Popular descriptions of urbanization these days often describe humanity as having entered a “new urban era“, with more people living in cities today than they do in rural areas. Urban areas have a large footprint of impact on the rural countryside, and the line between the urban and the rural is particularly challenging to make in many parts of the world, where peri-urban areas, and even remote rural villages are dominated by the footprint of urban residents who extract resources from villages, pollute far away rivers and deforest remote landscapes, send remittances back to rural homes, and alter rural lifestyles towards more urban, consumptive behavior (Photograph 1).
Photograph 1: Farmers in a rural Indian village spread a millet crop on the road, so that urban motorists can drive their vehicles onto the dried ears, crushing them to make it easy to remove the loosened grains. Thus, rural areas take advantage of their connection with cities to reduce the manual labor involved with manual threshing of crops. Photo: Harini Nagendra
Policy makers and planners rely on hard distinctions between the urban and rural to devise strategies for urban planning, but such strategies are complicated by the fluidity between the rural and the urban.
Much attention has been given to differentiating the expanded footprint of the city on rural landscapes, through approaches such as the mapping of urban-rural gradients, that extend from the city center out past peri-urban and suburban landscapes to the rural environment. But equally common, though much less discussed, is the phenomenon of rurality within a city. The expansion of cities in many predominantly rural landscapes in Asia, Africa and Latin America has resulted in the city engulfing whole villages within its boundary, amoeba-like. These villages then exist within the city, often becoming converted to peri-urban slums with rural huts complete with livestock, co-existing next to affluent high rise apartments inhabited by software engineers. These areas tend to become the locus for rural migrants, leading to congestion in these areas coupled with high poverty and difficult living conditions. Such villages in the city are becoming increasingly common across Indian cities. Yetcity planners tend largely to ignore these areas, or at the most, term them urban slums. The dichotomous approach of the urban planner and the limitation of the discrete view of the urban vs the rural truly breaks down in such contexts.
In the Indian city of Bangalore, this is clearly apparent in areas within the city center, as well as at the periphery, where the influence of the rural is obvious. Many of the former villages located within Bangalore’s limits are easy to recognize based on obvious physical features such as the presence of rural style houses with thatched sloping roofs, the presence of Ashwath Kattes (Photograph 2), raised platforms around a sacred tree that create a central place for people to meet and talk, and the presence of livestock including cows and pigs in the heart of the city (Photograph 3).
Photograph 2: Ashwath kattes provide the central focus for a traditional village festival or jatre held annually in a village in Bangalore city limits. Attended by hundreds of participants from local villages, these festivals hold great cultural significance for these communities. Yet at the same time these traditional cultural practices are not immune to the forces of urbanization and globalization, with mass produced plastic toys being sold here alongside hand crafted wooden toys, and global icecream brands sold adjacent to local handmade snack foods. Photo: Harini NagendraPhotograph 3: Livestock and people co-exist in one of Bangalore’s oldest neighborhoods, Basavanagudi, established as far back as 1897. Photo: Harini Nagendra
Thus, cities do not only undergo a one-way path towards increased globalization and homogeneity of lifestyles and livelihoods. Cities in many parts of the world, as far flung as Beijing, Mexico City, Kampala and Bangalore, exhibit forms of rurality that are uniquely, intensely local. We need new ways to conceptualize, examine, illustrate and manage such scenarios. Urban studies need to move well beyond discrete conceptualizations of the rural vs the urban — even, I would argue, beyond approaches that attempt to characterize urban vs rural gradients in linear term — towards more continuous, multi-variable approaches that can truly capture and illustrate the multi-faceted nature of rurality within the city in a manner that captures some of its true complexity, and provide a way to still retain the unique charm of the local within the rapidly globalizing city.
Frameworks for understanding the gendered nature of urban waste management have yet to emerge and analyses on the relationship between sustainable urban resource management and waste re-use and recycling at the neigbourhood-level are few. Those that do exist are more focused on city-level industry and infrastructure. This article illustrates how gender relations differentiate the ways in which women as compared to men manage urban waste, and how urban waste management impacts the underlying inequalities and relations between women and men. By presenting a gender perspective, the article gives a starting point for understanding how neigbourhood-level innovation around the re-use and recycling of wastes can be re-framed to promote equal participation in sustainable urban resource management and contribute to gender inclusive socio-economic transformation in cities of Africa.
Unlike other productive resources such as land, energy, and water that are subject to the prevailing forces of demand and supply in the city, waste materials in much of urban Africa are usually unclaimed, lying free on the streets, in restaurants, and in homes in anticipation of utility maximizers motivated by the costs and benefits of marketing discarded materials. However, much of the neigbourhood-scale innovations that seek to balance the need for household income enhancement and urban environmental protection through organic and inorganic waste re-use and recycling have not been sufficiently written about and shared internationally. Yet, innovations within the urban waste economy can be up-scaled to help developing cities in Africa increase resource productivity and adapt to a future of resource limitations and climate uncertainty.
In Kampala city, Uganda, where I have lived and pursued most of my research, dwellers in the low-lying and less economically advantaged neigbourhoods are increasingly motivated by an intersecting set of socio-economic and environmental factors to add value to discarded materials. The observable types of waste vendors include: i) regular waste vendors, ii) wholesale waste dealers, and iii) home to home waste dealers. Regular waste vendors own permanent spaces in markets, under a shed roof constructed by the authorities, for which they pay monthly rent, selling banana peelings, sacks, lint, and chicken litter as their commodities. These vendors collect waste materials from households and communities in the evening and bring them to the market early in the morning. Wholesale dealers, conversely, largely sell inorganic wastes which include plastic tins; bottles; and metal and glassware, which have a long shelf-life when compared to what regular waste vendors deal in.
Regular waste dealers. Image: Living Earth Uganda
Unlike the regular vendors, wholesale dealers can access or control or own land and housing spaces where they can collect and sort large volumes of waste. A case in point is a demonstration center in a suburb known as Kasubi-Kawaala, in the northwestern part of Kampala city, which occupies approximately 50 x 60 square feet for the collection of banana peelings, plastic bottles, tins, sawdust, cow dung and metal. Wholesale dealers also have access to external markets (outside the community). But the challenge is that prices for commodities are not usually set locally, but are set by marketplaces in China and Southern Sudan, for example. Wholesale dealers usually ‘step down’ from the external market price to allow for the collection, handling, storage and transportation of the materials to the nearest, most advantageous buyer outside the community.
Wholesale dealer of Plastic Bottles in Kampala City. Image: Living Earth Uganda
Home to home waste vendors collect plastic and soda bottles, tins, newspapers, food stuffs, saw dust, cow dung and banana peelings from restaurants, marketplaces, retail shops and residential premises in all parts of the city. From the responses given, these vendors can carry 30 to 40 kg of waste depending on the type of item they have collected. From empirical observations, these vendors are usually male youth (aged between 18-30 years) and boys (aged between 10-16 years); they are frequently associated with illegal waste dumping. These vendors walk long distances between the upland and low-lying areas of Kampala city in search for the desired volumes of waste materials. They have no designated distribution points like wholesale dealers and regular waste vendors do. The most common waste innovation marketed by all these types of vendor are garbage briquettes. These are created when banana peels and other dried organic material are put into a large bin and burned at high heat and low oxygen, which creates a kind of charcoal material made of garbage. This is then crushed and mixed with clay and cassava flour (as a glue) and rolled into balls to create briquettes that can be used instead of charcoal.
Garbage briquettes burning on a locally-made charcoal stove. Image: a family kitchen in Kampala
Gender relations as an urban phenomenon that socially defines individual roles, needs, and expectations within a network of human interactions shape socio-economic routines in the urban waste economy from a number of fronts. First, waste is a heterogeneous material and difficult to describe or classify. This is because the definition of waste can be very subjective: what represents waste to one person may represent a valuable resource to another. For example, oily milk packages may be used as fuel; leftover food may be fed to pigs and goats; discarded cardboard may serve as walls and roofs of houses. The classification of discarded materials may be influenced by the gender of the person making the judgment. What looks like ‘junk’ to women may be motorcycle parts to men; what looks like ‘dirt’ to men may be compost or fertilizer to women; there are myriad examples of different sexes “seeing” things differently (Muller, 1998). This means that waste needs to have a strict gender sensitive legal definition to comply with the law; such strict definitions have financial and legal implications for private businesses, local authorities, communities, and central governments.
Second, experiences from the communities have shown that as men and women participate (or not) in managing waste within the household, their relationship to discarded materials may depend on who they are, as much or more than on what they do. In particular, the frequently subordinate status of women may affect their general access to and control of resources, so that the “waste” materials or waste related activities may be the only ones which are available to them. This implies that new schemes for managing waste materials, which are blind to women compared to men’s activities, may destroy fragile livelihoods. Third, the household/social arrangement surrounding the use of waste reduction/recycling technologies must be innovated for proper waste management options. Reduction involves good practice, input material changes, and technological changes for environmental cost savings arising from producing less waste, which include savings in energy costs, waste storage space, transport costs, and lower emissions into the air, the water, and on land.
Waste reduction or recycling techniques, however, are often seen in highly limited terms as particular mechanical, chemical, or biological processes used in making one good for another. The extremely narrow view of technology that emerges from such a limited outlook does little justice to the “social content” of technology. The making of things involves not merely the relationship between, say, raw materials and final products, but also with the social organization that permits the use of specific techniques of production in homes, factories, or workshops. This means that the so-called “productive” activities that technology does, may be parasitic on other work being done, such as housework and food preparation, cleaning, and the care of children and adults as a source of labor for the operations. Technology in waste management is, in this regard, not only about equipment and its operational characteristics but also about social arrangements that permit the usage of equipment and the so-called productive processes carried out.
Technology for sanitation in public places—that is, waste collection and recycling machinery—has gender related questions that are critical for success in the targeted communities. For example, can women-owned enterprises as well as men-owned enterprises afford the investment? Are women-owned enterprises able to generate a higher work volume to pay for such investments, to the same extent as men-owned or mixed enterprises? Do women as well as men have equal access to the necessary training? Can women as well as men continue with related income earning activities, such as sorting the waste? How does new technology affect the health of women compared to men? Does it create equal risks or offer equal protection against health risks? Leaving such issues to the existing forces of competition and inequality in society may reinforce, or even increase, women’s social-economic disadvantage.
The re-use of ‘waste’ involves using a product or package more than once or re-using it in another application. Examples of re-use include re-using supermarket consumer bags, glass milk and water bottles, re-trading partly won tires or selling car scrap to merchants. Reusing extends the life of the material used and therefore reduces the waste quantity requiring treatment and disposal. However, waste re-use can be affected by consumer preferences that may be different in the case of women compared to men. Men and women value waste materials differently and see their usefulness for different purposes, such as domestic utility, saving on household expenditure, earning money or other purposes. Such issues are at stake in the field of gender and urban natural/social resources important in local livelihoods. Who uses which resources? Who controls decisions about how resources are used? Who is helping to sustain local resources and who benefits from this? How is the situation changing? Answers to these questions must be sought through gender-focused research in waste management.
Lastly, public gatherings and committee meetings at the neighborhood and community levels and at city councils are often the means of consulting the community about development priorities, and are increasingly a key ingredient in setting urban development agendas. In an era of intensifying pressure on municipalities for cost recovery and fiscal discipline, such consultations are also likely to be seen as means of securing a public commitment to pay for private waste management services. Here, too, gender considerations are important, as women and men may differ in their priorities for new or improved services, preferences for the type of service, and willingness and ability to pay. Several elements are at play when a community is consulted about waste services. The first is that women and men are likely to have different interests regarding environmental improvement, based on the different uses they make of the immediate environment. The second is the nature of the consultation process itself. This concerns the composition of the committees that take decisions and the forms of representation between the lower level and higher level committees. The ways in which the negotiation with the city council is structured, and the time and setting of the meetings may define the environment as “men’s” space, an environment in which women are not comfortable or free to express their opinions. Community consultation also concerns the degree to which a process of empowerment takes place among community groups. Do men and women, and members of different social groups, have equal opportunity to understand issues involved, to express their opinions and influence the outcomes? Simple but crucial decisions in this respect might concern the choice of the meeting place and time, language used, and division of representative tasks, such as negotiating with the local authorities.
This gendered understanding of the urban waste economy is advantageous to interventions that seek to achieve a balance between urban economic development, long-term ecological sustainability and social justice through the following ways:
Studies – disaggregating waste management modes and preferences by sex, and undertaking environmental health impact assessments by comparing vulnerability using gender-based variables such as what roles women play compared to men in collecting, sorting, disposing, storing, reuse and recycling of waste at multiple scales (household to community to city levels).
Capacity development – training opportunities on sustainable urban waste management are offered to an equal number of female and male change agents/ambassadors to promote practices that not only safeguard communities against waste-related hazards but also offer economic opportunities through re-use and recycling. This can be vital to the empowerment of communities, especially when participants acknowledge and acquire the ability to transform the household/neigbourhood waste activities into credible and environmentally sound businesses, and are capable of negotiating for enabling standards, regulations, and partnerships with formal institutions, mainly the private sector and local government authorities.
Incubation centers for cleaner technologies – gendered innovations as the process of integrating gender analysis around women’s and men’s roles, and research into technology development for commercial and non-commercial management of urban waste, can enhance the quality of outcomes. This research can be completed through interdisciplinary collaborations between gender experts, natural scientists, urban economists, and engineers working together to reform research agendas and institutions.
India is on a rapid path to urbanisation. While currently only 30% of India’s population lives in cities, this is changing rapidly. Plans have been recently announced to build 100 new “smart cities” across India, with an ambitious plan that includes the proposed investment of 1.2 billion US dollars in 2015. Many of these predicted future ‘smart’ cities will come up on farmland and pasture, often commons land used or managed by the local village. Some predictions indicate that 600 million Indians may live in cities by 2031.
In the urban India that is increasingly becoming our future, the focus of administrators has largely remained on infrastructure provisioning: for roads, energy, piped water, and increasingly, for internet access. The focus on a sustainable vision of planning rarely includes a consideration of green spaces. Yet the importance given to trees and plants seems high in comparison to that given to urban wildlife, which hardly ever figures in the conversation about city planning in India. Wildlife conservation remains a discussion centered on the rural and the forest, spaces that are increasingly shrinking as the city enlarges its footprint on the rest of the country. In this era of rapid urbanization, can we hope to derive a different, urban ethic of nature conservation? One that goes beyond the popular urban fetishization of nature via protected area tourism and wildlife photography, to a more inclusive consideration of how to deal with the challenges of the coexistence of the human with the wild in a city?
Begur Hero Stone Inscription, now preserved in Bangalore Museum
Urban wildlife plays a major role in the imagination of nature in cities. One of the most interesting narratives in the changing history of nature in the city of Bangalore can be constructed around wildlife. Epigraphic inscriptions found on hero-stones, pillars, rocks and temple foundations around Bangalore are filled with tales of hunts and wild beasts. At Kengeri, a satellite city of Bangalore at the south-west periphery, an inscription from 1060 AD commemorates the death of Rama-Deva, killed by an old boar while on a hunt. A series of inscriptions from Kanakapura taluk (south-west of Bangalore, near the Bannerghatta Tiger Reserve), describe the death variously of Rajendra-sola-valanadu from a tiger attack in 1118 AD, of Vellala Angandan from a tiger attack in 1120 AD, and of Sokka-Ilingatton and his dog in a boar hunt in 1310 AD. Hunting wild beasts was a kingly activity and a way to gain prestige: thus most of these inscriptions make it a point to mention that the victim was also a victor, piercing and killing the beast before dying. Yet the consequences of the hunt, and of death thereafter, were borne not just by the hunter but his entire family. Thus, the inscription from 118 AD states (after the death of her husband): “Thereupon his wife S’ikkavai, daughter of Vasavagamundar, entered the fire” (i.e. committed ritual sacrifice).
Tiger hunting in India 1880’s
Deaths due to wild animal attack were not just a consequence of hunting, but occurred as a consequence of making a living in an environment populated with wildlife. An inscription of 1351 AD from Kanakapura taluk describes the death of Vira-Somaji who “having gone to tend the cattle, was attacked by a big tiger and went to swarga” (heaven), while another inscription from 1653 AD commemorates the death of Chudappa’s son Devappa, mauled by a tiger. Presumably there were a larger number of such deaths, though of people not deemed significant enough to construct hero stones in their commemoration…!
Indian rulers were of course known for their fascination with the wildlife hunt. Yet some of the most grotesque of hunts resulted from the intersection between the British imagination of the wild within the confines of the city. Urban “hunts” were a favourite pastime of the British officer in Bangalore, influenced by Indian royalty’s fascination with the wild beast as an object of hunting, used to demonstrate bravery and prowess. Yet the urban hunt in actuality demonstrated neither of these supposedly masculine virtues. Hunts in the city were conducted by British officers on horseback, armed with guns and spears in the urban backdrop of Bangalore’s race course. Tigers and other wild cats were brought in cages from the forests surrounding Bangalore, often supplied by the Mysore maharajah. An account by a British officer James Welsh, in 1811 narrates in gruesome detail the hunting of an unlucky tiger transported in a cart from the nearby town of Ramnagara. When his cage was opened on the Bangalore racecourse, the tiger immediately knocked over four native sepoys, and chased British and Indian officers around the racecourse. The tiger was eventually killed by a group of twenty peons who surrounded him with long swords and shields, despatching him with over a hundred wounds. (Meanwhile the British officer who had arranged for the hunt complained bitterly that the natives had cut a tiger which he had already speared and killed.) In the vicinity of Bangalore, the Bangalore Hunt was a family hobby. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, members of the Mysore Royal family, European and Anglo-Indian participants trampled over agricultural fields, accompanied by hounds and horses, reckless of the damage caused to local farmers.
Lord and Lady Cuzon, governor of India in 1903 with tiger
For the natives, the dangers of wildlife were severe as the city grew, leading to an intensive period of targeted kills. During an 18 month period in 1835-1836, 2397 cattle and 14 humans were killed by wildlife, with an additional 9 people wounded in the division of Bangalore. 1 elephant, 22 tigers, 55 cheetahs, 21 leopards and 1 bear were destroyed during the same time. In 1836, rewards were instated for the destruction of wild predators, after which their number greatly decreased.
About 2 centuries later, the extermination of wildlife has been spectacularly successful. With the exception of Bannerghatta Tiger Reserve, adjacent to the southern border of the city, tigers are not to be found elsewhere (although I have seen a child of about 12 wonder if tigers lurk in an exotic Eucalyptus plantation adjacent to a road choked with traffic near my house!). Some types of wildlife are harder to confine to boundaries. Elephants, for instance. A few months ago, several schools near my home were closed for a couple of days while a herd of elephants moved through the surroundings, trampling over tennis courts and damaging lawns at one school. While we do not know what the elephants thought of such manicured green spaces, we do know that Bangalore’s newspapers were full of alarm at the “rampaging” elephant herds, with people converging in large groups and shining flashlights at the herd, further disorienting them and rendering it difficult for them to return to their familiar forest habitat.
My friend Madhu Katti (also a TNOC writer) has written about other invasions of urban habitat by wildlife in recent times, including the return of the lesser flamingos to Mumbai’s busy port harbour, and the San Joaquin kit fox to central California. These success stories are perhaps easier to handle than the challenges of dealing with a herd of marauding elephants in a city. The herd that visited Bangalore also sadly killed four people in the rural areas surrounding the city during their brief excursion. Animal-human conflicts are on the rise across India, as the city continues its seemingly relentless advance into the countryside.
Yet animals can hardly be to blame for this situation. The roots of the conflict seem to lie deeper, in our very framing of the wild beast as the “other”, a being to be valorized in battle, conquered in a hunt, trapped in a cage, butchered for trophies, and exoticized in print. In our smart cities, can and do expect high speed digital highways where we can browse for photographs of tigers and elephants, and watch spectacular youtube videos of wildlife at a safe distance. Yet can we see the real thing? Unless we seek out a different imagination of coexistence with nature—on her terms, as much as on ours—we lack hope for the maintenance of urban nature in an increasingly urban planet.
The garden has deep roots in human beings’ evolving sociocultural imaginary. We have created and been around gardens for thousands of years—and the nature of and within these gardens shift and change depending on needs, ideas, and priorities. Gardens—like the works in this volume—form part of the stories we tell about ourselves.
One morning before school, my father hurriedly interrupted my sister and me at the breakfast table, with a look of mischief in his eye, and an instruction to follow him, quickly and quietly, into the garden.1 It was a relatively chilly morning, at least by the standards of generally sunny and temperate Johannesburg. Our morning routines were usually quite rushed, so my father’s slow and deliberate steps from the front door to the far side of the house, us following in eager anticipation and confusion, disrupted the rhythm of the weekday mundane. Our house was located in a relatively newish suburb, somewhat on the periphery of this ever-expanding city. We had wild veld2 growing on neighbouring undeveloped plots and on the roadsides. It was not uncommon to see snakes and meerkats on our walks around the adjacent koppies,3 and hadedas were frequent visitors on our suburban lawn. Lizards sunning themselves on rocks and the odd translucent gecko on our bedroom ceiling (not to mention other critters like rain spiders who would seek respite indoors after a thunder shower) were not unusual curiosities. But these were paltry sightings in comparison with what was waiting for us under the exposed, creosoted eaves of our clay-tiled roof.
Tip-toeing, we caught up to my father: one finger placed on his mouth, with his other hand pointed to the under-hang. The square root of his gesture invited our gaze to follow it upwards, but it took some time for our eyes to adjust to the jarring chiaroscuro: the dimness of the roof under-hang set against the brightness of the early morning highveld sky. Eventually, the silhouette of a medium-sized furry creature came into focus. Slowly, spots started to develop, and I began to make out dark eyes and a black nose encircled by a pinch of white snout. A bushy striped tail accentuated its curled body, which was nestled quite comfortably in the rather awkward right angle made by the wall stud and the wooden strut of the eave. Its eyes were steadily trained on us: a genet! It was both exquisite and ordinary, reminding us of the wild edges of our city. It was both the first and last genet to visit our house—at least to our knowledge—but the memory, almost three decades later, is still angular and distinct.
It seemed unusual then, to come upon a genet in our suburban garden—even though they are relatively common to the region. Our wonder that morning might sound especially strange to readers outside South Africa. It’s a well-worn trope that locals poke fun at foreigners who think that lions and giraffes freely roam the streets (they don’t). Growing up in Johannesburg meant that our exposure to wild animals had been reserved for trips to the zoo and game drives in the bush (the latter, far outside city limits). In fact, our city upbringing was a source of constant mirth in the family: at a tender age, my sister, upon witnessing our Italian grandmother gathering fresh tomatoes from her vegetable garden, commented on the strangeness of this enterprise. Her mother’s tomatoes came packaged in a box from the grocer (as though the provenance of both sets of tomatoes were materially different). The store produced the tomatoes, did it not, so why did Nonna need to toil in the garden to get hers?
Following that morning with the genet, anything now seemed possible. The city was alive with possibility. For weeks afterwards, I would pay careful attention to the margins of our garden and home. I’d find my eyes flitting to the nooks and crannies of the roof, and when playing outside, any movement seemed to promise a break from suburban monotony. During the school-run, my eyes would be trained on the roadside, scanning the edges of brush, as though willing another surprise into existence. I am not entirely sure what I was hoping to see: a mongoose scampering between traffic? A duiker slipping between the trees? Perhaps, if I was lucky, a porcupine hobbling over a rocky outcrop near the golf course? Unfortunately for me, these ideations remained mere flights of fancy.
Eventually, my attuned gaze began to soften, and I stopped searching the wild borders of our city. Yet, just when the excitement of that one school morning threatened to fade away, and slip off the corners of my memory, a tortoise surfaced in our back yard. This was even more impressive than the genet’s arrival. How did it get there!? After all, it takes a rather agile creature to negotiate a six-foot perimeter wall topped with barbed wire! It remains a cheerful mystery to this day.
I hope you can forgive this foray into personal anecdotes, but the theme of this year’s The Nature of Cities flash fiction competition—“the city in a wild garden”—summoned these childhood memories, where lines between city, garden, and wilderness were momentarily blurred. The memory of the genet and the tortoise work to remind me that cities should not, and are not, divorced from the surrounding natural world. Cities are part of ecosystems. A harmful history of anthropocentrism is largely to blame for thinking of cities and nature as antinomies. “The city in a wild garden” invites a radical reimagining of the city. Instead of maintaining so-called neat boundaries between city and nature, here the city— through this theme—situates urban space within nature, hybridising the urban and destabilizing the scope and dimensions of what we have come to think of as city space. It is trenchant, too, that the garden is imagined as a wild space—not a manicured or heavily cultivated zone of human interference. It thus normalizes the wild garden as a feature of city space—not something relegated to the country or undeveloped land on the outskirts of the city. The notion of a garden as wild actively subverts the etymology of the word “garden,” which originally signalled an “enclosure” or that which was “fenced-in.”
Entrants were asked to write short stories with a target length of 750-words or less, set in the present or future (either near or distant), and inspired by this phrase, “city in a wild garden.” In keeping with The Nature of Cities’ focus on greener cities for the benefit of both people and nature, the stories themselves needed to feature the following three components: cities, nature, and people. As part of the brief, writers were asked to imagine cities “in which nature and people co-exist, cities in which the relationships between the human-made and the natural are imagined differently.” The competition’s entry guidelines were otherwise quite expansive and invited stories from a range of genres from science fiction to magical realism, inviting narratives that contemplated food security, climate change, wild nature, love stories, and utopian visions of green cities. The call received over 1000 submissions, from an impressive array of countries (101 in total). Two rounds of adjudication then commenced. The first round (consisting of almost one hundred judges) whittled the number of stories down to 150 submissions. This longlist was then forwarded to an executive committee of thirteen jurists, who ultimately settled on six prize-winning stories and a total of forty-nine entries (from twenty countries) which are collected in this book.
The collection, City in a Wild Garden, boasts a diverse array of gardens and types of gardeners. We find:
kitchen gardens and vegetable gardens;
unkempt, wild, and overgrown gardens;
suburban gardens and neighbourhood gardens;
balcony gardens, vertical gardens, and rooftop gardens;
Botanical gardens, animalled city-gardens;
people turning into gardens;
watchful gardens;
urban guerilla gardens;
… and war-torn gardens.
There are gardeners, old and young;
radical gardeners;
and potential gardeners (equipped with seed banks);
climate-change–combating gardeners;
people who plant gardens to remember;
and gardeners who are both plant and planter.
Ari Honarvar, from San Diego, penned the winning entry, “The Pomegranate Tree,” which follows a nine-year-old child in Pakistan, who helps her father finish smoking the last drags of cigarette in a drone-attack–ravaged garden. The titular tree bears no fruit as a result of the toxic debris caused by exploding ordnances. When the little girl thoughtlessly crushes an ant with a rock, her father allegorizes the garden’s ant colony as a means of developing her empathy for other living things. This poignantly throws into stark relief the inhumanity of the war being waged around them.
In second place, we had two prize winners. The first story, Rahul Kanvinde’s (Mumbai), “Monkey Business” is set in Delhi and presents an amusing postcolonial adaptation of the “dog ate my homework” ruse but now with the added benefit of promoting environmental justice: a bureaucrat plants bananas strategically across offices in a government building so that a monkey takes off with an important government file, which (not so accidentally) helps to thwart a deforestation plan. The other second-place prize was won by Bostonian, Jonathan Bronico with a story entitled, “Plua Koroa.” Bronico’s narrative celebrates traditional ecological knowledge: a mother uses plants for medicinal purposes, presenting an effective critique of the narrative’s Panamanian decree that forbids the cutting and foraging of wild plants.
Tied for third-place prizes were Heidi Ball for “Pomegranate Heights” (a charming love story about food security and fecund balcony gardens), C.Y. Ballard’s “The City Incarnata” (which imagines a dryad, who, through urban-wide rhizomes, pollinates her city), and Fernanda Castro’s haunting “Passing Season” (where every year skyscraper walls disappear and migratory birds pass through, unfettered by glass and concrete; yet, with this “passing season”, a grandmother and child observe the event together for the very last time).
Gardens in the collection are polysemic and teeming with potential. The multiplicity and variety of gardens on display rub away at the obdurate edges of brutalist skyscrapers, and call for reflection amidst humans’ capacity for both destruction and renewal. Many hands shape these narrative gardens. These can be complicated and heterogenous spaces; this rings true for this collection, and for us, as readers, who see this in our lived experiences of reified, physical gardens. Gordon Campbell writes in Garden History: A Very Short Introduction4 that “gardens are living creations that never stand still” and likens them to the flux doctrine, articulated through Heraclitus’s River: “one cannot step into the same river twice; the same might be said of gardens” (4).
Gardens are thus extremely variegated in form and function. The humble vegetable garden satisfies alimentary requirements, whereas, the allotment garden provides an excuse to be outside, enjoy the fresh air, and get some exercise. Remembrance gardens are places for reflection and memorialisation. Urban guerilla gardening challenges the types of locations we think suitable for gardens, and softens rough edges of unused and neglected spaces with new life. The act of gardening is therapeutic, centering—a meditative task that trains eye and hand into careful and productive partnerships to seed the earth and nurture the sprouting growth of young seedlings and saplings. In tony suburbs, gardens can be a narcissistic industry, where the aesthetic economy of landscape architecture signals wealth and privilege. Yet, other gardens, like communal gardens, can refute pecuniary excess, and instead welcome city residents from all walks of life to gather together through the act of planting. Rooftop gardens (for instance, acros Fukuoka in Japan), hanging and vertical gardens (which call to mind the residential towers of Bosco Verticale in Milan), and greenways (probably most famously, the Highline in New York) have presented different architectural opportunities to green the city—rehabilitating industrial and commercial wastelands, by reintroducing organic life into the fissures of concrete, brick, and stone.
The garden has deep roots in human beings’ evolving sociocultural imaginary. We have created and been around gardens for thousands of years—and the nature of and within these gardens shift and change depending on needs, ideas, and priorities. Gardens—like the works in this volume—form part of the stories we tell about ourselves. They feature in poetry, paintings, and literature. The garden, as an idea, underlies the buttressing narratives of ancient human culture and society: whether existing in the terrain of belief (the Garden of Eden in the Abrahamic tradition), history and myth (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), or even allegory—as in the case in Shakespeare’s Richard II.5
The gardeners, in Act 3, Scene IV of the Bard’s history play, compare kingdom to garden, remarking that
… O, what pity is it
That he had not so trimm’d and dress’d his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear and he to taste
Their fruits of duty: superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.5
They liken the king’s neglect of his realm to an untended, unpruned garden. This metaphor of the cultivated garden as representative of order, respectability, and fruitfulness ties in with the Renaissance notion of the garden as the apotheosis of human mastery over nature— imposing order over the non-human world. Gardening, from this vantage point, lent coherence to nature, mirroring the Great Chain of Being—the hierarchical construct that was believed to order all matter on Earth, placing humans atop all other earthly creatures. This would then later contrast with the appreciation of a wilder natural topography observable in the poetry and paintings of the Romantic period: works which eschewed industrial regularity and rather celebrated softer, wilder landscapes (see William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” or John Constable’s The Hay Wain). The Romantics sited uncultivated vistas as the liberating sources of creativity, pleasure, and virtue. Gardens have been famously lauded and metaphorized by the likes of Chaucer (his partially translated, “The Romaunt of the Rose”), Barrett Browning (“Beloved, thou has brought me many flowers”), Tennyson (“Come into the Garden, Maud”), Dickinson (“New feet within my garden go”), Lowell (“Behind a Wall”), Frost (“Lodged”) and Auden (“Their Lonely Betters”). More recently, anthropocentric views of nature have been challenged, and different representational modes and epistemes have been promoted.
Moving away from representations and allegories, gardens as physical and geopolitical realities have changed significantly over time. The position of the garden, where and how it takes up space, and whose hands tend it are all deeply political and ideological concerns. Grand, manicured gardens of the landed gentry of Europe telegraphed status and humans’ ability to subdue and order nature into pleasing patterns. Gentlemen gardeners designed, whilst those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic order tended. Colonial gardens became hallmarks of the landscapes of home—so-called imported “socio-natures”6—but brought with them invasive species that, in many cases, suffocated indigenous variants and erased Indigenous peoples’ methods of land husbandry. Flora and fauna (and even colonized people) were extracted from the colonies and displayed at Kew Gardens and the British Museum as well as at zoos and various international exhibitions (consider for a moment the fact that Ota Benga—a Mbuti, or Congo pygmy, was displayed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and at the Bronx Zoo). Colonial taxonomies extended dangerously beyond colonial landscapes and ultimately “instituted a hierarchy of human species through this episteme of difference, contributing to biologically determinist discourses of race, gender, and nature.”7 In My Garden (Book): Jamaica Kincaid writes about her own gardening and its attendant pleasures, whilst also exploring the nefarious impact of colonial gardens and plant collecting on world culture.8
Only relatively recently have ecologists and scholars started to embrace traditional ecological knowledge (tek) as an approach by which to reverse extractivist industries’ impact on the land. Indeed, Indigenous ecological engineering methods are being promoted over the entropic social metabolisms of industrial economies (with their reliance on non-renewable energies) in favour of fostering more sustainable ecosystems. Indigenous knowledge systems are increasingly being seen as the antidote to Western cultures’ view of society as separate and distinct from ecosystems; instead, “indigenous cultures routinely see themselves as embedded within ecosystems.”9 This ties into the explosion of the post-1980s movement of sustainable gardening: planting gardens that are soil sustaining, food producing, bio-diversifying, climate regulating, flood protecting, and erosion mitigating.
Significantly, the act of planting—which summons the activities and eco-political ethos of Wangari Maathai’s The Green Belt Movement in Kenya—is a transgenerational act. It is an act through which we think of and plan for tomorrow. A seed planted today does not proffer an immediate result. It is an investment in the soil that will yield flowering, fruiting, or shade months or many years hence. In an age of climate change and environmental degradation, gardening can be a radical political act. It is a challenge against what Rob Nixon10 has called the slow, incremental violence of environmental crisis. This type of violence, according to Nixon, has historically not received adequate media attention, or focused sufficient political will, as it lacks the spectacular sensationalism of more immediate national or international threats (i.e., war, terrorism, infectious diseases). What the world learned through Maathai’s ecological activism, is that gardening—or planting in a more general sense—is an affirming and enfranchising strategy of agents of environmentalism of the poor. It is a way in which to build food security and autonomy amidst the deleterious activities of hostile states and private companies that threaten livelihoods. Collective gardening is a form of social mobilization that infuses environmental emergencies with urgent visibility, working to redefine the types of violence societies should cooperatively be galvanising against: environmental collapse. Through a group’s activities as planters, the spectacle-driven attention span can be recast, to focus instead on what can be achieved through the communal “long durée of patient growth” to produce yields “for sustainable collective gain” (135).
In the city, gardens can be a staging ground for this fundamental reimagining of human-nature relationships. This can be a restorative process, as in Ros Collins’s “Raison d’être,” where a guerilla gardener finds solace and healing through gardening. Our eyes must become attuned to the extraordinary beauty and rejuvenating splendour of nature’s wildness. It is through the realm of art that we can safely play out the different possibilities of what sustainable urban futures can look like. This collection presents a geographically diverse contribution to this reimagining—some present warnings to us, whilst others offer up messages of hope. Let us look to the “wild edges of our garden” to see what we might find there (a genet or a tortoise, perhaps?). As the last line of Gitanjali Maria’s story, “Fireflies and Butterflies,” advises:
After all, you need a little wildness in the city to see nature’s beautiful things.
The title of this introduction has been borrowed from a line in Roli Mahajan’s story, “Essence of an Existence,” which also appears in this book.
Afrikaans for open grassland.
Afrikaans for small hills.
Campbell, Gordon. Garden History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Shakespeare, William. “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second.” William Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, Macmillan, 2007, p.870.
Swyngedouw, Erik. “Modernity and Hybridity: Nature, Regeneracionismo, and the Production of the Spanish Waterscape, 1890–1930.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 89, no. 3, 1999, pp.443–465.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth, and George B. Handley. Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. Oxford University Press, 2011, loc. 334.
Martin, Jay, et al. “Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): Ideas, inspiration, and designs for ecological engineering.” Ecological Engineering, 36, 2010, p. 839.
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press, 2011.
But it was all The Fear of Snow —Leonard Cohen, The Best
The power of the winter landscape has not escaped planners, and there have been several attempts to make the city more liveable and enjoyable in the winter.
The city in winter invokes diverse imaginaries—from romantic, beautiful, and magical to cold, dark, dirty, and hazardous. A quick Google search reproduces the first three imaginaries: romantic, beautiful, and magical (Figure 1).
Yet winter is often depicted as evil and threatening, especially in fantasy and folk tales. One only needs to look at Game of Thrones and the menacing “winter is coming” motto of the house of Starks (Figure 2).
Figure 1: From top left Ålesund, Norway;Helsinki, Finland; Quebec City, Canada[i]Inhabitants of cities that experience long, cold, dark winters, often dread the coming winter. Their everyday realities are closest to the last four imaginaries of winter in the city: cold, dark, dirty, and hazardous. In this article, I explore the winter ecologies of the city and the power those ecologies have in shaping the urban landscape.[iii]
The Urban winter landscape
Before I write any more, I should admit that I love winter. I love the first significant snow fall of the season and there is something exhilarating about stepping outside and breathing air so cold your eyelashes freeze. But I grew up in central Alberta where winter can sometimes start in late September and last until the end of May (with some breaks in between because of chinooks—warm winds that blow off the Rocky Mountains). As such, my perspective on winter is a bit more upbeat than that of many people. My childhood winters were also spent on a farm, and I did not fully experience an urban winter until I moved away to attend university in Ottawa. Since then, however, I have experienced winter in a variety of cities in North America and for the past seven years I have lived in Montréal, Québec. But, my understanding and experience of winter is limited to the northern hemisphere. While several cities at far southern latitudes also experience some snow and cold during winter, their winters are much milder because more of the surface area is water and there are fewer large land masses.[iv]This article focuses primarily on winters in cities at northern latitudes.
The romantic imaginary of the winter city is very visible in Montréal, with its many parks and winter activities. Montréal is an example of a good “Winter City”, which is a concept and movement that developed in the early 1980s to encourage northern cities to become more livable and enjoyable through the creation of socio-cultural activities (see box 1 for a short description of the Winter City concept and movement). Montréal has a long history of winter cultures: skating rinks can be found in almost every public park, snowtubing and sledding, urban ski and snowboard parks, as well as many other cultural activities throughout the winter (Figure 3).
But the urban landscape in winter is not always pretty and fun. The snow is not pristine white but rather brown, yellow, and grey. Sidewalks and roads are messy. The photos in Figure 4 show snowy streets in Montréal the day after a snowfall in early January (2019).
Figure 3: Examples of winter activities in Montréal. Top left photo is the refrigerated rink near Lac Castor in Mont Royal Park; top right ski/snowboard/tubing at Pente à Neige in Angrignon Park; bottom left Fête des Neiges, Parc Jean Drapeau; and Festival Montréal en Lumière.[v]Figure 4: Montréal streets and sidewalks covered in snow. The sidewalk has been cleared in the righthand photo.[vi]Along with being messy and dirty, streets in the winter are also difficult to navigate, especially if not cleared or have a layer of ice under any snow. Thaw and freezing throughout the winter can mean that sidewalks and streets can become skating rinks. Indeed, there are videos of people using ice skates on streets in Montréal and other northern cities. For many people, in particular elderly and disabled, the city becomes dangerous and impossible to travel around in the winter because of snow and ice. Making the city navigable and safe is a central aspect of socio-ecological management in northern cities (especially if cities want inhabitants to attend cultural events and engage in winter activities).
The City of Montréal, for example, has a website dedicated to snow removal with the slogan “Promoting mobility during the wintertime” (Figure 5). The website outlines snow removal policies, processes, and other information.
Figure 5: Ville de Montréal web site.[vii]Like many northern latitude cities, making Montréal accessible and liveable is complex and political. In the winter, the entire city seems to revolve around processes and ecologies that aim to reduce and eliminate snow and ice…in certain places.
Snow, ice, salt, and sand: managing the city in winter
Snow and ice for play in parks (and private yards) is desirable; snow and ice on sidewalks and roads is not. Snow and ice in desirable spaces can be understood as good winter natures while the snow and ice that get in the way of everyday routines are bad natures. Such bad nature is at the centre of urban management alongside other bad natures such as sewerage and grey water.
Snow removal
The snow removal process has made Montréal famous. Several years ago, the Boston Globe wrote an article entitled “Montréal Is Really Good at Snow Removal, Eh?”[viii] In the article, Sargent quotes a Globe and Mail journalist who argued that Montréal is
“…one of the snowiest major cities in the world, and its approach to snow is akin to the U.S. attitude toward Saddam Hussein—it’s an archenemy that should, ideally, be removed from the scene as fast as possible.”
Montréalers do indeed view snow as an object to eradicate (in certain places). The City of Montréal has a fascinating and relatively efficient system to eliminate snow, although many in the city would argue it is not efficient enough, but people outside the city seem to think otherwise, as the case with the Boston Globe article and the numerous videos on YouTube.
But removing snow and eliminating ice require the production of particular landscapes and ecologies in the city.
Spatial fix: snow dumps and chutes
The City of Montréal’s snow removal website outlines four stages of the snow removal process: salting, plowing, loading, and disposal. In many boroughs of the city, sidewalks (and sometimes bike paths) are cleared of snow before the roads (Figure 6). For sidewalks, salting and plowing are usually done at the same time, with tractors plowing the snow and spreading salt afterwards. The snow from the sidewalks is pushed to the ends of streets and becomes part of the street clearing process (Figure 7).
Figure 6: Right, cleared sidewalk, snowy street. Left, cleared bike path and snowy street.[ix]Figure 7: Snow at the end of a street awaiting removal.
Tractors (sometimes a parade of them) plow the snows from the streets, then the snow blown into waiting trucks (see Figure 8).Approximately 180 vehicles are used for roads and 190 for sidewalks in Montréal to clear the entire city.
According to the City of Montréal, more than 300,000 truckloads of snow are loaded every year (12 million cubic metres).
Once the streets, sidewalks and bike paths are cleared, the city’s inhabitants no longer have to think about the snow. Their everyday lives are more or less back to normal. But few think about where this 12 million cubic metres of snow is put?
Cleared snow either goes into sewer chutes or surface snow dump.
Figure 8: Typical snow removal process with tractors and trucks in Montréal.[xi]Figure 9: Map of snow dumps and chutes on the Island of Montréal.[xii]The largest snow dump site in Montréal is Saint-Michel, where approximately 3 million cubic metres of snow from six districts are deposited (Figure 10, left photo). At two other sites, Angrignon and d’Anjou, more than 1.8 million and 1.5 cubic metres respectively of snow is piled up.[xiii]
The creation of large snow dump sites can be understood as a spatial fix for a temporary accumulation problem. Rather than deal with the snow where it falls and accumulates, the unwanted ‘waste’ in urban life is removed to an out of sight location. The unwanted snow no longer concerns urban inhabitants once it is not visible and in their way. Such a spatial fix is similar to how we remove garbage and grey water from our houses.
Figure 10: Saint-Michel snow dump site in Montréal in winter (top) and summer (bottom).[xiv]The accumulation of snow in snow dumps can vary from year to year, but such sites are concentrations of salt, gravel, sand, oil and other road pollutants collected with the snow. While such pollutants may remain stable in the winter, come spring the meltwater becomes mobile. According to the City of Montréal, “meltwater from disposal sites is recovered and treated according to environmental standards”. This means that the water is pumped into the sewer networks and into the sewage treatment plant for treatment. But not all the salt and other waste will move with the water.
The ecology of sites like Saint-Michel is not well recorded. Snow can sometimes last well into the summer (and tends to blend in with the brown-grey colour of the cliffs because of the sand, gravel and other pollutants). During the spring and summer, the Saint-Michel dump also retains water (Figure 10, right photo). But the salt and other pollutants certainly have impacts on the ecology of site, as it does throughout winter cities.
Salt
Salt is still used in Montréal. Some cities have experimented with alternatives. Calgary, for example, recently began using beet juice to de-ice. Most cities, however, still use salt. Salt is spread with gravel and other abrasives (such as sand) on streets and sidewalks. In Montréal, an average of 140,000 tonnes of salt and abrasives are used each winter. But salt is also used by businesses, institutions such as hospitals and schools, apartment complexes, and homeowners. The aim of salting is to make it safer to move about the city. The use of salt is a touchy issue in cities such as Montréal. Icy sidewalks can be deadly for many elderly, children, and disabled, and not salting means that the city in inaccessible for them five months of the year. Many argue that salt is not necessary; that sand and gravel can be used alone. Indeed, there are a plethora of alternative products out there. However, if one looks at the porches of most houses and apartment buildings around Montréal, the usual bag of salt is visible. This is because salt is generally more effective and much cheaper
Yet while salt makes the winter city more accessible, it has numerous ecological impacts. Salt seeps into soils, runs off into sewer systems and waterways. In the case of Montréal, salt runoff into the St. Lawrence river is significant. The effect of road salt on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems is well known. Some of the effects include groundwater salinization, changes in soil structure, accumulates in aquatic ecosystems which then alters the composition of fish or aquatic invertebrate communities.[xv] Road salt can also pose a danger to urban wildlife such as birds and squirrels who may ingest too much either directly or through plants.[xvi]
The use of salt also damages human property. An recent article in the National Post outlines the many ways that salt is corroding urban infrastructure, including roadways, bridges, and buildings, not to mention boots, clothing, and harming pets.[xvii] (Salt on sidewalks was a large motivation for the development of winter dog boots). As geographers Roger Keil and Julie-Anne Boudreauargue “…road salt [is] a formidable issue in the yearly rhythm of socio-ecological management in a winter city”.[xviii]
Figure 12: Winter snow fence with protective felt.
Salt is an integral part of the winter city. But it is also a part of the city’s spring, summer and autumn ecologies. The sorts of vegetation that is planted in parks, besides streets, and in front yards is dictated by what can survive the onslaught of winter salt. Some people try desperately to protect plants by covering them, installing winter fencing, or just not planting anything at all (Figure 11). Indeed, the ecologies and landscapes of the winter city can be said to shape the city much more than those of other seasons.
The dreaded “winter is coming” might need to be rephrased as winter is always here, despite being out of sight visually and mostly mentally (many Montréalers seem to suffer amnesia in the summer—they forget about winter as soon as spring arrives.)
The power of the winter landscape has not escaped planners and, as the below box on “Winter City” design illustrates, there have been several attempts to make the city more liveable and enjoyable in the winter. Yet, rethinking the use of salt and where we move snow in northern cities to make the winter city more ecological has been difficult. Indeed, my own love of winter activities depends on being able to walk safety to the bus/metro in order to access the skating rinks, sledding hills and winter cultural activities. Salt is seen as a necessary evil to create the ideal winter city.
Figure 12: Comic using the Game of Thrones motto [xx]However, with climate change, and the increasing number of warmer days and thus freezing rain means that salt will need to be used more. In the week that I have revised this article, Montréal experienced a huge winter snow storm with record low temperature followed by a day of freezing rain, rain and temperatures above 0 Celsius. The streets and sidewalks are puddles of melted grey snow (with road salt and gravel, of course), which turn to ice in the evening. As I walk to work with crampons on my insulated rain boots, I wonder what might happen if we just left the snow, did not salt the ice and made the streets and sidewalks into ski paths and skating canals (I have seen people skating on the road a few times!). Of course, this would leave young children, the elderly and disabled isolated in their houses. The winter city is a complicated idea and phenomena for planners and urban inhabitants alike. So I find it is very exciting and inspiring to see cities like Edmonton embracing the idea of the “Winter City” and thinking more critically about all facets of city living in the winter—social, ecological, and political.
[viii]Sargent, H. (2015, February 3). “Montreal Is Really Good at Snow Removal, Eh?” Boston Globe. https://www.boston.com/weather/untagged/2015/02/03/montreal-is-really-good-at-snow-removal-eh
[xvi]Findlay, S. E., & Kelly, V. R. (2011). Emerging indirect and long‐term road salt effects on ecosystems. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1223(1), 58-68.
[xvii]Hopper, T. (2018, 22 Jan) How Canada’s addiction to road salt is ruining everything. The National Post. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-canadas-addiction-to-road-salt-is-ruining-everything
[xviii]Keil, R. & Boudreau, JA. (2006) Metropolitics and metabolics: Rolling out environmentalism in Toronto. In Heynen, N., Kaika, M. & Swyngedouw, E. (eds) In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism, (pp. 56-77). London: Routledge.
A gray shadow, a streak of energized air in a faint vibrating gray which I barely noticed in the split second I perceived it, and then the impact, the splintering sound, the noise of thick feathers brutally brushed back and scrunched up, the awareness of a sudden resistance to the rotation of my bike’s front wheel.
I wasn’t in a good shape when I broke the sparrowhawk’s wings.
A gray sky over Berlin, a cold eastern wind. An early March day that never had properly lighted up and already started to sink back into dawn. No rain, no snow, but this dry and uncomfortable wind. I was cycling back towards my flat. The gusts came from the North-East and hit me from the right side. They had blown over the great gray Northern European plain, rushing along all the way under the same gray and somber sky, from Kiyv, from the Dnieper floodplain, where now was a war. A war, black smoke rising, shells falling and bursting, under this same bleak cloud cover which stretched far over flat plains.
The wind broke through my clothes on the bicycle and made me shiver. I was slowly pedalling back from the COVID test station, hoping that I finally tested negative and could resume life with others. It was the third time I’ve had a Coronavirus infection this winter. They had come one after the other, like grey clouds rolling in from a cold sky. I progressed slowly on the bike, trying to make the necessary effort as less fatiguing for my muscles as I could. I hoped to get a test clearance, as I had to teach my seminar later, but I still felt weak and sickly. I had to breathe hard when I tried to accelerate the bike to more than pedestrian speed.
Then came the crash. A gray shadow, a streak of energized air in a faint vibrating gray which I barely noticed in the split second I perceived it, and then the impact, the splintering sound, the noise of thick feathers brutally brushed back and scrunched up, the awareness of a sudden resistance to the rotation of my bike’s front wheel. I stopped violently, bending over forward, but managed to halt.
I looked around me. There were two bird’s bodies lying in the middle of the crossing between two side streets, two heaps of gray-brownish feathers, two beings totally strange to the tarmac they were suddenly thrown on, the gale ruffling their feathers in gusts. I did not understand immediately what had happened. I did not see clearly. I saw the feathers and knew “bird”, I saw them lying on the street and thought “hurt”, and I also thought “beauty” — a shining kind of beauty by the way these beings were misplaced on the coarse asphalt. Two feathery heaps burning holes into the shell of reality, making me glimpse what is behind it. Those presences were the truth. And they were in a terrible state.
Photo: Andreas Weber
After my perception had adapted, I understood that the brown-grayish feathery thing close to me was a sparrow. It was dead. I saw the soft, gray and slightly pinkish lid over the eye which pointed to the sky, like a delicate veil which had shuttered the sight in the moment of impact, forever. I looked further down the street to the other bird. I only then realized what had happened. The second lump of feathers had somewhat reorganized and now sat flat on the street, looking at me.
It was a sparrowhawk. I understood it immediately now I saw her sitting. A female sparrowhawk. The plumage on her breast shone in a pattern of alternating black-and-white stripes. The upper side was tawny, dark brown on lighter brown and grey. She was in the middle of the road and looked at me. She held me in her gaze, in the radiant beam of two orange eyes which fixated me on the tarmac as though I was her prey — and not was she mine.
Photo: Andreas Weber
I pushed my bicycle to the post of a streetlamp at the curb. A car rolled into the intersection, and I wildly waved my arms in order to make them avoid the bird squatting in their way. The sparrowhawk still looked at me. So far, she had been motionless, hunkering low on the street. That she was alive was only manifest in her eyes, but there her aliveness was intense. The orange glow sent a beam of power into the world and made it glisten with every turn of her head. I was in its center, held in focus by an ancestral power. That was the most prominent experience: I was held in this power. And, then again, the bird sat flat on the street, clearly injured, probably in great pain, helpless.
My fingers shook when I fumbled the phone out of my pocket. I typed “Sparrowhawk injured emergency” in the search box and added “Nabu”, the acronym for “Naturschutzbund”, the name of a major nature protection NGO. I remembered that they run a wildlife sanctuary in the capital. I already had dropped a bird there: My son once brought a tiny warbler chick home from his way back from school. When I opened the door, he said: “Bad news. I have a little bird which fell out of the nest.” We gave the nestling the wrong food first, so the staff scolded us, but they managed to nurse the chick back to health.
“I have injured a sparrowhawk”, I told the lady who picked up the phone. Another lady, I thought, being up to doing tedious volunteer work with birds.
“Does she have a ring?” she asked.
“I can’t see. She is sitting on her belly.”
“Can you catch her?”
“Catch?”
“I can’t come to get her.”
I looked at the bird. Right now, she started to flutter. Her wings made a whirring and flapping noise and she slid some feet across the tarmac.
“I don’t know”, I said. “She is trying to escape.”
“If you manage, it would be great. If you don’t, then it is just as it is. There are many more migrant sparrowhawks from the northeast right now in Berlin”, the lady said.
Migrants from the northeast, I thought. Raptors arriving from Russia, from the Baltics, from Ukraine. In my imagination, I heard the splintering noise again when the birds had crashed into the whirring spokes of my front wheel. I felt nauseous. Bombs dropped in the northeast, splintering wood, shredding concrete, tearing up bodies. The sparrowhawk possibly had come from those regions. Then he crashed into my bike, in a scene of violence. Violence, suddenly exploding around her, around me. The dead sparrow on the street. The devastated hawk. My hands still slightly shook. I would not leave her here.
“Ok”, I said.
“Bring her to the university vet clinic if you manage to catch her. They treat injured wild birds.”
The sparrowhawk started to flutter again. Another car passed by, slowly curving around the bird who was now anxious to get away, but unable to fly. Two young men approached, as out of nowhere, and walked by, slowly, staring at the bird.
“Do you live nearby?” I asked the older one.
“Yeah. We’re just about to move house.”
“Could you help me catch the bird?”
“Oh sure. What bird is it?”
“A sparrowhawk.”
“A what?”
Obviously, he had never heard the name — the name of the second-frequent raptor on the Eurasian landmass, after the buzzard. But he was eager to help, as was his mate. They dashed off and came back moments later with a large moving box. In the meantime, I had searched for the location of a nearby sharing car on my phone. When the two young men were there again and I looked up, excited, and vibrating with the faint hope that this might not end with the death of this bird of prey, the sparrowhawk was gone.
“Where is she?” the older guy shouted.
“I think under that car”, I said, getting down on my knees, staring into the dark interstice between metal and road.
But there was no bird.
Sparrowhawks are in many respects lesser goshawks — a miniature version of their bigger cousins, just as buzzards are smaller-scale editions of golden eagles. Just like some model trains which both come in scale 0 and the smaller 00, the pairs look pretty similar, apart from their body size. Sparrowhawks and goshawks also have pretty close habits of hunting. Both are originally forest dwellers and are capable of maneuvering the dense stands of trees with incredibly speedy flight. Birds process on average three times more pictures per second than we do — for sparrowhawks a Netflix episode would be composed of a series of stills – and so are able to avoid crashing into obstacles.
At least the goshawk mostly manages — the smaller sparrowhawk is known for sometimes giving away security for a bigger impact of the attack. In Berlin, the Nabu folk know that they occasionally smash into glass fronts while they persecute small songbirds. They crash into cars — or bicycles. Human-made obstacles are far more destructive than naturally grown ones — like trees or foliage. Human-made objects are in the way of the sparrowhawks’ prime hunting asset: brutal speed and the willingness to risk it all.
The raptor usually waits hidden in a bush and then suddenly sweeps out of it, accelerates with frantic beats of his wedge-shaped wings up to 50 kilometers per hour, mostly only two or three feet overground, and then tries to capture the small songbird she had observed and singled out. All this happens so swiftly, in such a casually determined way, that most people rarely or never see a sparrowhawk. It is as though the bird’s body while hunting completely transformed into immaterial energy, a flash, an arrow made from light, and no longer a visible animal.
But, in spite of all this shapeshifting magic, on average, only every tenth attack is successful. That means that in times of dwindling bird numbers (because of crashing insect quantities), hunting becomes harder for the daring predator – and accordingly more dangerous.
“The bird is here”, one of the guys shouted. Somehow, she had made it across the street and into a corner at the bottom of a wall behind some bushes. She wanted to escape us, all her force pulled her to search for a protected hiding place and to sit there in the dark and to wait until the pain would go, until she could stretch her wings again, until she could stand on her sturdy, yellow feet with the sharp claws, until she could fly again and hunt, sweep down as a deadly gust from the top of a barren tree between two gray buildings and crash into a flock of sparrows, beating down her prey from the empty air and flying away with it.
I only hoped she would make it to the clinic. Unwillingly, she had maneuvered herself into the perfect spot the catch her. We just needed to push the box to the wall. Somehow, she slid in, beating her flight feathers hard against the container. I tilted the box over and closed the lid. Her claws made a scraping noise on the floor. I lifted the package up. The bird was lighter than I had expected.
The car was just around the corner. I put the box with the raptor in his cardboard shelter on the back seat, typed a message to the college that I’d be late to my seminar this afternoon, and started the engine.
Like many creatures of the silent wild who have become exiled from their lives in today’s agro-savannas devoid of wild corners and refuges for life, sparrowhawks are adapting to a life in cities. They hunt smaller birds and indeed predominantly feed on sparrows. In Berlin, those often roost in bushes in front of condominiums, fed by elderly women who rejoice in hearing the little singers’ chatter in front of their double glass windows. In the German capital, bird ecologists estimate that about fifty breeding pairs of sparrowhawks raise offspring every year.
In winter, their numbers are reinforced by wandering visitors from those parts of northern and eastern Europe where the cold season is still too inhospitable for them to survive. Then those reckless hunters from the dense spruce forests of the great northeastern plains have to maneuver between parking cars, whirring rental scooters, and bulky buses. And still, nearly nobody sees them. Only when the lesser bird folk starts their shrill alarm calls, we can glean that there might be a sparrowhawk planning an ambush.
The bird scratched the cardboard from time to time. I wondered which body parts had been damaged in the impact. At least one wing. Maybe both. Possibly also a leg. Or both. She did not stand; she lay stretched out on the floor. But maybe birds can’t stand with one wing hanging down. I sensed the muffled noises from the cardboard and hoped that she was not hurting too badly. I drove fast. I had the impression I was doing some sort of ambulance service. And then the students were also waiting for me. When the red light flashed in my face, I knew that I had gotten a speeding ticket. Plus, the extra fee the car-sharing company would demand.
I sped on, eager to give this being back its full life. My heart was low. The world seemed somber. There was this terrible war that had just started, and now I had destroyed a beautiful bird of prey. It felt gloomy and distorted. And somehow those two facts belonged together. I had not even been fast. I had had no chance to avoid the impact. Both birds only manifested in the moment when they shattered into my wheel. Before they had been invisible, they had been on the plane of a spiritual duel, somewhere in the land where only unseen forces act, where nothing had a fixed shape, where everything waits in order to burst into being.
The two birds had burst into disaster. And I was the one to be struck with it, to receive the message.
I thought of the dead sparrow. I had put it under the hedge behind the streetlight to which my bike was locked. I thought of the closed eye under its tender membrane. I realized that I had not paid much attention to this casualty. It did not feel fair. Sparrows are much more numerous than birds of prey (although their numbers are in decline, too), and somehow seem less remarkable as individuals. But I knew immediately that this was only what it seemed. A life is a life, and this one was over.
And then I thought of the day I had hit a sparrowhawk hunting sparrows before, and also caused a casualty. I had not thought of it before, so quickly had I had to act today. But now the memory struck me and gave me sudden gooseflesh. Today was not the first time I had run into a hunt in full flight. I knew all this already.
That other time was late January afternoon, on a bank of the Pò River in northern Italy. We slowly rolled through the thickening fog in our car. The stream lay gray and silent to the right, behind lone groups of bushes and trees. When a couple of shadows darted from the nothingness towards my windscreen, I had no chance to react, just as it had been today. A small bird hit the glass with a thump. For a fraction of a second, I saw the fleeting silhouette of some other little birds and the curved wedge of a sparrowhawk pursuing the chase.
I stopped. The sparrow lay in the brown leaves of the embankment, between the barren stalks and the withered dishes of last summer’s wild carrot blossoms. He looked at me, the black eye on his side wide open. He was breathing wildly and frantically, but not moving at all. He just looked at me, petrified, shaken by his breath. I took up the tiny animal with my hand. I felt his little heart racing. Still, he just stared at me. I feared he would die at any moment, would draw that soft veil over his eye and stop breathing. But he did not.
I put him into the low vegetation where a barren branch and some dense stalks formed a sort of natural platform, a kind of nest actually. I did not want him to lie on the ground. He still stared, silent, panting. I left him there, parked the car, and we walked some steps. The fog was closing fast, dusk fell, and the plain and the wide stream merged into one all-encompassing grey plain. Only the trees and plant stems provided some vertical movement, gave a low rhythm to the blurred landscape.
We turned back quickly. The air was moist and chilly. As I passed the little platform I had put the sparrow on, I could see that he was still there, eyes open. I went closer. And then, in this moment, he flew, rose up with the weightlessness of a creature of the sky, beating the wings a couple of times and then soaring, beating and soaring, fully back in the shape of his own aliveness, radiating life in every gesture of his undulating flight until he vanished in the fog towards the river Pò.
At the clinic, I did not need to wait. A young man, a vet student obviously, asked me to fill out a form. “Do not try to call and ask how the animal you delivered fares as we have far too much to do to be able to tell you”, it read in bold capital letters on the lower part. When I had marked my address and some more details, I pushed the cardboard box over the counter. Through an open door, I could see persons in green and blue surgical gear moving between stainless steel surfaces.
The sparrowhawk made a scratching noise when the student took the box. “You’re good,” he told me. “There is nothing more to do.” I walked out into the gray day and went slowly towards the parked car, under a low northeastern sky which was heavy on my body. It weighed me down like unbearably doleful news.
Thanks to a bunch of canny coyotes doing what coyotes do, we have recently been reminded of the increasing presence of nature in cities and the human interaction with nature, both in New York City and other cities. And these lessons are applicable not just to the many cities where humans and nature interact, but also to how people relate in a social way with nature.
New Yorkers are a funny group, at once impatient with any reminders that natural elements (such as the snow and cold of our recent winter) might impact their lives, but endlessly fascinated by nature in the form of wildlife and plants, appearing and surviving against all odds in one of the world’s mostly densely populated and built up cities.
For followers of nature in cities, few can forget the saga of Pale Male and Lola, two red tailed hawks whose nest on a tony Fifth Ave. co-op was evicted, later to be replaced following a high-level diplomatic negotiation (that I was part of along with officials from the Audubon Society). The story of Pale Male transcended the small world of birders and entered the popular culture mainstream through several books for adults and children (Red Tails in Love, Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City, The Tale of Pale Male, etc.) and movies.
Pale Male and Lola. Photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Over the last few months, coyotes have been appearing on an almost daily basis in New York City—one on top of a bar in Queens, another wandering through Manhattan’s Riverside Park, a third (or was it the second) trapped outside a restaurant in Lower Manhattan. Each of those sightings, and the attendant police chases replete with tranquilizer-dart armed sharpshooters of the NYPD’s elite Emergency Services Unit, becomes fodder for the nightly news and daily newspapers (with the word “wily” used almost every time). In fact, coyotes have been in parts of NYC for decades, and now are common in cities across the country.
Hal the coyote being tracked by NYPD and Park Rangers. Photo: NY Times/ Paul Kreft.
But the fact that those stories are still prominent on the news reflects New Yorkers’ fascination with nature. Kind of like the song “New York, New York”—if they can make it here, they’ll make it anywhere—city residents seem to identify with the survivor instincts of hawks, falcons, herons, and now coyotes. They also tend to love stories of “survivor” trees, such as the non-native Ailanthus altissima—the tree made famous in the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—which grows from almost any surface. (I have even seen one growing out of a subterranean pit and up through a steel grate.) Threaten to cut down a tree, even if it is old and decrepit and likely to fall, and the neighbors will get up in arms (except for those who don’t like trees and the messy leaves they drop.) It may be no accident that nature has taken an ascendant role in New York City, where the City has pursued a deliberate policy of protecting and enhancing natural areas for more than 30 years, from starting a special unit concerned with natural areas in 1984 to the recent creation of the Natural Areas Conservancy.
And while it might seem to people who have never visited New York, or only visited Manhattan, that New York is the last place for nature and humans to interact, in fact more than 50 percent of the parklands in NYC (City, State and Federal) are “natural,” according to the Trust for Public Land’s “2015 City Park Facts,” which also reports that among the 100 largest cities in the US, more than half have park systems that are more than 50% natural. More than 1/3 of the parks under the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation (NYCDPR) are natural areas, and they have been under the care and study of the NYCDPR Natural Resources Group (NRG) since it was established in 1984—more than 30 years ago.
So what do people actually think about nature in the form of parks, and what are the social interactions that people have with parks and nature? What do they look for when they go to a park, and how far are they willing to travel to get there? Are they looking for experience with nature that are active, as in fishing or birding, or passive, as in simply experiencing nature and finding a place of refuge there?
Those were some of the questions asked by researchers from the US Forest Service (USFS), working with the Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC), a recently founded non-profit partner to NYCDPR and NRG, and with NYCDPR/NRG staff. The study, led by USFS researchers Erika S. Svendsen, Lindsay K. Campbell , Nancy F. Sonti and Michelle L. Johnson, working with Bram Gunther, Sarah Charlop Powers, Helen Forgione and Clare Pregitzer of the NAC/NRG, was done through interviews with park visitors to NYC parks along Jamaica Bay in southern Queens and Brooklyn in 2013. “Reading the Landscape: A Social Assessment of Parks and Their Natural Areas in Jamaica Bay Communities” was issued in March of this year, and it contains fascinating documentation of how New Yorkers interact with their parks along Jamaica Bay, many of them natural, with tidal wetlands, coastal meadows and forests, and even freshwater wetlands. This “social assessment” was done in coordination with a city-wide ecological assessment of the 10,000 acres of NYCDPR natural areas conducted by the NAC/NRG.
Study survey team getting to work. Photo: USFS, Social Assessment project.
The primary questions guiding the study were these: “How do New Yorkers use, value and assign meaning to parks, and in particular, to less programmed or ‘wilder’ spaces in parks? How might we collect this data in a comprehensive yet efficient way so that it can be used by land managers and, ultimately, benefit the public?”
Interviewer team reviewing responses. Photo: USFS, Social Assessment project.
The study looked at 17 parks encompassing 2,140 acres along the edge of Jamaica Bay, whose adjacent neighborhoods have over 900,000 residents—more than many of the largest American cities. Those neighborhoods are also quite diverse racially, economically, and ethnically, including African-Americans, whites, Latinos and Asians. Field observations were made to document usage patterns, and the research teams conducted 681 in-person interviews with park users.
Site interview taking place at Jamaica Bay. Photo: USFS, Social Assessment project.
While there is much to be gleaned in the details of the assessment, here were the broad findings:
Parks provide for an important number and range of activities that are beneficial to human beings.
Parks serve as local resources, but are connected through their users to a wider network of outdoor sites.
Parks are a crucial form of ‘nearby nature’ that provides space for activities, recreation, socialization, and engagement with the environment and supports social ties and place attachment.
The majority of adult park users do not participate in formal environmental stewardship groups, but information about other forms of engagement and barriers to stewardship provides insight on potential for increasing stewardship.
Although relatively few park users commented independently on Hurricane Sandy, those that did discussed the way in which parks and neighborhood residents were affected by the event.
Of great interest to me was that city residents were willing to travel to get to these parks: though 37 percent of the people polled lived within ¼ mile of the park, 26 percent lived from ½ to I mile away, and 37 percent traveled more than I mile to get to the parks. In our work, the Trust for Public Land has found that most city residents are not willing to walk more than about ½ mile to get to a park. Mass transit options to get to most of the Jamaica Bay parks are extremely limited, which means that more than a third of visitors to these parks are traveling more than a mile to get there by driving, walking, or bicycling, primarily. So it’s possible that visitors are getting fit not just in the parks, but on their way to them.
Jamaica Bay on descent to JFK. Credit: Erlend Bjørtvedt.
As may be expected, almost 70 percent of visitors were there for active pursuits, including sports, walking, dog-walking, bicycling, and running. But almost 10 percent were engaged in a passive activity, and more than 4 percent were pursuing nature recreation. In interviews, a “prevalent theme for 14.7% of respondents was the ability to connect with material qualities of nature and the outdoors,” and “of the numerous sub-themes identified, the most commonly referenced attributes of nature were “fish”, “shade”, “views”, “water”, and “trees.” Also mentioned were qualities of the air, including “fresh air”, “breeze”, and “cool.” Other wildlife mentioned includes crabs, birds, and eels. Similarly, “13.7% of respondents identified the ways in which the park serves as a site of refuge. Interviewees sought out green space in order to get away from the crowds, sounds, and traffic of New York City. In particular, they sought out the sense of isolation (e.g. “to get away from crowds”) and peace and quiet that they could find in parks.”
Waterfront along Pelham Bay Park. Photo: USFS, Social Assessment project
The importance of the USFS/NAC/NYCDPR social assessment cannot be overstated. While many scientists are studying the life of nature in the city, and the roles of natural systems in providing ecosystems services, little is known about the social values of parks and nature and the way that people interact with them. Furthermore, many of the users are from economically underserved areas, who count on these parks for social connections to people and to the natural world.
This assessment is eye-opening, and it will be interesting to see the results of a second, city-wide assessment carried out in 2014. But as people increasingly move to and live in cities, scientific and social viewpoints on human and nature interactions will be important areas to study so our cities can use the data to make policy. While the cute stories of wily coyotes and people interacting describe one point of contact, the survival (and happiness) of humans and the other life forms with whom we share our cities will depend on mutually reinforcing, symbiotic contact. The 1933 movie “King Kong” ends with movie maker Carl Denham who, when asked about how the airplanes killed the giant ape, says “It was beauty killed the beast” (that is, Fay Wray, not the planes). Our coda can be “…and beauty and the beast lived happily ever after.”
King Kong and Fay Wray. Credit: RKO Radio Pictures
According to the UN, at least one third of the global urban population suffers from inadequate living conditions. Lack of access to basic services (drinking water and/or sanitation, not to mention energy, waste recollection, and transportation), low structural quality of shelters, overcrowding, dangerous locations, and insecure tenure are the main characteristics normally included in the definitions of so-called informal settlements.
Words matter. These “informal settlements” are neither informal nor irregular— they are, above all, human settlements.
Recognized as a global phenomenon, no country can claim to be free of informal settlements, although the numbers of people suffering can vary largely depending on the region: these problems now affect up to 60 percent of the world’s population—or even more—in some Sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asian cities, and the number of people affected in these locations is expected to double over the next two decades. High percentages are also seen in several Arab countries, and at least 25 percent of urbanites in Latin America live in informal settlements. Precarious housing and living conditions and growing homelessness can also be found in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, affecting, on average, one in 10 people.
Squatter settlements, favelas, shacks, villas miseria, bidonvilles, slums, and many other names are typically used to refer to such impoverished neighborhoods. In general terms, all of these names highlight their negative characteristics and clearly imply pejorative connotations. By cruel extension, the words used to describe the physical conditions of the settlements also tend to apply to their inhabitants. Despite what normative frameworks might say about all persons being equal before the law and the state, inhabitants of informal settlements are generally treated as second-class citizens.
Rocinha (“little farm”, due to its agricultural vocation until the mid 20th century), located in the rich southern zone of Rio de Janeiro, is considered one of the most populous favelas in Brazil. Most of its 70,000 inhabitants live in houses made from concrete and brick and have access to basic sanitation, plumbing, and electricity. The neighborhood has a vibrant local economy. Source: Alamy.comColorful houses at the base of the Rocinha Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Image shot 2010. Source: Alamy.com
In academic and government documents, “informal settlements” is the label typically applied to these areas. That those communities are not in compliance with building norms and property and urban planning regulations is often given as the main reason for qualifying them as “informal”. Also defined as “irregular”, they can easily be called “illegal”, and their inhabitants subsequently criminalized, displaced, and persecuted. From India to South Africa to Ecuador, legal and administrative changes have been made in recent years to give special/ad hoc inspection and demolition powers to local, provincial, and national governments to deal with these neighborhoods and, in theory, to prevent them from growing (in many cases, environmental laws and regulations or urban projects are used as excuses for destroying these settlements). As was recently recognized, the UN’s Millennium Development Goal 7-Target 11 commitment to reducing the population living in slums by 2020 was tragically translated in several countries as the pressure to destroy people´s self-built housing and even to incarcerate the leaders of social movements (for a critical analysis of the “cities without slums” initiative and why language matters, see Gilbert, 2007). In Zimbabwe alone, the UN reports that as many as 700,000 people were affected by terrifying slum “clearance” operations in 2005, which took the revealing name of “Remove the filth”!
At the same time, these areas are frequently presented as empty, colored grey or green on maps. As we all know, not having an official address (street name and house number) is a huge obstacle to being able to fulfill other needs and rights: applying for a job, sending one’s kids to school, being admitted into health systems. Invisibility and stigmatization of citizens living in particular neighborhoods go hand in hand and make poverty, exclusion, and discrimination self-perpetuating. Social exclusion often means spatial segregation, and vice versa.
Following a tradition most probably started before the mid-19th century in some English cities undergoing industrialization processes and migration from the countryside, our contemporary media still often depict the inhabitants of informal settlements as the troublemakers, the thieves, the lazy. It is hard to find positive stories about their daily struggles for better life conditions, rights, and dignity.
It is clear that we urgently need a better approach to naming and framing such areas broadly called “informal settlements”—one that is respectful and sensitive to the people who live there and that could better promote the transformations that our cities and our societies need.
Questioning the formal/informal dichotomy
The “informal settlements” label does not reflect, nor does it take into account, the many variations that these popular settlements present in different parts of the world. Using “slums” or “informal settlements” to describe Kibera in Nairobi or Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro does not seem appropriate when, just by looking at some pictures, anyone can tell that they present many differences in terms of quality and durability of the housing materials and access to basic services and infrastructure, to mention some of the more visible contrasts. We can then look to statistics and realize that while the cariocas of Rio have private bathrooms in every housing unit, their fellows on the other side of the ocean only have 1,000 public toilets for 180,000 people. Not only that: as a consequence of massive investments during the recent years in neighborhood improvement programs, a Rio favela house with a view of one of the many wonderful bossa-nova bays might now reach US$ 250,000 in value—and rumors that Hollywood stars are buying them are widespread.
Likewise, the classification of all such areas as “informal settlements” does not indicate the relevance of the places in their cities that they occupy or the spatial segregation they usually suffer from; the lack of access to affordable and public transportation, places of employment, schools, hospitals, and other basic facilities; the lack or limited access to financial resources such as credits, subsidies, etc.; or the lack of technical assistance and/or adequate materials to consolidate housing and neighborhoods buildings and infrastructure, just to mention a few.
Originated as a settlement at the outskirts of Nairobi for Nubian soldiers returning from service with the British colonial army more than a century ago, Kibera (“forest”) is known as the largest slum in Africa. Before Kenya´s independence, the law strictly segregated and discriminated non-Europeans groups from political, economic and social rights. Photo: Mathare Valley. Source: Alamy.comKibera, Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Mathare Valley. Source: Alamy.com
The difficulties of defining a phenomenon so varied and dynamic as “informal settlements” are often invoked to justify the continuing use of the catchall term and the predominant focus on what they do not have (Connolly, 2007). But academics in several regions have been discussing the formal/informal false dichotomy as a kind of “discursive differentiation” that shapes and enacts knowledge and power relations on the territories. Many of them argue that binary classifications are clearly insufficient to reflect the complexity of settlement processes that we face in reality; such classifications simultaneously hide authorities’ responsibilities in producing informality (Roy, 2009; Yiftachel, 2009; Wigle, 2013).
By defining what is formal and regular, and changing those definitions over time, according to political interests, involved governments maintain these settlements in a “grey” zone of non-definition and permanent negotiation that makes their inhabitants more vulnerable to clientelistic practices (understood as exchanges of goods and services for political support), which are particularly intense during electoral periods. The above authors go so far as to denounce that “the use of such binary categories also entails an uncritical view of regular settlement areas” (Wigle). On a related note, the irregularities in accessing urban services and/or violations of land-use and other planning norms in rich neighborhoods are not punished and, in many cases, are even presented and considered as positive ´investments´ that benefit the community as a whole. Based on such considerations, formal/informal, regular/irregular are ever-changing and mutually-defined categories and not fixed, contrasting entities.
In more general terms, these classifications do not allow us to analyze the profound, structural causes that explain the creation of precarious and inadequate settlements: expulsion of rural, campesino, and indigenous people due to the lack of government support for small and medium-sized agriculture; lack of mechanisms to control land grabbing and speculation; evictions and displacements due to multifactorial crises, social conflicts over land, resources, and natural or manmade disasters; urban renewal and “development” projects; lack of facilities and services; lack of affordable land and housing policies; social vulnerability and low-paid, unprotected jobs; lack of opportunities for youth; discrimination and marginalization.
Without considering the causes, how would we be able to reverse those tendencies and find the needed solutions?
The city produced by the people: the urgent need to understand it and support it
Academics aren’t the only ones who have being questioning this negative and limited approach. For more than 50 years, civil society organizations, engaged professionals, and activists have being analyzing and supporting these processes from a different, but also critical, point of view.
This movement, described as Social Production of Habitat, intends to highlight the positive and transformative characteristics of so-called “informal settlements”, which involve people-driven and people-centered processes to produce and manage housing, services, and community infrastructure. In other words, processes of practical problem solving for achieving human dignity and a better quality of life.
“Social Production of Habitat” is a phrase intended to describe people producing their own habitat: dwellings, villages, neighborhoods, and even large parts of cities. They may be found in rural and urban settings, ranging from spontaneous individual/familial self-constructions, to collective productions that imply high levels of organization, broad participation, and agency for negotiation and advocacy with public and private institutions—although, in general, they are implemented with very little or no support and often despite a myriad of economic and institutional obstacles (Ortiz and Zárate, 2002).
In recent decades, Habitat International Coalition, or HIC (full disclosure: I am currently serving as President of HIC), and other international networks have been documenting some of these collective initiatives in various parts of the world. Different kinds of organized social groups (social movements, cooperatives, tenants’ federations, women’s organizations, etc.) are driving innovative experiences that cover a broad range of activities: from accessing land and building housing and basic infrastructure, to the responsible management of the commons (water, forests and green areas, public spaces and community infrastructure); from gender equality and human rights promotion and defense, to food production and preservation of cultural identity.
The underlying, essential factor is that these initiatives and projects consider the production of housing and human habitat as a social process, not just as a material product. The collective effort to build and produce a place to live is not a mere object for exchange. It is a combination of different types of knowledge, expertise, materials, and other in-kind contributions from different actors and institutions, and not something that one can just buy (or not!). It is a social relation and not a mere commodity.
Instead of “informal settlements”, we prefer to understand and describe them as practices and social struggles that not only build houses and neighborhoods strictly on a physical level; at the same time, and perhaps even more importantly, they also build active and responsible citizenships against marginalization and social and urban segregation, advancing direct democratic exercise and improving individual and community livelihoods, participants’ self-esteem, and social coexistence (Ortiz and Zárate, 2004). In fewer words: the city produced by the people.
When organized, recognized, and supported (with the appropriate legal, administrative, financial, and technical mechanisms), these processes have a relevant positive impact both at the micro- and macroeconomic levels. Given that official statistics usually do not measure these people´s and communities´ efforts, HIC members have promoted research and dissemination projects with different academic institutions. The findings show that in places such as Brazil or Mexico, the Social Production of Habitat represents a constant contribution of around 1 percent of GDP (even in times of serious economic crisis, when public and private actors reduce their investments considerably); at the same time, they explain the multiple ways in which such social initiatives activate and strengthen several circuits of the local economy, at small and medium scales (construction materials and labour, professional services, etc.) (Torres, 2006).
At the same time, and thanks to their innovative proposals and concrete results, individuals and organizations engaging in the Social Production of Habitat have influenced the reorientation of housing and urban development policies and contributed to generating changes in legal, financial, and administrative instruments relevant to social housing, self-managed processes, tenure security, attention to low-income sectors, and environmental improvement, among other issues.
Social Production of Habitatas a fulfillment of human rights
Social Production of Habitat movements and projects fill the gaps left from the state’s failure to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights, particularly the human right to adequate housing and other related rights: property, water and sanitation, participation, non-discrimination, and self-determination, just to mention a few. Moreover, the right to produce and manage our habitat is one of the strategic components of the right to the city.
That being said, it is fundamental to highlight that people’s agency to improve habitat does not absolve the state of its obligations to citizens and residents (Schechla, 2004). According to the international commitments that they have signed, governments—both at national and subnational levels, including regional, provincial, and local authorities—are obligated to refrain from forced evictions, confiscation and repression of human rights defenders, discrimination, corruption, withholding services, and other such violations.
State institutions and officials should abstain from actions that would obstruct the social production of housing process, in particular through housing destruction and displacements. As established in standard-setting instruments, when resettlement is the only available option (i.e. due to a disaster-prone location or similar issue), the participation of the affected community and families is mandatory in agreeing the details of the process and negotiating appropriate resettlements (including providing shelter in a nearby location so as not to affect people´s livelihoods and social networks), as well as just remuneration and compensation measures.
At the level of protection, state obligations in the social production of housing process involve the provision of safeguards and assurances of freedom from unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, public-service fee increases, monopolistic control of building materials, and other impediments to the people’s process. The state also bears the obligation to prosecute violators and ensure effective relief and remedy for victims. Measures that prevent, deny, or repress the inhabitants’ rights to association, participation, and free expression in the physical development process would also violate the obligation to respect the human right to adequate housing.
At the fulfillment level, the state possesses unique capacities to ensure, recognize, and support people´s efforts and community-led efforts. Enabling social production of habitat policies, programs, institutions, and budgets is fundamental, including those that can guarantee access to:
land in good locations
security of tenure, prioritizing women´s needs and rights
services and infrastructure
adequate financial resources and schemes (credits, subsidies, and savings; recognizing people’s in-kind contributions)
professional technical assistance
information, materials, and technology
cross-sectorial training
Comparing different forms of producing housing and neighborhoods in face of obstacles to the right to adequate housing. Red: weak/no compliance; Yellow: mid compliance; Green: high compilance
A new urban agenda 2016-2036: a paradigm shift?
The third UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (known as Habitat III) will take place in Ecuador in October 2016. For almost two years now, multiple actors and institutions, including national and local governments, social movements and civil society networks, youth and women’s organizations, academics, professionals, journalists, and the UN and other international agencies have being participating in debates, declarations, and other documents that will serve as inputs for what should be the Conference’s main outcome: a “New Urban Agenda”.
An initial set of written materials, the so-called Issue Papers, was produced during the first half of 2015 and dealt with 22 relevant themes. One of those themes was informal settlements, which tried to provide definitions of pertinent key words (without mentioning any critics or limitations), some updated global figures and facts, as well as relevant recommendations. Those “key drivers for action” included eight topics: Recognition of the informal settlement and slum challenge and the mainstreaming of human rights; Government leadership; Systemic and city-wide/‘at scale’ approaches; Integration of people and systems; Housing at the centre; Appropriate long term financial investment and inclusive financing options; Developing participatory, robust, standardized and computerized data collection processes; and Creating learning platforms. Although they might not be sufficient, each of these eight topics is fundamental, and the group of topics certainly reflects many of the concerns and proposals for which civil society and social organizations have been advocating.
However, it seems that those important analyses and recommendations did not make their way into the second round of official documents, the Policy Papers (February 2016). None of those 10 papers dealt exclusively with informal settlements, and their contents do not seem to take into consideration the concepts or key drivers discussed in the previous Issue Papers. It is true that a few weeks ago, an official thematic preparatory meeting on this particular topic was held in Pretoria, from which arose clear and strong recommendations on relevant elements such as land policy (balanced territorial development and urban planning), protection against evictions, participatory and in situ slum-upgrading programs, among others; but, again, no critical review on the concept or alternative definitions were considered in its declaration.
At the same time, the social production of habitat is mentioned several times in different documents, but only in a very limited and superficial manner, despite the prolific and solid contents and formal commitments that the predecessor Habitat Agenda (Istanbul, 1996) managed to include. Today, as yesterday, our networks will continue to push so that a more accurate definition, analysis, and policy recommendations are considered in the new agenda (see Mexico City Declaration on Financing Urban Development, March 2016). Bringing the communities´ voices to the debates and showing the achievements and challenges that they face should be one of our main tasks.
Changing the words means changing the concepts; changing the concepts means changing the way we understand (or not) complex phenomena and are able (or not) to transform them in a positive way.
Neither informal nor irregular, these are, above all, human settlements. Or even better: they are the city produced by the people: the people who claim their rights to live, build, and transform the city.
Connolly, P. (2007) Urbanizaciones irregulares como forma dominante de ciudad [Irregular urbanization as predominant city form]. Unpublished paper presented at the Second National Land Use Congress, Chihuahua, Mexico, 17–19 October.
Gilbert, A. (2007) The Return of the Slum: Does Language Matter? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31.4: 697-713.
Ortiz, E. y L. Zárate (2002) Vivitos y coleando. 40 años trabajando por el hábitat popular en América Latina [Alive and kicking. 40 years working for people´s habitat in Latin America]. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana y HIC-AL, Mexico City.
Ortiz, E. y L. Zárate (2004) De la marginación a la ciudadanía. 38 casos de producción y gestión social del hábitat [From Marginality to Citizenship. 38 cases of social production and management of habitat]. Forum Universal de las Culturas, HIC y HIC-AL, Barcelona.
Roy, A. (2009) Strangely familiar: planning and the worlds of insurgence and informality. Planning Theory 8.1: 7–11.
Schechla, Joseph (2004) Anatomies of a Social Movement. Social Production of Habitat in the Middle East/North Africa (Part I). Housing and Land Rights Network-Habitat International Coalition, Cairo.
Torres, Rino (2006) La producción social de la vivienda en México. Su importancia nacional y su impacto en la economía de los hogares pobres [The social production of housing in Mexico. National relevance and impacts in the economy of low income households]. HIC-AL, Mexico City.
Yiftachel, O. (2009) Theoretical notes on ‘gray cities’: the coming of urban apartheid? Planning Theory 8.1: 88–100.
Wigle, Jill (2013) The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco, Mexico City. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38.2: 573-589.
The impact of urbanization needs to be kept in perspective compared with the much greater threat to biodiversity coming from our unsustainable global food system. If we were to dismantle major urban centers and spread their populations over the surrounding countryside, far more pastoral paradise would be consumed and carbon footprint per capita would rise dramatically.
The Year 2007 marked the arrival of the Urban Millennium when most of the world’s population became urban for the first time in human history (UNDESA, 2009). The proportion is now at least 55% and the global urban population is predicted to increase by 2.5 billion over the next 30 years (UNDESA, 2019). In North America, South America, and the Caribbean, 80 % of the population reside in urban settlements, while in Europe the proportion is 73% (EU Joint Research Center, 2019).
I recall how many environmentalists reacted with foreboding to this turning point (or tipping-point, as they saw it), as it served to highlight the relentless march of the concrete jungle into rural “paradise”, to paraphrase Joni Mitchel’s lament (Big Yellow Taxi, 1970). Certainly, in many developed nations, the belief that urban growth is the primary driver behind the loss of nature is commonly held by many journalists who echo or stoke the fears of the general public.
Such fears have been heightened by rural campaign bodies such as the Council for the Protection of Rural England, which has set out a particularly J.G. Ballard-inspired dystopian vision for England – “It’s 2035, and the countryside is all but over… there is no longer any distinction between town and country. Town does not end, countryside does not begin” (Kingsnorth, 2005). A similar ominous prediction for England’s green and pleasant land was expressed 30 years earlier by celebrated English poet, Phillip Larkin, in his poem Going, Going – “as the bleak high-risers come … more houses, more parking allowed … Despite all the land left free. For the first time I feel somehow that it isn’t going to last … And that will be England gone”. In academia, too, there seems to be a consensus that urban growth is a very major cause of biodiversity loss (McDonald, et al., 2018), if not the primary driver (McKinney, 2002; Catalano et al., 2021).
While urbanization certainly has had many very negative impacts on the natural world, is the hostility that environmentalists and the wider public hold for it justified, or is there a much more important factor driving biodiversity loss? As to the first part of the question, a skepticism about the scale of impact has been simmering for many years before being emphatically reemphasized relatively recently by the likes of David Owen and Edward Glaeser in their books Green Metropolis (2011) and Triumph of the City (2012) respectively. Both authors take the contrary viewpoint and contend that well-organized compact urban agglomerations benefitting from economies of scale have much lower environmental footprints than alternative lower-density arrangements of human populations of similar size. Flagship cities for these authors include New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Owen does concede, however, that “thinking of crowded cities as environmental role models requires a certain willing suspension of disbelief because most of us have been accustomed to viewing urban centers as ecological calamities”.
As to the second part of the question, while it is repeatedly asserted that Joni Mitchel was heaping the blame squarely on urban expansion for the loss of paradise, an oft-forgotten line of her song also implicates another culprit – “hey farmer, farmer put away that DDT now. Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees”; lyrics inspired by Rachel Carson’s 1962 tour de force, Silent Spring. Indeed, I contend here that it is “our global food system [and not urbanization, which] is the primary driver of biodiversity loss” (Benton et al., 2021).
Debating in a numerical vacuum
Discussions as to whether we are approaching a point where town does not end and countryside does not begin often take place in a numerical vacuum. According to Our World in Data, only 1% of the earth’s land area is built up urban, including cities, towns, villages, roads, and other human infrastructure (Ritchie & Roser, 2019). The figure is 2% in the US (World Economic Forum, 2020), while in the UK, which is a particularly densely populated nation, the figure is 7-8% (Office for National Statistics, 2019). Urban areas also include parks, gardens, golf courses, and many other forms of greenspace, so the actual footprint of concrete and asphalt may be smaller depending on how these numbers were calculated; in the UK ‘natural land cover’ accounts for 31% of urban areas.
Compact-city living
According to McDonald, et al. (2018), urban growth resulted in the loss of 190,000 km2 of natural habitat between 1992-2000 (16% of all natural habitat lost over this period) and threatens an additional 290,000 km2 by 2030. These findings are concerning, but such studies sometimes fail to fully consider the ecological and other environmental benefits of urbanization or consider what the environmental implications would have been had the new urbanites remained in the countryside.
While carbon footprint per unit area is higher in urban than rural areas, this is because there are many more people per unit area. In developed nations, at least, the carbon footprint per capita is lower in urban centers than in rural areas or sprawling suburbs (Owen, 2011; Glaeser, 2012). Residents of urban centers are less inclined to drive because services are readily accessible by foot or public transport. Policies are also in place to constrain car use in cities, e.g., restricted and costly parking charges; limited space to ease congestion through road capacity expansion; and the introduction of congestion charges (e.g., London). Because heat consumption is correlated with floor area and the ratio of wall area to floor area, rural and suburban housing, which is typically larger and detached, also uses more energy than in urban centers where apartments and terraced housing are the norms.
If we were to dismantle major urban centers and spread their populations over the surrounding countryside, far more pastoral paradise would be consumed and carbon footprint per capita would rise dramatically. Moreover, exacerbating climate change would cause additional biodiversity loss (IPCC, 2022).
Are the indirect impacts of urbanization exaggerated?
McDonald, et al. (2018) argue that the external land area needed to provide food, water, and materials to cities should also be taken into account when assessing their environmental footprint. However, in isolation, such analysis is misleading. The populations of urban centers would still need to eat and consume water if they were to be teleported into rural areas, and in developed countries, at least, their footprints would be much higher. This is because there are enormous economies of scale to be derived from supplying food and water to large concentrations of people compared with similar populations widely dispersed across the landscape (Owen, 2011; Monbiot, 2022).
While the need to minimize food miles and the concept of locavorism is music to the ears of many environmentalists, various other factors need to be considered when assessing environmental footprint, including how the food is grown and how it reaches its destination. Because food items are transported in bulk to cities, often with a range of other products, food miles per unit can often be much smaller for produce transported long distances than for the same food item that has been purchased in a local farmer’s market.
Moreover, focusing on food production where growing conditions are most optimal, maximizes production and reduces carbon output per unit. Monbiot (2022) is particularly uncompromising on this point – “given the distribution of the world’s population and the regions suitable for farming, the abandonment of long-distance trade would be a recipe for mass starvation”.
Is vertical farming the solution?
To circumvent the limitations of locavorism, some champion indoor and vertical farming systems (VFS) in cities, i.e., growing crops in vertically stacked layers using soil-less techniques such as hydroponics. However, the economic viability of VFS is currently uncertain, as start-up infrastructure costs are high and the process is labor and energy intensive. VFS, therefore, faces stiff competition from traditional horizontal farms in the countryside that have lower infrastructure and land costs, as well as free sunshine (Owen, 2011; Delden et al., 2021; Moghimi, 2021; Monbiot, 2022). Nevertheless, there still appears to be momentum behind VFS that is attracting investment and so increased efficiencies are anticipated from improved automation. Whether these will be sufficient to establish a profitable sector able to make a reasonably significant contribution to food supplies remains far from clear.
Urbanization in low-income countries
Contrary to the trends in developing nations, urbanization in low-income countries may initially increase emissions per capita, as the newly arrived consume more electricity and transport than their rural counterparts (Li & Lin, 2015; Connolly et al., 2022). While attempts have been made to inhibit urbanization in low-income countries these have largely been ineffective, and arguably, undesirable (Tacoli, 2015; Macdonald, 2016). All developed nations originally transitioned from agrarian to urbanized societies and low-income countries are now going through the same process. Those living comfortable lives in high-income nations should remind themselves that most people migrating to cities in low-income countries are not leaving behind some rural utopia but rather are desperately poor and are seeking a better standard of living for themselves and their families (Pearce, 2010; Glaeser, 2012). Moreover, as low-income countries transition to middle and high-income countries, the per capita environmental footprints of urban residents are likely to fall below those of their rural compatriots.
Owen (2011) suggests that the antipathy so many environmentalists have towards urbanization has a somewhat Malthusian undercurrent. Some commentators seem to imagine that rural-urban migrants would vanish into the ether if only the process could be stopped. However, a growing world population and accompanying urban growth are inevitable. The world population is approaching 8 billion and is projected to peak at approximately 10.4 billion people during the 2080s (UNDESA, 2022).
Contrary to any Malthusian fears, urbanization is and will continue to be an important and environmentally beneficial process in the demographic transition, slowing overall population growth. This is because fertility rates are lower in cities than in rural areas. Women socialized in cities are likely to be better educated, more involved in economic activities outside the household, have improved access to family planning services, are less culturally constrained, and opt to marry at a later age, and for all these reasons and more, choose to have smaller families than those in neighboring rural areas (Lerch, 2019). Therefore, achieving gender equity (in part driven by urbanization) is critical for, inter alia, meeting sustainability goals.
Density done well
Given the inevitability of urban growth, we must act to minimize and offset associated biodiversity losses, seeking biodiversity net gain wherever possible, particularly if biodiversity hotspots are disproportionately threatened by the process (McDonald, et al., 2018). The integration of biodiverse green space into the urban realm also brings multiple ecosystem services (Grant, 2012), including positive (biophilic) effects on our psychological well-being, delivering a dose of ‘Vitamin N’ or ‘Nature’s Fix’, to borrow the biophilic terminology of Richard Louv (2017) and Florence Williams (2017) respectively. This entails squaring the circle when it comes to maximizing the environmental benefits of compact-city living, while at the same time providing adequate urban greenspace (Garland, 2016). In this respect, the application of Jane Jacobs’ (1961) “density done well” philosophy will be critical. Urban green spaces must be designed to be multifunctional, working hard to integrate biodiversity and other services where space is at a premium (Photos 1-3). Density done well, of course, also means getting more out of built infrastructure, i.e., improving sanitation, housing, public transport, etc., and avoiding sprawling slums and shanty towns in developing countries.
Photo 1. “Gardens by the Bay … the face of Singapore’s futuristic melding of city and nature” (Wood et al., 2021); Singapore is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Photo: Lincoln GarlandPhoto 2. Richly vegetated monorail pier and road curb, Sentosa Island, Singapore; despite being very densely populated, in 1967 Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had a vision to turn Singapore into a Garden city with abundant greenery. Photo: Lincoln GarlandPhoto 3. Density done well – New York’s High Line, an elevated linear greenway created on a former railroad spur. Photo: Steven Severinghaus
The real culprit behind biodiversity loss
Over the last 50 years, the conversion of natural ecosystems for crop production and pasture has been far and away the primary cause of biodiversity loss (Benton et al., 2021). Cropping and livestock production occupies approximately 50% of the planet’s habitable land. Once natural habitats have been removed to establish agricultural systems there are often limited opportunities for wildlife to coexist due to heavy reliance on agrochemicals, and because of monocultural and deep tilling practices. Our food system is also an important driver of climate change.
While we must develop the capacity to feed at least 10 billion people well before the end of the century, this can be achieved while also significantly increasing the coverage of protected areas for the benefit of wildlife and the provision of ecosystem services. Various credible approaches have been proposed, although the most effective mechanism for reducing pressure on ecosystems would be a transition towards plant-based diets, as substantially less land is required per calorie produced in contrast with diets including a significant meat and dairy component (Poore & Nemecek, 2018; Benton et al., 2021; Ritchie, 2021; Monbiot, 2022). The IPCC (2019) also asserts that a significant shift to plant-based diets would provide a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change. Additional benefits would include improved dietary health and a decrease in the likelihood of pandemics. However, despite clear evidence governments remain reluctant to advocate such a transition (Islam, 2021).
Shifting baseline syndrome
Putting aside global issues and returning to first-world problems and the fears of the UK’s general public, I often struggle to fathom why disproportionate blame is put on urbanization rather than farming in explaining the impoverishment of the nation’s biodiversity. Note that the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world due to agricultural land use patterns (Davis, 2020). Many people seem assured that all is well simply from the superficial greenness of the UK’s countryside, even though very little significant wildlife can be found across large parts (Packham & McCubbin, 2020; Monbiot, 2022). They see what is there (greenery) rather than what is missing. Each generation, therefore, redefines what it thinks of as natural and so there is an ongoing reduction of standards and acceptance of degraded natural ecosystems caused by unsustainable agricultural practices; the phenomenon known as shifting baseline syndrome. According to Tree (2018), the British have “pre-baseline amnesia, we forget that there was once more, much much more”.
The myth of the UK’s green and pleasant land has been perpetuated by the absolute conviction of large landowners and the National Farmers Union who have had more influence with the Government and have been more adept at spinning themselves as custodians of the countryside than conservation bodies (Macdonald, 2018; Packham & McCubbin, 2020).
As a consequence of intensive agricultural practices, some studies are now finding enhanced biodiversity in towns and cities contrasted with the neighboring countryside, ranging from increased bee species-richness in the UK (Baldock et al., 2015) to Leopards in Mumbai (Braczkowski et al., 2018).
Conclusions
Ongoing urban growth certainly poses many challenges to the environment and every effort should be made to minimize and offset losses, and wherever possible integrate biodiversity into the urban realm, not only to benefit nature itself, but also to provide ecosystem services, including biophilic benefits. However, the impact of urbanization needs to be kept in perspective compared with the much greater threat to biodiversity coming from our unsustainable global food system.
It should also be recognized that urban coverage is only 1% of the land area while accounting for 55% of the global population. Therefore, an urbanized world, particularly one that seeks opportunities for densification and minimizes sprawl, frees space for other uses including protected areas for wildlife. However, whether we allow more space for nature outside of our cities will mostly depend on whether we choose to adopt more sustainable approaches to food production.
Thank you to Dr. Mike Wells and Gary Grant for their kind feedback on the article.
References
Baldock, K.C.R., Goddard, M.A., Hicks, D.M., Kunin, W.E., Mitschunas, N., Osgathorpe, L.M., Potts, S.G., Robertson, K.M., Scott, A.V., Stone, G.N., Vaughan, I.P. & Memmott, J. (2015). ‘Where is the UK’s pollinator biodiversity? The importance of urban areas for flower-visiting insects’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 282, 20142849
Benton, T.G., Bieg, C., Harwatt, H., Pudasaini, R. & Wellesley, L. (2021). Food System Impacts on Biodiversity Loss: Three Levers for Food System Transformation in Support of Nature. Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International, London.
Braczkowski, A.R., O’Bryan, C.J., Stringer, M.J., Watson, J.E.M., Possingham, H.P., & Beyer, H.L. (2018). Leopards provide public health benefits in Mumbai, India. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, 16, 176–182.
Carson, R. (1962). Silent Spring. Penguin Classics, Chicago.
Catalano, C., Meslec, M., Boileau, J. et al. (2021). Smart sustainable cities of the New Millennium: towards design for nature. Circular Economy and Sustainability, 1, 1053–1086.
Connolly, M., Shan, Y, Bruckner, B., Li, R. & Hubacek, K. (2022). Urban and rural carbon footprints in developing countries. Environmental Research Letters, 17, 084005.
Delden, S.H., Sharath-Kumar, M., Butturini, M., Graamans, L.J.A., Heuvelink , E., Kacira, M., Kaiser, E., Klamer, R.S., Klerkx , L., Kootstra, G., Loeber, A., Schouten , R.E., Stanghellini, C., Leperen, W., Verdonk, J.C., Vialet-Chabrand, S., Woltering, E.J., Zedde , R., Zhang, Y. & Marcelis, L.F.M. (2021). Current status and future challenges in implementing and upscaling vertical farming systems. Nature Food, 2, 944–956.
Garland, L. (2016). The Case for High-Density Compact Cities. Bulletin of the Chartered Institute ofEcology and Environmental Management: In Practice, 92, 32-35.
Glaeser, E. (2012). Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces make us Human. Pan Books, London.
Grant, G. (2012). Ecosystem Services Come To Town: Greening Cities by Working with Nature. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.
IPCC (2019): Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. IPCC.
IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, New York.
Kingsnorth, P. (2005). Your Countryside, Your Choice. CPRE, London.
Lerch, M. (2019). Regional variations in the rural-urban fertility gradient in the global South. PLOS ONE, 14, e0219624.
Li, K. & Lin, B. (2015). Impacts of urbanization and industrialization on energy consumption/CO2 emissions: Does the level of development matter? Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 52: 1107-1122.
Louv, R. (2017). Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life. Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill.
Macdonald, B. (2018). Rebirding: Rewilding Britain and its Birds. Pelagic Publishing, Exeter.
McDonald, R.I., M.L. Colbert, & Hamann, M. (2018). Nature in the Urban Century: A global assessment of where and how to conserve nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington.
McKinney, M. (2015). Urbanization, biodiversity, and conservation: the impacts of urbanization on native species are poorly studied, but educating a highly urbanized human population about these impacts can greatly improve species conservation in all ecosystems. BioScience, 52, 883–890.
Mitchel, J. (1970). Big Yellow Taxi. Reprise Records.
Moghimi, F. (2021).Vertical Farming Economics in 10 Minutes. Rutgers Business Review, 6, 122-131.
Monbiot, G. (2022). Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet. Penguin, London.
Owen, D. (2011). Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability. Riverhead, New York.
Packham, C. & McCubbin, M. (2020). Back to Nature: How to Love Life and Save it. John Murray, London.
Pearce, F. (2010). Peoplequake: Mass Migration, Aging Nations and the Coming Population Crash. Transworld Publishers, London.
Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360, 987-992.
Ritchie, H. (2021). If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares. Our World in Data. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Ritchie, H. & Roser, M. (2019). Land Use Published online at Our World In Data. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/land-use’
I normally write in The Nature of Cities about biocultural diversity, particularly related to the developing world, but in light of recent events, I would like to ask the reader’s indulgence in my writing about a slightly different topic, and maybe even getting on my soapbox a little.
In the U.S., landscapes where subsidies have promoted dependence on one industry are the same ones registering feelings of alienation and degradation. Why?
You see, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election in the United States, we heard a lot about the decline of the American rural landscape and the challenges facing the people who live in it. And as we watched a once-unthinkable candidate go from joke to threat to candidate to president, we heard more and more about how this is the result of dissatisfaction—namely, a feeling that much of the country has been consistently ignored by establishment figures, the ones in urban areas who make the decisions. A look at a map of red and blue districts shows the degree to which rural America determined the election. Whatever you make of the result of the election, if these voters were trying to get more attention, they surely succeeded.
It is tempting to point out here, like so many have already, the glaring inconsistencies in claims that the new President understands and speaks for rural America when, to many, he looks more like an extremely privileged urban elite who has gotten rich playing with other people’s money. The irony is not lost on us that so much breath has been expelled—about a candidate who would stop the government from coddling self-identified underprivileged groups—by those exact groups, shouting about an establishment that they did not feel considered them to be its highest priority. These debates will go on, and on, and on. But for now, I would like to suggest that we can treat this feeling of dissatisfaction as real, whether we think it is justified or not. And if so, maybe we can take a moment to think about the American landscape as a place where people live and work and find their identity and produce things, and what can be done to make it a good place for all of this to happen.
One view of an American rural landscape. Photo: William Dunbar
I have already hinted at some of the problems felt in ex-urban, peri-urban, and rural areas in the United States. The perception is that decision-makers in the U.S., particularly those coastal urban elites, have been ignoring rural America for decades; this has resulted in a steady outflow of economic and social capital from the landscape, with jobs being outsourced to other countries, and factories and other places of business abandoned; big-box retailers owned by rich outsiders are empowered to move in and force small enterprises out of business, making the employment situation even worse; without jobs, people have little to give meaning and structure to their lives, and turn to medicating themselves with hours of mind-numbing TV or video games or, worse, drugs; communities cannot thrive with their members living like this, causing family and other social structures to fall apart; and so the landscape becomes a place of little hope, its people holding on as best they can, hoping things will somehow get better again, and looking for a different kind of decision-maker, someone who will make great things happen for them.
In the face of this perception, an overriding theme in 2016 was that this is not what America is supposed to be like. Americans, perhaps to a fault, think of their land as a “great” country, in many ways the most advanced nation in the world. This contrasts with the description I have just given of problems in the American landscape, which do not sound all that different from those facing the rest of the world, even in many developing countries. If the plight of the American landscape is really that bad, then, the time may have come to consider applying lessons more commonly found in the sustainable development field when we think about how to revitalize that landscape.
With all this talk of the American “landscape”, it is notable that a hot topic in fields including nature conservation and sustainable development over the past few years has been the idea of the “landscape approach”. This term is, at least in my experience, generally applied to work in developing countries, or else in places where some kind of historical or biocultural landscape has been found since time immemorial. Still, since it is used in many diverse parts of the world, it is important to keep in mind that it is not a single agreed-upon “the” landscape approach, but rather a general concept of making the basic unit for resource management, decision-making, conservation, and other goals a “landscape”, rather than, for example, an administrative unit such as a municipality or a county. One consequence of using the landscape as the basic unit is that it requires consideration of all factors affecting the landscape, both internal and external. The term “integrated landscape management” is often used in this regard—where “integrated” means accounting for and including as many different stakeholders, interests, ecosystem functions, levels of governance, and so on, as possible in management decision-making. In this sense, “integrated landscape management” is essentially synonymous with “landscape approach”, at least for the purposes of this essay.
A quick note may be helpful here about the term “landscape” itself. There is a bit of semantic slippage between the sense of “the landscape” and “a landscape”, the former being a broader and more abstract concept of the way the world looks from a certain perspective and all the elements that make up this view, while the latter tends to refer to a geographically distinct physical space. Since, as I suggest in this essay, landscape approaches have not typically been used in the U.S., the term tends to be used with the former meaning, as in “the political landscape”. Conversely, applying a landscape approach means working in individual physical landscapes, requiring exactly the kind of re-envisioning of the American landscape—to wit, as a landscape made up of landscapes—that I am arguing for here. In any case, suffice it to say that there may be some inadvertent or advertent mixing-up of the two senses of the word in this essay, but I hope it will help to show the richness of the concept rather than to confuse the reader.
Before tackling any landscape approach, there is the basic question of “what is a landscape?” A definitive answer is surprisingly difficult to find, as it depends greatly on the country and context. For the purposes of the project I work with—a research project based on the Satoyama Initiative, an effort to reconcile biodiversity conservation and human livelihood by promoting the “socio-ecological production landscape or seascape”—we use the somewhat inexact guideline that a landscape is defined by the community or communities that inhabit it, as the area they rely on for their livelihood and well-being. It could therefore be a watershed, an administrative boundary, an arbitrary area centered on an urban area, or almost any other division the communities consider meaningful. Getting community members to think in terms of landscape and to attempt to determine their own landscape is an important basic step. The distinction between “the landscape” and “a landscape” becomes important here, as “a landscape” is a distinct unit while, for example, “the American landscape” refers to essentially the whole country as a more abstract concept. Keeping this in mind, the remainder of this essay briefly asks readers to consider what a landscape approach can do for individual landscapes of the American landscape, providing a few examples from other parts of the world.
Consider the problems facing the American landscape as described earlier. At the heart of most of them—and directly related to our election results—is the feeling among many non-urban Americans that decision-makers create policies that ignore or even harm their well-being. While policymakers say that their intent is to help the economy and improve the livelihoods of all Americans, policies sometimes create perverse incentives that result in jobs fleeing the landscape. An example may be when policies favor cheap imports of foreign-produced goods that make American manufacturing uncompetitive, a problem the new President has said he will meet by opposing free trade.
The advantage of a landscape approach here is that perverse incentives are often caused by favoring one sector or industry at the expense of other priorities—for example, when subsidies lead to overproduction of one type of goods to the point that the supply chain becomes damaged, eventually degrading the ability to produce that good and subsequently causing the subsidized industry to crash. A landscape approach, by focusing on the landscape itself rather than any one industry, should not allow this kind of imbalance if it will harm the landscape. Any subsidies or similar incentives applied using an integrated landscape management perspective would have to be to the benefit of the landscape rather than any one element in it, and would ideally balance costs and benefits toward long-term sustainability.
A diverse landscape in Tuscany. Photo: William Dunbar
A promising example in this vein comes from Italy (not a developing country in this case, but one with a long history of people shaping their landscapes for sustainable existence in harmony with nature). In one part of Tuscany, an organization called the Ancient Grains Association is attempting to bring back heritage wheat species as part of a sustainable landscape management model for an area that has suffered from rural abandonment and environmental degradation, in part a result of the globalization of the wheat industry, which has encouraged modern and calorie-efficient, but less sustainable, strains of wheat and incentivized the cultivation of a small number of high-profit, high-efficiency crops. A traditional landscape in this area comprised a richer mosaic of grapes, olives, forest patches, animal husbandry, and others activities. One major factor that the Ancient Grains Association has identified as crucial to its success is local government action to support growing ancient strains of wheat. Cultivation of these strains has been proven to be possible without subsidies, but would be very difficult if less sustainable grains were subsidized. The local city council is already involved in asking local schools to buy the ancient grains, financing local events, and creating an agricultural reservation as a kind of common space to encourage this kind of project. These actions have led to the success of the project to date, and plans are ongoing to further upscale them in the future.
A wheat monoculture landscape in another part of southern Europe. Photo: William Dunbar
Feelings of alienation can result from this same trend toward globalization. When the people in the landscape feel that they are not in control of the policies and decisions that determine their well-being—that they are not active agents in a mutually-beneficial and harmonious relationship between people and nature in the landscape—they will naturally feel less responsibility to make sure that the landscape is managed in a sustainable manner that will be good for themselves, their communities and the natural environment for the long term. A landscape approach is intended to help with exactly this problem in that it is centered on the people in the landscape themselves, and by definition makes them the decision-makers and key stakeholders in management decisions, resulting in a sense of ownership and motivation to work for long-term sustainability.
Looking to the world of sustainable development, an example of a project strongly emphasizing stakeholder engagement and empowerment is the COMDEKS project, which is administered by UNDP and has been implemented in 20 developing countries around the world. This project works in targeted landscapes to create a “landscape strategy” for integrated landscape management and then promote work toward the strategy’s implementation. Key to the project’s success is that it has required communities in each landscape to examine their own priorities for improving their sustainability and resilience and to collectively agree on steps to take towards reaching those goals. An important principle here is that in many cases, the people in the communities themselves hold the knowledge of what is best for their own landscape, although they are sometimes denied the means to implement it or are otherwise incentivized not to. Since each landscape is unique, the knowledge of what results in sustainable landscape management is built up over people’s long-term interaction with the landscape. This is often called traditional, indigenous, or local knowledge, and in many cases this knowledge is updated, enhanced, or integrated with modern scientific knowledge, while new knowledge is always being developed.
Assessing a landscape in Namibia with the COMDEKS project. Photo: William Dunbar
The American landscape itself provides famous examples of hard lessons learned where there was a lack of an integrated landscape strategy. One of these is the so-called Dust Bowl era, when a number of factors—perverse incentives leading to overproduction of cotton in an almost complete monoculture in some areas, alienation of the local farmers from the very decision-making processes that led to this imbalance, lack of a long-term strategy for sustainability—resulted in a landscape that proved tragically lacking in resilience in the face of changing environmental and economic pressures. Unfortunately, although this experience seems to provide a clear lesson, one look at much of the landscape in, for example, the American Midwest, where I grew up, shows that large-scale, monocultural agriculture, particularly of corn, still dominates. Is it likely a coincidence that the very landscapes where subsidies have promoted similar dependence on a single industry are the same ones where we hear the most about alienation and degradation both of the environment and the communities that live there? Maybe an integrated landscape management strategy for long-term sustainability and resilience—integrating diverse productive activities, interests, levels of governance, and ecosystem services in harmony with nature—is what is needed for the revitalization of these communities and to make their people feel they are truly the decision-makers and stakeholders in their own well-being.
Like anywhere else in the world, conditions in landscapes around the United States vary widely, so, as I have mentioned, there is no one approach that would work everywhere in the country. Still, the factors that characterize landscape approaches in general apply here as well. For one, any approach should include landscape diversity as one of its key factors, as diversity is strongly correlated with sustainability and resilience in many projects—for example, the “Indicators of Resilience” used in the COMDEKS Project encompasses these facets.
Meaningfully including landscape diversity means not only ecological diversity (although it is, of course, important), but also socioeconomic diversity. Readers of The Nature of Cities will be very familiar with the danger of urban areas relying on one or a small number of industries, as in the famous case of Detroit. The same principles apply as in rural areas of Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl—Detroit’s automobile-based economy can be seen as a kind of industrial monoculture and an example of the lack of resilience that comes from reliance on this kind of monoculture. The American landscape overall might be a very different place if communities were incentivized to remake their landscapes as bioculturally diverse mosaics of different land-uses and production activities, taking advantage of the knowledge that has been gained in the past and feeling deeply engaged in the future direction of their own lands.
Ultimately, the point of this essay is that we need policies that will help, not hinder, this goal. We need a well-thought-out and comprehensive vision of the landscape at multiple scales—from the perspective of the individual land-holder all the way up to large-scale policies on infrastructure and economic incentives—that will result in sustainable, resilient, fulfilling, and healthy communities committed to improving their own well-being. The examples provided here are of a few efforts being made in this direction in other parts of the world, and are meant to point to lessons that the United States can learn from when addressing sustainable development. Those who want to improve the American landscape should not be averse to looking at how landscapes are approached elsewhere, even in the developing world, as a source of good ideas and knowledge. If I can climb back on my soapbox just a little at the end here, I propose that this may even be a way to help bring some sanity into our sometimes-crazy politics.
As one last note, I would like to invite readers to post any comments below, but particularly I am interested to hear about any examples of positive landscape approaches in the States, as I have not found many in my limited research. I hope this essay can be the beginning of a dialogue about this important topic.
Man is part of nature, and the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, including intangible heritage, can go hand in hand.
The first time I visited the Méréville Estate and its Anglo-Chinese garden, created south of Paris at the end of the 18th century, I was struck by the interlinking of nature and culture in this amazing place. This National Heritage Site is the work of the Marquis de Laborde, who acquired the estate in 1784 and involved the greatest artists of his time (the architect Bélanger and the painter of the rocks Hubert Robert). The landscape created evokes a sublimated nature, punctuated by follies, utilitarian and decorative garden buildings. The walker is invited to follow a path of sensations, along which succeed different “scenes” with varied characters. In this kind of initiatory journey, he explores, with all his senses, the links between man and landscape. He is an observer of the natural life, in the sense given by the natural philosophy of the Enlightenment (Baridon, 1998, p.835).
View of the castle and the Méréville Gardens. Photo: S.Becher, 2016
What is striking in Méréville is the conjunction between the cultural creation of a “natural” landscape and the way in which this landscape has evolved. Nature has, little by little, regained its rights, thanks to the gradual abandonment of the estate in the course of its history. To an undiscerning eye, the garden now appears as a natural valley in which the meanderings of the river, the groves, rocks, caves, and other waterfalls seem to have existed from time immemorial. This soothing landscape, pleasant for walking and meditation, seems just out of a painting by Hubert Robert! http://www.essonne.fr/no-cache/diaporama/diapo/domaine-de-mereville/
The Nathalie Island with, in the background, the Trajane column, one of the main follies of the 18th century. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
Over several years of research and work on protected natural areas, especially in urban areas, I have observed how humans manage this “nature”, which is considered as wilderness. In the gardens of Méréville, I found myself faced with the same type of paradox created by human intervention on natural environments: Can a landscape that has undergone human intervention still be considered “natural”? If the resulting “cultural nature” is not less rich in native biodiversity, why would its conservation value be lessened as compared with other areas considered “wilderness”?
The (artificial) rockfall scene. Photo: L. Bruno, 2017
In the case of Méréville, man created an irregular garden in which he sought to reproduce the idea of nature, as conceived in the 18th century. This was a romantic nature, idealized and punctuated by the follies that make it so picturesque, while recalling the links of man with the natural world. Time has made the imagined landscape truer than nature itself.
Hiking in the historical garden is a bit like exploring a natural protected area. Its panoramic structure seeks to reach the great wild landscapes and create the effect of surprise and admiration on the visitor, as an explorer discovering “wild” nature. Here is a meander of river, an island, a lake; there are rocks and caves; and for the adventourous who dare advance to the bottom of the park, there is a great waterfall with rustling waters.
The vegetable garden. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
In the case of urban protected areas, and protected areas in general, men intervene to protect, manage and preserve a space considered as natural, in a way that recalls the gardener caring for his garden. The very fact that there is human intervention, to manage and protect biodiversity, guides the evolution of the protected area and transforms it de facto from a natural place into a cultural place, or even an artefact, into the etymological meaning of the term, “made by the hand of man”. Nature thus meets culture, which does not prevent it from enriching itself by this “fertilization”.
The castle of Méréville (13th-18th century). Photo: L. Bruno, 2017
The conservationists will forgive me my audacity, but can we speak of a “natural area” in the case of a “domestic nature”, even in a national park with big cats? The evolution of the nature and the culture concepts opens our mind to that of “cultural nature”. It has been demonstrated in the Amazon Rainforest, which is a “garden” cultivated by the Amerindians for their needs for the centuries (Hladik, 1996); in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai, where tribals cultivate and find medical and food plants among the highest density of leopards in the world; or in the Tijuca National Park in Rio, a “cultural” forest replanted by men. The recognition of the “cultural nature” value could contribute to integration of traditional knowledge into the management actions of protected areas. The survival of the Nairobi National Park, Kenya, depends to a large extent on the traditional Maasai knowledge to maintain the seasonal wildlife migratory corridor, linking the south of the park with the Athi Kapiti Plains, the “Maasai Garden”.
The castle seen from the entrance meadow with the two-century-old plane trees. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017The Ruined bridge, created per se. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
The hand of the man who protects and manages a so-called “natural” area in order to conserve it does not, in any way, diminish the importance of conservation actions or the value of the landscapes and the biodiversity conserved. Rather, the growing awareness of the need for human intervention and the beneficial transformation that it can bring about should lead to fundamentally different conservation practices. For it means to recognize man as part of nature and his responsibility, both in its transformation and preservation.
In Méréville, human intervention is the basis of the landscape built. There, conservation issues of the natural and cultural heritages intertwine. Most of the large trees planted in the 18th century were replaced or simply cut out by former landowners, in particular a forestry tradesman. But in this place preserved from visitors for several years, the herbs have pushed everywhere, good and bad. The river, whose bed has been moved and traced to draw curls, to throw itself into large and small waterfalls and to cross lakes, has gradually faded and flows slowly, as if for it time had stopped. The rocks and caves, covered with vegetation and blackened by the centuries, have such a “natural” character that they would deceive the most knowledgeable climbers. Many follies of the 18th century garden were sold and exiled to Jeurre Estate, 20 km further north. The remaining follies, including the castle almost in ruins and the “Swiss farm”, accentuate the natural character of the landscape, now housing a fauna and flora so important that it is classified a “Natural Area of Ecological, Floristic and Faunistic Interest” (ZNIEFF: Zone naturelle d’intérêt écologique, floristique et faunistique; https://inpn.mnhn.fr/zone/znieff/110001587). The protection of this area was motivated by the presence of wetland habitats of patrimonial interest (wood of alders, willows and sweetgale).
The orchard. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017The Rocks bridge: Photo: L.Bruno, 2017The Rocks bridge and the small waterfall. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
The parallelism between a natural area and a cultural site is not obvious, but it allows us an interesting reflection on the different levels of intervention and the power games played in the protected sites whether natural, such as a national park, or cultural, as a heritage site. The UNPEC research program (Urban National Parks in Emerging Countries & Cities, 2012-2016) analyzed the linkages and the relationships between the multiple stakeholders interacting with this type of protected area, managed at the national level, in a local (city) and regional (state, county, region) context and whose status, particularly symbolic, is strongly influenced by the international bodies.
In 2016, the Department of Essonne, owner of the Méréville Estate, decided to reopen the gardens to the public. The project involves a slew of stakeholders from many institutions. They come from the level of the French National State (Heritage Site, Archaeological Service, Environmental Department, etc.); the Ile-de-France Region, where it is located, the Department of Essonne itself and the Méréville Municipality, but also the Agglomeration of which it is a part. In 2017, the Department of Essonne has created the “Essonne Mécénat” Foundation, to look for financial support for the conservation, restoration and improvement of the Department’s natural and cultural heritage, including the Méréville Estate (http://www.essonne.fr/le-mecenat-au-service-de-lattractivite-de-lessonne/). This new public-private partnership initiative is still quite innovative in France. As part of this logic, a call for projects was launched with the aim of establishing a public-private partnership for the restoration of the castle, the main folly of the garden, which is now almost in ruins (https://fr.calameo.com/read/003221600d33fca1193d8).
The mill, in the entrance meadow, supplied running water to the castle. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017The Golden Globes Bridge. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017The Great Waterfall (currently out of the water). It has not flowed for more than 50 years. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
The restoration of the garden and its hydro-ecological system reveals some contradictions of environmental and heritage law. From the environmental point of view, the ecological integrity of the river must be restored and the obstacles created by man destroyed. It means destroying the waterfalls and lakes created in the 18th century. A hypothesis unimaginable from the cultural heritage point of view. The rehabilitation project of the historic paths calls for the expertise of archaeological excavations (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research). For every path traced, every grove site, every meander of the river, every rock, was thought to build this surprising landscape. Therefore, to meet the requirements of one law, technical choices require compromises with the other.
Chris Sandbrook speaks of plural conservation in the 21st century, and proposes a fairly wide definition which encompasses the diversity of conceptions of what nature conservation can be today: “actions that are intended to establish, improve or maintain good relations with nature” (Sandbrook, 2015, p.565). This plurality could also be applied to the conservation of cultural heritage.
The ruins of the dairy. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
While conservation is now composed of multiple means and various actions for natural and cultural sites, each one, in its cultural, socioeconomic and political context must find where to position the cursor between a traditional form of conservation, and opening up to the territory as well as its actors and inhabitants.
The new pond, created in Méréville in the early 20th century, is hidden discreetly in the meadow. It has become a refuge for wildlife, especially for birds such as the grey heron, looking for a secure breeding site on their migratory route. This element in particular has inspired a proposal for sectorisation of how the Méréville Estate, itself inspired by the sectors of national parks such as Table Mountain, Cape Town, and Tijuca, Rio. This system makes it possible both to regulate and secure visitation, and to protect the biodiversity of the site, including preserving certain areas from anthropogenic disturbance. The internal rules complete the protection of the natural and cultural elements of the site and the visitors.
The Wetlands. Photo: L.Bruno, 2017
But the park today (58 ha) is only a fragment of the 18th century property (400 ha). Beyond the walls, urbanization has come to nibble fields and forests but left in the valley floor marshes, now classified as Sensitive Natural Areas (ENS: espace naturel sensible) property of the Department of Essonne.
These natural areas follow the river for more than 2 km until the small village of Boigny. There are the stone quarries named “Carrières des Cailles”. It is one of the thirteen protected sites of the Essonne Natural Geological Reserves (http://www.reserves-naturelles.org/sites-geologiques-de-l-essonne), which are the witnesses of the last marine transgression at the Paris basin (-33.7 and – 28 million years).
The four sectors of the Méréville Estate: free access; regulated tour; guided tour only; quiet zone for nature conservation. Credit: Conseil départemental de l’Essonne, 2017
The small pebbles (“cailles”), used in the Méréville Garden for the paving of the paths and the caves, came from the sands of the Stampien Age[1] found in this location. The loop is thus looped, linking the odd cultural heritage of the historic garden, the sensitive natural heritage of the wetlands, and the remarkable geological heritage of the Stampien Age. The complementarity of the exceptional heritage value of these three sites, belonging to the Department of Essonne, makes Méréville a unique place for the dialogue between nature and culture. There, the two meet, complement and value each other. An intelligent and integrated management of the three sites could contribute to the acceptance of the “cultural nature” concept.
This could lead to changes in the management of heritage areas, both natural and cultural, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas, and to definitively integrate the value of human intervention into a proactive conservation.
When faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, it’s a good idea to call upon the forces of nature. First you have to think about the nature of your city, how it works and how to work with it. Mexico City is built on a lake, so start there.
A satirical video circulated this past summer announcing Mexico City as the country’s newest and most exciting water park, featuring waterfalls in the metro and an airport runway turned waterway.[1] I thought they might have included the geyser spouting out of a drain that I saw next to the sign for the Fuentes Brotantes (Gushing Fountains) Metrobús station.
Mexico City as a Waterpark. Photo: http://quinto-poder.mx/videos/video-nuevo-parque-acuatico-la-cdmx
Instead of draining away the rising water that was filling the major arterial road Avenida Insurgentes Sur, the sewage system was channeling rushing water from higher up the slope of the Valley of Mexico into the centre of Mexico City at the bottom. Similarly, roads running perpendicular to the avenue became fast-flowing streams with cascades forming as the water flowed over outcrops of urban infrastructure. The force of the water provided a new reason to take care when crossing intersections as the water level crept up our legs and hinted at the possibility of being swept away. But my real moment of fear came when edging along a ledge over several feet of murky water and thinking about the unlucky combination of my natural lack of balance and the number of electronic devices in my backpack.
From drain to gushing fountain. Photo: Janice AstburyIntersection with waves. Photo: Janice AstburyThe view from the edge. Photo: Janice AstburyThe view from the Metrobús. Photo: Janice AstburyMetrobús station as dry land. Photo: Janice Astbury
This watery urban adventure had begun when my boundlessly adventurous friend and colleague Jürgen Hoth decided that we should get off the Metrobús and continue our journey on foot along the flooded expressway. This seemed perhaps the only way to avoid spending the night in an articulated bus which had come to a complete stop with the thousands of other vehicles on the road.
We saw the reason for this paralysis after an hour or so of wading through water and clambering over railings and road dividers and across Metrobús platforms in search of higher ground over which to continue our journey. At the front of the sea of immobilised traffic we saw that a lake had started to form in the lower part of the expressway. Emergency workers were moving about with hooks presumably trying to unblock drains, which appeared to be a hopeless endeavour. People kept saying to me: “This city was built on a lake”. And although it looks like every last vestige of water has been drained away, “The lake keeps coming back”. This lake, with no natural outlet, was Lake Texcoco where the Aztecs turned an island into their capital city of Tenochtitlan.
To wait or to wade. Fording the Avenida Insurgentes. Photo: Janice Astbury
The flooding on the day of my watery adventure was by no means the worst of this past rainy season. It was only one of many days where people spent hours and hours moving small distances within the city-becoming-a-lake. Mexico City dwellers spend huge amounts of time sitting in traffic under all climatic conditions but the addition of water shifts the question from “what time will I get home tonight?” to “will I get home tonight?” As in many places, there is a sense that the climate is changing and that the flooding is getting worse. It is a big problem that requires a big solution. Some have decided that the solution is to build a giant sewer to carry more of the city’s unwanted water away. The Túnel Emisor Oriente (Eastern Discharge Tunnel) is scheduled for completion, after various delays and budget overruns, at the end of 2018. Despite the enormous investment, according to some critics, it will not be able to prevent flooding.[2] This massive engineering project raises questions about the effects of being on the receiving end of the wastewater of nine million people and their economic activities. It also seems unwise to channel water away from a thirsty city with a falling water table (and a serious subsidence problem), which must resort to piping water in from further and further away. The Sistema Cutzamala (one of the largest waterworks in the world, and possibly the most expensive to operate) brings water from about 150 km away and pumps it 1 km up to the elevation of Mexico City—and still only provides about 30 percent of the water required.
It’s an absurd situation for a city that was, and to some extent still is, a lake.
Fortunately, a growing number of people are thinking about what it means to be a city that was a lake, and are exploring ways to work with their ecosystem rather than against it. Many of them believe this is the only feasible solution given that conventional water management infrastructure has been tried unsuccessfully since the arrival of the Europeans. Academics, civil society organisations, and government officials are now talking about what are increasingly described as nature-based solutions. I have been fortunate to speak to some of them about this in my role as a researcher within the programme NATure-based URban innoVATION (NATURVATION).
Within the city boundaries: Milpa Alta. Photos: Janice Astbury
Fortunately, Mexico City has nature on a grand enough scale to play a significant role in providing solutions to its big problems. One of the most surprising things about this densely populated city is that more than half of the area within the city boundaries is a conservation zone, the Conservation Land (Suelo de Conservación). This large area of 85.5 hectares was designated for conservation some years ago (classified in 1976 and clearly defined in 1987).[3] This designation recognised the importance of the local ecosystem within the growing city. Unfortunately, there are many threats to the Conservation Land and the regulations governing its use are not always respected. However its very existence is testimony to the long-standing, prescient vision regarding the role of natural processes in the city, and an enduring legal framework that facilitated emergence of these nature-based solutions.
The Conservation Land is deemed to be of particular importance because of its role in recharging the aquifer, which still satisfies about 40 percent of the city’s water needs and has potential to do more. The slopes of the Valley of Mexico must retain their vegetation in order to absorb rainfall and recharge the aquifer. Vegetated slopes retain rainwater in the upper parts of the basin, slowing and absorbing the flow and lessening the likelihood of creating lake-like conditions and flooded roads and buildings at the bottom. Below much of the paved surface of the city lies an impermeable clay lakebed. There is nowhere for the water to go. It is therefore infinitely better for this runoff to be absorbed higher up and converted into good quality water for humans and non-humans, than becoming an agent of destruction, picking up contaminants, doing damage and ultimately requiring costly removal by a yet to be effectively implemented grey infrastructure.
It is also important to note the existence of the pedregal in the Valley of Mexico, an ecosystem of drought-resistant vegetation in a water collecting landscape of basalt (volcanic rock). It has the capacity to store water and to channel it into the deep aquifer below the lake bed so maintaining its functioning is crucial.[4] There are remnants of this landscape in the built-up portion of the southern part of Mexico City and there are opportunities to protect and restore it using approaches showcased around the campus of the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM).[5]
Pedregal landscapes at UNAM. Photos: Janice Astbury
But while there is growing awareness that the best solutions to Mexico City’s water problems must be nature-based solutions, the challenges of implementing these are greater than engineering a giant sewer. Multiple overlapping layers of grey infrastructure and the social infrastructure that facilitates its expansion limit the opportunities to benefit from the green infrastructure underneath.
People looking for housing can find cheaper options by moving to the edge of the city and up the slope. This land is thus sealed off beneath homes and roads and the other facilities that will eventually follow. Both real estate development and irregular settlements facilitate this sprawl, and are in turn encouraged by the social, economic, political, and legal context in which they unfold, with vulnerability and corruption playing big roles. Poorer people in this very unequal city often find themselves driven away from central areas and forced to settle far from their places of work and the amenities and communities that may be important to them. Sadly they become both victims and sources of the traffic problems, spending hours each day in buses that move even more slowly during flooding exacerbated by their dislocation.
Some areas are safeguarded by the presence of traditional practices of cultivation, now also combined with newer forms of sustainable production and land management. These are often in the care of indigenous communities or ejidos (campesino communities), which collectively own their lands. In the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Xochimilco (the last vestige of the Mexico City lake system) people still grow food using chinampas, the floating gardens that once fed the entire city and that are now also noted for their water filtering and flood mitigation capacity. But alongside these are a growing number of greenhouse operations and throughout the Conservation Land intensive cultivation both reduces and pollutes the water that makes it to the aquifer, while illegal cutting or clearing and land use change removes trees and displaces the native grasses that have a key role in maintaining the healthy functioning of the ecosystem.
All of this is made more complicated by the presence of criminal activity and accompanying impunity that can make it dangerous to confront people engaged in illegal activities. In parallel other forms of criminality direct attention and enforcement resources away from protecting a vital ecosystem and the communities maintaining sustainable livelihoods within it.
This complex dynamic plays out within an equally complex web of land tenures and jurisdictions including collectively owned lands, protected natural areas, cities and their boroughs, and several states. Fortunately various entities (states, municipalities, local communities, civil society organisations, academics) within what is now known as the megalopolis have come together to collaborate in an initiative called the Water Forest which covers an area of about 1000 square miles. They recognise that the ecosystem of the wider Basin of Mexico is essential to the survival of Mexico City and surrounding settlements with their 23 million people, and its protection and restoration is, therefore, a question of national security.[6]
The current investment of effort, creativity, and goodwill of many actors engaged in diverse activities is a source of hope, particularly as the work is taking place at multiple scales including within local areas like Xochimilco, the wider Conservation Land, and the umbrella initiative of the Water Forest. This is accompanied by the development of innovative approaches to financing that reflect the high value of the ecosystem services provided and it is facilitated by the expansion of perspectives that acknowledge and work with the complex overlapping systems that are the source of and solution to challenges, as is evidenced by the Mexico City Resilience Strategy[7].
Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, remains the socio-cultural shift required among all urban actors who need to move away from thinking like a builder of a machine and move toward thinking like a collaborator in an ecosystem. When faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, it’s a good idea to call upon the forces of nature. First you have to think about the nature of your city, how it works and how to work with it. Sometimes it’s not obvious on the surface, as in the case of Mexico City where water scarcity is emblematic but where the solution is to think like a lake.
NATure-based URban innoVATION (naturvation.eu) is a 4-year project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme involving 14 institutions across Europe in fields as diverse as urban development, innovation studies, geography, ecology, environmental assessment and economics. The partnership includes city governments, non-governmental organisations and business. The project will assess what nature-based solutions can achieve in cities, examine how innovation is taking place, and work with communities and stakeholders to develop the knowledge and tools required to realise the potential of nature-based solutions for meeting urban sustainability goals.
[3] Connolly, P., & Wigle, J. (2017). (Re) constructing Informality and “Doing Regularization” in the Conservation Zone of Mexico City. Planning Theory & Practice, 18(2), 183-201.
[4] National Research Council. (1995). Mexico City’s Water Supply: Improving the Outlook for Sustainability. National Academies Press.
[5] Suárez, A., Camarena, P., Herrera, I., & Lot, A. (2011). Infraestructura verde y corredores ecológicos de los pedregales: ecología urbana del sur de la Ciudad de México. UNAM, at http://centro.paot.org.mx/documentos/unam/infraestructura_verde.pdf
[6] Hoth, J. (2014). ‘Urban Jungle: No Forest, No Water for Mexico City’, in humanature, 21 March 2014, at https://blog.conservation.org/2014/03/urban-jungle-no-forest-no-water-for-mexico-city/
Urban development in the Amazon region could be reframed by associating two different systems of thought and practices: natural indigenous and technology capital production. Together—what I call a Third Landscape—they could meld “foreign” and “local” technologies within the relevance of local context.
1 Proposition
The logic of urban growth in the Brazilian Amazon could be changed if we succeeded in bringing together two different systems of thought and practices: that of the natural and indigenous, to that of technology and capital production. Together, they could guarantee the continued economic and environmental resilience of the region and pave the way to interesting hybrid solutions—what I have called a Third Landscape, where “foreign” and “local” technologies are employed within the relevance of local context. The Amazon could become a laboratory for design exploration, to establish a different logic for spatial (and maybe political) organization, where there is a productive encounter between natural and urban environments.
I have prepared a three-part article to expand on this idea. This one, where I lay out the proposition and try to justify it, a second one where through a series of images and short texts I interpret some of the ideas of what I have called a Circular Culture, that will serve as base for the understanding of an “indigenous imaginary”, and the last one where I make design propositions to exemplify what a Forest City could be.
2 Intro: extensive urbanization
In 1970, Henri Lefebvre posed the idea that the “total urbanization of society” was an inevitable process, which would demand new interpretive and perceptual approaches.[i] Indeed, not even fifty years later we are experiencing fast growing rates of urbanization, with more than half of the world’s population already living in urban centers. In many ways, it is not far different in the Brazilian Amazon. As consumption levels in our modern cities demand supplies from far-away sources, the Amazon region has been systematically integrated into the logic of urban growth with pressing global demand for its natural resources. Today, it is interconnected with Brazilian cities like São Paulo and Brasilia, as much as it is with other global cities like Tokyo, Montreal or Beijing. “Urbanization” has, in fact, arrived in the Amazon.
Urban web in the Brazilian Amazon. Source: IBGE 2010. Image: Axelle Dechelette and Anna Dietzsch
However, despite the rich cultural and natural environments and the predominance of a decentralized pattern of small urban nuclei, urban settlements in the Amazon follow models that are totally foreign to their contexts, mirroring urban centers of the Brazilian Southeast, the US and Europe. There is widespread disregard for the forest and the traditional knowledge that comes with it. As Bertha Becker pointed out in 2013, “In this regional economy commanded from outside, indigenous culture and knowledge have mostly been dissociated from great transformation movements.”[iii]
But does it have to be this way?
No. But if we want to work within the realm of an ecological urbanism, we will have to acknowledge the strong interdependency between natural and urban environments. We will need to transition from a perpetual response to emergency, to a long-term vision that nevertheless is not standardized, but specific, interdependent and aligned with new technologies that are relevant to local context
The (asphalted) grid stamped into the forest. City of Souré. Source: Google MapsArmed conflict between the Guarani-Caiowá and farmers in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Photo: Spensy Pimentel
3 Another Imaginary
One point of departure may be to look at the societies of the indigenous populations we have ignored in our rush to “progress”. If their paradigms are different from ours, maybe their solutions could enlighten us. But for that to happen we would have to acknowledge the possibility that modern society is not the only viable or credible social system and that economic progress and reliance on monetization are not “fundamental truths”.
Charles Taylor, in his book “Modern Social Imaginaries” coins the term “social imaginary” to explain the “intrinsic grasp” of our social environment and possibilities, pointing to the existence of a “moral order” that underlies our political and economic structures. In other words, our modern order is the one we may take for granted, or believe in, but it is not by any means the only possibility. Innumerous traditional communities, as well as disenfranchised ones, although imbedded in the reality of global economy, have found ways to live within different sets of values all over the world. Different imaginaries, or different “political imaginaries”, as Gibson-Graham have called them, are not fantasies or naïve discourse, but rather forms of alternative economic organizations that currently exist—“politics of possibilities” [iv] that locally define their own internal rules.
Castells pointed out in the 90s, that as the internet made the globalization of the production economy possible, it also created a platform for the connection of local voices.[v] Grounded in the reality of local possibilities and constraints, these voices can guide us in the conversation of what regional and global design could be. I have talked about this in another article at TNOC.
“The embrace of local power doesn’t have to mean parochialism, withdrawal, or intolerance, only a coherent foundation from which to navigate the larger world. From the wild coalitions of the global justice movement to the cowboys and environmentalists sitting down together there is an ease with difference that doesn’t need to be eliminated, a sense that . . . you can have an identity embedded in local circumstances and a role in the global dialogue. And that this dialogue exists in service of the local.” [vi]
As the deforestation of the Amazon poses a huge threat to our global environmental balance, indigenous populations have been able to sustain environmental preservation more efficiently than in other parts of the world. In Brazil, it is estimated that deforestation in indigenous areas can be substantially s smaller than in other non-indigenous lands, while in the world, indigenous land and communities are responsible for absorbing 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It is clear that indigenous cultural resilience and practices are tightly linked to the environmental resilience of their habitats.
In Brazilian Indigenous Territories, deforestation can be eleven times smaller than in other areas. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan
My proposition is that we should examine traditional indigenous practices to inform our understanding of the urbanization occurring in the Amazon and explore the idea of a “hybrid urbanization” that is structured on alternative solutions arising from the encounter of two imaginaries—that of our modern world and that of the indigenous knowledge. I believe we could reframe the discussion of urban development in the Amazon region by associating two different systems of thought and practices: the natural and indigenous, to that of technology and capital production.
Together, they could guarantee the continued economic and environmental resilience of the region. This would pave the way to interesting hybrid solutions—what I have called a Third Landscape, where “foreign” and “local” technologies are employed within the relevance of local context. The Amazon has the potential to become a laboratory for design exploration, to establish a different logic for spatial (and maybe political) organization, where there is a productive encounter between natural and urban environments.
The city of Altamira, Pará, Brazil. Photo: Marcelo Salazar (ISA)
4 The man-made forest
Three thousand years before Europeans arrived in Brazil, Brazilian Indians lived in a web of spread-out civilizations that covered the country’s surface. Opposing the view of “naïf civilizations”, or “pre-civilizations”, several studies show us today that they were organized in quite intricate and elaborate ways. Satellite imagery has revealed the occupation of the Amazonian Upper Xingu area by a system of gardens villages that could be compared to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities[vii]. These “polities” were responsible for the domestication of the forest: vast areas that we today assume are “pristine natural forests” were really planted and managed landscapes, indicating a high degree of “manufacturing” and yet great balance in the coexistence of man and forest.[viii]
Map showing ADEs found locations and predicted sites. In: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2013.2475
Soil samples from the Amazon Basin tell the story of Pre-Columbian, anthropogenic activity through the analysis of the Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs). The samples that have been classified as such are rich in macro- and micro-nutrients, in stark contrast to most of the Amazon soil, that is naturally acidic and rich in minerals that are toxic to plants at high concentrations. Layered above the more acid soils, ADEs contain remnants of burnt biomass, are rich in essential minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, and zinc and maintain a higher pH that is more forgiving to cultivation. These samples have persisted for centuries because of “fire derived black carbon”, and they have been found in the savannas, rainforests, and various blends of the two across the Amazon Basin. Indigenous cultures have apparently shaped the entire landscape through millennia of coexistence with the environment.[ix]
ADE and acidic soil samples. Image by Carbon-terra.eu. In: https://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/22/black-magic-secrets-amazonian-fertility/
As a rule of thumb, the Amazonian forest stands on a thin layer of nutritious soil, regulated by a fragile balance of natural processes that allow the system to survive interdependently. By ignoring the complexity of its functioning as a sophisticated superimposition of specific elements and conditions, modern agriculture cannot reproduce the fertility of the original soil in the long term, as many collapsed attempts have shown us.
The occurrence of Mycorrhizal (roots and funghi link) speeds up the decomposition of the large amount of debris the forest produces, feeding the poor Amazonian soil with organic material. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan.The suspension of volatile organic compounds (“forest perfumes”) in the high pressure zone created by the forest’s perspiration, speed up the cycle of clouds and rain precipitation. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan.
The discourse of pushing the “integration” of the Amazon into the economic logic of the country, and ultimately global capital, will be a failed experiment in the long run. Cities and rural settlements that were implemented in the region since the seventies, along a web of highways and throughways constructed by the military regime, are today the focus of the worst environmental disasters, pushing deforestation and fires to dangerous levels. The political inclination of the current federal government to further advance with this strategy adds a level of urgency to the Amazonian issue that we have not seen since the 60’s, when its indigenous population was considered “extinguished”.
In contrast, “By creating gradients of forests that mutually activated each other – the riparian buffer, the orchard, the managed forest and the gardens –these [indigenous] societies have avoided soil deterioration and could [can]therefore develop complex social relations and durable places of habitation.“[x]
Reconstruction of a section through a pre-Colombian Indian settlement. Information collected from authors: Heckenberger, Neves, Clement and Nevis. Image by Andrea Margit.
These spatial arrangements are imbedded in a social imaginary that is different than ours and that, in admittedly oversimplified ways, will be here described by the pinpoint of four characteristics: fluidity, kinship, cultural territory and subsistence. [xi] In this imaginary, patterns of flexibility, cohesion between man and nature and a non-hierarchical connection between socio-economic practices, natural cycles, and cultural traits form a cohesive system that I have called Circular Culture:
Fluidity: In Latin American indigenous mythology, nature and humans are bound by a “common spirit”. Our bodies and forms are transitional, pertaining to a world that is “all people”. The Brazilian anthropologist Viveiros de Castro borrowed from German philosophy to coin the term Amerindian Perspectivism[xii]to explain this way of seeing things. As he points out, in this world relations are formed between subjects with different perspectives, be it between humans, or between humans and non-humans. There is no “subdued object” and the separation between nature and human (Foster’s metabolic rift) diminishes.
Co-related notions extend to ideas of fluid time and fluid space, where boundaries are related to natural elements and events, rather than to abstract concepts of time or property. Acknowledging their importance in the structural organization of things, rivers acquire the status of deities, being the most important elements of continuity, both as means of transportation, as well as means of subsistence;
Rivers as the elements of symbolic and physical continuity. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Clara Morgenroth.
Kinship: Since the Enlightenment, when theories of natural rights[xiii]started to shape modern man as owner of his own, individual rights, we have valued individuality above community, disassociating both as opposing values. In Indigenous social organization, individuals are intertwined with the idealization of the group and its traditions. In some communities the symbiosis between the two is such, that political forces are horizontalized and apparently “non-hierarchical”, relying on an organic understanding of practices.[xiv]
As pointed out by Pierre Clasters in his book Society Against the State, Brazilian Indigenous societies rely on a political structure with no coercion, where the figure of the leader is important and respected but has no freedom to decide for the group. In periods of peace, leaders act as mediators, peacemakers and providers, and are constantly put in check by the group. “Greed and power are incompatible; to be a chief it is necessary to be generous.”[xv]
The Araweté people. Photo: Viveiros de Castro.
Cultural Territory: Without prescriptive boundaries (therefore fluid), the indigenous territory is defined by historical occupation, use and the capacity of those who occupy (and define) it to defend its natural resources. Boundaries are porous and with strong interdependence between man and land. In both the symbolic and physical worlds, culture and territory are interrelated in defining each other.
Subsistance: In a social logic that doesn’t aim for accumulation, concepts of modern capitalism are subverted, as individual supremacy, objectification of relationships and commodification of values don’t prevail. The construction and management of inhabited landscapes and “cities” will also obviously differ from ours.
In Circular Cultures, man, divine and nature coexist in a non-axial relationship. Image by Anna Dietzsch and Mariana Gortan
Turning to Indigenous communities to understand the forest and how we should relate to it as we deal with different degrees of urbanization and extraction patterns, will allow us to question the socio-political parameters that are now threatening the natural balance of the whole Amazonian system, as it could guide us to a more holistic approach where natural, cultural, and economic realities intersect as guides, much in tune to what Sir Patrick Geddes practiced more than a hundred years ago, and trends of “regionalism thinking” are currently practicing too.
Indigenous community protesting in Brasilia, Brazil. Photo: Valter Campanato, Agencia Brasil
It is relevant to notice that indigenous communities are very much imbedded and active in the Brazilian political life, with strong connections to a global web of institutions and governments. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution guaranteed the preservation of their livelihood and laid the framework for the demarcation of Indigenous Territories, which today occupy 13% of Brazil’s total area, if we only account for those already legally established. Ninety percent of these lands are in the Amazonian biomes and together are a real safeguard for the natural environment. Supporting them in deciding how their territories should be managed and how their “cities” could be shaped, will engender design propositions that could be applied beyond the indigenous territories and into the growing net of small and medium-sized cities that populate the different biomes of the Forest.
As the clearly expressed will of the people vis-à-vis environmental rights, New York City’s Section 19 will both constrain and guide legislative action. The amendment provides a floor below which environmental protections cannot sink, and all laws will have to take account of that environmental floor.
In November 2021, New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted to add an environmental amendment to their state constitution. Section 19, which provides that “Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment,” is now part of the New York Bill of Rights (the part of New York’s constitution that defines individual liberties and the limits of state power). This language is both sweeping and simple. It guarantees all New Yorkers the constitutional right to live, work, and play in communities that are safe, healthy, and free from harmful environmental conditions. As Steve Englebright, the amendment’s primary sponsor in the state assembly, explained: “the right to clean air and clean water and a healthful environment is an elementary part of living in this great state.” Just to give some perspective on how momentous this moment is, the last time any state amended its constitution to recognize environmental rights was 1971 when Pennsylvania voters voted overwhelmingly to add Article I, Section 27 to their constitution.
The final vote adopting this amendment indicated wide political support for environmental rights—the proposal to add Section 19 to the New York constitution garnered just over 70% support from voters, a greater than 2:1 margin. And, before being added to the ballot, the proposed amendment first had to twice pass both houses of the state legislature—something it also did by an overwhelming margin. This amendment clearly and unambiguously reflects the will of the people of New York. In this, New York is part of a broader social consensus on environmental rights across the United States and around the world.
Figure from Struggling to Breathe: Asthma, Pollution, and the Fight for Environmental Justice
In the Fall of 2021, just before New York adopted its environmental amendment, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to recognize the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a universal human right. In the Spring of 2022, the UN General Assembly as a whole will consider a similar resolution recognizing the human right to a healthy environment. Appropriately, this vote will take place in the UN’s New York headquarters—bringing environmental rights full circle. The New York City Bar Association has long been a vocal supporter of this UN resolution.
What does it mean to amend the state constitution?
The United States has a federal system in which both states and the national government have constitutions. The federal Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which applies to the states through the 14th Amendment, defines the minimum constitutional rights that must be accorded to every person in the United States. While States cannot use their constitutions to deprive individuals of the minimum federally guaranteed rights, they may add additional protections. With this amendment, New York has expanded the fundamental rights of New Yorkers to include the right to a healthy environment.
When the “forever wild” provision was added to the New York constitution in 1894, New York became the first state in the Union to include environmental protection in its state constitution. By enacting Section 19, New York has once again placed itself as the vanguard of green constitutional amendments, but it is far from alone in its embrace of environmental rights. Montana, Pennsylvania, and, to a lesser extent, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Illinois recognize environmental rights, as do the national constitutions of well over 100 countries. The United Nations Human Rights Council recently recognized the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a universal human right.
How will this amendment promote environmental justice?
Section 19 is a clear recognition that environmental rights belong to everyone—that no people and no neighborhoods can be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth.
By grounding environmental rights in the state constitution, New Yorkers have committed their state to a new path forward—one based on environmental justice. Environmental justice involves both fair treatment and meaningful involvement of communities in decisions by which environmental choices are made.
The constitutional rights enshrined in Section 19 give substantive heft to procedural rights that have long been a part of environmental decision-making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA.) These existing laws are focused on creating a pathway for public participation in decision-making processes largely in order to prevent “uninformed rather than unwise” decisions. By contrast, the substantive environmental rights enshrined in Section 19 put issues of fair treatment—how environmental burdens and benefits are actually distributed—squarely on the table.
With the adoption of Section 19, the right to clean air, pure water, and a healthy environment are now on equal constitutional footing with the right to property (Art. I, §7), to petition the government (Art I, §9), freedom of religion (Art, I, §3), and freedom of speech (Art. I, §8). Like these other constitutionally-protected fundamental rights, Section 19 delineates self-executing rights (meaning they can be claimed without additional implementing legislation) that the government can neither deny nor infringe. Every person holds these environmental rights by virtue of being in New York, and Section 19 applies whenever state action might impede those rights. It imposes constraints on what the government can do vis-à-vis environmental rights as well as on how the government must make decisions. All agencies and local governments will need to ensure their decisions take full account of environmental rights. In short, public officials of all stripes must embed protecting environmental rights into the fabric of all governmental workways.
Moreover, this amendment shifts the baseline for considering environmental (in)justice. For far too long, New York’s Black communities, communities of color, and low-income communities have borne far more than their fair share of the environmental burdens, with pollution disproportionately and systematically impacting their communities. They have had to fight tooth and nail for basic environmental rights. Poor communities, and communities of color, bear the brunt of polluted air, unsafe water, and the growing impacts of climate change.
Nearly a century ago, structural racism in the form of redlining intentionally cut Black and brown communities out of the New Deal and out of the economic prosperity it built. New York compounded this legacy of structural racism by steering most of its polluting infrastructure into these same communities, and then by failing to protect those communities with rigorous environmental enforcement. As a result, a Black child in New York is 42% more likely to have asthma than a white child, eight times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma-related ailments, two or three times as likely to miss days of school because of asthma. Across the state, Black New Yorkers are nearly four more likely to die from asthma-related complications.
Figure from the National Asthma Survey—New York State Summary Report
The same grim disparities hold true for cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, which are also closely related to pollution. Recent studies have shown how increased exposure to pollution heightens the risks posed by COVID-19.
Section 19 must be read in combination with the pre-existing guarantees of equal protection under law and the prohibition of discrimination (Art. I, §11). To fulfill their interrelated constitutional duties of equal protection and respecting environmental rights, all government actors, from courts to legislators and regulators, will have to prioritize protecting the most vulnerable from pollution, degradation, and climate change, and ensuring that environmental burdens are not heaped on already overburdened communities.
As such, this amendment is a momentous step forward for environmental justice. It provides a context and platform for raising disparate health and environmental outcomes associated with governmental decisions about polluting activities, and for challenging unequal protection under, or enforcement of existing law. It also requires a rethinking of public participation to ensure that those most affected by environmental decisions have a genuine opportunity for meaningful participation in a decision-making process that takes their environmental rights seriously.
What will this amendment mean in practice?
The challenge will be turning law on the books into change in the world and ensuring that this constitutional change marks the end of business as usual for polluters. If we are successful, Section 19 will mark the beginning of a new era in which human wellbeing and planetary health are the priorities. Nearly a century ago, in New Jersey v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court explicitly found that issuance of a permit could not prevent a court from enjoining conduct that created an environmental nuisance. Much the same way that a permit is not a defense to a claim sounding in nuisance, a permit will similarly not insulate ongoing conduct from constitutional scrutiny. Article 19 thus opens a pathway for reconsidering past governmental decisions that unduly discounted environmental concerns or did not fully value environmental rights. New York now has both the authority and the duty to ensure that environmental rights are respected. For that to happen, behaviors must change in all branches of government.
Executive Branch
The New York Constitution tasks the Governor with the duty to “take care that the law be faithfully executed.” Article 1, Section 19, now provides a constitutional foundation for all New York’s laws affecting the environment. To faithfully execute the environmental amendments, the state must issue new environmental guidance for interpreting existing law and regulation and will need to enact new regulations designed to promote, protect, and defend environmental rights.
The state has an unambiguous mandate to protect New Yorkers’ right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live and work in a healthy environment. Everyone exercising governmental authority, including agencies and local government, has an obligation to protect environmental rights, to promote actions designed to preserve and enhance these rights, and to take affirmative steps to provide a healthy environment to all New Yorkers, including intervening when these rights are jeopardized. Protecting clean air and water must shape how all state law is interpreted and applied. State actors will have new grounds to justify more rigorous enforcement or to defend state environmental legislation from attack by polluting industry.
Section 19 also gives states more flexibility to act in response to emerging environmental threats that might not yet be subject to regulation. This will be particularly useful when responding to threats posed by new chemical compounds. For example, had this constitutional amendment been in place earlier, it would have given New York clear grounds to take actions in Hoosick Falls to remedy PFAS water contamination once it became clear that the pollution was negatively impacting environmental rights. New York would not have to wait for regulations specifically targeting a particular chemical before holding polluters responsible.
Perhaps the most sweeping changes will be in how governmental actors conduct environmental impact assessments and/or consider environmental costs and benefits in decision-making. State actors will need to ensure that their decisions (vis-à-vis e.g. siting, transportation, development, and permitting) fully respect environmental rights. Section 19 necessitates that agencies and local planning boards strike a new balance when environmental rights and property rights (or economic development proposals) conflict. Where DEC previously interpreted SEQRA to allow permit denials “if the adverse environmental impacts cannot be favorably balanced against social and economic considerations,” this amendment now puts a thumb on the scale for protecting the environment.
The Judiciary must assess whether government action has violated these rights
Section 19 will greatly expand the range of people able to establish standing to bring challenges to government decisions about the environment. Because litigants can now allege that their fundamental constitutional rights have been violated, Section 19 will make it easier to challenge government actions with negative environmental impacts. In particular, the new amendment will facilitate new environmental justice challenges—allowing overburdened communities to allege that governmental action (or inaction in the case of failure to enforce permits) unduly infringes on environmental rights. Under Section 19, a court will have to satisfy itself that a challenged government action adequately protects and respects environmental rights. Where that is not the case, courts can impose the full panoply of equitable remedies that might be needed to ensure that environmental rights are honored.
Section 19 will also change the way that courts evaluate the adequacy of governmental decision-making processes by which environmental choices are made. As the United States Supreme Court explained in Cleveland Board of Ed v. Loudermill, the state definition of fundamental rights like property or liberty give rise to constitutional due process requirements. Once a state creates such an interest (and there is no better way to create than via constitutional amendment), no one can be deprived of their liberty/property interest without due process of law, nor can it be taken without just compensation. New York must treat environmental rights akin to property rights—deprivation of which can happen only after due process and with just compensation. This principle should serve as a guide to agencies in interpreting their duties under the myriad state laws and regulations.
The Legislature
As the clearly expressed will of the people vis-à-vis environmental rights, Section 19 will both constrain and guide legislative action. The amendment provides a floor below which environmental protections cannot sink, and all laws will have to take account of that environmental floor. This will be true for existing law, which may have to be amended to bring it into harmony with Section 19. Going forward, Section 19 offers important guidance to New York’s legislature as it debates a wide range of new legislation across a host of topics including eliminating structural racism, criminal justice reform, public education, transportation and energy needs, housing and development, and climate change. Environmental equity provisions like those built into the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act will become the standard for how to move forward with legislation that affects and concerns the environment.
I have three jobs—lecturer, facilitator of academic research, and mother of two nature-engaged kids. My three experiences lead me to think we have a core problem in urban social-ecology: that we let our fealty to discipline-specific methods get in the way of true multidisciplinary work that is key to real understudying in urban social-ecological systems. That is, our cross-cutting ideas are good and on the right track. Our methods, kept in silos, hold us back.
Job 1
One of the best parts of my lecturer job is that I get to teach a graduate course in urban ecology. I take a class of fourteen postgraduate students and we spend a semester exploring the theory and practice of urban ecology. The University of Cape Town’s Environmental and Geographical Science Department has various streams and points of entry for graduate students and students in my class have a diversity of backgrounds. Some have a strong disciplinary foundation in biology or social science, and others have more vocational training and are looking to add value to their qualification. This makes for an interesting teaching space, and we often end up in lively debate. The debate that goes on in my head is:
“What sort of urban ecologists do we want to train?”
“What should they be capable of?” And finally:
“Do we want good generalists or niche-specific specialists?”
Irrespective of their backgrounds, all my students relish the examination of the theory emerging in the field of urban ecology. For the first half of the semester we grapple with the call for new frameworks and theory, and scrutinize the old ecological theories to see if they fit the urban context. We delve into several thematic areas, and as the students lead these discussion sessions, selecting the themes at the start of the semester and the readings for each class, we shy away from nothing. This is a thrilling and greedy journey in which the students flex their muscles and put out critical and bold views.
Just as we are getting to that point when classmates start to anticipate each other’s points of view, we change gears. We start the second term of the semester with a daylong field trip, the purpose of which is to stimulate research ideas. Students return from this field trip and must present their research idea to the class—the question there are addressing, likely areas of literature, and the methods—following which we take a vote on which project the class should carry out. I am always delighted by the creative project ideas, and can see the culmination of theory and local context informing the ideas.
At this point I allow myself a brief moment of smug happiness. This year they elected to do one project, and are currently busy with the task of redesigning the City of Cape Town to the best ecological end. They have subcommittees representing different entities such as transport and biodiversity, and are steeped in the challenges of collective governance.
My smugness, however, is short lived. When it comes to the presentation of likely methods that would answer their questions, I start to squirm in my seat. Here students really flounder. While my students read a lot and are exposed to a variety of methods, it seems there is no compensation for a full and concentrated undergraduate degree in a single field in which one is systematically trained in discipline-specific methods.
This begs the question of what sort of training we need to make a contribution to urban ecology. It is comforting to fall back on an idea from ecology: that in life we need the generalists, who will thrive in a diversity of conditions, and the specialists who will fill specific roles and niches. Ecology also tells us we need this sort of diversity of function for health and persistence, so all is not lost. I like to look at the class as a whole, a representative group of young professionals heading out into the work force, and I see among them some specialists who have now added an urban angle to their undergraduate foundation, and then some well positioned knowledge brokers, who have been sensitized to another way of thinking that will inform their professional practice. I also know that by simply sitting in a class together they now also have each other as they move out into the world, one of the often under recognized benefits of being at university.
Job 2
My job with the African Centre for Cities (ACC) sees me heading up an Urban Ecology CityLab. The CityLabs follow the notion of city as ‘Laboratory’ and a number of thematic CityLabs have been set up to foster the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge between the academy, the various tiers of government running the City of Cape Town, and broader society. In each instance the work generated is meant to be put towards a publication.
Here, while still steeped in the theory and practice of urban ecology, my engagements take a different turn. My role is not instructive, but that of facilitator. I am conscious of being among a diverse working group of well-informed colleagues (again a miscellany of generalists and specialists) and guiding this group through the process of sharing and creating knowledge. After the first two years of the initiation of the CityLab programme, a group of us CityLab leaders got together to reflect on the CityLab process. This brought to light a number of interesting insights, where for example the spatial geography of the meetings significantly influenced attendance and outcomes, and debates around appropriate terminology had resulted in irreparable schisms. In the Urban Ecology CityLab we ran a series of seminars, on the basis of which we worked towards a special issue publication. I was not sure in the end if we managed to pierce any disciplinary boundaries. Generally we worked well across institutions. For example we had papers co-authored by staff at the City and staff of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), and papers co-authored by staff at UCT and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
But we did not have papers that were co-authored between a social scientist and a botanist, or an anthropologist and a zoologist. I think it might come down once again to methods. We are married to our methods, guarding our own territory closely on the basis of some secret society bounded by method. It is our security blanket, and often the site of great mistrust. As scientists we believe we are only as good as our method. What we achieved was a collective output, rather than any true transdisciplinary engagement.
I believe, indeed fear, that until we are happy to really acknowledge the value of each other’s method, any real transdisciplinary engagement, so critical to urban ecology and more broadly global sustainability, will continue to elude us. Simon Lewis (quoted in Zoe Corbyn’s piece ‘Ecologists shun the urban jungle’), commenting on the failure of ecologists to engage in the social really, calls us on it when he attributes this to the fact that it helps make complex systems more analytically tractable.
In other words, when upacking a complicated multidisciplinary problem, we often have more fealty to the method that to understanding.
These musings around the need for, and frequent failure to achieve, integrated and more holistic research in the urban, are of course not new. The literature is full of reference to the need for complex methods to engage with the complexity of cities, and the call for transdisciplinary work. There are good stories, and I do stumble on the occasional inspiring and insightful collaborations in the literature. For example, Vesa Yli-Pelkonen and Jari Niemela (2005) give a very frank account of the rewards and challenges in work in Finland that aimed to integrate ecological and social systems.
However, the examples do not abound, and I think we still have a big leap to take in forging methods that really bring together the diversity of research needed to understand the workings of our cities. Certainly in my own world I think a conservative approach to research on the basis of discipline-specific methods, developed in our silos, is retarding our progress in forging the cities of the future.
Job 3
Moving to my third ‘job’, I ask the question: ‘how do you raise children to be decent human beings with sound ethics and an appreciation of the natural environment?’ And given my own particular fascination with urban ecology: ‘how do you raise urban children to be ecologically aware and thoughtful, and give them the necessary tools to see, and experience nature in our cities?
With children (mine anyway) I am increasingly aware there is limited teaching and instruction. In part we set up patterns and rhythms that they fall into step with, and in part allow them space to dance to their own beat. My children spend much of their time out of doors in and around the City of Cape Town. Our front yard often looks like the high water mark after a heavy storm, with sticks, seaweed, stones and all manner of flotsam and jetsam lying about.
Like my graduate students, they are also not short of questions. At the moment they are exploring what happens to dead jelly fish when you freeze them. As for robust method, well, they are not there yet, but they have an unbounded and exploratory approach that is inspiring. Perhaps we lose our willingness to try new stuff, and become too rigid in our approach to problem solving. Perhaps if we embraced their open-minded approach, and accept a process of experiential learning throughout life, we might be less stubborn in our engagements with others and more open to ongoing learning.
Young people, my graduate students and my kids, pose interesting and unusual questions. They pose the kinds of difficult questions that integrate different areas of thought and reflect the complex world we live in.
They are, however, short on the methods.
My colleagues, on the other hand, may be too precious about their methods.
There is certainly space for experts; the specialists who will contribute the detailed and fine work and grow the disciplines. Much of the work required in understanding our cities will however require a more integrated approach. What I would like to see is the retention of some of the youthful no-categories approach to urban study, and the forging of a new and unified methodology that will facilitate real multidisciplinary work.
My sense is that there is a growing understanding of this need and that we are ripe for the revolution.
As we continue to make positive ecological, economic, and social impacts in each community, we have been asking ourselves how we can “thread the needle” and invest in vulnerable and disadvantaged communities while minimizing the negative impacts of gentrification and displacement.
Dr. Ian Mell from the University of Manchester recently published an article in Frontiers in Sustainable Cities on the role of green infrastructure in cities as a tool for economic and ecological “regeneration”. Dr. Mell’s article is one of a series of articles in both the peer-reviewed and popular literature that is critically analyzing whether urban greening projects are, not only providing measurable ecological benefits, but also providing “positive change” in communities.
Dr. Mell’s article identifies two United States examples where green infrastructure development has resulted in varying levels of gentrification and displacement — The New York City High Line and the Atlanta BeltLine. An earlier study by researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Colorado in Urban Studies found that long linear greenway parks like those in New York and Atlanta (plus Chicago’s 606 trail and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park) cause the most gentrification due to the amount of real estate development and redevelopment that can take place in close proximity to the amenity. Although the study also found that parks near downtown caused relatively greater gentrification than other new parks in cities, the study finds that there is less gentrification on balance in cities with higher-quality park systems.
Based on these findings, Dr. Mell sums up urban greening initiatives well: “All investment in [green infrastructure] …needs to be cognizant of the benefits and disservices that may develop because of landscape change. These potential problems should not limit the discussion of [green infrastructure] intervention in regeneration activities but should be examined to assess who benefits and who loses from change, and how any negative aspects of [green infrastructure] can be mitigated against.” As new urban greening projects come online around the US, more attention is now being paid to ensure that the negative externalities and unintended consequences of well-intentioned investments are minimized and that any new “value capture” near these projects can benefit the current residents near these amenities.
For the past decade, The Conservation Fund has been involved in green infrastructure regeneration in US cities through its Parks with Purpose program, with pilot initiatives in places like Atlanta, Baltimore, Durham, and Raleigh. As we continue to make positive ecological, economic, and social impacts in each community, we have been asking ourselves how we can “thread the needle” and invest in vulnerable and disadvantaged communities while minimizing the negative impacts of gentrification and displacement.
While we do not have all the answers, The Conservation Fund has been intentional with approaches intended to support local communities and minimize unintended consequences. These include: (1) planning, development, and construction of parks by the community (residents near Mattie Freeland Park identified key amenities during the visioning process); and (2) identifying opportunities for local value (acquisition of commercial land adjacent to the Harbour-8 Park in Richmond, California to support local park maintenance).
Mattie Freeland Park concept drawing. Credit: Park Pride
The next frontier in this work, supported by the findings of the study referenced earlier, is a two-pronged approach. For linear and downtown green infrastructure, affordable housing provision and anti-displacement regulations, through tax increment financing and inclusionary housing tactics, can be implemented. For other areas of the city, making more green infrastructure investments in park-poor, lower-income communities, in combination with protecting nearby affordable housing, would make cities more equitable and livable. Alessandro Rigolon from the University of Utah Department of City & Metropolitan Planning and Jon Christensen from the UCLA Institute of Environment & Sustainability are demonstrating leadership in this space through their research into parks-related anti-displacement strategies (PRADS).
Coordinating green infrastructure investment and affordable housing will be an ongoing challenge given the institutional history and constraints of each industry, but it will be worth the effort to try and, as I like to say, would not be any fun if it was easy.
Re-wilding beckons landscape architects to embrace a logical next step…to release artistic conceits altogether and replace them with the actual landscape type naturally intended, as much as is realistically possible.
Re-wilding is a new area of interest in landscape architecture concerned with making landscapes that are as close to the original ecology of a place as possible. Not limited to only planting installations, re-wilded landscapes can also exist to attract, reconstitute and/or re-introduce wildlife to heighten biodiversity.
Given the emergence of environmental issues at the scale of the planet, the interests, activities, and design works of landscape architects in the last few decades have evolved. Now, highly designed and artfully conceived landscapes include prosaic elements, such as constructed wetlands, areas for wildlife habitat, plants for pollinators, and features that perform as “living machines”. These new concerns have transformed ordinary elements such as drainage and detention features into performance-driven inventions such as biofilters and bioswales.
Re-wilded Trinity River. Rendering: Courtesy, Kevin Sloan Studio, Vincent Hunter, AIA
Since landscape architecture originates from a long and great history of gardens and artistic conceits made with living materials and natural systems, it’s understandable how the discipline continues to sustain the artful and intellectual dimension of landscape design as the new performance-driven landscapes culturally take hold. In fact, the very definition of a garden is any landscape that is charged with metaphorical meanings and abstractions.
Recent images of environmentally motivated works in landscape architecture that include native grasses, wetlands, and oyster beds to improve water quality, will arrange the elements into artful arrays, dramatic forms, and abstract relationships, as if, when all is taken together, the artistry and compositional relationships remain the priority over environmental performance.
In cases where it is appropriate and environmental performance is the priority, re-wilding compels landscape architecture to move beyond image-driven design for its own sake and embrace the full potential a performative landscape program offers. The three following case studies demonstrate that re-wilding does not present an “either/or” choice. Rather, they are extraordinarily compatible if handled with the right kind of attention.
Re-wilding beckons landscape architects to take the next logical next step in the evolution from highly designed landscapes to ecologically driven solutions. That leap, whether it is a small part of larger design work, or the entire work itself, involves letting go of the artistic conceits altogether and replacing them with the actual landscape that is intended, as much as is realistically possible.
This article examines three re-wilding case studies that all were recently built in metropolitan Dallas. Each case study offers a different approach taken to re-wilding, along with the political and economic methods used to achieve them. Dallas-Fort Worth is a compelling platform for re-wilding because the colossal geography, settled at an average human density of one person per acre, has enabled wildlife to take hold in the undersigned spaces between buildings and throughout the watershed network.
Bobcat City. Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife Film Title, “Bobcat City”.
As evidence for wildlife in the city, a recent film by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, titled Bobcat City, is a documentary about a graduate research program studying urban wildcats in DFW. Red fox, coyotes, turkey flocks, beavers, alligators, and river otters are just a few of the wild species frequently seen in DFW. Cities have always had rats, mice and other parasites that thrive with human urbanism. Wildlife, and the attendant food chains are radical and new phenomena that are distinctly and uniquely the product of the twentieth century and its sprawling and sparse suburban patterns.
DFW is also relevant for the topic and for a broader world audience to consider, because the pattern which formed the metroplex is not unique—it is typical, if not identical, to the patterns that also constitute similar cities such as Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, as well as the perimeter regions that flourished around the historical centers of East Coast cities in North America and also in Europe. Coming to terms and contending with the problems in Dallas, offers us lessons and examples that could apply to the same generic patterns throughout the world.
The three case studies examined by this article, all in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, are:
The John Bunker Sands Wetland.
The Airfield Falls Conservation Park.
The Trinity River Audubon Center in the Great Trinity Forest.
Replacement view across the John Bunker Sands Wetland. Photo: GFF Good Fulton & Farrell Architects
The development of environmental techniques to re-wild is also producing innovative methods to fund and drive their realization. Located just twenty miles from downtown Dallas, Texas, the 2,000-acre John Bunker Sands Wetland Center (JBS) is a model for taking a problem and combining it with a set of other possibilities that, when taken together, enlarge the outcome and cultural impact of all.
JBS Education Center. Photo: GFF Good Fulton & Farrell Architects
For visitors, the outward image of JBS is a nature project and a constructed wetland for public education and use. Situated within a unique, sinkhole-like basin of approximately 4,000 continuous acres, a single, special-use building receives visitors, offering a set of permanent exhibits, flexible galleries, administrative space and open, programmable rooms that are wrapped with glass and broad shaded verandas. Admission is free, and on days the center is open, visitors savor the exhibits and trails that extend throughout the wetlands over levee paths and walkable wooden trestles.
Without in any way misleading visitors from the enjoyment of their nature outing, the sense of “publicness” that JBS presents conceals the fact it is actually privately owned, as one part of the vast 28,000-acre Rosewood Ranch, a land trust for a significant Texas family. While the idea of shaping public spaces with private hands is not new, it is typically utilized to realize urban parks, cultural institutions, museums, and performance halls, versus as a model for an environmental reconstruction that is publicly accessible. However, there is more to the realization of JBS that makes it an exceptional example of environmental engineering and a model for other places to consider.
JBS Waterfowl. Photo: John Bunker Sands Wetland Center
For several years prior to the construction of the JBS wetland project, the flat and poorly drained 2,000 acres made the property too wet for agriculture and cattle ranching. Seasonal rains combined with the flat terrain made any kind of land planning and management, unpredictable. Itinerant ponds, potholes, and marshes could appear with seasonal rains to inundate crops. Conversely, in drier years, drought and evaporation turned the network of potholes into a muddy flat that was inaccessible for tractors, trucks, and all-terrain vehicles.
The key that unlocked the potential of JBS, and also solved all the associated land use problems, began with the idea to transform the area into a municipal water storage project for Dallas. By coincidence, the location of JBS is not only close to downtown Dallas, but it is also near a set of regional reservoirs that supply raw water to DFW. Since these reservoirs are also susceptible to drought and unpredictable water levels, JBS stores water that can be transferred to the reservoirs via pipeline to offset the effects of drought.
The environmental engineering that was needed to manage water for the JBS land produced an interconnected system of marshy pools defined by earthen levees. Installing a program of re-wilded wetland plants, a system of trails and trestles for public access, and an iconic visitor center turned what was an otherwise utilitarian water project into a thriving, multi-functional landscape for wildlife and cultural potential.
Educational outreach completes the JBS mission with programs that accommodate visits from elementary schools, wildfowl enthusiasts, birders, and individuals from the city who may simply want a day outing to walk the trail system and appreciate the abundant wildlife. Private groups can also rent JBS for use. During the fall, JBS sponsors a youth duck hunting day that also offers educational seminars in conservation and gun safety.
Mussel-Hunting at JBS. Photo: Wetland Link International
John Bunker Sands Wetland Center is a model of environmental accomplishment. The clever combination of re-imagining a water conservation strategy, educational outreach, tax abatements, environmental resilience, and making public places with private lands were made cohesive with a re-wilded landscape. Much more can be done with the strategy in other places.
The Airfield from the Pavilion. Photo: Courtesy Kevin Sloan Studio, Timothy Hursley
With any new design movement such as re-wilding, the concept and description have the potential to be misunderstood. Given the great history of landscape architecture as an art and design activity for cultural production, it is understandable that re-wilding could be misunderstood as a renunciation of design and artfulness.
The Airfield Falls Conservation Park in west Fort Worth Texas is one of the newest re-wilding examples which clarifies that architecture and a re-wilded nature can co-exist, not as an option but as a necessity. In this case, the combination and contrast of the two conditions heightens the appreciation and experience of each individually.
During the Cold War, Carswell Air Force Base (AFB) in West Fort Worth, Texas was one of the largest Air Force and military installations for long-range bombing and domestic defense in North America. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1988, the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 relocated the 7th Bomb Wing from Carswell AFB to Dyess AFB near Abilene, Texas. This resulted in not only a massive downsizing in Carswell’s population but also a significant reduction in size to the airbase geography. Approximately one-fifth of the former area of the base was relinquished to private land speculation. The more modest military outpost that remained is known as the Fort Worth Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base.
Airfield Falls. Photo: Courtesy Kevin Sloan Studio, Timothy Hursley
In reducing the fenced and secured footprint of the airbase, two regional creeks that were formerly sequestered within the base are now available for public recreation. One of these, Farmers Branch Creek, features a natural set of cantilevering limestone ledges that are the tallest natural waterfall in the north Texas region. Inaccessibility to the waterfall during the Carswell years had made the waterfall somewhat mysterious and legendary in local lore. The project objective was to provide access to the waterfall with a park and trail system. The project purpose was extended by an additional client-driven request to make a state-of-the-art water-conserving landscape.
The Tarrant County Regional Water District (TRWD) under whose jurisdiction the creeks and the parkland are held, wanted the yet-to-be-realized, seventeen-acre “trailhead park” to become the next addition to their vast network of hike and bike trails that already traced other creeks and rivers of their system. The request for a water-conserving landscape would also offer the benefit of introducing park users to water-conserving practices and plant materials that could, by logical extension, eventually reduce demands on the raw water supply as the new lessons circulate throughout the city.
The five-acre area off of Pumphrey Drive in Fort Worth, where park users arrive, coincides with the historic location of the former base commander’s house. All that remains of the commander’s residence are a few foundation walls, the stone curbing of a circle driveway, and a D-shaped concrete terrace that provided a pleasant creek view which was frequently a meeting place to discuss military strategies amongst officers and politicians. The five-acre arrival area also required a program of architectural elements for visitors, set into a re-wilded, water-conserving landscape.
Airfield Car Park. Photo: Courtesy Kevin Sloan Studio, Timothy Hursley
A water-harvesting car park is the first element that visitors encounter. The car park demonstrates two tree and understory examples of how to make shade in paved areas; with tightly spaced live oaks on one side, and a low, non-irrigated gravel paver landscape on the other side. Grading precision directs stormwater into a horsetail reed planted bio-swale and also toward a flume that cascades some of the stormwater into a rain garden pond. Rows of tables that encourage picnics form a line and edge between the car park demo and the open lawn that is planted with Habiturf®, a native grass mix that is the trademark of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas.
Two wings and the tail section of a McDonnell Douglas C-9 Nightingale Transport Jet were donated to the park by the air base for display. Instead of treating the three aircraft pieces like disparate sculptural objects, the design team elected to reassemble them as a dramatic structural tri-pod that forms a gateway arch to the trail system. The 100-foot wide wingspan of the display was also re-wired to illuminate the navigation lights of the wingtips and tail section. Low energy LED lighting extends the conservation lessons of the park, as does a set of night lighting fixtures that are the same as those used by the US Air Force. Both considerations extend the conservation mission of the park and also the history of the site.
Hanging Out. Photo: Courtesy Kevin Sloan Studio, Timothy Hursley
Lastly, a shaded family picnic shelter made of powder-coated steel sections re-use the foundation walls of the base commanders house and repurpose the extended patio for park users. All of the architectural objects stand in abject contrast to a natural landscape that is either untouched or enhanced with additional eco-constructing plant species. The use of Habiturf® ties it all together.
The arrival area, containing the display of architectural objects, exits into the second park section; a quarter mile long path, re-wilded with 30,000 pollinator-attracting plants. Once across the existing creek bridge, the six-foot-wide concrete path parallels the creek ensconced by dense tree cover and shade of the creek edge. This “Butterfly Walk” concludes at another bridge over the creek, where the waterfall is reached in a short distance. Nothing at or around the waterfall was touched or modified by the design project.
After testing to confirm the water quality in the creek, the TRWD allows visitors to get into the plunge pools of the waterfall. Children splash and play along with pets that are restrained by a leash.
When experienced, the Airfield Falls Conservation Park offers three sequential landscapes that progress from a re-wilded field with architectural objects, to bio-filtering landscape surfaces, to an untouched and preserved natural waterfall. The image of the front area in particular, with its orange and white, airfield elements and the monumental scale of the historic jet display, is a landscape of mismatched wild and architectural elements.
Airfield Falls entrance. Photo: Courtesy Kevin Sloan Studio, Timothy Hursley
Bobcats, turkey flocks, foxes, coyote, river otters, and countless avian species have been sited at Airfield Falls Conservation Park. At sundown, when the airfield lights turn on, and the nearby air base broadcasts Taps, visitors note seeing the park mingling wildlife with a re-wilded landscape of nature and architecture. As a case study, the lessons it offers establish an alternative set of possibilities for re-wilding and landscape architecture.
Airfield Falls demonstrates how re-wilding can enlarge the impact of a project done with a modest budget. In lieu of the cost of reworking an entire site with design, the select and strategic introduction of architectural objects transforms the untouched landscape into a perceivable intention. It also demonstrates that re-wilding need not be thought of as a precinct that is two-dimensionally separate from or adjacent to a project context. Instead, Airfield Falls became a re-wilded field condition dotted by highly designed architectural objects. The added coincidence that the re-wilding was agreeable to the existing wildlife already present at the two site creeks confirmed the appropriateness of the idea and also served as a lesson for similar circumstances.
TRAC Harvest Table. Photo: Trinity River Audubon Center, National Audubon Society
Dedicated in 2008, the Dallas Trinity River Audubon Center sits on 120-acres of reclaimed land and illegal dump-site that exist within the vast, 10,000-acre Trinity River Floodway corridor. Located safely above the inundation line of the Trinity River flood management corridor, the Center exists between a climax community of riparian trees and hardwoods known as The Trinity River Forest to the south and an eight-mile, levee-protected and grassed conveyance area to the north.
The location of TRAC near the threshold where the grassy conveyance transitions to the forest, anticipates a forty-year-long desire by patrons and stakeholders in Dallas to realize the entire 10,000-acre corridor as a publicly accessible urban park. Over four decades, nine distinct plans have been developed by acclaimed and internationally renowned landscape architects. While a recent plan by MVVA is proposed for the area between the two new highway bridges by Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, no federally approved plan, nor a means to fund another one, currently exists.
Walkway. Photo: Trinity River Audubon Center, National Audubon Society
The Trinity River Center epitomizes and embodies the national mission of The Audubon Society: what is good for birds is good for everyone. TRAC was specifically developed to fulfill two purposes: “the production of habitat for indigenous and migratory birds”, and to “serve as a place that will form a nature connection between visitors and the environment”. Education is the common product of both goals, since “people don’t tend to care about things they don’t understand”, notes Lucy Hale, the current director. The more people who understand how songbirds are the coal mine canaries of the environment, the more they can appreciate the critical role of nature, the environment, and their relationship to both.
While the architecture at TRAC is charged with abstractions, dramatic cantilevers, and poetic meanings, the re-wilded landscape around it is pure prose. Consisting of seven miles of publicly accessible paths, dotted with blackland prairie potholes, the re-wilded landscape has produced a compelling reason for its existence.
Audubon Center. Photo: Dallas Observer
The Dallas Trinity River Audubon Center is a textbook example of twentieth-century writer Sigfried Gideon’s notion of “the machine in the garden”. But where Gideon’s twentieth-century machine suggests a highly designed garden that is human-made, re-wilding offers a new kind of garden that is wild. Such a contrast, taken to a practical and poetic conclusion, heightens the potential and experience of both.
Summary
A re-wilded landscape can offer an experience of beautiful wildflowers, song birds, and fall color. But they can also include encounters with poisonous snakes, wildcats, undesirable plants, and other species who are unhesitant to defend themselves during face-to-face encounters with people. Even the seemingly bucolic and shaded environment of the Great Trinity River Forest has inadvertently drowned fishermen caught and overwhelmed by floodwaters from a deluge that occurred far upstream.
TRAC Trails. Photo: Trinity River Audubon Center, National Audubon Society
The realities of a re-wilded landscape demand that individuals set aside the distractions of cell phones and their ubiquitous internet access, which allow individuals the privilege of moving through environments while unaware of their surroundings.
In this respect, re-wilding begins to strike a philosophical chord. For humanity to sustain a beneficial relationship with the environment and planet, Nature and how people relate to it, cannot be ignored. Perhaps it is this attribute which best recommends re-wilding as a new and conscious objective for cities.
The sustainability of urban ecosystems depends on how we respond to future social, economic, and environmental challenges. From reducing the negative effects of highly engineered infrastructure on the ecological functioning of natural systems in cities, to achieving a more equal provision of ecosystem services in the urban social landscape, each challenge is unique.
Effectively adapting to climate change means addressing uncertainty while taking a dynamic view of urban natural systems.
However, no challenge has more potential to exacerbate problems and cut across social, environmental, and economic fields than climate change. This is partly because of the complexity of its manifestations, including: 1) increase of average temperatures, enhanced by the urban heat island effect; 2) change in hydrological regimes, which may result in more, less, or more variable rain; 3) increase in the frequency and severity of weather events, which may not be limited to “warm” events, such as tropical storms, but may also include prolonged dry spells, ice storms, or frosting events. Also, climate change requires a complex response, which necessitates putting together a wide range of ecological, social, economic, and political strategies that may be too difficult to conjure all at once in small-scale management landscapes, such as urban parks.
Many urban rivers concentrate urban nature, particularly densely forested areas. With climate change, these may be more vulnerable to changing hydrological conditions, such as intense storms or prolonged droughts. This riparian forested area in the Santa Rita River, a subsidiary of the Cali river, in Cali, Colombia, is an example of that. Photo: Camilo Ordóñez
Although climate change is being considered more and more in urban ecosystem management, I sometimes see an over-excitement about hasty and narrowly-conceived climate strategies. My experience is in urban forestry, where, for example, people usually argue that just planting more trees is the best way to address climate change. This idea has gained so much popularity that many cities are doubling or tripling their tree-planting targets. Obviously, the motivation for this is to enhance the benefits of urban trees, such as reducing urban heat, among other climate-related benefits. However, although planting more trees is a welcomed activity in itself, planting trees without giving any thought to climate adaptation may actually result in a higher mortality of newly planted trees. Urban trees are already vulnerable to the harsh conditions they grow in, such as compacted soils—conditions that have nothing to do with climate change, yet tree decline may be further exacerbated with the effects of climate change. For example, a tree surrounded by concrete and already struggling to survive may be more severely affected by a tropical storm. Considering that urban-tree planting is a considerable expense (e.g. many North-American cities today spend $250-500USD/tree in new street-tree plantings), our concern should be to maximize their benefits in a changing climate, instead of just blindly planting a lot of trees.
I believe that maximizing the benefits of urban nature in a changing climate depends on a strong adoption of some of the often-overlooked ideas related to climate adaptation. Contributors to TNOC have argued that national climate change strategies fail to address regional and local microclimatic realities (Villagra, 2016), while others show how engineering solutions for climate-proofing actually exacerbate climate vulnerability and social inequity (Shi and Anguelovski, 2016), or how climate change is actually an opportunity for reinstating nature-based solutions in cities (Garvin, 2016). I want to contribute to these efforts by revisiting some of these often-overlooked ideas and making better sense of climate change adaptation, drawing from my experience in urban forestry. Some of these ideas may be old for seasoned TNOC participants, others new for those new to TNOC, and yet others may have been only implied in passing in other TNOC articles. If anything, my intention is to bring these ideas to the forefront of the discussion.
1. Let’s increase adaptive capacity, instead of just mitigating impacts
When we think of climate-change impacts we intuitively start thinking about how to mitigate them. If the day is going to get hot, we seek the shade of a tree. Mitigating the impacts of climate change on urban ecosystems is an important issue. We can plant more trees in parks so people can escape the heat. We can also build barrages to protect a naturalized riparian forest from flooding, or develop storm-response programs to take care of trees in the case of a storm. But increasing the resistance of urban nature to the external threats of climate change can only go so far. If the trees we plant in a park are all the same species, they may be more vulnerable to a pest or disease that attacks that particular species and that is being driven by warmer temperatures. If a larger flood event than the ones the barrage was meant to stop comes, then our riparian forest will still get flooded. As important as impact mitigation is, we also need to work towards increasing adaptive capacity.
In broad terms, adaptation is the adjustment of a system in response or in anticipation to changing conditions. The adaptive capacity, or the characteristics that make a system capable of adapting to change, of urban ecosystems is important given the existing climate vulnerability of cities. Although the vulnerability of cities to climate change depends on the magnitude and intensity of changing global patterns and their local manifestations, it also depends on the conditions that already exist. For instance, for historic, cultural, environmental, and economic reasons, the majority of world cities are located in coastal areas, while a significant number of cities are located in mountainous regions, as in Latin America. Coastal and mountainous regions will be severely affected by climate change given the intrinsic variability of climate in these regions, which includes a higher frequency of storms, a more variable precipitation regime, and dependence on glacial water sources. Add to this an intensification of urbanization patterns, inadequate land use regimes, unsustainable livelihoods, undemocratic political organization, and a deteriorating natural environment, and we have conditions of high climate vulnerability, a determining factor in the direction of change for urban ecosystems.
In 2013, the city of Toronto was affected by a severe ice storm. The weight of the ice brought down a number of urban trees and broke numerous branches, causing evident damage to trees, infrastructure, and people. With climate change, ice storms may become more frequent and/or severe in certain urban regions. Photo: http://www.yourleaf.org
Increasing adaptive capacity may be a more important consideration in urban ecosystem management than mitigating impacts if a climate response is to be sustained in the long term, since mitigation responses may be downplayed by a mal-adapted system. When we only think of mitigating impacts, such as when we plant trees in a park without thinking if they are susceptible to a pest or a disease, the solution may actually become a part of the problem. Adaptation requires us to have a more dynamic view of urban natural systems, since these must thrive in a very different climate. The adaptive imperative is crucial from a climate adaptation perspective.
Our task, then, is to translate this adaptive vision into practical techniques. An adaptive response in the case of planting trees in a park, or protecting a riparian forest from flooding, may mean modifying the species and age mix of these urban forests in such a way that they can withstand pest and diseases, or flooding and storms, on their own. In the case of planting trees on a street, it may also mean improving soil conditions so the trees that are planted can grow to be robust and to withstand any attacks by pest and/or diseases, or by storms; or maybe planting trees at a younger age, since these can be more malleable to changing conditions. These techniques speak to a more general goal of creating dynamic natural areas in cities that emulate or enhance those natural patterns that are more favourable in shifting conditions and that optimize their functionality, without sacrificing their ecological integrity.
Undeniably, an adaptive response in urban areas will not be complete without the human element. So, climate adaptation in urban ecosystem management also means enhancing community participation programs to engage people in the management of newly-planted trees in parks, or riparian forest set aside for conservation. This doesn’t just mean raising the public’s awareness of the benefits of urban trees and natural areas, or asking residents for a helping hand in tending them, such as asking them to water them once in a while, or even gathering volunteers regularly for tree-planting events. A strong community program means actually allowing people to participate in the management of urban nature. This may mean establishing more public consultation processes in the development of management plans, or establishing community-based steering committees for an urban park or a residential area full of public street trees. If we have more people both interested in seeing urban natural areas thrive and engaged in their management, then climate change can be confronted effectively.
2. Let’s think about uncertainty and try to address it
Some people think of climate change as something that will happen far away in the future and they look at 50 to 100-year projections to inform their decisions. Others think that the changes are already starting to occur, and the drought, flooding, heatwaves, and ice storms they see right now will soon become the new norm. In reality, no matter how useful climate change projections are, or how indicative current weather is, we may never know the absolute magnitude of climate change and have no empirical basis to know how urban ecosystems may respond to it. We also do not know if our cities will live through cultural shifts that will reduce or increase the importance of urban nature. This “uncertainty”—known formally as the expression of the degree to which a value is unknown because of disagreements of what is known or even knowable—is a very important aspect of climate change.
Climate change uncertainty cannot be addressed with a static vision of the future determined to mitigate climate change impacts that may or may not manifest in the way they are projected. However, uncertainty does not make us powerless or our management strategies trivial. Uncertainty should not limit the development of climate-adaptation strategies. One of the things we can do right now is to assess the direction of change and what factors are contributing to this change, so we know if we can expect more, or less, or different, urban nature. This means increasing the amount of climate change vulnerability assessments (or CCVAs) of our urban natural resources, including doing CCVAs for urban forests, urban wetlands, and other natural features in cities. We also need to develop communication strategies so that we can build a language for communicating uncertainty openly and clearly to other stakeholders, allowing them to understand the degree of confidence we have at a particular moment in taking a decision regarding climate change. Finally, uncertainty requires us to diversify our portfolio of management strategies so we can increase the chances of reducing it. In the particular case of planting trees in cities, it may require us to diversity our planting techniques. Instead of just planting 5-yr old trees wide apart, we could combine this with planting trees closer together and/or planting them at a younger age, among many other techniques that diversify how we plant trees in cities and reduce uncertainty.
3. Let’s bring back adaptive management so we can learn before things get worse
The 1970s saw the emergence of a so-called “adaptive management” approach to ecosystem management (Holling, 1978). This theoretical construct was widely used to adjust management to the dynamic stability of natural systems. Although still widely used as a buzzword, many times the idea of adaptive management doesn’t materialize into anything substantial. Today, and with climate change, we have an opportunity to bring the principles embedded in the notion of adaptive management back to life.
The majority of us have an intuitive notion of adaptive management and see it simply as management that adapts to new circumstances. In fact, this conceptualization is widely used in ecosystem management plans. But such simplification is actually dangerous, since it may result in a reactive approach to management. To avoid this shallow interpretation, we need to be more proactive. In real terms, adaptive management refers to the integration of uncertainty and change into management by devising learning processes based on monitoring and experimentation activities that in turn feed back not just into management actions, but also into the basic assumptions and values of the management model.
This newly planted tree struggles to survive in the harsh urban environment of Bogotá, Colombia. With climate change, newly planted trees may be more vulnerable to changing climatic conditions, unless changes in planting techniques are adopted, such as planting smaller trees and planting in tree clusters. Photo: Camilo Ordóñez
Adaptive management is the cornerstone for managing climate change in urban ecosystems because it promotes monitoring and experimentation, activities that help us to be more proactive on the basis of the results of our activities on the ground. Monitoring and experimentation embrace uncertainty and establish a mechanism to reduce it. This is even more relevant in urban ecosystems, where complex socio-ecological dynamics and rapid or sudden changes usually determine the pace of change.
So, any climate-inspired activity in urban ecosystem management, such as planting more urban trees, needs to be complemented with strong monitoring and experimentation programs. A monitoring program can be used to collect data on the survival rate of these newly planted trees, which is crucial to understanding how climate change is playing a role in tree survival. An experimentation program may involve setting up lab experiments, either in a tree nursery or in a control urban environment, where different planting treatments, such as planting smaller trees and planting tree in clusters, can be set up to understand how successful these can be for ensuring the survival of newly planted trees. If adopted boldly, the whole city can be viewed as a living laboratory for urban forests, where we experiment, in a controlled and systematic manner, with different planting and management techniques that educate us today, faster, about the future.
Nature-based solutions to climate change: an economic justification
Because of their political, economic, social, and environmental conditions, cities will differ in the way they approach nature-based solutions to climate change problems, and will also differ in the way they can bring adaptive capacity, uncertainty, and adaptive management to the core of what they do. Climate change is certainly not an easy challenge for cities. Economically, not everybody can allocate budgets for planting more urban trees. Politically, not everybody has a centralized system government, or even enough public land, to coordinate nature-based strategies at the city scale, such as planting a million trees. Socially, poverty and lack of education may be more pressing issues in some neighbourhoods than spending more money on planting trees.
However, nature-based solutions to climate change can also provide low-cost, decentralized, poverty-alleviating, and educational opportunities in urban areas (see Garvin, 2016). And in cases where nature-based solutions are the preferred option to respond to the climate challenge, adaptation is a better way to think about how to manage them. Climate-proofing a riparian forest zone through conservation and tree-planting strategies requires the ecological savvy to do so, but ultimately it takes less money than a flood-resistant barrage to protect such a zone. Engaging private stakeholders in tree-planting and engaging citizens in the management of urban natural areas may actually reduce centralized municipal efforts and budgets. A tree-monitoring program could be led by citizen scientists; citizen leaders could collect data on the survival rates of newly planted trees using free-to-download cellphone applications. Finally, experimenting with different planting techniques, such as planting smaller trees and planting in clusters, may be cheaper in the long-term than investing in highly engineered tree-supporting infrastructure. Eventually, an adaptive mindset will pay for itself in the changing urban world we live in.
Quite often city-makers who want to implement nature-based solutions run into many hurdles standing in the way of realising their green ideals. But how do you tear down those walls? Effective co-creation is a path forward.
More than half of the world’s population lives and works in diverse, bustling cities. And perhaps, if you are reading this blog, you have a desire to make these places we call home greener—it can be done with nature-based solutions! Quite often city-makers who want to implement nature-based solutions run into many hurdles standing in the way of realising their green ideals. In this blog, DRIFT intern and Connecting Nature project member Shibeal McCann shares how adaptability and communication can help to overcome these hurdles collectively.
During an enlightening session (“Building natural networks and delivering the deal with stakeholders”) at the Glasgow Innovation Summit (23-25 March), I heard experiences from the cities of Glasgow, Genk, and A Coruña, as they endeavoured to explore how to deliver city-scale green networks using nature-based solutions.
We heard three contrasting examples, yet a coherent story on governance with unifying themes emerged—of adaptability and communication. Each city initiated networks to achieve a common vision that could not have been achieved alone. We heard firsthand the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of building networks to deliver the deal with stakeholders. Knowledge was shared that has relevance beyond the region and context it came from. We discussed insights into how to build networks in our own work. What stood out is that delivering parks is by no means a walk in the park. Here are the lessons I took away from this session.
Session: Building natural networks and delivering the deal with stakeholders – Glasgow Innovation Summit
Lesson #1: Strike the right tone
While building networks between people and places is encouraged, it is not easy, as explicit knowledge and textbooks on the topic are few and far between. As project manager, Max Hislop presented the hardships faced when he and his team set out to develop the Glasgow Clyde Valley (GCV) Green Network Blueprint, Scotland, UK.
Their journey from development to delivery began over fifteen years ago. The GCV Network blueprint is a strategic master plan which seeks to turn Glasgow City Region ‘green’ by developing green networks. The master plan includes installing walking and cycling routes to break up the conurbation (high density of buildings) of Glasgow while leaving room for wild spaces to return to for wild animals. Three cheers for Glasgow’s response to the biodiversity and climate emergency we are facing!
In all this, communication is key. You need to speak the language of your partners in the process and avoid complex data. The GCV team learned this the hard way when they presented a detailed, integrated habitat model mapping the networks of species to urban planners. It flew over the crowd’s head. The team had to accept that data is only effective if it can be communicated properly to the audience in question. This setback forced them to adapt, and, since then, they’ve started discussing this topic with urban planners in a shared language, linking the model to the project’s overarching strategic development plan.
Key take-home: Communicate with planners, if you have strong simple graphics, people will make use of them, avoid complex data – simpler is easier to absorb and digest.
Lesson #2: Find a banner to unite under
Nature-based solutions work better when people and organisations collaborate to achieve what they could not attain alone. Working in partnerships helps to ensure that different needs are considered and local opportunities are exploited.
This state of mind led the city of Genk, Belgium, to form partnerships to deliver their Stiemerdeals. Mien Quartier unveiled the innovative ways in which her city involved stakeholders, including citizens, groups, and local citizens – developing a network of people within their project.
Revolving around 8 fixed themes: nature, relaxation, meeting, happiness, growth, water, creativity and entrepreneurship. https://www.genk.be/stiemerdeals
The Stiemer itself is a stream running through the city of Genk, physically connecting neighbourhoods, nature reserves, and strategic city sites. Since 2015, the city has started revitalising the neglected and polluted valley to realise its full potential. What initially began as a spatial and ecological transformation project, later evolved to include social and economic objectives, realising that these types of transformations could act in synergy.
So, what do these deals entail? The city of Genk collaborates with one or more local entrepreneurs and companies with a flexible approach to governance. Every Stiemerdeal is a tailor-made cooperation, a symbiotic relationship. Stiemer honey, beer, biscuits – you name it, together they’ve made it. In total, they made 37 deals within the first year, incorporating a huge diversity of entrepreneurs into the valley!
The Stiemerdeals offers partners both financial support and material support. At the start of the deal, the team co-creates a clear vision, for how one aspect of the valley can become a valuable asset for the city and deliver multiple benefits. It’s an innovative way to develop a flexible approach to engage people and organisations, give them a sense of ownership, and make them feel part of something bigger, creating a snowball effect.
For me, the key take-home message here is that complex objectives usually cannot be achieved by a city alone. We must increase the capacity to realise the full potential of nature-based solutions. By connecting and networking, and co-producing innovative business models we can accelerate the journey to reach the multiple goals of nature-based solutions together with local actors.
Lesson #3: Tear down those silos
Urban gardens in A Coruña
For our final lesson, we took a trip to the North-West of Spain, to the city of A Coruña, where Antonio Prieto González shared their process for working with urban gardens in the region.
The various benefits of urban gardens were apparent in his city from the outset, specifically as powerful tools for fostering social cohesion, bonding between generations, and ownership of public spaces.
The team in A Coruña didn’t have much experience with nature-based solutions at the start of their adventure. And there were other ongoing initiatives in the city — school gardens, private urban gardens, and community gardens — however, they were all disconnected. The team wanted to create a network to unite these similar initiatives because siloed government departments are one of the main barriers to achieving multi-functional benefits. Many different departments in the municipality were connected indirectly and directly to these urban gardens, like the education, employment, and environment department.
But how do you tear down those walls??
Their solution was combining two societal levels: organisational and strategic. Antonio and the team took the time to work both levels when delivering the urban gardens and simultaneously making interdepartmental connections to show that there is common ground.
Firstly, they organised meetings with relevant councillors and heads of the departments to secure political support. This enabled them to connect to the operational level, working with technicians from different departments. They needed both.
Once again, the process wasn’t a breeze — some departments were not so easy to contact; it’s hard to find the right people (who have to have the time and energy and are not always the first people you think of) -but it’s crucial when working in this horizontal manner.
The key lesson for me was that working on fenced-off projects isn’t enough. You need to align the goals and benefits of the nature-based solutions with the wider city goals. In order to achieve this, making connections from one team to another, and one project to another, is vital to create and build local alliances.
Reflections
To me, these three contrasting examples form a coherent story on governance. Each city initiated networks to achieve a common vision that could not be achieved otherwise, employing communication, adaptability, and operational versus strategic working.
I saw a testbed for what does and doesn’t work so well, revealing the dead ends encountered so that, for others, the journey will be shorter. In that way, this session was an excellent way to show the variety of governance innovations we work on in the Connecting Nature project, and beyond!
About connecting nature
Coordinated by Trinity College Dublin, Connecting Nature is a consortium of 30 partners within 16 European countries, and hubs in Brazil, China, Korea & The Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia). We are co-working with local authorities, communities, industry partners, NGOs, and academics who are investing in the large-scale implementation of nature-based projects in urban settings. We are measuring the impact of these initiatives on climate change adaptation, health and well-being, social cohesion, and sustainable economic development in these cities. We are also developing a diversity of innovative actions to nurture the start-up and growth of commercial and social enterprises active in producing nature-based solutions and products. Connecting Nature is funded under the Horizon 2020 program (call SCC-02-2016-2017; Grant Agreement 730222) and includes 29 partners and 5 self-funded partners.
DRIFT’s team is coordinating the co-production of a new planning cycle with the involved cities and academic partners based on state-of-the-art knowledge about co-production and reflexive monitoring. This planning cycle is for city planners and policymakers that will connect experimentation and lessons to ongoing policy and market needs. It includes operational mechanisms to accelerate the scaling of nature-based solutions as well as guiding principles for turning socio-economic and institutional barriers into opportunities. This is achieved by close interaction between the academic and city partners; to learn by doing and to iteratively reflect upon the steps that are being taken in ongoing nature-based solution projects.
Marleen Lodder graduated MSc Architectural Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology with honours in 2010 and worked as a Ph.D. candidate (October 2011-2015) at DRIFT, Erasmus University. Her research focuses on how urban area development in the Netherlands can become beneficial, by generating economic, ecologic, and social cultural values.
Dr Paula Vandergert is a Senior Research Fellow in the Sustainability Research Institute, University of East London. She works with local authorities, strategic development organisations and local community groups on adaptive governance methods for sustainable and resilient communities and places.
Kato Allaert is a green urbanist, currently based in the Netherlands. In her work, sustainable cities with happy citizens are the focal point. To achieve this, Kato links the spatial perspective with the social, economic and ecological aspects of cities. Kato has around 10 years of work experience in different contexts - from academic research to urban design practice and the public sector - and in different countries - the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium.
Local governments planted millions of young trees on urban streets throughout the United States during the first decade of the 21st Century. From Los Angeles to New York, large cities made prodigious investments in urban reforestation and wrote off the expense as a relatively thrifty way of dealing with some deep-rooted and long-lasting environmental problems that any municipality would be hard pressed to fix on its own. That’s great. If Chicago can’t make every eighteen wheeler barreling down Kennedy Expressway run on ultra-clean biodiesel, it can plant more trees to filter the soot that inevitably burps out of tailpipes on older freight trucks. If Boston struggles to prevent raw sewage from seeping into the harbor every time a thunderstorm inundates the local treatment system, it can cut more tree beds into the sidewalk to sop up rainwater before it cascades into a curbside drain. You get the idea. On their own, trees don’t solve the underlying causes of pollution, but they ease the burden of so many different dilemmas that it’s hard to quibble with any concerted effort to plant more of them.
Scientists put a good deal of research toward cultivating and testing trees that can hack it in the city, but even the hardiest species need help during their first few years living on the streets. Young trees need water. They need fluffy, well-aerated soil. They need mulch. They need their broken branches pruned to promote rapid callusing against infection. In short, urban forests are not unlike rural forests in that they rely on human labor to successfully meet human needs. Yet few cities in the U.S. can pay for all that hard work.
Images captured using a D.I.Y. infrared camera developed by the Public Laboratory for Open Technology & Science. Source: PLOTS
While planting trees by the hundreds of thousands is a significant one-time capital investment, it’s nothing compared to the ongoing cost of staffing an army of public employees dedicated to keeping those trees alive. While the expense of sustainably managing a rural forest often pays for itself in the form of timber, the indirect benefits of a thriving urban forest never transform into real dollars and cents deposited in municipal coffers. We can calculate the value of ecosystem services provided by a functioning urban forest—the tons of carbon emissions prevented, the gallons of rainwater absorbed—but those savings don’t reappear as a line item in the street tree budget.
Since street tree care doesn’t pay for itself, cities rely on volunteer labor to make ends meet. I dealt with the pros and cons of this arrangement in my previous contribution to The Nature of Cities, so I won’t go any further than to say this: if volunteers are at the front-lines of urban forestry, we need to stop treating them like auxiliaries for a non-existent army of municipal arborists. We also need to recognize that volunteers aren’t just unpaid employees of local government, subject to policies emanating from City Hall. Neighborhood by neighborhood, volunteers have different ways of dealing with their patch of urban forest—different ambitions, different strategies, different priorities. Some want more trees. Some want fewer. Some form tight-knit groups to systematically care for every tree. Some prefer a more relaxed, individualistic approach. We must find a way to empower every community to find its own unique and evolving style of doing urban forestry. Volunteers are in the trenches. The rest of us, working in government, academia, and NGO’s, have to figure out how to help from the rear.
Trees mapped by volunteers at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy in Brooklyn, working with TreeKIT. Source: TreeKIT
OpenTreeMap may hold some answers. An open-source website that invites the public to interact with detailed maps of urban trees, OpenTreeMap is already set up in San Francisco, Philadelphia, San Diego, and throughout Great Britain. Earlier this year, the geospatial masterminds at Azavea launched a cloud-based version of the website that will be more affordable and accessible to small communities wanting to share their locally made tree maps with the wider world. This new version of OpenTreeMap allows volunteers to track the work they’ve done to maintain any individual street tree on any given day, from watering and pruning to enlarging a tree bed and installing a permanent guard around its perimeter. Volunteers click on a tree in the map, and up pops a little window where they can record their most recent activities. Later on, other volunteers can search for recent stewardship activity on the map, filtering out trees that have already been maintained in order to see where the most help is needed. The whole thing functions as a sort of self-organized volunteer mobilization system — except there’s no boss at the top giving orders, and volunteers are free to make their own decisions based on openly shared information about recent stewardship.
Looking at street trees in Philadelphia’s version of Open Tree Map. Source: Philly Tree Map
Some communities may not have a map-based inventory of trees to load into OpenTreeMap. No problem. The system itself allows users to drop new trees onto the map with the click of a mouse — or, these days, the flick a finger on a tablet. Alternately, for communities that want a more comprehensive approach, TreeKIT offers a low-cost and low-tech method for accurately mapping whole blocks of street trees out in the field (a quick explanation of how it all works is available here). The results are easily loaded into OpenTreeMap, and the hands-on nature of the process invites volunteers to go outside and discover a new affinity for their local urban forest. To date, volunteers working with TreeKIT have mapped more than 12,000 street trees on more than 600 blocks in New York City, and more work is planned for the summer of 2014.
Eventually, volunteers will want to know whether their stewardship efforts are actually having a tangible impact on tree health and longevity. Yet monitoring urban tree health can be tricky. Outward appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes there’s no way of knowing if a particular stewardship regimen is working until it’s too late and a tree is already dead. Sophisticated protocols and rigorous tools do exist for assessing urban tree health, but most are beyond the reach of the average volunteer. That’s where “open research” initiatives like the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science and Photosynq come in. Both initiatives are busily developing affordable, easy-to-make, and easy-to-use environmental sensing technologies that can take the place of other, less accessible gadgetry. Public Lab recently unveiled open-source designs for a D.I.Y. spectrometer and near-infrared camera, both of which are potentially relevant for assessing tree health through measures of photosynthesis. Photosynq is beta-testing a similar low-cost tool for measuring “fluorescence and absorbance of photosynthetic plants and algae in a non-destructive way.” As tools like these become available, they can help volunteers make more refined assessments of their urban forestry efforts, empowering them to gradually tweak and adapt their practices based on good data about what does — and doesn’t — work.
Mobilizing, mapping, and monitoring — “Three M’s” for empowering volunteer urban foresters to do more impactful and rigorous work together, in their own style and on their own terms.
My friend Madhu Katti (also a TNOC writer) has written about other invasions of urban habitat by wildlife in recent times, including the return of the 
Section 19 is a clear recognition that environmental rights belong to everyone—that no people and no neighborhoods can be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth.
The state has an unambiguous mandate to protect New Yorkers’ right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live and work in a healthy environment. Everyone exercising governmental authority, including agencies and local government, has an obligation to protect environmental rights, to promote actions designed to preserve and enhance these rights, and to take affirmative steps to provide a healthy environment to all New Yorkers, including intervening when these rights are jeopardized. Protecting clean air and water must shape how all state law is interpreted and applied. State actors will have new grounds to justify more rigorous enforcement or to defend state environmental legislation from attack by polluting industry.
The Judiciary must assess whether government action has violated these rights
5 Comments
Join our conversation