not going to happen on its own, for sure. But as we did in Switzerland, pursue those ideas and practices you believe in, and which can be proved to work, given patience and determination. In doing so, you will demonstrate to other parts of the world, that change can happen, and instruments can be installed, which will have a positive impact on the environment as well as on the green economy.

Nathalie Baumann 
Basel

on The Nature of Cities

 

 

Take a Walk on the Wild Side: Evolution in the Streets

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

I read this article by Menno Schilthuizen, a Dutch evolutionary biologist and ecologist, about the evolution of animal and plant species taking place in cities. In cities, evolution is propelled by two forces: the known laws of ecology AND the social dynamics of human society.

The city habitat, as a novel ecosystem, promises a towering stack of current and future questions that cross disciplines.

The article concludes that we are witnessing the emergence of a novel, hybrid type of ecosystem, one that is emerging at different locations all around the world at more or less the same time: the urban ecosystem. This made me question: why are more and more species calling the city home, and how do they adapt to survive in this new habitat?

Let’s start with my own home and habitat: Amsterdam. The Netherlands is one of the world’s most densely built up and populated countries. There are very few places in this country where you will find a horizon free of man-made structures, complete silence (even in the 650,000 ha appointed as silence area, where noise levels should not exceed 40 dB, there is no guarantee that the rules of silence will be complied with), or a night sky lit solely by the moon and stars (actually, we’ve got only two such spots). You will have to get yourself to the coastal outskirts to find these extraordinary places; in the rest of the country, ecology and society bump into each other constantly.

Silhouette of two dueling storks on top of a street light in Breda, the Netherlands. Photo: Erald van der Aa, for Holland Beeld

In order to guide this eco-societal contact, we have traditionally isolated one from the other by creating nature conservation areas and limiting urban sprawl by building compact cities. Zoning policies are valuable for protecting the functioning of different stakes that exist in a region: nature, food production, housing, industry, and so forth. The downside of prioritizing one function per area is the risk that the landscape becomes a collection of isolated or thinly connected islands. I will illustrate this using the “island” of intensive agriculture as an example of an isolated landscape, and the wildlife corridor as an example of a way to connect the “islands” of protected areas.

Large-scale intensive agriculture leads to impoverishment of the countryside’s natural character, chasing away birds and small animals that thrive on hedgerows and other linear elements that constitute the more traditional agricultural landscape in Europe. Removing grassy field margins and tree lines may obstruct water infiltration and increase erosion. At the same time, agricultural intensification and field enlargement lead to a decrease in the landscape’s attractiveness for tourism and outdoor recreation. People, just like other living creatures, enjoy variation in a landscape. So by prioritizing one function, in this case food production, there is a risk of losing other functions.

The second exemplary case is the wildlife crossing. The Dutch version of a wildlife crossing, the ecoduct, has become very popular over the past few years as an engineering solution for habitat fragmentation that connects natural areas with each other to enable safe animal crossings. And, as this video shows, wildlife crossings facilitate the movement of wildlife not only in Europe, but all over the world, including, for example, red crab migration in Australia. Yet since people are never far away, at least not in the Netherlands, the question has been raised whether to open wildlife crossings for recreational use. What would the deer, frogs, and hedgehogs think of sharing their crossing with hikers, bikers, and horseback riders?

Wildlife crossings are frequently built as a vegetated bridge over a highway—is there a place where ecology and society bump into each other more literally? Photo: Wageningen University & Research

Both cases illustrate a struggle between isolating versus mixing the diverse functions of the land. There is an ongoing debate about whether to propagate so-called nature-inclusive agriculture that offers opportunities for biodiversity increase through habitat creation—e.g., low-intensity management of drainage ditches that mimics natural processes. Farmers would receive financial compensation if they implement nature friendly measures. Then again, there is a strong argument against nature-inclusive agriculture: nature and large-scale agriculture have different demands on the land that are hard to satisfy simultaneously, such as in terms of the most preferred ground water level. So, in this case, ecology and society experience friction.

But the story is not just sad and gloomy. The bumping of ecology and society actually reveals very promising dynamics. And where do these dynamics reveal themselves most elegantly? In cities.

Because the city offers little space for isolation, functions need to be mixed. The city is a mix of buildings; infrastructure; flows of people, money and knowledge; but also home to an extremely diverse set of vegetation types and arrangements, water bodies, gardens, parks, and all things in between. The result is a unique ecosystem that operates on its own and that can only be expected to gain in importance, considering the increasing cover of urban land globally. Combined with the ongoing loss of natural habitat and the attraction of easily accessible food sources in the city, the emergence of the unique urban ecosystem has driven species formerly living in shaded forests and wild rivers to call this novel habitat home.

So, how do species adapt to urban living? Some are not so familiar yet with their new neighbors and remain on the lookout for spots with little human interference: the outskirts, industrial sites, and railway tracks. Amsterdam’s resident fox has built her hollow in a small patch of woodland right next to the train tracks and a large industrial area flanked by a busy road. Somehow, she manages to cross the road every day without getting hurt and with a meal for her family. On the menu: mostly rabbit (themselves once dumped here by their caretakers), alternated with the occasional rat or pigeon. A kingfisher has chosen to reside in one of the city’s port areas, a spot where the waters of river and sea collide to produce a large nutritional variety. From a sandy wall hidden by marshy bushes, the bird flies up and down while the ships go by. The grass snake has found a home in Amsterdam, too. It breeds in the urban forest, reproduces by the thousands, and the lucky few that are not turned into road kill or eaten by birds of prey can grow up to 100-110 cm long as adults. In March, these fellows like to go out in the sunshine, and you may very well find them sunbathing between the steamy stones of rail track levees—one of those urban fringes not crowded by people. If you’d like to see how the fox, kingfisher, and grass snake came to call the city home, the urban lives of these creatures have been beautifully captured in the 2015 documentary Amsterdam Wildlife, by city ecologist Martin Melchers.

Amsterdam’s resident fox jumping the water that divides its hollow from an industrial site. Photo: nrc (Dutch newspaper)

Other species, birds in particular, seem to mind the presence of human beings to a far lesser extent. Amsterdam is full of swallows building their nests underneath the tiles of sloping roofs; I witnessed a coot trying to build its nest on a deserted boat in the canal in front of my apartment; and people have found blackbirds nesting on inner-city balconies, even when that space is shared with the owner’s pet. People’s presence can even increase an individual’s chance of survival, as shown in a scene from the documentary Amsterdam Wildlife. In one of Amsterdam’s few high-rises, an office of ABN AMRO bank at the Zuidas business district, or “Financial Mile”, employees took over the care of a young Peregrine Falcon after it was deserted by its parents. The bank employees even came in on weekends to feed the bird. Peregrine Falcons are Amsterdam’s penthouse inhabitants; they like heights and started to inhabit the city when tall chimneys and office towers were constructed. From their lofts—often man-made nest boxes—they’re living an easy life, just waiting for a pigeon to fly by below before dinner is served.

 

A coot nesting on a heap of waste in the Amsterdam canals. Photo: belevenissenindenatuur.blogspot.nl

There are plenty more examples of animals adapting to city life. Madhusudan Katti recently described the growing population of endangered Kit Foxes in a California oil town in an article for TNOC. Matt Soniak has also provided entertaining stories about urban wildlife for Next City. In Chicago, for instance, coyotes have learned to navigate the city’s hectic traffic and can be found waiting patiently by the side of the road for traffic to stop, after which the coyotes start to make their way across. City coyotes in Chicago also appear to be healthier than their wild counterparts, as the city contains fewer of their predators and offers more food sources. Complex as they are, cities can turn out to be safer and steadier than many undeveloped areas. A severe drought in India that killed nearly half of the rural monkey population left Jodhpur’s city monkeys virtually unharmed. To other species, the urban heat island effect is what makes the city such an attractive place to live. Some insects just love the warmth, and this has resulted in more insects living inside than outside of cities. Meanwhile, people are purposely attracting biodiversity into the city. Residents actively plant flowers to attract pollinators and place bee hives on their green roofs, assisted and enthused by people and organizations trying to bring nature closer to the city.

So we know some of the reasons that animals come to the city, and have an idea of the ways in which they adapt their behavior to survive in their new homes. But does this adaptation also result in evolutionary changes? In his TNOC article, Madhusudan Katti mentions that Bakersfield’s Kit Foxes demonstrate novel traits. Also, some birds have adapted their singing to the urban environment. To deal with one of the largest urban burdens, low-frequency traffic noise, birds in San Francisco changed the tone of their melodies to a higher-pitched one. Or, they save their calls for the (relative) silence of the night. There are additional examples of typical urban bird behavior. Schilthuizen explains how, starting in 19th century Germany and extending from there to other European cities, blackbirds stopped migrating because cities offer plentiful food year round. In general, due to a lack of natural predators, urban birds are less sensitive to stress. This means that urban birds are evolving differently than birds of the same species that roam in non-urban areas. Research has shown that changes in urban bird behavior are taking place over decades, not millions and millions of years, and this process is labeled with the term HIREC: human-induced rapid evolutionary change.

Evolution-the-urban-way is happening all over the world. In a MOOC by Leiden University, Schilthuizen explains the effect on a species’ evolution if some reside in cities, facing strong selection pressure, and others of the same species don’t. Speciation may occur: the evolutionary splitting of a species into an urban and non-urban species. And if species evolve while in the city, how then do populations in different cities compare to each other? When the same evolutionary changes take place independently in different places or times, we arrive at what is called parallel evolution. These dynamics promise a towering stack of current and future questions for biologists and ecologists, but also for architects and planners (for a great example, see Mark Hostetler and colleagues’ new Building for Birds online tool), home owners and companies, food growers and traffic controllers. Most of all, these novel changes promise a chance to move from “nature despite people” and “nature for people” focuses all the way to a framework of “people and nature” that is underpinned by an interdisciplinary approach—just the right thing for our multi-function cities.

With the city habitat as a novel ecosystem, there is a whole new world to explore and discover for humans and, indeed, for many more animals.

Marthe Derkzen
Amsterdam

On The Nature of Cities

Taking “resilience” out of the realm of metaphor. How do you measure resilience in cities? How would you know if your city or your community was resilient?

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
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.
Keren Bolter, Fort Lauderdale Resilience requires two things: awareness and being in action. Be aware of what is occurring and what the risks are, and then take actions to reduce risks and increase capacity. 
Cezar Busatto, Porto Alegre It’s crucial to know whether a community is more or less resilient to evaluate its culture of participation and collaboration and its social cohesion and civic engagement. 
Lorenzo Chelleri, L’Aquila  Resilience is a socio-political choice, implying trade-offs. Metrics help, but won’t save us from the development of risk-washing strategies.
William Dunbar, Tokyo Resilience assessment via communities’ own perceptions, through Indicators of Resilience in Socio-ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes.
Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm Increasing efficiency is viewed as critical for achieving sustainability, but a too strong emphasis on efficiency may erode resilience making the urban system vulnerable, through insufficient overlap in critical functions should some fail.
Antoine Faye, Dakar In my understanding, if the process is aimed at fusing a “resilience” agenda with the mainstream urbanization agenda, then it should be a continuous learning process. In that sense, the concept is not a “stock” but rather a “flow”.
Richard Friend, Bangkok If we take resilience as being the ability to learn and reorganize in the face of changing circumstances and risks, then the need to measure resilience becomes a learning exercise.
Lance Gunderson, Atlanta It is better to understand and assess resilience in urban areas, than to try and measure it for at least two reasons: difficulties in measurement due to different definitions of resilience; and attempts to measure such a property creates spurious certitude to a complex issue.  
Tom Henfrey, Bristol All talk of resilience these days is highly politicised, and it’s important to take this into account when considering whether and how to measure resilience in cities.
Patricia Holly, Barcelona+Nairobi From the metaphorical world of ‘resilience’ writ large, is an emerging consensus around the means of addressing through concrete, reliable, and comprehensive urban engagement, the visions, aims and goals of cities to become safer, more resilient places for the people, businesses, and organizations that live there.
Dan Lewis, Barcelona+Nairobi From the metaphorical world of ‘resilience’ writ large, is an emerging consensus around the means of addressing through concrete, reliable, and comprehensive urban engagement, the visions, aims and goals of cities to become safer, more resilient places for the people, businesses, and organizations that live there.  
Rachna Lévêque Resilience at strategic city scale requires collective governance that looks beyond the specifics to respond to intricately linked urban stresses.
Shuaib Lwasa, Kampala Measuring resilience in cities is locale and context specific. Context to the risk profile and local conditions that shape the risk but also provides the levers for making cities resilient.
Timon McPhearson, New York Resilience is a property of a system. Cities are systems, so on the surface it makes sense to think of building “urban resilience”. But cities are complex entities that have multiple social, ecological, and technical systems, so it’s difficult to interpret the meaning of terms like “resilient city”, let alone evaluate them.
Franco Montalto, Venice Resilient cities will be as diverse in form and function as we are diverse as an urban populace. Resilience plans will morph and change as we learn and grow. Resilience solutions are local and diverse, not monolithic and standardized.
Luciana Nery, San Paolo Resilience is about survival and prosperity—we need to measure it.
Henk Ovink, The Hague The key question is not how to measure resilience, but how to get to resilience in an accountable and transparent way?
Elisabeth Peyroux, Paris Measuring resilience should be considered both as a (very difficult) methodological and a political problem.
Catherine Sutherland, Durban What needs to be measured is the entanglement of state policy and practice with the practices evident in the lives of ordinary people and how these together contribute to greater resilience. This is much harder to measure, as these entanglements emerge in multiple ways along multiple paths at different scales.
Pakamas Thinphanga, Bangkok If we take resilience as being the ability to learn and reorganize in the face of changing circumstances and risks, then the need to measure resilience becomes a learning exercise.
Claire Weisz, New York The value of scientific data and metrics to track losses and gains across many variables and factors could be the engine to realize the resilient communities that we are currently unable to achieve.
Dan Zarrilli, New York Ready to withstand and emerge stronger from the impacts of climate change and other 21st century threats.
David Maddox

About the Writer:
David Maddox

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.

Introduction

Resilience is one of three in a trinity of key urban design values: resilience, sustainability, and livability. Yet, of the three, resilience seems to reside the most in metaphor. Many are trying to build resilient cities and communities all over the world, and “resilience” works wonderfully (for the most part*) as a metaphor. Having a “resilient city” sounds like a great idea that everyone could support. No? But to design for resilience suggests we can identify it, plan for it. There are many definitions, each addressing different sectors of thought or action: ecological resilience, economic resilience, community resilience, engineering resilience, psychological resilience, and so on. When we descend from the heights of metaphor we are quickly faced with four key questions, practical questions: resilience to what, resilience of what, resilience for whom, and decided by whom? In addition, the answers generally must be specified locally. As a metaphor, resilience is deeply susceptible to risk-washing and cynical politics. As a grounded concept, it has the potential to address serious human and ecological problems. It’s a steep challenge, community by community.

(*And then there are the social patterns and systems that we wish were less resilient: social systems that seem to tolerate or even perpetuate corruption, racism, injustice and poverty come to mind.)

Of the 21 respondents to this roundtable, some are working on direct or indirect metrics. What makes them relevant and validated? Some are measurement skeptics. If it can’t be measured then how can we construct resilience (in an adaptive management sense)? Some are actively engaged in city building and policy. How is resilience an actionable concept?

In a time of gathering stresses from climate and ecological change, economic stress, and the persistent challenges of sustainability, justice and livability, resilience is a key area of thought with enormous potential. We must continue to work to bring it down from the 10,000 meters of metaphor to functional concepts on the ground. As we build and improve the cities of world, how can we act on the core ideas and promise of resilience?

Keren Bolter

About the Writer:
Keren Bolter

Dr. Bolter has planned and collaborated on several projects including the MIT Sea Level Rise Scenario Planning and Alternative Futures project and an Anglo-Floridian partnership to exchange adaptation strategies between the UK and the US. For the Southeast Florida Regional Planning Council, Keren helped create a Guide for Adaptation Action Areas, in order to identify areas that experience coastal flooding due to extreme high tides and storm surges.

Keren Bolter

Resilience requires two things: awareness and being in action. Be aware of what is occurring and what the risks are, and then take actions to reduce risks and increase capacity. In a completed design for resilience, you must go beyond planning to implementation. This transition can have many obstacles, but creativity, inspiration and leadership can overcome resistance. You can measure changes in resilience by monitoring unique indicators of performance over time.

Let’s move from these abstract ideas to focus on examples in my city, Fort Lauderdale, located in Broward County, Florida. Sea level rise risks here are increasing dramatically in many dimensions, including physical, social, and economic. The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact has a unified projection which predicts 7-18 centimeters of sea level rise by 2030 and 17-61 centimeters by 2060. The City of Fort Lauderdale already experiences tidal flooding (see picture). With the majority of the City’s land sitting at elevations between 1.2 and 1.8 meters above sea level, there is significant risk to storm surge. In addition, the porous limestone aquifer is just a meter below the ground surface during the wet season. Increasing sea levels will continue to compromise drainage and reduce our capacity to store ground water. With these increases in flooding, water management issues will impact more people and more property due to increased growth in the city. There are a variety of health impacts from threats such as seepage from septic tanks, vector-borne diseases, and mold. Financial risks include increased insurance rates driving down property values, in turn reducing the tax base, which will limit infrastructure and drainage improvements. What about vulnerable populations, and issues such as lack of a vehicle and public transportation options during hurricane evacuations?

Now that we understand the risks, how can we measure resilience? I will explore qualitatively. Adaptation to sea level rise tends to be classified in three ways: accommodate (modify structures, for example by elevating, floodproofing), protect (seawalls, living shorelines), and retreat (or at least stop developing in those high-risk areas!).

legend
Flood risk into the future. Credit: Keren Bolter
Low water.
Low water, Broward County, Florida.

There are policy actions, design standards, and outreach strategies which can prioritize adaptation. Fort Lauderdale has been a champion in all three of these arenas. In 2011, Florida’s Community Planning Act (HB 720) was created, providing Adaptation Action Area language at the state level. Broward County was the first local government in the state adopt Adaptation Action Areas (AAAs). Last June, Fort Lauderdale integrated the language as well. AAAs are a designation in the Coastal Management Element of a local government comprehensive plan which identifies one or more areas that experience coastal flooding due to extreme high tides and storm surge, and that are vulnerable to the related impacts of rising sea levels for the purpose of prioritizing funding for infrastructure needs and adaptation planning.

High water
High water, Broward County, Florida.

Leadership from the local government had driven up awareness and action, working hard to inform residents and municipal employees with education workshops and promotional materials.

In one neighborhood, Las Olas Isles, which frequently experiences tidal flooding, drainage improvement plans include 50 tidal control valves and 48 baffles with an anticipated City budget of US$8.5 million over the next 5 years. In addition to government action, there are private businesses which are investing in awareness and action. As part of Coastal Risk Consulting, I have been helping to provide Coastal Rapid Risk Assessments which inform residents about the risks of nuisance flooding and storm surge at the parcel level over a 30-year mortgage period. These are specific examples of actions which reduce impacts which provide a foundation which we can ramp up as risks increase.

Cezar Busatto

About the Writer:
Cezar Busatto

Cezar Busatto is married, father of twins, Leonardo and Carlos Ernesto, born in Veranópolis city and an Economist from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

Cezar Busatto

Resilience is a complex approach to complex problems we have not been able to deal with in our cities and societies. Therefore, I understand resilience as a new hollistic approach that tries to reconnect knowledge that has been imprisoned in silos in the last centuries.

The one dimension type of solution is the origin of unsustainability. Gross National Product measuers economic growth but is not able to measure sustainable development. The United Nations made a big paradigm change introducing Human Development as a new measure of development. But it’s still short, if we consider the need to take into account the measurement of environmental, cultural, political, institutional and other dimensions of development.

How to begin that paradigm change? 

In my opinion, we need to consider two basic concepts: territory and collaboration. Territory is where people live, grow their families and communiites, have their public spaces and social equipments. It’s the space of convivience. Collaboration is a way common people connect to each other in their informal networks on everyday life.

Bringing together collaboration and territory, we begin to restablish the necessary connections of knowlwdge to create innovative approaches to solve old problems.

Innovative and plural apporaches take into account different ideas and dimensions of a given situation, helping to build more complex, sustainable and resilient answers to it.

We are talking about articulating multistakeholder networks getting together people from communities, private sector, government and academy to deal with real problems local communities have to face with. These person-to-person (p2p) networks are real democratic experiences of dialogue and conversation among common citizens and foster better convivience and quality of life.

This is not a localist type of proposal. Local challenges are very offen connected to global ones. Let’s take a city, for instance: the challenges people face in a neighborhood are very often connected to challenges in the whole city. And it’s difficult to imagine that challenges found in a city would be disconnected from challenges at a broader scale. Besides, the p2p conversations and connections through new technologies connect local to global, bring new knoledge to the table and give more sustainable and resilient answers to local issues.

Moreover, collaborative territorial networks dealing with real and everyday challenges assure people’s motivation and mobilization. To achieve this purpose, the commitment of government staff in the dynamics of these networks is also very important.

That’s the social methodology we conceived in developing Porto Alegre’s resilient strategy. The core of our strategy is the articulation of local resilient networks in each of the 17 territories in which the city is divided. These networks define their main challenges and the way to face with them in a multistakeholder type of commitment. When the answer depends on public money, the local network of Participatory Budgeting is called to place a priority on the specific project in order to be included in the Public Budget. Each local resilient network will finally have an action plan to strenghten resilience in a given territory.

At the same time, all these local resilience networks come together to define the main challenges for the city as a whole.  In a collaborative workshop we select what we call the focal areas to make Porto Alegre more resilient. Working groups are then organized to get deeper in the diagnosis and formulation of a plan of acction for each focal area. The consolidation of the territorial and focal plans will result in the resilient plan for the city.

In order to measure resilience, we will also need an innovative approach. We must of course take into account wellbeing conditions like the meeting of basic needs, public services provision and economic opportunities. But I understand it is crucial to know whether a community is more or less resilient to evaluate its culture of participation and collaboration and its development of social cohesion and civic engagement.

Lorenzo Chelleri

About the Writer:
Lorenzo Chelleri

Lorenzo is the Director of the International Master Degree City Resilience Design and Management and Chair of the Urban Resilience Research Network (URNet) at the International University of Catalonia (UIC). With a background in urban and regional planning, environmental policy and urban geography, his research and teaching activities critically address the governance and planning processes related to city resilience governance.

Lorenzo Chelleri

City resilience? Take resilience thinking (the theory) and apply it to cities. “Nonsense”. As an urban planner, this is what came to my mind when I first came across the definition of resilience 10 years ago. Indeed, if defined as the capacity to overcome threats, retaining system structure, functions and identity, to me this was nonsense if were to be translated to cities. Why? Because a part from Lewis Mumford teaching us that “the need for social life” and “the commodities exchange opportunities” always represented the eternal core identity and function of any metropolis, city or settlements, the real capacities of cities, evident through history as the most durable (or resilient) human artifacts, resides in their transformational capacities.

Measuring city resilience? This is of course necessary and useful, and makes a lot of sense. This is not at all contradictory. The application of resilience thinking to cities, the metaphor of resilience (or “dealing with change”) has the positive effect of inspiring planners to tackle some specific urban challenges. It became worth finding measures to address resilience to disasters (recovery capacities), to climate impacts (adaptive capacities) to carbon emissions (mitigation capacities), etc. As presented from various colleagues within this roundtable, there are different valuable metrics and methods to measure such necessary and specific aspects of resilience related to urban development.

However, while I do agree on the need to assess, measure, and enhance city specific resiliences, my main concern is related to the emergence of a new overall paradigm, framing resilience per se as an imperative urban goal, a label potentially fitting within business as usual development agendas and promoting resilient cities rankings thanks to its indicators and metrics.

How can this be the case? We have now reached a general consensus on the need, normative compliance and positive outcomes related to resilience building. However, notwithstanding agreeing on resilience being a multifaced concept, many efforts have been spent on framing, promoting and measuring specific resiliences, while less attention has been spent in critically assessing and evaluating the trade-offs between resilience and other development goals. For instance, the “overcoming change” normative paradigm, should be operationalized through three very different approaches, namely “maintaining – adapting – transforming” (respectively aiming to build robustness, introduce incremental change or introducing long term disruptive change within the system).

Fig 3 approaches
The three coexisting and conflictive approaches through which is possible to operationalize resilience by “overcome change”. Credits: adapted from Chelleri et al (2015) “Resilience trade-offs: addressing multiple scales and temporal aspects of urban resilience”, Environment and Urbanization (27)-1: 181-198.

These coexisting but conflictive approaches, which could be operationalized through hundreds of different actions building resilience, can imply specific or strategic trade-offs. For instance, how would one frame long term transformational resilience synergies with enhancing the robustness and business continuity of current critical infrastructures? How to build resilience through community led initiatives (enhancing local self-sufficiency) in synergy with the need of growing the international competitiveness of a city? The main issue is that resilience, as sustainability, should be a social and political choice, about how and which substantial change, or incremental change, or asset to be maintained through robustness, promote. Green-washing experiences are a warning of the potential manipulation of metaphorically positive concepts, like sustainability. While our unsustainable urbanization process takes place, we should carefully avoid the rise of Risk-washing development strategies, manipulating the normative message of resilience building. The assumption of the normativity of resilience hides the issue of who is building it, for whom, and possibly replacing urban sustainability outcomes with urban (un-sustainable) durability.

Within the academic debate, it is clear to us that resilience is not just the flipside of vulnerability, and that in cities these three approaches related to resilience building (figure above) should coexist within the emerging urban resilience thinking. However, on the ground, resilience and its metrics, do not provide practitioners with any guide on how to prioritize or manage the process of building development pathways accounting possible resilience trade-offs. For instance, if we take resilience metrics and assess both the renewable energy distributed network of a very sustainable community, and the redundancy and modularity of a decentralized fossil fuel energy network, owned from a big company, they could eventually score the same level of resilience, in providing a reliable energy service. But what about their embedded trade-offs respect to sustainability, or social justice, or economic implications of such resilience metrics?

As Aristotle said, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For urban resilience I think we should learn and frame our thinking following this quote. Urban resilience is not just the sum of its parts. Measuring its social, economic, infrastructures or disaster facets performance is key. It is key only once we are clear on the city overall goals (like achieving sustainability, or inclusiveness, enhancing people quality of life, etc.) in order to frame how each of the resilience facets could support or impede the path to achieve them.

William Dunbar

About the Writer:
William Dunbar

William Dunbar is Communications Coordinator for the International Satoyama Initiative project at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) in Tokyo, Japan.

William Dunbar

A community-based approach to measuring resilience in peri-urban areas

“Resilience” has gained increasing attention in recent years, to the extent that it seems to be rivaling “sustainability” as the word of the day in many fields. This makes it increasingly important to study resilience systematically; otherwise there is a risk of the term becoming overused and therefore essentially meaningless. Effectively measuring resilience is one step toward systematic study, keeping in mind that the goal is not just to study resilience but to optimize it.

Defining a community’s resilience loosely as its ability to withstand various types of changes, shocks and disturbances, unfortunately the only way to directly measure resilience is to subject a community to shocks and disturbances and see if it withstands them, which is obviously not practical. So we are left with estimating or measuring indirectly. One way to do this is by using elements that are thought to contribute to resilience and can be measured directly as indicators.

Ideally, it would be possible to use these to produce hard, quantitative data that could then be used in some sort of universal index of resilience. The fact that different communities exist in different ecological and cultural contexts, however, means that various responses to related challenges may contribute to or undermine resilience differently in different places. This can make it difficult if not impossible to identify and correctly weight quantitative elements of resilience. An alternative approach is to rely on qualitative, perception-based data. This roundtable entry presents an example of the latter approach.

The “Indicators of Resilience in Socio-ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS)” were developed through a collaborative activity carried out under the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initative (IPSI) by Bioversity International and the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). After extensive field-testing around the world, they were further refined and updated in a Toolkit publication in collaboration with UNDP and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), providing guidance on how to apply the indicators. Much of the indicators framework applies to peri-urban areas, particularly where a significant amount of food production takes place. As was pointed out in a recent TNOC essay, peri-urban areas can provide connections between people living in urban areas and rural areas and can see benefits in resilience through effective management.

The process outlined in the Toolkit involves engaging a community in “resilience assessment workshops”, in which participants provide scores for the 20 indicators based on their own perceptions of their community and landscape. Example indicators include: “The landscape or seascape is composed of a diversity/mosaic of natural ecosystems and land uses”; “Common resources are managed sustainably in order to avoid overexploitation”; and “Rights and access to resources and opportunities for education, information and decision-making are fair and equitable for all community members, including women.”

Perhaps more important than the numerical scoring of the indicators is the process of having the community gather to discuss their resilience. Many participants have never considered resilience as a concept before, and it can be eye-opening for them to think about how different kinds of resource management in their landscape affect the community’s prospects. This can then feed into a long-term process of holistic resource management including repeated assessments and actions based on their results.

There are trade-offs involved in measuring resilience with either a purely quantitative approach or a qualitative, perception-based approach like the one introduced here. The former may provide the sort of comparable numerical data preferred for making decisions about resource allocation, but that same data may be less useful to those on the ground in any landscape. The latter, on the other hand, may not provide comparable data, but may pay off in secondary benefits like improved communication, understanding and motivation to work toward a resilient community.

Measuring resilience is a problematic but extremely important issue for urban as well as other communities, and I hope the Indicators of Resilience in Socio-ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS) will help forward the process. I encourage readers to download the Toolkit publication, and I would like to thank TNOC for the opportunity to take part in this roundtable and discuss these issues.

Community members scoring the Indicators of Resilience at a workshop in Ondangwa, Namibia: Photo: William Dunbar
Community members scoring the Indicators of Resilience at a workshop in Ondangwa, Namibia: Photo: William Dunbar
Thomas Elmqvist

About the Writer:
Thomas Elmqvist

Thomas Elmqvist is a professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm University and Theme Leader at the Stockholm Resilience Center. His research is on ecosystem services, land use change, natural disturbances and components of resilience including the role of social institutions.

Thomas Elmqvist

On measuring urban resilience

To start out, I will make two statements about resilience. Firstly, my view is that resilience represents a systems approach (non-normative) to meet the challenges of sustainable development (normative goal). So at the outset, resilience could be either good or bad depending on the context. We certainly struggle with undesired resilience (e.g. dictatorships and corruption are examples of systems often being resilient but undesired by most). Secondly, resilience is a property of a system not of a locality. There are many instances where resilience has been linked to particular city or small geographic region. But this may lead to many unintended consequences, for example, building (desired) resilience in one city may lead to erosion of resilience or create undesired resilience elsewhere. Only if we view resilience as being a non-normative systems approach where cities are viewed as open systems connected to the rest of the world in many ways, may we be able to design appropriate indicators of urban resilience and measure some of its components.

Although we are still far from identifying such measures I will suggest two areas where we should start developing these, admitting the large challenge we have ahead of making any such measure operational.

The first starts out from the common view that increasing efficiency in urban functions (transport, energy, governance) is critical for achieving sustainability. However, in some instances a too strong emphasis on efficiency (maximizing outputs) can erode resilience through a deliberate reduction in redundancy and connectivity. The loss of redundancy and connectivity might create vulnerabilities in the urban system as a result of an increased dependence on a few sources and the entire system might become unstable having insufficient overlap in functions. In the figure below there is an evident difference between a self-organized system/network (to the left), having high redundancy in connections between different parts (many alternative pathways if one fails) and designed systems/networks (to the right).

Elmqvistimage

There is empirical and theoretical evidence for that the trade-off between efficiency and resilience is real, and thus it would be worthwhile developing a measure of redundancy or degree of overlap for critical urban functions to avoid loosing desired redundancy. Such a measure could for example be based on some rather simple metrics developed in network theory.

Secondly, to build resilience, urban regions must take increased responsibility for and take into account their profound connections with, and impacts on, the rest of the planet. Collaboration across a global system of cities could and should provide a new framework to sustainably manage resource chains. Here a measure is needed that capture the intensity and type of such collaborations across multiple scales.

So combined, such measures could provide us with guidance for where and how much we should invest in redundancy in urban functions and in governance and institutions and for engaging in collaboration across a global system of cities. The outcome would likely also help us understand some of the true costs of sustainability.

However, it is still uncertain if we will succeed in finding such measures that truly could become operational and used in urban regions across the world. Perhaps we may alternatively view resilience as a concept that brings new dimensions and insight into urban planning. Insights from resilience thinking provide urban planning with a new language and metaphors for the dynamics of change and new tools and methods for analysis and synthesis. Most importantly, a resilience approach confronts modes of governance based on assumptions of predictability and controllability with a mode based on dynamics and non-linearity. However, resilience thinking provides planning with little guidance in prioritizing or addressing tradeoffs between different development strategies, highlighting the inherently political character of urban governance. Perhaps these insights from resilience thinking into urban planning combined with the acknowledgement of the limitations of these in addressing trade-offs, e.g. among different groups of people, is perhaps still the important contribution resilience can make to a sustainable urban and socially equitable future.

Antoine Faye

About the Writer:
Antoine Faye

Antoine is the Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) of the city of Dakar in Senegal, West Africa, where he oversees the elaboration of a Dakar Resilience Strategy.

Antoine Faye

The idea of “resilience” is gaining ground in urban policy circles. Although differently defined, the concept is commonly accepted as being the process from which, cities as complexes systems “of individuals, communities, institutions and businesses”, would be able to gain “the capacity to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience” (100 RC of the Rockefeller Foundation).

On one hand, provided that above definition hold true and is widely shared, we will at least success in taking “resilience” out of the realm of metaphor and avoid that every actor gives a meaning to the concept depending on the trajectory that that actor wants to adopt.

On the other hand, in my personal understanding, if the process is aimed at fusing a “resilience” agenda with the mainstream urbanization agenda, then it should be a continuous learning process. In that sense, the concept is not a “stock” but rather a “flow”. Legitimately, the question of “how do you measure resilience in cities? How would you know if your city or your community was resilient?” makes sense only if we encompass that “resilience” is not acquired, but rather sought.

Indeed, the commitment towards resilience is accompanied with challenges that open to opportunities. Both, perspectives depend on various factors. These factors can ease or deepen the challenges while maximizing or annihilating the opportunities. For instance, in Africa, the present context of that of rapidly growing cities has produced two key figures, namely; informality and entrenched inequality. A prerequisite for building resilience in this part of the world is to understand how informality and entrenched poverty interact and are intertwined.

We are not without knowing that informality manifests itself with settlement on unplanned land without public services and bulk infrastructures, unregistered and or transfers of constructions, insecure job, unregulated trade and service provision; all of such widening the already existing inequality between the “have” and the “have not” and deepening the vulnerability of the later to resist to shocks and stresses.

However, above all that precedes, what born out of informality is perhaps the inability for the institutional (systems) of the city to capture data from these constituents in order to build a base line to inform the prerequisite status with which to depart from in elaborating a resilience strategy. Thus, the most difficult aspect of building resilience in city like Dakar in Senegal is the unavailability of reliable data to form solid hypothesis and assumptions based on reliable indicators. In such case, “measuring resilience to know if your city or your community was resilient” will be just hazardous since there are no indicators to assess the real impacts of policies and infrastructure investments.

According to the World Council on Cities Data (WCCD), cities are subject to complex dynamics forcing us to dwell upon a necessary framework if we are to understand the interaction of natural and human system within that specific space. In that view, the WCCD adds that the resilience of cities to withstand the impacts of natural and social evolution and changes depends predominantly on the flow and efficient management of resources. I sense that better indicators can enable us to better measure the resources flows and interactions towards holding governments and communities accountable to their targets and goals which is the ultimate objective of resilience.

Richard Friend

About the Writer:
Richard Friend

Richard Friend is in the Environment Department, University of York, and member of the management group of the University’s International Development Network.

Richard Friend and Pakamas Thinphanga

Measuring resilience through self-assessment and public dialogue

If we take resilience as being the ability to learn and reorganize in the face of changing circumstances and risks, then the need to measure resilience becomes a learning exercise. Given the nature of urbanization as a deeply contested process of change entwined with issues of power, knowledge and rights, promoting such learning around measurements of resilience becomes a process of social learning and dialogue. Yet it also needs to be a process that can accommodate different values and interests in ways that allow for innovation, and ideally, for socially just and ecologically viable outcomes. The major challenge has been in getting issues of climate change and resilience on the policy agenda.

Our work on promoting urban climate resilience in South-east Asia has been based on a framework that is grounded in Shared Learning Dialogue (SLD) processes—essentially spaces for informed public dialogue that bring diverse urban stakeholders together. Combined with this, we have approached urban systems as comprising:

  1. infrastructure, technology, ecosystems,
  2. institutions and
  3. agents (organizations, individuals).

Measurement of urban resilience requires consideration of these three elements and the ways in which they interact.

We have experimented with different approaches to measuring resilience; the jury is still out on which approaches work best but certainly different approaches serve different ends.

From our perspective from city level engagement in Thailand and Vietnam, we have had greatest success adopting self-assessment methods. For example, the UNISDR Local Government Self Assessment Tool (LGSAT) is based around the Hyogo Framework for Action key essentials, providing a kind of global standard. It is framed largely around disaster risk reduction rather than climate change, although elements of climate resilience do appear in some of the questions. These generally have to separated out into two discussion points—for example, assessment around disaster risk reduction in many circumstances is far more positive than around climate resilience.

The questions in the LGSAT are efforts at defining key elements of resilience. This is also requires further refinement around characteristics of resilience which we have taken as being—diversity, flexibility, redundancy, safe failure, access to information and participation in decision-making.

By adapting this framework, and focusing in on core elements or urban resilience around governance, institutional coordination, land use planning etc.—we have been able to facilitate dialogue among state and non-state actors that has identified key areas of weakness (and in rare cases strengths!), and also the very different, conflicting perspectives of different actors. In this way we are able to open up for public debate, issues around resilience of what, for whom – and critically, who defines ‘resilience’.

The focus of this effort has been less concerned with the score and more with the dialogue. Even so, the record of the dialogue becomes a point of reference for city stakeholders to monitor progress in improving resilience. However the challenge still remains in actually achieving degrees of urban resilience that are also socially just.

Pakamas Thinphanga

About the Writer:
Pakamas Thinphanga

Pakamas has a technical background in biological sciences and coastal ecology with a Ph.D. from James Cook University, Australia and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oxford. She joined TEI in late 2008.

Lance Gunderson

About the Writer:
Lance Gunderson

Lance Gunderson is a systems ecologist who is interested in how people understand, assess, and manage large-scale ecosystems of people and nature

Lance Gunderson

I think it is better to understand and assess resilience in urban areas, than to try and measure this property for at least two reasons. These reasons include 1) difficulties in measurement due to different definitions of resilience, 2) and that by attempting to measure such a property creates spurious certitude to a complex issue.

The word resilience has been defined and applied in at least three different ways by different scholars or scholarly fields. Such different definitions imply not only different metrics and approaches to measurement, but also the feasibility of measurement. One definition, used by physical scientists and engineers is referred to as engineering resilience. For such systems, there is an assumption of a single configuration (regime, state or identity) and resilience is defined as the magnitude of a disturbance and the capacity of the system to recover from that disturbance. For the engineering type of resilience a variety of quantitative metrics have been proposed which relate to the rate at which the system recovers to a pre-disturbance state. Such metrics may be a recovery of processes or structures, such as restoration of power outages, or rebuilding buildings. Even with this type of resilience, there seems to be little agreement on which of the many attributes should be measured in practice.

Another type of resilience is called ecological resilience. Ecological resilience refers to the shifts in controlling variables that mediate or control the transition from one state or regime to another regime. Moreover, the variables that influence such shifts generally operate at different scales of space and time. Because of the dynamic nature of these thresholds, and difficulties in measuring such slow and fast dynamics, this type of resilience may be assessed, but is (for all intents and purposes) not quantifiable or measureable.

The third type of resilience has been described as community resilience. Some social scientists reject the notion or existence of social systems and hence community resilience.    For those who do recognize community resilience, it can be characterized as the capacity of a group or organization to function with respect to specific disturbances or crises. Due to the novelty of configurations, ranges of functions, a large and complex number of variables that define a community’s capacity to respond to a specific disturbance, such resilience is also (for all intents and purposes), not computable or measureable.

When faced with a new type of collective problem, we try to gather information in order to develop an understanding that helps direct how we act or intervene. In this case, trying to understand and direct trajectories of cities or urban centers over time, the concept of resilience has become part of the discourse. In efforts such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, or NOAA’s Coastal Resilience program, resilience is the central organizing theme. Implicit in these programs is the use of resilience as a normative term (as in a city or coast should be resilient). Yet there are a number of resilient facets of cities, such as slums, impoverished economic zones, or air-pollution zones that are very resilient. Such areas can be quite resilient, yet are not desirable.

Attempting to measure or index resilience (and there are lots of folks that say they can measure resilience) creates a spurious certitude that is likely to drive maladaptive actions and constrain creative and productive actions that may help change unwanted trajectories.

Tom Henfrey

About the Writer:
Tom Henfrey

Tom Henfrey is a researcher, educator, activist and social entrepreneur on community action for resilience and sustainability based in Bristol, UK.

Tom Henfrey

Measurement and power: The political ecology of urban resilience

All talk of resilience these days is highly politicised, and it’s important to take this into account when considering whether and how to measure resilience in cities. Most treatments of urban resilience are overtly or covertly complicit with the appropriation of the concept by conservative forces seeking to reinforce inequalities of wealth and power. The essence of this neoliberal discourse is to conflate resilience with persistence, as an outcome whose necessity needs no qualification. Urban resilience, therefore, is presented as the ongoing existence of cities in something like their present form: nonwithstanding either its desirability or wider consequences.

Although ill-informed and inchoate—for reasons I’ll explain shortly—this narrative is implicit in almost all mainstream discourse on resilience. It is abetted by an ingenuous and academically fashionable postmodern notion that resilience is not a well-defined quality of complex systems, but a purely normative concept that can and does mean all things to all people. Created and sustained largely by social scientists lacking any familiarity with relevant scientific theory—and often any apparent notion that the possibility that such theory exists—this notion is blind to, among many other things, the effects of power relations on the dynamics of social systems.

Resilience is neither the mere fact of persistence; nor does the latter reliably imply the former. Resilience is a quality: a capacity to negotiate change through creative responses, including the prospect of transformation to a radically different form when conditions demand. In their current form, cities inherently lack resilience. They depend on throughputs of matter and energy that are utterly unsustainable, and consequently endure only because they externalise the consequent social and ecological damage: in other words by systematically undermining resilience elsewhere. Their primary function—reflecting the main, unstated, policy goal of almost every government in the world—is to ensure that wealth and power accrue disproportionately to those who already have both in excess, at everyone else’s expense. An inevitable consequence of increasing inequity is to intensify resource flows to even less sustainable levels, further undermining resilience in the city itself, its constituent subsystems, and connected systems elsewhere. All centralised initiatives on ‘resilience’ of which I am aware are actually concerned with perpetuating this state of affairs.

For this reason, no city in existence can plausibly claim to be resilient. Nor, limited by present conditions and mindsets, do we have any solid idea what a resilient city would look like. There are some inspiring visions, and some good ideas of how to get there, but little prospect of progress under present urban governance and planning regimes. Each disruption experienced by a city is a signal of its fundamental lack of resilience, and hence an opportunity to identify routes towards transformative change. Urban resilience strategies that emphasise maintaining the status quo ignore these signals and dismiss these opportunities. In doing so, they force change in exactly the wrong direction. Where such strategies form the basis of measurement, the results will be useless at best, and more likely counterproductive.

Resilience theory shows that, in ecological systems at least, when resilience changes it does so abruptly and without warning. The indicators that a system is approaching such a threshold bear no predictable relationship to the changes that take place when it is reached, and are evident only in retrospect, if at all. Rather than seeking to measure either progress to resilience or resilience itself, what in my view is needed is a more qualitative approach to fostering the conditions that can enable such a transformation. This requires political commitment to dismantle existing political, economic and financial institutions, and support for meaningful efforts (pretty much all by grassroots actors too marginal with respect to these institutions to have vested interests in their perpetuation) to replace them with flexible and adaptive structures able to transform in whatever way necessary to allow resilience. Only then can begin the work of building genuinely resilient cities and societies—that sustain themselves, grow and flourish in ways that allow interdependent social-ecological systems to do the same.

Dan Lewis

About the Writer:
Dan Lewis

As a civil engineer and private consultant, Dan Lewis has worked in urban reconstruction and housing programmes in South Africa and Chile as well as with First Nations communities in his home region on Vancouver Island, Canada since 1987.

Dan Lewis and Patricia Holly

Resilience as a metaphor? A journey from intuition to logic

The journey from concept to concrete is observable in the dozens, maybe hundreds of resilience-based dialogues currently underway. Everything from food security to kinder-garden care; ‘community’ to global; climate change to criminality; and metrics to ‘zeitgeist’ are being explored, debated, calculated, and sometimes even acted upon. Perhaps this is the foundation of the metaphor—resilience described by chaotic, disjointed, soup-to-nuts type interests.

Sifting through the varia however, is non-ending, often incredibly interesting, and virtually impossible to isolate the gems within the limitations of time and growing demand for understandable, reliable, and strategic action. Nowhere is the pressure more acute than from the cities and towns throughout the world asking for guidance and seeking support to introduce new planning, development, and management paradigms that (ultimately) result in better capacity to withstand the shocks and stresses they face daily. Our journey within UN Habitat’s urban resilience programming begins from this point.

Key words shaping the approach include: ‘cities and towns – understandable, reliable, strategic – planning, development and management – and action’. In the best case, the manner in which cities—all cities—change, is through the functions of planning, development and management. These functions, when they are undertaken in a strategic, reliable and understandable manner can positively re-shape cities over time.

The implications are huge however. Planning in the 21st century hasn’t changed since the beginning of the 20th century, and the inertia is enormous. Development patterns, driven by grossly unsustainable, real-estate driven, land use, has produced urban sprawl (and trillions in profits…and losses) that will take decades to undo. Urban management practice continues in the silo’d bureaucratic models that seem timeless and ubiquitous. In spite of this; that there is demand for creating more resilient cities and towns, is indicative—not conclusive—of a desire for change, and gives us the first milestone in the journey from metaphorical to literal.

The challenge now begins to take shape—introducing comprehensible, reliable and strategic action through urban planning, development and management to achieve—over time—better resilience to both acute and longer term shocks and stresses.

Breaking down these key words or ‘elements’ was essential to getting from concept to concrete, and finding a comprehensive approach to meeting the challenge. It began simply with the who, what, where, when and how interrogation which rapidly blossomed into a pretty complex array of interdependent, multi-stakeholder, multi-sector, multi-hazard ingredients in the mix. However, even this helps move the journey forward.

Accepting, for example, that an urban ‘planning’ process must be ‘comprehensible’ we understand implicitly that this means different things to different people—in other words, it demands ‘reliable’ translation giving meaning to all stakeholders from politicians to bankers, community members to utility operators, and so on. The same applies to urban ‘development’ and ‘management’ processes, and we have access to methodologies for consultation, collaboration and engagement that are well developed and tested throughout the world. Introducing new content—knowledge and process that delivers elements of resilient urban development—and strategically re-orients how a city or town develops, benefits from these tools and ensures that all stakeholders contribute, own and support both short, and long term aims.

Similarly, understanding that cities are incredibly complex, complicated, dynamic and unique systems; creating understandable and reliable baselines from which to plan, develop and manage within a resilience-based strategy, requires layered communication that provides meaning to that same diverse group of stakeholders. Moreover, developing an approach that is applicable in all cities and towns demands standardizing both the urban systems model, and the language and meaning of resilience-based planning, development and management.

Why? Try and find out how many cities there are in the world today. Wikipedia ridiculously defines 85, most of them in China. Other sources range from 4,000 to 3 million cities and towns…bottom line is no one knows. In any case, far too many to suggest a customized process for each, which achieves little in terms of building understanding, or standardizing reliability, or achieving greater, global strategic aims of meeting demand for more resilient cities and towns.

Now we’re getting somewhere—we have a clear challenge, we understand the means to meet that challenge, and are well on our way developing the models, metrics, standards, and systems through which to deliver. We’re not alone—organizations participating in the Medellin Collaboration on Urban Resilience for example represent the largest community of practice engaging with cities, and have agreed to a set of common aims to meet increasing demand. Resources, both knowledge-based, and knowledge generating, are emerging from academia, and analysis of implementation, and political commitment at all scales is freeing up financial support directly for cities, and for the support institutions they rely on.

From the metaphorical world of ‘resilience’ writ large, is an emerging consensus around the means of addressing through concrete, reliable, and comprehensive urban engagement, the visions, aims and goals of cities to become safer, more resilient places for the people, businesses, and organizations that live there.

Patricia Holly

About the Writer:
Patricia Holly

Patricia Holly Purcell, a US and British National, is the Senior Strategic Partnerships Advisor at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), based in their Nairobi Headquarters, focusing on the Agency’s City Resilience Profiling Programme.

Rachna Leveque

About the Writer:
Rachna Leveque

Rachna Lévêque is an urban and regional planner with global experience on projects ranging from buildings and public space to strategic city planning and policy making.

Rachna Lévêque

Cities need generic resilience

The dominant approach to resilience in cities takes the approach of specific resilience – by focussing, for example, on resilience to disasters (natural or manmade) and resilience of communities. This approach, of building resilience of this to that and under these circumstances, enables resilience to be measured to some extent and therefore operationalized. However, focussing on specific resilience risks losing the overview of the entire city as an intricately connected social-ecological system (our economic systems being a subset of the ‘social’ of the social-ecological system). Hence, it raises questions like: who decides whether the resilience of one community is at the expense of another?

Decision makers taking a long-term strategic perspective of the city often have to judge various priorities against one another and pave a way forward, often in an environment of changing social, political, environmental, economic and technological influences locally and globally. Hence, their occupation is predominantly with generic resilience. In this respect, it is more meaningful to think of resilience as the ability of diverse stakeholders to collectively influence their social-ecological system (or sub-system) to be in a state of (desirable) resilience. In terms of city-level decision-making, this relates to three things: the ability of stakeholders to get involved (or connect into wider system dynamics), the ability of stakeholders to have or gain knowledge of the system, and the ability of stakeholders to take meaningful action (i.e., to have influence). The debates on power and the politics of inclusion and exclusion are interweaved through each of these: who is involved in what, why and in what way; which stakeholders have what access to the various discussions that take place at strategic level; what opportunities do stakeholders have to find common solutions; what opportunities do they have to question and present new ideas, and what potential do the stakeholders’ propositions have to ‘revolt’ to strategic decision making levels. It is important to remember that stakeholders comprise not just resident communities, but also workers, businesses, developers, utility providers, and various governmental and non-governmental authorities and agencies including those operating at regional and national level.

Based on the above, it seems obvious that greater transparency and participation in decision-making would lead to (desired) resilience. However, at city-regional level one has to consider whether the mechanisms for transparency and participation actually allow diverse stakeholders to have influence while also allowing the city to decide how to move forward. To take a recent example, in Mumbai, the draft Development Plan developed after three years of participatory workshops and consultations was recently scrapped by the state government in the wake of citizen protests. Is this the ability of citizen groups to have influence? Perhaps. Is it the exercise of veto by the state government? Yes. Is it a desirable state of resilience for the city? For some communities negatively influenced by the Development Plan, it provides another window of opportunity, however slight. However, for the city as a whole, spending further time and effort on a Development Plan which will probably have little influence on what actually gets built in the city is quite meaningless in the absence of other systems which support transparency and public participation. Not being able to have a say over its own development trajectory probably does not equate to a desirable state of resilience either. Nonetheless, Mumbai perhaps needs to consider whether its diverse needs (needs of its diverse communities and needs of the city region) are reconcilable at city scale in a document such as the Development Plan, and make provision for more local and regional initiatives which will incorporate its specific and dynamic needs.

The dangers for urban resilience at strategic city scale are likely to be different in different contexts. In a city with well-established systems of reporting and mechanisms for participation, involving the same stakeholders who get involved every time conserves knowledge of the system but could lead to a diminishing set of ideas and experiments to learn from. It is also easy to follow the protocol in any public consultation without actually taking on board the issues raised. The regular mechanisms of information transfer (websites) often exclude the most vulnerable, excluding their needs and points of view in the direction that the city takes; this frequently places the burden of resilience on NGO’s to transmit the information, collate input and present ideas in a convincing manner. Of course, actually implementing anything that is proposed requires both political will and capability, and may require collaboration and cooperation between agencies at different scales and with different priorities.

I therefore see resilience for the whole city not as an issue of robust infrastructure or community coping strategies, but as one of good collective governance that allows diverse stakeholders from multiple scales to come together, interact and share ideas in a fairly power-balanced manner, and find common ground on a variety of issues in a way that allows the city to move forward. This might mean ‘agreeing to disagree’ on certain issues and agreeing to experiment on other issues with a view to learning for the future. However, governance for resilience requires more than collaborative dialogue, it requires stakeholders to move their focus from specific sectors, scales or interests, to the interlinkages in the complex social-ecological system that are our cities.

Shuaib Lwasa

About the Writer:
Shuaib Lwasa

Shuaib Lwasa is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Makerere University. Shuaib has over 15 years of experience in university teaching and research working on interdisciplinary projects related to urban sustainability.

Shuaib Lwasa

As the debate on the Sustainable Development Goals by UN member countries reaches its final lap for approval, there is general consensus about the transition from development at as measurable progress in terms of economic growth, improved social services, employment and incomes, trade and human wellbeing to development that encompasses nature, resource use in consideration of the planetary boundaries.

The most daunting of legs in achievement of sustainable development is the implementation of actions for the proposed 17 Goals and 168 targets. The debate about sustainable development is yet to reach consensus on how to achieve these goals and targets and how to measure progress. Parallel but very closely related debates have been going on in regard to climate change and disaster risk reduction. These three global debates are yet to resolve the challenge of making resilience an actionable concept and therefore measurable to address the inherently constructed, cumulative and extensive risk in various contexts. This calls for alternative conceptual frameworks, methodologies, data and tools to measure progress in achieving sustainable development goals.

Whereas the debates are global, the challenges are also local and these three issues of sustainable development, climate change and disaster risk reduction form the grand challenges of the century. This is because sustainable development is likely to be undermined by increasing risk and disasters, and or, progress so far made in terms of development will most likely be reversed by the increasing disasters. With intensive disasters notwithstanding, the case for extensive risk and associated disasters is a risk profile for much of Africa and particularly Urban Africa.

Kampala flood. Photo: Shuaib Lwasa.
Kampala flood. Photo: Shuaib Lwasa.

Amidst closing the urban infrastructure deficit, sustaining the economic growth while reducing or avoiding emissions and adapting to a changing climate, cities in Africa present diverse risk profiles that define the city resilience challenge. In my opinion, climate risk and other risks, form the cornerstones of defining and achieving resilience in cities of Africa.

Achieving resilience in cities of Africa will most likely occur through three ways: first, the understanding of current risk rooted in historically constructed risk such that recovery from unavoidable disasters minimizes loss and damage; secondly, that future risk is anticipated and strategies implemented to reduce, the creation of new risk, potential loss and damage; thirdly, that current and future risk would have to be addressed in context of reduced impact on livelihoods and wellbeing in cities to enable building back better that reduces creation of new risk.

There are synergies and tough choices to make in building resilient cities. These tough choices are potentially the basis for measuring resilient cities, which is a difficult issue to achieve. Measuring resilience in cities is locale and context specific. Context to the risk profile and local conditions that shape the risk but also provides the levers for making cities resilient.

I would like to point to a few issues, which in my opinion can potentially be progress markers for resilience in cities like Kampala:

• There are tough choices around proofing urban infrastructure to risks given the path dependencies of urban development in Africa. This can be length or size of proofed infrastructure, proof-constructed infrastructure
• The possibility of harnessing synergies around reducing urban risk and curbing losses as a trade-off of increasing risk especially extensive risk
• Cities in Africa will continue their roles as production zones therefore there are tough choices around transforming production processes and infrastructure that is resilient to all forms of risk
• Cities are also zones for provisioning implying natural resource base that provides food, fiber, water, biomass, timber and therefore enhancing urban ecosystems is crucial for resilience in cities
• Cities and human development opportunities for the urban population is crucial especially the kind which increases opportunities for the urban poor
• A resilient city would have features that harness opportunities related to scalable resource efficiency, decentralized services and infrastructure, local employment and expanded markets and strategies that eradicate urban poverty

Timon McPhearson

About the Writer:
Timon McPhearson

Dr. Timon McPhearson works with designers, planners, and local government to foster sustainable, resilient and just cities. He is Associate Professor of Urban Ecology and Director of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School and Research Fellow at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Timon McPhearson

Urban social, ecological, and technical-built system (SETS) resilience

With cities taking climate change adaptation seriously, building resilience in cities to effects of climate change and other urban challenges has become an increasing priority among urban policymakers, planners, designers, and managers. Coastal cities facing severe sea level rise, for example, are learning to “live with water” and thus build resilience to flooding into multiple aspects of planning and development.

Phoenix, Arizona USA was brought to a halt by a single storm on September 8th, 2014.  Local climatologists called it a 500-year event when it rained 10-15cm in less than 24 hours. Photo: Twitter/Michael Chow
Phoenix, Arizona USA was brought to a halt by a single storm on September 8th, 2014. Local climatologists called it a 500-year event when it rained 10-15cm in less than 24 hours. Photo: Twitter/Michael Chow

Resilience is a property of a system. Cities are systems, so on the surface it makes sense to think of building “urban resilience”, or designing “resilient cities”. However, cities are complex entities (McHale et al. 2015) that have multiple social, ecological, and technical systems (SETS), which interrelate and feedback on each other, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of terms like “resilient city” or “urban resilience” that apply to the city scale, let alone evaluate them.

Additionally, resilience is a multidisciplinary concept that encompasses persistence, recovery, and the adaptive and transformative capacities of urban systems and their subsystems (McPhearson et al. 2015). Improving resilience at both small and large system scales depends on answering the question of resilience “of what, to what” and, perhaps especially in urban areas, resilience “for whom”. It also means recognizing that resilience at one scale may positively or negatively impact resilience at larger scales. Additionally, resilience to flooding in one part of the city, for example, may have no, little, or a large impact on resilience in another part of the city.

Despite the need to think in systems to deal with the very real equity, livability, and climate change challenges we face, defining, measuring, and evaluating resilience in the urban context means, for the moment anyway, breaking apart our complex urban systems into their parts.

What I mean is this: We can develop metrics and indicators to evaluate social resilience, ecological resilience, and technical/built infrastructure resilience for particular challenges in a particular location, but we don’t have robust methods for evaluating resilience of a complex multi-scale system like a city. Even evaluating resilience in the social, ecological, or technical domains is not a simple task, but it is certainly doable. Engineers and product designers have been doing this for a long time and can provide reasonable methods and metrics for evaluating the resilience of a building, or bridge, or energy supply system to particular risks, such as flooding, storms surge, high winds, or power outages.

Though we still have a long way to go, we can develop these kinds of metrics for evaluating social resilience as well. Take heat waves as an example. Following both the Chicago heat wave in 1995 and the European heat wave in 2003, analyses found in both cases that people who were better connected socially were less prone to heat-related death (Klinenberg 2003). We can learn a lot by comparing how disasters differentially affect different communities. Developing indicators for social connectedness, social cohesion and other potential indicators for social resilience must become an area of active research, especially since cities are already asking for these indicators in urban planning and policymaking. Built and technological infrastructure may even be developed as potential social resilience indicators in so much as they may tend to increase or decrease the potential for social cohesion and other attributes of local communities that allow them to be more or less resilient.

Difference in average temperature (2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004) from 2003, covering the date range of 20 July – 20 August. Image credit: NASA
Difference in average temperature (2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004) from 2003, covering the date range of 20 July – 20 August. Image credit: NASA

Developing methods for assessing ecological resilience is already an active area of research with good progress developing indicators to various ecological stressors and pressures. For example, ecologists can utilize biodiversity data combined with species trait data to develop functional response indicators. The assumption, backed up by research (though primarily in rural contexts), is that if species in an ecological community have a high diversity of traits that can respond to stress, disturbance, pollution, or other ecological challenges, then they are more likely to be resilient than a community with a lower diversity of response traits. Additionally, the importance of redundancy to resilience is important to keep in mind since communities with many species that have a particular trait useful for dealing with stress will fare better than communities that may have only one or few species with that particular trait. Though these kinds of ecological resilience indicators are beginning to be developed, we have yet to test this approach for multiple taxa and in multiple urban contexts.

The resilience research community has much left to do to not only better develop the various indicators for resilience in the social, ecological, and technical domains of our urban systems, since this remains all very new, but also to learn from each other in the process. For example, research approaches in ecology could inform development of social resilience indicators, and visa versa. The goal should be that the rise of resilience will serve to develop a broader understanding of the systems nature of planning, governing, and design while also driving greater interdisciplinary approaches and scholarship to foster the cities we want.

References
Klinenberg, Erik. 2003. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. University of Chicago Press.

McHale, Melissa R., Steward TA Pickett, Olga Barbosa, David N Bunn,
Mary L Cadenasso, Daniel L Childers, Meredith Gartin, George Hess, David M Iwaniec, Timon McPhearson, M. Nils Peterson, Alexandria K. Poole, Louie Rivers III, Shade T Shutters, Weiqi Zhou. “The New Global Urban Realm: Complex, Connected, Diffuse, and Diverse Social-Ecological Systems.” Sustainability (Special Issue) 7: 5211-5240, doi:10.3390/su7055211

McPhearson, Timon, Erik Andersson, Thomas Elmqvist, and Niki Frantzeskaki. 2015. “Resilience Of and Through Urban Ecosystem Services,“ Ecosystem Services (Special Issue) 12:152-156, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2014.07.012

Franco Montalto

About the Writer:
Franco Montalto

Dr. Montalto, PE is a licensed civil/environmental engineer and hydrologist with 20 years of experience working in urban and urbanizing ecosystems as both a designer and researcher. His experience includes planning, design, implementation, and analysis of various natural area restoration and green infrastructure projects.

Franco Montalto

Decentralized resilience

Not unlike natural ecosystems, cities provide us with a wide range of functions and services. In the words of Harris and Ullman (1945) they are “…focal points in the occupation and utilization of the earth by man. Both a product of and an influence on surrounding regions, they develop in definite patterns in response to economic and social needs.” Cities are housing; they host new economic opportunities; they promote social interaction and cultural advancement. Cities free up a certain fraction of the human population from having to work the land directly, critical since according to Jane Jacobs (1970) “agriculture is not even tolerably productive unless it incorporates many goods and services produced in cities or transplanted from cities.” Cities are thus integral components of local, regional, and global economies.

When subjected to different kinds of disturbances, resilient cities continue to provide these valuable functions, though their form may change as a result. Subjected to a storm surge, they absorb energy but convert it into a reconfigured coastline; having become the destination for a particular group of refugees, they provide shelter and work, possibly through the repurposing of vacant buildings and neighborhoods; when global investors have shifted attention elsewhere, they cultivate local resources to fund local needs and initiatives, often through the generation of new businesses. Anti-fragile (Taleb 2014) and dynamic, resilient cities are both physically and culturally prepared to adapt to a range of uncertain futures. In so doing, they persist, while their brittle and inflexible cousins are gradually abandoned, dismantled, or destroyed by the same, or similar, events.

The question that many planners are asking is whether we can create this kind of resilience in both new and redeveloping cities that are challenged by contemporary trends in population growth, coastal development, climate change, and other perverse local realities associated with globalization. I would argue that where it exists, resilience is tightly woven into the cultural and physical fabric of a city, but is not easily superimposed on top of it. Resilience, in my view, is the outcome of diffuse grass-roots, micro-scale activities that collectively and gradually create a culture and place that can change in response to diverse and unpredictable stimuli, so as to continue providing the services needed by its population. To design resilience, we need to think small and diffuse, not big and centralized.

I offer three comparative examples. A new, regional storm surge barrier might protect certain coastal communities from certain types of storm surge; but its value pales in comparison to a city populated by individuals who, cognizant of the fact that they live in a flood plain, can easily move to higher ground temporarily when a flood is predicted. The latter requires an efficient means of diffusing information about imminent risks, a widely understood and multifaceted response plan, and an efficient transport network that can support relocation of different people in different directions at almost any time to a decentralized network of safe havens.

For the second example, think Baltimore, Maryland. Tourists and multinational corporations may initially be attracted to a fancy downtown, but if residents of the surrounding neighborhoods are barely getting by, and suffer from high crime, poor schools, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and high drug traffic, how resilient will this city be, for example to economic shifts that raise unemployment, or media reports that begin to spoil the glossy public image and brand that the local elites had been attempting to disseminate of the city center? A resilient Baltimore needs widespread attention, not just a fancy waterfront.

And finally, considering that each year the world wastes about 1/3 of the food it produces (FAO 2015) while global obesity, one of the leading causes of preventable depth, has doubled since 1980 (CDC 2015, WHO 2015), let’s consider resilience as it pertains to food choices. We can continue to subsidize industrial agriculture practices that, often located in increasingly drought prone areas, require massive application of pesticides and fertilizers, and generate extensive carbon emissions to transport highly processed agricultural commodities 1500-2500 miles (Worldwatch Institute 2015) before showing up, mysteriously, in your bodega in some highly processed form. Or we clear the way for the growing local and urban agricultural movement that enables urban dwellers to see more readily where their food comes from, and to choose to participate in its production, while creating new uses for post-industrial landscapes, new economic opportunities, and old-fashioned backyard learning. As the international development adage goes, the hungry man who is given a meal asks for another, while the one who knows how to fish feeds himself.

If urban resilience arises from decentralized grass-roots choices and actions that allow cities to provide valuable functions and services to the various populations that live in, or are linked to them, we can measure it by interacting with urban people. Resilience planners need to seek to understand why we, the urban population, do what we do; they need to better understand what motivates us and what hinders us; they need to remove the barriers (often historical and/or imposed from afar) that prevent us from solving our own problems. Resilient cities will be as diverse in form and function as we are diverse as an urban populace. Resilience plans will morph and change as we learn and grow. Resilience solutions are local and diverse, not monolithic and standardized.

References:

Center for Disease Control (2015) http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

Food and Agriculture Organization (2015) http://www.fao.org/in-action/seeking-end-to-loss-and-waste-of-food-along-production-chain/en/

Harris, CD and EL Ullman (1945). The Nature of Cities. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 242: 7-17.

Jacobs, J (1970) The Economy of Cities. Vintage. 288 pp.

Taleb, NN (2014) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House. 544 pp.

World Health Organization (2015) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/

World Watch Institute (2015) http://www.worldwatch.org/globetrotting-food-will-travel-farther-ever-thanksgiving

Luciana Nery

About the Writer:
Luciana Nery

Luciana Nery is Deputy Chief Resilience Officer of Rio de Janeiro and wishes to incorporate the lessons learned at the Olympics for the resilience of the city.

Luciana Nery

We must measure survival and prosperity

In theory, it is not difficult to measure the evolution of resilience in time: to the same shock, there must be less impact. This means that if a strong earthquake hits a city twice, the city is more resilient if by the second time it suffers less damage and fewer casualties. Or if the shock is an economic downturn, then the city is more resilient if the next recession is milder and its consequences are short-lived.

A 40mm/hour rain in Rio de Janeiro usually means that landslides will happen in the mountain slopes, threatening entire communities and claiming many lives. Since 2010, 40mm/h is the threshold to evaluate the need to activate the early warning system in the high-risk areas. In the meantime, the city built extensive slope contention infrastructure, resettled families in high-risk areas and established frequent evacuation drills. A recent study conducted by GeoRio of all landslides related to extreme weather events between 2010-2013 concluded that the threshold to initiating action can be safely raised to 55mm/h. More importantly, in that same period, no life was lost due to landslides in the city. This means that Rio de Janeiro is verifiably more resilient to heavy rains.

In this specific instance, that of rains and landslides in Rio, the scope is limited, the variables are well-known and the data are reliable. This is seldom the case in many other aspects of resilience. In the real world, how often can we establish parameters to determine cause and consequence? More than that, some consequences must be avoided entirely—and then being resilient is not allowing the shock to happen in the first place, like pandemics or terrorist attacks. In those cases, investments in prevention and the monitoring of trends is what fosters resilience, and then measuring the (non) consequences can feel substantial to policymakers, and yet seem diaphanous to the general population.

Then perhaps resilience must be measured not solely ad hoc, in terms of measuring impacts and its consequences, but also contextually and at the community and individual level. To what extent is a city, community or person exposed to a certain vulnerability, be it natural or manmade?

As the concept of resilience grows in importance for cities, so does the search for comprehensive and yet pragmatic indicators and measurement tools. The World Resource Institute, in partnership with the City of Rio, is developing a set of indicators for resilience. The work is in progress but we have already reached some conclusions.

The poor are disproportionately affected by shocks and chronic stresses, and a high proportion of socially vulnerable people will certainly make a city more fragile to all kinds of shocks. Measuring their resilience, thus, entails assessing their social vulnerability: educational level, employment status, access to basic services like sanitation, clean water, garbage collection, health, etc.

Another conclusion is that measuring self-reliance and preparedness of the general population is essential, so that efforts for fostering a culture of prevention can be assessed. Self-reliance and preparedness also depend heavily on the social cohesion of a community—when it comes to safety and awareness, the individual and the community are virtually indistinguishable. It is, therefore, the job of resilience practitioners worldwide to engage people in finding how they feel, respond and act more resiliently. It is this self-reliance and preparedness of citizens that, in addition to public policies and city resources, can prepare a city to face not only its recurrent risks, but also the unexpected ones, the black swans.

The efforts are ongoing. Cities and institutions around the world are working on resilience indicators. More than ever, cities are collaborating with each other. Big Data is more readily available. Indicators and units of measurement will be tested, improved upon and shared; then they will become widespread and continue to evolve. After all, it is not a simple task: if we are setting out to measure resilience in cities, we are also measuring our survival and prosperity. Let the challenge begin!

Henk Ovink

About the Writer:
Henk Ovink

Henk Ovink is Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of The Netherlands.

Henk Ovink

The transformative capacity of a resilient process

sandyhateDisasters are terrible. I always use the image of “I hate you Sandy” painted on a wall somewhere on the Jersey beach, to stress that whatever happens and how bold and big government and private sector can come in, it is still all about the human scale. Bridging the gap between public and private also means bridging the gap between the institutional world and the people, the communities and the informal world. Because there is not only a disconnect between politics and people, there is also a disconnect between professionals and people.

Poor people live in poor places all over the world. They are hit hardest when disasters strike, fully dependent on others to get back on their feet. Some say resilience is all about the capacity to bounce back after a disaster. But I say that is not enough. Resilience is a progressive term, it is about bouncing back different and smarter, through collaboration, innovation and the best of science.

In the Netherlands we have a long long tradition of managing risks and uncertainties and deliberately started to built our country in the Delta of the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt. A delta prosperous and vulnerable at the same time. Public private partnerships were key from the beginning. Nowadays we manage these risks and uncertainties in a cross governmental long term Delta approach, where public, business and knowledge sector join forces in a joined approach.

This year’s WEF Report put the impact of Water Crises as #1 risk, at last we acknowledge as businesses, ngo’s, academia and governments that water is the #1 risk and also its number one opportunity! Water is the global connecting task. Two billion people will be devastated by 2050, four billion in 2080 if we continue with our current practices. Of all worldwide disasters 90% is water-related. Global urbanization gives us growth, prosperity, emancipation and development opportunities, but climate change, sea level rise and increasing impacts of these risks put a lot of pressure on our cities, societies and citizens, on our economy and ecology. If we don’t act the system will collapse and then we are the victims of our own failure and missed opportunity.

Water is at the heart of this uncertain future, it is through water that we feel the impact of climate change the most. Water is essential for our economy, our social and cultural well being. Water quality defines our economic and societal prosperity and water risks—too much or too little—define our society’s vulnerability. Water is an urban matter, an asset if right, a severe risk if not. And while urbanization has this emancipatory capacity—women work and kids learn—it is the collective water issues that puts these urbanizing places at higher risk and thus stressing—again—the emancipatory curve. Water connects economy and ecology and on the urban regional scale we can adapt and mitigate and thus strengthen our cities and our communities world wide By collaborating across silos, bridge gaps and use new ways for public private partnerships to get to such an approach.

The WEF’s Global Risks Perception Survey’s showcase over again that future risks (climate change, water crises, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, extreme weather events, natural catastrophes, man made environmental catastrophes, etc) are increasing in frequency and impact. At the same time these risks show a clear and strong interdependency on a regional, most often urban scale. Although this increases the complexity of these risks and their impacts this is also the scale where we (mankind) can adapt to and mitigate these risks! This is where we can and must act.

Resilience is not a condition nor a passive state, it is a truly dynamic and societal process, progressive and in flux all the time. So when it comes to this question of measurement the key question is not how to measure resilience but how to get to resilience in an accountable an transparent way? A process where not only the outcome is at stake but the strategy and interventions are pre-assessed by truly comprehensive BCA’s, the process is monitored, and the outcomes both on strategy, governance and the actual interventions are evaluated. And that evaluation is brought back into the institutional domain for capturing reform. An not only in the public domain, but in this societal force of public and private partnerships. For that we need a comprehensive approach and I’d like to address the six critical points for that:

1. A resilience process of trust, inclusive collaboration and without negotiations:

  • Create a process of trust where it is not about negotiations (to get the most out of it) but about collaboration (to get the best out of it);
  • Truly collaborative and inclusive: From the start this should be about including all stakeholders through the phases of assessment and analysis all the way towards planning and implementation;
  • No negotiations towards agreements on paper, but collaboration in practice and ensure that that collaboration leads us to agreements. Negotiations never build projects, the experience helps to agree.

2. Better instruments: Benefit Cost Analysis, Monitoring and Evaluation instruments are critical but often are different, non-comparable nor cross applicable and lack the capacity to capture comprehensive long term integrated resilience approaches.

We have to share all our global knowledge we built up over the years to ensure that worldwide there is a better common understanding on how transparency and accountability can be strengthened both in public as well private environments through the development of new and better models and instruments.

3. Programmatic long term: next to our short term project based assessments where it is fairly easy to calculate benefits and bring in the private sector, we need a better understanding on how to assess and evaluate and thus build trust and commonality on a long term, comprehensive, programmatic investment approach.

4. Innovation: we need new models to address innovation. The Rebuild by Design competition I developed and led for the former US Presidential Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, created a sabbatical detour, on the edge of the institutional world, collaborating across all partners, design driven, focused on resilience in light of future risks. We delivered 41 opportunities with coalitions and ended with awarding 6 strikingly innovative proposals for resilience investments across the NY region. UNISDR just acknowledged the Hoboken proposal as Model for the World.

5. Prevention pays! We all know this. The questions remain on:

  • How to capture future value and future revenues through upfront investments;
  • How to use the process of collaboration and innovation to get to comprehensive approaches and implementable projects based on partnerships and trust, like the Rebuild by Design competition;
  • How to incorporate lessons learned, for example the current Dutch Delta program agreed upon by our congress that addresses future risks for the next 100 years, with secured funding for the next 35 years.

6. Start now by building a platform for collaboration and innovation:
No time to waste. We have to start now, in a transparent and accountable way, use principles of collaboration for developing long term, comprehensive approaches to capture revenues and ensure upfront public and private investments.

We need to use this testing as the inspiration, as the new standard, as the way to replicate for a better tomorrow and bring these learnings back into our institutional worlds, both public and private and by doing so really innovate and reform. This is really about capacity building not only within those vulnerable communities but as much within our institutions of governments, businesses and research institutes. The reform of the institutional world is key for resilience success.

Right now no one in this world is ready, no one, no place, no system is fit for the future. We have to collaborate world wide to tackle these challenges together. This collaboration is different than any collaboration before. This is not about negotiating the best parts for ourselves, this is really about securing the world for generations to come. Not by fixing it, but by changing the culture. And with that changing our systems so they can become more resilient, more adaptive and empowered in embracing and dealing with complexity.

Elisabeth Peyroux

About the Writer:
Elisabeth Peyroux

Elisabeth Peyroux is an urban geographer at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), based at the UMR Prodig in Paris. She works on urban development issues in Johannesburg.

Elisabeth Peyroux

I engaged with the debates on resilience while doing research on urban planning in Johannesburg. In 2011 the Johannesburg 2040 Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) committed itself to provide “improved quality of life and development-driven resilience for all”, “a resilient, liveable, sustainable urban environment” and “an inclusive, job-intensive, resilient and competitive economy that harnesses the potential of citizens” (City of Johannesburg, 2011, p. 9).

I think the context of South African cities’ transformative agenda provides an interesting starting point to reflect on the idea of measuring resilience.

As opposed to the so-called conservative “bounce back” perspective, resilience entails a dynamic process set in motion by a transformative action whose aim is to promote a more “inclusive” development pathway: “Resilience is the capacity of a system to continually change and adapt, yet remain within critical thresholds – even when confronted with the unexpected” (City of Johannesburg 2011, p. 25). The GDS shows that some of the critiques made towards complex adaptive system related to resilience thinking can be partially overcome, at least discursively: by stressing human agency, by assigning social values to development goals, and addressing issues of inequalities and injustice.

Writing from a political economy perspective I am critical towards the notion of resilience and its translation in policy making (in line with Davoudi, 2012; Joseph, 2013; Welsh, 2014). Measuring resilience in cities poses, to my eyes, overwhelming challenges. This undermines the very idea that it can be usefully mobilised in urban planning.

Measuring resilience in cities means that we can identify it and provide an accurate characterisation and quantification of it (Carpenter et al. 2001). This also means that resilience can be monitored in such a way that it can inform policy-making.

The first challenge for policy makers is to identify the factors that give rise to resilience in a complex environment: a highly diverse population, an heightened sense of uncertainty and unpredictability, the need to consider the intertwined effects of internal and external factors, the interdependencies between ecological and social systems, time scales and cross-scale dynamics. In addition, in a city as unequal as Johannesburg the challenge entails developing “a relational understanding of resilience” (Prior and Hagmann, 2013, p. 14) that can support a targeted allocation of funding in line with developmental goals.

Second, measuring resilience implies measuring both the capacity of the system to achieve resilience (a process of capacity building) and the outcomes resulting from this capacity (a change of state of being). The difficulty, in addition to developing adequate quantitative and qualitative indicators, lies in assessing how these processes and outcomes are directly or indirectly linked in order to draw lessons on “what works” and “what doesn’t work”.

Third, some indicators of change of state of being are observable and quantifiable: in Johannesburg an expanded Human Development Index that is closely associated to asset and protective factors linked to resilience is used to measure the improvement in the quality of life, wellbeing and development. Other factors connected with resilience, such as social cohesion and inclusion and social justice (“A society that is cohesive and inclusive can withstand change and extreme shocks (…)” (City of Johannesburg, 2011, p. 29), “Pursuing just distributions of benefits, to improve the adaptive and resilient capacities of vulnerable groups and the citizenry of Johannesburg as a whole, is central to resilience and to sustainability” (City of Johannesburg 2011, p. 32), are difficult to observe empirically and to quantify.

Finally, measuring resilience should be considered both as a methodological and a political problem (Prior and Hagemann, 2013). Through the neoliberal rhetoric of responsabilization, self-sufficiency and self-sustainability resilience thinking serves as a way to justify the withdrawal of long term, permanent state support exposing the ambivalence of the concept of local developmental state in South Africa. By favouring the constant adaption of the subject to current situation over the resistance to the conditions of its suffering (Welsh, 2014) resilience thinking can eventually seem at odds with the Johannesburg social transformative agenda, as such approach forecloses the possibility for people to challenge the structural foundations of unequal power relationships that cause poverty, deprivation and inequality, the very sources of the so-called “lack of resilience” of the population.

References

Carpenter , S., Walker, B., Anderies, J.M., Abel, N. (2001) From metaphor ro measurement: Resilience of what to What? Ecosystems 4: 765-781.

City of Johannesburg (2011) Joburg 2040 GDS, October 2011.

Davoudi, S. (2012) Resilience: A bridging concept or a dead end? Planning Theory and Practice 13 (2): 299-333.

Joseph, J. (2013) Resilience as embedded neoliberalism: a governmentality approach. International Policies, Practices and Discourses 1 (1): 38-52.

Prior, T., Hagmann, J. (2013) Measuring resilience: methodological and political challenges of a trend security concept, Journal of Risk Research, DOI:10.1080/13669877.2013.808686.

Welsh, M. (2014) Resilience and responsibility: governing uncertainty in a complex world. The Geographical Journal 180 (1): 15-26.

Catherine Sutherland

About the Writer:
Catherine Sutherland

Catherine Sutherland is a lecturer in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is an urban geographer who focuses on urban sustainability and environmental governance.

Catherine Sutherland

Resilience is a contested term, as its definition and transformative value depends on from whose perspective it is viewed. The emergence of resilience as a ‘new’ way of approaching the economic, social and environmental crises we face, particularly in light of climate risk, reminds me of other moments when new ways of thinking about environmental challenges rose to the fore. In the 1960s ‘limits to growth’ became the dominant discourse framing environmental politics. In the 1980s ‘ecological modernisation’ and ‘sustainable development’ emerged as dominant discourses. Within each era of new ideas, scientists focused on ways to measure how far we had travelled in meeting the principles and goals of each discourse, with their indicators showing progress in some areas and failure in others. Some of the measures were universal and general, while others revealed that the measurement of environmental sustainability needs to be context specific.

Most of these measures were developed by scientists.

The measurement of resilience concerns me as it appears that those developing measures for it have not learnt from, or engaged with, other ‘moments’ in the history of the environmental movement. One of the main questions that have been asked in the critical reflection of these approaches is from whose perspective sustainability/ecological modernisation/resilience are being measured and for what purpose. This is important as it raises the issue of who has the power to define and shape each discourse and whose interests are being served in defining and measuring the relations between society and the environment in this way. Is ‘resilience’ acting in the interests of the poor and vulnerable and in the interests of highly degraded environmental systems, or is it just another way for those in power to mask the real reasons for poverty, inequality and environmental destruction and to move away from the just transformations that are required to change the world and the power imbalances in it? Resilience is about adapting, coping and learning to live through shocks and risks—it is therefore about ‘managing the dangers’ not challenging or changing them. It is about making people resilient, which is important when disaster strikes, but in so doing, it undermines the social protests and social movements that are required to change the world, as it makes it possible for the status quo to remain. It makes ‘coping’ a way of life for those who are tasked with managing environmental challenges and those that live through them. It does not question nor address the politics or power relations in cities and hence it cannot be fully transformative.

Another issue I have with measuring resilience is that much of this new discourse implies that people become resilient because of the policy and action of some outside agent and through the rationalities of government. It is the impact of these interventions that are measured. In other words, they were not resilient before. This notion needs to be strongly criticised as it does not recognise that the poor and vulnerable are continually being resilient, as that is how they live their lives. What needs to be measured is the entanglement of state policy and practice and the practices evident in the everyday lived worlds of ordinary people and how these together, through their relations, contribute to greater resilience. This is much harder to measure as these entanglements emerge in multiple ways along multiple paths at different scales.

For me, the value of ‘resilience’ lies in the lessons learnt from it. This learning is achieved by tracking resilience along its multiple trajectories as it emerges in different places within different contexts. Resilience is present in so many different forms. We need to start in local spaces, with local people, following ‘resilience’ and critically analysing it together so that it can reveal why and how people are having to be resilient and what this tells us about the power relations in the world between people and between people and the environment. And then we can begin to think about how we can change these relations, measure these transformative shifts and move towards a better world.

Claire Weisz

About the Writer:
Claire Weisz

Claire Weisz, FAIA, is the founding principal of WXY, an architecture and planning firm based in NYC. Recently one of 10 Rebuild by Design finalists, her current work includes designing the new Rockaway Boardwalk post-Sandy.

Claire Weisz

HudsonRiver signageImagine this scenario; you live in a dense urban community along a vulnerable coastline, a catastrophic event occurs with only 6 hours warning, but since a web of communication exists to locate and reposition people, critical assets and provide alternative places to live and work short term. Issues have been worked out so that the time of recovery is minimized to 24 hours and there has been no loss of life and livelihood. In this community individuals and everyone around them are constantly reminded through notations on the physical surfaces of the city, their environmental history and through this the dynamic nature of where they are standing. Through these simple set of graphic interfaces, that are constantly kept current by real time data from scientists, people are able to learn as they go through their daily lives their risk level in a very subconscious yet concrete way. In the event of a climate related extreme events and conditions, these citizens, when they get critical warnings, via their devices or through media, understand in a visceral way where they are and therefore what they need to do. Because of the level of individual awareness, government and businesses alike have had to agree on a system and plan in the case of sudden and extreme climate related events. Although change is difficult, likely the increase in public and environmental knowledge has resulted in increases cultural and social capital spread across income levels.

New York City under Hurricane Sandy.
New York City under Hurricane Sandy.

Designing shared civic and communication spaces and systems by connecting individuals to larger urban common webs and linkages is also about aligning values. By designing viable shared systems through a transparent process a need will emerge to evaluate longer term investments with the greatest chance of social equity and least environmental loss. More people than ever before are challenged by lack of leverage and access to power structures and at the same time more vulnerable to living in a degraded environment. If insurance and funding mechanisms are tied to minimizing unintended negative effects and maximizing individual and neighborhood autonomy, projects like zero energy neighborhoods, district renewable energy, zero waste districts, pooled investments in regional storm protection projects, shared regional risk analysis tying all local projects together, become important to pilot and advance.

WXY-WEST8_RESEARCH01_DIAGRAMLEVEE_HIGHwebWorking this way the mechanisms of design and planning are the means to understand actual places, guiding policy and thus funding projects to reflect the way people behave both as individuals and in aggregate. Building soft and hard systems; from signage, to floating communities, new public transit and public spaces, to new places for habitat, wind turbines and water resource management, that help us adapt, model and test new ways of living and producing, are critical to a future of competing priorities and fluctuating risk levels.

A resilient and adaptable response as described in this snapshot is only achievable by design. This means designers and scientist being at the table together. Without the will to design both the process and the implementation of a multi-layered meaningful and responsive system, there will be stop gap, insufficient and less resilient communities. Without scientifically driven and ecologically understood design goals, there will be investments in expensive solutions and systems that are difficult if not impossible to update, that don’t take into consideration the flux of daily existence, that fail under the stress of people’s constant changes in priorities.

“What if?” the inevitability of the “internet of things” along with advances in the dialogue between scientists and designers could be catalytic in unexpected ways. Potentially what has started with foundation funding and private research initiatives might spawn new types of entities—public/ private partnerships—whose values demand that improving social, economic and environment conditions be aligned. These new ways of doing business and playing politics would avoid the zero sum game of choosing who benefits and who doesn’t by having changed where the goal posts are. Then the value of scientific data and metrics to track losses and gains across many variables and factors would be the engine to realize the resilient communities that we are currently unable to achieve.

Daniel Zarrilli

About the Writer:
Daniel Zarrilli

Daniel Zarrilli was appointed in March 2014 by Mayor Bill de Blasio as the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency for the City of New York. In this position, he is leading the development and implementation of the City’s OneNYC resiliency program.

Dan Zarrilli

Urban resiliency for climate change and other 21st Century threats

Our resiliency challenge

Hurricane Sandy was the worst natural disaster to ever strike New York City, claiming 44 lives and causing over $19 billion in damages and lost economic activity. As we continue to recover from its effects, we have also recognized the need to prepare for a wide range of future risks, not just ‘the next Sandy,’ as we continue to build a stronger, more resilient city.

In fact, just in the past fifteen years, New York City has faced a varied set of threats, including terrorist acts, an Ebola outbreak, hurricanes, an earthquake, a blackout, and a global economic downturn—all events that could challenge our ability to cope as a city and as an urban system. The only certainty is that the future is uncertain and the next threat won’t look like the last.

That’s why we have recently taken stock of our existing challenges. Our population will grow to 9 million by 2040; our infrastructure is aging; inequality is increasing; and, of course, our risks from a changing climate and other threats are growing.

With climate change in particular, Sandy certainly highlighted the city’s vulnerabilities, and those vulnerabilities are projected to get worse. According to the New York City Panel on Climate Change, sea levels are expected to rise 11 inches to 21 inches by the 2050s, and 22 to 50 inches by 2100. With this projected rise in sea levels, the city’s floodplain will continue to expand, creating more frequent and intense flooding. A similar Sandy-like event in 2050 could cause $90 billion in damage and lost economic activity—compared to Sandy’s $19 billion—due to the rise in sea levels alone.

The good news is that the City is acting to address these challenges.

Our resiliency vision

In April, Mayor Bill de Blasio released One New York: The Plan for a Strong and Just City. The OneNYC action plan guides the City’s investments in four strategic themes of growth, equity, sustainability, and resiliency. For us, resiliency is not just a metaphor.

But what does it mean? Our vision for resiliency is that our neighborhoods, economy, and public services will be ready to withstand and emerge stronger from the impacts of climate change and other 21st century threats.

To achieve this vision, the city and its partners are investing over $20 billion in a multilayered approach to resiliency, because there is no single silver bullet solution to our resiliency challenges:

1. Every neighborhood will be safer by strengthening community, social, and economic resiliency. This means we will improve neighborhoods by strengthening local organizations, expanding economic opportunities, and mitigating the effects of heat.
2. The city’s buildings will be upgraded against changing climate impacts, such as floods, wind, and heat waves.
3. Infrastructure systems will adapt to maintain continued services in the face of projected disruptions and impacts.
4. Our coastal defenses will be strengthened against flooding and sea level rise using a mixture of locally-tailored measures.

How will we know if we’ve succeeded? Measuring resiliency is no easy task. We intend to monitor several key performance indicators over time, including the Social Vulnerability Index for neighborhoods across the city, and our average annual economic losses resulting from climate-related events. These are the highest level indicators toward our goal of eliminating disaster-related long-term displacement of New Yorkers from homes by 2050.

By continuing to implement our full resiliency program – its physical, social, and economic measures – New York City is committed to achieving this goal, enabling us to fulfill our vision to withstand and emerge stronger from the impacts of climate change and other 21st century threats.

Taking the Long View: Looking at Landscape Restoration Through Varied Lenses

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
So many restoration projects fail when we try to bring Mother Nature back in a year and a half. In the business of landscape scale restoration, short-term, small-scale efforts are simply not good investments. And long-term requires partnership.
Each morning on my way to work, just west of Portland, Oregon, I pass a thriving new development with hundreds of brand new houses, a beautiful new school, bustling stores and new parks. These new assets, which serve humans so well, have largely replaced the green expanse that characterized this landscape just a few years ago. Along the fringes of this new development, I can spot remnants of the mixed forest, wetlands and oak savannah that until recently characterized this stretch of my commute. This kind of rapid transformation of the urban/suburban landscape is a familiar sight across the country and around the world. As we look out upon this scene, we can perceive the changes through different lenses—some clearly positive, some dimly negative, and some more complex, like bifocals—giving us pause, prompting us to think differently about how humans and wildlife might live together.

Western Tanager. Photographer unknown

Regardless of your perspective, there’s no question that it’s instructive to watch a landscape transform under the influence of rapid urban growth and climate change. That new development, for example: We can view it as a positive change that provides welcoming homes for thousands of new residents, drawn to the opportunities that Oregon’s Washington County offers them and their families. For those of us with experience in the field of public works, it is constantly amazing to observe the efficiency and poetry displayed in the creation of a new development like this one. In the span of a year and a half, we see the creation of a new transportation network, delivery of clean healthy water, a new sanitation system, electricity, and the many other services needed to provide a safe and healthy environment for humans. It is remarkable how quickly the landscape changes in order to provide the services needed by a thriving human community here in the Tualatin River Watershed.

The delivery of parallel services to wildlife can be very different, however. For wildlife, the benefits of food, shelter, and clean water are often provided by native vegetation along stream corridors. What we’ve learned along the way is that wildlife and humans both benefit when they are given an opportunity to work together. If we take a step back and think about human needs on a landscape level, we realize that humans and wildlife alike rely on the many benefits provided by our natural resources, including clean air, healthy soil and clean water. The real challenge is finding efficient ways to deliver these natural resources benefits for both humans and wildlife.

Birds at Fernhill Wetlands. Photo: Michael Nipper

Over the course of a dozen plus years, Tree for All has efficiently planted more than 10 million native trees and shrubs throughout the Tualatin River Watershed. Along the way, we have had many opportunities to celebrate this success with local business leaders and elected officials. On one of these occasions I had an interesting conversation with a person who has since become a friend who criticized this work as a waste of time, producing leaves that had to be picked up, trees that dropped branches in roadways, and the enormous amount of money needed to maintain these “nutty” green assets. I must admit that I had to bite my lip and take a deep breath as I struggled to understand his point of view. Maybe he was looking through a different lens, I thought. Perhaps a new experience could provide him with a more nuanced and accurate perspective—a new pair of bifocals, if you will.

I invited this now-friend to join me at a Tree for All community planting event at a city park near his home. To my delight, he accepted. He became the newest recruit to the army of volunteers that comes together every year, in the worst and muddiest weather, to plant native trees in local parks and natural areas all over Washington County. They participate for many different reasons. Some volunteer as a way to combat climate change, others join in to get their kids out of the house. Some plant a tree to remember a loved one, while others just enjoy the free donuts and an opportunity to chat with friends and neighbors. Regardless of the reason they showed up, each participant is changed by the experience. They have tasted their interdependence with the natural world around them. They more deeply understand how we can make room for nature, and how we can efficiently provide the services that are needed for a welcoming wildlife home. It is interesting, and sometimes transformative, to view the world through Mother Nature’s lens. It is safe to say that after that day my friend found a nice new pair of bifocals that saw both humans and wildlife as important.

Children planting trees at Jackson Bottom Wetlands. Photographer unknown

The long haul

Landscape conservation requires that we think long-term about our investment and stewardship. We are putting actions in place that address both our community’s needs today and the interests of future generations.

At work, the shiny new development miles behind me, I have the good fortune to have a desk just steps from Jackson Bottom Wetland Preserve. Watching the patience of a Great Blue Heron hunting for lunch as it wades through the water at Jackson Bottom reminds me that it often takes years–and sometimes decades–to create a welcoming home for local wildlife. A dozen years ago, this same location was drained dry, a sea of invasive grasses with marginal wildlife habitat. So much has happened since then to provide a home to this Great Blue Heron, along with more than 211 other species of birds. In the first two years, it started with the removal of non-native plants, tilling and reshaping the soil, removing channels, and planting native grasses. During the third year of this effort, the landscape was ready for woody and herbaceous plants, such as willows and forbs, to be placed throughout the wetland. During the next couple of years, native plants began to provide habitat for insects, song birds and waterfowl. Before long, waterfowl had the nesting material and open water needed to raise their families alongside the newly arrived frogs and turtles.

Now, after twelve years, this 600 acre wetland is home to one of the state’s largest Great Blue Heron rookeries, shorebirds, song birds, and the list goes on. Its award-winning environmental education center attracts people of all ages, who learn to balance the needs of humans and wildlife for the benefit of future generations. It is interesting how native vegetation and access to water puts in motion the services needed for a thriving wildlife community. It also helps me understand why so many restoration projects fail when we try to bring Mother Nature back in a year and a half. In the business of landscape scale restoration, short-term, small-scale efforts are simply not good investments.

Trail at Jackson Bottom Wetlands. Photo: Michael Nipper

Partnership snapshot: The Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve

Designated as an Important Bird Area by the Audubon Society, the Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve  is a complex mosaic of wetlands, wet prairie, riparian forest and oak woodland located along the Tualatin River on the southwest edge of Hillsboro, Oregon, the largest city in Washington County. Bordered by agricultural, residential and public sector activity, it serves as an important wildlife refuge for resident and migratory birds, deer, river otter, beavers and amphibians. The preserve is part of a vast complex of open space, wildlife corridors, and lowlands that stretches throughout the Tualatin River Basin and is a partnership between the City of Hillsboro, Clean Water Services, and the Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve nonprofit organization. Read more about how these partners continue to transform and expand the Preserve here.

Taking Conservation to Scale video:

Good business

“The Tree for All program is a business model that allows partners to align and integrate their resources around a common investment strategy. In a single year, TFA partners planted more than two million trees and shrubs along the creeks and tributaries of the Tualatin River Watershed. Along with those new two million plantings, their investment strategy has resulted in saving ratepayers more than $100 million in the last 10 years, restored over 120 river miles in the last 10 years; created wildlife corridors for fish and birds, and has engaged thousands of volunteers in natural area restoration” – Pam Treece, Director of the Westside Economic Alliance and incoming (January 2019) member of the Washington County Board of Commissioners

“Green infrastructure costs too much!”

“I can’t afford to plant trees because we don’t have the budget.”

“I put the plants in the ground and it sure costs a lot to maintain them.”

These comments are not uncommon, and not surprising, depending on which lens we are looking through. If we take the long haul view; what does it really cost? During my career, I have seen more failures than success when it comes to restoring Mother Nature. Unfortunately, these situations can perpetuate the notion that green infrastructure is too expensive. More times than not we forget that it takes time to bring back the services Mother Nature needs to be successful. Would we move into a new home if it lacked a roof and electricity? Would it be good business if we built that new house but forgot about water and sanitation, then moved on to build another similar house? Would the Great Blue Heron find a welcoming home if there was no water, no food and no nest material?

It is clear that to be successful both humans and wildlife need an environment where natural resources benefits are available and functioning properly. The Tree for All program has been delivering restoration at the landscape scale for almost a dozen years and during this time we have learned that restoration can be a good business move. The lessons we’ve learned have enabled us to create large scale projects which are able to meet multiple objectives, such as the new Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge. We have also learned the importance of transformative partnerships, and that green assets actually reduce capital and operational costs over time. Pumps and pipes may seem more straightforward to those who shy away from the maintenance costs of green infrastructure, but the truth is that investments in natural processes become assets over time.

Wapato Lake. Photographer unknown

Partnership snapshot: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a longtime key partner of Tree for All. Since the partnership began, the USFWS has been part of more than 1300 acres of Tree for All projects, including two wildlife refuges. The Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge (TRNWR), established in 1992, was the first of these. A collective enthusiasm about TRNWR encouraged more USFWS projects to take place here—the most recent being Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge (WLNWR). Established in 2013, WLNWR is the newest wildlife refuge in the United States. A unique partnership between Intel, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the Joint Water Commission, Tualatin Soil & Water Conservation District, Clean Water Services and the Clean Water Institute reflects a shared commitment to protect the water quality of the Tualatin River; provide high-quality habitat for birds and other wildlife; and increase the resiliency of the natural systems we all depend on. The restoration of Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge offers an unrivaled opportunity to add over 800 acres to the existing 5,000 acres of near-contiguous Tualatin River floodplain habitat that has already been placed in conservation by a diverse network of collaborative partners working throughout the basin. These partnerships have already resulted in the restoration of over 700 acres of riparian forest to protect the water quality of the River and provide wildlife habitat on Refuge lands and have also infused vital public funding for environmental education programs at the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.

Wapato Lake is the ultimate example of what can happen when community members come together to protect and enhance the natural areas in our watershed. It protects drinking water supplies, encourages watershed-friendly farming practices, provides storage capacity for extreme weather events, provides recreational and tourism opportunities, and benefits soil health. A project like these brings public and private investors to the table These are just a few of the multiple objectives achieved by landscape scale restoration. By making room for these other needs, many new public and private investors come to the table—and research is beginning to show how these kinds of partnerships result in powerful benefits.

Partnership snapshot: The Intertwine Alliance

The Intertwine Alliance is a coalition of more than 150 public, private and nonprofit organizations working to integrate nature more deeply into the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region. The Intertwine leverages investments in nature by building connections across sectors, organizing summits and forums, facilitating collaborative initiatives, and helping partners build capacity through training and education. In 2017, the Intertwine Alliance and a research team from Portland State University’s Institute of Sustainable Solutions conducted a study to explore the relationship between collaborative partnerships and on-the-ground outcomes. The project focused primarily on Tree for All’s work in the Tualatin River Watershed and found that collaborative partnerships, such as those facilitated by the Intertwine Alliance, enables organizations to more effectively achieve their goals.  Read the full report by Rebecca McLain here.

In order to create resilient, thriving landscapes, we have to act on unprecedented scale. It will take new kinds of partnerships, new sources of funding and …

Innovation

One of the first lessons learned during the development of the Tree for All program was the need to innovate. In the early days, pilot projects provided a lot of interesting information. More times than not, if we looked at the cost of a single pilot project and projected the resources needed to go to scale, I’d find myself wringing my hands and wanting to invest in a lottery ticket. Over the course of dozen years we did “strike it rich” by thinking outside the box and reengineering every aspect of project delivery which included planning, monitoring, and financing.

So often restoration planning tries to anticipate Mother Nature’s return for the next 100 years by creating elaborate models and thinking we can actually predict when and where vital services will be available for wildlife. In the case of Tree for All, we learned that focusing on foundational native plant communities was one of the best recipes for bringing back wildlife. Successful native plants populations bring the native insects and other food sources needed by wildlife. In addition, native plants provide the wildlife highways and habitat needed for keystone species like Beaver, Blue Heron and amphibians.

When Tree for All started, the going rate in our region to grow and install a single native plant was in the three-dollar range. Today, that cost is running between 50 and 70 cents. Cost savings were realized by implementing innovative site preparation techniques, slashing administrative costs, finding new ways to contract and distribute native plants, stimulating the private sector workforce, and rethinking how we monitor for success.

Having completed more than 700 projects, Tree for All has been able to transition from project-based monitoring to a system that is able to measure success across broad landscapes. This approach brings great cost savings as we have moved to real-time paperless monitoring and drone technologies.

On the financing front, finding creative ways to weave together diverse funding sources is as much an art as it is a science. We have learned that if we begin projects by cultivating transformative partnerships, it became much easier to find innovative ways to finance large scale projects. Again, the Intertwine/Portland State University research project addresses this point in depth. Once each partner recognizes and values each other’s work, it is truly amazing how quickly resources move into projects. While there is no shortage of interest in identifying innovative financing strategies, we have found that a focus on partnerships is fundamental to success.

Restoration work along streams in the Tualatin River Watershed helps support local business, healthy watersheds and a vibrant community. Produced by Sheepsco:

Summary: Balancing human and wildlife needs for a resilient future

Imagine watching a forestry crew place 30,000 native plants in the ground in a single day along miles of urban and rural streams. This is no fantasy, but the reality that we’re witnessing in the Tualatin River Watershed today. Moving from pilot programs to scale has been a historic journey carried out by amazing transformative partnerships that share a common vision and an understanding that we are in it for the long haul. Success has resulted from thinking outside the box and constantly asking: How do we efficiently provide natural resources benefits for both humans and wildlife?

Sunset over jackson Bottom. Photographer unknown

As we look forward, the Tree for All dream of a resilient and healthy watershed in the midst of rapid urbanization and climate change is quickly becoming the vibrant reality for the wildlife and humans of the Tualatin River Watershed.

Bruce Roll
Portland

On The Nature of Cities

 

 

 

Tales from the London 2018 Heatwave. But Are We Listening?

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
There are places that have been designed with water as a key feature—new neighbourhoods in London such as Barking Riverside and Greenwich Millennium Village incorporate and link to water.
The 2018 London heatwave lasted weeks! I know we Brits like to talk about the weather—but honestly, it has been really hot—and it’s unheard of to be able to go for weeks without worrying about bringing a cardigan, umbrella, or raincoat when you step outside your door.

The parks have been full; the ice cream vans have been doing a roaring trade; the tube has been unbearable. My hundred-year-old flat has a beautiful, large bay window in my bedroom, south facing, and the room has been stifling at night, making sleep difficult. I had special glazing put in 4 years ago, when I had the windows replaced, that is supposed to manage the solar gain but still the blinds and windows had to remain shut all day to try to keep the internal temperature lower. We dog owners have had to adjust the daily regime: no walking in the middle of the day, checking the pavement temperature, hugging any shade from trees and buildings. I even have a little paddling pool that I put in the garden with some water in for the dog, much to her initial bewilderment.

In the heatwave, a quiet corner of the river Lee in East London became an impromptu bathing area. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

Many people this summer have been enjoying formal and informal opportunities to cool down by and in the water in London. We have outdoor lidos dotted across the city, as well as bucolic swimming ponds in Hyde Park and on Hampstead Heath. To the west of London there are swimming spots in the River Thames itself and there is an outdoor swimming club in the Royal Docks, east of Canary Wharf. It was heaven after running around London to slip into the cold, murky green water of Hampstead ladies’ pond where swimmers share space with ducks.

It’s not just the formal outdoor swimming spaces that have been full. We’ve been fascinated to find that a little corner of the River Lee became an impromptu bathing spot for humans in the heatwave, clearly with no thought to things like water quality or personal safety.

The Lee Valley Park Authority put up signs to discourage swimmers, highlighting pollution, hidden hazards and currents as dangers. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

Through word of mouth and social media, Shadwell Basin near Wapping has attracted a growing crowd of young people, including my daughter, much to the chagrin of the local authorities. She was chatting with friends about how hot it was and how lovely it would be to find somewhere local outside to swim in the heat and someone mentioned Shadwell Basin. When they got there many other young people were there, jumping in and swimming, sunbathing around the edge.

In neither area was it clear that you shouldn’t swim there. They now have enhanced signage to warn of the dangers of swimming in these spots. [Informal swimming photo folder] In the prestigious development around Kings Cross, the water features have provided children with informal opportunities for play and other parts of the city with water features and fountains have been busy, parents bringing children fully kitted out to play, with towels, swimsuits, changes of clothes and picnics.

Water features across London become informal play destinations in the summer. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

As well as these mostly joyous experiences of the heatwave, I’ve been worrying about the wider impacts—in the 2003 heatwave, there were 20,000 related deaths across Europe, with the elderly and vulnerable in cities most at risk. What will the figures be like this year? I’ve been working on themes related to climate adaptation in the urban environment for 11 years, but I’m not sure people (residents, professionals, public officers) are any more aware of how to adapt to extreme heat despite the millions spent on excellent research, for example the suite of projects under the UK Research Council’s Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate programme, 2009-14.

Water is a challenge in extended heatwaves—reservoirs and rivers run low, drinking water has to be carefully managed, often resulting in hosepipe bans and other measures to reduce unnecessary consumption of a precious resource. Water is also a core part of health advice for coping with extreme heat —National Health Service heatwave guidance includes having cool baths and showers and drinking fluids, especially water.

So, a question for us all—if heatwaves and flooding are going to be more frequent and water is therefore at any one time a scarce resource to be conserved, flash flooding to be minimised, and an essential ingredient in dealing with extreme heat—are we doing enough to put water centre stage of urban design, regeneration and management? Are we actually designing new buildings and neighbourhoods with the future climate in mind? For London, this is likely to include more frequent heatwaves and more frequent heavy rain leading to flash flooding. I look at all the new homes being built in London—a high priority to deal with the shortage of affordable homes for families. Evidence of design for a changing climate—multifunctional green and blue areas, sustainable drainage systems, thought about orientation and materials—is scarce. The areas that do introduce these measures stand out as special, for example the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and Groundwork project to “climate proof” social housing through sustainable drainage systems, monitored by colleagues in the UEL Sustainability Research Institute.

Many cities are like London, with different types of water bodies, from large rivers to small canals, creeks, ponds and ditches. Many of these water bodies are neglected and unloved, others are hotspots for regeneration, with developers often featuring pictures of water in their marketing materials. The opportunities for making the most of the water, through increased access, quality and enhanced biodiversity are immense. This is especially important in inner-city areas that have more blue space (water) than green space.

Nicola Baird enjoying a cuppa and SUP on the City Road Basin near Old Street/Angel, Islington. Photo: © tNicola Baird for Islington Faces http://www.islingtonfacesblog.com

Rosie Markwick, a yoga and standup paddleboard (SUP) teacher, runs classes from the Islington boat club, a charity set up in the 1970s to offer water activities for local children. Islington is one of the densest and least green of the London boroughs and the south of the borough has been identified by the local authority as particularly challenging for climate change because of the magnifying effects of the urban heat island and the vulnerability of the local population. The Regents Canal flows through the borough, and the boat club is located on the City Road basin. Rosie teaches a wide range of people, from local 80-year olds to stressed city workers. She has noticed how people very quickly relax and become much more open and engaged when they’re on the water.

The Canal and River Trust, which manages 2,000 miles of inland waterways for British Waterways, including Regents Canal, has recently published independent research showing wellbeing benefits of being by inland waterways. This adds to emerging academic research about the wellbeing benefits of water in urban areas, such as the work by the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health, University of Bonn reseachers Sebastian Vőlker and Thomas Kistemann, and their 2013 research article “I’m always entirely happy when I’m here!” Urban blue enhancing human health and wellbeing in Cologne and Dűsseldorf, Germany, published in Social Science and Medicine.

Thames 21 is a charity working with local communities to clean up and revitalise local creeks. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

The 2018 heatwave has shown how water has provided much delight and refuge from the heat across London. But, inevitably, the weather has changed and already the heatwave feels like a distant memory. But notwithstanding the ephemeral nature of this heatwave, it has been instructional for those city makers who will observe and listen. Rather than either ignoring hidden urban water bodies or just seeing them as profit-optimising development opportunities, we should invest in them for their health, biodiversity, recreation, cooling and social benefits.

There are some great examples of things starting to change, led by charities—for example, Thames 21 and the London Wildlife Trust have both been involved in local projects to engage city dwellers in caring for and understanding local creeks and water spots as well as enhancing quality and access. Thames 21 has worked with Oxford University and local communities to identify a whole range of new opportunities for sustainable drainage and constructed wetlands. London Wildlife Trust manages wetlands in London, including Woodbury Wetlands, which is surrounded by a mix of existing social housing estates and new luxury apartments, as well as Walthamstow Wetlands, which I mentioned in my last TNOC essay.

Urban wetlands are havens for wildlife. Photo: © Paula Vandergert
Walthamstow Wetlands is one of the new nature areas in London open to the public and is Europe’s largest urban wetland reserve. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

Notwithstanding these positive signs, I would argue there is still a long way to go to optimise the benefits of urban water for people and nature. For example, there are also issues around increased demands for water in a heatwave. Whilst the urban food growing movement is literally blossoming in London, access to water in some of these spots can be difficult—a real challenge for successful cultivation.

In the heatwave, watering regimes have had to be stepped up markedly. My local mini-allotment site has had to get creative in finding a source of water, negotiating access to a water point in the street and running a hosepipe to fill water butts. Other growing sites have had to rely on residents bringing water from home—not a long-term solution.

The Alcázar in Seville demonstrates how water has historically been integral to urban design in hot cities. Photo: © Paula Vandergert
The Alcázar in Cόrdoba shows how Moorish design utilised the sight and sound of water as well as surrounding scents and shade of planting to create a harmonious oasis in the heat. Photo: © Paula Vandergert
Pancras Square in Kings Cross incorporates a flowing water feature at its heart, attracting local workers and visitors to enjoy the sound and sight. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

Should urban designers in cities like London be looking for inspiration in cities like Seville or Cόrdoba, where hundreds of years ago gardens were created as tranquil oases, with water very much at their heart? Is that what has inspired places like Pancras Square, Kings Cross, with it’s flowing water feature? And can such thoughtful design be incorporated in less prestigious spaces where ordinary people live? Or would that be deemed unaffordable?

If such blue spaces can offer health benefits, surely they are worth the investment. Actually, there are places that have been designed with water as a key feature—new neighbourhoods in London such as Barking Riverside and Greenwich Millennium Village incorporate and link to water. It would be interesting to see whether residents are actively engaging with this local water and if it is bringing health and wellbeing benefits.

One of the created ponds at Barking Riverside – part of the sustainable drainage system. Photo: © Paula Vandergert
As part of its education and outreach work, London Wildlife Trust does water quality testing activities with children. Photo: © Paula Vandergert

What would a design process that embeds water look like? There are many questions. Might it involve not only thinking about physical water bodies, their access, their quality, possible uses—for example, could they be swum in? Kayaked? Fished? Lived on? But also, how could water be managed locally for watering green or growing spaces. Is there potential for rainwater harvesting or grey water recycling, to reduce impacts of flooding? To provide delight and tranquillity? To provide local ecological richness and biodiversity? This type of process clearly requires many strands/disciplines to come together, deep partnership working, understanding local people’s needs and desires, thinking at different scales, and understanding what the trade-offs are between activities and functions, such as with regard to pollution or disturbance.

It seems to me that currently many of these questions are either not explicitly considered or are answered in isolation of each other. If we consider the fundamental role that water, and the water cycle, plays in our very existence and the life of the planet, maybe it’s worth the effort to attempt a more complex and comprehensive analysis of how we engage with water in our cities.

Paula Vandergert
London

On The Nature of Cities

A group of trees with no leaves against a blue sky

Talk in the Park: An inquiry into culture and creativity

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
Barrow is once again booming with a new training academy to occupy a redundant department store, new transport links, and an extra 5,000 jobs. But the question remains about local and wider perceptions of what constitutes culture in a town that, at the same time, has some of the highest deprivation, situated at some of the most beautiful UK coasts. ‘Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’.

Rightly, people recently have been valuing Indigenous cultures and writing about them. Not wishing to mimic or appropriate, but as an attempt to learn from such ways of thinking, this essay uses a form of circular storying[1] that becomes nonlinear. I stumbled upon ‘storying’ (the making and telling of stories) through my practice as an ecological artist/researcher while working with a youth drama group in 2017. We were working towards a theatrical contribution to a forthcoming lantern parade in Cockermouth, northwest England, to celebrate the anniversary of floods that had devastated the town in 2009 and 2015 and I introduced the idea of a fictional fish. From that idea, the group created an elaborate archetypical, right-of-passage, myth that they performed as a giant shadow puppet-play across the River Derwent. I later realized that several of my projects had initiated what I had rationalized as ‘dialogues’ with people, non-humans, places, and time. I then discovered similarities to Indigenous or ‘otherwise’ ways of thinking, through the work of Vanessa Andreotti[2]. The reason for this explanation is that this text weaves together several ideas, themes, and events that I hope, for the reader, flow to make some kind of sense.

A group of trees with no leaves against a blue sky
1. Trees Barrow Park. Photo: D Haley

The main story is written from one perspective, about a series of six talks with groups of people in a place in early Spring 2023. But this first requires context about the place; Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, Northwest England (aka Barrow).

A Place in Context

The last Ice Age left the Furness Peninsular, on the coast of northwest England, geographically remote; defined by the River Duddon Estuary to the north, Morecambe Bay to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. For much of its history, it remained predominantly impenetrable to the east, with densely forested mountains, lakes, and wild animals. A few Celts settled to mine copper, iron, and coal and they cultivated some of the low-lying land for arable and cattle farming. The Romans were not particularly interested in this place, so the Celts were followed by Vikings who settled and gave their names to many of the villages in the area. Then the Normans arrived and in just over half a century, Cistercian Monks founded Furness Abbey in 1123. By the time of Henry VIII’s dissolution in 1537, Furness Abbey was the second richest in Britain, with iron smelting, agriculture, and fisheries. However, Barrow itself remained a small fishing hamlet of only 32 dwellings (including 2 pubs) until 1843.

A green statue of a person in a coat
2. Foreground: Sir James Ramsden (25 February 1822 – 19 October 1896), Ramsden Square, Barrow-in Furness. Background: BAE Systems, Devonshire Dock Hall (The Sheds). Photo: D Haley

Boom Town

In 1839, iron prospector Henry Schneider arrived and by 1846 he opened Furness Railway, providing the means of distributing iron ore, slate, and hematite. Schneider was joined by James Ramsden, the railway’s general manager and he established blast furnaces to turn the iron into steel. By 1876, having received substantial investment from William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire and the Duke of Buccleuch, the Port of Barrow facilitated the export of steel from what had become the largest steelworks in the world. The port developments had, in the meantime, prompted Ramsden to found the Barrow Shipbuilding Company (1871) with merchant ships giving way to orders from the Royal Navy to expand and protect Britain’s burgeoning Empire. Following Ramsden’s death in 1896 the shipyard was taken over by Vickers Ship Building and Engineering, adding their capability for manufacturing armaments for the army and navy. Warships were also built for export, including Japan’s flagship, the Mikasa, in 1905. ‘The Yard’ continued to build aircraft carriers, passenger liners, and airships, and in 1901, it launched its first submarine. By 1914 it had built the largest submarine fleet in the world for the Royal Navy.

‘The Last Place God Made’[3]

At this point, it’s worth considering the demographic and cultural changes that took place from 1839 to 1939. As previously stated, the population of Barrow and surrounding villages prior to 1843 was less than 3,000. By 1876 inward economic migration from Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland and other parts of Lancashire increased the population to over 19,000, with a sizable Indian community and some from China.

As well as being the Furness Railway general manager (the ‘Fat Controller’ in the Thomas the Tank Engine[4] books) and four-times Mayor of Barrow, James Ramsden was keen to express the town’s success by embracing the philanthropic ideas of the age. Barrow became one of the first British towns to be ‘planned’. Influenced by the altruism of Lever Brothers’ Port Sunlight (1888) and Cadbury’s Bournville (1893), Vickerstown (1898-1905) was developed as a ‘model village’, on Walney Island, adjacent to the shipyard. Before he died in 1896, Ramsden’s planning included a grid of well-constructed terraced housing in the town center with a tree-lined avenue leading to a central square. A grand neo-Gothic Town Hall was constructed (1885-1889) from local red sandstone and slate. These gestures of civic grandeur and benevolence continued as the population rose to over 60,000. Nicknamed ‘the English Chicago’ for this rapid growth, the town kept growing as the industries expanded, and in 1905 it was referred to as, ‘the last place God made’, at the zenith of Britain’s Industrial Revolution and colonial Empire.

As Fortunes Come and Go, so do People

During the First World War (1914-1918), with the increase in munitions workers, the population surged again to 82,000. During the Second World War (1939-1945), Barrow was targeted by intense air raids that mostly bombed civilian housing, so that people left the town at night to sleep under rural hedgerows. Following WW II, with a population of 77,900 (1951), local mines (1960), the ironworks (1963), and then the steelworks (1983) closed. As the main employer in the town, the shipyard focused on submarine production, with the first UK nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought launched in 1960.

In 1986, the Devonshire Dock Hall (‘The Sheds’) was constructed to develop and build the Vanguard class of nuclear-powered submarines, armed with Trident II missiles, as part of the Government’s Trident Nuclear Programme of ‘Continuous At Sea Deterrent’[5]. The Sheds overshadowed the Town Hall to become Barrow’s iconic skyline. However, in 1991 the end of the Cold War saw a drop in defense budgets, and as shipyard orders fell away VSEL’s workforce shrank from 14,500 in 1990 to 5,800 in 1995, making Furness General Hospital the largest employer in the town. The knock-on effect throughout Barrow meant that many businesses collapsed and there was a sharp rise in unemployment in this remote town, dependent on a single major employer. Despite regeneration initiatives from the Central Government and Europe to build better road access and a new shopping mall, the town’s population continued to decline to 71,900 in 2001, and 69,100 in 2011 and was projected to fall to 65,000 by 2035. In 2011 Barrow’s demographic profile was 96.9% ‘White British’ with ethnic minorities of Hong Kong Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Thai, Kosovan, and Polish people making up the 3.1%. By 2021, little had changed[6]. Barrow remained the largest shipyard in the UK, with BAE Systems employing 9,500, a third of the town’s workforce.

Educating the Future

BAE Systems had taken over the shipyard in 1999 from Marconi (VSEL) and in 2016 the Government invested £300 million in constructing additional ‘sheds’ to facilitate the development of the Dreadnought class of nuclear submarines to replace the Vanguard class. This development again significantly changed Barrow, as thousands of contract workers flood into the town every Sunday evening and leave mid-day every Friday. While the Portland Walk shopping mall and surrounding streets see shops of all sizes close, new bars with craft beers at London prices have opened. Gyms, fast food outlets, hotels, rental apartments, and expensive cars now dominate the town’s economy. BAE Systems with the universities[7] of Lancaster and Cumbria are providing new training facilities and opportunities for schools and further education colleges to prepare their students for apprenticeships; a move that some see as a return to old paternalistic values of the ‘Yard’ as the center of the community. However, the character of the Yard has changed from one of openness and benevolence, with its own brass band to very strict high security, managed by the Ministry of Defence Police.

Other changes are taking place with Barrow Offshore Wind Farm, Ormonde Wind Farm, Walney Wind Farm, and West of Duddon Sands Wind Farm becoming the largest off-shore wind farm in the world (2006-2018). In 2022 the Government recognized Barrow’s estates of depravation through its Levelling-up[8] policy to regenerate civic infrastructure. This has been further enhanced by Arts Council England investing in Barrow through its Priority Places and Levelling-up for Culture Places strategy, with increased revenue funding for new and existing arts organisations. It also created BarrowFull (formerly Barra Culture) to promote arts, culture, and creativity in the town.

The shipyard has, this year, been awarded the AUKUS[9] contract to build nuclear submarines for the next 35 years and BAE Systems advertised for 1,200 new jobs[10]. With attractive salaries, many of these have been filled by mechanical engineers from independent local motor garages, but as an unintended consequence, many local independent motor garages have closed.

A sign on the side of a bus stop on a sidewalk
3. Bus shelter advertisement, Abbey Road, Barrow-in-Furness. Photo: D Haley

‘All the world’s a stage…’

The 19th and early 20th Century increased population of Barrow-in-Furness gave rise to the emergence of many forms of local entertainment. Blessed with stunning coastal scenery the western shoreline of Walney Island became a great attraction with an open lido and other entertainments for holidaymakers. There were many pubs and working men’s clubs for after-work socialising, with dedicated activities and hobbies from darts and dancing to brass bands and model railways, pigeon racing, and allotments to soccer and rugby.  Women came into their own with competition dancing and festivals, but Barrow was essentially a man’s town.

Barrow did boast four theatres during its heydays between 1864 and the 1970s, offering Music Hall, Variety, concerts, drama, ‘animated pictures’, and cinema. The theatres changed their names as they were revamped to meet changing popular demand, and one still remains as a nightclub. In 1990 the Civic Hall (1971) was reconstructed as the Forum 28 entertainment complex. Her Majesty’s Theatre was demolished in 1972 and the proceeds of its funds contributed to the Renaissance Theatre Trust that pioneered touring arts throughout Cumbria to the mid 1990s. It, also welcomed the radical celebratory and arts company, Welfare State International[11] (WSI) to the nearby town of Ulverston where it remained until 2006.

One of WSI’s biggest projects was its eight-year urban regeneration residency in Barrow (1982-1990). The culmination of this cultural programme in 1990, was a festival of locally written and performed plays, The Shipyard Tales, and a spectacular pyrotechnic event, The Golden Submarine.  The legacy of this work, however, was to create the space for the Barracudas, a nationally acclaimed carnival band[12], Furness Youth Theatre[13], and eco/visual arts company, Art Gene[14]. The youth theatre company and arts organization continued and were joined by the award-winning Signal Films & Media[15] (2007) and the sonic arts company, Full of Noises[16] (2009). Today many people continue to walk their dogs and children, fly kites, swim, windsurf, sail, and engage in many hobbies, from upholstery and ballroom dancing to model railways, choral singing, and ukulele bands. Barrow, also boasts an internationally acclaimed opera singer, contralto Jess Dandy.

Culture, in the sense of diverse human activities being passed down through the generations, has adapted to change and evolved in this industrial town. However, despite everything mentioned above, in the national press and media Barrow has gained a reputation for lacking in Art World Art and Culture, and cast as the cultural backwater. The question that emerges, therefore, is what constitutes ‘culture’ and what value is given to local culture?

‘TALK IN THE PARK’: another kind of story

About a year ago, I was invited to write a conference paper, a short article, and a book. I, also thought it would be a good idea to apply for a small grant from my local community arts organisation to create a series of talks about art, creativity, and culture.

I presented the conference paper, online, to the University of Murcia, Spain, on the topic of Generous Domains: Storying an Ecological Brave Space, to explore ideas of decolonizing the environmental sciences, based on a United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded research project that I led with Valeria Vargas of Manchester Metropolitan University.

The short article, Unreal Estate: A Dialogue with Pigeons, was for a TNoC Roundtable, ‘How can artists and scientists co-create regenerative projects in cities?’ As for the book, Metapoiesis: an inquiry into space, this article may become one of the chapters.

Meanwhile, I gained a small grant from the local arts development agency, BarrowFull, for a series of six, weekly, two-hour Saturday morning events. The title for the programme suggested itself – TALK IN THE PARK.

A path through a vibrant green field leading to a house surrounded by trees
4. Full of Noises, Piel View House, Barrow Park. Photo D Haley

Taking time to talk

The idea for the six talks came from my experience as a fifteen-year-old attending adult education evening classes on Life Drawing, Painting, and Art History in London, in the late 1960s. The latter was led by my school’s sculpture teacher, George Poole (1915-2000), and was attended by a diverse group of about twelve people on a Friday evening. Each week, George chose a theme, projected slides of artists’ work, and started a conversation that would last around two hours. The conversations were the real element of learning, as everyone had something to say that prompted questions beyond aesthetic appreciation to include politics, cultures, sex, music, architecture, and environment. The exchanges carried on at the local pub to fuel my sense of inquiry and passion for art as integral to life, beyond galleries, museums, and concert halls. There was no question, then, of the sessions not being in-person, so social interaction was embodied in the dialogue that evolved, session upon session. We each learned to talk and share a common evolving language.

Let the talking begin…

Throughout January 2023 I distributed a thousand black and white leaflets at the Library, Dock Museum, Forum entertainment venue, arts companies, and train station. I gave interviews on local radio, emailed my networks, and posted on social media. On the first day, I brought with me tea, coffee, and a good supply of biscuits.

Here, I use the PowerPoint slides to illustrate some of the ideas and issues I raised to prompt conversation and provide some context for newcomers each week. I tried not to manage or determine people’s participation, but to facilitate and provoke engagement. On occasion, I did contribute my own views, as the view of another participant, but this dual role was at times difficult and constantly required nimble assessment of the reactions of others. In this sense, I tried to step back from being a lecturer or performer to being one of the group, within the group. The first Talk…

WEEK 1. February 11. Five people attended.

I was pleased that I was not alone and the number resembled a small dinner party. The participants were all known to me; two retired school teachers, a local civic councillor/journalist, and two artists. I introduced the concept of the series of events and only got as far as the fifth slide, when everyone had a story to contribute about pigeons, or in one case, the intricate story of fostering a crow with a broken wing for several years. The session over-ran by 30 minutes and nobody wanted to take a half-time break. They just seemed to enjoy the experience of ‘having a good talk’.

Several screenshots of a powerpoint presentation with pictures of tree bark, pigeons, seeds on the ground, and flower petals gathered in a crack in the ground
5. PowerPoint Week 1. Photos: D Haley

WEEK 2. February 18. Seven people attended.

An artist/academic, a poet, and a lawyer joined the previous week’s group and one of the teachers did not attend.

At the end of the first session, I asked those present what topic they would like to focus on in week 2. The consensus was our relationship with nature. This provided fruitful conversation around human exceptionalism, separability, and the need to reconnect with nature. The importance of nature-focused education was explored, as a subject developed by several of those in the group who had used the area’s coastal location in their teaching practice. A local woman remembered her childhood experiences of visiting the Irish Sea coast of Walney Island in the 1950s. Examples were given about some children from ‘deprived’ families who had not experienced their outstanding natural location and this raised issues around the relationship between culture and nature, education, knowledge, and community. The depiction of Nature through the arts and sciences provided a fruitful line of inquiry as obvious to some but as a new way of thinking for others. Eventually, the extinction of species, the climate emergency, and global political will emerged. This carried over to the following week.

Several screenshots of a powerpoint presentation with pictures of a man, and a cloudy sky
6. PowerPoint Week 2. Images: Charles Darwin and painting by Paul Gauguin, 7,000 Oaks Joseph Beuys. Photos: Morecambe Bay, D Haley

WEEK 3. February 25. Seventeen people attended.

An artist brought their two young children, grandparents, and nephew in addition to the core group.

In addition to an exploration of some of the issues surrounding our response to ‘the nexus of climate, species and cultural crises’, the conversation from the previous week had touched on very human expressions of architectural and landscape design at the heart of Barrow’s cultural identity. As a geographically isolated urban/coastal/industrial town, Barrow-in-Furness represented the conclusion of the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. This had been expressed through fine Victorian and Edwardian buildings, including St Mary of Furness Catholic church, designed by the son of Pugin (architect of Westminster Palace). Indeed, Barrow Park was designed by Thomas Mawson, the most sought-after landscape architect of his day. These vanity constructions were further compared with contemporary architecture and urban developments. Discussion around such physical and societal development moved to the concept of ‘Sustainable Development’ and this gave way to the notion of different people’s worldviews and the potential for diverse ways of thinking, or not.

Several screenshots of a powerpoint presentation with pictures of buildings, skyscrapers, and streets
7. PowerPoint Week 3. Photos: St Mary’s of Furness[17], Westminster Palace, The Houses of Parliament[18], Centre Pompidou[19], Lloyd’s of London[20], Sydney Opera House[21]/video box cover, Barrow Park[22], United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
WEEK 4. March 4. Eleven people attended.

The poet brought their young niece, an urban ecologist returned to their home town and two local couples joined.

The previous week, someone had praised the Enlightenment and rational thinking as the highest value of human evolution and this was promoted by several regular members of the group, so I thought it was worth further exploration. Surprisingly, to me, nobody seemed to challenge this idea, as it was claimed that the Enlightenment, provided the foundations of Modernity, contemporary education, and the scientific method. Meanwhile, I had noted the lack of people of colour and people other than white European ethnicity among the participants, but thought that the largely educated or even cultured group would have challenged some of the precepts of the Age of Reason… and colonialism. Offering John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Imagine’ as an antidote to Rene Descartes went nowhere, but Eduardo Paolozzi’s call for ‘a new culture in which way problems give way to capabilities’ did gain some traction, although more from an engineering perspective of Problem-Based Learning!

Several screenshots of portraits of powerpoint presentation with pictures of people and book covers
8. PowerPoint Week 4. Images: René Descartes[23], album cover[24], book cover[25]
WEEK 5. March 11. Eleven people attended (four men and seven women).

Several screenshots of a powerpoint presentation with pictures of book covers
9. PowerPoint Week 5. Images: DVD cover[26], book cover[27]
The central topic for this session was ‘Other Perspectives in Culture’. It arose from what appeared to be polarised views of the Enlightenment being a good or bad thing. On slides, I selected quotes from the UK artist, David Hockney and US philosopher, Robert Pirsig to offer other perspectives that I thought could further explore alternative approaches. Both focused on the phenomenon and metaphor of ‘space’, with the hope that this would prompt the participants to consider different ways of thinking about different ways of thinking; something that, from my perspective, was lacking from the conversation about the Enlightenment.

This topic seemed to be surprisingly difficult for the people to comment on, so I offered more input than I had wished, in an attempt to provoke some response. This included the idea that different cultures experience space differently and that Western Modernity had both valued this richness and appropriated it. A paradox exemplified in visual art by Post-Impressionism’s fascination with Japanese prints and Cubism’s adoption of African sculpture; each of which enhanced Western ways of seeing, while othering the cultures from which they came.

These examples gave traction to the group and in particular, the other three men, two of whom were accomplished artists. While there was some input from the women artists, the men (including me) enthusiastically ran away with the conversation. Then, quite quietly, one of the women asked if we might collectively consider the idea of ‘space’ as having gendered aspects. The conversation paused. The men looked quizzically at each other, agreed with this idea, and carried on. Bizarrely, their conversation moved onto a critique of male football supporters and tribalism within cultures.

While I tried very hard to catch the attention of each of the women to contribute, none took the cue. Finally, out of frustration, the woman who introduced the concept of gendered space snapped and reiterated her idea as a complaint and two of the other women then agreed. Perhaps ashamed, or dumbfounded by their (our) inability to shift the conversation, the men stopped. As the meeting drew to a close, the woman who had complained intervened, with some assertiveness, to consider the place/exclusion of women in the conversation.

Getting it wrong can sometimes hurt and hurting can sometimes be necessary for a learning experience. I took some time and apologised for not facilitating well enough. As the frustrated woman is one of my closest friends, I agonised about the last session and how to manage/not manage it. Something had to be said, we couldn’t leave the elephant in the room, so I consulted Vanessa Machado de Olivera’s book, Hospicing Modernity, for some wisdom that might express my feelings and hopefully help us all to process the situation. I sent my proposed slides for the following week to my friend to check that they were appropriate.

Several screenshots of a powerpoint presentation with pictures of trees in a field
10. PowerPoint Slides Week 6 (not projected at the meeting) Photo: D Haley

My friend replied:

A word of caution against using any quoted abstraction about what ‘good’ or ‘better’ behaviour might be, regardless of how it seems a good direction to take [who would disagree with those ideas?], or even, whether an especially good female thinker has written it. Working from a ‘normative’ abstraction can be a [patriarchal] way of silencing/diminishing/categorising the lived experience of those on the inevitable other side when things don’t happen as they should. It can, also, close off the process for a difficult and necessary conversation if people feel they have to think it in abstract, normative terms. It depends on how it’s done. 

There is I think, a lot of goodwill in the room, a lot of experience, and a lot of learning to do. And, it may have all blown over by Saturday.

WEEK 6. March 18. Nine people attended.

The final session arrived and although I had my slides in readiness, I did not project them but suggested that we talk openly about the issues that my friend had raised. It wasn’t easy and there were a few difficult moments. It will, of course, take a lot longer to truly resolve such contradictions, but we did open up ideas of ‘the male voice’ as the dominant conversation, and despite good intentions, how this links to social misogyny and by association racism and coloniality; subjects that I had tried to introduce earlier in the Talks, but that require much greater nuanced reflexivity. The key factor that the group, as a whole, focused on was education but were reluctant to let go of rationality as the pinnacle of human endeavor.

As the final session drew to a close, I reminded everyone that was, indeed, the last session in the series and thanked everyone for their contribution. I then asked if people wanted to continue in any way, they were perfectly at liberty to do so and that I no longer had any ownership of the idea nor further organisation. The group seemed a little sad that our talking adventure had come to an end, but they said they had enjoyed themselves. A Director of the venue said that he liked the title, ‘Talk in the Park’ and asked if he may use it for part of their Summer Programme. I was delighted to pass it on. A little time was spent thanking each other for all our input and I asked if anyone wanted to add anything or if they wanted to ask any questions. Two questions were asked:

  • With the influx of people, migrants, and contract workers at BAE Systems, what will happen to Barrow’s culture; will it be overwhelmed?
  • How can we retain Barrow’s culture and heritage?
A person in a hi-vi jacket walking next to a bicycle on a path through a field
11. Barrow Park, Central Barrow, ‘The Sheds’. Photo: D Haley

History becoming futures

In 1840 Barrow was a tiny fishing village of about 150 people. By 1870 it had become a town of 19,000, with a railway, a port, docks, iron, and steelworks. The population was largely comprised of economic migrants from Cornwall, Ireland, and Scotland, including a sizable Indian community and some from China. In 1905 it was at the zenith of Britain’s Industrial Revolution and colonial Empire. From then until recently Barrow-in-Furness was largely regarded as a geographic and cultural backwater by the arts and media establishment. Indeed, the A590 road that ends in Barrow was referred to as the ‘longest cul-de-sac in Great Britain’.  Each of these historic elements provides their own stories of what now weaves into a collective view of local heritage that has become the somewhat idealized myth of Barrow.

As I write this essay, the AUKUS alliance, with its $4.82bn contract for BAE Systems to build nuclear submarines, represents thirty-five years of assured future business. This means that the town is once again booming with a new BAE Systems training academy to occupy a redundant department store, new transport links, and an extra 5,000 jobs. Ancillary support services, construction, and manufacturing will increase that number greatly. Recent UK Government ‘Levelling-Up’ policies have included Arts Council England investment through its ‘Priority Places’ programme that has increased revenue support for existing and new arts organisations. But the question remains about local and wider perceptions of what constitutes culture in a town that, at the same time, has some of the highest deprivation, situated near some of the most beautiful UK coasts. As Welsh writer and commentator Raymond Williams noted: ‘Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’[28] Perhaps that complicatedness also accounts for the paradoxical stories of Barrow-in-Furness and its particular culture.

David Haley
Walney Island

On The Nature of Cities

[1] Coleridge 1760

[2] Vanessa Andreotti (2015) Global citizenship education otherwise: pedagogical and theoretical insights”. In Ali Abdi, Lynette Shultz, and Tashika Pillay (Eds.) Decolonizing Global Citizenship Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

[3] Bryn Trescatheric (1998) The Last Place God Made: A History of Victorian Barrow

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Tank_Engine

[5] https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/operations/global/continuous-at-sea-deterrent#:~:text=For%2024%20hours%20a%20day,United%20Kingdom’s%20strategic%20nuclear%20deterrent.

[6] https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/censusareachanges/E07000027

[7] https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/your-area/priority-places-and-levelling-culture-places

[8] https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3155

[9] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/13/joint-leaders-statement-on-aukus-2/

[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-63227490

[11] https://www.welfare-state.org/

[12] https://thebarracudas.wordpress.com/about/

[13] http://www.furnessyouththeatre.com/

[14] https://www.art-gene.co.uk/

[15] https://signalfilmandmedia.com/

[16] https://fonfestival.org/

[17] https://ourladyoffurness.org.uk/

[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Westminster

[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Pompidou

[20] https://rshp.com/projects/office/lloyds-of-london/

[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Opera_House

[22] https://www.visitlakedistrict.com/things-to-do/barrow-public-park-p1213731

[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_%28John_Lennon_album%29

[25] Eduardo Paolozzi, (1985)  “Lost Magic Kingdoms and Six Paper Moons from Nahuatl”. London: British Museum Publications.

[26] David Hockney (1998) dir. Phillip Haas. Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China. Milestone Films https://milestonefilms.com/products/day-on-the-grand-canal-with-the-emperor-of-chinga

[27] Robert Maynard Pirsig.(1993)  “Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals”. London: Black Swan.

[28] Williams, Raymond. (1988) “Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society”. London, Fontana Press, p 50 & 213

Talking the Walk—Narrating and Navigating the Life of the Los Angeles River

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

A review of Rosten Woo’s “Bowtie Nature Walk,” available at the Bowtie Parcel on the east side of the Los Angeles River’s Glendale Narrows. A map and tour audio files are available here.

A “nature walk” seems like an unlikely activity to find on the industrial banks of the Los Angeles River. From the vantage point of a 70-mile-per-hour car crossing the moat between east and west Los Angeles, there doesn’t appear to be much “nature” on the river’s cavernous concrete floor or walls.

The Bowtie Nature Walk asks vital questions about the current plans for the Los Angeles River: namely, whether they will lead to a recognizable “river,” or the opposite.
But to those who live alongside, recreate on, work with, or otherwise get up close to the river, its ecological complexity is undeniable. The persistence of certain plants and wildlife in the concrete channel, despite no natural hydrology, has undoubtedly inspired Los Angeles River revitalization efforts. This is the audience I suspect artist and designer Rosten Woo had in mind while creating the “Bowtie Nature Walk,” the second of three installations intended to bring the less-visible aspects of the Los Angeles River ecosystem to the surface.

img_2533
Looking south over Glendale Narrows from Los Feliz Boulevard. Photo: Anne Trumble

Woo’s audio tour piqued my interest because a few months before its release, I got up close to the Los Angeles River myself. Very close. For six days, I walked the river’s entire urban reach, from Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley, to the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach. While traversing both sides of the 51-mile channel, I observed things well known to river advocates—mainly that the river is a dynamic landscape. But I reached the river’s terminus with its sweetly acrid aroma baked into my skin, and more questions than answers about its future. Several months later, Woo’s nature walk gave shape to these questions.

In ten audio segments, less than four minutes each, Woo’s narrators peel back layers of the river’s socio-ecology. Each segment corresponds with a modest wooden marker poking above clumps of fountain grass throughout the Bowtie Parcel. Also called G1, the parcel was purchased from Union Pacific Railroad by the California State Parks in 2003 for $10.7 million, to create a 100-acre river park. Located within the soft-bottomed Glendale Narrows, and with a shape squeezed and pulled into a bowtie by surrounding infrastructure—freeway, rail tracks, and river channel—it is an ideal lens through which to view the river’s past, present, and future. The Bowtie Parcel is a microcosm of the ecological, social, and political factors influencing the Los Angeles River corridor and basin.

Each narrator explores a piece of the River’s story through found cultural artifacts. With a variety of spoken accents, the narrators represent the diverse communities surrounding the river and shaping Los Angeles’ cultural vibrancy. The one-mile audio tour loops around several large-scale land-art installations from previous public programs conducted by Woo’s non-profit collaborator, Clockshop. These artifacts are enduring symbols of the perpetually unfurling, emergent culture inspired by the Los Angeles River.

The symbolism of labels

Labels—and the symbolism they encode—are a theme woven throughout the Bowtie Nature Walk. What do the labels we give things mean? How do labels influence city making? How do labels shape a landscape like the Los Angeles River? Woo discovered this conceptual direction in a large warehouse anchoring the northern end of the Bowtie Parcel. The box’s blank exterior gives no indication of what’s inside. I passed by it on day three of my river walk, and paid no attention. It was one among hundreds of non-descript warehouses dotting the industrial portions of river. But inside, Nelson-Miller’s several hundred employees comprise the world’s largest, industrial label maker. While Nelson-Miller is, according to their slogan, “Labeling the World,” the Bowtie Nature Walk explores how we are “Labeling the River.”

Plants as labels

A grove of Mexican Fan Palms growing between Nelson-Miller’s warehouse and the river channel is the subject of the tour’s introduction. The narrator discusses how palm trees have become a label, perhaps the label, for Los Angeles. She quotes the California author and architecture historian Esther McCoy, who once called palms “a symbol of the city’s indolence; shallow rooted, constantly on the move, shifty, shiftless, with no sense of place.” Los Angeles has since adopted a policy to not replant palms—native or non-native—as they reach the end of their natural lives.

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Bowtie Parcel Nature Walk, wooden marker 2 at Mexican Fan Palms. Photo: Anne Trumble
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Bowtie Parcel Nature Walk, entrance signage. Photo: Anne Trumble

Someday, the palm trees along the Los Angeles River will all be gone, including an indelible grove I discovered on day two of my river walk. Wedged between the Weddington Golf Course and the river channel in Studio City, one finds a row of native California palms that have evaded annual frond trimming. Desiccated, brown fans from years past obscure narrow trunks from the ground up to living fronds tufting their tops. I hadn’t noticed “natural” palm trees like these before on my walk, but their juxtaposition with the stark concrete channel forced me to pay attention. Instead of bare, thin pencil trunks, I found columns displaying everything they’d grown. Much as the rings inside deciduous trees visualize a historical record of growth, these Fraggle-like creatures animating the edge of the concrete river wear their history like so many layered dresses. This was the first moment on my river walk that I felt I was somewhere; I was in Los Angeles. The 12 walking hours before this “palm experience” could have been in any suburban landscape.

The Bowtie Nature Walk left me wondering: how much of the decision to not replant palms is a reaction to their acquired symbolism rather than the palms themselves? Will Los Angeles be less indolent, more rooted, or less shiftless without palms? Or will the absence of palm trees lead to no label for Los Angeles at all? Perhaps a palm-less Los Angeles will be a label-less, or place-less, Los Angeles.

“Native” and “Non-Native”: symbolizing an attitude towards nature

Five of the ten audio segments examine the immigration status of plants in the Los Angeles River ecosystem. Which plants are native? Which are non-native? How do we decide which get to stay, and which have to go? With the exception of the native palm being selectively phased out through city policy, other native plants have become a label for the restored Los Angeles River of the future. Narrators discuss how native planting guidelines are established, and announce that specialty nurseries to supply the plants are being propagated nearby. Much like eradicating palms for a more “rooted” sense of place, re-nativizing the Los Angeles River is intended to reclaim the river’s natural heritage, producing a recognizable landscape, or a landscape “of the place.”

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“The Unfinished” by Michael Parker, Clockshop’s Bowtie Project. Photo: Anne Trumble

One audio segment examines the only native plants remaining on the Bowtie Parcel. Mulefat, California buckwheat, and sage, in addition to natives that have not lived there for decades, will be prominent in a restored Los Angeles River. Day one of my river walk provided a snapshot of this native river vision. As I trekked along the newly constructed San Fernando Valley River Greenway, the path snaked between the river channel and discriminately designed plantings of native California sage, wild rose, laurel sumac, and sugar brush. Although they provide preferred habitat for native birds and other wildlife, these plantings will always require extensive maintenance to defend them against aggressive non-natives.

The Bowtie Nature Walk weaves through the non-native and “invasive” fountain grass blanketing much of the river landscape. Listeners are encouraged to visualize removing millions of fountain grass clumps dotting the foreground and horizon and the seeds that stay viable underground for up to seven years. Like similar exotic species that out-survive natives with greater adaptability, the fountain grass will need to be eradicated from the Los Angeles River basin to construct a native river landscape.

Another exotic and invasive species residing in the river channel set day three of my river walk apart from the others. After two days pounding the hot, barren, ceaseless sea of river concrete, I approached the soft-bottomed Glendale Narrows. A green haze on the horizon was the first sign of vegetative life in the river channel. I sprinted a few hundred feet, anticipating the relief of a temperature drop. There I stood and applauded this symbol of nature’s dynamism. Giant reed grass—Arundo donax—is thriving in the harsh Los Angeles River.

I would later learn from the Bowtie Nature Walk that giant reed grass is reviled among river advocates. Its habitat value for native wildlife is reportedly low and its rapid growth—up to four inches a day—outcompetes native species. But Arundo has found a luxury home in the Los Angeles River. It can depend on natural and human disturbances, such as annual floods and continual attempts at removing it, to break and release stem fragments that propagate elsewhere. Downstream drains and islands of trash and debris characterizing the Los Angeles River are the perfect nooks and crannies for fragments to lodge and sprout new, vibrant colonies. The plant even feeds on heavy metals common in the river water, absorbing them through its roots and storing them in its stalks and leaves. Arundo is also being studied for carbon sequestration of degraded soils associated with desertification, although I haven’t found research on this specific to the Los Angeles River.

Giant reed grass thrives off the human excesses of the contemporary Los Angeles River. It is a species symbolic of the Anthropocene, confirming that stability in nature is an illusion and humans are inseparable from the ecological equation. The Bowtie Nature Walk left me with many Arundo-inspired questions. Perhaps when we focus on the negative aspects of a species, we miss out on its industrious side.

One Bowtie Nature Walk segment links a belief in native plant superiority to the Nazis. The first and most vocal proponents of native horticulture, the Nazis were obsessed with creating “pure landscapes” along the Autobahn, free of foreign intruders. Woo uses this example to suggest what the eugenics of native horticulture symbolizes about our attitude towards nature. One narrator states, “Fear of the non-native combines two contradictory impulses: the celebration of our landscape before human intervention, and the fear of nature beyond human control.” Proponents of re-creating native landscapes want to return to a pristine nature no longer possible in the Anthropocene. But attempting to do so requires unending human intervention to keep foreigners out. Meanwhile, examples like giant reed grass suggest that nature has other ideas about cleaning up our messes.

“River”: symbolizing something lost

The Los Angeles River’s impervious course to the ocean relaxes just once over 51-miles. At the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin, its concrete walls and floor recede into a landscape reminiscent of the river before thousands of WPA workers descended on the flood ravaged basin with 3.5 million barrels of cement. Three hours into my first day river walking, I reached White Oak Avenue, Sepulveda Basin’s westernmost edge. What I found looked like, well, a river. As I tweeted photos, a follower immediately tweeted back: “Now THAT looks like a river!”

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Field of Fountain Grass on the Bowtie Parcel next to the Los Angeles River. Photo: Anne Trumble

Native willows, cottonwoods, and sycamores mingle with non-native black locusts, tree of heaven, and eucalyptus. The lush mass of trees and shrubs replaces the heavy mat of concrete previously lining the bass, catfish, and carp-filled stream. Moving further into the basin, I passed between golf courses on both sides of the river, where maintenance crews mowed and fertilized meticulously manicured fairways. I strolled past bonsai dotted gravel terraces being raked smooth in a Japanese Garden. I ambled through the wildlife reserve, where maintenance crews replaced acclimated non-native plants with native ones. Waterfowl, shorebirds, and other small birds swam in a lake filled with reclaimed water from the nearby Tillman Water Reclamation Plant. These recreation areas provide room for a 100-year flood event. The iconic Sepulveda Dam at the easternmost end of the basin ensures that prospective floodwaters don’t move beyond their carefully engineered boundaries into the city beyond.

I named river walk day one The Archetype. The engineered Bell Creek and Arroyo Calabasas merging to form the river, and the 405 and 101 freeways merging to force the river back into its concrete edition prior to Sepulveda Basin, epitomize the Los Angeles River. Although most of its uses require intensive gardening, Sepulveda Basin is a snapshot of the river when it had room to pour out beyond its banks, depositing rich alluvial soils and recharging underground aquifers. The channel leading into the basin exemplifies the halt of these ecological functions to protect human settlement. The new San Fernando Valley River Greenway exemplifies the river’s future, with continuous pedestrian access and a re-nativized riverbank.

One audio segment of the Bowtie Nature Walk asks the question, “What is a River?” Various versions of “river” from my walk came to mind. Is a river the concrete channel that has been fixed in place for the past 60 years? Is a river the softer, wilder version that momentarily flows through Sepulveda Basin, with room to flood only in catastrophic events? Is a river new courses carved each year, flooding the delta with rich soil and recharge water?

For nearly 50 years, the Los Angeles River was called a “flood control channel.” Through tireless advocacy efforts, that term has universally been replaced with its historic descriptor, “river.” This change in language acknowledges that Los Angeles has a river at all, and in doing so reclaims the channel as public asset—and, consequentially, makes it available for public access. It is as much a shift in words as it is a shift in consciousness. A long forgotten landscape slicing through the region is now accessible by everyone. But it does beg a question asked by the Bowtie Nature Walk: to what version of “river” is the Los Angeles River now being restored?

Woo’s narrator suggests that if steelhead trout are to return to the Los Angeles River—one metric of restoration in current plans—the concrete banks need to be removed and the flow of water from treatment plants rerouted away from the river. It would again be seasonal and wild, as it was 70 years ago, when the steelhead trout called it home. But that would require restoring a surrounding Los Angeles; relocating homes, industry, and infrastructure for a wider flood zone. The narrator explains that as a real estate vision takes the helm of restoration efforts, other visions fade, and new development abutting the river channel will make a restored vision impossible. The Bowtie Nature Walk asks whether current plans will lead to the opposite of a restored river. Will the final result be restored access and high maintenance native plantings—but not a restored hydrologic system—because that would require a restored city to match? I wonder, then, whether the former result is a “river” or something else entirely? By continuing to call it a river, perhaps we are chasing a mirage—an optical illusion of what was lost, rather than what has become or what will be.

“Restoration”: symbolizing choices

One thing I have learned about Los Angeles during my short time calling it home is that the city values challenging questions posed by artists and activists. In Lewis MacAdams’ lifetime artwork, he asked, “to whom does the river belong?” Rosten Woo asks in his river artwork, “for whom or what is river restoration?” Time and advocacy have provided the answers to MacAdams’ question. But Woo’s questions will be answered as river restoration unfolds.

The Bowtie Nature Walk prophesies two very different answers to Woo’s question, based on the outcomes of two distinct choices: abandon enough of the city to make room for a restored river, or proceed with current plans, knowing that they will not produce a restored river, but something else entirely. Neither of these choices acknowledge the terms of conserving nature in the Anthropocene.

Erle Ellis, a professor of anthropogenic landscape ecology at the University of Maryland, explains conservation in the Anthropocene in his essay “Too Big for Nature.”  He says, “To conserve nature in the Anthropocene, the ecosystems engineered to sustain us must be engaged to the fullest. It is only by increasing the productivity of engineered ecosystems that we gain the ability to leave room for nature. To demand less from our agriculture or our settlements is to demand more from the rest of Earth’s ecology. The only hope of conserving any semblance of a wild nature is to offer it the luxury of not serving us.”

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Bowtie Parcel Nature Walk, wooden marker 6 at Fountain Grass. Photo: Anne Trumble

The Los Angeles River and its watershed undoubtedly comprise one of the most engineered ecosystems on earth. It is engineered to protect us. As the Bowtie Nature Walk suggests, it is difficult, if not impossible, to undo its engineering. Perhaps an Anthropocene re-making of the Los Angeles River is about engineering it to sustain us, in addition to protecting us. If the Los Angeles River could be as productive as possible, thus lessening the pressure on the rest of Earth’s ecology, what might it look like? Would it be re-engineered to capture every drop of water it currently releases to the ocean? Would its vegetative inhabitants mitigate pollutants, like the giant reed grass does now? Would the transportation its linearity facilitates be maximized, beyond just recreation? These possible futures may not be the picture of a native, bucolic river landscape, but they may be key for choosing to go forward to nature, rather than going backwards to nature.

I hope that there are more artists and activists, like MacAdams and Woo, who continue to make the Los Angeles River the vehicle for their inquiries. It is work like theirs that asks some of the most critical questions about our fundamental role as humans on earth.

Anne Trumble
Los Angeles

On The Nature of Cities

A picture of walkway between two buildings with planters on either side and with large trees shading the walkway

Tel Aviv Was Tartan Before It Was White: An Analysis of Patrick Geddes’s 1925 Town Plan

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
For Geddes, the city—no, much more than the city itself, the natural region of which it is an integral part—is to be conceived of as a civilisational totality, the basis of a social, cultural, and philosophical project having at its heart the physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing and betterment of its citizens.

The White City. Thus, Tel Aviv refers to itself, taking its cue from the many buildings built in the International Style in the 1930s by the avant-garde architects who had studied in Europe or come to Palestine to escape Nazi Germany. Some had studied at the Bauhaus, and the term has come to be adopted locally to name the particular kind of modern architecture, adapted to the local climate and socialist sensibility of its elite, that became characteristic of the city’s rapid growth. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 on sand dunes outside the ancient port city of Jaffa as the first modern city of a future Jewish homeland, heralding the end of two thousand years of exile and persecution, but presaging the coming conflict between Israel and Palestine.

A map of a city
Geddes Plan for Tel Aviv 1925 Credit: Cover of Geddes’s 1925 report

The urban fabric of Bauhaus Tel Aviv is characterised by small, freestanding, cubistically styled apartment blocks, four or so stories high, placed on individual plots within a screen of lush vegetation. The effect from the street is striking, a strong sense of urbanity in the succession of buildings that juxtaposes a strong typological homogeneity with a matching heterogeneity of architectural form in terms of balconies, openings, frontage, and roofs. There is a real intimacy in the shaded gardened spaces between buildings that, despite being narrow, are neither mean nor confined. An ordered hierarchy distinguishes between wide, rectilinear streets, full of shops, restaurants and other commercial activities, and secondary lanes that wend through individual neighbourhood blocks, revealing small parks and public buildings.

Considered the most complete ensemble of Modern Movement architecture ever constructed, white Tel Aviv was accorded the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008[i]. In its presentation, UNESCO gives credit where it is due, because underpinning the architectural achievement lies an exceptional town plan, devised by Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, educator and pioneering urban theorist, renowned for his organic territorial vision, formulating town, city, and conurbation[ii] in terms of their larger regional environment.

In 1925, Geddes was commissioned by Tel Aviv’s mayor, Meir Dizengoff, to devise a plan for the city’s development. At that time, sixteen years after its foundation, Tel Aviv comprised a series of neighbourhoods that had grown up northeast of Jaffa, turning its back on that ancient city. The city was composed of small, residential streets with no particular hierarchy, structured around several major arteries, Allenby Street, Bograshov Street, and Rothschild Boulevard.

The area for which Geddes provided a detailed town plan consisted of a band of sand dunes, scrub, and agricultural land just over a kilometre wide, running parallel to the seafront, and two and a half kilometres long. To the south it was bound by the existing neighbourhoods along Bograshov Street, and to the north by the Yarkon River—Geddes refers to it by its original Arab name, the Auja. In today’s Tel Aviv, which has grown far afield from these modest beginnings, the area’s eastern boundary was delimited by Shlomo Ibn Gabirol Street. It is important to note (and we shall see this further on), that Geddes did not limit his efforts to this area alone, but took into account a vaster territory, considered in terms of the coherency of its natural environment and prior urban occupation. Indeed, as far as he was concerned, Tel Aviv was to constitute an extension of what he referred to as Greater Jaffa[iii].

Planning where technique answers to vision

Geddes’s report, written in English, consists of 68 typed pages (a title page, table of contents, a plan, and a text covering 62 numbered pages). The version I consulted at the Historical Archives of the City of Tel Aviv-Yafo[iv] is a photocopy of an original printed hectograph[v] held in the National Library of Israel at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The cover is titled “Town Planning Report Tel Aviv, Professor Patrick Geddes, 1925”, over a plan in black and white (identical to the plan reproduced here in colour).

Geddes was in Tel Aviv from April to June, drawing the outline plan that was ultimately approved by the city authorities and the British administration, and that was to be faithfully implemented, forming the basis for the future urban development of the northern part of the city. He started writing his report while he was in Tel Aviv, completing it later in the year, after his return to Edinburgh. Officially, his contract specified that three-quarters of the work deal with Tel Aviv, and the remaining quarter with Jaffa. In reality, the part concerning Jaffa occupied only a minor part, most of his unbounded energy and enthusiasm going into his work on Tel Aviv. There was a great complicity between Geddes and Mayor Dizengoff, in the beginning, at least. Geddes was passionate about the idea of translating the humanistic, social ideals of the Zionist movement into a city plan that would embody them and enable them to flourish. It would appear that he was unalert towards its nationalist undertones and that such development might take place at the expense of the Arab population[vi].

Perusal of the report suffuses us with Geddes’s wide-ranging holistic vision of town planning. He relates to the town in its spatial, environmental, civic, and metabolic dimensions. He approaches the area being planned with great sensuality, having clearly spent much time surveying the area, getting to understand it in its most subtle details[vii]. His careful attention detailing technical issues—for example, constantly analysing the costs of what he projects so that it might be feasibly built—is always in service of the spiritual aspects underpinning the city’s inhabitants’ social and cultural aspirations. For every issue, he takes the time to expose his positions with pedagogy and examples. Thus, the text of the report oscillates between precise planning proposals, dissertations on underpinning principles, and philosophical considerations on town planning’s contribution to the betterment of the human condition. We shall return to this more fully later.

Yet the document is disconcerting, because the presentation of the project is markedly haphazard: laid out in eight chapters, their subjects overlap and repeat themselves, and one has frequent difficulty trying to discern its organisational logic. The fourth chapter, for example, contains twenty-two sub-sections, sequenced, it would seem, in the order that they entered Geddes’s mind: “Casino Place, End of Allenby Street” is followed by “General Planning Needed for New Tel Aviv”; “Area of Silicate Factory” comes after “Proposed Location of Main Shopping Areas” and before “Planning for Schools”. Perhaps this is Geddes’s way of saying that a city, in its complexity, defies all logical classification, and can only be considered as an assemblage of incommensurate subjects of different natures, for which no ordering is truly valid.

It is impossible to proceed here with a complete analytical presentation of Geddes’s project. We shall try to do justice to its multiple aspects, the way that Geddes has related to the city as an emanation of its region, founding his plan upon its geomorphological, biological, hydrographic, and already-inhabited[viii] context.

Housing in Tel Aviv

This is the title of Geddes’s third chapter, in which he lays out his concept “of the Garden Village character for Tel Aviv” (p. 13). In six pages of tightly typed text (and many digressions in which he gives his position on the risk of building height on infant mortality, of the temptation to build an American “Skyscraper” and its effect on speculation in Tel Aviv…) he lays out the blueprint for the scheme that will make White Tel Aviv into the remarkable place that it has become a century later. His approach is contrary to the abstract, technical method that is so emblematic of modern planning, that in so many places has reduced city layout to a regular grid of more-or-less uniformly hierarchised streets.

A picture of walkway between two buildings with planters on either side and with large trees shading the walkway
Gardened pathway between J. L. Gordon Street and Megido Street Credit: Joseph Rabie

In the case of Tel Aviv, he laid out an array of main streets, composed on the one hand of a limited number of wide arterial roads, aligned with the seafront in the direction of the city’s future northward growth, and on the other of spaced-out secondary ways, perpendicular to the seafront. Some would be broad boulevards partaking in the structural organisation at the city level, others less so and more neighbourly. But what was most important was that these main streets, destined to be occupied with commercial activities and calibrated in terms of expected traffic, would delineate large blocks protecting interior neighbourhoods and their amenities, each endowed with its own particular organisation. Their interior roads, freed from external traffic, would be as narrow and short as possible.

Thus, Geddes makes the distinction between “the Main-Way which leads to it, and past it,” and “the small internal road [which] is purely a Home-Way” (p. 13). Indeed, the patterning of tartan cloth comes to mind, with its hierarchical distinction between major and minor bands, providing a fitting metaphor for Geddes’s spatial organisation. About this, he adds (and the built result in Tel Aviv bears witness):

In this form of lay-out of large Home-Blocks within Main-Ways, it will be noticed that practically no two interior aspects are exactly the same. Each has its own more or less different character, often indeed distinctive. So the monotony of city block interiors hitherto is substantially abated, and even given a very appreciable degree of Garden Village Character; with local choice, and individualities of planting etc. will continue to increase. (p. 44)

By increasing the size of the block and reducing the number and length of roads, the economy on road construction would not only free up a significant area for habitation, but beneficially pay for playgrounds, gardens, and sports facilities, where inhabitants would be shielded from the dangers, dust, and noise of the main thoroughfares. This would give “more space, beauty and recreated value to the interior of each block; and with the further advantages of homely seclusion of about half of the houses within the main block itself” (p. 16). And while townsfolk “are accustomed to enjoy the active bustle of street life and are often too little accustomed to the quieter joys of a garden quarter” (p. 16), such “garden pleasures” would be fitting for a population transitioning “between the overcrowded cities of Europe and the renewal of Agricultural Palestine” (p. 16). And besides anything else, those who would incontestably benefit from each block constituting an inner haven were children, indulging in outdoor activities.

The “home-ways” would be seven metres wide, with houses on either side to be set back three, or preferably four meters. For Geddes, “people pay much more attention to their front gardens than to the back” (p. 20), and he immediately suggests that fruit trees be planted, and vines cover the buildings. The back garden would be ideal for a vegetable garden, and here Geddes refers to a certain Dr. Seskine in person, whose particularly bountiful garden was an example of how the city might meet half its needs. He also appeals for the preservation of orange trees left over from the groves on land purchased from their former Arab owners, in many cases needlessly destroyed. Tel Aviv would, Geddes claimed, “become one of the most successful examples of the ‘garden city’—a new type of civic grouping in this respect at once more beautiful and more health giving than any previous form of large community in human annals” (p. 43)[ix].

A picture of a fenced in yard with trees lining the outside
Garden off Mandelstamm Street, in one of Geddes’s Home Blocks Credit: Dan Miller

Geddes specified a plot size of 560 square meters, based on current planning practises in Tel Aviv, sufficient for one large, or two smaller semi-detached houses, with sufficient space for a garden. A maximum of one-third of the plot could be built upon, with a maximum of two storeys. Geddes fiercely contrasted “the Garden Village of this twentieth century, and the Human Warehouse Tenement of the nineteenth” (p. 13). Even unbroken terrace housing with gardens at the back was to be proscribed: a discontinuous street façade enabling respiration between the main streets and the interior areas was a fundamental part of his plan.

Nonetheless, his guidelines, in terms of height and density, rapidly proved to be insufficient for the city’s needs, particularly with the pressure for housing that came with increased immigration following the rise of Nazism. Thus, the planning code was subsequently modified, enlarging the building footprint on each plot, and raising the permissible number of storeys from two to four. The initial size of individual plots was maintained, nonetheless, and Geddes’s internal plan of the blocks, with their wending inner ways and public areas was scrupulously respected. It was the combination of that initial plan, and the stylistic innovations of the modern architects inventing, a decade later, a particular typology of compact buildings consistent with its densification[x], that engendered the extraordinary urbanity of the city.

More so, one might claim, than if Geddes’s looser, more suburban town code had been adhered to. The Tel Aviv architect Ada Karmi-Melamede writes:

(…) the buildings formed a row of freestanding objects of similar height and width, detached from one another. Stretching along the street, the buildings seemed modelled on a single prototype. The solidity of the building edges was eroded by carved out openings, which sliced through the corners and wrapped around to the side façades. This rotation and asymmetrical balance were characteristic of the front façades. These buildings, with their unframed elevations, could be read as fragments of some larger street order[xi].

Combined with the luscious vegetation that has grown up in Geddes’s front gardens, the streets of Tel Aviv have come to compose the most intimate, desirable place.

The city as sited geography

Throughout his report, the reader is struck by Geddes’s sensitivity to the geographical context founding the singularity of place. There are numerous examples where, whatever may be the technical necessities or functional needs, his proposals take care to do no damage, compose with the existent, and seek to amplify it. Geddes (as we have already remarked) considers Tel Aviv a township that forms part of Greater Jaffa. This is the very first thing he states, in the report’s introduction. Each feature treated by the report is considered as a sited component of a territorial whole vaster than the area occupied by the city.

The city’s relationship with the seafront is of paramount importance. The first chapter of the report deals with a proposition for the improvement of Jaffa port. This comes with the acknowledgement that the current situation of congestion and inefficiency, given the limited financial means at hand, can only be addressed with limited ameliorations. Geddes proposes a scheme composed of a seawall along the beach and the construction of warehouses that, in his opinion, would be financially feasible. In each case relating each concern to the bigger picture, he calls attention to Jaffa’s hinterland and its flourishing agricultural production—not only the renowned Jaffa oranges[xii], but also grapefruit, grapes, figs, and olives, “a veritable ‘little California’ for Europe” (p. 2)—that gives the harbour both its symbolic and functional importance.

Tel Aviv’s city fathers, however, wanted a separate harbour for the city, not only due to the inefficacy of Jaffa’s port, but also in line with their aspiration that Tel Aviv compose an autonomous entity: this was one of their priorities for the town plan. Geddes carefully lays out his arguments against this. The very central location put forward by the municipality would by its industrial nature surely ruin “the present town and especially residentially and as a watering place, of great and attractive future possibilities” (p. 8). Indeed, today, the amenity and allure of Tel Aviv’s seafront constitute one of its major assets. Besides, Geddes considered that his project for Jaffa’s port would be sufficient to provide for Tel Aviv’s needs. Always pragmatic (and diplomatically so), Geddes nonetheless makes several suggestions, including the construction of minor landing facilities to the north by the Auja River’s mouth[xiii].

Geddes’s attention to the city edge along the seafront is reiterated in his planning for how the expanding city should meet the countryside to the interior. Here he refers specifically to a stream running in a wide gully from south to north, Wadi Musrara (today the Ayalon), some two and three-quarter kilometres from the coast, the near side of which had been fixed as the municipal boundary. He reflects upon how, in former times, for defensive purposes, the boundary would have been fixed beyond the stream; and with this no longer necessary and the boundary being pulled back to the closer bank, it would be neglected, and both city and neighbours would “invariably more or less spoil and pollute the stream and bank itself, as by rubbish dumps, drains, and worse” (p. 6). Geddes envisages it as a wooded, recreational park area with parkways “as fully as possible along both sides of the stream. They are also adjusted to the city’s avenues, and thus to the interior parks as well; so that not merely a belt of green adorns the city, but with a network of interior lines and park and garden spaces as well” (p. 7). This verdant inland boundary would be a worthy match for the seashore.

Geddes’s advice on the matter was not taken; today, one hundred years later, an eight-lane freeway and railway corridor are crammed into the former wadi, the stream constrained within a concrete channel, the whole overshadowed by Tel Aviv’s burgeoning skyscrapers.

A picture of a street with cars and a storefront with trees growing in front of it
Bauhaus style buildings on Dizengoff Street Credit: Joseph Rabie

The general layout of the street network that we have already discussed also obeys Geddes’s sensitivity to context. There is no orthogonal grid in Tel Aviv, unlike so many modern cities the world over (colonial or otherwise). Geddes’s tracing out of the main arteries takes into account both the lie of the land and the existent urban structure and pathways[xiv]. “The “largest possible foresight,” is needed in order to guide the future acquirement of land beyond those fragments that circumstances make available, “with clearer perception than heretofore of their respective desirability and value to the city” (p. 21). In this way, Geddes lays out his method:

Such planning is thus no longer local and piecemeal. It is not simply topographic, but now geographic; not merely topotechnic but geo-technic. That is, it keeps clearly in view the City Survey as its basis and starting-point; and it works out the relation of each building estate, thus a future city quarter, to the City, seen as a growing & developing whole. (p. 21)

And also, bioclimatic. Geddes reduces drastically the number of east-west streets that characterised the planning of Tel Aviv up until then, resulting in so much housing facing southwards and exposure to the direct sun. He reduces this by favouring a north-south orientation in his large city blocks, opening them to the sea breeze coming from the west.

Based on this, the urban armature is structured by a limited number of major north-south streets, hierarchised according to different urban functions. At the heart of his plan, Geddes places his “Central Avenue”, which he punctuates with his “Hexagonal Place”. He destined this to be the focal point of a shopping area, prescribing that the buildings surrounding it be higher than elsewhere, and preferably designed by a single architect to ensure its spatial unity. Thus was born Dizengoff Circus (named for the mayor’s wife, Zina), which has become a core element of the Tel Aviv landscape.

A picture of a crosswalk with buildings and trees in the background
Dizengoff Circus, one of the focal points of Tel Aviv civic life Credit: Dan Miller

The line followed by Dizengoff Street in itself demonstrates Geddes’s attention to context. Running north-south parallel to the seafront, it gradually curves inward at its lower end, veering in an east-west direction. By now more or less perpendicular to the seafront, it crests a low hill where Geddes planned to build his “Acropolis”. This was to be composed of a series of squares, fronted with cultural institutions, that was only partially carried out[xv]. This will be discussed further on.

A picture of a street lined by trees
Sderot Ben Gurion Avenue: one of the wide avenues that Geddes planned Credit: Dan Miller

A place that appealed particularly to Geddes, as a “beautiful wild spot” (p. 30) of unspoiled nature, was a high area on the cliffs, with broad vistas over both the sea and lower-lying land to the interior. He proposed preserving this as a nature reserve and wildflower park for recreative purposes, which would constitute a fine counterpoint to the boulevards and “artificial” city parks that he planned elsewhere. And Geddes argues, concerned that such a “sentimental” approach might be ruled out by “practical” objections, “that this progressive city should not disgrace itself, by destroying the last and the finest little spot for nature-lovers within its entire bounds” (p. 30). This area was ultimately turned into an “artificial” park[xvi].

Telling the city

Though Geddes refers in his report to different drawings and plans that were carried out during or after his several months spent in Tel Aviv, none are reproduced in the document, apart from the reduced copy of the general plan on the cover, which was drawn by Geddes himself[xvii]. As a text-only document, without a detailed plan or some familiarity with Tel Aviv, it is difficult to situate the features set forth in the report. Yet the text is sufficiently descriptive to contextualise them, in relation to the sea, for example, or to Jaffa. Italo Calvino, in his Invisible Cities, teaches us that we can tell the city, for places are as literary in their representations as they are graphic. What it takes is a consummate city-teller, and Geddes is a master at that art.

One is struck, throughout the report, at how Geddes’s specification of his technical intentions is supplemented with all manner of digressions. An example is his proposition for a sanatorium, that would be ideally situated on the bluff adjacent to the nature reserve. In his fervour, he gives a detailed outline of its architecture, a “low building of Bungalow type, with ample verandahs (sic) and porches (…) given a pleasant aspect by having the roof brought down, so as to come between and over the windows (…)” (p. 31).

Perhaps he is overstepping himself, insofar as a town plan is concerned, but Geddes clearly relishes this degree of suggestiveness. Such a sanatorium, he continues, could be profitable for visitors from Egypt or Europe, and he goes on by recommending that the entire quarter be developed as a health resort. He goes on to prescribe that the sanatorium incorporates a holistic approach, staffed with an ensemble of medical specialists ensuring that “the patient is sent away, not merely temporarily relieved of his immediate symptoms, but re-educated towards general health and throughout a thus prolonged life and activity” (p. 32). He concludes with ancient examples of “healing environments”, that for different ailments needed “various surroundings, as of sea coast or mountains respectively,” where Hippocrates and his fellows “built noble Health Cities” (p. 32).

Indeed, one might posit that Geddes’s digressions are not digressions at all, since they constitute the very substance of a holistic approach that refuses to conceive of the city as a uniquely physical artefact. For him the city—no, much more than the city itself, the natural region of which it is an integral part—is to be conceived of as a civilisational totality, the basis of a social, cultural, and philosophical project having at its heart the physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing and betterment of its citizens. Thus, the technical finalities laid out in the town plan report are inseparable from Geddes’s commentary on what “the good city” might be, or what might prevent it from being so.

In this, he is deeply concerned with what is appropriate for each situation: he takes great care in detailing useful industrial activities that would benefit Tel Aviv’s inhabitants’ needs—such as tanning, silk and wool production, furniture making, metal work, clothing, shoe-making, pottery, glass, printing. He has a clear penchant for artisanal activities, with a clear allusion to the Arts and Crafts movement, without denying certain industries’ needs for large factories. He highlights the promotion of local oriental production—carpets, for example, given the abundance of camels—not as a stereotype, but out of a genuine affinity. No internationalist, he values the distinction of local styles, asking whether “in our present age of electric fittings and appliances, is there not even an export market, as for lamps of modern usefulness, yet with something in design and finish of Oriental beauty” (p. 28). He praises the revival of tile-making in Jerusalem at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts as a possibility for Tel Aviv. He proposes opening workshops for artistic crafts and promoting young craftspeople.

On occasion, Geddes can be quirky, as in the example he gives for a prospective toy industry: “Already for instance what are probably the most artistic doll-figures in the world are produced by a Jewish Lady in Jerusalem” (p. 28).

Geddes devotes nine pages of the report to gardening in Tel Aviv, stating that “botany and horticulture have still much to do to influence Tel Aviv throughout its growing range” (p. 41). Citizens should be encouraged from an early age to garden—the distribution of young trees and plants and the institution of a tree-planting holiday by the municipality already having set a good example. All this was abetted by so many existing houses having large plots, and Geddes’s own restriction of plot occupation to one-third in the planned areas. Indeed, “the absurdly exaggerated fear of damage by fruit-thirsty children should be met not by their (starvation) prohibition etc. but by ample and generous fruit growing to meet these healthy requirements” (p. 42).

A picture of a red and white striped curb with trees and flowers growing within the circle
Garden running the length of Hayotser Street, in another Home Block Credit: Dan Miller

He proposes the foundation of a horticultural society, particularly auspicious “at the outset of a Town Planning Scheme, which (…) carries the Garden village into the heart of every new city block” (p. 43). He suggests that each block set aside a plot for a common garden, an economic sacrifice that would be offset by the rise in value as the garden matures. The horticultural society would be of great benefit, and the volunteers for each garden would form a local group, so that “among these a healthy rivalry must arise, is at once human nature, and one of the best outlets for it” (p. 44). In this he is encouraged by Mayor Dizengoff’s engagement to make a yearly official visit and suggests that the best gardeners be bestowed with “the simple and charming old Indian custom, (…) the award of a flower-garland” (p. 44).

Geddes is full of praise for the garden on the grounds of the Tel Aviv Gymnasium, “by giving that touch of rural interest to the young city minds, which in most schools heretofore have been starved of their needed interest and understanding of living beings and processes” (p. 44). It is the lack of gardens, characteristic of the industrial age, that condemns schools “to a vicious circle of verbalistic and mechanistic conceptions.” And from this he extrapolates his holistic vision, observing how the project for a Jewish homeland in Palestine “stands for regional reconstruction, for better combination of town and country accordingly; so hence the opportunity of Tel Aviv” (p. 44).

Geddes’s Acropolis

The report’s final chapter is devoted to cultural institutions in Tel Aviv. It begins with succinct presentations of the institutions one might expect: synagogues, gymnasia, a university, libraries, cinemas, theatres. But as one engages in the text, Geddes becomes more detailed and lyrical, and his veritable project reveals itself. At the core of his ideal lies the need to nurture the civilizational nature of the city. In Geddes’s mind, the schism lamentably opened up by modernism between nature and culture should never have been allowed to take place. Cultural institutions are the organic counterpart (and counterpoint) of his beloved gardens.

Thus, the necessity for a conservatorium and a centre for eurythmics and gymnastics. “The importance of establishing and diffusing a high standard of musical and dramatic art need not here be enlarged on,” (p. 52) writes Geddes, followed by an extensive, taut paragraph covering two-thirds of a page in which it is a question of the revival of the historic traditions of Israel; the danger of folk-song being replaced “by the feeble sentiment and patent vulgarity” of the music halls— but “even from these however, a great voice at times emerges” (p. 52); and the role that such artistic institutions might play alongside the Hebrew University in increasing goodwill between Jew and Gentile.

Plus, a centre for the constructive arts; a museum and art gallery; a science museum; a workers’ college; and a women’s college. Concerning the latter, it is interesting to critically examine Geddes’s attitudes in terms of the prejudices of the early 20th century. Though women do have a role to play in medicine and technical professions, he does consider that, for the vast majority, their vocation lies in the home; and while he recognises the value in “musical and other cultivated interests”, he favours “women’s colleges, of a non academic type, and thus of more living interests” (p. 54), that provide education in domestic economy and childcare demanding scientific knowledge and technical skill. Thus, their role is to be concerned with “the private (and the collective) conduct of our human lives,” in terms of physiological and psychological well-being, whereas men are “occupied towards the external work of maintaining or regulating life” (p. 54). But there is hope! Geddes does concede that women have the aptitude to exceed matters of home and family, having a role to play in the field of citizenship: the women’s college should thus offer the study of the “social and moral sciences and arts” (p. 55).

Geddes requires that these institutions be grouped together in a clearly defined precinct. Once again this reflects upon his holistic vision, advocating “proximity of these Institutes, so as to prevent their mutual forgetfulness, which in time hardens to exclusiveness, and thus to failure of usefulness all round; and just when duly intelligent and understanding and sympathetic co-operation are most required” (p. 56). Finding a sufficiently ample central site in Tel Aviv should pose no problem, given the city’s currently early stage of development. But, Geddes continues, the site should be geographically significant, so as to sublimate its civic role. He gives the examples of earlier cities that have chosen the most outstanding sites for their important edifices, citing “the sublime situation of the Temple of Jerusalem” (p. 56), and of course, the Hellenic acropolises that inspired him to choose a strategically placed hilltop for his institutions.

Geddes worked with a local architect, David Moed (mentioned in the report), to draw up a detailed plan of the project and the individual buildings. The report itself provides Geddes’s description of the general layout, along with a programme for each of the edifices. Faced with the constraint that a water tower had to be built on the site, he proposes to add an outlook turret, and envelop it with a museum presenting the beginnings of Tel Aviv and its region—by a sleight of his literary hand, conjuring up his very own Outlook Tower[xviii] in Edinburgh.

One has the distinct expression, reading between the lines, that such an ambitious project goes well beyond the immediate concerns of the municipality. Having answered all their requests in the bulk of the report, Geddes undertakes in this last, voluminous chapter to persuade them of his cultural project’s well-foundedness, for it is clearly of great importance to him. He endeavours to argue how, despite its great cost, it would be feasible, and surely beneficial for the city as a gesture of comprehensive planning. Today, the sole vestige of Geddes’s Acropolis, the far more modest Habima Square, is a favourite haunt for Tel Aviv’s inhabitants.

Joseph Rabie
Montreuil

On The Nature of Cities

[i] https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1096/. See also the Tel Aviv municipality report, “Nomination of the White City of Tel-Aviv for the World Heritage List”, https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/1096.pdf.

[ii] Geddes’s neologism, specifying the agglomeration of separate towns into larger urban entities. Patrick Geddes (1915, 2012), Cities in Evolution. An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics, Williams & Norgate, London, p. 34.

[iii] Jaffa was a predominately Palestinian city: its inhabitants fled as refugees during the Nakba (the Catastrophe) when the city was conquered by Israeli forces during the War of Independence in 1948. Few were allowed to return. Ultimately, Jaffa and Tel Aviv grew into each other, the older city being annexed into the municipality of its younger neighbour. See Tamar Berger (1998, 2009), Place Dizengoff. Une dramaturgie urbaine, Actes Sud, Arles. During the early years of the British Mandate in Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at its very beginnings. The project for a modern, Jewish Homeland had been endorsed by the British with the Balfour Declaration in 1917; this, for the Palestinians, has come to represent the process of dispossession of which they are victim. See Histoire de l’autre (2003, 2004), Éditions Liana Levi Piccolo, Paris, a comparative, historical account by a group of Israeli and Palestinian school teachers. During the mandate period there was a putative complicity between the British administration and the Jewish population around shared European values, relating to the indigenous Palestinian population with disdain. In this respect, see Edward Said (1992), The Question of Palestine, Vintage Books, New York.

[iv] All references to the Geddes report are courtesy of the Historical Archives of the City of Tel Aviv-Yafo. My thanks for allowing me to make a photocopy of the report.

[v] The hectograph is a technique that uses a gelatin sheet to transfer an original to multiple pages.

[vi] We rely here on Catherine Rochant Weill’s thesis, which provides an exhaustive account of Geddes’s work in Tel Aviv and how the municipality implemented it. The contradiction between Geddes’s humanistic ideals and the city’s imperviousness towards its Palestinian context, is at the heart of her work. See Catherine Rochant Weill (2006), Le plan de Patrick Geddes pour la « ville blanche » de Tel Aviv. Une part d’ombre et de lumière, thesis, Université Paris 8.

[vii] The survey constituted Geddes’s method for acquiring a deep knowledge of the area under consideration. There appears to be no known document attesting to a formal survey by Geddes in Tel Aviv, though it is evident from the report that he knew the city and its environs intimately.

[viii] The area covered by White Tel Aviv, that was urbanised during the mandate period, belonged to Arab landowners who sold it to the city’s Jewish inhabitants. After 1948, land belonging to refugees who had fled was confiscated by the new Israeli state, after declaring that it had been “abandoned”. See Berger, op. cit.

[ix] Geddes did not introduce the garden city movement in Tel Aviv: its principles were invoked from the very beginnings of the city’s foundation. Berger, Op. cit.

[x] Weill-Rochant describes how the architects decried Geddes’s plan and called for its replacement, fortunately with no success. As an organised movement theorising a local form of modernist, progressist architecture, they advocated the construction of large, collective apartment blocks—exactly what Geddes wanted to avoid. Op. cit.

[xi] Ada Karmi-Melamede, Dan Price (2014), Architecture in Palestine during the British Mandate, 1917-1948, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Ada Karmi-Melamede is a leading Israeli architect, as was her late brother, Ram. Their father, Dov (“Bear”), was one of the prime movers in the Israeli Modern Movement: with Aryeh (“Lion”) Sharon and Ze’ev (“Wolf”) Rechter, they were collectively referred to as the “zoo”.

[xii] The Jaffa orange has come to symbolise Israel’s agricultural success. Eyal Sivan demonstrates how this typically Palestinian product, of great local importance from even before the 20th century, was appropriated by the State of Israel. See Eyal Sivan (2009), JAFFA, the orange’s clockwork, documentary film, Trabelsi productions, Alma films, the factory, et. al.

[xiii] Near where a small port was built during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt, when Jaffa became impracticable for the Jewish population.

[xiv] Weill-Rochant, Op. cit.

[xv] This is Habima Square, with the Habima Theatre and Mann Auditorium. The change in direction of Dizengoff Street may have been inspired by other Tel Aviv Streets that do the same, namely Allenby Street and Rothschild Boulevard. Just beyond the hill, Dizengoff Street becomes Eliezer Kaplan Street, which since the beginning of January 2023 has been the location of massive demonstrations against the Netanyahu government’s attempts to neutralise the supreme court.

[xvi] Spiegel Park and Independence Park, on either side of the Hilton Hotel.

[xvii] Weill-Rochant, Op. cit.

[xviii] This contained a presentation of urban and regional planning, based upon the site survey, of such fundamental importance to Geddes. For him, the urban planning exhibition (which he also proposed for Tel Aviv in the report) was an important pedagogical tool for teaching the public about the city.

Teleportation and the Reinvention of the World’s Cities: A 20-year Retrospective

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.
It began, like electricity before it, as a new technology for the rich in lower Manhattan to play with. A daring startup, Helios Travel, began offering teleportation from Greenwich (Connecticut) to Wall Street for the princely sum of $10,000 a pop. Many potential customers couldn’t handle the idea of all of the information in their atoms being encoded in a beam of light and flung into Manhattan, or accept the risk that their beam could be broken and their essence dissolved into nothingness (which happened twice in the first decade of Helios Travel). But for those brave enough to try it, they could make the 60 km trip essentially instantaneously, rather than wasting an hour in a car. For the very rich of Wall Street, it felt like just another option, like the $3,000 helicopter rides to the Hamptons that had been available for years. To the rest of the world, it became a joke, a symbol of the excesses of the roaring 2020s.

But five years later, by 2031, the cost of the technology had fallen exponentially. A ticket from New York to Washington was around $6000, while a ticket from New York to Los Angeles ran around $7000. For the rich, at least, teleportation began to replace air travel. In these early years of Helios Travel, the biggest expense was ensuring an uninterrupted fiber optic cable of sufficient bandwidth to carry passengers’ information, and the cost of teleportation still varied with the distance traveled. While the airline industry was still flying hundreds of thousands of commercial flights a day, they lost most of their first-class passengers to teleportation, and savvy tech analysts began foreseeing the day when the aviation industry disappeared entirely. What society was almost entirely unprepared for was the massive transformation that would come to the world’s cities.

By the mid-2030s, the price had fallen to $0.30/km. That same trip from Greenwich to Wall Street was now $18, and middle-class commuters in New York began to abandon the Metro North train. In cities around the world, suburbs began to extent farther and farther out into the countryside, as people chose cheaper land costs and bigger houses for only a few dollars more on their cost of their daily commute. The rich, meanwhile, had already entered in to a state of hyperconnectivity. It became a normal thing for tech executives in Silicon Valley to live on Maui (Hawaii), commuting in to the office every morning and home at night. And if they needed to go instead to Beijing for a meeting, that was possible too. Reality became a set of stages, each accessible by clicking the right location at the teleportation kiosk and electronically debiting your bank account.

When President Garcia was inaugurated in 2040, it had become clear how disruptive the technology of teleportation truly was. The problem of ensuring fiber optic cable continuity solved, what remained were the fixed costs of maintaining the teleportation kiosks and the ample electricity they needed. Helios Travel had announced a new deal of $9.99 for travel anywhere in the world that the kiosk network reached. Almost overnight, it felt like, real estate markets in cities around the world collapsed. Why would anyone pay for rent in London, when they could live in a sunnier clime for a fraction of the cost? Companies, too, began to realize that while they needed a central place for their employees to work, they need not be near any city. Corporate headquarters often moved to glass office building in rural locations with spectacular views of places like the Rockies or Big Sur.

The poor and working class still could not afford to teleport every day for work and were stuck living close to where their predominately service sector jobs were located, often near urban centers that were now dramatically depopulating. Teleportation also had the effect of erasing country borders for businesses, and many service sector jobs, which had heretofore resisted offshoring, now could be done by workers from any country. That is, rather than offshoring involving moving workplaces to developing countries, workers from developing countries could follow the jobs to wherever they needed to.

Going along with this increased international connectivity was, sadly, an increased potential for cross-border crime and terrorism, as the attacks of May 2041 showed most graphically. Governments around the world began to take control of teleportation technology, strictly monitoring and limiting who could travel internationally. This created further a two-tier world: a mass of people who could teleport, financially and legally, and a group of left-behinds stuck in the places they lived.

Now, as we approach the 25thanniversary of the first commercial teleport, things seem to have stabilized. While many cities have dramatically depopulated, they do not appear to be shrinking to zero. Especially for culturally iconic cities like New York or Paris or Tokyo, there is some subset of people who want to live in that dense environment. Conversely, some industrial cities that were never considered good places to live lost the majority of their population, although often the industries and factories remained. Real estate prices in cities stabilized at roughly 30% of what they were in 2030.

Two major cultural movements started too, exacerbating existing diversions. A back-to-nature movement took hold in much of the US and Europe, as millions of knowledge workers chose to live in beautiful rural places and commute to wherever on Earth they needed to be for work. This had the unintentional effect of dramatically increasing home development in iconic rural landscapes like Provence and the Rocky Mountains. At the same time, a hardcore group of artists and writers began intentionally living and working in dense urban environments, building an ethos focused on localism and authenticity. There was plenty of abandoned urban spaces that this group of urban creatives could reclaim for art.

In the short span of a few decades, humanity has had to get used to the idea that the space where we slept need not be anywhere near where we worked which need not be anywhere near where we recreate. This decoupling can be seen as the end of a sequence of many transportation improvements that decreased travel costs, from subways to automobiles to jet planes to driverless cars. We have had to radically rethink what cities mean in this new era, where the first law of geography (“everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”) no longer applies. Now, instead of being segregated by geography, we are segregated by ideas and dreams and culture and economic class. As the Internet enabled parallel virtual spaces for interaction among like-minded individuals, teleportation enabled parallel physical spaces for such interaction. In the process, we have perhaps lost some of the wonderful ability of urban life to allow for chance intersection and serendipity, that marvelous moment when on a subway car a stock broker used to be able to see (and maybe even have a conversation with) a construction worker or a new mother or a Starbucks barista. The tradeoff is that we have been given the opportunity to create the kind of places, the kind of cities that we dream of. May our dreams be worthy of this great opportunity, to create cities in our vision, unfettered by the tyranny of geography.

Rob McDonald
Washington

Temporary Nature’s Potential for Resilience and Liveability

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

In my last blog I introduced to you the earthquakes that devastated Christchurch city beginning back in September 2010. I had been wondering about what I might share with you in my next blog and when I was driving thru the city the other day and spotted a field of wildflowers on a demolition site it occurred to me! Over 2 years on and more than 50% of the commercial buildings have been demolished in the Central Business District, the re-build is beginning and will accelerate from now onwards for the next 10 to 15 years.  The demolitions have created thousands of tons of rubble and have left vacant spaces everywhere! Lots of room for carparks now……..

Map of central Christchurch,  December 2012. You can see from this photo of the central city below the many open spaces where buildings have been demolished. Note also the Avon River (in green) which snakes thru the middle, a zone of severe liquefaction during the earthquakes. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1212/S00080/uc-captures-cbd-aerial-images-for-cera-in-the-rebuild.htm
Map of central Christchurch, December 2012.  You can see from the photo below the central city with the many open spaces where buildings have been demolished. Note also the Avon River (in green) which snakes through the middle, a zone of severe liquefaction during the earthquakes.

It will be clear from the above photo that the centre of Christchurch city now resembles something akin to what we see in many “shrinking” cities in the USA and Europe. With a difference, of course — it is only temporary. But also similar in that there are many, many open spaces (vacant lots). So what I want to tell you about is a real “nature in the city” project that exemplifies both resilience and liveability and what is so great about people, places and nature. Mary Rowe in her latest blog on the Nature of cities site states it very well in my view:

“Increasingly in the imaginative, innovative pockets of city-building there is a recognition that small, seemingly modest local initiatives aggregate up into a whole that makes a city not only more liveable, but are also critical contributors to a city’s resilience.”

GreeningtheRubbleKiwi’s (people from New Zealand — named after the iconic flightless bird) are renowned for their “will do” attitude of rolling up their shirt sleeves and getting stuck in. This project is no exception. Way back, and in amongst all the destruction and rubble and not long after the first earthquakes happened, a group of volunteers decided to bring nature back, albeit temporarily. “Greening the Rubble” was born and is now an established trust. It is a community project which unites a team of volunteers responding creatively to the extensive damage caused by the earthquakes. The reason Greening the rubble was activated so quickly after the earthquakes was because a number of people were already convinced the city was due for some remedial greening.

Greening the Rubble seeks to bring more biodiversity into the city and it is this urban ecology philosophy that has characterised Greening the Rubble work since its beginning To that extent, it is an experiment in urban ecology that uses private land as an outdoor laboratory. Greening the Rubble volunteers are creating temporary “pocket” parks and gardens on demolition sites, usually in commercial rather than residential streets. License agreements are made with site owners, modest financial support from these owners and extensive sponsorship of the construction materials and design process, make it possible for volunteer teams to build and maintain these parks. These sites are in public use only temporarily, until owners are ready to redevelop — which might be from six months to a few years later. A partner organisation called Gap Filler uses these and similar sites as venues for arts events, performances and installations of usually shorter duration, days or weeks.

The following has been extracted and edited from the Greening the Rubble website. Key contributors to Greening the Rubble include the site owners and:

Examples of Greening the Rubble’s projects

Greening the Rubble’s latest temporary mini-park was in the heart of the suburb Riccarton, at Rotherham Street, surrounded by shops. It included a stage for buskers, seats (which were well used at lunchtime), plants and trees. The mural by Tess, ‘The Hope Bear’, accompanied this garden. The park is due to be dismantled and moved in a few months time. There was a celebration event there on 23 November 2012 with music from Uncle Boyle’s Jazz Triplets, led by pianist Matt Everingham. If you are interested in more, go here.

Tess' mural, the stage and seats in use - the park is finished! http://greeningtherubble.org.nz
Tess’ mural, the stage and seats in use – the park is finished! Greening the Rubble

Relocatable garden (with Dance-O-Mat)

A modular design for planters and seating, built from reclaimed demolition timber, proved versatile in this relocatable garden. Below is a new set which we’ve installed on Oxford Terrace next to Gap Filler’s Dance-O-Mat. A planting of native Libertia pregrinans provides bold orange-green colour.

Modular seats from pallets and planters http://greeningtherubble.org.nz
Modular seats from pallets and planters. Greening the Rubble 

Food garden

At 191 Fitzgerald Ave, Christchurch, a food garden with raised beds has been constructedon the site of two demolished houses. The site owner has longer-term plans for an Arts Centre on this site, but meanwhile seeks productive use of the space, and has put water back on and is happy to allow public access under a license agreement with Greening the Rubble.

Volunteers from Pegasus Health helping at Fitzgerald Ave community garden, Dec 2012 http://greeningtherubble.org.nz
Volunteers from Pegasus Health helping at Fitzgerald Ave community garden, Dec 2012. Greening the Rubble 

Garden now open all hours, with volunteers there each Tuesday morning. Food in exchange for voluntary labour! http://greeningtherubble.org.nz
Garden now open all hours, with volunteers there each Tuesday morning. Food in exchange for voluntary labour! Greening the Rubble

Wildflowers at Worcester Street, Stanmore corner, 2012 Photo: Colin Meurk
Wildflowers at Worcester Street, Stanmore corner, 2012 Photo: Colin Meurk

Wildflower garden

The wildflowers at the corner of Stanmore and Worcester streets, were initially seeded by a team of volunteers from a nearby town, some 80km south of Christchurch (Ashburton).

St. Asaph ‘lunch area’ beside city offices and car park

In May and June 2011 new surfaces were built using recycled on-site bricks, with added lime-chip and plants rescued from the inner city cordon by CityCare. Three steel planters containing kowhai (Sophora microphylla) trees and flaxes (Phormium tenax, on loan from the City Council) were also placed on site It was completed in July with further re-cycled materials to complete the structures and welded triangular frames for seats. In August recycled timber planks as seat tops were also added. It’s now complete.

What you saw in the Red Zone from the lunch area St.Asaph seats http://greeningtherubble.org.nz
What you saw in the Red Zone from the lunch area St.Asaph seats. Greening the Rubble

The garden at a year old. There's now a builder's shipping container at its rear, which provides some wind shelter. http://greeningtherubble.org.nz
The garden at a year old. There’s now a builder’s shipping container at its rear, which provides some wind shelter. Greening the Rubble

My blog would not be complete without a couple of examples from the Gap Filler team.

July 17, 2011- ?? : Think Differently Book Exchange – Cnr Kilmore & Barabdoes St http://www.gapfiller.org.nz
July 17, 2011- ?? : Think Differently Book Exchange – Cnr Kilmore & Barabdoes St. Gap Filler

Here is an excerpt from the Gap Filler website about this “alternative” idea:

“Imagine you’ve never heard of Gap Filler. You’re walking down Barbadoes Street towards Beat Street Cafe or the Herb Centre. You’re waiting at the Kilmore intersection for the lights to change. You turn around. There’s a big fridge on the vacant site behind you. The lights haven’t changed yet. You look again. It’s not rubbish, the fridge. It’s been placed there quite deliberately. There are even paving stones leading up to it from the footpath. It’s beckoning you. So, you feel a bit silly, but you walk down the path. When you get to the fridge, you see it’s full of books. And not just any books, but great & amazing books that changed people’s lives! This is the Think Differently Book Exchange. A little note inside the fridge invites you to take a book, or come back later and leave one. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for months…!”

Dino-Sauna comes to town!

A temporary sauna was installed on the old Moda Fotografica site on 28th September 2012 for the weekend (corner Oxford and London Streets). It was tested by a small group of locals on Friday night then it was open for public use on Saturday and Sunday evenings, overseen by the locals an interested onlookers!. Sauna sessions were held for a set duration in the interests of safety.

A temporary sauna. http://www.gapfiller.org.nz
A temporary, ‘pop-up’ sauna. Gap Filler

Built by Fabricio Fernandes, (an architect from Brazil who has, for now, made Christchurch his home) this unique structure had been tried and tested and was ready to be shared with the public. This event was supported by Gap Filler – who else would be crazy enough to try something like this?! http://www.gapfiller.org.nz
Built by Fabricio Fernandes (an architect from Brazil who has, for now, made Christchurch his home), this unique sauna had been tried and tested and was ready to be shared with the public. This event was supported by Gap Filler – who else would be crazy enough to try something like this?!

So there you have it! Creating “temporary” nature that can be shifted around the city from place to place! A prime example of resilience and liveability in an earthquake damaged city!

Glenn Stewart
Christchurch, New Zealand

The ‘Equal Streets’ Movement in Mumbai

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

Roads are a significant aspect of a city’s environment, both in terms of the area they occupy as well as their socio-environmental condition. In Mumbai for example, nearly 2000 km of roads occupy approximately 40 km2 of land. This is nearly 20% of the developable land area of 240 km2 and much more than the open spaces reservation of 24 km2. Even then there is continuous effort to expand them further. The ratio of streets area may not be much different in most cities across the world.

For various reasons, most city people spend considerable time on roads everyday. Congestion, noise and air pollution, accidents, forever increasing number of cars, shrinking space for walking and cycling, high stress levels and the loss of tree cover, are some of the common road experiences in most cities.

How do we deal with this complex web of conflicts and contradictions for the achievement of more humane and environmentally sustainable streets, and in place of highly unequal roads in favour of cars? How do we make cities and their streetscapes more livable? Reclaiming some of the street space for pedestrians and trees is part of the answer. These spaces need to be planned to be more amenable for people and nature; that is, more livable.

A significant movement presently under way in Mumbai called “Equal Streets”. I am an active member and, for the achievement of the objectives above, Equal Street is noteworthy. Excerpts from its vision statement summarize the ideas and objectives of this movement:

“Every day, people in Mumbai are being squeezed out of spaces to walk or cycle by the sheer pressure of cars, which are getting bigger than ever. Apart from the omnipresent danger posed by motorized transport on the roads, which are actually public spaces, there is the rising toll of air pollution that has left the city literally gasping for breath. Contrary to public perception, however, there is no fundamental right for motorists anywhere to drive or park: it is a privilege for a tiny minority of Mumbaikars, for which they are loath to pay”.

“Equal Streets is a public movement which seeks to correct this fundamental imbalance. As things are, the bulk of public expenditure on city transport favours owners of cars. This movement strives to put the people at the centre of usage of major roads, at least on Sunday mornings to begin with. Through this bold experiment, communities will regain control of some major roads and declare them closed to motorized traffic for a few hours every Sunday morning”.

“As the title suggests, Equal Streets in Mumbai treads the same path and resonates with the move to usher in greater democracy in accessing roads as public, rather than private, spaces. It seeks to rid select roads of an oppressive hierarchy whereby motorists believe that they have a right to occupy the major space while walkers and cyclists are pushed to the periphery, always in danger of being injured, not to mention the omnipresence of toxic emissions from vehicles. This movement is being led by local citizens, who have been highly active in preserving open spaces and waterfronts in the city”.

“Everyone, irrespective of their class or wealth, will have equal access to these open spaces on Sunday mornings. In that sense, the movement is a great leveller. It does not end at declaring certain stretches free of cars weekly but target being the catalyst for raising much greater public awareness regarding the significance of public spaces. In every corner of Mumbai, there are conventional and non-conventional spaces which deserve to be thrown open for public use. Equal Streets can indeed serve to network such spaces by creating walking and cycling tracks between them as corridors. It promotes healthy activity and seeks to correct the sedentary lifestyle which even children now find themselves engaged in”.

“Thus Equal Streets is not a one-off initiative but a sustained movement. The objective is to provide walking and cycling tracks throughout all neighbourhoods in the city. This is the assertion of a democratic principle, based on the rights of citizens to equal space in the city, and should be part and parcel of Mumbai’s Development Plan, which is now being drawn up.  The first step is to generate greater public awareness and involve citizens. The closure of certain streets to motorized transport on Sunday mornings will result in achieving this larger mission”.

Besides claiming space for walking and cycling, the movement is committed to critically address a host of other concerns, if it is to achieve popularity and gain influence for the achievement of much needed socio-environmental change. Excessive obsession for private cars and their priorities, high investment for roads and flyovers, alarming loss of tree cover, the choking and hacking of trees in order to restrict their growth, reducing footpath widths in order to increase road areas while widening lane widths for cars, increasing traffic speed, rapidly increasing noise and air pollution, restricting and barricading walking spaces in order to discipline pedestrians coupled with continuing abuse, apathy and indifference by authorities towards the environment are some of the critical issues that the movement will not only protest against but also prepare designs forsustainable alternatives. “Equal Streets”, over a period of time, will hopefully be a significant socio-environmental movement in the city.

Let us turn to trees along streets with an idea of developing a rich environmental condition and thereby positively contributing to the larger objective of building healthier and more sustainable city environment. Most roads have, or are planned to have, trees along sides in order to beautify them. In Mumbai, it is alarming that 53 big trees along roads fell in just 24 hours due to rain this year alone. The city looses nearly 20 trees on an average every day. Nearly 1000 trees fell in June and July in this years rain.

MumbaiStreetTree1
A sculptor in memory of a dying environment. Photo: P.K. Das

Who decides what trees have to be planted along streets? How deep can the roots go and how much should they spread. What is the basis for such decisions? Should these trees have good spread or should they be tall with minimal spread? Should the trees be decorative or deciduous? All these important questions have to be dealt with by the Equal Streets Movement and specifications for trees along streets have to be prepared, perhaps a manual produced to guide the engineers and contractors who otherwise act mindlessly.

But above all, citizens, including the Equal Streets Movement will also have to collectively intervene in decision-making and monitor and supervise the plantation and thereafter their maintenance.

In Mumbai, the manner in which trees along streets are treated by the Tree Authority and other municipal agencies like the ‘BEST’ (Public bus transport agency) is deplorable and depressing to witness. Concretization of streets and pavements are carried out up to the tree trunks, thus choking the roots from air and water. The contractors who construct roads and pavements have no knowledge about matters relating to trees, neither are they guided or controlled by any such relevant contract conditions to care about trees during their concretization onslaught. Moreover the concerned engineers of the authorities and the contractors think that leaving areas of earth around the trees would dirty pavements and roads. So they not only pour concrete tightly up to tree trunks but also damage them during excavation for footings and foundations of the streets and pavements. Then there is the construction of rain and storm water drains, which brutally destroy any roots of trees that come in the way of specified widths. Engineers of the Corporation prepare generic plans for streets, footpaths and drains sitting in their cozy offices without reflecting any concern for varying situations and existing trees along streets. The tender documents for contractors only specify the concrete quantity for which the contractor has to quote unit rates. Increasing concrete turnover is indeed their priority. Designs for the construction of footpaths and drains are standardized for all places with fixed and outdated ideas.

MumbaiStreetTree2
Trees are a hindrance and have to go. Photo: P.K. Das

Hapless trees unfortunately do not speak nor protest then and there. They are therefore brutally attacked during our “development” projects. Gradually these trees loose strength, their anchorage to the ground is weakened; finally with time they fall or die. Mumbai is experiencing rapid loss of tree cover along

Streets decay because of this continuing abuse and indifference by authorities accompanied by the lack of citizen’s awareness. While we regularly lose trees, there are no new trees being planted, due to lack of tree planting plans for streets by the Municipal Corporation.

Trees along streets have many benefits. The list can be rather long but I shall highlight a few here. Trees absorb carbon monoxide that cars emit in large quantities. They provide shade and make the area cooler and comfortable for people to walk. Leaves and roots of trees absorb a fairly good quantity of rain-water, thus reducing load on storm water drains that takes huge amounts of money to construct. Driving on streets having tree cover is much less stressful than driving on streets without trees. Street trees provide comfort to pedestrians too. Besides providing shade, they reduce ambient temperatures considerably in hot weather.

MumbaiStreetTree3
A drain and it’s chamber has to be right under the trees? Photo: P.K. Das

There have been many studies to establish all these facts. Trees along streets also contribute substantially to the beauty and aesthetics of the street as well as the city. Street trees provide relief to buildings along streets from noise, dust and fumes from car exhausts. Jeff Spek, in his book ‘ Walkable City’ has enumerated with ample references to various research data on the above issues and has also analysed in depth the plight of pedestrians and cyclists in cities.

Can the ‘Equal Streets Movement’ address these issues in Mumbai, promote public knowledge and influence the authorities to prepare plans and undertake their implementation with citizens’ participation? We will have to wait and watch.

Lack of citizens’ awareness is a serious matter of concern for the movement. Getting to the streets to walk and cycle and enjoy few hours of planned and spontaneous cultural and entertainment programs as planned on Sunday car-free days will undoubtedly be successful. In a similar activity called ‘Rahagiri’ organized by local organizations and the ‘Times of India’ on Sundays in Gurgaoan in Delhi, more than 20,000 people participate, mostly from middle and upper classes.

But, it is another thing altogether when it comes to expressing concerns about trees and other critical environmental issues including cutting down of roads and cars. There are many serious class and related cultural issues that have to be analyzed while organizing such movements. It shocks me as to how and why most city folks, rich and poor equally, instinctively attack trees. They hack their branches with slightest excuse, because the falling leaves dirty their properties. They fear that falling branches and entire trees during wind and rains may pose danger to people and property and parked cars. This fear has got compounded due to a few such incidences and their prominent coverage by the press.

But they do not think to the reason why the trees are falling. Why is such a reactionary instinct against trees noticed amongst city folks? I am sure that many of these people, when they were living in their villages, were nature-caring, worshipping trees and plants and water. Historically it is a fact that communities always had deep-rooted relationships with nature and the environment. Is this change in behavior in cities rooted in the culture of violence that is increasingly becoming a way of urban life, that is severing individual and community relations along with growing apathy and alienation towards the environment? Or is it that these people let their anger and frustration out on trees and nature due to increasing misery and stress of city life? We notice levels of intolerance; apathy, anger, revenge, individualism, etc., rising and fast becoming the mark of city culture.

The case of regular attacks on mangroves and wetlands in Mumbai is no different. Land sharks, real estate agents and developers regularly carry out destruction of the mangroves. Mumbai incidentally has enormous mangrove cover (ca. 61.42 km2) intermingling with the city’s landmass. Similarly, forests too are attacked and encroached. Such aggression towards nature and various environmental features is a long story. As a matter of fact, landfilling wetlands, riverbeds and seacoasts are a historical phenomenon in the making of Mumbai from seven islands to a metro today of 480 km2 and twelve million people. (Of the 480 km2 nearly 240 km2 is developable land while the balance 240 km2 is the vast extent of natural features—rivers, creeks, mangroves, wetlands, watercourses, hills, forests, etc.)

Let us get back to the streets. Space for walking is diminishing by the day due to road widening. Also trees that exist for years along roads and footpaths are now perceived as obstruction in the way of road widening and done away with. There has to be a massive campaign and a strong movement for protection and conservation of trees along the streets in Mumbai, as much in all cities globally. The ‘Equal Streets Movement’ is a significant beginning that addresses the various issues into a comprehensive and sustainable development model with environmental thrust.

In the neighborhood planning for Juhu (an area of approximately four km2 in Mumbai), citizens of the area, along with this author, have prepared their own vision plan in which walking and cycling has been proposed as an important mobility mode within neighborhoods. This perspective has led to the idea of networking and inter-connecting the various public spaces including, open spaces and the diverse extent of natural assets in the area.

Cities cannot be planned to merely have large landscapes or gardens and parks. Jane Jacobs in her various writings has discussed this issue in depth. Big parks or open spaces do not necessarily improve the quality of life and daily experiences of most people living in cities. What matters most is a series of small initiatives intertwined with their neighborhoods and well connected with other such spaces in adjoining areas for easy accessibility and engagement. These ideas would have to be consciously included into urban planning and design proposals. Streets are one such element that connects one area with the other, while enabling social networks and an opportunity for improving the environment.

P.K. Das
Mumbai

On The Nature of Cities

 

The 6th Mass Extinction and Cities: A View from Vancouver

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

The truth is, we will never know what the future holds. This lack of certainty implies that we are engaged in an ethical, if not spiritual, dilemma. We are part of the dance of life and our actions have consequences.
Behind the scenes of pandemic, and long before, we have been quietly witnessing the planetary-scale annihilation of life-supporting systems, the Earth’s “6th mass extinction”. Unlike the previous five, this is the first time a mass extinction is caused by a single species, in this case Homo sapiens. Along with the other crises we’ve initiated (climate, desertification, ocean acidification, etc), this mass extinction event is projected to reach the tipping point of no return within ten or twenty years. What is at stake is a nothing less than the “survival of human civilisation”. Assuming we survive Covid-19, what can we do to help other species survive, and thereby reduce the risk of “living in an empty world”?

Although you’d expect an emergency of this calibre to hold the highest ratings of public awareness that unites cooperative mobilisation of global proportions, the 6th mass extinction is quietly happening with little fanfare. (Did you hear the giraffe is listed by IUCN as a threatened species?) Acknowledgement of the unfolding catastrophe does exist, but air time is restricted to headlines of scientific updates, which are both terrifying and framed by an oddly boring medium. Even so, in the year ahead, according to the World Economic Forum, biodiversity loss is the third biggest risk to the world, ahead of infectious diseases, terror attacks and interstate conflict (WEF 2020).

The UN recently warned member nations that, unless drastic measures are taken to curb the ongoing destruction of life-supporting ecosystems, a biologically impoverished planet awaits present and future generations. Since 2017, a decade after reports began suggesting that a mass extinction might be imminent, numerous scientists have begun reporting evidence that the earth’s life support systems have already begun to unravel. Apparently, nature is disappearing at a rate tens to hundreds of times faster than the average of the past 10 million years.

Recent research has shown that birds and insects have declined in significant numbers since the 1970s. Insects play a central role to a variety of processes (pollination, herbivory, detrivory, nutrient cycling) and are important food sources for higher trophic levels such as birds, mammals and amphibians. A large-scale loss of insect diversity and abundance will likely provoke trophic cascades and jeopardize ecosystem services. In September 2019, the most comprehensive bird survey ever conducted in Canada and continental United States reported that 76% of breeding birds (529 species) declined in population 29 percent between 1970 and 2018 (click here to view the figure). The long-term surveys analysed, which accounted for both increasing and declining species revealed a net loss in total abundance of 2.9 billion birds across all species and almost all biomes. Birds are the canaries in the coal mine that is the Earth’s future. Severe declines in both common and rare species indicate that something is wrong.

In the case of birds, and likely the same for other taxa, the causes for continent-scale declines include habitat loss and degradation, unsustainable agricultural practices, pesticides (including, but not limited to, neurotoxic neonicotinoids), climate change and pollution. The authors of the bird study comment that “landscapes are losing their ability to support bird populations”. However, they also highlight the conservation success stories from the same timeframe that brought some birds back from the brink, demonstrating life’s resilience.

The 2012 Cities and Biodiversity Outlook report stated that 60% of the area projected to become urban by 2030 had yet to be built.

Cities are not exempt: everything is connected

For this essay, I adopt the premise that human settlements have a role to play in addressing the 6th mass extinction. If 60% of the area projected to be urbanised by 2030 had yet to built in 2012 (CBD, 2012), then we have a precious window of opportunity to future-proof cities and their hinterlands to support life. Certainly, cities are only weakly relevant to some of the leading causes of extinction, like overhunting, toxic pollution, and climate change. However, they are not insignificant to other causes, notably habitat destruction, invasion by alien species, and human population growth. This moment is also poignant for its juncture between the UN Decade on Biodiversity (2011-2020) and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). Add to this the climate justice movement that has captured the world’s attention, and our window of time is rich in opportunities and rewards.

So, what is the most skilful and effective response or attitude we can adopt to this tragedy? For those of us dedicated to the evolving field of urban ecology, whether thinkers, citizens, designers, policymakers, artists, or practitioners, how do we proceed with our programs and projects when we sense that Armageddon is raging outside our sphere of influence? To set the tone and perspective, I will borrow Greta Thunberg’s analogy that our house is on fire. If we consider biological annihilation akin to our burning house; if we take on board both the evidence and the unknowns; and if we allow ourselves to think outside the box of “expertise” and into the expanse of “we are talented, compassionate, creative human beings”, what might an appropriate response look like?

How to respond when your house is on fire

If our house is on fire and it’s too late for the fire extinguisher, what is an appropriate response? Well, if we want to survive, if we want others to survive, and if we want to emerge with a decent chance of recovery afterwards, then we’ll get out. Not only that, we’ll get out fast, leaving valuables behind and closing doors stop the spread of fire. We’ll raise alarm by notifying the fire department and enlisting all possible help to douse the flames. Mentally, we’ll want to be alert, responsive and careful. Physically, we’ll want to embody vitality and clarity of mind. In short, we’ll do our best. By treating it as an emergency and putting all other concerns and worries to the side, we will dedicate our full presence and attention to the matter at hand.

Wildfires of the Unites States. Modified photo by tonynetone. Credit: CC By 2.0

What might it look like—to dedicate ourselves to the matter of the extinction crisis—when we live in cities? Urban living tends to disconnect people from the natural environment, and the lack of iconic species or ecosystems locally can dampen the proverbial flames beneath our bottoms.

I will use my home as the location for this thought exercise, starting with a brief introduction for context.

Vancouver, BC, is Canada’s 3rd most populous city (2.4 million, Sept 2019). Since 2007, it has consistently been one of the most liveable cities in the world, largely because of its location. The ocean to the West, mountains and fjords to the North, and a multicultural city in between, Vancouver’s high standard of living is closely tied to the quality of its natural environment. As a city, it is also famed for its sleek style of urbanism (“downtown living”, eco-density) and, let’s not forget, for its West coast chillax vibe.

Vancouver remains one of the most liveable cities in the world. Image courtesy Cornelia Schneider-Frank on Pixabay.

In many cases, and certainly by contrast with other cities, the shiny expectations about this city are true. The quality of life is excellent for many, and the backdrop and access to nature is amazing. Cracks in the veneer have begun to appear, however, partly due to the city’s hasty transformation into a mega-city, with direct implications on its natural environment. The decline in liveability in recent years has been attributed to air quality from wildfires, but also difficult issues like combined sewer overflows, lack of affordability, and polarizing class dynamics.

 The land now occupied by the City of Vancouver was once a rainforest and marshland, with over 50 streams that flowed either to the sea or the mighty Fraser River. The oceans and mountains have shaped the humid coastal climate, and First Nations sustained themselves, the land and the water since time immemorial. That changed with exceptional speed after the first settlers arrived in the late 1800s. The seemingly endless forests and innumerable streams and wetlands were cleared, filled and industrialized within a matter of decades, rather than centuries as on the east coast before. Rather than recharging aquifers and supporting local ecosystems, rain that used to be absorbed by the ground or flow through salmon-bearing streams is now intercepted by roofs, drain tile and paved surfaces and directed into an underground pipe network.

This mural of early Vancouver grants perspective (with future-Stanley-Park centre-left, and current-day downtown at centre-right) on how the landscape has changed in the last century. Photographed at 2490 Marine Drive in Dundarave Village, West Vancouver. Photo: Christine Thuring

With regards to the extinction crisis, lush and liveable Vancouver is not exempt. Until its ambitious Rain City Strategy is implemented, the city continues to send direct toxic runoff and sewage into the Salish Sea, with massive implications to biodiversity. Shockingly, it appears that one of the region’s apex predators, the iconic killer whale (Orcinus orca), is on track for extinction. Evidence is mounting that the southern resident pod is starving, its population numbers in decline. In 2018, when yet another calf died soon after being born, the pod captured the world’s attention by communicating what is at stake, both for them and for us. Despite public outcry and demonstration, the drivers of this ecocide are not being resolved quickly enough, if at all.

Southern resident Tahlequah (J35) drew international attention in a show of mourning, holding her dead calf at the surface for a record 17 days. Used with permission by the artist. “See Me” Watercolour ©Lori Christopher, Hat Island, WA

When an ecosystem loses its apex predator, we can expect a ripple effect through all trophic levels of prey, right down to the primary producers (plants). Everything is connected. Compared to the plight of the orcas, however, the signals we receive from the terrestrial environment are subtle, maybe because we don’t notice when something small has gone missing. Still, Pacific Northwest ecosystems are famous for their astounding inter-connectivity, so if a highly intelligent, apex species is at risk then our terrestrial ecosystems are undoubtedly also under pressure.

Since cities are expressions of human dominance over the natural environment, it can be a stretch to imagine how or where to begin restoration efforts. Well, if our house is on fire, then we must act with courage and fearlessness, in collaborative consensus and harmony. In this precious decade ahead, we have no time to lose. It’s valuable to recall that we have much in our favour! We have technology, tools, knowledge and shared language at our disposal. The majority of humanity has “woken up” and aware of the crises at hand, to some degree or other.

In Metro Vancouver, eight municipalities have declared a climate emergency, and a number of ambitious strategies are in process of development and/ or implementation. In these, the term biodiversity is used often but without any detail. For all intents and purposes, I interpret this to mean that biodiversity is a piece of jargon. Recalling the inferno at hand, I will humbly don the warrior’s cloak (as “Captain Well-what-would-you-do?”) and suggest some things we can do to support life in this beautiful part of the world. I will undoubtedly miss some important points and invite you to use the comment section below.

Reconciliation and stewardship

Indigenous peoples (or “First Nations” in Canada) have lived on and cared for the lands and waters since time immemorial, and indigenous stewardship may be the key to global conservation goals. At the time of writing, Canada and B.C. were momentously poised with the opportunity of a generation to demonstrate its acknowledgement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Reconciliation in this context honours indigenous rights to territory and tradition, to self-determination and to respect and understanding. Politically it’s been a bumpy road, and I won’t get into that here. Suffice to say that we settlers live on unceded, stolen lands, and we have treated them very poorly. If we were to return these lands and waters to the rightful owners, then restoring them is the least we can do. Fortunately, this will also benefit biodiversity.

Empowering the spirit of respect and reconciliation would also involve exploring the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and indigenous cultural practices that allowed millennia-old societies to thrive in symbiosis with nature. These time-tested practices were established through ingenuity, creativity, spirituality, ecological understanding and resourcefulness. Allowing First Nations people back to their traditional lands, supporting the revival of traditional knowledge and practices, and/ or restoring degraded lands can heal the land and all people. In this era of nature-deficit-disorder and loneliness, connecting with nature and with other beings will significantly enhance individual and social well-being (however urban). Whether joining a conservation group, adopting a local green space, or connecting with First Nations on indigenous-led campaigns, we have much to gain.

Biodiversity-led landscapes

Building on a foundation of reconciliation and respect for indigenous tradition and knowledge, an appropriate response to the extinction crisis will also involve multi-functional landscapes. This means that every surface is relevant to both biodiversity and humans, while also repairing links to the damaged hydrological cycle, improving air quality, providing shade, etc. With regards to plantings, cultivated forms lacking value for wildlife will be replaced with species or cultivars that provide food that is nutritious. For example, the red-flowering currant is an early flowering shrub that provides nectar for hummingbirds fresh in from migration and for newly awakened bumblebee queens. The City of Vancouver and partners have been installing pollinator gardens, often featuring nest boxes and wildflower meadows, for demonstration and education. Someday, let’s aim for healthy and viable pollinator habitat to be everywhere!

Similar to plant selection, the management and maintenance of landscapes must take into account the nesting requirements of native bees, of which there are nearly 500 in BC. For example, willows are essential host trees for certain specialist species of solitary mining bees, conifers provide resins for bees that construct resin nests, and elderberry is great for stem nesting bees. Wildflower meadows designed for native pollinators must ensure the soil specifications and maintenance regime are all aligned with nesting needs, and that they take entire life cycles into consideration. It goes without saying that pesticides are not appropriate during an extinction or a climate crisis, especially given the “evidence that these treatments have little to no benefit in many crops.” One of the province’s youngest societies, the Native Bee Society of BC, is assembling resources that identify the needs of native pollinators, e.g. , soil specifications.

Replacing hard with soft

Heavily manicured landscapes must be re-oriented to the needs of healthy ecosystems and healthy communities. Parks and green spaces featuring expanses of lawn must be diversified with mosaics of habitat, including groves, meadows, ponds, wetlands and constructed ecosystems like bioswales and rain gardens. Native trees and shrubs will be planted to benefit native pollinators and birds. Wetlands must be restored, of which the massive dividends to biodiversity will also benefit access to nature, climate resilience, carbon sequestration and much more. There are countless opportunities to de-pave the hardscape of the region, what with its high water table and proximity to salty, fresh and brackish waters (salt marsh, mud flats, peat bog, riparian streams, rivers). The sky’s the limit, so to speak!

As sea level rise weakens Vancouver’s recreational sea walls, these hard surfaces can be replaced by floating paths that allow for restored intertidal zones beneath and associated habitat for shellfish, clams and more. The terribly polluted waters of False Creek can be improved with floating vegetated islands designed for phytoremediation, i.e., planted with species that remove, transfer, stabilize, and/or destroy contaminants. We must also restore and maintain inter- and subtidal estuarine habitats, like eel grass, which provide important spawning and nursery habitat for numerous fish (and therefore serve as important feeding areas for marine birds and mammals). Such interventions will concurrently improve water quality by trapping sediment, pollutants and nutrients.

Reducing combined sewage outflows is an urgent priority of the moment for the City of Vancouver, and much hope is hinged on the Rain City Strategy, which aims to capture and clean 90% of urban stormwater. In areas where “reverse engineering” and de-paving the landscape is not feasible, multi-functional green infrastructure must be implemented that not only fulfils the requirements of water sensitive design but also provides habitat for wildlife, beautiful nature experiences for residents, thermal comfort and improved air quality, etc. All that being said, let’s not forget to refer to indigenous practices and technologies before seeking high-tech solutions from other parts of the world.

Engaged citizenry must inform political will

We have a huge range of options for speaking on behalf of beings without voices and rights. As individuals, we can strive to be ethical consumers and divest out of life destroying institutions. We can connect into supportive communities by campaigning on issues close to our hearts. We can express our wishes by contacting political representatives and signing petitions. As citizens of the earth, we might heed the call of former UN climate chief who recently stated that “civil disobedience is not only a moral choice, it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics”.

We can support the development and adoption of effective policies, too. For example, the Ecocide Project is working to establish ecocide as international crime, alongside other crimes against peace of (i.e., genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, crime of aggression). Making ecocide a crime could serve as a brake on the few companies responsible for the majority of destruction while reaping profits. We can each contribute to halting reckless industrial activity by discouraging government ministers from issuing permits, banks from lending, investors from backing it, and insurers from underwriting it. As such, we can help weaken the infrastructure that silently sanctions acts of large-scale environmental destruction.

Ten years ago, the world’s governments pledged to stop subsidizing activities that drive species to extinction, opening the UN Decade on Biodiversity. This has had little effect. Meanwhile, trillions of dollars are awarded annually for subsidies that contribute to the drivers of extinction! In a recent paper, Dempsey and colleagues (2020) discuss methods for holding governments to account, namely subsidy accountability. They envision interdisciplinary teams working together to track subsidies and to forecast the environmental and social effects of their redirection or elimination. “To advance transformative economic change, we need to build country-specific lists of policies in need of reform and, crucially, to amass the political power necessary to persuade governments of all stripes to implement such changes. Big, public money is out there. We need to redirect these funds towards efforts that support ecologically sustainable economies and full pockets for nature” (p. 2).

In closing

We have a choice on the story lines we wish to adopt. In our minds and collectively, we have an opportunity to envision and manifest the world we wish to inherit. Nature will never give up on life. Just as wildfires of apocalyptic intensity burn out and new life emerges, we are part of the dance of life and our actions do have consequences. The truth is, we may read countless papers and reports, but we may never truly know what the future holds. To my mind, this lack of absolute certainty, combined with unprecedented phenomena, implies that we are enlisted in an ethical, if not spiritual, dilemma. Whether or not the orca benefit from our de-paving the region and restoring fragmented habitats and food webs is, in a way, beside the point. The resilience of life is forever affirming, and this can be our cue. On the one hand, any action other than freezing like a deer in the headlights is better than nothing. On the other, if we have the wherewithal to remain present, alert, kind and compassionate, inside or near a raging inferno, we may find that taking care of ourselves and caring for other beings are one and the same. Think global and act local. Life will thank us for it.

Christine Thuring
Vancouver

On The Nature of Cities

 

References

Ceballos, G, Ehrlich, PR and Dirzo, R. 2017. Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (30) E6089-E6096 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1704949114

Dempsey J, Martin TG, Sumaila UR. 2020. Subsidizing extinction? Conservation Letters 13. DOI: 10.1111/conl.1270

Figueres, C and Rivett-Carnac, T. 2020. The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis. Knopf Publishing Group. ISBN 0525658351

Gauger, A., Rabatel-Fernel, MP., Kulbicki, L., Short, D. and Higgins, P. 2013.  The Ecocide Project: Ecocide is the missing 5th Crime Against Peace. Human Rights Consortium, London. ISBN 978-0-9575210-5-6

Macy, J. and C. Johnstone. 2012. Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy. New World Library, Novato CA.

Román-Palacios, C. and JJ Wiens. 2020. Recent responses to climate change reveal the drivers of species extinction and survival. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1913007117

Rose, C. 2019. Devastation in the Skies. Wingspan. A publication of the Wild Bird Trust of British Columbia. 8-11 https://wildbirdtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Wingspan-2019-Fall-Winter.pdf

Rosenberg, KV., Dokter., AM, Blancher, PJ., Sauer, JR., Smith, AC., Smith, PA., Stanton JC., Panjabi, A., Helft, L., Parr, M., Marra, PP. 2019. Decline of the North American avifauna. Science. 366 (6461): 120-124. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw1313 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6461/120

Watson, J. 2020. Lo-tek. Design By Radical Indigenism. Taschen.

Whyte, D. 2020. Ecocide: Kill the corporation before it kills us. Manchester University Press. ISBN: 978-1-5261-4698-4

World Economic Forum. Jan. 2020. The Global Risks Report 2020. 15th edition.

The Aburrá Valley Must Finally Understand: Water is Also Nature!

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

Understanding the nature of the place in which a city exists must be a priority, and involves sensible use of the local context, building in a manner consistent with the particularities of topography—an imperative highlighted in the Colombian Andes—and appropriate integration with hydrology and water flow systems, biodiversity, and other ecosystem characteristics.

Although it is less conspicuous than vegetation in dense urbanized areas, water, the source of all life, is just as vital.

Medellín is the second Colombian city, located in the center of the Aburrá Valley. It is also the main settlement of the 10 municipalities that comprise the denominated Metropolitan Area of the same valley. Medellín has not been an exception to the modality of enforced, rigid, uncontrolled urban occupation over the wrinkled topography of wild or rural areas in Colombia. The colonial introduction of the damero pattern over topological and hydrological conditions, which suggests and even demands other responses, has been repeated across the whole nation’s urban setting. Many disastrous events, such as landslides and annually repeated floods, have demonstrated that we need a harmonious dialog of design and nature.

Despite Medellín’s successes (e.g., in transportation and social urbanism), we haven’t done so well in our relations with nature. Public authorities and people in general feel that the duty towards nature is fulfilled by projecting numbers of trees to be planted, when possible.

Although it is less conspicuous than vegetation in dense urbanized areas, water, the source of all life, is just as vital. Discreet most of the time, but forceful when it occurs in a large body or when it appears suddenly (especially in respondse to climate variations, which have lately become unpredictable), water reacts by following clear hydrological laws and according to the way urbanization, unaware of its effects, has modified the relief and corresponding bed, surfaces, and spaces for free and natural flow.    

Photo 1
St. Petersburg. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

Photo 2
Zurich. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

Photo 3
Delft. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

In particular, cases such as Stuttgart, Boston, St. Petersburg, Zurich, Delft, and Woodlands, Texas, are quite illustrative of a sound dialogue with their water bodies. These cities have become well known for their understanding and harmonious coordination with the aquatic realities of their specific locations. In Colombia, one of the water-richest countries in the world, there is a long way to go in the realms of knowledge and acceptance of the behavior of water in urban settings. In urban planning processes in Colombia, people’s primary concern has tended to be determining the quickest way to get rid of water as soon as it reaches urbanized surfaces. The conviction that we have an abundance of water is counterproductive and reduces our impulse to care for and retain sensible interactions with the hydrological cycle. 

The mistreatment of watercourses has been increasing since the first half of the 20th century, when urban planners with narrow, purely utilitarian aims sought to “sanitize”, urbanize, industrialize, and transport. At that time, the administrative authorities decided to “rectify” and channelize the river Aburrá, axis of the valley and source of life in many senses.  

Upstream, this “rectification”, channeling, and continuous urban growth mounted along the valley slopes at the fringe of each and every one of the tributary streams, until, today, no brook crossing through urban areas in Medellín leads its waters naturally towards the river. Most of the streams across the city have at least part of their routes channeled in concrete, when they are not fully encased. Images of channels, walls, pipes, and concrete beds have become so familiar that people do not remember the original names of the watercourses, and indistinctly refer to all of them as “the channeling”. 

Photo 4
Medellín watercourses are channelized. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

The rapid and little-controlled urban advance towards the mountains’ edges led planning authorities to an idea: draw a thick line to stop the city’s sprawling tendencies. This is the origin of the so-called Metropolitan Green Belt (from the metropolitan administration) and Encircle Garden of Medellín (from the municipal administration). Though the main—and quite optimistic—purpose of that line was to stop urbanization, the names suggest a concern for nature that has not materialized. Although these works, already accomplished, include a certain amount of vegetation, they are dominated by cement or brick tiles, hardening the bed of small runoffs instead of transforming it, as a true green belt would. Certainly, effort has been invested in good quality works, which have been well received by the community. Directors of these projects have involved the suburban communities, and the results have stimulated the recognition of previously inaccessible places and the need to work on increasing biomass. But the water has definitely been the forgotten main actor of the story. 

Photo 5
Local projects to improve water management. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

A similar situation occurs again halfway between the mountain ridge and the mouths of creeks in the river, through the scarce green open spaces within the urbanized areas. Even when spaces are converted into parks, in these green patches, water is mistreated. This is the case in the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Channel Park, where a nice recent opportunity to interact with running water in a respectful way or contemplate it, as a constituent part of the landscape, has been wasted. On a plot that used to be the municipal nursery, the sport television offices established themselves, accompanied by a park. Although some of the works respect the natural spirit of the place, in affluent areas, the existing water and vegetation were displaced by rigidly disposed water channels and plants. 

Photo 6
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Channel Park. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez Channel Park. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

Photo 8
Existing water and vegetation displaced by rigidly disposed water channels and plants. Photo credit: Gloria Aponte

We urgently need to attend to water in all its manifestations. All levels of society have responsibility in this task; it must be faced via a joining of wills from several society groups: authorities, administration, the academy, communities, developers, schools, etc. 

As it has progressed, studies and guidelines to improve the quality of urban development have been published. The most recent for the Area Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá is 2015’s Política Pública de Construcción Sostenible (Sustainable construction Public Policy). This policy, which integrates natural resources and building construction, is addressed to builders and developers and articulates the inextricability of principles of biodiversity and environment with gray infrastructure and engineered solutions. The work consists of eight books and, although its overarching title could be interpreted as being focused on buildings, it involves elements from wider scales. If we accept, as the above policy states, that “a collection of sustainable buildings does not produce a sustainable city”, the traditional scope of sustainable building must widen to encompass the open space in between buildings.  

The policy´s first book, called “Base line,” orients the reader to a detailed analysis of the place before intervening in it. The book covers all aspects of the landscape, such as ecosystems, biodiversity, natural landscapes, water, and green spaces. In this sense, the document suggests that the recognition of any water flow is important for understanding it and using it in a sound way. Such recognition also raises awareness of the threats from flooding and torrential overflows. 

The purpose of this book is to stimulate a responsible attitude towards natural water functioning and avoiding interference caused by unconscious works in open space. Although there are examples and references in many countries, this is the first time that these principles are clearly and explicitly “translated” to our own environment, to be adopted by normative force, for a much more stimulating habitat. 

The first step would be to spread the existence of these tools, followed by studying and digesting them, before applying the experiences that emerge from them in every new urban intervention by demanding responsible agents to implement them.  

As Gary Grant says in his recent article, “Towards the Water-Sensitive City” (TNOC June 2016): ”When city authorities begin to consider the fabric of the city itself as a rainwater collection facility, this changes the way people design and operate the urban landscape.” 

We won’t be able to complain after flooding disasters occur in the lower parts of our cities if, together, we all do not drive attention and efforts to understanding nature’s flows or articulate development interventions to these problems through overly simple adaptation strategies.  

Nevertheless, Medellín has recently received international recognition because of its strong and continuous work to reemerge from a pronounced social decline that the city experienced at the end of the last century. Due to its persistent efforts in terms of coexistence, civic culture, equity in public services, and transport systems, Medellín can now share certain important achievements. The unwavering work of various bodies and successive administrations earned Medellín the following awards:  

  • Medellín won the title of most innovative city in 2013, competing with the cities of New York and Tel Aviv for the “City of the Year”, organized by the Wall Street Journal and the Urban Land Institute -ULI-
  • Medellín won The MobiPrice 2015 prize for its model Metro System and EnCicla program, each of which is unique in Colombia
  • Medellín won The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize for their sustainable and innovative urban approach in March 2016  

Medellín has thus become a national and international example of social inclusion and the organization of urban operations. However, this does not mean that the city has solved all problems related to everyday urban life. A great debt is still latent: attention to the city’s relationships with its natural ecosystem, particularly water, and equilibrium between urban activity and the city’s “metabolic capacity”— goals of actual “sustainability” that must go beyond semantics. 

Our debt is mainly to the abundant water that runs towards the valley axis, which urban development works strive to hide. We all have to remember that water is also nature! 

Gloria Aponte
Medellín

On The Nature of Cities

The Art of Designing Meaningful Public-Science Collaborations

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

We need to go beyond just discussion about mixing elements, infrastructures, and place in cities. Mixing has to be done at the ideation stage where inclusion and diversity in thinking and decision-making can be allowed to flourish.
When many voices come together, they create a sound so loud it moves you. What you hear when you experience this is the very same thing that gives a good choir the power to deliver you from your sins—a powerful element called resonance. When two frequencies stream in harmonic proportion to each other. Or in the case of this workshop, it is the resonance when the ideas of diverse people come together in a hum of productive chatter under the same roof at exactly the same time.

Photo: M’Lisa Colbert

The roof in question sat atop a beautiful gazebo housed in Parque Vincentina Aranha in São Jose dos Campos, Brazil, just north of São Paulo. Parque Vincentina used to be a quarantine site of a hospice for tuberculosis suffers in the 1920s. Since then, it has been lovingly restored as one of the main public parks in the city. The grounds and buildings are beautifully landscaped in a fit-for-royalty fashion. You enter the park through a towering gold-paint encrusted steel gate. The path to the main park building is meticulously cleaned each day and paved with careful craftmanship.

Galinha D’Angola (Helmeted Guinea Fowl)

Gawking around corners throughout the park is a special speckled bird—the Galinha D’Angola (Helmeted Guinea Fowl), which I learned is a common variety of turkey in Brazil. A far cry from the time the grounds were used as a hospice, the beautiful exterior stone corridors and archways are now filled with footsteps and purpose as people saunter to and from throughout the day enjoying the park and the community programming the city organizes weekly. The Nature of Cities, ICLEI South America, the City of San Jose dos Campos, and a host of other international partners designed a public engagement workshop to gather local knowledge, and map community visioning and meaning of food, water, and energy innovations in São Jose dos Campos. This public engagement was part of an international research project called IFWEN, which looks at how green and blue infrastructure in cities support innovations in integrating and governing food, water, and energy in a nexus approach. The goal of the workshop was to engage the community and design a collaborative space where the knowledge and social imaginaries of people living in the cities collided with those of the international scientists.

Community Mapping Exercise

Fifty people joined us from the community in São Jose dos Campos, and they were all from very different walks of life. A few of them were teachers, two came from an eco-fashion label, and another handful were a mix of municipal officials, activists, children, and everyday citizens. The maps created by the community were rich in detail and experience. In total there were eight maps created. The picture below details both the satellite maps and the inner-city maps that community members used to highlight points of meaning along six question prompts we created based on the research focus of the international study. The data mapped was both tangible, such as the location of natural assets, roads, transport links etc., and intangible, such as place attachment, safety, belonging, stress and smells, etc., that exist in their city.

The maps were not only an opportunity for the international researchers to mobilize citizen science to better understand the context of city life in São José dos Campos, but they were also a learning experience for the community to have access to such rich physical details about their city from both the city database and the international team.

Community members worked with satellite maps to show both natural landscapes, and inner-city detail to map points of meaning in their city along six question prompts we developed based on the research focus. The data mapped was both tangible, such as the location of natural assets, roads, transport links etc., and intangible, such as place attachment, safety, belonging, stress and smells, etc., in their city.

Findings from the workshop

Energy Trade-offs

Energy is a very visible issue area in São José dos Campos. due to the fact that the city has a sequence of high voltage towers that conduct electricity to the capital São Paulo. The transmission lines are imposing throughout its landscape. This was a point of contention for the city residence, and a common mentioned innovation was the desire for green infrastructure to be placed around the site of these towers to make the space useable and more pleasant for residence. The city has recently launched a project called Linha Verde to address this issue.

Water Contamination 

Water was the most important element mapped on each of the eight community maps. Flooding in the inner-city region was a very big concern for most, along with a heightened sense of risk of industrial

Map Analysis by Juliana Landolfi

This map is a synthesis of all of the local knowledge mapped by the community during the workshop. The map highlights areas of importance for green and blue infrastructure (green), food including markets, super markets, gardens, etc (yellow), areas where difficulty or distress is experienced in the city (red), and areas where the community desired innovations and change (purple).

leaks, illegal dumping sites, poor soil quality and traffic pollution that cause water contamination in and around the city. Innovations centered around a desire for infrastructures that could facilitate greater river tourism, leisure sites for swimming and river revitalization to make fishing sites a possibility.

Food Sustainability

Overwhelmingly most community residences that participated in our work shop got their food from public markets more than super markets, although access to both was clearly important. São José dos Campos supplies the capital São Paulo with an important volume of food, as well as destines much of its agricultural production for export. This production comes from large agricultural producers, who represent an important part of the city’s economy. Residence expressed a desire to continue to innovate infrastructures for local food such as, community gardens, urban farming, and composting.

The workshop was noted by many community members and the scientists to have been a really inspiring collaborative space. Such a collaborative space is an important aspect of any research study, especially an international one. Where researchers strive to support knowledge gathering and exchange in cities, and not simply aim to extract data, their results are richer and the co-benefits for the community are empowering for capacity-building and innovation creation in cities.

Designing a public engagement

There are a few important aspects of collaborative design that we have found at The Nature of Cities, within our approach called the Forum for Radical Imagination on Environmental Cultures that make events that bring diverse groups together more or less successful depending on the goal of the engagement. The insights listed below can ultimately help researchers, urban planners, developers, municipal decision-makers and many other actors to meaningfully involve the public in city building.

Use the earth: Find a way to connect with nature

When you say, “a breath of fresh air”—consider the underlying meaning of this popular metaphor that appears in different forms in various cultures around the world. As humans, we often crave “a breath of fresh air” to incite a change of pace, regenerate, or help us think through something difficult. Nature has a way of humbling people. A stroll in the park, or a breath of fresh air grounds you and helps you clear your mind. Including nature as a key element to the design of a community engagement can support creative flows of discussion and inspiration—especially as you are bound to invite diverse peoples, personalities and partialities to work together towards a common goal. The end of September in Brazil is just the beginning of the summer months, so there was a good chance our hopes to host this event outside would be thwarted by rain. It did rain. But by then our discussions were well underway, and nobody really cared at that point.

Draw from the arts: Materialize your ideas

Dialogue and discussion are important as an ideation stage, but its critical we carry those ideas through so that they can materialize into the changes we want to see in our cities. Art is an incredibly powerful capacity humans have that can help us achieve this. What is art? Often, we consider “art” to be the product or result of something we produced in a creative state of mind, like a painting or a film. Sure, it is. But we shouldn’t forget we are fundamentally talking about a process, or the expression of human creative skill and imagination that sometimes manifests itself in a painting, but other times manifests itself in the scientist who is trying to decipher exactly what the numbers they tabulated mean.

For our event, we began with dialogue and discussion. When we were all in this ideation stage, we were imagining. The Nature of Cities worked with a gallery in São Paolo called Choque Cultural to find an artist who could help us channel our inner creativity. Pedro Jurubis took a mix-media approach combining paint, sketch and collage to visualize our ideas. He worked with the community members, and everyone drew their ideas.

Community Collage led by Pedro Jubris

Inclusivity and voice: Let everyone speak

Depending on the size of the group, you want to parcel activities so that everyone can participate and ensure all voices are heard. This is important, there is nothing worse than having to bottle up something you had to say and leaving a place with the frustration of knowing you didn’t get a chance to say it. So, set some grounds rules for respectful discussion, but let everyone speak. To get around the size of our group, we mixed people and separated everyone up into groups of 5 or 6. Each group had a map, a facilitator and a few tools to help them map their local knowledge, ideas and visions for the future. At the end of the group exercise, we came together and each group presented their maps, and discussed among the other groups what common themes and thoughts had emerged. It doesn’t matter how many people attend, but it is ideal to try and ensure you have as much diversity as possible. For example, though we had diversity in the types of people, we lacked diversity in geographies. We suffered a capture issue at our event. Though the invitation was completely open, we learned that most people who had attended, tended to live closer to the inner city. There were not very many participants from the neighborhoods along the periphery of the city. This is something we reflect on as we think about designing other such events.

Collaboration: Bringing diverse actors together encourages social learning

Cities are growing at a rapid rate.  The more they grow, the more complex they become, and the more difficult it is to manage and live in them sustainably. Ideally, most planners will tell you, that the key to making this complexity work for us is density. A huge opportunity to mix elements in cities like transportation, public services and neighborhoods that can make all of our footprints smaller and more sustainable. I am all for mixing, but I am one of the many that understands that mixing involves stepping outside of your comfort zones, accepting lifestyle change, making different personal choices and thinking in new and different ways. This can be a difficult thing for many of us who are habituated and comfortable in our current urban environments. Yet, if we can achieve this both on a personal and social level than we create the environment we need for livability and resilience. .

To truly create viable transitions and sustainable, enabling environments in cities to foster these kinds of changes, we need to go beyond just discussion about mixing elements, infrastructures, and place in cities. Fundamentally, mixing has to be done at the ideation stage where inclusion and diversity in thinking and decision-making can be allowed to flourish. Not only will this move people to involve themselves and better accept and participate in sustainable changes, this collaboration will improve the outcome and make for more liveable and resilient cities.

For example, when you put a doctor and an architect together in a room, suddenly a city building design is forever changed by the insight of the health professional along with the insight of the designer. Add an energy engineer and now the building is following energy efficiency standards. Add an artist and the building is likely to become more colorful, expressive and a source of cultural beauty, and inspiration. These are the kinds of collaborations and innovations you should be looking to push together when designing events and engagements with the public.

Our societies are siloed, and we have all learned to work that way. We need to unlearn this. Each time we collaborate together on an issue, we encourage social learning and build an environment that facilitates collaboration in our cities. So, this century, this is our challenge. To reimagine our cities, what it means to be urban, and make our cities and ourselves more collaborative.

M’Lisa Colbert
Montreal

On The Nature of Cities

Am aerial shot of a park with pathways, benches, and people walking

The Baltic Green: A Case Study of Children’s Access to Outdoor Play and Urban Nature in Liverpool City Centre

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

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

How can Liverpool City Council more meaningfully shape a better world? By creating a city that offers streets, spaces, and facilities for all ages, abilities, and backgrounds to enjoy together. A child-friendly approach has the potential to unite a range of progressive agendas and to act as a catalyst for urban innovation. But it hasn’t been easy.

1 Where do children belong in a city?

Globally there are countless examples of city-wide projects that endorse child-friendly cities, such as the Belfast Healthy Cities partnership, Climate Shelters in Barcelona, the Oasis project in Paris, and a mobility app in Oslo. Yet, providing multi-functional, playable space in nature for children ― beyond the playground ― seems to have largely been written out of urban planning agendas. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the incoherence between local government support for child-centred and green planning and their unprecedented neoliberalisation-linked budget cuts and residential property development.

The case study of a community-led urban park in Liverpool called the Baltic Green serves as a strong example of how local councils are prioritising financial projections and urban development over the needs of cities’ children. Overall, this paper contributes to wider discussions around children’s access and exposure to (urban) nature. The literature review, case study, and discussion build up a cohesive argument to emphasise that we must prioritise children’s outdoor play in urban planning. It is clear that putting children centre-stage in city planning can help make a city safe, inclusive, and accessible.

2 Methodology

I observed a combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. A literature review was executed by synthesising academic articles, journals, reports, and books using a keyword search[i]. I also carried out one semi-structured interview with the brainchild of the Baltic Green project, Tristan Brady-Jacobs (See Appendix B for interview questions). In the interest of full disclosure, I sporadically volunteered at the Baltic Green between February 2021 and June 2021. Therefore, I am in a unique position to recall the evolution of the park and access an abundance of primary data.

3 Literature Review

Child-friendly urban planning is an emerging field to increase efforts in improving children’s development, health, and access to opportunities. Such endeavours have been

neglected over economic, spatial, and welfare developments in the context of neoliberal urbanisation. Cities have become increasingly motorised and hostile with few outdoor places reserved for children. The context of austerity, disinvestment in the public realm, and the dismantlement of social and welfare structures led to the emergence of new spaces and activities for children, such as commercial indoor playtime activities and organised after-school activities (Karsten, 2005). Clearly, children’s access to and participation in non-commodified urban spaces and their associated health, equality, and well-being concerns have been limited (Karsten 2005). The literature presented in the following section will make a compelling case for the importance of providing access to nature in the places where children live, play, and learn.

There is an abundance of research showcasing the detrimental effects of Nature Deficit Disorder amongst children living a suburban, sedentary, and indoor lifestyle (Baró, 2021, 2). This condition encapsulates the loss of children’s free-ranging exploration of ‘‘wild lands’’ in cities and suburbs, as children’s attention is absorbed by televisions and computer screens, parents’ fears for children’s safety outdoors grew, and bulldozers relentlessly removed wild edges (Chawal, 2015, 434). Karsten divided the experiences of children into the self-explanatory categories of “inside children” and “outside children”, drawing attention to the present-day rarity of the latter (2016, 76). Multi-sensory, experiential outdoor learning amongst flora and fauna has been shown to benefit children socially, psychologically, academically, and physically, fostering a sense of shared responsibility and cooperation. In these uncertain times of environmental destruction, Oscilowicz postulates that children show greater environmental stewardship and attachment to nature through regular engagement with nature (2020, 778). It is vital to instill children with such values in order to imagine a future in which the human megatropolis can live in harmony with nature, something to be chartered by the young people of today.

More generally, environmental justice literature has shown that green play spaces are critical assets that may improve community presence, cohesion, and resilience (Oscilowicz, 2020, 782). In Arup’s report ‘Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods’, they emphasised that spaces that are free at the point of access and provide a mix of uses, natural elements, and activities away from congestion are a powerful tool to decrease inequality between different communities (2017, 37). The report elaborates on how green amenities can facilitate social cohesion and community building or in other words “an inclusive space that opens the door to interaction” (Arup, 2017, 27). Oscilowicz further defends this theory by stating that urban parks, gardens, and community gardens provide neighbours with an opportunity to build community by facilitating chance encounters (767, 2020). This point illustrates how green spaces are beneficial for a multitude of stakeholders, a priority being the developmental benefits to the children, but also social connections for the guardian, parents, grandparents, and caretakers (Oscilowicz, 2020, 768). Intergenerational interactions, serendipitous encounters, and multicultural exchange are invaluable consequences of open green spaces for children.

Such spaces played a crucial role during the COVID-19 lockdown. Many countries imposed strict rules on people’s movement and interaction to limit the spread of the virus, thus city dwellers found solace and joy in their local green space. Outdoor sites became popular and overcrowded, demonstrating the very value of open spaces in cities, and thereby postulating the importance of their maintenance and funding. Now more than ever, community planners and city officials should consider prioritising the cultivation of high-quality play spaces with public infrastructure and programming.

A number of authors have recognised the importance of ‘everyday freedoms’ for children (Chawal 2015, Baró 2021). This idea combines the ability of children to play and socialise with high levels of independent mobility, establish supportive social groups and multicultural relationships, and strengthen their overall emotional and relational well-being (Baró, 2021, 2). As enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child “play is an instinctive, voluntary, and spontaneous human learning impulse, and a basic human right. Nussbaum supported this argument by listing affiliation as one of the central capabilities to compose human well-being; being able to live with and toward other people, engage in various forms of social interaction, imagine the situation of another and show concern for others (2013, 444). She views creative play as a starting point for children to exercise these capabilities. Furthermore, in Chawla’s research, they also adopt a philosophical lens to underpin the importance of health and well-being. They revive Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia or happiness, often translated as ‘‘human flourishing’’, as the ultimate goal of human life, achieved through people’s full and balanced realisation of their capabilities (Chawal, 434, 2015). Another author argues that neighbourhood green play spaces may be the only space where children experience-free exploration and liberty in an urban setting (Oscilowski, 768, 2020). In light of these discussions, the importance of play environments for children is clear to enable them to explore, test their capabilities, contribute to their social and cognitive development, acquire new knowledge and skills, and enjoy a sense of competence (Chawal, 438, 2015).

One leading academic within the topic of children’s access to nature is Roger Hart, he completed his dissertation on Children’s Experience of Place in 1979. His later work tracked how his ability to carry out research on children’s interaction with nature became increasingly difficult from the 1970s to the early 2000s. He attributes this to the new culture of fear among parents, who over the years have relinquished children’s right to roam. This parental control and protection are evident within a multitude of comparative studies, for example, children in countries such as Finland and Germany are granted high levels of independent mobility (Arup, 2017, 16; Karsten, 2016, 77). These findings serve as a reminder of how children in the UK who walk (or less frequently bike) independently to school or other hobbies have now become the exception (Karsten, 2016, 77).

There exists a considerable body of literature on the positive associations between urban nature and child well-being including benefits to mental and physical well-being. Interaction with nature has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on both physical and mental health, this can include ADD/ADHD, overall mental health, stress, resilience, self-esteem, depression, respiratory diseases and allergies, neonatal survival, and mitigating pesticide risks (Tillmann, 2018, 958; Chawal 2015). Chawla draws on a series of reports to substantiate her research claims of the benefits of green spaces on children’s health. For example, when Scottish families with young children live less than twenty minutes walking distance from a green space, mothers rated the general health of their children as higher (Aggio et al. 2015 in Chawal, 434, 2015). Furthermore, Dutch children who lived near green spaces had lower rates of respiratory diseases (Maas et al. 2009), and four- and five-year-olds in the United States who lived in neighbourhoods with more street trees were less likely to have asthma (Lovasi et al. 2008).

Given all the literature outlined above, this section has built up a clear overview of why cities ought to pay attention to facilitating access and exposure to urban nature for all residents. There is an abundance of research advocating for the benefits of access to urban green spaces, this underpins the calls of families for clean, safe, and green neighbourhoods.

4 Case Study of the Baltic Green

Liverpool proclaims itself as the gateway to nature given the ability to access a wide variety of natural landscapes including greenery, forestry, seaside, and coastal regions. The city council manages over 500 parks in the region (Open Spaces, 2022). Yet, despite attention to community cohesion and social interaction highlighted in local planning documents, it seems the local authority’s focus on children has ceased to be compulsory. The context of austerity and dismantlement of social and welfare structures has been further compounded by the abolition of the National Play Strategy. Youth services in England and Wales have been cut by 70%, with the loss of £1bn of investment resulting in zero funding in some areas (Weale, 2020). The following section will illustrate how, despite attempts by local community groups, access to urban nature for children in Liverpool has been interrupted.

Historically a place of industry, the Baltic Triangle is now considered one of Liverpool’s most bohemian areas and has emerged as a popular cultural hotspot, as well as a place to live surrounded by thriving creative and digital industries. The area is indistinguishably marked by the plethora of coffee shops, bars, convenience stores, yoga studios, co-working spaces, and new residential property developments. In and amongst this symbiotic mix of businesses, residences, and amenities, there is a single remaining patch of green.

An aerial map of a city
Aerial image of the Baltic Triangle (Source: Strategic Regeneration Framework, 2020, p.7.)

The plot of land was described by Liverpool City Council in the Strategic Regeneration Framework as “poorly maintained and requires improvement” (2020, 15). In February 2021, during the second wave of the COVID-19 lockdown, a team of volunteers assembled to transform the site into a multi-purpose recreational space. By all means, an upgrade from the previously abandoned and uninviting scenery. It was born from the desire to install tables and chairs for local residents to utilise on their daily outings permitted during the COVID-19 lockdown. This idea evolved to see volunteers and artists build a variety of structures, this included a puppet stage, a chess board, large thrones, and a wooden dragon.

A pictures of a group of workers sitting around a table outside
Construction workers having a break around the table and bench. Source: ‘Baltic Green Working Group’ Facebook group chat

A picture of a field with wooden structures placed in it
Wide angle shot of the entire site. Source: ‘Baltic Green Working Group’ Facebook group chat.

A picture of a group of people standing around in a field with wooden structures scattered about
Site in use by the local community at the weekend (Source: ‘Baltic Green Working Group’ Facebook group chat)

Complimentary to the wooden creations, volunteers planted trees to border the park, treated the grass, and put in waste management facilities. The site rapidly became a popular meeting spot for residents, families, and construction workers or a welcome discovery for people walking past. The green provided a space for young and old to meet, sparking exchange, interaction, and delight.

A collage of five pictures of people smiling at the camera
Baltic Green in Actin April 2021 (Source: Baltic Green Facebook Group)

A collage of three pictures of people smiling at the camera
Example of Baltic Green being used by families and local community members in May 2021 (Source: Baltic Green Facebook Group).

Am aerial shot of a park with pathways, benches, and people walking
Vision board of how the Baltic Green could look (Source: Baltic Green Facebook Group).

Efforts were pursued by the team of volunteers to obtain permission from the council to establish the site as a permanent urban park. Such status would require financial support, health and safety assessment, and insurance. Despite the success of the park, the values collided with Liverpool City Council. The council pursued a litany of complaints and faults with the project, its intentions, and provisions for the area. First, the council representatives issued complaints about anti-social behaviour being attracted to the site at night time, such as excessive noise, street drinking, and recreational drug use. But when pest control discovered rats on the site, the council heeded this problem and ordered the removal of three structures. The council’s instructions were responded to by the volunteers. Diligently, they removed the “rodent-infested” structures, continued to clear garbage bins, and maintained clear communication with the council about their actions. Nonetheless, the Baltic Green was bulldozed in the early hours of the 7th of June 2021 by Liverpool City Council.

A picture of a field of dug up dirt and trash
Baltic Green the day after demolition (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

A picture of a field with a parking lot and buildings behind it
Shot of Baltic Green from residential apartment block on the day of demolition (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat).

A picture of a field with broken pieces of wooden signs and trash scattered everywhere
Baltic Green from the fence after demolition (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

Today, the site has reverted to its previous desolation visited only by the occasional dog walker or resident crossing it en route elsewhere. It is hard to imagine that this plot once hosted the creations of volunteers and artists. The Baltic Triangle has already been subject to worrying tell-tale signs of gentrification whereby the financial projections of developers have been prioritised over the local needs of residents. It is clear there are tensions arising between the longstanding businesses, the new inhabitants, and the agenda of the local council, and the Baltic Green is the epicentre of this collision.

5 Discussion

Equipped with a detailed understanding of the urban, environmental, and socio-economic context of the Baltic Green from previous sections, this part of the paper will extrapolate the ways in which the site fulfilled children’s access and exposure to outdoor spaces and in turn aided the prosperity of the local community. The discussion will not attempt to rebut the decisions made by Liverpool City Council but instead illuminate the tragic loss of a unique community-led initiative to meet the demands of a neoliberal city.

In the literature review, numerous studies emphasised the importance of independent and creative play for children in nature. The Baltic Green offered a unique and experimental way for children to interact with space. The fencing, constructed by volunteers, reduced the need for constant parental supervision. As the structures did not match the standardised and monotonous amenities found in a children’s play park, the wooden creations provoked children to use their imagination to interact and play with the unfamiliar objects. This approach recognised the fundamental importance of independent play and learning to help shape a child’s development and prospects, hence their adult lives. When interviewing Tristan, he encapsulated this idea by saying “if we control the way they [children] think, we control their development and we don’t get new ideas or concepts.” Furthermore, Tristan recalled the “wonderful feedback” from parents and guardians’ thoughts on the space given its unique offering.

As revealed in the map in Appendix A, the Baltic Green is one of the few remaining green spaces within the urban density of the Liverpool City Centre. In the Strategic Regeneration Framework (SRF), it reports that there are now in excess of 14,000 residential units in total in the city centre core with a resident population of 45,000. In addition, there is a potential 12,800 units in the proposed pipeline across 31 schemes (Liverpool City Council, 2020, 8). Such developments are displacing children and families to other (indoor) play spaces or increasing the likelihood of them staying home. Although Liverpool boasts a wide variety of family activities, such as museums, restaurants, and festivals, such events include parental supervision as an integral part of the experience. Where do children have the space to engage in outdoor, autonomous, and non-commodified play? The Baltic Green was one of the few remaining outdoor provisions in the area that offered a versatile function for all generations. The destruction of such spaces promotes sedentary and indoor lifestyles and as discussed in the literature review this has negative impacts on a child’s health, well-being, and cognitive development.

In the Baltic Triangle, the fear of looming gentrification is already starting to create displacement pressures and a sense of community loss. The rapid pace of development has initiated a narrative in alignment with Karsten’s statement that the city has become “the domain of young, childless households.” (2016, 76). The Baltic Green embodied social interaction and community development, such activities are key to counteract community erosion and instead empower a community to build social capital. Drawing on the interview with Tristan, he shared how the space was very useful for parents and guardians to “grab a drink and cake to sit on the green and chat” in the knowledge that their children were playing in a safe space. When the space was dismantled local residents took to Twitter to express their outrage, one resident exclaiming that Liverpool City Council clearly did not care for “community” or “culture” (See Appendix C).

A screenshot of a social media post with a picture of a parking lot with cars in it on the edge of a field
Screenshot on Twitter of @AskLittleAlan’s response to the demolition of Baltic Green (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

These spaces for social connection are particularly important in neighbourhoods. One would assume that such civic action would be celebrated by the local council but, in this case, it seems to have been punished. Returning to the interview with Tristan, he summarised how in his opinion Liverpool City Council saw “People are problems to be resolved not a resource to be harnessed”. City planners should perceive the growth of the city in a balanced and spatially responsive manner as a priority.

To compress the findings of this discussion section, it is clear that communication between the volunteer group and Liverpool City Council was not mediated in a productive manner. The evidence provided in the literature review attested that the Baltic Green adequately met the needs of the local community and most importantly the children’s access to urban nature. Despite the efforts of volunteers to install bins and ensure regular checks, there were still issues with the upkeep of the site. Yet, the ability of volunteers to prohibit the misuse of space is limited. Social control exerted on public spaces will not stop people who want to misbehave, if it were not at the Baltic Green, it would have been another open space in the city. Collaboration and communication with the Liverpool City Council prior to the dismantling of the site could have seen mutually beneficial outcomes for all parties involved.

6 Conclusion

How can Liverpool City Council more meaningfully shape a better world? By creating a city that offers streets, spaces, and facilities for all ages, abilities, and backgrounds to enjoy together. A child-friendly approach has the potential to unite a range of progressive agendas – including health and well-being, sustainability, resilience, and safety — and to act as a catalyst for urban innovation. Such emancipatory and intersectional elements of greening interventions were facilitated in the Baltic Green. This paper demonstrated this with the inclusion of primary materials including photos, interviews, and social media posts. Thus, the main argument in this paper deplores Liverpool City Council’s decision to dismantle the community-built urban park. The Baltic Green offered a space for children to interact with nature, engage in independent play, counteract sedentary and indoor lifestyles, and also an opportunity for community cohesion. In future urban planning and development plans, Liverpool City Council needs to better consider the needs and identities of children living in the city centre to create a just and prosperous city.

Alice Sparks
Brussels

On The Nature of Cities

[i] Keyword search included public green spaces, child-friendly cities, intergenerational space, community gardens, playable spaces, multifunctional green infrastructure, and playful encounters.

References

Arup. (2017). Designing for Urban Childhoods. London. Retrieved from https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/cities-alive-designing-for-urban-childhoods

Baró, F., Camacho, D., Pérez Del Pulgar, C., Triguero-Mas, M., & Anguelovski, I. (2021). School greening: Right or privilege? Examining urban nature within and around primary schools through an equity lens. Landscape And Urban Planning, 208, 104019. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.104019

Campbell, S. (1996). Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development. Journal Of The American Planning Association, 62(3), 296-312. doi: 10.1080/01944369608975696

Chawla, L. (2015). Benefits of Nature Contact for Children. Journal Of Planning Literature, 30(4), 433-452. doi: 10.1177/0885412215595441

Hadani, H. (2021). By 2030, 60% of the world’s urban population will be under 18. Are our cities ready? [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/building-better-cities-for-children-coordinating-within-and-across-city-agencies-to-harness-the-power-of-playful-learning#:~:text=By%202030%2C%20up%20to%2060,and%20health%20and%20well%2Dbeing.

Hart, R. (1979). Children’s Experience of Place. City University of New York.

Karsten, L. (2005). It all used to be better? different generations on continuity and change in s Geographies, 3(3), 275290. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280500352912

Karsten, L. (2016). City Kids and Citizenship. In V. Mamadouh, & A. van Wageningen (Eds.), Urban Europe : Fifty tales of the city (pp. 75-81). AUP. https://doi.org/10.26530/OAPEN_623610

Liverpool City Council. (2020). The Baltic Triangle Strategic Regeneration Framework. Liverpool. Retrieved from https://www.liverpoolbidcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/Baltic-Triangle-SRF.pdf

Nussbaum, M. (2013). Creating Capabilities. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Open Space. (2022). Retrieved 9 June 2022, from https://www.liverpool.nsw.gov.au/venues/parks-and-playgrounds/open-space

Oscilowicz, E., Honey-Rosés, J., Anguelovski, I., Triguero-Mas, M., & Cole, H. (2020). Young families and children in gentrifying neighbourhoods: how gentrification reshapes use and perception of green play spaces. Local Environment, 25(10), 765-786. doi: 10.1080/13549839.2020.1835849

Tillmann, S., Tobin, D., Avison, W., & Gilliland, J. (2018). Mental health benefits of interactions with nature in children and teenagers: a systematic review. Journal Of Epidemiology And Community Health, 72(10), 958-966. doi: 10.1136/jech-2018-210436

Weale, S. (2020). Youth services suffer 70% funding cut in less than a decade. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/20/youth-services-suffer-70-funding-cut-in-less-than-a-decade

Appendix A – Map of Site

An aerial map of a city
Figure 1. Aerial image of the Baltic Triangle (Source: Strategic Regeneration Framework, 2020, p.7.)

Appendix B – Interview Questions for Tristan Brady-Jacobs

  • Chronological overview of all activity related to the Baltic Green, i.e., when did it start, what date were the council threats enacted, and what remains on the Baltic Green today?
  • What were the original intentions (mission, goals, and outcomes) when you imagined the Baltic Green?
  • Can you recall some of the feedback and experiences of visitors to the site? Here I want to capture the diversity of users.
  • Having read the Baltic Triangle Strategic Regeneration Plan – they maintain the importance of public space to facilitate community cohesion and access to nature. They even comment that the ‘flourishing art scene’ ought to be celebrated. What went so wrong? Why was none of this appreciated?
  • Why do you think it went so wrong?
    1. Clashed with the neoliberal agenda of Liverpool City Council
    2. Was not in unison with the gentrified image of the Baltic Triangle
    3. Simply an attempt for the council to assert their authority and deter other communication action groups from following in your footsteps

Appendix C – Additional Community Response to the Dismantling of Baltic Green

A screenshot of a social media post with a picture of a field, parking lot, and buildings in it
Screenshot on Twitter of @PinkElliefont’s response to the demolition of Baltic Green (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

A screenshot of a social media post with a picture of a parking lot with cars in it on the edge of a field
Screenshot on Twitter of @AskLittleAlan’s response to the demolition of Baltic Green (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

A screenshot of a social media post with a picture of a fenced in field with trash scattered about
Screenshot on Twitter of @JHESolomon’s response to the demolition of Baltic Green (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

A screenshot of a social media post with an aerial picture of a fenced in field with trash scattered about
Screenshot on Twitter of @bettybrisco’s response to the demolition of Baltic Green (Source: Baltic Green Working Group Facebook Chat)

 

The Barrancas of Cuernavaca: Rescuing Lost Landscapes Hidden by Garbage

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

The first five people we spoke to in the San Anton neighborhood of the Mexican city of Cuernavaca didn’t know the location of the Salto Chico (small waterfall).

How can a once popular natural attraction, in the middle of a densely populated city, disappear from the mental maps of residents? Garbage.

The neighborhood’s larger waterfall, referred to as the Salto Grande or Salto San Anton, is known as a place to buy ceramic planters originally made from the local clay. A small effort is made to promote the waterfall and surrounding basalt formations to tourists.

Top and bottom: signposting the Salto Grande. Photos: Janice Astbury

Minutes away from the Salto Chico–who would imagine it’s there? Photo: Janice Astbury

The existence of the Salto Chico, however, only seems to be common knowledge among people who live a five-minute walk or less from it. Passing through a barely visible entrance off a narrow street, it is a surprise to discover that the Salto Chico boasts its own stunning waterfall and basalt columns. The decaying infrastructure of walkways, terraces, and hanging bridges indicates that it was once an attraction. How is it that such a place in the middle of a densely populated city has disappeared from the mental maps of residents? How has a place of such beauty become a dumping ground?

Bathe at your own risk: the Salto Chico. Photo: Janice Astbury

At some points, we must wade through garbage to move around a waterfall-fed basin still recognizable as the sort of iconic bathing pool associated with ecotourism and natural shampoo. The gate at the top of the stone stairs descending down into the ravine or barranca generally remains padlocked, and most people don’t care because the Salto Chico de San Anton is understood to be a polluted place where no one would wish to go.
The situation of the Salto Chico echoes that of most of the barrancas that have historically defined Cuernavaca. Known as “the city of eternal spring”, its pleasant climate is attributed to the cooling effect of its 46 ravines, which have a combined length of about 140 kms and run through all parts of the city (Alvarado Rosas & Di Castro Stringher, 2013).

City centre secret: the Salto Chico. Photo: Janice Astbury

In April 2016, as residents complained about the intense heat, the barrancas seemed to have lost their moderating influence. As Pedro Güereca García suggested during his presentation that same month at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos: the city of eternal spring has become the city of sewage drainage. At the Salto Chico, clean water from a spring mixes in with sewage from the houses of both the rich at the top and the poor clinging perilously to the sides of the ravine. Mechanics’ workshops add used oil to this sullied water, and other substances from various other sources are also incorporated—which is what happens in a place that belongs to nobody, explains César Salcedo, who is one of the people who does care deeply about the Salto Chico.

One of the many barrancas visible from the streets of Cuernavaca. Photo: Janice Astbury

Cuernavaca’s barrancas are also the connective tissue of the Chichinautzin biological corridor, in which the city is situated. They have traditionally helped sustain the Corridor’s high levels of biodiversity by allowing plant and animal species to both survive in and pass through a dense and expanding urban area.

The barrancas have provided connectivity for people, as well. Friends tell me stories of walking to school through the barrancas so that the daily commute became an adventure. They often conclude with a sigh as they think about how such experiences have been lost to their own children—a common narrative in much of the world. But even without the great transformation of the experience of childhood, Cuernavaca’s barrancas are no longer very attractive to children or anyone else. As another engaged citizen, Javier Ballasteros describes: “These rocks were formed over thousands of years, but people born since 1980 have no experience of the barrancas. They don’t know this place. Maybe they walk by or pass by here in the bus or in their car. We swam and played here all day. Families came on Sundays. That was 50 years ago. We’ve destroyed it in 50 years…I bring my grandchildren but they want to leave. They say: ‘Everything’s dirty and locked up, we can’t swim.’”

Living above the barranca. Photo: Janice Astbury

Living above the barranca. Photo: Janice Astbury

In addition to the considerable contribution of garbage and sewage made by the general public, the municipal government proposed in 2007 to turn a section of the barranca of San Anton (near the aforementioned waterfalls and in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood) into a landfill site. This was a perceived solution to the closure of the existing dump outside the city—thanks to a roadblock erected by fed-up local residents. After much protest by civil society organizations, the idea of formally turning the city’s greatest asset into a dump was dropped. However, the propaganda that accompanied the lengthy promotion of the project served to reinforce an image of the barrancas as places best suited to receiving waste.

Beside the busy road and supermarket car park…Photo: Janice Astbury

…A barely noticeable barranca one can still walk through or alongside. Photo: Janice Astbury

City centre wilderness that’s no longer a playground in San Anton. Photo: Janice Astbury

Dressed for a day at the Salto Chico. Photo: Janice Astbury

The presence of so much waste in places of natural beauty is a strange phenomenon. I began seriously thinking about it in 1983, during my first stay in Cuernavaca when a fellow passenger threw a bottle from a car window into a beautiful landscape. When I remonstrated with him, he proclaimed proudly: “Mexico is free!”

That moment has come back to me often and I still don’t really understand it. At that time, there was very little garbage in Mexico because there was little that was disposable—and most people wanted the deposit back on their bottles. I have been watching trash accumulate ever since in Mexico, in the U.K., and in various other parts of the world. My bewilderment reached a peak in 2007 in Honduras, when I discovered that a day out at the beach was like a day at the dump. Family picnics involved dozens of items in individual packets and the packaging would pile up around the picnickers as the meal proceeded. Late arrivals had to clear a space to sit before adding their own garbage. I was shocked—this was before I was familiar with the aftermath of sunny days in Manchester parks.

I really began to wonder if people saw garbage differently than I did, if they found the multi-colored packaging attractive, or their ability to purchase the packaged items as a sign of affluence. Or if, like the bottle thrower, they were perhaps pleased to be getting away with something, with not following the rules—which resonates in the context of the once rule-bound English parks, where resident park keepers even had the authority to lock up miscreants over night (Ruff, 2000). Or perhaps some people don’t even see the garbage—and don’t care if they add to it. Other species don’t necessarily care, either, as a key actor in looking after Manchester’s nature described: “We were standing on a small bridge and a heron landed on a shopping trolley in the stream, and you know shopping trolleys are not a problem, they can be a habitat just like any other. It’s only us that have a problem with shopping trolleys.”

Precious asset or waste disposal site? Photo: Janice Astbury

Uncared for places viewed through rusty fences. Photo: Janice Astbury

The sign says free entry to a lookout onto a barranca but the chain prohibits any entry. Photo: Janice Astbury

The witness to the heron on the shopping cart and I agree, however, that it is extremely important that people connect with urban nature, and that a lot of people do mind if places look uncared for. To many such people—potential stewards of urban nature—wilder versions of urban nature look unkempt. Uncontrolled environments, such as “urban wildscapes”, i.e. “urban spaces where natural as opposed to human agency appears to be shaping the land” make some people very uncomfortable (Jorgensen, 2011, p. 1). They are seen as wastelands to which it is appropriate to add more waste. This means that although urban wildscapes are important places for some people  (see Jorgensen, 2011) and for reappropration by other species, it is important for a significant portion of urban nature to show signs of care and to invite people into them (as I discussed in an earlier essay). At a minimum, people should not be met with locked gates.

Locked gates and garbage can make extraordinary urban landscapes, where nature could be at its most visible and interesting, become undervalued and, eventually, almost forgotten.

Behind the falls. Photo: Janice Astbury

Cleaning up. Photo: Janice Astbury

But things are changing in the hidden landscapes of Cuernavaca in part through the leadership of people who have cherished childhood memories of the barrancas and want to pass their attachment on to the next generations: “It’s about the grandchildren”, several of them tell me—and about engaging youth in the process of transformation. Nearing the end of our quest to find the Salto Chico and now in close proximity to it, a women points us in the right direction before we can even voice our question.

Descending the steps, we see the hundred or so people who have got there before us and already started work. “I don’t know if we’ll get it all cleaned up today,” says César, who is playing an organizing role while insisting that it is not an initiative of any particular group, but of civil society in general. I share his assessment as I survey the scene, noting that some sections of the path passing under the waterfall are buried under more than a foot of waste. However, within a few hours, the place has been completely transformed by dozens of mainly 20-somethings, with a complement of the older people who had played there as children, and of children who perhaps hope to play there yet. “The idea is to look after and restore our barranca here where we live” says César, “and in doing so to set an example for other people in other neighborhoods to do the same, to show them what is possible.”

The difference a day makes. Photo: Janice Astbury

The people who are beginning to look after the barrancas now are trying to restore places they care about. Some of them also think in terms of restoring ecosystem services that they value, including those of clean water supply, temperature regulation, and flood mitigation, as well as recreational opportunities. Some see cleaning up as a political act, even a transgressive act. If mess is normal, clean provokes rethinking, as do citizen led initiatives versus reliance on government, says Javier, who works tirelessly during the cleanup. He doesn’t wait for organized events to do this and he later showed me viewpoints and entrances to the barranca, which he regularly sweeps up to make them look more attractive. He extracts the dead leaves and other organic matter to make a substrate for the street planters that he constructs from recycled crates and installs all along his street, which he also cleans up. “I’m doing an environmental education campaign,” he says, “but not with my mouth.”

Javier says that many people have asked him why he’s cleaning the street. “Who’s coming?” they ask, some are sarcastic and many say that it’s the government’s job. I tell him about my similar experiences cleaning up Manchester canals, where people asked me more than once if I was doing community service as punishment for some crime I had committed. But Javier’s neighbors have for the most part stopped littering and some have started watering the plants; some have asked him if they can have a planter in front of their house. He would now like to acquire a key to the gate of the Salto Chico so he can regularly take groups of young people in to clean and restore it. Javier notes that a lot of people talk about problems in terms of what’s wrong with government, but he says, “I don’t like to talk about good or bad governments; I prefer to speak about good or passive people, because the destruction of beauty was done by all of us, and now we’re waiting for someone to fix it. We need to do it and we can begin to make a difference in days.”

Despite César’s insistence that no one should put their stamp on the big cleanup or the overall effort to restore the barranca, local politicians are soon descending the path, ready to pose for photographs. “That’s ok,” says César, “they bring people. [The people from different agencies] bring people. We need them all… We have short, medium, and long-term goals. Citizens can keep working and if it’s not this government that gets behind it, then maybe it will be the next one. The stages are first cleaning up, then water treatment, and then reforestation of the barrancas.” César believes that the barrancas need the protection of being classified as parks in order to limit what is built on them and what is thrown into them. He wants them to move from places that belong to no one to places that belong to everyone.

Janice Astbury
London

On The Nature of Cities

References

Alvarado Rosas, C. & Di Castro Stringher, M.R. (2013). Cuernavaca, ciudad fragmentada: Sus barrancas y urbanizaciones cerradas. Universidad Autonoma del Estado del Morelos and Juan Pablos Editor, S.A.

Jorgensen, A. (2011). Introduction to Urban Wildscapes. In A. Jorgensen & R. Keenan (Eds.), Urban Wildscapes (pp. 1–14). Taylor & Francis USA.

Ruff, A. (2000). The biography of Philips Park Manchester 1846-1996. School of Planning and Landscape, University of Manchester.

The Beaver, Cottonwoods, and Lucy: Preservation Is Not Enough

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

Over the years walking the greenway, I’ve been taken with how much the beaver sculpture is loved by passersby. And how it might connect people who are otherwise disconnected from nature and even their neighbors.
In a previous essay, Size Doesn’t Matter, Really, I made the case that even small scraps of urban green, such as Portland’s one-square-block Tanner Springs Nature Park can provide significant benefits to a community. Located in the city’s intensely developed Pearl District, Tanner Springs provides access to nature to thousands of nearby apartment dwellers and contributes to urban biodiversity as well. In some cases, these mini-greenspaces are the only access to nature local residents might have in their everyday lives.

I also highlighted  Heron Pointe Wetlands, a small remnant of green on the Willamette Greenway close to downtown Portland. With few riverine habitats remaining within the city limits, its importance far outweighs its half-hectare size.

Heron Pointe Wetland. Photo: Mike Houck

Located along the Willamette River, this postage stamp sized wetland is home to mature black cottonwood, ash, willows, elderberry and red-osier dogwood. Since the 1980s, there has been an ongoing conflict with the condominium owner’s association over the trees and native shrubs. Some in the association have an aversion to “messy” cottonwood seeds that waft onto balconies and the greenway path. Even as I write this, condo owners have launched another assault on the wetland vegetation, using the rationale that the Himalayan blackberry is an invasive weed on the city’s no plant list, despite the fact that the city has environmental policies in place that recognize even invasive species provide critical habitat on this reach of the Willamette River. But, along with the blackberries, they’ve also ravaged native stands of red-osier dogwood, willows, and native wildflowers, hacking limbs from the cottonwoods and ash trees to improve views to the river.

The Heron Pointe homeowners have cut both native and invasive species of shrubs and “pruned” trees as well. Photo: Mike Houck

Before “pruning”. Photo: Mike Houck

Lucy, Heron Pointe resident lecturing a group about the wetlands and her new beaver installation. Photo: Mike Houck

The ongoing conflict with the homeowners, more than three decades after having secured the wetland’s protection, is deeply frustrating. Often, however, when I’m at my lowest ebb, I get a shot of inspiration and a renewed passion for that miserable, scrappy little riverine preserve from an inanimate creature that occupies a place of honor along the greenway trail. A three-foot tall bronze beaver has captured my heart and apparently the hearts of passersby who cannot resist stopping to pat it on the head and leave small tokens of affection.

Ironically, the beaver was installed by a wizened, white-haired, wiry resident of the adjacent Heron Pointe Condominiums who was, by far, the most militant antagonist of the offensive, scruffy cottonwoods. Her name was Lucy. Lucy initially protested the trees blocked her riverine view.  When that failed she insisted the air-borne, fluffy snow-like seeds were a nuisance. Her final gambit was to claim the trees exacerbated her asthma.

In one of my most memorable Lucy episodes, as I was being wired for an onsite television interview I told the cameraman and interviewer that it was highly likely she would appear to harangue me about the cottonwoods. Right on cue, camera and audio rolling, she appeared and proceeded to poke me in the chest, demanding we remove the offending trees. Looking over my shoulder I could see the TV crew doubled over In laughter. Alas, none of the footage was used. I’d give anything to have that footage for the archives. The point being, of course, that even though we’d managed to save this postage stamp sized wetland from development, so long as it was in private ownership its long-term fate was not assured.

While dogged and strident in her loathing of those cottonwoods, Lucy was also sweet as could be. In fact, tree averse as she was, she rallied her fellow condo owners to work with the city’s environmental services bureau to remove invasive plants and replant with native species a couple decades ago. Sadly, several years ago her husband died of complications of Alzheimer’s. To honor him she installed a cast bronze beaver, an animal abundant on nearby Ross Island and along banks of the Willamette River; and one especially fond of wetland’s native species. More recently Lucy herself moved to an assisted care facility. As testy as she was, I admit to missing her frequent harangues.

Another incident, with another condo resident drove home the fact that merely protecting a patch of ground, particularly if it’s privately owned, is insufficient in the long term. Ongoing public education and long-term monitoring are also needed. In this instance after installing a beautiful, information-packed interpretive sign were sitting on a nearby bench quaffing a couple magnums of champagne to celebrate three years navigating the city’s bureaucracy to get the sign installed.

A woman soon sidled up to the sign and expressed her love of nature and wildlife. Incredibly, she then asked us, “Is there anything you can do to help us cut these trees down?” I responded, “do you think the wildlife you see has anything to do with those trees?” She replied, “Oh, I never thought of that” and walked off. “What”, I responded to my colleagues, “Do we need to hire someone to sit here and quiz passersby If they get the connection?”

City of Portland staff, Linda Dobson, Steve Bricker, Jim Sjulin installing the interpretive sign on their day off as the wetland is privately owned and they were not allowed to do the installation on city time. The sign’s graphic designer was Martha Gannett, Martha Gannett Graphic Design, far right. Photo: Mike Houck

The Interpretive Sign. Photo: Mike Houck

Fall. Photo: Mike Houck

Summer. Photo: Mike Houck

Christmas. Photo: Mike Houck

Spring. Photo: Mike Houck

Winter photo. Photo: Mike Houck

Mardi Gras. Photo: Mike Houck

New Years 2014. Photo: Mike Houck

Fourth of July. Photo: Mike Houck

Over the years walking the greenway, I’ve noted how much Lucy’s beaver is loved by walker and cyclists many of whom are unable to resist giving the beaver a pat on the head or leaving small twigs, a flower, or some other token of their affection. One greenway habitue’ even took to décorating it with attired apropos of the upcoming holiday or passing of the season. While I always look forward to seeing the feisty Anna’s Hummingbird fiercely guarding his nearby perch on a red-osier dogwood, I am equally delighted to find some new trinket, beaver-chewed twig, or outfit has been festooned on the much-beloved wetland icon.

At the Interpretive sign. Photo: Mike Houck

Cyclists of three generations checking out the beaver. Photo: Mike Houck

After years of haggling over pruning, clear cutting non-native blackberry, and arguments over views versus trees, the fact remains that constant vigilance is necessary to truly protect this small riverside wetland. I’m hopeful that Lucy’s beaver will continue to prompt walkers, joggers and cyclists to pause a few moments, perhaps only because they are bemused by the sculpture’s accoutrements, or more hopefully to pause a few moments to enjoy the last little patch of green on this reach of the Willamette River. One thing is certain. Lucy would be amused had she known that a passing beaver stopped recently just long enough to climb the steep river bank and fell a cottonwood not fifty feet from her sculpture.

Mike Houck
Portland

On The Nature of Cities

An actual beaver. Photo: Mike Houck

Beaver felled tree. Photo: Mike Houck

The Bicycle is a Catalyst for Nature Conservation

Many voices. Greener cities. Better cities.

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells

Fast, efficient and individualistic, the bicycle is no ordinary mode of transport. It’s a church, a gym, a community creator, a cash printer, a protest placard, a dopamine generator, a mechanical expression of self-determination, an icon of hope. It is touchable, attainable freedom.

It is also a tool for nature conservation and one that the City of Cape Town—indeed, any city—stands to benefit from.

Bicycles enhance our freedom. Photo: Georgina Avlonitis
Bicycles enhance our freedom. Photo: Georgina Avlonitis

My father is a boisterous character, half-man half-bicycle. Last month, he cracked two ribs after tumbling over his handlebars. I profited from his misfortune by taking his place in the world’s largest individually-timed cycle race, the Cape Argus. Egged on by minstrel bands and reels of cheering supporters, some donning fancy dress, I joined over 30,000 competitors to pedal 110 km around the breath-taking Cape Peninsula. The race is a magnificent celebration of sport, healthy living, unity and nature. It physically exposes and connects people to the region’s awe-inspiring natural beauty. The organizers are well aware of this, having furnished all finishing medals with images of iconic local species and the words, “Our Natural Heritage”.

The experience left me wondering whether bicycles could meaningfully contribute to nature conservation in a broader sense. The answer appears to be multifarious.

1. More bikes = more connectivity, awareness, compassion, and innovation

Exposure to nature nourishes the soul and fosters compassion for wildlife (and for fellow humans), especially in children. Urban citizens who never encounter wildlife, who never marvel at the complexity and fragility of nature, may feel indifferent to its plight.

By liberating green space and enhancing mobility, bicycles can reconnect people to nature and to each other. On a bicycle, one cannot turn up the music, wind up the windows, lock the doors and adopt tunnel vision. On a bicycle, one is exposed and alert to their surroundings. One is manoeuvrable, approachable and distractible. One can divert, slow and stop to examine oddities, follow intriguing scents, chat to curious strangers, explore unchartered streets, or just quietly observe wildlife.

With eyes and ears on the ground, cyclists feel a greater sense of place and a stronger connection to their neighbourhoods. Such interaction may ignite compassion for a city, its nature and people; inspire innovations for improving urban liveability; and instil the motivation to set about doing so. Certainly, cycling can render us happier, healthier, wealthier and calmer with more time and money to spare for community-centred activities including nature conservation.

Imagine:

  • A community of cyclists, proactively interested in their city, its nature and its people.
  • The ideas they will devise, develop and share, aimed at improving their city.

Bicycles enhance our mobility and connectivity. They enable interactions that would otherwise be impossible.  Photo: Georgina Avlonitis
Bicycles enhance our mobility and connectivity. They enable interactions that would otherwise be impossible. Photo: Georgina Avlonitis

 2. More bicycles = more space for nature

I recently visited a suburb of Johannesburg. Ecologically dull, aesthetically grim, traffic congested, socially segregated, it is dominated by roads, car parks and shopping complexes—a superb example of bad urban planning, a suburb designed for cars not people. Yet it resembles much of the modern world—a world that is rapidly transforming through low-density car-infatuated urban sprawl.

A bicycle consumes only a slither of the space that a car does, both in terms of lane width and storage/parking area.

Imagine:

  • The potential for reducing traffic congestion by converting car drivers into cyclists.
  • The projected urban sprawl that could be averted and the natural habitats that could be saved.
  • The area of concrete and tarmac that could be reclaimed, liberated and transformed into ecologically-vibrant, socially-inclusive multifunctional public space.

 3. More bicycles = less pollution, more resources

The life-cycle of vehicles and the road infrastructure that they necessitate is resource-ravenous and waste-flatulent. At the point of sale, a new car has already inflicted ecological damage globally not least through the extractive industries that support its manufacture. Regardless of manufacturing, conventional cars are woefully inefficient. Why do we need vehicles that are typically 25 times heavier than our own bodies? What a waste of natural resources! What needless environmental degradation!

Even if distant impacts are “out of sight, out of mind” then surely local impacts elicit concern. Vehicle emissions contribute to urban smog, impart respiratory illnesses and stain our lungs grey. Hydrocarbons, break fluids and other chemicals leak from cars poisoning our waterways. Noise pollution from traffic and road construction shakes the ground, awakens the sleeping and stresses the awake.

An average bicycle, on the other hand, produces comparatively negligible pollution. It weighs around one-sixth of our body weight and less than one-hundredth of an average car. It moves in silence, causing little disturbance to wildlife. Its full life-cycle impacts are dwarfed by those of a car.

Imagine:

  • The potential reduction in air, noise and water pollution by converting car drivers into cyclists.
  • The consequent enhancement of a city’s resource-efficiency and the reduction of its ecological footprint.
  • The water, mineral and energy resources that could be saved.

 4.  More bikes = more environmental justice

Green infrastructure generates multiple ecosystem services that support human wellbeing including education, recreation, spiritual fulfilment, storm water absorption, climate regulation, and food production. In an increasingly urbanized world, maintaining direct access to such benefits is challenging. Communities may suffer ‘nature deficit disorder’ which hinders child-development and induces psychological ailments. You are not alone if you can identify the logos of obscure commercial brands better than common bird or tree species. Affordable, safe public transport is not always available for carless families wanting to visit green spaces beyond walking distance.

Bicycles can address such environmental injustice: (1) by alleviating road traffic to allow for the establishment of additional green space; and (2) by extending one’s radius of accessible area to encompass otherwise inaccessible ecosystem services.

Imagine:

  • Establishing more equitably-distributed green space.
  • Enhancing the mobility of carless citizens to enhance the accessibility of ecosystem services.

Love is a dangerous game

Despite the enormous enthusiasm for cycling, so palpable at the Cape Argus, only a tiny, albeit increasing, proportion of Cape Town’s inhabitants dare to cycle on a regular basis. Their reasons appear multifarious yet rooted in fear: fear of colliding with reckless drivers (taxis deserve a special mention here for frequently endangering the lives of cyclists); fear of exposure to violent crime; fear of inhaling noxious traffic fumes; fear of arriving sweaty at work; and fear of being stigmatized.

These fears are legitimate, but all can be overcome. Local movements like the monthly Moonlight Mass and the annual Naked Bike Ride are helping to raise awareness of cycling in the city. For over a decade, NGOs like the Bicycle Empowerment Network have been addressing poverty and mobility through the promotion of cycling in low-income communities. However, the keys to a more bicycle-friendly city that reaps the aforementioned social and ecological benefits, lie primarily in the hands of the local government.

Thousands of cyclists gather under a full moon at Green Point in Cape Town, before cycling in mass through the city. Photo: Russell Galt
Thousands of cyclists gather under a full moon at Green Point in Cape Town, before cycling in mass through the city. Photo: Russell Galt

The City of Cape Town will become the 2014 World Design Capital presenting unprecedented opportunities to support urban initiatives fostering social and environmental progress; an opportunity to deploy the bicycle as an agent of urban transformation and as a catalyst for nature conservation.

To achieve this, the local government must:

  • Strengthen the protection of cyclists, better inform drivers, and enforce road safety;
  • Expand the network of formal cycle lanes and allow bicycles on board public transport;
  • Improve street lighting and tighten security to reduce crime;
  • Improve air quality by taking meaningful measures to reduce traffic congestion;
  • Launch a well-framed public campaign to promote cycling;
  • Incentivize employers to provide showers in the work place;
  • Identify and pedestrianize priority roads (e.g. Long Street and sections of Main Road).

By embracing the bicycle and its associated benefits, Cape Town will truly stand apart as a forward-looking, innovative city designed not for its cars, but for its people and the nature that underpins their wellbeing and prosperity.

Russell Galt
Cape Town