Test of using a ‘category’ as a way to display Roundtable posts (eg: a collection of writings by different authors) To use this, you would make a ’roundtable title’ into a ‘category’
As urban practitioners, itâs important to understand the significance of these city rankings and indices, how they may or may not be useful, and be clear and mindful of their limitations.
So, what happens when a city reaches the top ranks? Have you ever noticed the kind of media attention the city gets? City rankings are indeed very popular and attract a lot of media attention across the globe.
Each year, there are more than 40 city indices published globally. In fact, since 2007, more than 500 different urban indices and rankings have been published worldwide to rank cities from across the globe according to the Business of Cities. These indices show how cities perform when compared with each other in their region or globally based on various indicators including livability, quality of life, competitiveness, sustainability, prosperity, resilience, and others. As urban practitioners, itâs important to understand the significance of these city rankings and indices, how they may or may not be useful, and be clear and mindful of their limitations.
In addition, there are not many rankings that specifically focus on the environment, despite the clear role that cities play amidst the current climate and biodiversity crises. In a recent post on the ecological performance of cities, IUCN and NParks Singapore address this shortcoming by presenting two indices that intend to measure urban nature in cities and set targets towards a nature-positive future. While the City Biodiversity Index has been around for a while, it has recently been revised to improve its robustness and applicability. The other index, IUCN Urban Nature index, which measures the ecological performance of cities, has recently launched its draft and the ongoing pilots in 5 cities will soon provide important insights on its application. Yet, how does one define usability? Or usefulness? And for whom?
In this post, we present the preliminary findings from our research on city rankings and indices, exploring who are the users of city rankings, and how they use rankings in practice. We also identify the limitations of city rankings and propose future prospects and recommendations. Our findings are based on multiple sources of information, including desktop research, literature review, and interviews conducted with the index publishers, urban practitioners, and academic experts.
Who are the users of city rankings and how is it useful for them?
Based on our research, we have considered three main categories of users for city rankings, i.e., a) city ranking producers (including real estate, consulting firms) b) city policymakers and urban planners, and c) researchers and students. Each of them uses city rankings in a different manner and we do acknowledge that there may be other users existing as well.
Similarly, global consultancy firms, such as ARUP and Arcadis, use city rankings as a useful resource for branding and marketing for their own firms. One such example is the ARUPâs City Resilience Index and the framework which is often used by the firm for other projects. On the other hand, Grosvenor, which is one of the largest privately-owned international property companies, produces information that can be used directly for the corporateâs own real estate investments and market visibility.
b) City policymakers, urban planners, and local authorities
City rankings are also used by policymakers for city planning and benchmarking. For example, some cities use their city ranking to benchmark against the best, or at least higher ranked cities and set goals, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). One such example is the Global Power City Index used by Tokyo city to set goals and annual KPIs, based on the performance of different indicators each year.
Similarly, there are also various theme-based rankings, for example, transport-related rankings which assess the transport infrastructure in cities and rank them according to public transportation availability, accessibility, and infrastructure provisions for sustainable transport. These rankings help make comparisons on various parameters and inspire other cities to learn from. One such example is the Walking Cities ranking by Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) which inspires cities to promote active mobility in cities, thus promoting a healthy air quality environment and cutting transport emissions.
Some cities also use it for domestic comparison, i.e., to assess how different cities are performing at the national or regional level. This is the case for the Global Power City Index used in the United Kingdom or the smart city rankings/ Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Initiative) used by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in India.
City rankings provide access to datasets for researchers. Recently, there has been a steep rise in interest in research on the role and performance of cities in addressing resilience and sustainability issues. City rankings potentially allow researchers to access new data for an individual city, collected and processed by third-party producers. These new data can be used to learn about urbanization trends, including theme-based indicators to understand best practices, e.g., for transport, water, or the environmental and social performance of cities. One such example is the UESI index that offers an interactive tool to compute environmental and social indicators for various cities.
What are some of the limitations to city rankings?
Despite their potential benefits, city rankings do have quite a few limitations. It is important for policymakers, local authorities, and researchers to be mindful of such limitations and consider them whenever necessary.
Limitations to city rankings
Lack of available, accessible, and quality data for assessment. One of the main limitations to city rankings is the lack of quality data available to calculate the index or ranking. Often, city rankings are based on open data sources, and not based on datasets which are officially disclosed or recognized by the city authorities. This lack of data seriously limits the scope of the analyses. For most of the cities, the city-level data are not consistently available and differs drastically. Even if data is publicly available, we usually don’t have information on the way these data are collected, and it may differ from country and city. For example, while making a city-to-city comparison, data may be available for the London city area but, for Tokyo, data might be available only for the metropolitan area.
In addition, in some cities from developing countries, city-level data may be outdated, and the only available data might be from national-level authorities, but updated years ago. Due to financial constraints, most of the cities from the Global South are often unable to update their city-level data annually or make it public, thus missing out on being assessed for city rankings. Conversely, cities from the developed nations of Europe and North America ensure that there is publicly available data, and therefore data accessibility is much easier in these cities. This leads to a clear bias towards the Global North in the majority of city rankings. Therefore, it is important for policymakers to be aware of the potential biases due to data availability when deciding to make use of a city ranking for their own city.
Lack of representation of secondary cities. Relatedly, the method of city selection is rarely explained by the producer of rankings. Most of the cities selected are primarily based on openly available data for cities, a determining factor to include any city in the indices. Some producers also use other available resources to select the city e.g., the Global Power City Index includes cities based on the top 20 major city rankings from Global Cities Index (GCI),Cities of Opportunity, and the Global Financial Centers Index (GFCI). It is more often observed that city rankings focus only on global cities, leading to repetition of the usual suspects at the top and secondary cities not making to the index, thus more often ignoring them.
Disaggregating city-level data. Spatial aspects of a city are important to understand the urban form (sprawl, green space), the geographical situation of the city (natural assets, isolation, connectivity), and others. Hence, spatial datasets are important to determine livability in cities. It is observed that more often the detailed spatial data for cities from the global south is unavailable. As a result, city indices publishers are unable to incorporate spatial data sets in their indicators. It is understood that this could be due to limited resources or publicly available data sets for the producers of these rankings.
Similarly, the neighborhood-level data is more often ignored or not publicly available and captured in these rankings. In cities, neighborhoods are the real essence of city-making, but the producers of city rankings rarely use such nuanced, sub-city-level data. This clearly limits the use of such rankings for urban design and livability purposes.
Lack of (representative) public engagement. Another limitation of city rankings is that they are rarely engaging with the local public. Ideally, publishers of city rankings would understand how an individual city is perceived and lived by the residents, but it is also important to engage them at some point during the city assessment. Even though some of them claim to engage with the city residents, few indices disclose how the public opinion is accounted. Those that do, even suggest a lack of representativity, e.g., EIU the Global Livability Index which is constructed based on subjectively measured data (i.e., data based on the opinion of someone else and relies on the opinion of those creating/capturing the data which are essentially the EIU employees in a particular city). Similarly, IMD-SUTD Smart City Index (SCI) assesses 118 cities worldwide by capturing the perceptions of only 120 residents in each city, which is quite small as a sample size. Almost all the city indices that we came across are based on publicly available secondary data and only a few of them consult the residents, local city authorities, or academia to have their views.
Lack of involvement of academia. Other than a few city rankings which are peer-reviewed by experts from academia, most of the rankings miss out on this expertise. It is often observed that there is an oversimplification of indicators included in the indices and collaborations with academic experts could indeed provide a more integral view of city rankings to guide the index results and suggest improvements.
Lack of transparent methodology. Often, the methodology of city indices is not disclosed publicly or available free of cost. It usually comes with a paid subscription service that policymakers, researchers, or the general public may not be willing to pay for. This leads to misinterpretation of the methodology or the city ranking and interest only on the final ranking instead of fully understanding the detailed methodology or indicators used by the indices.
Lack of learning for other cities. It is also observed that city rankings typically attract attention for winning or losing cities, meaning cities that are ranked at the top or at the bottom. This could be because of the way producers showcase best to worst performing cities, rather than listing them in a way that could trigger learning for cities.
What are the prospects for city rankings in the future?
Overall, we find that, while city rankings are potentially useful for different users, they also come with limitations and constraints which need to be addressed for better outcomes.
First, city ranking publishers need to make sure that there is transparency and a clear indication of the methodology used in city rankings. As mentioned earlier, if the methodology is available publicly without any paid subscription, there could be a better understanding and response to the rankings.
Secondly, city rankings should not just focus on ranking the cities but, in fact, should also indicate ways of improvement or learning for other cities. This could help in having city collaborations and engagements to improve different themes or indicators lacking in respective cities.
Thirdly, in general, the visual appeal of these rankings can be more informative, visually enticing, and insightful with the possibility to change some of the user preferences while exploring these rankings.
In addition, we identify some of the prospects for city rankings and where they could particularly be useful.
Prospects for city rankings in the future
Stimulating Public interest for the city residents: Generally, extreme rankings tend to stimulate public interest in urban policymaking. Once a city ranking is published, the individual performance of that city generates media attention and recognition (or shame!) in the regional and local media. With the rise in public participatory planning approaches in cities, these rankings may be starting points for city-wide discussions between the experts, residents, and local authorities, to how their city can be improved in specific indicators.
Addressing the demand for Environmental Indicators in Global Indices: With the rise in climate change and biodiversity issues, there is a renewed interest in indices and rankings that include environmental indicators. To our knowledge, no existing city ranking covers all the important environmental or nature-related aspects, including the use of nature-based solutions for biodiversity and climate change. However, the recently launched Urban Nature Index by IUCN Urban Alliance promises to be a new knowledge product helping cities measure and track their ecological performance and sets a benchmark in measuring the environmental performance of cities. Increasing the amount of easily accessible environmental indicators and testing their robustness will help guide cities towards better environmental practices.
Developing theme-based vs Overall city indices: More generally, we note that cities are made of complex urban systems, and it is important to understand them individually and in-depth while ranking the cities. Therefore, we recommend city rankings to be more targeted and meaningful by focusing on theme-based city benchmarking rather than trying to cover all the aspects and losing the fine ingredients present in these themes.
For example, the Walking Cities Index by ITDP is an extremely specific index focused on walkability whereas the Best Cities ranking by Resonance considers transportation as a whole (Fig 4. below), but misses out on an important form of transportation in the city, i.e., walkability. In fact, it only considers ease of getting around using public transportation in the city which is just one part of overall transportation in the city. City ranking producers must be transparent in the themes or sub-themes they assess.
Guidance for these themes can be obtained from the Sustainable Development Goals, which represent a useful guideline for cities: not only Sustainable Development Goal #11, which provides specific targets for cities, but also all other goals that are, in one way or another, related to urban governance.
Best Cities Ranking by Resonance (Source: Resonance)
Incorporating retrospective and prospective dimensions: Given the importance of scenario exploration in urban and environmental governance, indices could also consider future scenarios to consider city trajectories. Based on the city action plans, climate change commitments, and future plans for cities, projections can be made, and they can be ranked for the next 10, 20 years. This could generate greater interest, learning, and invite policymakers from other cities to make better commitments or plans in their cities.
Learning for other cities: It is important for city rankings to initiate learning for other cities. Some good examples that city rankings could take inspiration from are, the Urban Environment and Social Inclusion Index (UESI), or the CDP climate scores who donât focus on showcasing the top and the bottom cities, but are arranged in a format that promotes comparison of cities as well as allows for improvements or learning for other cities.
Our exploration of city indices is still at the beginning, but our preliminary findings agree with other scholars that, in fact, city rankings should be Taken more Seriously. They have the potential to promote healthy competition and guide cities to nature-positive futures, and itâs up to us urban practitioners, to design or interpret them in the most useful way possible.
For the interviews conducted during this research, we would like to thank the team of Global Power City Index, led by Hiromi Jimbo, Norio Yamato, and Peter Dustan from the Mori M Foundation. We would also like to thank the authors of essay â Taking City Rankings Seriously – Daniel Pejic and Michele Acuto from the University of Melbourne. We also appreciate the time for the short discussion with Angel Hsu (author of Urban Environment and Social Inclusion Index) and Agnieszka Ptak-Wojciechowska, Anna Januchta-Szostak (author of publication â âThe Importance of Water and Climate-Related Aspects in the Quality of Urban Life Assessmentâ) for taking out time to answer my questions about city rankings.
To read more on this topic, here are some of the reference papers if you are interested to know more about city rankings.
Perrine is an Assistant Professor at NTUâs Asian School of the Environment. Her research group examines how green infrastructure can contribute to creating resilient and inclusive cities in Southeast Asia. Prior to joining NTU, Perrine was a senior scientist at Stanford University with the Natural Capital Project.
With significant climate change impacts already affecting us, we need to go one step further than to simply suggest methods of mitigation and focus more on radical adaptation as well as change the way we look at development in our cities.
Acknowledging local conditions and ensuring adherence across agencies and citizens will ensure achievements of its goals.
With over 140 km of coastline and 480 sq.km land area, Mumbai is one of the most vulnerable cities to climate change induced hazards such as sea-level rise, storm surge, and urban flooding amongst many others. Further, with only 12% of its land area under green cover and with a population of over 13 million, Mumbai has one of the poorest per capita accessible open spaces at 1.08 sq.m/person, which is much lower than the Urban and Regional Development Plan Formulation and Implementation Guidelines of 10-12 sq.m. for Indian cities. Although Mumbai cityâs GDP is slated to touch close to $230bn by the year 2030 â which is larger than that of several countries, this development has come at a large natural and environmental cost â the meagre access to green space for its ever-growing population has been further diminished over the last 4 decades in which time Mumbai has lost over 43% of its green cover, and the situation does not seem to be getting better any time soon.
Personally, I was exposed to the first-hand effects of sea-level rise and storm surges in my time in New York City in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the northeastern coastline of the US. The physical, as well as monetary damages, were too large to comprehend, but the response by the federal and state governments to the event was incredible to witness. Rebuild By Design was a competition that was launched by President Obama in order to have some of the best planners, designers, sociologists, architects, landscape architects, scientists, and many others work on creating long term, sustainable interventions to help prevent a similar loss of life and property in the future. Working as an urban designer within one of the winning teams â SCAPE Landscape Architecture â and on the Rebuild By Design competition opened my eyes to the issues surrounding climate change and its effects in a way I had never before comprehended. The winning proposals like Living Breakwaters by SCAPE off Staten Island, the Big U by BIG Architects in Manhattan, and the Huntâs Point Lifeline proposal by Penn Design are stellar examples of acknowledging climate change and adapting our urban fabric to be more resilient by addressing the root causes of the issues and by way of systemic changes.
SCAPE/ Landscape Architectureâs winning proposal âLiving Breakwatersâ for Staten Island/ Raritan Bay. Source: Rebuild by Design
Upon moving back to Mumbai in 2015, I was rather alarmed to see the lack of discussion, or, in fact, any mention of Climate Change hazards let alone planning for their effects. This despite Mumbai having experienced its worst-ever floods in the year 2005 when vast areas of the city were flooded with up to 8 feet of water amidst torrential rain and high tides that paralysed the city for days. The aftermath of the floods saw some peripheral measures being taken such as the installation of check gates in order to prevent backflow of seawater into our natural storm water channels (nullahs) in case of high tide, but no comprehensive changes were set in motion. Mindless construction has followed in the years since the floods, including further destruction of our natural areas such as salt pan lands, wetlands, and mudflats with the government, in fact, proposing these sites as the best areas for generations of large-scale affordable housing. This has ensured that, year after year, the city continues to suffer from any heavy rain event.
Devastating floods in Mumbai on July 26, 2005. Source: PK Das & Associates
Specifically, over the last 8 years, Mumbai city has seen a huge push in city-level transport infrastructure â primarily by way of construction of new Metro rail lines as a means to aid the heavily burdened railway system in the city, as well as an elaborate Coastal road for movement of private vehicles (no planned mass transit systems will use this carriageway). While the Metro is a much-needed initiative in the city, its planning and design have been greatly criticised for lacking a short-term implementation as well as a long-term growth vision. While the southern part of the city has received an underground metro system, the northern part has been planned with elevated metro corridors. The primary reason cited for this differentiation – high costs associated with underground construction. Underground metro construction although more expensive is largely seamless and causes very little disruption to daily life in the city and ensures effortless extension of the lines in the future. (The London Undergroundâ which is the oldest Metro system in the world built in the 1850s continues to grow even today). The overhead metro rail, on the other hand, has forced the hacking and destruction of a countless number of large 50-60-year-old rain trees along our major road arteries in order to make space for the construction and erection of the metro line. The overhead metro also has severe limitations in terms of future expansion and extension since it is weaving through an incredibly dense fabric of the city.
Congestion seen at a typical overhead Metro station in Mumbai. Source: PK Das & Associates
On the other hand, the famed Coastal road âalbeit a jewel in the governmentâs cap â has been proven to be an unnecessary development based on traffic counts and user stats according to transport planners, not to mention the incredible cost of the project ($1.6bn) which could rather have been used for other public infrastructure projects. The coastal road has had a severe impact on the immensely diverse geography of the western coastline. The natural rock beds and their inter-tidal spaces along the coast are home to countless species of marine life. A lot of these areas are also filled with mangroves â which are part of the cityâs natural defense mechanism against rising sea levels and coastal flooding due to storm events. The coast is also home to the cityâs oldest inhabitants â fisherfolk, referred to as Kolis. Easy and unhindered access to the coastal waters, as well as land areas along the coast for various fishing-related activities, form the basis of the fisherfolkâs livelihood. The incessant landfilling (almost 300 acres) along the coast for the coastal road greatly threatens indigenous activities as well as severely alters the natural anatomy of the coastline. Despite its several cons and clear negative effect on the environment, statutory approvals and all environmental clearances were easily achieved from the Central government â a lot to do with the fact that the ruling party at the centre was also in power in our state.
Glimpses of the immense landfilling off the western coast of Mumbai for the Coastal Road. Source: Times of India and Hindustan Times
These major infrastructure projects coupled with the continuing boom of real estate in the ever-expanding city has meant that we have been in a permanent state of construction which has led to increasing levels of dust and pollution. Despite being a coastal city where the sea breeze aids in carrying most of the polluted air away, Mumbaiâs pollution levels have been consistently rising and are similar to the terrible AQI levels seen in northern areas such as New Delhi. What is clearly demonstrated by these projects is a complete disregard towards the state of the environment and its preservation. An immediate shift in our mode of development from purely an engineering and mechanical approach to solving localised problems to a far superior environmental engineering and larger environmental infrastructure approach is the need of the hour if we are to approach and tackle climate change in a holistic manner at a systems level.
Tackling Climate Change is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals laid out by the UN- which calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The Paris agreement adopted by countries at COP21 in Paris furthers this goal and aims to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees by the end of the century. The agreement requires all countries to take action while recognizing their differing situations and circumstances. Under the Agreement, countries are responsible for taking action on both mitigation and adaptation. As of June 2020, 189 countries have joined the Paris Agreement, India included. In fact, the Government of India had already launched the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in June 2008 and outlined 8 national missions in order to achieve the goals set out in the plan. The National Mission on Sustainable Habitat aims to reduce energy consumption in urban areas used for transport-related infrastructure and urban buildings and promotes an urgent shift to public transport in cities. Taking a cue from the C40 Cities Network, cities are now in the process of developing their own Climate Action Plans to contribute to this vision. (C40 is a network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities that are collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed in order to tackle the climate crisis.) A climate action plan is a detailed and strategic framework for measuring, planning, and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and related climatic impacts. Ideally, a climate action plan also includes an implementation strategy that identifies required resources and funding mechanisms. (Source: City of Burlington website)
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is developing the Cityâs first climate action plan with technical support from the World Resources Institute India (WRI). As part of the C40 Cities Network, Mumbai city is encouraged to draft its Climate Action Plan by the end of 2021 and will be doing so in collaboration with and compliance to C40 guidelines and ambitious standards. The Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP): Towards a Climate Resilient Mumbai, primarily focuses on identifying climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies for the city. The 3rd Development Plan of the City – DP 2034 was released last year and aims to guide the cityâs development over the next decade. In the cityâs history, no previous Development Plan has achieved what it set out to do with local agencies simply not being able to keep up with the promised timelines. With each development plan, earlier initiatives are shelved to make way for new ones leading to a highly unsustainable approach to city planning. The MCAP comes at an important juncture in terms of being able to successfully weave into and carefully facilitate its agenda hand in hand with the goals set out in DP2034. If the MCAP can be successfully integrated into the 12-year plan, it can protect the cityâs natural systems, increase resilience capacities of vulnerable groups, and enable resilient urban growth that ensures aggressive reductions to the cityâs greenhouse gas emissions. The MCAP is slated to focus on 6 thematic action tracts to specific sectors for mitigation and adaptation. These themes are (1) Sustainable Waste Management, (2) Urban Greening and Biodiversity, (3) Urban Flooding & Water Resource Management, (4) Building Energy Efficiency, and (6) Sustainable mobility.
Mumbaiâs unique and diverse ecosystems already offer protection to its citizens from extreme weather-related events such as high tides and floods. The rich diversity of natural assets that are found interspersed across the cityâs ever-expanding fabric cover almost 33% of the total landmass and include over 140 km of coastline â which are one of the most bio-diverse zones of the city; 16 km of beaches; 40 km of rivers; over 70 sq. km of creeks, mangroves, and wetlands; 50 km of ânullahsâ – open storm water channels; and almost 58 sq. km of hills and forests. In order to have the MCAP truly transform Mumbai into a world-class sustainable and climate-resilient city, the very notion of what open spaces are need to be re-defined to go beyond gardens and parks and include these vast and diverse natural assets. Add the over 320 documented and listed gardens and parks and over 1200 recreation and playgrounds to these natural assets and the MCAP can bring almost 45% of the cityâs land area directly under its purview of green and open spaces with policies specifically drafted for their protection.
Some of Mumbaiâs natural assets â beaches, creeks, and rivers. Source: Open Mumbai, PK Das & Associates
The MCAP plans to identify pathways for emission reduction strategies for the years 2030 and 2050. Integrating these natural assets into the MCAP will help achieve the following – (1) Enable universal and free access to all types of open spaces in the city â thereby allowing preservation and further expansion of these spaces once they are appropriated by citizens, (2) flood mitigation â by way of protection of mangroves and promoting natural urban drainage systems like our nullahs, permeable pavements, bio-swales and parks to help with maximum water retention and reduce surface runoff during rain events, (3) Reduce urban heat islands and promote carbon sequestration, (4) Develop a local bio-diversity and action plan that can be advocated and implemented by local area residents in their communities thereby contributing to change at a city level and (5) address issues of comprehensive housing and infrastructure solutions for marginalised people living in the buffer areas of these natural assets who otherwise misuse these areas for lack of any options available to them. Over and above this, the MCAP needs to influence the development agenda for infrastructure projects as well and ensure that projects such as the Coastal road and overhead metro go through a much tighter design evaluation process in order to conform to the regulations set in place. In summation, we believe that the following three principles must be adopted under the MCAP in order to achieve the results it is expected to see â (1) Urban Planning & Design are a Right of the common people of the city â and must be an integral part of any design process, not just in the stakeholder consultation stage before the report is published, but should be embedded into the several processes required for implementation as well, (2) Demonstrate change through participatory endeavours at a local, neighbourhood scale which will ensure that local residents can relate to the work being done, and finally (3) Scale-up these local initiatives in order to influence city-wide transformative change.
To ensure a participatory and inclusive process in the development of the MCAP, a series of stakeholder consultation sessions were arranged in the city in September last year where participants included local and state-level government agencies, think tanks, community-based organisations, private enterprises, planners, designers, and citizens of Mumbai participated across various roundtables spanning various topics of waste management, urban mobility, air quality, energy efficiency, urban greening and bio-diversity, and urban flooding and water resource management.
However, as described through the two infrastructure projects of the overhead Metro and the Coastal road, the on-ground realities shed light on the current state of affairs in the financial capital of our country, and, therefore, the distance we need to cover in order to align with some of the initiatives that are being discussed and planned in the MCAP. Close to 50 C40 world cities have successfully developed their own CAPs that are compatible with the Paris agreement ranging from Los Angeles to Kuala Lumpur â clearly, there are several examples to learn from, but it is important to adopt certain unique strategies in order to make a plan truly suitable to the local context. India currently ranks pretty high up in the Climate Change Performance Index of 2022 â in 7th spot with Denmark and Norway leading the charts â but the manifestation of these charts is yet to be seen for any of us here in Mumbai. The MCAP is certainly a much-needed positive step in the quest for tackling Climate change and we truly hope the plan lives up to its hype and facilitates a practical implementation scheme in order to meet its goals.
With significant climate change impacts already affecting us, we need to go one step further than to simply suggest methods of mitigation and focus more on radical adaptation and change the way we look at development in our cities. Initiatives like the MCAP promise a brighter way forward in order to have any chance at a liveable future on our planet.
Maria AragĂŁo, Lisbon As far as plants are concerned and, since even the most naturalized of urban settings is man-made, it is of the utmost importance to have proper knowledge of plants.
Amy Bowen, Lincoln From a UTVC perspective, better knowledge of plants and, thereby, success of nature-based green cities can be catalyzed by science and innovation, collaboration, and knowledge mobilization. Urban forests are novel ecosystems and sound science is needed to underpin the entire value-chain.
Luis Camargo, Bogota Taking a big view perspective, the knowledge of plants should ultimately come from the day-to-day relation established with plants in the city. Appropriating our role as citizen naturalists is an essential aspect of this.
Martha Fajardo, Bogota Learning and respecting the ways of todayâs indigenous and traditional peoples, and integrating them into environmental and developmental considerations, will prove indispensable for the survival of our biodiversities.
Andrew Grant, Bath Botanic gardens are places of science where an extraordinary diversity of plants representing multiple biomes and habitats inspire not only wonder in botany but wonder in the physical and emotional impact that can be generated by different plant species.
Richard Hallett, Durham Now, as we plan for the future, we are beginning to think about how to maximize the benefits trees and plants provide the city.
Mark Hostetler, Gainesville A continuum exists between highly manicured landscapes that contain mainly monoculture turfgrass and exotic plants to totally wild yards that contain mainly native plants. The horticultural industry, in my opinion, needs to investigate paths forward to shift towards more alternative landscape designs.
Nikara Mahadeo, Cape Town Rapid urbanisation poses significant challenges, but it also creates the opportunity to develop and design more resilient and sustainable cities, inspired by nature and biodiversity. The integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) in land-use planning and development is one such opportunity in cities.
Peter Massini, Robertsbridge The decisions as to which plants to use to best effect are often keenly contested between ecologists, landscape architects, arboriculturists, and horticulturists; all focusing on different aspects of the âperformanceâ and âpurposeâ of the plants selected.
Darby McGrath, Lincoln From a UTVC perspective, better knowledge of plants and, thereby, success of nature-based green cities can be catalyzed by science and innovation, collaboration, and knowledge mobilization. Urban forests are novel ecosystems and sound science is needed to underpin the entire value-chain.
Matthew Morrow, New York A robust and intelligent information sharing system with input from plant producers, ecologists, botanists, restoration specialists, horticulturists, landscape architects, gardeners, foresters, and city planners could feasibly create a repository for shared information, the purpose of which would be to grow the collective knowledge of useful plants and plant communities for use in our urban greenspaces.
Max Piana, Amherst Now, as we plan for the future, we are beginning to think about how to maximize the benefits trees and plants provide the city.
Ryan Plummer, Lincoln From a UTVC perspective, better knowledge of plants and, thereby, success of nature-based green cities can be catalyzed by science and innovation, collaboration, and knowledge mobilization. Urban forests are novel ecosystems and sound science is needed to underpin the entire value-chain.
Mohan Rao, Bangalore The horticulture industry plays a vital role in mainstreaming the immense floral diversity that one could leverage to address not merely aesthetic considerations but those of resilience, diversity, and endemicity.
Ian Shears, Melbourne How can the horticultural or âgreenâ professional be the fundamentally important voice of the plants? This âvoiceâ is critical in providing the knowledge of plant needs for growth and health, and the knowledge of what the potential of the plant is to provide maximum benefits.
Keith Sacre, Cambridgeshire Does the horticultural industry have a role to play? Well, of course, it does, but it also has to develop an understanding of what nature-based green cities are and how horticultural and plant knowledge is critical to develop the ability to set specific plant knowledge in context.
Georgia Silvera Seamans, New York We can no longer devote public money and public lands to single-function plants. We cannot limit native understory species to natural areas.
Ernita van Wik, Cape Town Rapid urbanisation poses significant challenges, but it also creates the opportunity to develop and design more resilient and sustainable cities, inspired by nature and biodiversity. The integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) in land-use planning and development is one such opportunity in cities.
Mike Wells, Bath The expertise is out there, but the focus and coordination towards practical application in urban areas are rare. Perhaps a good starting point would be a series of international conferences to establish frameworks of required information and the basis for plant selection in urban landscape design in general.
Dr Audrey Timm is a horticultural scientist specialised in ornamental horticulture. Since joining International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH) as Technical Advisor in early 2019, Audrey leads their Green City initiative with the purpose of increasing the quality and quantity of living green in urban environments, and of nurturing a strategic shift in city form and function.
Introduction
As urban and environmental practitioners and change-makers, whether in the public, private or NGO sectors, we work to respond to the global imperative to bring more nature into our cities, with a seemingly clear understanding of the science that underpins the urgency of the current moment. We know full well that nature provides many benefits which sustain our increasingly urban lives. We also know that this nature is diminishing at unprecedented rates and needs to be protected, conserved, and even restored as a matter of priority. Acknowledging the need to act now is an easy message to promote, and at the strategic planning level, awareness, and advocacy of the need for action are at an all-time high. But do we know what this action entails at a practical level?
We know that there is global recognition of the value of plants in providing solutions for common city problems. However, we propose that there is a common deficit in recognition of what this means in terms of moving from planning to implementation, from theory to practice, and from the strategic realm to the practical. This is often where we, as city shapers, are in danger of falling short.
If we accept the hypothesis that plants are the critical foundations of urban nature, then how do we go about ensuring we procure, prepare, and plant the right plants in the right places when implementing nature-based solutions? How can we enable better decision-making when it comes to plant selection and preparation? Is a closer engagement with the ornamental horticulture industry what is missing?
The global green cities community welcomes bold commitments by politicians, and strategic policy and planning visions of restoring significant areas of habitat or of planting impressive numbers of trees in and around cities in the coming years. We ask the question, however, whether these commitments consider how these ambitions are to be achieved. In many cases, plants need to be carefully selected and procured months, and even years, in advance of implementation, and need to be prepared and grown in such a way as to ensure they are fit for purpose. Where do we find stories of best practice in engaging the horticultural industry throughout the process? Do you know of examples of multidisciplinary cooperation that has ensured that the right plants were planted in the right places to deliver on the intended outcomes of an urban greening project?
Letâs think for a moment about how the global rise in attention and awareness of the benefits of nature-based solutions has strengthened connections, partnerships, and engagement with the ornamental horticulture industry. Are we able to effectively implement urban nature-based solutions and restore urban natural habitats without engaging these critical stakeholders â the breeders and producers of plants? If not, why not? Do we need to be?
Letâs take the Bosco Verticale project in Milan as an example. The two residential skyscrapers feature facades covered with the leaves of 800 trees, 4,500 shrub, and 15,000 other plants. The plants found on the façade make up the equivalent of more than two hectares of woodland and undergrowth concentrated into just 3,000 square meters of urban space â a multiplication factor of almost 7 times. We invite you to take a look at how this urban greening project provides nature-based solutions to a wide range of urban challenges:https://aiph.org/green-city/guidelines/case-studies/case-studies-bosco-verticale-milan/
It might seem obvious that careful plant selection made a significant contribution to the capacity of this project to deliver an impressive range of green solutions. What is less known is the fact that the selection of species was informed by a three-year research project, undertaken with horticulturalists, botanists, and ecologists, during which the plants were pre-cultivated in containers in a nursery to accustom them to the conditions they would be subjected to, while producing perfectly adapted root systems. Planting was then carried out progressively over a three-year period, as the building façades were completed, and was completed two years prior to the first residents of the towers moving in. In this example, the process of planning, selecting, producing, procuring, and planting took more than five years.
What does this mean in terms of our approach to planning and implementing urban nature-based solutions which harness the power of plants?
We invite respondents to consider the critical role of plants and the critical importance of careful planning and plant selection in enabling successful urban greening projects. We welcome stories of best practices where the careful selection of plants and engagement with suitable growers and producers of these plants has led to the implementation of effective nature-based solutions for specific urban challenges? How do we ensure that these consultations take place in advance of implementation so that plants are integral to the success of these solutions, and not just an afterthought?
Have you considered this in your work? If so, what has been your experience, and what lessons have you learned along the way? If not, how might these considerations strengthen and enrich your approach in the future?
We are interested to explore the knowledge gaps and identify where there is room for capacity building in ensuring that we, as practitioners, are sufficiently equipped to drive the transformative shift to urgent action for nature in cities.
Timothy is an urban development professional with a background in the social sciences and city and regional planning. In his role as a Green City Consultant at AIPH, the worldâs champion for the power of plants, Timothy is responsible for progressing strategic partnerships within the Green City programme and for coordinating the AIPH World Green City Awards.
Nikara is a Professional Officer: Biodiversity, Nature and Health at ICLEI Africa. Nikara holds an MSc Environmental Sciences (University of KwaZulu-Natal) and an MPhil in Conservation Leadership (University of Cambridge).
Nikara Mahadeo and Ernita van Wyk
Rapid urbanisation poses significant challenges, but it also creates the opportunity to develop and design more resilient and sustainable cities, inspired by nature and biodiversity. The integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) in land-use planning and development is one such opportunity in cities.
Nature and biodiversity play a critical role in meeting societal needs, with urban communities depending significantly on intact and novel ecosystems to sustain them. Urbanisation, however, is one of the biggest threats and risks to native biodiversity, with residential; business; and industrial infrastructure readily displacing natural areas & species, including plants. Â It is currently estimated that globally, 2 in 5 plant species are threatened with extinction. This threat can negatively impact human well-being, particularly for those living in cities, as plants produce the air we breathe; food and medicines; cooling of cities, amongst other critical services.
Rapid urbanisation poses significant challenges, but it also creates the opportunity to develop and design more resilient and sustainable cities, inspired by nature and biodiversity. The integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) in land-use planning and development is one such opportunity in cities. In some instances, NBS can be more cost-effective than grey infrastructure alternatives, adding social and economic value over the longer term. Using plants in the implementation of NBS can have multiple benefits, as plants are fundamental to well-functioning ecosystems and are known to adapt to changing environments. For example, creating green open spaces by planting trees and other vegetation can support cooling; improve air quality; and increase biodiversity and beautification in cities. Urban areas with more diverse ecosystems will have greater resilience to shocks, whilst also addressing challenges associated with climate change; food and water security; and mitigate risks to public health; and reduce disaster risk.
In Africa, it is thought that NBS have not readily been used as much as they have in other parts of the world. However, many would argue that NBS solutions have long been a part of many African initiatives but have just not been termed so. Africa is one of the fastest urbanising regions of the world. This growth, however, threatens some of the richest biodiversity, including plants, across the continent. As a result, a significant proportion of African livelihoods are at risk, due to the dependency on ecosystem services, which this biodiversity provides.
Through the INTERACT-Bio Project, the Dar es Salaam City Council has recognised the value of integrating NBS into land-use and development planning. As part of the project, a catalogue on the Cityâs indigenous biodiversity, focusing primarily on plants, is being compiled. Dar es Salaam is located within the East African Coastal Forest biodiversity hotspot, however, nurseries and urban greening initiatives have traditionally grown and used exotic species. Therefore, the aim of the catalogue is to help create awareness in the City Council, nurseries, and the general public of the rich variety of indigenous coastal forest species that could be used in NBS initiatives, such as ecosystem restoration and urban greening. A good understanding and field knowledge of the local indigenous species was required to develop the catalogue, therefore suggesting that the use of plants in NBS does require the expert skills of horticulturalists, botanists, plant taxonomists, and the like. In addition, different species have different characteristics, therefore, this knowledge can be useful in understanding what ecosystem services different species provide. Using this information can ensure that the best combination of species is used in NBS, to ensure that the maximum ecosystem services benefit is derived. Furthermore, using a variety of species in NBS not only increases biodiversity, but also enhances the functional resilience of urban ecosystems. It is therefore critical that plant biodiversity is promoted in NBS, particularly in fast-growing cities, not only to ensure resilience and sustainability, whilst meeting development needs, but also to sustainably manage and restore ecosystems; and address social challenges, to improve human well-being and quality of life in cities.
Ernita is a Senior Professional Officer: Social-ecological systems at ICLEI Africa. Following initial training in ecology and conservation, Ernitaâs interests and work have spanned the design and implementation of research and operational work in the fields of invasive species, adaptive management, biodiversity mainstreaming, and environmental stewardship, over a period of 24 years. Ernita holds a PhD in Environment and Development.
Darby McGrath is the Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Horticulture and Program Lead for the Plant Response & Environment at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. She has a MES and PhD from the University of Waterloo. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo and Brock University.
Darby McGrath, Amy Bowen, and Ryan Plummer
From a UTVC perspective, better knowledge of plants and, thereby, success of nature-based green cities can be catalyzed by science and innovation, collaboration, and knowledge mobilization. Urban forests are novel ecosystems and sound science is needed to underpin the entire value-chain.
Cities are confronting a myriad of challenges, such as rapid urbanization, increasing disasters, more extreme weather events, and threats to ecosystem services. Nature-based solutions are capturing attention as an innovative response to these and other challenges. In the specific context of Canadian urban forests, this generally manifests as directives to increase canopy cover. While increasing canopy cover in urban areas is critically important, substantive difficulties exist to realizing this aspiration. We fully concur that success of nature-based green cities is only possible with a better knowledge of plants and respond to the questions posed by drawing upon our recent work with urban tree value-chains (UTVC) in Canada.
Where does the knowledge come from? Understanding the pathways by which trees go from nurseries to planting is essential if canopy cover targets are to be met efficiently and effectively. The analogy of a chain is employed to represent linkages among the actors involved with trees from their source to end. While it provides an appropriate starting point, UTVCs are complex, interdependent, and multi-level networks. UTVCs are understudied, with comprehending interactions and decision-making of actors involved identified as essential. Recent advancement in this regard has occurred in Ontario, where research revealed the UTVC to consist of multiple pathways, one based on the flow of products and the other based on the flow of knowledge and communication. Concerningly, urban forest governance in Canada is not comprehensively reflected in value-chain studies to date. It remains fragmented and multi-faceted, with a relative dearth of federal and provincial involvement, considerable municipal purview with diverse policy approaches, and extensive influence of private landowners.
Can the horticultural industry be more useful? Absolutely! Key actors in the UTVC come from the horticultural industry. The following scenario helps to understand the complexity of the UTVC and illustrates how the horticultural industry can be more useful. A city is updating their urban forest management plan. A key component of the plan is their projected tree plantings specifically, the objective of increasing tree diversity. This one objective has implications across the UTVC.
Has the city updated their soil specifications to support a diverse tree canopy? Are the soil suppliers prepared to provide the specified materials to support these trees?
Are landscape contractors aware of changes in the specifications and preparation techniques?
Has the city ensured that recommended trees are available in nurseries as finished stock?
Are the propagating nurseries prepared to meet these changing demands by their finishing nursery customers?
What of the tree care companies that will be maintaining trees through juvenility?
These questions pose common gaps in communication and evidence where actors from the horticultural industry can make key contributions.
From a UTVC perspective, better knowledge of plants and, thereby, success of nature-based green cities can be catalyzed by science and innovation, collaboration, and knowledge mobilization. Urban forests are novel ecosystems and sound science is needed to underpin the entire value-chain. Collaboration is required to remove barriers between actors and build collective capacity. Knowledge mobilization, which is reciprocal amongst value chain actors, provides a basis for decision support tools, evidence-based decision making, and science-informed policies. While approaches that bring these touchstones together are scarce, the Greening the Landscape Research Consortium is a recent example in Canada. It employs a research consortium model in response to challenges and opportunities with the urban forest value chain and serves to illustrate a novel way forward.
Amy Bowen is the Director of Consumer, Sensory and Market Insights at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. Amy has a PhD in Biological Sciences with a specialization in Plant Science, Oenology, and Viticulture from Brock University.
Ryan Plummer is Professor and Director of the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (ESRC) at Brock University. In addition to research and teaching, Ryan has led the development of the ESRC and several associated programs â Minor in Environmental Sustainability, Master of Sustainability, and Ph.D. in Sustainability Science.
Martha Cecilia Fajardo, CEO of Grupo Verde, and her partner and husband Noboru Kawashima, have planned, designed and implemented sound and innovative landscape architecture and city planning projects that enhance the relationship between people, the landscape, and the environment.
Martha Fajardo
LALI Re-orienting nature-based solutions with ancestral-cosmovision thinking.
Learning and respecting the ways of todayâs indigenous and traditional peoples, and integrating them into environmental and developmental considerations, will prove indispensable for the survival of our biodiversities.
As a concept, Nature-Based Solutions (NbS), is a big IUCN call and âinventionâ. We appreciate the funding of timely initiatives by the European Commission (Horizon 2020), bringing together Latin American and European partners to strengthen international cooperation on NbS and ecosystem restoration providing knowledge in co-creating suitable ânature-based citiesâ.
Special emphasis on these EU policy agenda aims in âInnovating with natureâ. However, at the Latin American Landscape Initiative, we find ourselves in a stage of inspiration on how to nurture and appropriate this vision for Latin America, making sure our collective brings in the cosmovision of ancestral peoples and local communities and a less utilitarian outlook on nature.
Latin America’s experience with nature dates to indigenous knowledge systems and values that travel through rural and urban settings. This vision sees spirituality, healthy landscapes, and ecosystems as vital for supporting human life and social cohesion. Learning and respecting the ways of todayâs indigenous and traditional peoples, and integrating them into environmental and developmental considerations, will prove indispensable for the survival of our biodiversities.
Nearly half of Latin Americaâs indigenous population now live in urban areas, in areas that are less secure, less sanitary, and more susceptible to disaster. But, people-natureâs values, beliefs, which considers their voices, cultures, and identities are not sufficiently included in city planning, design, and implementation, then NbS can be unjust, hopeless and fail to provide multiple values, ethics for nature, beings, and society.
Latin America is a continent with historical and cultural unity and a vibrant and changing social and economic reality. In this vast territory with diverse morphologies, climates, ethnicity, and development patterns, there are also strong and lasting unifying ties, such as a common historical, indigenous past, and the bonds through which we built our present societies. In this context, the landscape is the tangible expression of these constants of unity within diversity. Inspiring by both the cosmovision of Latin American indigenous peoples and the European Landscape Convention we created the Latin American Landscape Initiative (LALI).
LALI comes as a declaration of fundamental ethical principles to promote the recognition, valuation, protection, management, and sustainable planning/design of Latin American landscapes through the adoption of agreements that recognize local, regional, and national diversity and values, tangible so much as intangible, of landscape, as well as principles and processes to safeguard it.
LALI work through clusters which translates itself as a network, a system that is nourished by cooperation, cocreation, pacts, and the charitable work of key people in Latin America. It grows and becomes stronger through its Clusters. The Ancestral Landscapes Cluster is one of those which aims to recognize, recover, and disseminate the values -tangible and intangible- of ancestral communities/landscapes, inhabited and given meaning by the different native peoples of Latin America, to contribute to their appreciation, understanding, and protection.
The understanding is embedded in a cosmology that reveres and considers nature as sacred and acknowledges humanity as a part of it. The Network invokes indigenous peopleâs values, asking the world to reevaluate our relationship to âPachamamaâ; therefore, we can turn away from ruining, privatizing nature, to create solutions by re-sacralizing our relationship with Mother Earth.
This is part of the contribution that LALI and its Ancestral Landscape cluster, can give to the highly recognized nature-based solution concept to make better, greener equity and more sustainable cities.
Dr. Richard Hallett, Research Ecologist, USDA Forest Service, NYC Urban Field Station Dr. Hallett (B.S. UW-Madison, M.S. and Ph.D. UNH)has spent his career studying tree and forest health in the northeastern U.S.
Richard Hallett and Max Piana
Now, as we plan for the future, we are beginning to think about how to maximize the benefits trees and plants provide the city.
We ask a lot of the plants, especially trees, that make up the green infrastructure of our cities. This is because the environmental conditions (soils, atmosphere, climate) in urban areas are typically very different from the conditions that plants evolved to grow in. Luckily, many of the plants that we use in urban environments are capable of adapting to and thriving in cities.
In our response, we will focus on trees in cities. The knowledge base for planting the right plants in the right places comes from:
Empirical evidence â urban foresters and arborists are keen observers of the urban environment and institutional knowledge can help inform urban greening strategies.
Research on urban ecosystems â rigorous studies have focused on specific species and urban environmental conditions and can be used to inform management decisions.
Research on rural ecosystems â Forest management has been studied for over 100 years in forested ecosystems around the world. This body of work is particularly relevant to how we might think about managing urban forested natural areas in cities.
Trees are typically long-lived and, when we invest in planting a tree in a city, the hope is that it will grow and thrive in that spot for several decades. This tree not only needs to establish itself in todayâs challenging and complicated urban environment but will need to thrive in an environment that exists several decades into the future. This future environment will likely be warmer and wetter or dryer. Three important factors come to mind when thinking about the future of urban nature. These involve sourcing plants that are: 1) urban adapted; 2) climate adapted; and 3) ecosystem service adapted.
A paradigm shift is beginning in the urban forestry world as land managers start to think less about restoring to some previous condition and more about what the future might bring to a newly planted tree or forest. Urban forestry has never really focused on extracting forest products but rather has relied on the many benefits or ecosystem services trees and plants provide to urban residents. Now, as we plan for the future, we are beginning to think about how to maximize the benefits trees and plants provide the city. Can we select species or genotypes that are more salt-tolerant to plant in coastal zones that will experience more saltwater flooding? Are there species or genotypes that are particularly effective at removing water from the ground after a major storm event? Are there species that are better at surviving in the high temperatures found in the urban heat island and are there species that are better at cooling the environment?
The horticultural industry is already adept at breeding and selecting plants for desirable traits such as aesthetics or yield. Is it feasible to move towards a model that emphasizes regional needs by providing native and/or adapted plant stock that also works toward selective breeding to maximize critical ecosystem services like stormwater or heat island mitigation? Can economies of scale be created by establishing regional hubs including metropolitan land managers and plant producers to maximize the benefit that plants provide to cities? Are there ways to share knowledge focused on local propagation of planting stock via seed sourcing/sharing, clonal propagation, and/or the creation of seed orchards of adapted species?
Bringing together horticulturalists, urban forest managers, and scientists to focus on breeding, enhancing, and producing trees and plants that can maximize the ecosystem services provided to urban areas might be a way forward for future nature-based green cities.
Max Piana is a research ecologist for the USDA Forest Service, based in Amherst, MA. He currently co-leads the Urban Phytotechnology Project in Philadelphia and the Urban Silviculture Network, which spans eight cities in the northeast U.S.
Peter is an experienced green infrastructure policy-maker and practitioner. After a 30-year career in both the third sector and public sector, latterly as Green Infrastructure Lead for the Greater London Authority, he now works as a consultant advising public and private sector clients.
Peter Massini
The decisions as to which plants to use to best effect are often keenly contested between ecologists, landscape architects, arboriculturists, and horticulturists; all focusing on different aspects of the âperformanceâ and âpurposeâ of the plants selected.
It would seem axiomatic that plants (and the medium in which they grow) are the fundamental components of the nature-based solutions which, through urban greening, will help cities respond to the challenges of climate change, poor air quality, and biodiversity loss.
Yet despite this, the decisions as to which plants to use to best effect are often keenly contested between ecologists, landscape architects, arboriculturists, and horticulturists; all focusing on different aspects of the âperformanceâ and âpurposeâ of the plants selected.
The reality is that all of these professionals can, and should, play an important role in designing and specifying nature-based solutions. The landscape architect will provide the framework and select plants that sit well within a designed landscape whilst the ecologist might champion native plants to complement the local ecology; but it is, perhaps, the arboriculturist and horticulturist who may have the most useful knowledge as to the suitability of different species and cultivars for specific conditions and needs.
In recent years in the UK, there has been increasing inter-disciplinary collaboration driven by requirements such as the Urban Greening Factor and Biodiversity Net Gain which demand outcomes that cannot (yet*) be delivered through the skills and expertise of a single professional discipline.
The Trees and Design Action Group (TDAG)[1] has been one of the driving forces, bringing together people and organisations to improve knowledge and good practice to support better collaboration in the planning, design, construction, and management of urban trees. It has been central to ensuring that the commercial part of the arboricultural industry (the suppliers and contractors) have had the opportunity to contribute their knowledge and expertise to help bridge the gap between policy and practice.
So, perhaps now is the time for a sister organisation to bloom, a Horticulture and Design Action Group (HDAG) – or Horticulture and Urban Greening Action Group (HUDAG) for those who prefer an alliterative acronym. A natural extension of the AIPH Green City initiative, the Action Group (or groups across different international domains) could become the focal point for collaborative ventures between academic institutions, public bodies, NGOs, and commercial companies aimed at providing detailed guidance and specifications on urban plants that complements TDAGâs resources on urban trees[2].
Would this not replicate other forums or initiatives? I donât think so. In the UK at least, most guidance and training are issued by respective professional institutes (for landscape[3], ecology[4], and horticulture[5], for example). Sure, there is plenty of collaboration, but it isnât providing, in my view, the specific skills and knowledge needed by a new breed of professionals, those specifically engaged with designing and delivering nature-based solutions in urban areas – ecological engineers, urban greening architects, and green infrastructure designers, to coin just a few. A better understanding of the performance of plants in an urban environment will be a core competency for these nature-based solutionists.
Dr Mike Wells FCIEEM is a published ecological consultant ecologist, ecourbanist and green infrastructure specialist with a global outlook and portfolio of projects.
Mike Wells
The expertise is out there, but the focus and coordination towards practical application in urban areas are rare. Perhaps a good starting point would be a series of international conferences to establish frameworks of required information and the basis for plant selection in urban landscape design in general.
To answer the question of how we fill the knowledge gaps in the ability of plants to survive in cities and deliver vital urban ecosystem services, we need to understand the knowledge gaps. These include:
Knowledge of historical ecology. Often the list of species that occupied a site pre-urbanisation is unknown or challenging to compile.
Knowledge of autecology. For some plant species, there is extensive literature relating to a multitude of autecology characteristics, but the information is disparately spread across a very wide range of sources (and languages), in forms not readily accessible to the non-academic practitioner. But even for the most researched plant species, there are often large gaps in what is known about their full requirements. Information that might be needed includes intrinsic conservation value (e.g., rarity, threat status), germination, soil and plant husbandry requirements interdependencies and mycorrhizae, and positive and negative reactions with other plants (see e.g., Wohllebenâs The Hidden Life of Trees, 2018). Also, when we create urban habitats as refuges of plant species that are both naturally rare and threatened, the autecological requirements may be particularly exacting and difficult to recreate and maintain in the urban realm. We also may need to consider the change in requirements, needs, form, appearance, and functions through the year and between years and successional interactions and characteristics. Intrinsic characteristics that are particularly important in a plant speciesâ ability to adapt to environmental change (e.g., C4 metabolism) are also crucial.
Knowledge of functional potential: To optimize our urban realm, we need to simultaneously consider the following for each plant species and then construct planting designs based on optimization of cumulative functions:
Faunal and floral support potential: Capacity to support native fauna and other flora (and the degree to which this depends on co-evolution, see e.g., Garland and Wells, 2021 in the Handbook of Urban Ecology.)
Capacity for ecosystem service provisioning, aesthetic appearance throughout the year, cultural significance, capacity for shade provision, ability to remove pollutants from air and water, wind sheltering and breeze harvesting functions, food provision, and carbon capture potential.
Techniques to optimize plant community design. We are now starting to look at the optimization of urban ecosystem services in ecological design, for example, using systems such as developed in Germany and elaborated into models such as Envi-Met or ESII and into certification systems such as Greenpass. However, the level of sophistication of these models in terms of taking on board the differences between plant species is currently limited.
At present, urban design practitioners are generally obliged to mentally integrate and extrapolate the multiple characteristics and functionalities of plants through the lens and limitations of professional experience when selecting species for urban design palettes. This frequently reduces palette richness.
To develop a truly holistic model for balancing all these factors in urban design would be an impressive achievement but it is clear that it can only be achieved by concerted and directed interdisciplinary endeavour.
Relevant parties will include plant ecologists, physiologists and socio-phytologists, conservation specialists, soil scientists, mycologists, horticulturalists, researchers into plant-animal interactions, urban historians, palaeobotanists and ecological historians, medical toxicologists and allergenic specialists, eco-climatologists, and computer modelling and Internet of Things (IOT) experts. The expertise is out there, but the focus and coordination towards practical application in urban areas are rare. Perhaps a good starting point would be a series of international conferences to establish frameworks of required information and the basis for plant selection in urban landscape design in general. The Urban Plant Selection and Nurture Project could be born and find its champions.
Portuguese Landscape Architect, educated in the United States. Currently the Technical Support to the Board of Directors of the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects, a TNOC Festival 2022 Curator, running a small private practice, and raising two boys, two dogs, three cats, and three chickens.
Maria AragĂŁo
As far as plants are concerned and, since even the most naturalized of urban settings is man-made, it is of the utmost importance to have proper knowledge of plants.
Actually, I believe that the success of nature-based green cities is only possible with a better knowledge of the entire urban ecological cycle, which also includes plants, in addition to air, water, soil, fauna, as well as considerations for environmental quality, sustainability, and human well-being within cities and towns. As the rate of urbanization intensifies throughout the globe, and the devastating effects of global warming can no longer be ignored, urban ecosystems and green corridors are a proven important piece of the city. They are the support, the infrastructure, to ensure that people have a healthy and sustainable place to live, work, and visit. The ecological connection between the countryside and the city must not only be restored, but it must be promoted and nurtured as if life in the city depended on it. Because, in fact, it does! Human connection to nature has been the basic support for our existence for millions of years and, in a world where the effects of climate change rule, it is of the utmost importance that cities lead the transition to more sustainable and resilient human living environments, where ecosystem services and biodiversity are promoted.
As far as plants are concerned and, since even the most naturalized of urban settings is man-made, it is of the utmost importance to have proper knowledge of plants. As landscape architects, and thus the professionals assigned to plan and design the exterior environment, we spend hours and hours in college learning about plants, their characteristics, and how they can be better suited. When planning for urban environments, we learn to avoid large canopies that may interfere with overhead cables, trees with aggressive root systems that may structurally damage sidewalks and underground infrastructures, or plants that are prone to cause allergies and to favor plants with low water requirements and low maintenance, just to mention a few. It is very important to stay updated on this matter as new cultivars are constantly appearing. And this is why it is so important to have a fluid communication between designers and producers. We (designers) need to know what is available in the market. I mean, what is the point of making a pretty plan if it cannot be implemented because the plant pallet chosen cannot be purchased, right? Or worse, forces the builder to have it shipped from other regions, or even countries as is the case in Europe, exponentially increasing the productsâ ecological footprint and contributing even more to the fast-pacing increase of adverse impacts of climate change…. and higher probability of failure.
On the other hand, producers need to know what the designers want so that they can produce it. It is a symbiotic relationship that is greater than the sum of its parts. Landscape architects must be more assertive about native plants and be advocates for a more expressive presence of this group of plants, especially in the urban environment. Their benefits are enormous: they are better adapted to the existing local conditions, which means they require less maintenance and, therefore, have a smaller environmental and financial cost for the cities and their constituents; they more effectively contribute to lowering the temperature and, because they are part of the existing local ecosystem, there are most likely several species of plants and animals in the surroundings that depend on them to thrive and prosper; in addition, by using native plants we are reducing the introduction of potentially invasive plants which threaten the proper balance of the whole system. There is, of course, a place for the use of exotic ornamental plants and landscape architects must know the when and where. And, because we have been passed that knowledge, we have the professional and ethical obligation to be more assertive about the use of native plans and advocate for their use, especially in the urban environment.
Landscape architects have been given the knowledge and have been imparted with the responsibility to plan, design, and manage the exterior man-made environments, so we have the professional and ethical obligation to be more assertive and advocate for the importance of the naturalization of the urban environments, the ecological connection to the surrounding rural areas, the generalized use of green infrastructures in lieu of (the currently still) more standard (and less effective) systems, and the use of native plants.
Founder and Director of the Organization for Environmental Education and Protection (OpEPA). Luis is currently the Regional Latin America Vicechair of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication.
Luis Camargo
Taking a big view perspective, the knowledge of plants should ultimately come from the day-to-day relation established with plants in the city. Appropriating our role as citizen naturalists is an essential aspect of this.
Reflecting on this prompt, I think that as citizens, our knowledge of plants comes from several sources, such as botanical, functional, emotional, and esthetic. Each direction serves a different function in the appropriation and incorporation of plants into our conception of nature-based green cities.
What are nature-based green cities? For me, the concept of a nature-based green city goes beyond the traditional conception of a city with parks and tamed nature corridors created primarily for recreation and the control of waterways. I imagine cities where multiple strategies are incorporated into the base conception of the city and how humans relate with nature within the city. Nature â biological corridors as part of the main green-urban structures, food gardens, smart nature buildings (green rooftops, green buildings, etc.), parks, urban protected areas, rewilded areas, natural waterways, wetlands, etc. and naturalized learning/playing spaces throughout the city.
The transition from traditional to nature-based green cities is not easy and requires understanding and political commitment. Cities must be re-molded to welcome nature back in. For this transition to occur, we must have better knowledge of plants as urban planners, as park managers, and as citizens in general. Taking a big view perspective, the knowledge of plants should ultimately come from the day-to-day relation established with plants in the city.
Appropriating our role as citizen naturalists is an essential aspect of this. Identifying different plants and their function in the same manner as we identify brands and their function would be a start. This would require not only access and contact with more plants and ânatural spacesâ but a âmarketingâ strategy in learning that allows every citizen to learn about and understand their natural environment (species, function, interrelations, and interdependencies).
City forests and biological corridors become a fundamental approach for access and contact. Stemming from these pockets of nature, green walkways that connect smaller parks and green areas full of key and diverse local species serve as bridges for fauna to move through the city, creating flows of non-human life. Green buildings are integrated, providing islands of green for birds and pollinators of all kinds.
There can be three types of spaces for human interaction within these green mazes: parks, nature classrooms, and food gardens. Parks as spaces for recreation can integrate planned, naturalized, and rewilded areas to ensure access to different expressions of nature. Inside parks or as intentional spaces, nature classroom created for formal and non-formal learning allows local schools and organizations to move out of the traditional classroom into plant-rich environments for learning, creating neutral spaces for learning encounters between groups allowing for learning ecosystems to emerge. Finally, food gardens in homes, rooftops, community gardens, and food forest strategies within the main green-city structures allow citizens to establish a more intimate relationship with the plant food sources that nourish us.
Horticulture Industry: Shifting Conventional Norms in Cities
Figure 1. A relatively new Gainesville, Florida home with more natural landscaping. It has no lawn and does not require mowing. It conserved trees in the front yard and has native plants that were installed by the landscaper. Photo: Mark Hostetler)
A continuum exists between highly manicured landscapes that contain mainly monoculture turfgrass and exotic plants to totally wild yards that contain mainly native plants. The horticultural industry, in my opinion, needs to investigate paths forward to shift towards more alternative landscape designs.
I am going to take a slightly different angle on this roundtable prompt. When talking about eco-friendly yards and common spaces in green cities, design professionals, city planners, homeowners, and even the horticulture industry often say, âWell, it cannot be too messy!â My immediate thought is: What is too messy? Aesthetic preferences are in the eye of the beholder and are shaped by experiences, culture, societal norms, and values. A continuum exists between highly manicured landscapes that contain mainly monoculture turfgrass and exotic plants to totally wild yards that contain mainly native plants. The horticultural industry, in my opinion, needs to investigate paths forward to shift towards more alternative landscape designs.
Enter âcues to care theory.â Cues to care (Nassauer, 1995) is a phrase used to describe actions undertaken by humans that indicate a landscape is well cared for and meets cultural expectations for maintenance. According to this theory, there is a common expectation in societies that landscapes will be looked after, managed, and maintained to acceptable standards. This cues to care theory is used in the context of creating eco-friendly yards. If we can figure out how much minimum âcuesâ are needed to make a landscape acceptable, we can incorporate more native plants and wildness into yards. For example, are one trimmed hedge and 20% mowed lawn the expected ingredients?
Thus, what is needed is research that demonstrates what are the âcuesâ in landscape designs and how far can front/back yards and common spaces be pushed down the ecological continuum before people revolt? To date, very little appropriate research has been conducted to determine the cues needed for different cultures and situations (see more details from this blog) (Hostetler, 2020). From my experiences, landscapes tend to be dominated by conventional âcuesâ or designs by landscape architects and environmental horticulture professionals, even for eco-friendly landscapes. For example, âwe need at least 50% mowed lawnâ is a cue that I have heard repeatedly.
To see greater adoption of eco-friendly landscapes in cities, there needs to be a movement in the horticulture industry to take chances. They need to try out different designs that have a reduced monoculture turfgrass footprint. Mavericks are there in the industry, but conventional inertia is quite strong. Perhaps the users (homeowners) are resisting, and subjective norms still perpetuate the adoption and management of conventional landscapes. But I also think the horticulture industry is not presenting enough alternative choices. An understanding of native plants that work well in different soil types will greatly aid in shifting the momentum. In fact, no plant will do well in sterile fill dirt that is typically used for grading on lots in new developments. The industry should push for compost-amended soils and for conserving the topsoil as much as possible.
Further, we do not know how malleable citizen preferences are, and we cannot âshiftâ preferences if most landscaping designs are based on mowed lawns and colorful vegetation. For example, if homeowners were presented with the environmental and economic costs of a manicured yard versus an alternative yard, perhaps they would be more willing to adopt a more eco-friendly yard. In particular, if an entire neighborhood, from the beginning, was designed with very little turfgrass and had lots of native plants, would not the homeowners in these neighborhoods have a different acceptance level? A new subjective norm? I bet so.
Ultimately, the goal is to have both attractive and ecologically functioning human-dominated landscapes. The challenge of shifting landscape preferences remains but the horticulture industry could play a significant role in shifting norms. Imagine, in your mindâs eye, patches of natural landscaping with complex vertical height structures that are bordered with landscaping rocks, trimmed hedges, etc. (all native plants). These bordering features would indicate human intent while simultaneously providing a more chaotic, natural landscape in the yard itself. Perhaps even educational signage is required to raise levels of awareness for novel yards (see neighborhood signs). Exploring peoplesâ preferences when incorporating more natural landscaping needs to be researched and the environmental horticulture industry and maverick developers/homeowners need to try out new designs. Such studies and local examples will lead to the reduction of environmental impacts and create landscapes that are better for wildlife and humankind alike.
Andrew formed Grant Associates in 1997 to explore the emerging frontiers of landscape architecture within sustainable development. He has a fascination with creative ecology and the promotion of quality and innovation in landscape design. Each of his projects responds to the place, its inherent ecology and its people.
Andrew Grant
Every nature-based green city needs a Botanic Garden for knowledge and inspiration
Botanic gardens are places of science where an extraordinary diversity of plants representing multiple biomes and habitats inspire not only wonder in botany but wonder in the physical and emotional impact that can be generated by different plant species.
âimagination is more important than knowledgeâ Albert Einstein
Knowing plants is not just about understanding how they live, their habits, and their homes but, if we are to create truly inspirational and beautiful nature-based green cities, then it is essential to have the creative vision for how to use them.
Botanic Gardens are typically the places where these elements come together. Places of science where an extraordinary diversity of plants representing multiple biomes and habitats inspire, not only wonder in botany, but wonder in the physical and emotional impact that can be generated by different plant species. It makes me think every green city needs a Botanic Garden.
Singapore has two Botanic Gardens which provide the home for specialist expertise training and for beautiful plant collections that define the very identity of Singapore as a City in a Garden or a City in Nature. In our Gardens by the Bay project, the second Botanic Garden, plants were the client. Whist we helped shape the environment for the plants, the detailed knowledge of the diversity of species came from the horticultural experts within the National Parks Board of Singapore. Having such centres of excellence places a focus on the value of plants in the community and builds local pride and horticultural skills.
My landscape architecture course included weekly teaching sessions at the wonderful Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh; an inspiring place of horticultural excellence and remarkable plants that has fed my imagination and understanding of how to use plants ever since.
Most landscape architects will have had a similar introduction to plants and planting design as part of their qualifications and training. This will involve an understanding of the soils, ground conditions, microclimate considerations, and maintenance that need to be factored in when considering selection of plants. Parallel to this technical awareness of plants is the need to know how to use them as part of a creative and ecological vision or concept. I was lucky to have my experience in horticulture at Edinburgh, but many landscape and ecology courses are less fortunate to have such resources and I fear many students are emerging with limited practical exposure to plants and how to use them. There are exceptions, of course. The University of Sheffield Landscape Department has an enviable core team of experts who have helped pioneer new approaches to urban planting whilst inspiring and teaching thousands of students from around the world using hands-on techniques and research.
Ultimately, this is all about creating the infrastructure for people to learn about plants, and how to use plants in defining the future environment, alongside the establishment or retention of special places dedicated to horticulture and the enhancement of green spaces in cities. Can we create a renewed interest in Botanic Gardens that is less about their heritage and more about their future role as places where we invest in the wonder of plants and in the skills and training that go with the optimum use and maintenance of plants in our future cities?
The challenge is that such places are typically underfunded and in decline rather than being beacons of plant science and wonder. We need a new focus on how we create and maintain such places and will require a much more integrated approach from governments, city councils, universities, and all parts of the landscape, ecology, and horticultural industries.
Mohan S Rao, an Environmental Design & Landscape Architecture professional, is the principal designer of the leading multi-disciplinary consultancy practice, Integrated Design (INDĂ), based in Bangalore, India
Mohan Rao
Images from Bangalore and Medellin: who is to say which is where?
The horticulture industry plays a vital role in mainstreaming the immense floral diversity that one could leverage to address not merely aesthetic considerations but those of resilience, diversity, and endemicity.
I distinctly remember the day I was walking in Medellin, Colombia and being âsurprisedâ at my own knowledge of plants â surprised because here I was, halfway across the planet from Bangalore, my home in India – and yet able to recognise and even name a large majority of plants one saw along streets, in home gardens, in every tended landscape. To be perfectly honest, I was quite thrilled for a few hours at least, showing off my knowledge to anyone who cared to listen. Mercifully, this elation quickly deflated; I started thinking about context and geography and the ubiquitous presence of a handful of specimens â shrubs, climbers, ground covers â across continents. Whether in large, formally designed landscapes or home gardens, the limited palette of plant material across geographies struck me as odd, something worth pondering about.
And this round table offers the perfect forum for further pondering. The phrase knowledge of plants in the provocation caught my attention â is it really knowledge of plants that is a barrier for the success of nature-based cities? Or is it something else, something deeper? Humanityâs knowledge of floral diversity, built up so diligently and painstakingly over the last three centuries, is extensive and comprehensive. The issue may be not so much in the knowledge as much as in the way it is leveraged. Limiting the discussion to the horticultural aspect of this knowledge, it is worth noting the horticultural industry â one dare says across the globe â is largely driven by aesthetic considerations; an aesthetic rooted in 19th-century ideals of nature, celebrating the exotic.
The challenges that humanity â and the planet – faces from issues like climate change, extreme weather events, and increasing urbanisation need to be tackled, urgently so. As landscape architects, planners, and designers, it is imperative that we consciously address the larger global issues, however, local oneâs scale or area of intervention may be. Interventions in urban landscapes play a crucial role in addressing these challenges. A thoughtful deployment of native plant material can help address drought and flood cycles, enable habitat creation and protection for insects, birds, and pollinators, minimise the chemical load on soil and water systems, help tackle urban heat island effect, ameliorate the microclimate; the list is long and is only limited by oneâs aspirations for positive change.
The horticulture industry plays a vital role in mainstreaming the immense floral diversity that one could leverage to address not merely aesthetic considerations but those of resilience, diversity, and endemicity. Like any other industry, the horticulture industry too is driven by perceived demands of the markets â specimens seen as the most in-demand are the ones that get the most attention in developing cultivars, in large scale propagation, and in maintaining large stocks. Concerted efforts by the industry to propagate (popularise?) endemic species with manifold advantages can ensure ecologically valuable species are more accessible to, not just landscape professionals, but to lay gardeners too. It is an important opportunity for the industry to shape the nature of the demand and popularise a more mindful and meaningful planting palette.
I am certain many will relate to the struggles one goes through in trying to source native plants specimens since they are rarely available in conventional nurseries and sourcing from the wilderness is increasingly difficult, if not impossible. While catering to conventional demands for the standardised aesthetic plant material, the industry could easily offer a selection of native specimens, catering equally to the casual enthusiast and the serious practitioner.
The horticulture industry invests substantial time and resources in research and development of cultivars that are hardier, less water-intensive, resistant to pests, etc. It is time for some of these efforts to be dedicated in identifying, nurturing, and propagating suitable endemic species; ones that could easily replace the current standard but limited palette. Such a move would go a long way in mainstreaming endemic flora in everyday horticultural practises. This would lead to popularising an entirely new spectrum of plant material which would meet the aesthetic / productivity demands of the designer and the gardener while sustaining a crucial link in sustaining local ecosystems.
Ian Shears is one of Australiaâs leading experts in urban landscapes and urban forestry. He has specialised in Urban Landscapes for over 25 years and has worked for over a decade with the City of Melbourne. Ian and his teams have been credited with the development of some of Australia’s most progressive environmental projects and polices.
Ian Shears
How can the horticultural or âgreenâ professional be the fundamentally important voice of the plants? This âvoiceâ is critical in providing the knowledge of plant needs for growth and health, and the knowledge of what the potential of the plant is to provide maximum benefits.
In recent times there has been a rethink and repositioning of the role of city greening, its importance to the health and wellbeing of the community, and the liveability of the city. Traditionally green components of cities were viewed from a heritage, aesthetic or amenity perspective. Changing climate, urban densification, urban heat island effect is placing significant pressure on the built fabric, services and people of the city. A healthy, resilient and thriving âgreen infrastructureâ is now recognised as playing a critical role in responding to these challenges and conferring environmental service benefits, urban cooling, health and wellbeing outcomes. The myriad benefits span economic, social and environmental and political domains, are interrelated, with each feeding cumulatively into the creation of resilient and sustainable urban landscapes.
The knowledge of the benefits of urban greening is well researched and documented. Translating this âbenefitâ knowledge into on-ground (or on roof or wall) outcomes is critical to ensure successful outcomes, and to unleash the potential of having nature at the heart of urban planning and design. This transference of knowledge is in essence the âappliedâ component of horticultural science.
The greening or ârenaturing âof cities involves three distinct, interrelated applications of the idea. Expanding the use of green infrastructure, protecting and enhancing ecosystems and biodiversity, and providing people ways to immerse in nature. Each of these methods involves innovative practices used at multiple urban scales and applies to âgreen fieldâ locations or retrofitting dense built part of the city.
In unpacking each of these areas it becomes clear that there is a wide range of professional skill sets required to come together to imagine and realise âthrivingâ outcomes. So how can the horticultural or âgreenâ professional be the fundamentally important voice of the plants? This âvoiceâ is critical in providing the knowledge of plant needs for growth and health, and the knowledge of what the potential of the plant is to provide maximum benefits.
Reflecting on what the âgreen voiceâ is provides insight into what knowledge is needed, and how to input and embed the knowledge. The wide range of urban environments that plants will need to tolerate and thrive is expanding and plant knowledge will need to encompass this need. Ecological considerations and biophilic connections between people and nature are increasingly important considerations in urban settings.
Design, implementation, maintenance and evaluation are critical processes that green professionals and the horticultural industry are able to inform contemporary best practice in the wide range of urban greening projects. Provision of high quality climate ready plant materials is increasingly important. This is particularly important with long lived greening elements such as trees. Trees are vulnerable to increases in urban temperatures and determining how existing trees will fare is as critical as selecting new species to plant.
Of many green infrastructure elements, green roofs, walls and facades are becoming more common green components of cities, reflecting the paucity of urban space for more traditional greening. The horticultural industry is well placed to provide knowledge on planning, design and maintenance of these elements.
Another emerging field is nature immersion, understanding why nature improves happiness, health and creativity. Biophilic urbanism describes the need for human beings to connect with nature and the natural environment. Cities committed to a biophilic approach focus on increasing the amount and quality of nature that is present in the city â and on improving access to it.
Contemporary city greening is providing many opportunities for the horticultural sector and its players. Understanding what knowledge is needed and how to impart that knowledge strategically is a great opportunity.
Matthew Morrow is the Director of Horticulture at Forestry Horticulture and Natural Resources, a division of the NYC Park’s Department. In this role he works to educate and support the gardeners and gardens of the agency, as well as the various native flora and fauna of New York City.
Matthew Morrow
A robust and intelligent information sharing system with input from plant producers, ecologists, botanists, restoration specialists, horticulturists, landscape architects, gardeners, foresters, and city planners could feasibly create a repository for shared information, the purpose of which would be to grow the collective knowledge of useful plants and plant communities for use in our urban greenspaces.
The phrase âIf you donât grow it, you donât know it,â was oft-repeated by one of my horticulture mentors, as they firmly believed that, if a genus or species of plants was not planted by and maintained by persons themselves, then only a hypothetical knowledge of said plant could be had. I agree with this to an extent, which is why collaborative efforts as listed below are so important. The specific, detailed information that a botanical observer records concerning a species as it exists in the âwildâ, should be synthesized with the observations of the person who has grown and maintained that plant in a different setting. A robust and intelligent information sharing system with input from plant producers, ecologists, botanists, restoration specialists, horticulturists, landscape architects, gardeners, foresters, and city planners could feasibly create a repository for shared information, the purpose of which would be to grow the collective knowledge of useful plants and plant communities for use in our urban greenspaces. This data, if supplied to growers in the horticulture industry who have an interest in the concepts and possibilities of ecological gardening, natural areas management, and restoration bring, could provide them with the impetus and financial recompense that they require to partner with those involved in the intelligent greening of our urban spaces. Further alloying this knowledge with tried-and-true gardening wisdom can lead to a macro environment where âRight Plant, Right Placeâ no longer needs to be stressed or thought of too much, as it will be a baked-in concept, suffused as a guiding philosophy throughout the entire process.
In my opinion, the commercial horticulture industry has many things to atone for: a promulgation of invasive species, the over recommendation of unnecessary, often problematic pesticides and fertilizers, and gatekeeping the aesthetic ideals of the horticulture world to guide consumption of the products produced by favored manufacturers. However, the expertise and ability the horticulture industry possesses to produce high-quality plants on a grand scale is vast, impressive, and could be applied to the purpose of growing and supplying species that serve ecological functions our urban natural areas and greenspaces demand. It is very important for the plants that we include in the public-facing spaces in our cities to be comprised not only of mostly native species and useful to a wide variety of life but to fulfill the requirements of materials in an urban infrastructure. Meaning, they must be safe, appropriate as to habit and size, and tolerant of urban conditions. Finally, but no less importantly, they should be beautiful (or inspiring, compelling, conducive to poetic thoughts, etc.).
I will here emphasize that the role of experienced, passionate, and thoughtful city gardeners, who act often as ambassadors for our gardens and landscapes, educating and inspiring the people who move through and around these spaces cannot be minimized. These interactions can lead to some of these folks asking of their garden centers and nurseries to stock plants that we want to use in our public greening projects, providing further incentive for the horticulture industry to prioritize production of these plants, as their market will have expanded. A benefit of this would be that home gardeners in our cities could be activated to working towards the same goals as our city agencies, will become de facto partners when it comes to nature-based solutions to urban greenspace issues. Though a general idea, the specific measures needed to increase the knowledge of plants and their importance to the future of our greenspaces begins with a conversation between a variety of people who have complementary special knowledge bases. To sum up, better knowledge of plants should come from everywhere.
Keith Sacre has a MSc in Arboriculture and Urban Forestry, a BSc in Arboriculture, a BSc in Social Science, and a post-graduate diploma in management studies. He is currently a director at Barcham Trees, a co-founder of Treeconomics, a founder member and trustee of the Trees and Design Action Group, and a trustee of the UK Arboricultural Association, and is a previous chair of the Association.
Keith Sacre
Does the horticultural industry have a role to play? Well, of course, it does, but it also has to develop an understanding of what nature-based green cities are and how horticultural and plant knowledge is critical to develop the ability to set specific plant knowledge in context.
If nature-based green cities are to be achieved with all the benefits associated, then it is essential that there is a better knowledge of plants. The urban forest has many benefits to offer and delivers extensive ecosystem services. These have been quantified and valued in the many i-Tree and other studies which have been carried out in the UK up until the present date. The studies underestimate the real value because services, such as health and well-being, are not currently included.
The studies have revealed, in general, that the urban forest is highly dependent on a relatively low number of tree species and faces many challenges.
Of these challenges, two are particularly important if the contribution trees make to nature-based green cities is to be, not only sustained, but enhanced into the future. The two challenges are climate change and the threat of alien pests and disease in the UK. An urban forest heavily dependent on relatively few species is vulnerable and lacks the resilience necessary to cope with either of these challenges.
To meet the challenges which the future holds the species diversity needs to be increased but the question of which species should be planted and in what numbers needs to be answered. This depends on a knowledge of trees and their characteristics. The tolerances of individual species must be known and understood so that appropriate selections are made. Knowledge of their natural environment is critical as the challenges of climate change are going to favour some species and not favour others. Some of which are already present in the population and are threatened as change occurs. There also has to be an understanding and knowledge of the growth characteristics of individual species and how they might impact the environment in which they are planted. It remains true that most landscape architects and others involved in the planting of trees work from a very limited palate which is unlikely to enhance the possibility of nature-based green cities delivering. This limited palate is driven by a safety-first approach and a serious lack of knowledge of what else is available and the capacity of nurseries to produce what is required.
Many tree-planting programmes are driven by numbers and percentage increases in canopy cover which are ill-informed and not strategically planned beyond one planting season. Yet there is an unwritten expectation that planting will ensure that the ecosystem services required will automatically follow. Tree species have different characteristics. Their age potential varies enormously with some approaching the end of their useful life after sixty or so years while others will live beyond a thousand years. Each species has the potential to deliver different ecosystem services at a different rate over a different period. If the potential of nature-based green cities is to be realised, then it is essential that greater tree and plant knowledge is utilised and put into practice.
There is much knowledge already in the public- domain but it is not widely utilised. Examples such as the Trees and Design Action Groupâs Tree Species Selection Guide authored by Dr. Andrew Hirons from Lancaster University and Myerscough College need to be more widely promoted but this must be coupled with a desire and intention to use different species and understand why. The lazy approach to species selection is fuelled by a lack of knowledge and the need to meet narrow aesthetic objectives cast aside, and tree knowledge respected and valued.
Does the horticultural industry have a role to play? Well, of course, it does, but it also has to develop an understanding of what nature-based green cities are and how horticultural and plant knowledge is critical to develop the ability to set specific plant knowledge in context. It also requires a focus which is not entirely based on selling trees and plants irrespective of their capability to do the job required of them.
Georgia lives and breathes city trees–with experience in New Haven, Boston, Oakland, and NYC, and a dissertation about urban forestry policy in Northern California cities. Georgia is the founder of Local Nature Lab and directs Washington Square Park Eco Projects where she designs urban ecology programs for New Yorkers of all ages.
Georgia Silvera Seamans
Radical UnderstoryâNo More Tulip Bulbs
We can no longer devote public money and public lands to single-function plants. We cannot limit native understory species to natural areas.
Cities remain in the grip of ornamental bulb mania. Every fall, in New York City, there are calls to scatter bulbs in the understory and, every spring, our social media feeds fill up with photos of their brassy blooms. The City donates and plants bulbs, and seems just as besotted as the FOMO crowd. While the Cityâs Parks Department funds native species plantings, the lionâs share of resources is funneled to short-lived spectacles rather than to co-evolved species relationships.
What do tulips and daffodils do for our urban ecosystem? What relationships do they support besides being eye candy for people? What is the carbon footprint of growing and transporting ornamental bulbs? Confession: I like tulips. But we can no longer devote public money and public lands to single-function plants. We cannot limit native understory species to natural areas. All New Yorkers should have everyday exposure to plant biodiversity. Letâs plant native early spring bloomersâtrout lily, spring beauty, mayapple. To those who might argue that certain species cannot thrive in certain urban environments, I do not accept these limits, and neither should you. I have seen native species growing in âunlikelyâ places. We should redesign and manage our cities to support more nature and greater ecological function everywhere.
The push for the âgreenâ in nature-based green cities must come from public agencies. State and local governments must embrace their power as consumers and drive substantive changes in the horticultural marketplace. We have seen this change before. To seed the Cityâs MillionTreesNYC initiative, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation (NYC Parks) directly contracted with three nurseries for their street tree procurement system (Jonnes 2016). Because of this one-to-one relationship, NYC Parks was guaranteed their preferred species as well as consistently high-quality plants (Stephens 2010). Pennsylvania imposed a phased ban on the sale of Callery pear effective February 2022 (PA Pressroom 2021).
Governments at all levels tout their sustainability plans but, as they relate to plants, these proposals are a form of shallow sustainability. We need ideas and on-the-ground projects that support deep resilience based on ecosystem functions. Cities and their proxiesâ actors must become ecologically literateâtotal species richness is not enough. Native species outperform introduced species in terms of function even though from a distance they might appear structurally similar.
I do not want to see existing trees such as London plane trees or ginkgos removed to facilitate the planting of native species. We need to preserve our existing canopy. Mature trees absorb more particulate matter, store more carbon, and provide cultural benefits. Have you foraged and eaten ginkgo seeds? They are delicious! But when a plane tree or a ginkgo falls in a park, letâs replace these trees with native forest species. Oaks support many of our breeding bird populations (Narango et al. 2020) but other genera to consider in our parks are Carya, Fagus, and Betula (Doroski et al. 2020). The species choices we make for parks and streets can impact our natural areas; trees in our cultivated landscapes are a seed source for forested natural areas (Doroski et al. 2020).
There is even greater potential to increase native plant diversity by looking below the trees. I am proposing a radical transformation in the understory of our neighborhood parks. New Yorkers are familiar with the knockout rose and Russian sage pairing ubiquitous in many parks. We see ornamental cherries, non-native dogwoods, cherry laurel, Japanese aucuba, and mop-head hydrangea wherever we go. Our smaller parks donât have plant identities. The sameness of the plant palette leads to fatigue, especially outside of the exuberance of spring flowering and fall color. Many of our parks are not remnant ecologies; however, if they are planted with native species, then they can satisfy the human demand for beauty, offer multi-seasonal liveliness, and function as high-quality habitat patches.
Video data gathering captured the spatial and temporal distribution pattern â the flux/flow â of the ecology of small lanes in Bangkok. It suggests that we should stop seeing cities in terms of centers and peripheries, a residual concept of colonial metropolitanism, but as patchy distributive ecological systems, where every point in the system has value.
Sois, or lanes, are the capillaries of Bangkok, Thailand. Like rectangular blocks in New York City, or piazzas in Rome, they constitute the architecture or the DNA of the city. For anthropologist Erik Cohen, a Bangkok soi constitutes an overlooked âsemi-autonomous ecological sub-systemâ which comprise the âinterstitial hinterlandâ between the dominating lines of urban development and expansion. As the megacity of Bangkok continues to grow along ribbons of wide roads, sois are the informal, unplanned, in-between micro spaces that still make the city varied, interesting and livable. The Bangkok soi remains a particularly revealing unit of analysis to understand the nature of fast-growing Southeast Asian cities like Bangkok.
Cohen conducted his fieldwork during the summers of 1981 through 1984; co-author McGrath lived in Bangkok between December and May from 1998 to 2007; and Diwadkar just arrived in December 2020 in time for the cityâs first COVID lockdown. McGrathâs field research chronicled both the centripetal growth of the center of the city with the construction of the first mass transit lines and the extensive centrifugal expansion of the city with the construction of an outer ring road at the beginning of the millennium. In the decade between Cohenâs and McGrathâs longitudinal fieldwork, Thailand was the worldâs fastest-growing economy before the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Between 2006 and today, Bangkok has been the scene of continuing political conflict, including two military coups. At the time of Diwadkarâs arrival, COVID shut the entry doors to one of the worldâs most visited tourist hotspots and dampened ongoing street protests.
View of Soi Ratchawithi 6, still from walk-through video shot by Bung, one of the students in the workshop (January 2021).
The ecology of Bangkokâs sois have continued to adapt and change in a way Cohen could only begin to imagine in the early 1980s. Sois remain bounded physical environments condensing both social contact and ecological interactions. As Cohen noted, they mark the transitions of rural patterns of canals, pathways, and fields that become unevenly urbanized during various periods of development. As such, they constitute a dynamic and heterogenous patch matrix of social, built, and vegetated structures that often temporarily revert to flooded waterways during rainy season.
Affinities between the architecture and ecology of the city can advance urban ecology beyond social metaphors. The concept of the metacity, postulated in both urban design and urban ecology, positions the science and design of cities up-close embedded within complex lifeworlds, but also reflects on patterns and processes with objective methods remotely. A metacity approach has the potential to address both the cultural and ecological dimensions of environmental justice and the climate crisis by making accessible the descriptive ecological and projective architectural tools through everyday handheld digital videography to collect data information on patterns, micro-climates, movements of the city, in both biophysical and social science senses.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Area: Inside-out
The two authors returned to the topic of the ecology of Bangkokâs sois during the cityâs first COVID lockdown in January 2021, as part of a ten-day remote design experiment workshop (DEX), for Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Architecture. We had the unique experience of understanding Bangkok through the simultaneous social-ecological observations of ten students participating in the workshop, locked down in the immediate areas around their dormitories or family homes across the entire Bangkok metropolitan area. Their video data, gathered over a few days, sheds light on the validity of Cohenâs initial fieldwork but also can be evaluated in relation to the centripetal and centrifugal forces of development that transformed both the cityâs center and periphery, as documented by McGrath.
We organized the Design Experiment Workshop into two video exercises derived from The Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies definition of ecology. The first videoed a 5-minute walk down a soi near their place of residence in order to study the processes influencing the spatial distribution, abundance, and interactions among and between organisms. The second exercise required visiting one ecological âhot spotâ on the soi, framing the transformation and flux of energy, matter, and information from multiple camera positions and different times of the day. The workshop employed data gathering through the architectural application of film framing and editing techniques first described in the textbook Cinemetrics. Videography of everyday life is ubiquitous in an age of YouTube and Tik-Tok, but with a systematic framing method, pictures and sounds can create, in the words of philosopher Gilles Deleuze âsets of informationâ. Â We offer four examples of this fieldwork, from two students locked down in Bangkokâs periphery, and from two students in the central city. We use studentsâ nicknames to preserve their privacy.
Google Earth view of Bangkok Metropolitan Area showing the location of the following four examples from workshop. Hong and Oat from the western and northern periphery, and Bung and Toon in the city center. We use the studentâs nicknames to protect their privacy.
1. Two 5-minute walks in Bangkokâs Periphery
As documented by McGrath and Thaitakooâs survey of the construction of Bangkokâs outer ring road, the centrifugal expansion of the metropolitan region has been conducted primarily through highway construction across agricultural land. The ribbon pattern that Cohen described in the urbanization of central Bangkok in the 1980s continues on the periphery today, as large areas between highways remain unplanned. Both housing estates and industrial zones are constructed as gated enclaves on patches of converted farmland between the commercial ribbons. The path of the ring road crossed huge tracks of wet rice fields to the north and east, major trunk canals that fill and drain the fields, fish farms and prawn fields near the coast to the south, and old fruit orchards to the west. The ring road crosses the mighty Chao Phraya River twice but also bridges several of the canals that follow the old course of the river.
Key map of Bangkokâs outer ring road survey by McGrath and Danai Thaitakoo, 2005.
Hongâs walk down Soi Phetkasam 88
In the western periphery, Hong documented the âinteresting ecological heterogeneityâ along the âinterstitial hinterlandâ of Soi Phetkasam 88, a very dynamic soi crossing a former fruit orchard area and an irrigation trunk canal. The soi connects to an exit from the recently completed 12-lane Western Outer Ring Road, making it a shortcut by-path for many vehicles, including delivery cars, trucks, taxis, and buses.
Google Earth view of Soi Phetkasam 88 with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Hongâs 5-minute video walkthrough along Soi Phetkasam 88 records the ecology of a soi filled with middle to low-income housing, interspersed with multiple shops. The shops occupy quickly built, one-story sheds, and sell both village craft production, such as straw brooms, but also car mechanics, and, as everywhere in Bangkok, street food. At the end of the walk, a small bridge crossed over the Bangchak Canal, which continues to feed remnant fruit orchards as support older villages and new informal settlements.
Video of Hongâs 5-minute walk along Soi Phetkasam 88
Mining the information on their video, students were asked to make a âsoi shedâ diagram. If a watershed map documents the catchment area of a river system, a soi shed maps the distribution, abundance, and interactions of sound, energy, material, organisms, and information encountered along a five-minute walk. Additionally, students were asked to construct four architectural cross-sections at key âhot-spotsâ of ecological interactions captured in their 5-minute video. The video itself is seen as a âmoving sectionâ through the soi, capturing 30 frames per second. Each drawn section shown is one of 9,000 possible cross-sections captured in the video. Each video frame can be seen as a slice of ecological information rather than a visual picture, and much like in an MRI scanning a living body, video frames can be analyzed as frozen moments of space/time.
Hongâs soi shed map on the left, and cross-sections at two hot-spots, at a local market and crossing the canal, along the soi
Along Soi Phetkasam 88, there are temperate and tropical plants of various sizes and species competing with each other to grow as well as the colorful competition of various signs, flags, and awnings. There are all kinds of different residences, from one-floor and two-floor houses, shophouses, and small apartment blocks. There are no sidewalks, and all kinds of objects line the soi: cars, signs, waste containers, tables, sandbags, traffic cones, and merchandise for sale. Convenience stores line the soi, providing a small income and activity for older citizens who stay at home. Interestingly, as you walk along the path, there are also many car repair garages located next to the convenience stores. Here, the soi is a little livelier, with human interactions around the stores and garages, in combination with the chirping sounds of the birds.
Oatâs walk down Soi Sinsapnakorn
The northern periphery of the city has experienced development longer than the western frontier, especially following the expansion of Don Mueng, Bangkokâs first international airport, after World War II. This area was first developed for export rice field production, but became the location of inexpensive, densely packed single-family houses in gated communities when rice farmers sold land to developers from the 1960s. Soi Sinsapnakorn is the main lane of such an older suburban community.
Google Earth view of Soi Sinsapnakorn with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Oatâs walk starts at the back south end of the soi and crosses six blocks of tightly packed single-family, walled, and gated homes along the soi to the west, and attached row houses further east. Potted plants, well-maintained gardens, and mature trees attract songbirds throughout. On the left, just before the soi crosses the Lam Phakchi Canal, there is a play and sports ground, occupied in the afternoon and early evening by a market.
Video of 5-Oatâs minute walk along Soi Sinsapnakorn
The Lam Phakchi Canal is a major trunk canal, a remnant of the irrigation system for export wet rice production. Along the soi, north of the canal, are four townhouse blocks with front extensions used for hanging laundry, car parking, or gardens. Some have been adapted to shophouses occupying the sidewalk with goods for sale. At the intersection with the 6-lane Thep Rak Road, there is an empty booth no longer occupied by a security guard. The soi is no longer gated since a new road was built as a cut-through to the south.
2. Two 5-minute walks in Central Bangkok
Central Bangkok has experienced an explosion of high-rise condominium, hotel, office, and shopping mall construction following the introduction of mass transit at the beginning of the millennium. The first two lines of the BTS Skytrain system, the Silom and Sukhumvit lines, meet at Siam Central Station, adjacent to Chulalongkorn University property. In addition to the research on Bangkokâs developing agricultural periphery along the outer ring road, from 2000 to 2005, McGrath also documented the transformation of this central node in Bangkok following the opening of the Skytrain. Data on the construction of shopping centers in the area since 1960 was compiled on a 3D digital model that also included a timeline that demonstrates the impact mass transit infrastructure had on the urban adaptation of the public realm of Central Bangkok.
Digital timeformations model showing the evolution of Bangkokâs central shopping district between 1960 and 2005., The completion of Siam Central Station at the intersection of the first two BTS Skytrain mass transit lines in 2000 led to the explosive developments that followed.
Bungâs walk down Soi Ratchawithi 6
Soi Ratchawithi 6 is one of many sub-sois off Ratchawithi Road, a major east-west road that leads to Victory Monument. The BTS Skytrain Silom line skirts around the monumentâs roundabout. Ratchawithi Road parallels the San Sem canal, a major waterway connecting to the royal garden district of Dusit and the Chao Phraya âRiver of Kingsâ further east. The elevated Sirat Expressway crosses Soi Ratchawithi 6 near the canal. The area is densely urbanized containing a mix of single-family homes, shophouses, and many small affordable dormitory apartment buildings for workers and students.
Google Earth view of Soi Ratchawithi 6 with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Video of Bungâs 5-minute walk along Soi Ratchawithi 6
Soi Ratchawithi 6 is crowded with local shops, supplemented by many street vendors, some conducting business from the back of pick-up trucks. All this retail activity supports the workers and the students living in small, single-room apartments along the soi. It is a pedestrian-friendly space with motorcycles occasionally weaving through. Vending and advertising trucks give way to occasional cars for the few single-family residences that still line the soi. Residents, outside of these few family houses are not car owners, so motorcycle taxis drive clients to nearby mass transit spots.
Toonâs walk down Soi Sawasdee, Sukhumvit 31
Soi Sawasdee lies north of Sukhumvit Road, a main commercial corridor of central Bangkok. It can be also accessed from Asok Montri and Petchburi Roads, while also connecting to multiple other sois, such as Sukhumvit Soi 23, 31, 39, and 49, all the way to Sukhumvit Soi 51, known as Thong Lor. The Asok Skytrain stop is just a short motorcycle taxi ride away. Toon has witnessed rapid development in the past decade that she has been living here. She observes that there is a wide range of different levels of income and expenses on this soi, and it is truly an âinterstitial spaceâ.
Google Earth view of Soi Sawasdee, Sukhumvit 31 with 5-minute walk indicated in yellow.
Walking east, on the right-hand side, is a relatively expensive sit-in restaurant which has recently set up a takeaway booth offering cheaper prices to help people out during the pandemic. On the opposite side of the road are commercial shophouses which are mostly medium to high-end restaurants. Visitors usually come from more distant areas, but now mostly delivery motorcycles can be seen here. On the right is a government school called Sawasdee School, so the 7-11 and the street food vendors are usually packed with school kids during after-school hours. A large number of parents of this school ride motorbikes, so there are street barriers set up for dropping off students. Despite the density of tall condominiums, the heat island effect is not very severe here as there are a lot of family homes with mature trees. There is also a small canal, roughly a meter wide, running parallel to the soi.
Video of Toonâs 5-minute walk along Soi Ratchawithi 6
Further down the soi, there are three interconnected, made-to-order, street food vendors open daily from 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM, except Mondays, when they are prohibited. The local motorcycle taxi station is located across the street, serving residents, school kids, and teachers. The inhabitants of the soi are reflected in the mixture of restaurants serving Thai, Western and Japanese food. On the right is a construction site for yet another high-rise condominium that has been in the process for the last three years. Around 5:00 to 6:00 AM when workers commute here for work there is a large flux of bicycles.
Detail of Toonâs soi shed map on the left, and cross sections at three hot-spots, showing top to bottom, a vendorâs street cart, the sidewalk food vendors across from the motorcycle taxi stand, and below the raising of properties to avoid flooding on the bottom right.
The drainage of the soi has always been problematic, and during rainy season it always floods so every entrance to a shop or a compound will have a slope up to prevent water from entering the property. At the end of the walk is a plastic bottle collector, who comes once a month. On the right is a high-end, high-rise condominium that just opened last year, while on the left is a French bakery and patisserie shop. The flux of visitors typically come from Thai youth who appreciate the European look of the shop and the authentic pastries.
3. Four Ecological Hot-Spots
The second phase of the workshop furthered the ecological study of a soi by applying the Cinemetrics multi-dimensional approach to examine micro-level studies of one ecological âhot spotâ on each soi. Through systematic video framing, soi hot spots were systematically âscannedâ or âsensedâ over several daily cycles in order to compile robust qualitative and quantitative data sets. Students videoed a hot spot from three angles at a close, medium, and long-range according to the multiple still framing technique of Japanese filmmaker YasujirĆ Ozu. From this information, an interactive 3D digital model was constructed that could also visualize changes over time. Like corresponding architectural drawings plans, sections, and elevations, video frames are seen as 3D data, framing space, but also the transformation and flux of energy, matter, and information, which constitutes the ecological metabolism of the soi.
Plan analysis of the first four shots of Yasijiro Ozuâs film Early Sping. (Drawn by Brian McGrath, 2006). Ozuâs 1956 film opens with two households which share a small alley. Through the film, we see the city of Tokyo undergoing a massive post-war transformation from the inside out.
Car Repair Shop, Soi Phetkasem 88
As Hong noted in her walkthrough, the presence of car repair shops has emerged as a distinct characteristic of Soi Phetkasem 88. These shops play an integral role in the ecological interactions on this soi and are hot spots of social, material, and informational flux. Cars are parked on the soi, and the mechanics cooperate with local convenience stores and food vendors nearby and offer their expertise to the local residents. The interaction of this ecosystem includes a complex social pattern of both the cooperation of the businesses and among the residents of the soi.
Hot-spot video of a car repair shop, Soi Phetkasem 88
Hong documented the affection and attention that the mechanics have for their work. They demonstrated expertise in repairing motorbikes, trucks, racing cars, antique cars, as well as small motor parts. The car repair activities sometimes pollute the soi with oily residues and aerosol spray painting. However, the social care offered by the workers in these shops seems to offset the toxic residue for their soi neighbors.
Hongâs hot-spot digital 3D model of a car repair shop showing social and material interactions, transformations, and flux over time.
The auto repair and the convenience shop workers, as well as residents, demonstrate these caring relationships that were built up over time. This explains why people do not complain much about polluting activities such as spray painting or oil changing. Even though there are residues, wastes, as well as some toxic substances being left behind, other businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores, hairdressers, and cafes are able to thrive due to the influence of the repair shops as it becomes an active hub for automotive work.
Afternoon Market, Soi Sinsapnakorn
With the opening of a new connecting road, an afternoon market has emerged next to the Soi Sinsapnakorn community play and sports area at the Lam Phakchi Canal bridge. Vendors wait for the temperature to drop in the early evening to prepare snacks and take-away meals for students after school, residents out for exercise, or people returning from work. There is a cooperative and complementary spirit among the vendors as each specializes in one course, beverages, or dessert, but they share a seating area and customers.
Video of afternoon market at Soi Sinsapnakorn
Oat observed only exercise activity in the park during his first morning walkthrough, but by returning at different times of day, he was able to document the vendorâs preparation and clean-up, and the portable architecture that they deploy. Interestingly, Oat observed not only human activity at the market, but the relationship between the vendors and the customers with street dogs and birds. Many people fed dogs table scraps, and pigeons and sparrows enjoyed overlooked crumbs on the ground.
Oatâs hot-spot model of the afternoon market documented the interspecies relationships between humans, dogs, and birds.
Street Vendors in Soi Ratchawithi 6
Bungâs morning walk through Soi Ratchawithi 6 showed the leisurely pace of a few students picking up some snacks for breakfast. However, in returning over the course of the day to a particularly dense concentration of mobile street vendors, he was able to document the tightly packed choreography of pedestrians, pick-up trucks, motorcycle taxis, and cars. Soi Rachawithi 6 is a narrow soi that effectively slows vehicular travelers down, as there is no way to quickly traverse the lane in a direct line.
Video of street vendors on Soi Ratchawithi 6
From his video over the course of several days, Bung was able to map the dance between the moving parts in the soi and even document how residents help to direct traffic during times of peak activity. In addition to slow traffic, the soi is also a place to enjoy slow food. Bungâs video documents how each dish is freshly prepared according to the customer’s direction â spicy, sour, sweet, or salty.
Map of mobile street vendors on Soi Ratchawithi 6
Cross-soi cooperation on Soi Sawasdee
Soi Sawasdee, like most of the sois off Sukhumvit, has many high-rise condominiums and commercial buildings as well as older detached houses with gardens, town and shophouses, and construction sites for even more towers. One particular cross-section of the soi, just south of the school, is especially active. A row of three food vendors work opposite a motorcycle taxi station. Both provide essential services to inhabitants and workers in this area, but they also help each other out, exchanging labor, on the part of the motorcycle taxi drivers, with food and drink provided by the vendors.
Video of sidewalk food stalls and motorcycle taxi stand on Soi Sawasdee
There are two food and one drink stall with some seating areas on one side, sharing several sun-shading umbrellas. They have an interconnected relationship with the motorcycle taxi drivers on the opposite side. Some drivers help the food stalls set up at 4:00 AM in trade for lunch. People in this area are regular customers for both services, commuting to-and-from the Skytrain with the bikers, and crossing the road to get lunch with the vendors. The food vendors have everything youâd crave in a made-to-order meal. Aunt Jong has a papaya salad shop and another station grills pork neck on a little gas top. On the opposite side, the motorcycle taxi station uses matching green umbrellas. The water tank behind the drivers also gets refilled by the food vendors.
3D model showing video shooting locations at different times of day.
Some customers have built a close relationship with the food stall owner, even dining on the table with cooking utensils to have casual chitchats with Aunt Jong. She hosts a true âchefâs tableâ. Later in the afternoon, around 2:00 PM, when there are no more customers, the vendors will start to pack up. Dishes are cleaned in the basin by the station. Umbrellas are knocked on the ground to remove leaves. Then everything gets put away through the gate to the house behind the fence, where one of the stall owners lives and works as a maid. Heavier things are packed and rolled away on a cart, again with the help of the motorcycle taxi drivers. Only the drink stall remains for a few more hours, and a couple of motorcycle taxis still operate late into the evening.
Conclusion
Parallel to the concerted efforts by global alliances and nation-states to confront the twin crises of climate and inequity, there are countless undocumented micro acts of ecological stewardship and social cooperation. Any locality can be seen as a spatially and temporally heterogeneous social-ecological system, and as such, can be analyzed as a hot spot of the potential integration of the architecture and ecology of the city. The metacity framework, explored in the Ecology of a Soi workshop, introduces ecological concepts into everyday architectural contexts in order to begin the process of coordinating and quantifying everyday transformation and flux of energy, matter, and information as important contributions to a just climate transition.
The studentsâ video data gathering captured the spatial and temporal distribution pattern of human and non-human organisms (plants and animals), their aggregation/abundance, as well as the bidirectional relationships between organisms and flexible self-built environments. They also measured the flux/flow of information, energy, and matter with a focus on processes, interactions, and relations. We present this distributive architectural system of local urban ecological data gathering as fundamental in collectively addressing the twin crises of social justice and climate change. It suggests that we stop seeing cities in terms of centers and peripheries, a residual concept of colonial metropolitanism, but as patchy distributive ecological systems, where every point in the system has equal value.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank INDA Program Director Surapong Lertsithichai, Deputy Director Sorachai Kornkasem, and Third Year Coordinator Scott Drake, as well as the students who participated in the workshop, Aticha Thanadirak, Pattraratee Keerasawangporn, Buris Chanchaikittikorn, Pittinun Tantasirin, Nichaporn Atsavaboonsap, Pheerapitch Phetchareon, Nisama Lawtongkum, Nicha Vareekasem, Raphadson Saraputtised, and Pannathorn Amnuaychokhirun. Special thanks to Dr. Steward Pickett for the many fruitful discussions about integrating the architecture and ecology of the metacity.
Brian McGrath and Vineet Diwadkar New York and Bangkok
Vineet Diwadkar is a designer and urban planner working at the intersection of technology, ecology and policy. He is currently Associate Director with AECOM, Primary Investigator with the Terreform Center for Advanced Urban Research, and Adjunct Faculty at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Vineet works with communities, governments and multilateral organizations, infrastructure owners and operators, and researchers to deliver strategic planning and policy, cross-sector infrastructure and development, and to strengthen livelihoods through ecological and heritage conservation.
In order to address the challenges of the 21st century, we cannot rely on 20th-century managerial paradigms and so must embrace new multi-scalar governance arrangements centering beneficial human relations with ecological systems and reduce our dependence on technological extractivism.
Governments and communities around the world are embracing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) as a major climate adaptation strategy. Building off of pre-existing approaches to integrating ecological and built systems, NbS attempt to meet a wide array of social goals including improving urban quality of life, supporting transit and recreation, and mitigating the impacts of extreme events.
In support of this work, NATURA is a global network of networks connecting researchers and practitioners to share knowledge on NbS and improve the implementation of NbS in different contexts. The early career working group within the project sought to identify emergent issues including the meaning of NbS, their motivations for working on NbS, and the challenges and opportunities facing the field. We find that diverse conceptualizations of NbS enable a more transformative approach that embeds considerations of social power and history within research and practice. In order to address the challenges of the 21st century, we cannot rely on 20th-century managerial paradigms and must embrace new multi-scalar governance arrangements centering beneficial human relations with nature and reduce our dependence on technological extractivism.
Introduction
As a group of early career researchers and practitioners within the global NATURA network of networks, we work on applying nature-based solutions (NbS) in varying social, ecological, technological, and geographical contexts. NbS have become mainstream as an urban climate adaptation approach, primarily in the global North (Figure 1). The NATURA project has defined NbS as â…solutions that are based on nature-preserving protective ecosystems, incorporating ecological elements, or even mimicking ecological processes in built infrastructure, offering flexibility in the face of changing conditions and providing multiple benefits to society, often at relatively low cost.â NbS then serves as an umbrella term encompassing different ecosystem-based approaches for climate adaptation inclusive of existing concepts such as green infrastructure, urban ecological infrastructure, and ecological engineering. In the broadest sense, NbS refers to the use of ecological elements to improve urban quality of life in the face of climate change and other social ills stemming from current infrastructure systems.
Figure 1. Geographic foci of current Nature-based Solutions research as indicated by a recent Web of Science Search. Current literature on NbS has been predominantly produced in the Global North, especially within the USA, Germany, the UK, and Italy, though is being taken up in an increasing number of contexts. In the Global South, NbS have been used for a very long time without being named as such, and as such, the academic literature may misrepresent the depth of place based NbS knowledge systems.
As NbS becomes the main approach for climate change adaption, we feel a need to examine its inherited approaches and ideas in light of the pressing human and environmental challenges of our time. These issues include social justice and equity in urban sustainability initiatives, the urgency of climate adaptation and mitigation, and the need for broader and more fundamental transformation of the infrastructural systems underpinning social well-being. Our early career working group was composed of individuals motivated to address these challenges within NbS research and policy.
Figure 2. Geographic representativeness of TNOC Early Career Session participants. While heavily influenced by Europe and North America, there were important insights offered by participants from places poorly represented in the current NbS literature (Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America).
To that end, we seek to synthesize the diverse perspectives and approaches to NbS present within the NATURA Early Career working group and a TNOC workshop we organized in February of 2021. The aim was to critically reflect on (1) what NbS means to us and our work; (2) why we are motivated to work on implementing and researching them; and (3) the practical challenges and opportunities for advancing NbS. From our early career perspective, we identify an emergent agenda for NbS research, policy, and practice.
The Meaning of NbS
Both the NATURA early career working group and TNOC session had broad geographic and disciplinary representation through the 45 participants virtually joining from across the globe (Figure 2). The resulting ideas of what constituted NbS reflected this diversity and geography. There was broad consensus that the exact meaning of NbS is often contested, with major tensions between agendas of regulatory and institutional actors and self-organized and âbottom-upâ relationships with nature and ecological systems.
The group also found that NbS provides a way of thinking about the deeper relationships between human-built systems and natural systems. Similar to concepts of biomimicry, NbS in this sense turns our attention to how ancient and evolving ecological systems are impacted by and interdependent with human-built infrastructures. Understanding NbS in this way focuses on reciprocal relationships with nature, and as such requires a shift in value systems and world views to reflect an understanding of humans as part of nature rather than as separate entities. While mainstream NbS remains a âsolutionsâ-oriented framework â related to the utilitarian construct of Ecosystem Services – our broader framing has potential to promote systemic change in the relationship of infrastructures with natural systems. Such changes include integrating ecological conservation and restoration within urban design and infrastructure planning, and identifying root causes of environmental problems and resilience challenges such as systemic racism and resource extractivism. Similarly, participants recognized the centrality of equity and justice concerns in any reformulation of the human relationship with nature.
While such a framing of NbS is quite broad, it makes space for a diversity of approaches and elements within NbS research and practice that go beyond those currently being used by major implementing organizations (Box 1). Participants raised several issues that related to the meaning of NbS. A major one was the depth of ecological understanding of NbS during their design. For example, if wetlands were being âdesignedâ to handle waste or stormwater, were their dynamic ecological processes considered during design, and by whom? What was the exact role of wetlands in urban nutrient cycling, as well as how these relate to other social and ecological functions and characteristics (e.g. recreation, biocultural relationships, and biodiversity)? This example highlights the importance of the social processes for identifying and framing challenges addressed by NbS, all of which relate to ontological issues around what types of cultural and ecological elements are considered as ânatureâ, the diversity and abundances of species considered as part of NbS, and their relationships with ecological and technological systems.
Figure 3. Mural Board from 2021 TNOC NATURA Early Career Seed Session.
Box 1: Definitions of Nature Based Solutions
According to the Web of Science Core Collection, the term ânature based solutionsâ explicitly in the title or abstract, first appeared in 2015 and in 864 peer-reviewed documents since then (as of 20 July 2021). Papers predominately fall under the categories of Environmental Sciences (n = 485), Environmental Studies (n = 237), and Green Sustainable Science Technology (n = 168). Authors and institutions are mostly from the Global North, predominantly Europe (Figure 1). Even with this recent appearance and limited research to date, the term has already diversified. In the United States ânature based infrastructureâ and âengineering with natureâ are common descriptions for actions to support resilience and to reduce flood risk (US Army Corps of Engineers, 2013, Nesshöver et al., 2017). In Europe, NbS are considered to also ‘harness the power and sophistication of nature to turn environmental, social and economic challenges into innovation opportunitiesâ (European Commission, 2015 p. 2). Other international organisations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) consider it as those actions that protect, restore, and sustainably manage natural ecosystems while also providing benefits to both society and nature. Established, formal, definitions of NbS include:
âactions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.â International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
âproject solutions that are motivated and supported by nature and that may also offer environmental, economic, and social benefits, while increasing resilience. Nature based solutions include both green and natural infrastructure.â The Nature Conservancy.
âsolutions that are inspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience. Such solutions bring more, and more diverse, nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes, through locally adapted, resource-efficient and systemic interventions.â European Commission.
employing a similar term to NbS,ecosystem-based management, defined as âan integrated management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem ⊠an approach that works across sectors to manage species and habitats, economic activities, conflicting uses, and the sustainability of resources.â National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office for Coastal Management.
another similar term, engineering with nature, or âthe intentional alignment of natural and engineering processes to efficiently and sustainably deliver economic, environmental, and social benefits through collaboration.â US Army Corps of Engineers.
âsolutions that are based on nature-preserving protective ecosystems, incorporating ecological elements or even mimicking nature in built infrastructure, offer flexibility in the face of changing conditions and provide multiple benefits to society, often at relatively low costâ. Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene (NATURA) project.
Motivations for working on NbS
Early career individuals have diverse motivations for pursuing NbS work, as was highlighted in the diversity of responses to our prompts in the TNOC working session (Figure 3). While diverse, several dominant motivations emerged, namely the need to address increasing climate chaos, deal with urban sustainability challenges in a much more focused and transformative way, and deal with broader systemic and strategic transformations required for planetary sustainability.
Impending Climate Chaos
Not surprisingly, addressing climate challenges, including extreme heat, drought, sea level rise, hurricanes, and flooding, are a large motivation for early career researchers studying NbS. NbS were seen as â…the only solution that can help us reach climate goals and create a healing environment,â – not only combining adaptation and mitigation within one solution pathway, but addressing the deeper-seated alienation of humans from natural systems in an effort to restore right relations.
Transformative Urban Sustainability
Another major motivation is to transform the urban sustainability agenda. In particular, rather than simply focusing on âclimate proofing citiesâ, early career professionals are motivated to understand how NbS can achieve social justice, restore indigenous systems of governance and knowledge, promote community leadership of/anchoring NbS initiatives at appropriate scales, and focus more on health and wellbeing of communities and less on economic outcomes.
These transformative sustainability ideals are seen as particularly critical in cities. Several participants provided insights worth quoting in that
Cities are where increasing numbers of beings, humans and otherwise, live: they are the drivers of biological and cultural evolution, novel ecosystems, and places of exchange and discovery. We need to approach cities much more intentionally with this context in mind, to maximise their potential and minimise their hazards and inequity.
and
If we donât get it right in cities, we wonât be able to “save” nature elsewhere or get it right anywhere.
And lastly
An unrecognised form of NbS is traditional and indigenous knowledge systems which in their own right offer various solutions. Such knowledge systems have much to offer across the world. They are well suited and highly locally contextual and have much scope. Some of such solutions are now finding their way to mainstream in different ways â ranging from objects of daily use such as bamboo straws, bamboo and Neem tooth brushes to living infrastructures such as the famous root bridges in North East India.
Systemic and Strategic Transformations for Planetary Sustainability
In addition to specifically targeting the urban sustainability agenda for transformation, participants in the EC working group desire even deeper transformations in how NbS practice is taking shape to positively influence planetary sustainability concerns. These desires are in line with broader calls for radical transformation of society and infrastructure systems through embracing the concept of NbS (McPhearson et al. 2021). This larger transformation seeks both a paradigm shift in terms of learning from and emulating natural systems in infrastructure and system design, achieving genuine multi-functionality, as well as accelerating institutional and knowledge system changes required to enable this type of transformation. From this point of view, society, ecology, and technology are fundamentally intertwined as a system, and this larger system is what needs to be radically transformed in order for NbS to be successful in addressing the multitude of related climate and justice goals. A key dimension of this systemic change requires new models of multi-scalar knowledge generation, utilization, and governance, as characterized by one quote from a workshop participant:
Local and regional networks are critical, especially with a research/educational institution as a key participant. Many participants from many types of practice can experiment with approaches, collaborate on intersectional solutions, and share the knowledge they gain.
At the macro level, there is a widely agreed-upon need to accelerate the rate of systemic change. Overall, we feel an increasing urgency to operationalize emergent frameworks for climate-resilient, multi-functional infrastructure addressing intersecting challenges related to climate change, urban sustainability, social equity, and justice, as well as center indigenous and place-based approaches for governance and adaptation. These fundamental transformations of human systems and their relationship with the earth system are absolutely critical to address the multi-scalar and interdependent challenges of planetary sustainability.
Challenges and Opportunities for NbS
Participants had much to say about the challenges and opportunities within NbS research and practice. We organized these into the emergent themes of addressing a need for genuine transdisciplinarity, centering equity and justice principles in the face of very technical decision-making processes, addressing competing value systems and uneven power relations, and lastly, dealing with the contextual and contingent nature of NbS projects.
Genuine Transdisciplinarity
A major challenge – opportunity pair identified is in combining the diverse disciplinary knowledge required to achieve success in NbS projects and research programs. There is widespread agreement that projects and programmes require a transdisciplinary approach in order to both understand the complexity of how NbS fit into existing social and technological systems and deliver on their multiple benefits. Without transdisciplinary research approaches drawing on both biophysical, social science, and participatory research paradigms, it will be impossible to have projects that are context-specific, co-produced and owned by the communities navigating competing demands of different groups. While there is a growing acknowledgement in the academic community that NbS requires a transdisciplinary approach, little consideration is often given to how different underlying conceptual (e.g. scope of approaches) and ontological (meaning of ânatureâ) frameworks shape NbS research and practice. For example, health is often framed in terms of active recreation and biophysical benefits (Dumitru et al. 2020), and furthermore, often seen as secondary to social and economic benefits. Other perspectives on health, such as community health, and relational health frameworks as suggested by recent research on environmental racism (Seamster and Purifoy 2021), look at broader psychological dimensions of belonging, affect, and a sense of responsibility and possibility with regards to how landscapes change. In this sense, an ontology of health as right relationships on multiple levels potentially conflicts with an ontology of health as biomechanical processes within a single organism, and each brings different concepts to bear on the problem (e.g. social transformation vs. medication). Another common theme was that engineering and (bio)physical science often dominate research and design of NbS, and if they ignore the impact of pre-existing structural inequalities, leads to reproduction of environmental and climate injustice.
Centering Equity and Justice in technical and financial decision making
If researchers and practitioners do not center equity and justice in NbS work it can be difficult, if not impossible, to include them as considerations down the road. In addition to basic issues of framing, a key challenge identified by early career researchers and practitioners is that when projects consider justice and equity of NbS, they do so through primarily a distributional perspective, omitting the potential changes that would come from considering participatory, recognitional, procedural, and transformative justice. Dealing with this multi-dimensional concept of justice in NbS projects and research is crucial to not contribute to perverse outcomes of projects. It will also help to identify where the conflicts are while simultaneously making the vital role of the less-privileged communities in environmental decision-making visible and active.
Participants also noted that the planning cycles for deployment or finance of NbS often have a short-term focus. In the UK, for example, the funding cycle for Defra (government), water supply and wastewater companies, and the Environment Agency are misaligned making it difficult for these stakeholders to collaborate with other programmes that deploy nature-based solutions e.g., NGOsâ public health, and community-based organisations. Taken together, the disciplinary, bureaucratic, and financial ârealitiesâ of many NbS knowledge to action systems preclude a transformative approach towards including affected communities in research and practice.
Competing Value Systems and Uneven Power Relations
History has shown us that interventions like NbS often have capitalist intentions focusing solely on development and growth disguised as urban greening (Rosol et al. 2017). Early career researchers and those implementing these interventions on the ground have an important role to play challenging these practices to ensure the design of NbS to ensure that they are just and equitable.
In particular, there is a clear inertia in the field of NbS whereby existing conservation and infrastructure practices, and the culture from which they emerged, do not appear to have substantially shifted over the course of our earlier careers. These systems of decision-making have largely been top-down and non-collaborative, and there is a real need to create a cultural value shift around the need for real collaboration with affected communities. Ideally, as collaborative projects become the norm, and principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent become standard practice, the NbS community can lead on demonstrating the value of embedding procedural equity and justice within research and practice.
Proof of Concept and Contextual ContingencyÂ
Championing the advancement of the âscienceâ of NbS by advocating the design and implementation of robust monitoring and evaluation programmes that incorporate indigenous and cultural knowledge is also an important goal for early career researchers and practitioners. This is central to work to advance the evidence of the impact NbS have on societal challenges across different scales. The challenge of demonstrating the value of NbS can be partially addressed by embracing opportunities for both âbasicâ research, in terms of modeling key biophysical processes, such as the role of coastal NbS in basin-scale wave-attenuation and mitigating sea level rise, which can provide new analytical tools with broad applicability. Another key challenge identified was that the functions and benefits of NbS are often perceived to be contingent upon following a particular maintenance regime, and are sensitive to environmental and built environment contexts.
For example, while bioretention facilities were embraced for their role in trapping sediment and pollutants, they become clogged up over time with hazardous waste that then must be disposed of at great costs. What if the larger urban technological system did not generate toxic waste in the first place? How do we beneficially incorporate landscape-scale processes such as sediment movement into the design and maintenance of NbS? Clearly, we have much to learn about how to balance a need for a particular aesthetic, functional predictability, and mimicking ecological processes across scales. How we deal with seasonal vegetation and weather dynamics is also a challenge for standardized engineering paradigms demanding consistency. In an increasingly chaotic climate these challenges are all magnified, highlighting opportunities for creating transparency in design standards to facilitate collaborative learning, and embracing ideas of modularity, flexibility, and facilitating the self-organization of complex ecological systems that have evolved in place over millennia (such as coastal marsh complexes that appear to adapt to sea level rise if not constrained by built infrastructures).
Case Studies Illustrating Diverse Definitions, Motivations, and Challenges and Opportunities for NbS Research and Practice
Across our network, several participants contributed case studies highlighting the major tensions and issues identified in our collaborative meetings and TNOC working session.
Case Study 1: NbS examples from South Africa
NbS projects have emerged in South Africa in a number of different forms, depending upon particular environmental challenges, as well the opportunity-space generated by particular social conditions or current events.
At the national level, the longstanding programs of Working for Water (since 1995) and Working for Wetlands (since 2002), and Working for the Coast (since 2008) provide environmental as well as social benefits through: the removal of alien invasive plant (AIP) species, restoration of native biodiversity and habitat, and provision of employment and skills training opportunities for people. While permanent eradication of AIPs requires long-term, ongoing intervention at sites, benefits include reduction in risk of out-competition of indigenous biodiversity, restoration of water to the water table (as IAPs use up large amounts of groundwater as compared with indigenous plants), and reduction in fire risk (to fire-prone AIP vegetation). Since the inception of the program, Working for Water has cleared more than one million hectares of AIPs. While the program is not designed to offer long-term employment, it has provided temporary jobs and training to approximately 20,000 people each year (with targeted attention to hire people from economically vulnerable groups, including women, youth, and disabled individuals).
At a city level, there are multiple instances in which NbS have been instituted to restore or enhance ecological infrastructure, as well as supply cultural amenities and enhance social value for people. In Cape Town, there are examples of community-driven river or wetland area revitalizations, such as the Liesbeek River Life Project and Plan and Princess Vlei Restoration Project. There are also examples of municipally-driven projects, such as the Green Point Park Biodiversity Showcase Garden, which was one of the City’s Green Goal 2010 projects and part of improvements to the park following the 2010 FIFA World Cup. These various initiatives have focused on removing litter and waste as well as AIPs, restoring native biodiversity through plantings, improving water quality, and providing greater community cohesion and access to waterside amenities (e.g., for picnicking and barbecuing, recreational activities such as walking, boating, fishing, and other sports, and educational exhibits and instructional programs). Ongoing challenges facing these NbS include: equity and social justice questions surrounding who can secure access to these spaces and enjoy their benefits (e.g., are the spaces available to everyone, or rather, are they limited to those who live in the area or have the financial means to travel to the spaces?), threats to longevity of the spaces from bids for commercial development (such as shopping malls), and needs for coordination and perpetuity in maintenance and government-recognized protected area status.
Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated a proliferation of a different kind of NbS in Cape Town: small-scale backyard food gardens and urban community farms. Amidst loss of livelihoods/income and increasing levels of food insecurity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in South Africa, community food garden initiatives have emerged (such as the Gugulethu Urban Farming Initiative and the Langa Agri/Food Hub, with connection to neighborhood Community Action Networks (CANs)). These initiatives aim to green neighborhoods, grow and provide access to local, nutritious food, foster food sovereignty and security, and build community through the creation of urban âfood forests.” Challenges to these initiatives include sustainability of financial and material resources (as many have been started and maintained through donations, short-term fundraising, and small grants, and many of the people running these programs are low-income or unemployed and volunteer their time to keep them going). Other challenges involve gaining formal recognition and status for initiatives (such as NPO status), establishing and maintaining access to distribution networks and markets (for donating or selling produce), and legal access to parcels of land on which to grow crops.
Case Study 2: Flood Control in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Hurricanes MarĂa and Irma, which struck San Juan in the fall of 2017, revealed San Juanâs vulnerability to floods and served as a call-to-action to build resilience to future storms in Puerto Rico. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had a shelved flood control project from 1986 to channelize 9.5 miles of the Puerto Nuevo River – the largest river in the San Juan Metropolitan area. Over a billion dollars was allocated by the federal government in the wake of these hurricanes to begin construction. The USACEâs decade-old project mission was simple: move water as quickly as possible through the river channel and out to the San Juan Bay. Little consideration was given to NbS when the project was designed in the 80s. A high-velocity concrete channel was chosen as the best means to achieve that goal. Despite the apparent conflict with the USACEâs new internal Engineering with Nature vision (see Box 1), the USACE believed that they must move forward with the decade-old channelization project as originally envisioned or risk having to cancel the project and lose the funding. Due to this perceived risk, little to no effort was made to engage with local community leaders and scientists to reimagine what flood control could look like through this alternative NbS mission framing. Instead, local community leaders have taken up the banner in developing NbS visions and designs for flood control that can serve as alternatives to the USACE project. Their message has been: âThe river is alive, and nobody knowsâ. The nascent efforts by local community groups to present alternative framings of flood control are promising, yet have met resistance given the USACEâs narrow mission and vision.
Being a territory of the United States without any representation at the federal level, this example from Puerto Rico highlights how powerful institutions can wield political and institutional power over local communities in shaping their communityâs future. While the USACE may have conducted the cost-benefit analysis of the project and its outcomes on communities (the distributional equity aspect), they have seemingly not taken into consideration issues of participatory, procedural, and transformative justice mentioned earlier in Section 4.
This case also highlights how institutional routines, practices, and approaches in an organization are obdurate to change and present a challenge for institutions trying to implement NbS. Despite the USACEâs new framing of flood control projects, the institutional legacies prevented the USACE from reimagining flood control through an NbS lens in San Juan. This case demonstrates the importance of community participation and building multi-level governance capacities in helping to overcome these individual institutional and political challenges.
The early-career researchers who have assisted with this project have been motivated to not only build the flood resilience of San Juan communities, but to also restore watersheds and build the transformative capacities needed to promote community leadership of NbS initiatives.
Case Study 3 Greening Wingrove, UK
NbS within the United Kingdom have taken many, often contested forms (Wright 2011), and have most recently been incorporated into a larger social agenda around sustainability transitions and urban greening. In one case, a group of residents in the West End of Newcastle, UK came together with local ward councillors to explore how they could tackle problems of litter and fly-tipping (i.e. illegal dumping) through a sustainability transition framework including numerous elements of urban greening. Working together with Ward Councillorâs, âGreen Wingroveâ was born and, in 2014, they secured a ÂŁ1M grant to help educate the community about sustainable living and re-green parts of the West End through the creation of a community garden, orchard, renovating neglected street planters, back yards food gardens, and an energy efficiency programme.
Case Study 4 Sejong Special Self-Governing City, South Korea
NbS in South Korea has been largely considered as a part of the low impact development (LID) or âeco-friendlyâ rainwater management solutions including bioswales, tree box filters, vegetated walls, rain gardens, infiltration basins, and pervious paving. More recently, with the governmentâs policy on promoting new housing and urban development to disperse the concentrated population in the metropolitan Seoul area, few cities have been selected as pilot cities for testing out a new paradigm for integrated stormwater management using NbS, namely the âSmart and Eco-friendly Rainwater Management Systemsâ (Shafique and Kim 2018).
In these cities, traditional approaches for managing stormwater and reclaiming rainwater reclamation have gained increasing urgency as the country faces mounting urban flooding and groundwater depletion problems due to dense urban developments. One of them, Sejong City, has adopted LID-focused NbS within its new urban development plan to reclaim rainwater and reduce runoff volume by ~20% and reduce average surface temperatures by ~1.4 degrees C. The ultimate motivation for the project came from a need to relocating central government offices in support of balancing national development and decentralizing development within the metropolitan Seoul area. The new designated administrative Sejong city will accommodate the relocation of 40 national governmental offices and 15 research institutes by 2030.
Several challenges became apparent during the implementation of NbS within this large-scale new urban development project. These included the lack of legal frameworks and regulations guiding design criteria, and closely related issues stemming from a lack of educational resources about NbS for practitioners and citizens, and a lack of country-specific expertise. As is occurring with Sejong city, NbS will be increasingly turned to in the country to reduce multi-faceted climate risks, including addressing water stress and scarcity alongside mitigating urban heat islands and reducing future urban flood hazards.
Case Study 5: Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems
One participant was involved in the regulation, evaluation, and monitoring of existing decentralized wastewater system initiatives through the CSE water team in India in 2019. This case highlighted that NbS can include âhybrid technologiesâ or ecological-technological systems, a concept which â… explores the relationship between society and nature in the industrial ecosystem and the contradictions that define it. (Schneider 2011)â DWAT systems highlight the role of constructed microbial ecologies in solving persistent human challenges. One example of such a system is the âShowcaseâ Wastewater system at CSE campus, implemented in 2005, has been designed to treat 8000 litres per day, or the effluent generated by ~100 people. The system is composed of a settling bed, an anaerobic baffled biogas reactor, and a planted filter bed, which treats grey and black water for onsite horticultural re-use and could otherwise be used for agricultural irrigation. The facility serves as a model system for CSEâs consulting work across India.
The motivation for these systems varies across the country. In the industrialised Tughlakabad Institutional area where CSE is located, ongoing water scarcity has highlighted the need for sustainable and cost-effective water treatment solutions. Centralised sewage treatment technologies have proven to be expensive, complex, and are wasteful with regards to the total wastewater generated which also has unacceptable negative impacts on local ecosystems and environmental health.
The construction and dissemination of these systems have not been without challenges. This case highlights the continuous maintenance and training required for stakeholders to employ safely; involving water quality monitoring, plant health surveillance, and routine record keeping. In addition, concerns over the scale of applicability and insufficient land in urban centres arise. While questions over who responsibility falls to multi-partner organisations and developments are evident, as well as competing interests from large-scale infrastructure companies pushing large centralized projects. There are several obstacles to overcome, not least cultural barriers to water reuse and informed knowledge of these systems for widespread uptake.
However, opportunities exist to replicate similar models and refine them within specific application contexts in India and beyond – Over 1/3 % of the worldâs population experiences periodic water stress, and issues of scarcity from overconsumption and quality degradation will only be exacerbated by climate change and growing human populations. While not a panacea, DWAT systems create a more cost-effective and ecologically integrated solution towards the perennial problem of wastewater treatment than large expensive technologically fragile centralized systems. While these systems are increasingly deployed in the global south, numerous instances of alternative ecological solutions utilizing a decentralized/distributed wastewater treatment paradigm are also becoming increasingly common in the global north (Angelakis and Snyder 2015).
An agenda for future research and practice on NbS: working on cultural and systemic change for a sustainable future
Early career researchers within the NATURA network seek to engage in transformative work to address multi-scalar and intersectional sustainability, equity, and justice challenges in NbS. This work requires broader cultural and systemic transformation in order to be successful. As we work towards these larger goals, a research agenda emerges that seeks both practical knowledge and wisdom as to what works where, how, and why? These questions must be addressed alongside deeper questions about the role of scientists and experts in relation to the communities impacted by NbS work.
Major topics for further examination include questions such as:
What concepts and definitions of NbS propel different types of projects?
What are their epistemological and ontological foundations, what do they include?
What do they omit?
How are they influenced by disciplinary, cultural, institutional, and political factors?
Do these different concepts and their related approaches overlap or diverge, how do these relate to uneven power relations of different actors and institutions?
How does NbS research and practice consider the history and context of the need for and the nature of NbS?
How do they grapple with questions related to the systems of governing nature and their equity and justice?
At what scale do we need to consider urban NbS?
Only within the city? Including watersheds?
Regional ecological networks?
The full extent of urban metabolism and ecological footprint?
At what spatial, temporal, and social resolution do we deal with global networked social, ecological, and infrastructural complexity?
It is readily apparent that the emergent field of NbS has many questions to answer. It also has a long, and often troubled tradition of imposing particular society-nature ideals onto human and ecological communities. The primary task ahead of us remains the balancing of our motivations to address urgent crises facing humanity with a sensitive and nuanced approach that centers on building healthy relationships with the human and ecological communities that will be impacted by our work. Ultimately, many of us seek to collaboratively produce convivial social-ecological-technological systems, not only to ensure their sustainability, but to provide humans and non-humans alike for a deep and lasting satisfaction with our time here on earth.
Zbigniew Grabowski1, Ffion Atkins2, Lelani Mannetti3, Clair Cooper4, Danielle McCarthy5, Robert Hobbins3, Matt Smith6, Yuliya Dzyuban7, Charlyn Green3, Yeowon Kim8, Richa Joshi, Hopeland P9, Pablo Herreros Cantis1, Luis Ortiz4 1 â New York;Â 2 â Cape Town;Â 3 â Atlanta;Â 4 â Durham;Â 5 â Belfast;Â 6 â University Park;Â 7 â Singapore;Â 8 â Ottawa;Â 9 â Tamil Nadu
Ffion is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cape Town focusing on bridging urban metabolism with landscape ecology. With a background in Oceanography, her current work centres around the fluxes of water and nitrogen (and sometimes plastic) in coastal urban systems.
A current Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Urban Studies Institute, Mannetti promotes visionary thinking by city stakeholders to enable sustainable solutions to resilience challenges. With a PhD in Conservation Ecology from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, her research focuses on the adaptive co-governance of complex social-ecological systems.
Clair Cooper is a PhD candidate at Durham University in the UK and an early career fellow at the Urban Systems Lab, New School sponsored by NATURA. Using geometric data analysis techniques, thematic mapping and quantitative text analysis, Clairâs thesis explores the nexus between Nature-based Solutions and structural conditions that influence poor health in cities.
Danielle is a PhD candidate and interdisciplinary researcher in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University, Belfast. Her interests lie in the nexus of health, built environment, ecology and environmental psychology. Her PhD topic explores the role of urban nature on physical activity in older adults in Belfast.
Robert Hobbins is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University. He is an urban sustainability scientist and knowledge architect who researches and implements strategies to build more inclusive, equitable, and resilient cities given todayâs rapidly changing environmental conditions.
Matt Smith is a NOAA Sea Grant Knauss Policy Fellow working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources and the Coastal States Organization. He is also a Ph.D. Candidate and soon-to-be graduate in Biological Sciences at Florida International University where he studies the influence of coastal flooding and stormwater infrastructure on urban water quality.
Dr. Yuliya Dzyuban is a Research Fellow at Singapore Management University for the Cooling Singapore 2.0 project exploring the impact of vegetation on urban climate and perception of heat. Her area of expertise lies in using mixed-methods approaches to uncover relationships between urban morphology, microclimate, and human wellbeing.
Charlyn Green is a research coordinator at the Urban Studies Institute working on resilience and well-being on the micro, mezzo, and macro scales; trans-disciplinary thinking in problem-solving approaches; social welfare policy; community-based participatory research (CBPR).
Yeowon Kim is professor at Carleton University where she undertakes interdisciplinary studies of infrastructure systems, urban ecohydrology, stormwater management, and institutional governance for sustainable urban futures influenced by resilience theory, civil and environmental engineering, and systems science.
Hopeland is an interdisciplinary ecologist and practitioner working primarily at the intersection of biodiversity, urban ecology, design, restoration ecology and conservation.
Pablo Herreros is a Research Fellow at the URban Systems Lab at the New School, where he applies socio-ecological analysis to urban ecosystem services and environmental risks, with special focus on their spatial attributes and their links to social justice. He previously studied environmental engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain.
Luis Ortiz is currently an EPA ORISE Fellow. As Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Urban Systems Lab at The New School he examined the spatial and social dimensions of climate change and energy justice.
References:Â
Dumitru, Adina, Frantzeskaki, Niki, Collier, Marcus. (2020). Identifying principles for the design of robust impact evaluation frameworks for nature-based solutions in cities. Environmental Science & Policy. 112, 107-116.
European Commission. (2015). Towards an EU Research and Innovation policy agenda for nature-based solutions & re-naturing cities. Final Report of the Horizon2020 Expert Group on Nature-Based Solutions and Re-Naturing Cities. Brussels: European Commission.
McPhearson, T., Raymond, C. M., Gulsrud, N., Albert, C., Coles, N., Fagerholm, N., … & Vierikko, K. (2021). Radical changes are needed for transformations to a good Anthropocene. npj Urban Sustainability, 1(1), 1-13.
Nesshöver, C., Assmuth, T., Irvine, K. N., Rusch, G. M., Waylen, K. A., Delbaere, B., Haase, D., Jones-Walters, L., Keune, H., Kovacs, E., Krauze, K., KĂŒlvik, M., Rey, F., van Dijk, J., Vistad, O. I., Wilkinson, M. E., & Wittmer, H. (2017). The science, policy and practice of nature-based solutions: An interdisciplinary perspective. Science of the Total Environment, 579, 1215-1227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.11.106
Rosol, M, Beal, V, & Mossner, S, (2017). Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes. Environment and Planning A. 49, 8, pp.1710-1718.
Schneider, D. (2011). Hybrid nature: Sewage treatment and the contradictions of the industrial ecosystem. MIT Press.
Seamster, L., & Purifoy, D. (2021). What is environmental racism for? Place-based harm and relational development. Environmental Sociology, 7(2), 110-121.
Shafique, M., & Kim, R. (2018). Recent progress in Low-Impact Development in South Korea: Water-management policies, challenges and opportunities. Water, 10(4), 435.
US Army Corps of Engineers (2013). US Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Risk Reduction and Resilience. CWTS 2013-3 Directorate of Civil Works, US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington.
Wright, H. (2011). Understanding green infrastructure: the development of a contested concept in England. Local Environment, 16(10), 1003-1019.
âLakshmamma thought sadly of her grandchildren, growing up in the city, in a crowded slum with no thope to run around in or trees to climb.â
This excerpt, from our bilingual book âWhere have all our gunda thopes gone?â, is a story of loss and hopeâloss of nature as a city expands and hope that our readers will be encouraged to protect nature in their neighbourhoods.
Though the characters are fictional, the setting and experiences are based on conversations we have had with residents living in a village in peri-urban Bengaluruâand one of the sites of our research on commons.
Gunda thopes (or wooded groves) are an important common once found across the state of Karnataka in Southern India. Historically, thopes have been an integral part of the rural landscape, planted with fruit and timber yielding trees, and cared for by the local community. But, in recent times, there have been transformations to these thopes especially in the peri-urban interface of cities such as Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. Our story is about one such thope that transformed from a grove of towering mango (Mangifera indica) and jamun (Szyzygium cumini) into a landscaped park with lawns and ornamental plants.
The original gunda thope on which the story is based.. Photo: Seema MundoliThe thope after it was transformed into a landscaped park. Photo: Raghavendra Vanjari
We have brought out this booklet at a time when rapid urbanisation with its challenges of sustainability and equity is being witnessed in the Global South.
Our story follows Lakshmamma, who lives in Bengaluru, and who has returned on a visit to her natal village after many years. Lakshmamma is amazed at how much had changedâthe village situated now in the peri urban interface of Bengaluru, looked more like a city to her. On her last evening in the village, she retraces her steps past commons, like the pond and lake, making her way to a gunda thope she visited often as a child.
The village pond with stone steps leading down to the water. Illustration: Sukanya Basu
Lakshmamma is shocked at what she sees. Instead of a thick grove with trees, what she sees is a landscaped parkâsimilar to the parks in the city she lived in now. A large fence, a signboard with âdoâs and donâtsâ, exercise machines, a playground, and perfectly trimmed trees greet Lakshmamma.
The signboards with âdoâs and donâtâsâ in the park, once a thope: A common sight in many urban parks. Illustration: Sukanya Basu
Walking through the park, Lakshmamma is filled with bitter-sweet memories. She then spots a majestic peepul (Ficus religiosa) treeâshe had fondly named Maranna (tree brother) as a child. The rest of the booklet is a conversation between Lakshmamma and Maranna about the changes to the thope.
Maranna the majestic peepul tree. Illustration: Neeharika Verma
The conversation weaves through Lakshmammaâs childhood, the many happy hours she had spent in the thopeâplaying with friends, eating mangoes, grazing her goats. But it soon turns sad as Maranna tells her about how the thopes and their uses had changed over timeâand the slow erasure of thopes from even the communityâs memory. Lakshmamma mourns the loss of the commons, thinking sadly of her grandchildren living in the city who will never experience the abundance of gunda thopes that Lakshmamma did as a child.
Lakshmamma in conversation with Maranna. Illustration: Neeharika Verma
The story of this story
Though the characters are fictional, the setting and experiences are based on conversations we have had with residents living in a village in peri-urban Bengaluruâand one of the sites of our research on commons. The thope has indeed been transformed as described in the story. But is not an exception. Other urban and peri-urban commons such as lakes, ponds, cemeteries, and grazing lands have witnessed a similar fate. Some commons have been converted to schools, roads, bus stops, community centers, housing, and so on. As a result, the ecological benefits that these green and blue spaces provided have been lost forever. Others, like the thope in the book, have been converted to parks and spaces of leisure. Stripped of their native vegetation, we now have perfectly manicured lawns, fenced walls, and several rules and regulations that prioritise recreational use of the urban elite and middle class. Meanwhile, the conversion, enclosure, and gentrification of what were once commons have all marginalised traditional users and the local community who had livelihood, social, and cultural connections extending across generations.
Our research on the transformation of and contestations around thopes and similar urban and peri-urban commons has been published in peer-reviewed journals (Mundoli et al 2017, 2018) and used as a teaching case study in the MA Development programme at Azim Premji University. Students have also visited our field sites to undertake land use and biodiversity mapping.
Students learning about transect and quadrats to map plant biodiversity in the thope. Photo: Seema Mundoli
But one of the questions we asked ourselves is:
âHow can we communicate our research to a wider public, and partner with them in protecting the cityâs environment?â
The story of Lakshmmamma and Maranna is our attempt to do that and, in order to make it more accessible, the booklet has also been illustrated.
We decided early on that illustrations would be an integral part of the story. The first step for us was to identify what illustrations could fit the storyline. Once this was done, the illustrators read some of the field notes and publications and looked at photographs taken during field visits over the years. Next, rough sketches were drawn by the illustrators and, if the sketches resonated with the storyline, the sketches were completed by adding details.
From a photo to an illustration. Photo: Seema Mundoli; Illustration: Sahana Subramanian
Illustrations as a new way of conversing about urban commons
We did not want the illustrations to direct too much attention away from the story. Rather, we wished to complement the story. The simple hand-drawn black and white line-art enabled us to achieve this effect. It was an added advantage that, while there were three of us illustrating, our styles were similar, enabling us to achieve a consistency in the illustrations. Apart from adding power to storytelling, the illustrations also act as a tool that allows readers to imagine the story of the thopes. Through the illustrations of Lakshmammas lined face, the spreading branches of Maranna, the lake surrounded by agricultural fields, and several others the readers are able to visualise the landscape of the village as it once was. Similarly, through the illustrations of the park and the school into which the thopes were converted, readers are able to relate to what the thopes have become. We feel that this allows the readers to sympathise with Lakshmamma and Marannaâs story more deeply. Illustrating a book was a new experience for the illustratorsâand it was an exciting venture to convert an academic publication into a more widely accessible format. This experience also provided us an opportunity to converse about urban commons in a new way.
A wider outreach of the story
India is a country of many languages, and also of many similar thopes, albeit by different names, spread across the country. For a wider reach, the booklets were conceptualized as bilingual and were translated into two languagesâKannada, spoken in Karnataka, and Hindi a language familiar across other states. Printed copies of the English-Kannada version have already been distributed through the Department of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development across 6400 rural libraries in the state of Karnataka. In addition, we prepared illustrated worksheets for teachers and educators on the topics of commons, benefits of trees, and maintenance of commons under the rights-based legislation, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The worksheets elaborated include activities that involve students identifying commons and engaging with nature around them. The objective is to create awareness among children and encourage collective action to protect the disappearing commons. The Department is also considering an awareness campaign that includes identifying thopes and working with the local community in planting and maintenance for which we are collaborating as well.
Conclusion
We have brought out this booklet at a time when rapid urbanisation with its challenges of sustainability and equity is being witnessed in the Global South. We especially recognise the important role that commons play in countries like India, and the contestations around commons as cities sprawl into the peri-urban adversely impacting local communities and ecosystems. But we also realise that communicating these challenges and raising awareness is the first step towards forming partnerships in protecting commons. And our illustrated book âWhere have all our gunda thopes goneâ, seeks to do just that.
Neeharika Verma received her undergraduate degree in biology from Azim Premji University, and is currently pursuing her masterâs in marine science from the University of Massachusetts, USA.
Sukanya Basu was a Research Assistant at the Azim Premji University and is pursuing her PhD in Sustainable Food Systems from University of Göttingen, Germany.
Seema Mundoli is an Assistant Professor at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Her recent co-authored books (with Harini Nagendra) include, âCities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Citiesâ (Penguin India, 2019), “Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities” (Penguin India, 2023) and the illustrated childrenâs book âSo Many Leavesâ (Pratham Books, 2020).
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. She uses social and ecological approaches to examine the factors shaping the sustainability of forests and cities in the south Asian context. Her books include âCities and Canopies: Trees of Indian Citiesâ and “Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities” (Penguin India, 2023) (with Seema Mundoli), and âThe Bangalore Detectives Clubâ historical mystery series set in 1920s colonial India.
Around the world, urban planning is inextricably linked to both historic and current power structures. Urban planning in Palestine over the past century is no exception. Perhaps what differentiates Palestine today is the ongoing settler colonialization.
Urban planning often serves existing power structures to the detriment of the marginalized and as such has been used as a tool for racial segregation and discrimination in many contexts. As UCLA Professor Ananya Roy puts it: âUrban planning has repeatedly produced segregation and displacementâ. Much has been written, for example, on the discriminatory urban planning practices in the United States and their impact on exacerbating racial injustices against African Americans, in particular.
Yet, even as a planning professional of Palestinian origin who has visited the occupied West Bank many times and witnessed and experienced the discrimination against Palestinians there firsthand, the extent of the influence of planning policy was not obvious to me until I began researching it. Spatial planning policies, systematically introduced and enforced over the past century first by the British Mandate and then the Israeli government, have been instrumental in creating the unjust physical realities experienced by Palestinians today.
Below, I provide a glimpse of this planning history, which is vitally important to understanding todayâs reality. I do this by highlighting excerpts from some of the research and scholarly work on this topic. The rest of this essay is organized mostly chronologically to address each of the key periods of the past century, with a final section focusing on the city of Jerusalem.
While this essay focuses on the planning history, I have provided brief commentary and infographics connecting to the wider context and broader history. For further reading on this history as told and experienced by the occupied (not the occupier), I recommend sources like Decolonise Palestine and Palestine Remembered. For a visual representation of how the creation of the State of Israel physically transformed Palestinian cities and villages, I highly recommend this excellent project by Visualizing Palestine.
Planning during the British Mandate (1920 â 1947)
After the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I, Palestine came under the control of the British government. As Martin Crookston, a contemporary British planner, describes in this review, the plans developed by the British under this mandate did not even record all the existing Palestinian villages, let alone plan for their development or expansion to meet the future needs of the indigenous population (as is normal practice). What is even more shocking is that these plans are still in use today by the Israeli government.
âThe map below indicates in yellows circles the villages. But the Plans did not record all the villages in 1940s Palestine; so these yellow circles do not represent a complete picture of rural settlement even then. There was intended to be a layer of more local planning below these âregionalâ plans, but it never really happened, or only to a tiny extent. In the whole of Mandate Palestine, some 900 Arab villages saw only 25 outline plans prepared for them â eight of them in what is now the West Bank.â
A British Mandate Plan for part of Historic Palestine (1947). Source: Martin Crookston (2017) Echoes of Empire: British Mandate planning in Palestine and its influence in the West Bank today, Planning Perspectives, 32:1, 87-98, DOI:10.1080/02665433.2016.1213183
Furthermore, as is typical with the international transfer of planning expertise, British planners brought with them planning solutions which may have worked in Britain but did not necessarily work in Palestine. Crookston elaborates below:
âThe echoes of empire ring down to the present in other ways in the Mandate Plans, too… Importing a âsolutionâ intended to tackle the sprawl that was stretching along the radial roads of UK cities, the plans declared wide building-lines to set development well back from primary roads. These are now cited as reasons for demolitions. And the regional plansâ zoning of areas for only a few main uses (roads, an agricultural zone, development zones, nature/forest reserves, and beach reserves) has become a tool for hyper-restriction of natural village expansion.â
In other words, British planning policies which were meant to restrict linear sprawl of town and cities in 20thcentury Britain were imposed on Palestinian villages and are now being used as legal justification for restricting the natural growth of these villages. Critically, the same planning policies were not applied to the Jewish colonies being set up by international Zionist organisations to accommodate hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants, who came mostly from Europe and the United States with no immediate ties to the land of Palestine. Not only were these colonies permitted, but they were also allowed to grow and develop without planning requirements or restrictions.
Rassem Khamaisi, professor at the University of Haifa, describes this dichotomy in applying planning policies as follows in his paper on the British Mandate and the control of Palestinians:” The Arabs were subject to restrictive statutory and physical planning, and land surveys were used as a tool for confiscating their land, particularly in situations of ethnic conflict.
By comparison, new Jewish colonies and towns were rapidly developing to absorb largescale Jewish immigration that came to Palestine, especially after the Second World War. The Mandate planning institutions did not involve approved structure plans for the Jewish agriculture colonies. Besides which, most employees in the Planning Adviserâs office and in the district commissions were Jewish, and some of them paid more attention to the Jewish towns plans than to the implementation of the Mandate policy.â
The Creation of the State of Israel over Palestinian villages (1948 â 1967)
Between 1947 and 1948, to enable the creation of a Jewish state, 750,000 Palestinians were made to flee their homes through violent assaults first by militant Jewish groups and then by the newly formed Israeli state. This moment in history had a significant impact on all aspects of life for Palestinians, including the strength and connectivity of their cities. The quote below is from another work by Khamaisi focusing on the major Palestinian urban centers and how they were affected by the creation of the State of Israel.
âIn 1947, the United Nations Assembly partitioned Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, under Resolution 181. The War of 1948 between the Arabs and the Jewish, as an aftermath of this resolution, lead (sic) to the establishment of a viable, functional sovereign Jewish state with Tel-Aviv its urban core. This urban core began to develop in the 1930âs even though the Israelis aspired to establish Jerusalem as its Political core after the War of 1948, and according to the Rhodes ceasefire agreement of 1949. The Arab Palestinian state failed to establish, with Palestinian territory outside the Israeli state fragmented into two units lacking territorial continuity. As a result of this war, known as âNakbaâ [disaster] to the Palestinians, and territorial fragmentation, the normal growth of Palestinian cities and towns changed in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel. Â Israel divided Mandate Palestine under Jordanian rule (West Bank, âWBâ) and Egyptian administration (Gaza Strip, âGSâ). Between 1948-1967 the Palestinians lost their urban centers in territories within the newly established Israel proper, and the urban centers outside Israelâs borders, ruled by foreign Arab States, remained relatively small and dependent on the Jordanian core and the Egyptian core, Amman and Cairo, respectively. Jerusalem, which had previously functioned as the
Palestinian core, was divided into West Jerusalem, under the sovereignty of the State of Israel, while East Jerusalem was under Jordanian sovereignty and dependent on Amman.â The catastrophic loss of the Nakba was also felt, perhaps even more painfully, in Palestinian villages, hundreds of which were wiped off the map:
âAfter May 15th 1948 the War expanded and Israeli forces took over portions of the territory that was set aside for the establishment of a Palestinian state through the Partition Plan and expelled much of the population that lived in these areas. By the end of the war approximately 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees and between 500 and 600 Palestinian villages had been depopulated. Many of these communities were later destroyed.â
â Source: https://www.afsc.org/resource/palestinian-refugees-and-right-return
To cover the traces of these acts of ethnic cleaning, many of the sites of the destroyed villages were later designated by Israeli authorities as nature reserves or cultural sites:
âThe razed grounds of 182 erstwhile Palestinian villages â almost half of the villages depopulated by Israel in 1948 â are today included within the boundaries of Israeli nature and recreation spaces: mainly national parks, nature reserves and Jewish National Fund (JNF) forests and parks. Most of the Palestinian villages were intentionally destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 war or gradually dilapidated due to lack of official care as they were not considered heritage sites worthy of preservation. However, many of the villages were centered on ancient ruins, whose historical value led in some cases to declarations of national parks on the grounds of former villages. Similarly, villages near a natural spring were later classified by Israel as nature reserves or recreation areas; and, lastly, one of the goals behind the planting of some of the JNF forests in Israel â later turned into recreational areas â had been to obscure the remains of destroyed Palestinian villages.â
âSource: https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232332
The multiple layers of colonisation and appropriation involved in such acts of forestation over ruined villages are described piercingly by Liat Berdugo in her essay reflecting on the tree she planted as a child in Jerusalem at the age of six:
âSo the planting of forests is a politically charged endeavor that links ecology and aesthetics to cultural survival. It is a way for Israeli Jews to say âwe are hereâ… But more than that: it is a strategy for expropriating land. Prior to the declaration of Israeli statehood, the leaders of KKL-JNF [Kayemeth LeâYisrael, also known as the Jewish National Fund] saw afforestation as âa biological declaration of Jewish sovereigntyâ that could be used to set up âgeopolitical factsâ.â
She goes on to describe:
âA half-century later, it remains a public secret that at least 46 KKL-JNF forests are located on the ruins of former Palestinian villages. American Independence Park, where the names of foreign donors are etched on the Wall of Eternal Life, is superimposed on the villages of Allar, Dayr al-Hawa, Khirbat al-Tannur, Jarash, Sufla, Bayt âItab, and Dayr Aban, which were captured, âdepopulatedâ of their 4,000 inhabitants, and razed by Israeli state actors in 1948.â
Berdugo also implicates the Israeli legal system which rejects claims of Palestinians to village sites after they have been forested:
âAnd the Israeli courts have determined that when a forest is grown on expropriated land, Palestinians who return to that land are trespassing. In 2010, the Supreme Court rejected a petition by Palestinian refugees from the village of al-Lajjun to reclaim land in the Megiddo forest, ruling that afforestation justified Israeli control under the Land Acquisition Law of 1953.â
Planning during the military occupation of the West Bank (1967 â 1994)
Planning process in Palestinian centres
In 1967, Israel occupied the remainder of historic Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza). As an occupying power, Israeli authorities now had direct control over planning laws in these areas.
Rassem Khamaisi describes how the Israeli state took away agency and representation in planning from the indigenous Palestinian population through the issuance and implementation of Military Order (MO) 148 which transferred planning powers from local village councils to commissions appointed by the Israeli military:
âThe MO no. 418 also abolished the local planning commission in village councils, later establishing six Regional Rural Planning Committees (RRPC). It also granted the Military Commander the authority to appoint members of the HPC [Higher Planning Commission] and RRPC. Under the MO, the HPC was also authorized to set up subsidiary or ad hoc committees as it deemed necessary. Once the MO had been issued and implemented, the Palestinians were robbed of all authority and responsibility in the planning institutions; their presence in the province and RRPC, or in the sub-commission of the HPC, was merely formal. The âresponsibleâ in charge set up the HPC and appointed Jewish members with no Palestinian representation.â
In this new planning system, most Palestinian applications for detailed plans or building permits were rejected on the pretence of protecting agricultural land or lack of sufficient land ownership documentation. This is captured in numbers by Khamaisi:
âThus, obtaining a building permit was a very complicated and serious process, which decreased the number of building permits issued to the Palestinians. For example, in the period between 1 January 1988â1 September 1988, the number of applications submitted was 994, but the number of permits given was only 221. It is worth mentioning that in the period between 15 November 1986 and 28 September 1987 no permits at all were issued by the local committees.â
Establishment of new Jewish settlements
The HPC prepared regional plans for the West Bank in the early 1980s with multiple colonial objectives including limiting the development of Palestinian villages, severing connectivity of Palestinian cities, and most importantly enabling the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank with full spatial segregation from Palestinians. In Khamaisiâs words:
âTo amend the Mandate plans in the regional tier, the HPC prepared two regional plans covering part of the West Bank. The first, called the âPartial regional plan no. 1/82, amendment to regional plan RJ-5â, emerged in 1982. This plan covered an area of about 45 km2, around the three sides of Jerusalem, forming a belt around Jerusalem in the area of the West Bank. Plan no. 1/82 determined five main land-use zones (agriculture, nature reserve, future development, reserved area and built-up village areas). An analysis of the goal containing proposals of land use and regulations, leads to the conclusion that this plan intended to prevent the securing of building permits in agricultural zones according to the Mandate plans, and to limit Palestinian development in villages and in congested built-up areas. However, the areas designated for future development were selected for the creation or expansion of Jewish settlements.
Planning in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords (1995 â today)
 The Oslo Peace Accords signed in 1993 were expected to transfer control of the West Bank, including planning powers, to the Palestinians. The reality was markedly different, with the West Bank being divided into three zones (A, B, C). Area A (covering 18% of the West Bank) is administered by the Palestinian Authority and Area B (covering 22% of the West Bank) is under joint Palestinian-Israeli control. Area C, the largest of the zones covering approximately 60% of the area of the West Bank, is under exclusive Israeli administration including planning control. In Area C, planning restrictions on Palestinians have increased compared to the pre-Oslo era, with even less construction permitted. Simultaneously, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank continues.
The Israeli NGO Bimkom â Planners for Planning Rights describes this juxtaposition of planning powers between Palestinians and the occupying State of Israel in their 2008 report:
âThe two sides in this conflict do not have equal power. The Israeli Civil Administration enjoys substantial statutory and legal powers, and the average Palestinian citizen has no practical possibility of successfully challenging its decisions. Even according to the official position of the Israeli government, Area C is under temporary belligerent occupation and is not part of the sovereign State of Israel. This status implies that the powers of the Israeli authorities in the area to impose restrictions on Palestinian development and building are extremely restricted compared to those of a sovereign government. Nevertheless, the Civil Administration severely restricts Palestinian development in Area C, arguing that the future of this area remains to be determined in negotiations for a permanent agreement. At the same time, Israel continues to permit extensive construction in the settlements scattered throughout Area C, as if this construction does not establish facts on the ground and does not have grave ramifications for any future agreement.â
Source: The Prohibited Zone: Israeli planning policy in Palestinian Villages in Area C, Bimkom, June 2008
Jerusalem
The Israeli planning interventions in the city of Jerusalem, particularly after the 1967 war, offer a rich albeit disheartening case study of planning as a tool for segregation. Some of the injustices have risen to the world scene earlier this year as Palestinian families in neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah fight illegal dispossession from their homes. Jonathan Rock Rokem has written extensively on this topic, terming Jerusalem as a âContested Cityâ. Below are excerpts from a 2012 paper on the politics of urban planning in the city:
âIsrael, with the Ministry of Interior and the Jerusalem Municipality as its main legislative arms, has been responsible for urban planning and policy for the last 45 years, keeping a clear separation between Israeli and Palestinian living areas clearly visible in the location of disconnected living areas in the map below, dating from 2008.â
âIn more details, over the last 46 years, Israel has used its military might and economic power to relocate borders and form boundaries, grant and deny rights and resources, shift populations, and reshape the Occupied Territories for the purpose of ensuring Jewish control. In the case of East Jerusalem, two complementary strategies have been implemented by Israel: the construction of a massive outer ring of Jewish neighborhoods which now host over half the Jewish population of Jerusalem, and the containment of all Palestinian development, implemented through housing demolitions, legally banning Palestinian construction and development, and the prevention of Palestinian immigration to the city.â
âUp until today, planning and development in Jerusalem has been officially determined by the last statutory authorized master plan dating from 1959. The 1959 â[The] Scheme, prepared at the time when Jerusalem was a divided city, includes only the Western part of the pre-1967 Israeli Jerusalem. Therefore, it has little relevance in determining planning and development in the current conditions. This means that without an updated master plan, for almost 50 years, the Municipality, the Ministry of Interior, and other government departments have shared the development and planning without an overall legally binding document.â
âSince 1967, the policy employed by the Jerusalem municipality has been affected by the Israeli national political discourse. The principal Israeli policy has been âreunifyingâ Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty while the Palestinian Eastern population sees the integration of East Jerusalem as illegal âannexation.â In ethnically divided cities, urban planning policy can take a major role in enhancing spatial and social division (Bollens 2000). The unequal funding of urban planning and construction projects between the Eastern and the Western parts has resulted in a city split into two distinct growth poles, with the crossover parts and old border areas remaining mainly neglected division points between the two sides.â
Around the world, urban planning is inextricably linked to both historic and current power structures. Urban planning in Palestine over the past century is no exception. Perhaps what differentiates Palestine today is the ongoing settler colonialization. Unlike other settler colonialization “projects” (e.g., in the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa), the Israeli colonial regime is still formally in power today and continues to perpetrate injustices at every scale against the occupied Palestinian population. As I have attempted to argue in this essay, spatial planning policy has been an important tool in creating todayâs inhumane reality affecting millions of Palestinians on the ground and in the diaspora.
Where do we go from here? The first objective is obvious: ending the colonial project in Palestine. After that point, there will be decades of injustices and abuses to rectify, including the legacy challenges of the planning system, in order to plan for just and liveable cities for all people on that land.
Until then, as built environment professionals, it is important that we denounce the fundamentally unjust systems governing the urban context in Palestine and elsewhere, and continue to work towards rectifying this. For professionals interested in working in Palestine, being fully aware of the colonial planning power dynamics and their impacts is essential to making informed decisions on the projects in which we chose to be involved and the stakeholders and communities we chose to include.
We need to reimagine the institutional landscape of urban disputed commons governance to accommodate diverse goals and management practices that simultaneously produce good and bad commons. On one hand, practices of good commoning produce bad commons. On the other hand, if disputes were to be resolved, the land would likely be privatized, halting the practices of good commoning.
Can practices that produce âgoodâ commons also create âbadâ commons? In some instances, practices of commoning spaces that are neither public, private, nor common can also degrade these spaces.
Mornings in my neighborhood of Wanowrie in Pune city, in the western state of Maharashtra, India are a charming sight. An undeveloped parcel of land also known as Kakade ground, approximately 48 acres in size, is the center of Wanowrieâs universe. An enthusiastic and dedicated youth group begins the day with volleyball matches. Running and cycling groups gather at the local tea sellerâs semi-permanent structure on the land for their post-exercise banter. Street dogs playfully loiter around them, yapping for a stray biscuit. Residents may be shopping for fruits and vegetables at nearby popup stalls. The elderly may assemble at a corner of the land for their morning constitution and some healthy neighborhood gossip.
On some days, youth wings of local political groups organize cricket and soccer matches, bringing the passing traffic to an eager halt to watch the game. Strategically placed benches provide rest, and traditional water pitchers quench the thirst of the weary. Weekly and semi-permanent farmer markets save residents a trip to the inner city for produce. These decentralized produce markets provided an essential service during the COVID-19 induced lockdowns. Street vendors and fast-food selling hawkers take over the land in the evening. Approximately, five times a year, the land hosts artists and small businesses all over India, automobile exhibitions, book fairs, circuses, and fun-fairs. The land also provides space for local residents to learn and hone their car and bike driving skills. Occasionally, the land becomes home to migrant laborers and the nomadic Dhangar tribe with their sheep, camel, goats, and horses. Some trees on the land have threads tied around their barks, indicating that local residents may be worshipping the tree. Thus, a âgoodâ commons results from these various uses that miraculously do not conflict with each other, but instead create a vibrant neighborhood.
Kakade ground in Wanowrie. Photo: Praneeta MudaliarWeekly farmer’s market. Photo: Praneeta MudaliarMigrant laborers in July 2021. Photo: Praneeta MudaliarA sacred Banyan tree keeps the water cool for humans in earthen pitchers and for animals in a water trough. Photo: Praneeta Mudaliar
With multiple people using the land as an open-access âgoodâ commons, âbadâ commons are close behind. The waste from the farmerâs market and street vendors accumulates on the land. Plastic bags, in which residents bring food for the nomadic and migrant communities, litter the land. A cow-shelter that pious residents constructed to house cows on the land generates a steady stream of waste. Housekeeping staff of the surrounding gated communities dump trash on the land. Burning the trash engulfs the neighborhood with noxious fumes. Passing men use the land as a urinal. Pigs, dogs, donkeys, camels, horses, crows, pigeons, and flies abound. Mosquitoes, in particular, pose a real threat of malaria and dengue. In the absence of a natural predator, pigeons are a growing menace with the city registering wheezing cases related to pigeon droppings. Thus, the very process of making the commons is also degrading the commons. In the absence of maintenance, commoning is endangering the well-being of residents and people using and accessing the land.
Good commons meets the bad commons. Benches to rest amidst the trash. Photo: Praneeta MudaliarPious residents feeding cows on the land. Photo: Praneeta MudaliarPigs amidst the trash. Photo: Praneeta Mudaliar
Such parcels of undeveloped land are common not just in Pune, but across India because these lands are usually entangled in a legal controversy. The Center for Policy Research, New Delhi estimates that 7.7 million people in India are affected by disputes over 2.5 million hectares of land, affecting investments worth $200 billion. 66% of all civil cases in India are related to land/property disputes and the average timespan of a land acquisition dispute, from the creation of the dispute to its resolution by the Supreme Court, is 20 years.
Like other undeveloped legally disputed parcels of land in India, the land opposite my home is similar. This dispute can be traced back to two land developers who earmarked the land in 1957 for a shopping mall, multiplex, restaurant, corporate park, and a hotel with exclusive apartment units. The dispute is complicated by the fact that the land was granted to the people to be held in trust and can only be sold with the District Collector’s permission. The departments of revenue and forest are also involved. These departments have passed a stay order against the sale of the land to the developers. In 2009, the Pune Cantonment court directed the police to inquire into the land dispute, which is still in progress.
When resources are legally disputed, who should have the responsibility for maintaining the âgoodâ commons generated through commoning? Is it the police department that is conducting the inquiry? Is it the court or the departments of revenue and forest? Is it the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) that collects rent from the street vendors and hawkers but cites the dispute as a reason to not clean up the land? Is it the land developers who also collect rent from the vendors on the land? Is it the wealthy and middle-class residents of this plush neighborhood who are the main actors in the making of the commons?
Mumbai High courtâs notice that the status quo of the land should be maintained. Photo: Praneeta Mudaliar
Sheila Foster argues that when governments are unable to provide essential services or are not able to oversee and manage resources, a situation called âregulatory slippageâ arises. In such situations, the resource is vulnerable to degradation because of competing users and uses. When regulatory slippage occurs, a group of actors with high collective efficacy i.e., strong social ties and networks may fill the vacuum in governance. At Kakade ground, residents voice their concern at the trash and occasionally conduct cleanliness drives on the land, but these sporadic efforts do little to arrest land degradation. Thus, for Kakade ground, a 20-year-old practice of commoning to create a âgoodâ commons may have built collective efficacy among residents, but the exercise of that collective efficacy for maintaining the commons is yet to be seen. Perhaps the land dispute[1] may be preventing them undertaking long-term action.
Practices that simultaneously produce good and bad commons on disputed spaces raise several questions for future inquiry:
What happens when the commoning of legally disputed spaces occurs without explicit or implicit intent to common that space?
What are the unforeseen, unpredictable, and undesirable consequences that emerge from the use and access to such disputed spaces?
What is the role of the state in such situations?
Would residents have maintained the commons if the space were not disputed?
On one hand, practices of good commoning produce bad commons. On the other hand, if the dispute were to be resolved, the land would likely be privatized, halting the practices of good commoning. Thus, with or without the resolution of the dispute, residents stand to lose the most. Therefore, what could be the form and nature of collective management for such legally disputed resources?
Despite critical advancements in the scholarship on common-pool resources, studies on rural commons dominate the field. While research on urban commoning is growing, scholars are yet to delve into the commoning of legally disputed resources. Where resources donât neatly fall into categories of private, public, and commons, approaches to manage such kinds of resources are also missing. The undeveloped land in my neighborhood accommodates multiple uses, reflecting the diverse social goals of different groups of people. There is therefore a need to re-conceptualize and reimagine the institutional landscape of urban commons governance to recognize and accommodate diverse goals and practices that simultaneously produce good and bad commons.
While we move about the city using public transportation ⊠so too do a diversity of insects. Where are they going and why?
 Every day I make the commute between my home in a rural-style village on an âoutlying islandâ (Lamma Island) to the middle of the city in Hong Kong. Altogether the journey is about one hour one way and involves walking, a ferry, and a subway/MTR ride. A variety of things can happen to me on any particular day that can liven up the commute. But certainly, one of my favorites is finding a butterfly or moth joining me on my journey.
Not infrequently, when I get on the ferry from Lamma to Hong Kong Island I will find moths in the boat. Sometimes large and conspicuous ones (e.g. Macroglossum species, or the hummingbird moths) wind up flying and buzzing around frightened passengers. I do my best to jump in and save the day, capture them safely and release them.
A Graphium sarpedon (common bluebottle) looks through the glass of a walkway to the central ferry piers in Hong Kong. Photo: Timothy C. Bonebrake
But where do I release them? If I let one go over the water it usually results in the insect dropping straight into the water â fish food. Iâve learned this the hard way and I now avoid such careless releases. If Iâm in transit however, do I let them go on the city side even if they originated on the rural side? Presumably theyâre not trying to get to the city like I am. But who am I to judge? If theyâre flying away from rural Lamma then perhaps they are looking for new habitat on a different island. I wonder about this a lotâŠbut I usually release them wherever I get off next and hope they find their way to a decent new home (or office?).
In all likelihood I assume that most of the insects I meet in transit are not there by choice. Especially for moths, light is likely the main culprit in attracting them to these unfamiliar habitats. I also suspect that in many cases the individuals are dispersing from the habitat where they originated but end up in these spaces unintentionally. At least for Lepidoptera, most of these species will be unable to persist in these highly urbanized and fast-moving spaces (boats, cars, or subway terminals).
This doesnât mean that they canât escape on their own. Sometimes if Iâm in a hurry, or if a butterfly seems to be on a mission (looking for mates⊠or a good brunch spot perhaps), I will let it be. My guess is that some proportion (probably low) do find their way to more hospitable environments where they may thrive and reproduce.
An Arhopala bazalus (powdered oakblue)(left) sits calmly on the floor of the Sheung Wan MTR station underground. A Macroglossum sp. (right) discovered on the ferry to Hong Kong Island. Photo: Timothy C. Bonebrake
Unfortunately, most of the six-legged friends I make on my commute are probably not going to survive much longer. If Iâm honest with myself, I know that these interactions are really a sign of human imposition into a landscape where humanity and other species are struggling to coexist.
Thereâs the additional issue of public transit, and private transit of course, affecting dispersal of species and having consequences for ecological communities. If I release a hummingbird moth that originated from Hong Kong Island to another island, where perhaps there are not natural populations of these species, is there a chance that a new population will establish and displace native species? This thought is nearly always in the back of my mind when I release insects from urban infrastructure traps during my commute. In Hong Kong, this is unlikely to be the case as the ecological communities across islands are fairly well mixed and they are pretty close to one another. But I imagine this is an issue in some contexts.
Iâve concluded that ultimately these short-term âcommutesâ of species accompanying my transit, along with those of millions of other city dwellers, is probably inconsequential given the scale (within the city) and the variety of other impacts humans bring to the environment. There may be some homogenization of biodiversity resulting from these human-aided dispersal events but (1) most are occurring at relatively short distances, and (2) most individuals are not likely to persist for a long time following the dispersal event (assuming they survive the transit at all).
Between cities is another matter. A classic study was conducted by Von Der Lippe and Kowarik (2008) in Berlin â by placing seed traps along a motorway and comparing seed sets from the outgoing lane (away from the city) vs the incoming lane (into the city) they found significantly higher levels of non-native plants (and a higher overall level of seed deposition) being dispersed out of the city than into it. In this way, at larger spatial scales it appears likely that roads and transit pathways between cities could be changing biodiversity in those cities and the landscapes between them.
There also bound to be evolutionary consequences for some species who encounter such transit infrastructure frequently. Urban moths exposed long-term to high levels of light pollution can evolve to reduce their flight-to-light behaviors which would lower the probability of being trapped in subway stations or walkway structures. I imagine urban butterflies evolving to read subway maps, or perhaps figuring out clever ways of downloading music to more easily pass the time during their dispersal events.
Anyway, there are interesting implications surrounding the unexpected commuters we may meet on the bus, boat, or in our car. Certainly, the consequences of urban and transit infrastructure on local biodiversity is a subject in need of continued study. New ways of thinking about such infrastructure to accommodate our commuter companions could help to facilitate their movement.
But most of all, when I am lucky enough to find a cool bug while mindlessly going about my day moving through the city trying to get to work â I try to stop and appreciate my fellow commuter. I imagine its own journey, more epic than my own given our relative sizes and the massive skyscrapers towering above us. Such chance meetings are a wonderful reminder of the animals that mirror our movements through urban pathways and transportation corridors. These creatures are doing some amazing things. By comparison my own commute feels rather dullâŠbut all together itâs really very cool; our rapidly zig-zagging and chaotic trajectories â fluttering, hopping and brisk walking â interweaving through complex vertical and horizontal concrete masses. All of us ending up somewhere new where exciting adventures await.
Julian Agyeman, MedfordTwo fundamental ârecognitionsâ before we can move forward: (1) we must recognize and acknowledge, openly, that in the U.S., we are on stolen land; (2) Second, we must recognize and acknowledge, openly, that in the U.S., urban planning is the spatial toolkit for articulating, implementing, and maintaining White Supremacy.
Isabelle Anguelovski, BarcelonaDecolonizing green city planning would involve prioritizing land recognition, redistribution, control, and reparations and developing new land arrangements as necessary to an environmentally just landscape.
Anna Livia Brand, BerkeleyDecolonizing green city planning would involve prioritizing land recognition, redistribution, control, and reparations and developing new land arrangements as necessary to an environmentally just landscape.
Jean-Marie Cishahayo, OttawaThe spatial, social, and economic dimensions of urban inclusion are tightly intertwined and tend to reinforce each other. On a negative path, these factors interact to trap people into poverty and marginalization. Working in the opposite direction, they can lift people out of exclusion and improve lives.
CJ Goulding, TeaneckWhile we recognize what needs to be done, it will not be easy, and we will face pushback and resistance from those who would like to see things remain as they have been.
Morgan Grove, BaltimoreAn âanti-â urban ecology is more than social interactions and ecological thinking. An âanti-â urban ecology is to understand and act upon how these institutionalized systems alter the ecologies and interactions of species, populations, communities, landscapes, and ecosystems at local, regional, and global scales.
Derek Hyra, WashingtonDecolonizing green city planning would involve prioritizing land recognition, redistribution, control, and reparations and developing new land arrangements as necessary to an environmentally just landscape.
Laura Landau, New YorkReal transformation only happens when we examine issues of ownership and control in order to radically redistribute power. The good news is that many environmental groups are already showing us how to take these steps.
MarĂa MejĂa, BogotĂĄCaliâs urban natures mirror deep wounds of racism and colonialism. Its urban development in the 20th Century was embedded in historical dynamics of labor exploitation and the trade of goods and commodities. The historical concentration of land by elites made of Cali a highly segregated city: it was a radicalization of space.
Polly Moseley, LiverpoolSolidarity and justice are meaningful to the struggles which the people of Liverpool have felt as a city. Where we have sown wildflowers on public land threatened with building projects the wildflowers have been particularly welcomed by local activist groups and residents; we find more homegrown social innovation and receptiveness to change in these spaces.
Amanda K. Phillips de Lucas, BaltimoreAs we plot out the path towards the anti-racist city, we must simultaneously amend the practices and procedures that have burdened others. We must begin to see the tools of our professions as enmeshed within multiple systems and structures. What we understand as a best practice may also result in the worst possible outcome for a community.
Steward T.A. Pickett, PoughkeepsieCritical race theory has suggested sequential steps that urban ecology must use to contribute to just and equitable cities, towns, and regions: (1) Awareness of how racism shapes places; (2) Acknowledgement that racism evolves; (3) Inclusion of marginalized communities in research; (4) Embedding of anti-racist praxis in core philosophies.
Charles Pompeh, AccraThere is a complex inter-mesh of racism, socio-political, and economic injustice that accounts for environmental degradation in Africa, all with colonial origins. Lands in Africa became the property of Europeans, with Africans enduring all forms of brutality. It must now be de-colonized.
Malini Ranganathan, WashingtonDecolonizing green city planning would involve prioritizing land recognition, redistribution, control, and reparations and developing new land arrangements as necessary to an environmentally just landscape.
Baixo Ribeiro, São PauloThe history of resistance of indigenous peoples in Brazil is a history of struggle to keep their lands, which are permanently besieged by rampant capitalism. Minerals, timber, and oil are our worst enemies. Consumers worldwide are directly responsible.
Amrita Sen, BangaloreEnvironmental organizations have to bear larger accountabilities towards protection of marginal urban communities, not only during incidences of risk but also when environmental management and its related implementation at all levels appear discriminatory and/or racist.
Abdallah Tawfic, CairoWomenâs experiences and perceptions of public spaces diïŹer to men and it is important to take these differences into account when planning and designing spaces. By applying an intersectional gender lens, womenâs specific experiences, needs, and concerns can inform the development of safe and inclusive public spaces.
Cindy Thomashow, SeattleNatural systems are putty in the hands of city planners and the wealthy. Intentional inequities, more frequently than not, shape cities. UEE builds the leadership skills that support change-making focused on fairness, equity and justice.
Hita Unnikrishnan, BangaloreEnvironmental organizations have to bear larger accountabilities towards protection of marginal urban communities, not only during incidences of risk but also when environmental management and its related implementation at all levels appear discriminatory and/or racist.[/
Ebony Walden, RichmondWe need more planners, environmentalists, institutional and civic leaders, across races and with a broad intersection of identities committed to confronting racism in urban ecology in an ongoing, diligent, and vigilant fashion to disrupt the status quo of white supremacy.
Ibrahim Wallee, AccraThere is a complex inter-mesh of racism, socio-political, and economic injustice that accounts for environmental degradation in Africa, all with colonial origins. Lands in Africa became the property of Europeans, with Africans enduring all forms of brutality. It must now be de-colonized.
Diane Wiesner, BogotĂĄNos preguntamos dĂłnde y en cuĂĄntas calles de las urbes colombianas rendimos tributo a nuestros paisajes, a los pueblos originarios o a los indĂgenas? Nuestras plazas estĂĄn repletas de monumentos de una España que arrasĂł con poblaciones y ecosistemas.
Diane Wiesner, BogotĂĄLet us ask: where, and in how many streets of Colombian cities do we pay tribute to our landscapes, native peoples, or indigenous people? Our plazas are full of monuments to a Spain that razed populations and ecosystems.
David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director. David’s dad told him once that he needed a back up plan, something to “fall back on”. So he bought a tuba.
Introduction
There has been a growing belief in the need for âequityâ in how we build urban environments. The inequities have long been clear, but remain largely unsolved in environmental justice: both environmental âbadsâ (e.g. pollution) and âgoodsâ (parks, food, ecosystem services of various kinds, livability) tend to be inequitably distributed. Such problems exist around the world, from New York to Mumbai, from Brussels to Rio de Janeiro to Lagos. Indeed, among many there is a sense that âequityâ is not enough. Perhaps we need a more active expression of the social and environmental struggles that that underlie issues of equity and inequity in environmental justice and urban ecologies: one that is explicitly âanti-racistâ, and which recognizes and tries to dismantle the systemic foundations of the inequities.
There is a logical resonance of this idea to a wide variety of identities, histories, prejudices, and processes that systematically exclude and discriminate among people, including (but sadly not limited to) colonialism, social caste, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and indigeneity.
So, let us try to imagine approaches beyond the mere basics of equity. What would an anti-racist (or de-colonial or anti-caste, and so on) approach to âurban ecologiesâ be? How would it be accomplished? Is it an approach that would create progress? How would it integrate social and ecological pattern and process? How would we as professionals and concerned urban residents engage with it?
These conversations must be about social issues as much as ecological ones. Light needs be shined in all directions.
We must be fiercely honest with ourselves by shining lights into the patterns and limitations â yes, the stubborn prejudices â of our own professions. What can we do as individuals? How can we nudge our disciplines â ecology, or planning, or architecture, or policymaking, or educations, or civil society, or whatever â in better directions?
And we must also move towards articulating what we are for and activate ourselves and our professions towards change that supports these things; not be satisfied with merely railing at what we are against.
What actions we will take to make cities that are truly better for everyone?
Polly Moseley is a producer and PhD candidate at Liverpool John Moores University, working on applied research on social and cultural values underpinning urban ecological restoration work in North Liverpool. Her first degree was French & English Literature from Oxford, and she is interested in linguistics and place-based narratives. Highlights of her career involve intercultural exchange with Grupo Cultural AfroReggae and street art with Royal de Luxe, and land artists in Nantes. Her current projects include building the Scouse Flowerhouse movement and preparing a public campaign for the restoration of a beautiful, heritage Library building. Polly has spent a total of 22 years on kidney dialysis and has dialysed in 180+ centres. She plays fiddle and loves wild swimming.
Polly Moseley
Solidarity and justice are meaningful to the struggles which the people of Liverpool have felt as a city. Where we have sown wildflowers on public land threatened with building projects the wildflowers have been particularly welcomed by local activist groups and residents; we find more homegrown social innovation and receptiveness to change in these spaces.
Identifying as an anti-racist gives me more courage to take responsibility for the society and culture. I am an activist within. In Liverpool, a city in which almost all infrastructure is directly connected to the Slave Trade, my work involves constantly thinking about how to decolonialise histories and to give voice to a wider diversity of people, leaders, neighbours and workers. I have found how interrogating street names and learning from ecological and migration histories, peeling back layers of denial and grief to engender understanding through active listening, can strengthen the meaning and the cultural context. Listening to how Professor Corinne Fowler[i] suffered death threats and hate crime following her report on slavery connections for the National Trust emboldened my feeling of why showing solidarity with anti-racist work at this time is so vital. Professor Fowler described how her family life had strengthened her resolve to air these histories.
My identity or lens as someone who has experienced loss and chronic illness is what has strengthened my empathy with people and with the complexity of the North Liverpool landscape, so rich with stories. Darren McGarvey[ii] writes about culture being viewed through a lens of identity. In North Liverpool neighbourhoods this lens has primarily been people, who, like McGarvey, identify as working-class. Their deep sense of loss â be it the loss of their livelihoods in Ireland through potato famine, loss of jobs with containerisation of the port, loss of 125-140k population to outlying towns and estates in the 1960s during the so-called âslum clearancesâ, loss of most of the infrastructure in their parks â means that the plea for the leader of the Dasgupta review[iii] for us all to consider ourselves âasset managersâ jars in these neighbourhoods. Talking about nature as a resource can embed the sense of scarcity[iv], just as it can re-enforce what Bhattachary describes as the âmyth of expendability â of expendable people and expendable regionsâ[v]. Problems in these neighbourhoods have been over-diagnosed, resulting in a litany of terms associated with deprivation and poverty, which can re-enforce stigma, blight, dependency and fear of further loss.
McGarvey lumped together chronically-ill people with prisoners at one point in his book, which made me flinch, and reflect how blurring boundaries across inequalities doesnât work for people who are viscerally experiencing injustice â a point made clearly by Reni Eddo-Lodge âwe know that eradicating class inequalities will go some way in challenging race inequalitiesâ yet âracialised class prejudiceâ[vi] is different and needs to be called out. Though I have seen public health work regress due to economic and health policy, the ecological work I get involved in is deliberately cited in neighbourhoods dealing with the sharp end of health and social inequalities, and its purpose is reconciliation, with, through, and across the land. All of these post-industrial urban landscapes are cultural: restoring nature into these landscapes can elicit more airing of opinions and response.
This year, 2021, our urban wildflowering programme has built a partnership with the Liverpool charity, Mandela8. This charity is born to honour and continue the work of a group of anti-apartheid activisits from L8 or Toxteth â a postcode which became synonymous with race riots in the 1980âs, and which is re-asserting a positive identity[vii]. The story of their anti-apartheid protest has just been unveiled at the Museum of Liverpool[viii].
We took some horticultural advice and a gift of seeds of a South African origin from Fergus Garrett of Great Dixter, which are now growing in local community gardens and pots to be planted back into the Mandela Field of Hope this month (June 2021) in the historic Princes Park. Liverpool has just elected its first black woman Mayor in the UK. Times are a-changing.
Solidarity and justice are meaningful to the struggles which the people of Liverpool have felt as a city. Where we have sown wildflowers on public land which was threatened with building projects â Walton Hall Park (resisted a new Everton FC Stadium), Sefton Meadows (resisted housing), Calderstones carbon capture meadow (resisted housing), and Rimrose Valley (resisting a new road) â the wildflowers have been particularly welcomed by local activist groups and residents, and we find more homegrown social innovation and receptiveness to change in these spaces. To me, this means that framings, like âanti-racismâ can generate powerful engagement to accelerate climate action, aligning climate action with action for social good.
Currently on my street, a newly-arrived family is receiving hostility from neighbours, and the reason given for the hatred is noise. The 5-year-old girl described her home country, Iran, to me as âanother worldâŠand now we are in this worldâ. This way of understanding her migration, echoes the spirit of AfroFuturism[ix]. The outsider / alienism manifested by Sun Ra in the 1970âs is described by black creatives as a way of owning both painful histories, sharing current realities and casting alternative futures.  He dramatized and owned the narrative levied at Black people during a time when racism was rife, and, in doing so, changed perspectives,  showing how narratives can be shifted through showing the absurdity underlying prejudice through performance.
I have co-produced a Northern Flowerhouse Charter which mandates âInviting outsiders inâ and flips the âNorthern Powerhouseâ industrial narrative, used by the UK government to talk about investment in hard infrastructure and jobs in the North to address the historic North-South divide, as most investment is concentrated in London and the South East.
Scouse Flowerhouse was a name coined by a young man who is full of creative energy, very much a true âScouserâ. These names work because they were given by local people. Knowing when to step aside was some advice given to me by artist/activist Tayo Aluko[x] recently in an interview we recorded. In urban environments we should all be in the business of reparation and constantly be prepared to be educated and re-educated, as I was during the Nature of Cities Summit, time and time again.
The photo is of the sowing of Mandela Field of Hope this Spring with Liverpool FC fan and artist Peter Carney displaying his newly-made Scouse Flowerhouse banner. The best artworks I have commissioned for wildflower work have enabled artists to communicate words and messages they have held for a while, waiting to find the right work for them to inhabit, and wildflowers have been the enabler. We aim to design intercultural dialogue into these colourful fields by programming a variety of cultural celebrations, choreographing new encounters. Â Iâd like to do more of this by re-establishing platforms for pro-active debate in public spaces.
Peter Carney with children from Windsor Community Primary School on Princes Park, April 2021, Photo by Sonia Bassey, Chair of Mandela8
Jean-Marie Cishahayo has around 20 years of studies and professional work in International development and lived in 4 continents: Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America. He has passion in capacity building in sustainable development, climate change, smart and green cities, local economic development, Resilient Monitoring and evaluation, Climate change. He is fluent in French, English, Chinese and Swahili.
Rethinking “the right to city”: the future challenge in managing equity and inclusion in urban natural systems matrix
The spatial, social, and economic dimensions of urban inclusion are tightly intertwined and tend to reinforce each other. On a negative path, these factors interact to trap people into poverty and marginalization. Working in the opposite direction, they can lift people out of exclusion and improve lives.
Beyond urban equity, it is possible to build antiracism in managing natural systems in the urban matrix. This is an approach that could create progress in my view. Here, are some concepts and approached to develop some reflections.
I would like to start by recommending that we first revive and rethink the original idea of right to city. The âright to the cityâ is an idea and slogan that was originally proposed by Henri Lefevre in his 1968 book: Le Droit Ă la Ville. It has been aclaimed more recently by social movements, thinkers, and several progressive local authorities alike as a call to action to reclaim the city as to create a space for life detached from the growing effects that commodification and capitalism have had over social interaction and the rise of special inequalities in worldwide cities through the last centuries. (Chapters 2-17 from Writings on cities, selected, translated and introduced by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas)
Lefevreâs concept of the right to the city sounds like a combination of the best practices in urban settings planning with a preliminary aim to build harmonious community, rights to urban resources, equity in environment justice and urban ecology, antiracism, high quality of urban services such education, housing, transportation, safety, health services, sharing a natural based environment resources and freedom to live in a human ecosystem community. These rights are not granted; we need to preserve, secure, maintain, and fight for them while respecting otherâs identity and aspirations. This reminds us also the concept of âUrban ecologyâ, an iteration of the Chicago Schoolâs human ecology approach, borrows ecological concepts like invasion and succession in attempts to explain the organization of the society in cities. (Andrew E.G.Jonas, Eugene Mc Cann, and Mary Thomas, âUrban Geographyâ, 2015, Will Blackwell)
Over centuries, I think, this concept had been a failure or strong test to both policy makers, urban planners, communities, and individuals. Social exclusion, racism, and segregation started in the clear absence to right to city in all form of life in many countries of the world. Even today this is politicized and institutionalized in some countries.
Much more, it is better to understand how this concept of right to the city plays today in modern institutions, countries, and communities. The following are well-balanced visions and findings by the World Bank in order to build sustainable inclusive and resilient communities.
Today more than a half of the world population lives in cities and this proportion will reach 70% by 2050. To make sure that tomorrowâs cities provide opportunities and better living conditions for all, it is essential to understand that the concept of inclusive cities involves a complex web of multiple spatial, social, and economic factors:
Spatial inclusion: urban inclusion requires providing affordable necessities such as housing, water, and sanitation. Lack of access to essential infrastructure and services is a daily struggle for many disadvantaged households.
Social inclusion: an inclusive city needs to guarantee equal rights and participation of all, including the most marginalized. Recently, the lack of opportunities for the urban poor, and greater demand for voice from the socially excluded have exacerbated incidents of social upheaval in cities.
Economic inclusion: creating jobs and giving urban residents the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of economic growth is a critical component of overall urban inclusion.
The spatial, social, and economic dimensions of urban inclusion are tightly intertwined and tend to reinforce each other. On a negative path, these factors interact to trap people into poverty and marginalization. Working in the opposite direction, they can lift people out of exclusion and improve lives.
This brings us back to reflect the purpose of the new Sustainable Development Goals. No one should be left behind, everyone counts. This is a fundamental concept of human rights and equity in urban settings. Because some of our communities are not more inclusive, anger and antiracism movements are gaining grounds.
It is possible to build equity in urban matrix, but it will require a total rethinking of our urban policy, special planning, and education systems in schools and families. It should focus more on innovative approaches to building a multicultural and inclusive communities in a nature-based environment. No one should be left behind, if I can borrow this slogan from the United Nations Sustainable development goals.
No one was born, racist, extremist, violent, exclusive, radical. It is indeed his type of family, his type of education, his type of companions, his type of community and his type of political environment that transformed his personality and his way of thinking. So, what can we do for our environmental equity? And why are we powerless to change the situation?
Amanda K. Phillips de Lucas is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech in 2018. She is interested in how social understandings of space shape the production of infrastructure systems. Her research interests include the History of Technology, Infrastructure Studies, Political Theory, and Urban Environmental History.
Amanda K. Phillips de Lucas
If I Had a Hammer⊠Crafting the Right Tools for the Anti-Racist City
As we plot out the path towards the anti-racist city, we must simultaneously amend the practices and procedures that have burdened others. We must begin to see the tools of our professions as enmeshed within multiple systems and structures. What we understand as a best practice may also result in the worst possible outcome for a community.
A reckoning is emerging as scholars advance the projects of justice and equity within ecology and environmental studies. Academics and activists are naming the complex legacies of harm perpetrated by discriminatory policies, resource extraction in the name of economic growth, and racialized disinvestment. Alongside documenting these legacies, it is necessary to explore how the tools used within the environmental disciplines are implicated in this history.
To quote Audre Lorde, âthe masterâs tools will never dismantle the masterâs house.â These words weigh heavy as we consider strategies that address the environmental, economic, and social inequities built into cities. Positioning Lordeâs invocation in the spirit of this roundtable â what if building the anti-racist city requires the abolition of environmental management as we know it?
An example from Baltimoreâs history illustrates how the tools that support environmental management can simultaneously be used to curtail the project of social justice.
During the âfreeway revoltsâ of the 1970s, lawsuits were a frequently utilized tactic to stop or delay the construction of urban interstates. The most successful cases challenged highway development through established parkland. These lawsuits followed the precedent set by the Supreme Court in Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe in 1971. This decision stated that âprotection of parkland was to be given paramount importanceâ in road placement.
The privileged status of parkland simultaneously devalued residential land in highway routing decisions. In the case of Baltimore, the decision in Overton Park pitted activists concerned with preserving their homes, businesses, and local communities against the Sierra Club-sponsored VOLPE (Volunteers Opposing the Leakin Park Expressway). This division hindered the already tenuous attempts to develop a cross-neighborhoodâand thereby a multi-racialâcoalition opposed to the whole highway project.
Lawyers for VOLPE were successful in getting a temporary injunction against the route through Leakin Park. The lawsuit relied on the new tools afforded to them through the Overton Park case and coincident policy changes. These tools, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), required public hearings, and environmental impact statements (EIS), were not useful to groups looking to preserve their homes and continue to live within the city.
Judges hearing a lawsuit brought by the larger coalition of Baltimore highway activistsâa group called MADâruled against the case on all counts. While MADâs lawyer used arguments successful in the Overton Park and Leakin Park cases, the judges found that the public hearings and impact statement for the majority-Black and impoverished Franklin-Mulberry corridor in west Baltimore were adequate and did not necessitate additional environmental study. Since demolition in the corridor took place prior to any environmental study, the judges found that the site was already determined to be suitable for route placement. This ruling was made in spite of the long history of racialized dispossession and disinvestment that occurred in the corridor prior to the emergence of strengthened environmental protections.
While MADâs case lost on procedural grounds, the tools afforded through environmental policy were an ill-fit definitionally as well. As the judges noted, injunctions should only be issued when projects are âto prevent continuing work in areas that have already been changed in an environmental sense.â They cite clear cutting forests or dam building activities as examples of environmental alteration â signaling a clear distinction between what we might now refer to as natural and built environments.
The consequences of these inequitable legal and political tools are visible in Baltimoreâs landscape. The âhighway to nowhereâ divides west Baltimore while vacant row homes overlook the sunken, partially constructed interstate. Leakin Park sits just a few miles away, relatively undisturbed.
As we plot out the path towards the anti-racist city, we must simultaneously amend the practices and procedures that have burdened others. Importantly, we must begin to see the tools of our professions as enmeshed within multiple systems and structures. What we understand as a best practice to achieve environmental preservation may also result in the worst possible outcome for a neighborhood, a resident, or a community.
Change requires not only peeking outside of our disciplinary silos, but also challenging our notions of what natures, environments, and beings ought to be preserved, nurtured, and maintained.
The project of the anti-racist city requires a heterogeneous set of tools. We must design these tools to serve and address the environmental problems communities deem most pressing. Developing this new toolkit necessitates the end of universal and top-down approaches to environmental management. Our task is one of humility. In this relinquishment is the kernel of liberation, an opportunity to remake our practices to address the problems and desires of those most in need.
Diana Wiesner is a landscape architect, proprietor of the firm Architecture and Landscape, and director of the non-profit foundation Cerros de BogotĂĄ.
Nos preguntamos dĂłnde y en cuĂĄntas calles de las urbes colombianas rendimos tributo a nuestros paisajes, a los pueblos originarios o a los indĂgenas? Nuestras plazas estĂĄn repletas de monumentos de una España que arrasĂł con poblaciones y ecosistemas.
Un grupo de indĂgenas Misak, usando cuerdas, derriban una estatua del español SebastiĂĄn de BelalcĂĄzar, que estaba ubicada en el Morro de TulcĂĄn. Imagen tomada de: Casa Fractal Cali. Abril 2021
Para algunos, derrumbar monumentos significa borrar huellas y argumentos que sirven para reinterpretar la historia. Estamos viviendo una nueva relaciĂłn con estos elementos que llegan a reflejar ciertas identidades incompletas.
Nos preguntamos dĂłnde y en cuĂĄntas calles de las urbes colombianas rendimos tributo a nuestros paisajes, a los pueblos originarios o a los indĂgenas. Nuestras plazas estĂĄn repletas de monumentos de una España que arrasĂł con poblaciones y ecosistemas. Muchas personas proponen que la mayorĂa de estos monumentos deberĂan exhibirse en los museos, como parte de la historia. El debate estĂĄ abierto.
Gonzalo Fuenmayor. The Unexpected Guest – Special Edition Faena Collection, 2017. Tomado de la exposiciĂłn «MitologĂas Tropicales del artista colombiano Gonzalo Fuenmayor», llevada a cabo en el Museum of Fine Arts de Boston.
ÂżCuĂĄl es, entonces, la legĂtima representatividad? Si en lugar de las ordenanzas de las Indias âen las que el damero pasaba por encima de las geografĂas onduladasâ las ciudades se hubieran estructurado desde las cuencas y desde la naturaleza, tal vez el resultado hubiesen sido trazados y ciudades orgĂĄnicas, con otras jerarquĂas y otros «desĂłrdenes». ÂżAcaso ese orden-desordenado o el nuevo orden que reclamamos âbasado en soluciones que tienen como eje la naturalezaâ serĂĄ reflejo de sociedades mĂĄs democrĂĄticas y equitativas o que quieren llegar a serlo?
Colombia es, en efecto, un conjunto superpuesto de estas dualidades: españoles-indĂgenas, naturaleza-no naturaleza, entre otras; sin embargo, lo mĂĄs probable es que nos reconozcamos en una sola de esas miradas.
DecĂa Fernando Patiño, lĂder de la FundaciĂłn RĂos y Ciudades, que habrĂa que «soñar con nuevos sĂmbolos para este paĂs tan golpeado por una violencia que ya tiene mĂĄs años que nosotros, la generaciĂłn de la mitad del siglo veinte». Y, en efecto, son los rĂos, las montañas y los vestigios de humedales âmadre viejasâ los que deberĂan ser nuevos sĂmbolos de uniĂłn, sin necesidad de levantarles un pedestal.
BastarĂa con permanecer en profundo sentimiento de respeto y afecto al encuentro sagrado de las neblinas, las cordilleras y las aguas. El patrimonio de la vida. El respeto y el honor a todo aquello que lo representa, sin formalismos, deberĂa ser la legĂtima representatividad de los territorios.
* * *
On identity and duality
Let us ask: where, and in how many streets of Colombian cities do we pay tribute to our landscapes, native peoples, or indigenous people? Our plazas are full of monuments to a Spain that razed populations and ecosystems.
It is difficult to understand the realities of inequality across Colombia, from the peasant life of the Sumapaz pĂĄramo to the experiences of urban indigenous people. Our understanding is limited to the little we know or what we are told by the media, in their terms. There are a lot of nuances that make interpretation difficult.
What is currently happening in Colombia represents a country ablaze with pain. On the one hand, indigenous people and citizens are tearing down monuments such as those of the founders of Bogota and Cali, which for them are symbols of colonialism. “By destroying the statues, they vindicate the memory of their ancestors murdered and enslaved by the elites. They also [dismantle them] as a sign of protest for the threats they have received,” say the media. What for the indigenous is an act of dignity, for others is an act of vandalism and violence. The statue of SebastiĂĄn de BelalcĂĄzar, founder of Cali, was built on the hill of TulcĂĄn, on top of a pre-Columbian cementery.
A group of Misak Indians, using ropes, pull down a statue of the Spanish SebastiĂĄn de BelalcĂĄzar, which was located in the Morro de TulcĂĄn. Image taken from: Casa Fractal Cali. April 2021
Experts in heritage conservation question these actions because the statues reflect a common history; not a recent moment but a preceding one. But, at the same time, they also recognize the statues as vehicles for incomplete narratives that must be debated. Their representations do not reflect the plurality of life and diversity. This explains why violence against cultural symbols, exercised by different sectors of society, has been recurrent in human history.
For some, tearing down monuments means erasing traces and arguments that serve to misrepresent history. We are living a new relationship with these elements that come to reflect certain incomplete identities.
Let us ask: where, and in how many streets of Colombian cities, do we pay tribute to our landscapes, native peoples, or indigenous people. Our plazas are full of monuments to a Spain that razed populations and ecosystems. Many people propose that most of these monuments should be exhibited in museums, as part of history, not honored in city squares. The debate is open.
Gonzalo Fuenmayor. The Unexpected Guest – Special Edition Faena Collection, 2017. Taken from the exhibition “Tropical Mythologies by Colombian artist Gonzalo Fuenmayor,” held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
In this interpretative rupture of colonialist symbols, let us also recognize the fact that we have erased many of the palatial and agricultural settlements of our ancestors, which are closely linked to nature. A good example of this are settlements of the Muisca society on the banks of the Bogota River.
What is, then, the legitimate representation of people or territory? If instead of the ordinances of the Indiesâin which the urban checkerboards reflected the undulating political and colonial geographiesâthe cities had been structured to reflect the indigenous origins and nature, perhaps the result would have been organic layouts and cities, with other hierarchies and different “disorders”. Will such disorderly order, or the new order that we demand based on solutions that have nature as their axis, be a reflection of more democratic and equitable societies, or societies that want to become more democratic and equitable?
Colombia is indeed an overlapping set of dualities: of Spanish and indigenous; of nature and non ânature among others. The probably is that we only recognize one side of these halfâs.
Fernando Patiño, Rios y Ciudades Foundation chair, said that we should “dream of new symbols for this country so battered by a violence that is already older than us, the generation of the mid-twentieth century”. And, indeed, it is the rivers, the mountains and the vestiges of wetlandsâour ancient mothersâthat should be new symbols of union, without the need to erect pedestals for them.
It would be enough to remain in a deep feeling of respect and affection for the sacred meeting of the mists, the mountain ranges and the watersâthe heritage of life. The respect and honor to everything that represents it, without formalisms, should be the legitimate representation of the territories.
Laura is currently pursuing a PhD in geography at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the civic groups that care for the local environment, and on the potential for urban environmental stewardship to strengthen communities and make them more resilient to disaster and disturbance.
Laura Landau
Real transformation only happens when we examine issues of ownership and control in order to radically redistribute power. The good news is that many environmental groups are already showing us how to take these steps.
Thanks to the work of environmental justice scholars and activists, we have long understood that the placement, quality, and safety of environmental resources are shaped by structural racism. This is often discussed in terms of distributional justice, or the equal distribution and maintenance of green and blue spaces. During COVID-19 in the United States, we saw first-hand how access to open space, the safest place to spend time in public during the pandemic, is inequitably distributed. Further, the events of summer 2020âfrom the racialized police call on Christian Cooper to George Floydâs murderâreminded us that even in public spaces, non-white bodies are not granted equal safety and freedom. These instances go beyond distributional justice to issues of procedural justice and interactional justice, which get at the inequitable decision-making processes and inclusivity within green and blue spaces.
In order to work against the injustices that are so deeply embedded in our society, we have to acknowledge the ways in which our histories of colonization and slavery continue to shape our urban environments. This work begins with being explicitly anti-racist in our missions and actions. This includes speaking up and sharing statements in response to racist violence, conducting anti-bias trainings for staff, board members, and volunteers, taking a look at who is represented (and who is absent) in each of these roles and at all levels of the organization, and initiating dialogues to gather input on what needs to change.
But the work does not end there. Real transformation only happens when we examine issues of ownership and control in order to radically redistribute power. The good news is that many environmental groups are already showing us how to take these steps.
In summer 2020, along with my colleagues at the USDA Forest Service and the NYC Urban Field Station, I interviewed representatives from 34 civic environmental stewardship groups in New York City. These groups range from small informal neighborhood groups to citywide organizations, yet they share an intention to steward the local environment through land management, conservation, scientific monitoring, systems transformation, education, or advocacy. I found that stewards are already participating in anti-racism work in a wide variety of waysâsome just beginning to examine their relationships to environmental justice, but others thinking deeply and creatively about how to use their power and resources. For example, one steward shared her vision to connect and partner with an Indigenous community group and offer them ownership of a garden plot as a gesture to the LANDBACK movement. In addition to allowing Indigenous stewardship of the land, this partnership could become a powerful education tool for the many school groups that come through the garden. Imagine if all of our conversations about environmental equity started from a place of acknowledging that the land we manage is stolen land. How might that change the way we think about environmental justice?
Another group that stewards a neighborhood park was able to leverage their power to support protesters following the police murder of George Floyd. When they noticed that NYPD vehicles were surrounding the park during peaceful protests, they stepped in to communicate on behalf of the organizers and requested that no more police vans be sent. This seemingly simple step limited potentially violent action by police against protesters, and affirmed to the community that the park is a place where they should feel safe and protected.
Finally, a number of stewardship groups led by women of color discussed the steps they are taking to gain ownership of their local food systems. They shared that food sovereignty and control of the food chain are essential to promoting the health and economic wellbeing of their communities. Efforts such as starting locally owned food co-ops and sliding scaled produce boxes have the potential to become long-term and sustainable interventions to address chronic issues like food apartheid. These shifts do not happen overnight, but they are nonetheless crucial seeds of change. If we learn from and support the efforts of groups like these, I trust that we will begin to see more new and creative projects that deepen the possibilities for anti-racist natural systems management.
Designing thriving urban ecologies for 10Â 000 generations and more
We at Open Design Afrika believe that collaborative Creative Intelligence is a SUPER POWER! We also believe that every child and citizen should have the right to develop it and be empowered to confidently contribute to the future-making of a world we can ALL feel proud to live, work and play in.
As a designer I always look at our manmade world through a design lens with the human race at the helm as the chief designer. For generations we have successfully engineered a very destructive and unjust world for living in.
The current Global Pandemic sharply heightened our awareness of thriving inequalities and how everything in this world is connected âfrom the sunflower to the sunfishâ, as boldly expressed by Richard Williams also known as Prince EAâ, a spoken word artist and civil rights activist, in his epic video titled âMan vs Earthâ, a highly recommended video that cuts to the bone, puts things into perspective and breaks down complexities into basic building blocks, vital to ignite, escalate and sustain real systemic change.
Humanityâs inability to systemically approach the design of our manmade world, has captured and disabled global populations from prospering and confidently contributing as future makers.
The triple bottom lineâ People, Planet, and the Economyâforms the foundation of this design process. Disregarding people and planet had a devastating ripple effect felt by generations. This resulted into a serious disconnect across all levels of society, in business, government and in our environments. History has proven that without a holistic and systemic approach it is not possible to create a conducive environment where ecologies can flourish and a prosperous value chain can be developed that is beneficial to all. At best, the legacy of the human race has been a world that is in constant survival mode,
Today far too many show the scars of the unjust global culture we have engineered, but as an intelligent species I strongly believe that we are equally capable of designing the exact opposite if change is driven through wisdom instead.
Observations
Why do we continue to reinvent the wheel with solutions less impactful and sustainable? As the top designer of ecologies, Nature boasts with the most impressive portfolio of successful models, processes and systems that stretch across 3,8 billion years which allows all living organisms no matter their size, to flourish. It will be very wise to learn from Nature and implement these learnings across education, in society and across all other sectors. We must learn from nature how to approach our manmade world as a holistic design challenge and aim to develop strategies that will impact and allow humanity to thrive for 10 000 generations and more – THE SAME WAY NATURE DOES. This I believe is the greatest legacy worth aspiring too.
Education shapes the fabric of society and to date it has been a significant contributor to inequalities. The education we have experienced across generations did not optimize participation and the opportunity for ALL children to develop their full potential. It certainly did not enable society with FUTURE-MAKING LIFE SKILLS. Developing Creative Intelligence through creativity, phenomenon base learning, play AND STEAM education democratises participation and optimise the learning experience and the development of crucial future-making skills in ALL CHILDREN and across all levels of society. This I believe will be a great start to address the skill shortage of the past, and shape the foundation to start transforming society into a more prosperous world thatâs beneficial to all.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution suggests unique and exciting opportunities for large scale transformation to achieve and uphold the UN SDGâs. Yet a symbiotic relationship between man and machine is crucial to succeed. Priority investment in technology and tech skills without EQUAL investment in Creative Intelligence, is not driving and serving this agenda. This includes future-making skills like empathy, creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, complex problem solving, judgement, decision making and collaboration that defines and differentiate us from the machine â itâs our ONLY competitive advantage. Other investments will proof to be short-lived without investing in appropriate social and human capital that can uphold, maintain and drive future prosperity.
Albert Einstein once said: âImagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited but Imagination encircles the worldâ and I could not agree more.Â
Imagine the immense added value and ripple effect on our future economies, environments and communities if Empathy and Emotional Intelligence guided all our decisions, in government, as leaders and in civil society. Creative Intelligence will develop the human qualities and social capital thatâs needed to drive and build the just and equitable society we should strive to design.
At Open Design Afrika we believe that collaborative Creative Intelligence is a SUPER POWER! We also believe that every child and citizen should have the right to develop it and be empowered to confidently contribute to the future-making of a world we can ALL feel proud to live, work and play in.
Watch Open Design Afrikaâs message to the world:
Enfim, apesar dessas consideraçÔes um pouco superficiais, pretendi com a minha participação nesse fórum, chamar atenção para a questão do racismo contra os povos originårios no Brasil e sua ligação direta com modos de vida que destroem a natureza do nosso planeta.
 * * *Â
The history of the resistance of the indigenous populations in Brazil is a history of struggle to protect their lands from being permanently besieged by aggressive capitalism and financed by global industry. Extraction of ores, wood, and oil are our worst enemies. Consumers around the world are directly responsible.Â
My wife and I are grandsons of indigenous Brazilians, but we don’t know much about this past. We can easily identify many generations of our white ancestors, but we have no information about our indigenous progenitors. This is because of the history of very aggressive racism against the original people in Brazil. Our grandparents and their relatives suffered real exterminations and, therefore, at the beginning of the 20th century it was very dangerous to demonstrate their own culture. Parents did not want their children to suffer like them and started to mimic white people’s culture, changed names, and deleted their past. This happens to a large portion of the Brazilian population, but I cannot specify the percentage of the 200 million inhabitants who share this same history, not least because many do not identify themselves with indigenous cultures.
The indigenous people are authentic and true protectors of the forests, in addition to possessing very special methods to take care of nature and cure many challenges. So, the protection of the indigenous peoples is, at the same time, the protection of nature. The promotion of indigenous peopleâs cultures is at the same time the promotion of solutions for the nature of the planet. The history of the resistance of the indigenous populations in Brazil is a history of struggle to protect their lands from being permanently besieged by aggressive capitalism and financed by global industry. Extraction of ores, wood, and oil are our worst enemies and consumers around the world are responsible for the system that generates the imbalance that is taking Earth to its end and of which the lands protected by the indigenous peoples are the last frontiers of unexplored forests.
In addition to the land, indigenous people also fight for the maintenance of their cultures and their languages. According to ONU (2014), there are 256 different indigenous groups in Brazil and about 180 languages, many of which are close to extinction. Only to compare, in South America there are 45 million indigenous people, 642 indigenous groups, and 500 languages. According to CEPAL (2010), Brazil has only 900,000 indigenous, but has the largest number of indigenous communities (305), followed by Colombia (102), Peru (85), Mexico (78) and Bolivia (39). Although the numbers contain some inaccuracy, the vulnerability of Brazilian indigenous peoples is clearly noted.
In relation to indigenous lands, the attitude of the Brazilian State has been one of slow demarcation, more or less respected depending on the governments of the moment. However, the strength of capital is much greater than that of the state and is able to face and involve all governments in their lobbies, which results in a permanent threat of setbacks despite some advances. The current situation is very worrying in Brazil, due to the sum of factors: a very aggressive government in relation to indigenous lands and the worsening of the pandemic with the consequent mortality of the indigenous population, known to be more susceptible to influenza viruses.
In relation to the promotion of indigenous cultures, the non-indigenous population (the majority of the Brazilian population is mixed between white, black, and indigenous peoples) has been more interested over the last decades in the knowledge of some cultures of the original native peoples, as well as the ancestral cultures. But it is a timid awareness of the seriousness of the situation to which these cultures are subjected in Brazil. For example, there is still no strategic project to engage the population in the learning of indigenous languages by non-indigenous.
These are just brief observations, but with my participation in this forum I intended to draw attention to the issue of racism against the indigenous peoples in Brazil and their direct connection with ways of life that destroy the nature of our planet.
Morgan Grove is a social scientist and Team Leader for the USDA Forest Service’s Baltimore Urban Field Station and is a lecturer at Yale University. He joined the USDA Forest Service in 1996 and has been a Co-Principal Investigator in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) since its beginning in 1997.
[The findings and conclusions in this essay are those of the author and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.]
Morgan Grove
Institutionalized racism is a resilient system
An âanti-â urban ecology is more than social interactions and ecological thinking. An âanti-â urban ecology is to understand and act upon how these institutionalized systems alter the ecologies and interactions of species, populations, communities, landscapes, and ecosystems at local, regional, and global scales.
Here in the United States, institutionalized racism has been adaptive and resilient since before the founding of the country. It has persisted despite a civil war, amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and changes in the countryâs laws and programs.
And while progress has been made, institutionalized racism persists with very deep and widespread roots. The same is likely to be true in other societies based upon caste, colonization, or religion and manifest in their urban ecological systems.
An âanti-â approach in urban ecology depends upon tackling institutionalized systems of race, caste, colonialism, or religion as resilient systems. There is a profound and deep seriousness and meaning to this statement that is neither academic nor intellectual. It is an adaptive and resilient system and requires a wide variety of adaptive, systemic responses. Again, it is an adaptive system. It is also a complex system. While complicated and complex systems may have many parts, the interactions among the parts in complex systems are interdependent and involve feedbacks, non-linearities, thresholds, and uncertainties that are missing from a complicated system.
Many of these interactions may appear prima facie to be objective and unbiased. But that is how the prejudices of banal bureaucracies of governance can often work. When scrutinized further, the racist intent or at least racist outcomes of âobjectiveâ rationales become manifest. For instance, the City of Baltimore had a history from the 1930s to 1970s of approving environmental zoning variances in âdeterioratedâ neighborhoods and denying zoning variances in âwell-keptâ neighborhoods. The rationale was that the value of deteriorated neighborhoods had already been reduced. Thus, the marginal harm was small. In contrast, the value of well-kept neighborhoods was high and the marginal harm would be great. The net result of this practice was the longterm concentration of polluting businesses in Black neighborhoods and protection of white neighborhoods in the city.
An âanti-â urban ecology is more than social interactions and ecological thinking. An âanti-â urban ecology is to understand and act upon how these institutionalized systems alter the ecologies and interactions of species, populations, communities, landscapes, and ecosystems at local, regional, and global scales. Further, it is more than âimpacts onâ ecological phenomena. An âanti-â urban ecology is to conceive of and understand these types of ecologies and their interactions as active agents and narratives in social-ecological systems of institutionalized racism.
Institutionalized systems of race, caste, colonialism, or religion will be a major challenge to climate change adaptation. Climate change creates societal disruptions, displacements, and migrations of human populations to new countries and from rural to urban areas. Resettlement to urban areas is often concentrated and segregated. In the United States, we have seen major migrations before from Scandinavia, Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe, and from the South. All of those migrations resulted in fundamental, longterm restructuring of urban ecological systems. Over the next 30 years, it is unknown whether climate-driven migrations to urban areas will reinforce or reckon with institutionalized systems of prejudice.
When one envisions success, how is it done and what does it look like? First, in order to create resilient systems that are good, we will need to learn from and disassemble resilient systems that are bad: race, caste, colonialism, or religion. Second, success for an âanti-â urban ecology may need to be recast as a progressive urban ecology that supports universal human rights and self-determination. Recast from what one is against into declarations of what one is for. But does it look like assimilation into the existing, normative goals, processes, and appearances of the existing privileged peoples and places? Would that be success? Is this the reference for goal-setting and evaluation? Or, is there a different future that simultaneously dismantles the resilient parts, feedbacks, and adaptive capacities of institutionalized racism on one hand and builds new visions and systems of society that are resilient socially and economically and in the face of climate change? These types of questions will be fundamental to a progressive and universalist urban ecology.
CJ Goulding (he/him) (@goulding_jr) is a weaver, a facilitator, a community builder, an organizer, and a storyteller who invests in the growth of people, the growth of connection between people, and the growth of communities. In his career, he has trained, mentored and supported national networks of over 450 leaders who are changing systems and creating equitable access to nature in their communities. He believes in liberation for people of color that is not based on the context of White supremacy, and is committed to organizing and redistributing power and resources in order to achieve equity and justice.
CJ Goulding
Changing Urban Ecology Through Radical Imagination and Community Gardens
While we recognize what needs to be done, it will not be easy, and we will face pushback and resistance from those who would like to see things remain as they have been.
Imagine with me that we are building an urban community garden. Can you see the empty lot? Can you hear the sounds of the city and community around you? As you create that mental picture, hold the idea that this garden is synonymous with the environmental, outdoor, and urban ecology movements.
Our world and our society are built on our beliefs and imaginations. In the United States, there is a blind faith, an inherent trust in our policies/laws, our society, our representatives, our systems, that they are built to support the idea, built into the U.S. Constitution, of âall men being created equalâ. When we examine the history of the empty lot, this garden, it tells us a different story, one where our country and movements have been planted in exclusionary soil.
The mainstream outdoor and environmental movements have roots in ideas that imagined the wilderness and nature to be pristine, serene, untouched and untrammeled by human contamination. Some environmental leaders and ideas around those times also include an imagination that like wilderness and urban areas, people held different value and could be separated when considering the impacts of policies, resources, and living conditions.
In the past, the plants sprouting in this empty lot from those imaginary roots are the weeds of the removal of the Miwuk and Paiute people from Yosemite Valley, the mistreatment of farmworkers during the 1950s (which led Dolores Huerta to start the National Farmworkers Association), and events like a toxic smokestack being demolished in Little Village, Chicago in 2020 despite the blatant concerns for the health of the Black and Brown people in the surrounding community.
All this is rooted and planted in the imagination, the belief and mindset that the mistreatment of people, specifically communities of color, for the benefit of âwildernessâ and for a privileged group of people is justified, that certain people are expendable. These are the sewage sludge, industrial residue, the pesticides in our garden. These are the factors we will have to acknowledge and overcome in order to grow life in this plot.
So, what is the solution? How do we grow a garden in contaminated soil?
First, we get specific in our awareness of the contaminants. Knowledge of soil health and potential contamination are keys to helping communities identify and correct problems so that a garden is safe and productive. The same applies to our movement.
To plant this community garden, to lead the movement forward in an anti-racist and equitable way, we have to lay bare the mental models that harm people and land. We have to call those contaminants in the soil out specifically to treat it and grow moving forward.
FSGâs Water of Systems Change refers to six implicit and explicit conditions of systems change that we must investigate in order to be able to change. They are: Structural (policies, practices, resource flows), relational (relationships and connections, power dynamics), and transformative at the core (mental models).
Once we understand the contaminants in our movementâs racist soil, we have to employ what adrienne maree brown calls a âradical imaginationâ that thinks generations ahead, outside of the habits that brought us to our current predicament. The colonial leaders who brought us here are not going to be the leaders who bring us forward. Instead, our imagination for this garden has to be based in what has worked before and what we imagine is possible. In that way, although we have started with contaminated soil, our future is positive, informed, inclusive, and hopeful.
This community garden will bring life to land that was poisoned. These relationships we build are raised beds, the community centered practices are soil amendments to stabilize the contaminants. We will address those contaminants (exclusionary and racist mindsets), remove and unlearn those habits, and replace them with clean soil. We will follow knowledge from Indigenous communities and communities of color like the use of phytotechnologies (plants that extract, degrade, contain or immobilize contaminants in soil) in order to lead us forward.
While we recognize what needs to be done, it will not be easy, and we will face pushback and resistance from those who would like to see things remain as they have been. Keep making progress.
I asked you to imagine us building an urban community garden. Our radical imagination has given us the context to ground us and the awareness of how we can move forward equitably. Now letâs open our eyes and get to work.
Steward Pickett is a Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. His research focuses on the ecological structure of urban areas and the temporal dynamics of vegetation.
Steward T.A. Pickett
Critical race theory has suggested sequential steps that urban ecology must use to contribute to just and equitable cities, towns, and regions: (1) Awareness of how racism shapes places; (2) Acknowledgement that racism evolves; (3) Inclusion of marginalized communities in research; (4) Embedding of anti-racist praxis in core philosophies.
Social, economic, and political research has exposed the ideological drivers behind colonialism. Racism is one of the prime tools of colonialism and industrial capitalism. The roots of ecology, along with those of other disciplines born in the last two centuries, are entwined with colonialism, racism, colorism, classism, sexism, and other tools of empire. However, the fact that urban ecology shares this tainted history does not excuse it from seeking an anti-colonialist, anti-racist future (Baker, 2021). Ecology, like many other disciplines, must first address and then work to dismantle the systemic racism in which it is embedded (Pickett & Grove, 2020; Schell et al., 2020).
Ford and Airhihenbuwa (2010) laid out a strategy for applying critical race theory to public health, which I believe ecology can also employ. Critical race theory offers ecology a way to acknowledge the role of structural racism in its history and practice, while at the same time suggesting how the discipline can expunge the influence of this systemic racism from its ongoing research and application. All urban ecology work, not just that focused on the green spaces in the urban mosaic, should follow Ford and Airhihenbuwa through these steps:
Adopt Race Consciousness. Ecologists must become aware of the role racism has playedâand continues to playâin shaping the discipline and its work. Being conscious of race is not the same as being racist.Nor is âcolorblindnessâ the same as being anti-racist (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Kendi, 2019). Instead, colorblindness encourages people to ignore the substantial and continued role of structural racism in the human-ecological systems that ecology must study to promote sustainability or even just to work in the Anthropocene.
Understand that Racism Evolves. Racism, which emerged from colonialism and the ideology of white supremacy, adjusts to political, economic, and cultural changes. Those adjustments are often subtle or couched in non-racial terms. They become ordinary or banalâânaturalizedââand hence may be hard to detect by those who are not the targets of racism. Indeed, even those who are afforded lower racialized status may not be aware of all the ways in which racism constrains their lives. Those on the top of the heap are even less likely to see racism at work on their behalf.
Center Work in the Margins. The margin refers to communities that have been deprived of power or resources. It is in such marginalized situations where anti-racist research questions, institutions, and projects must be grounded. The realities and worldviews of racialized groups that are oppressed and disempowered must be reflected in research. This move prevents the questions, methods, and interactions by which research is conducted to privilege the realities and worldviews of those at the top of the racialized and class hierarchy. Such awareness of center-margin dynamics is also relevant to research conducted by Global North institutions and scholars in the Global South.
Employ a Critical Race âPraxisâ. According to Ford and Airhihenbuwa (2021:S32), âcritical race theory is an iterative methodology for helping investigators remain attentive to equity while carrying out research, scholarship, and practiceâ (emphasis added). Thus, critical race theory invites ecology to be reflexive in all steps of its work in systems where past and present colonialism, evolving structural racism, and the obfuscation of âpost-racialâ rhetoric are in play. It requires ecologists to recognize that intentional racist behaviors are not required for racism to be an ecological factor.
Critical race theory has suggested four sequential steps that urban ecology must use to contribute to just and equitable cities, towns, and regions. First and foremost, ecologists must become aware of the role that racism and classism continue to play in constructing and enforcing inequity in urban places. Second, we must understand and investigate how the manifestations of racism continue to change in urban places, and how racism continues to generate novel forms of oppression and exclusion. These manifestations of racism can drive social and ecological processes in urban systems. Third, urban ecological research must stop neglecting marginalized communities, and indeed, focus at least some of its efforts in those places. Ethics requires the constant, engaged involvement of residents in marginalized communities. Finally, if the first three steps become habitual, the fourth step will signify the achievment of an anti-racist ecology as an intellectual, practical, and ethical instrument in urban ecologyâs normal toolkit. It is urgent that we begin the journey along the four steps identified by critical race theory. That journey can help ecology take up its responsibility toward equitable urban futures.
References
Baker, B. (2021). Race and Biology. BioScience, biaa157. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa157
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (5th ed.). Roman and Littlefield.
Ford, C. L., & Airhihenbuwa, C. O. (2010). Critical Race Theory, Race Equity, and Public Health: Toward Antiracism Praxis. American Journal of Public Health, 100(S1), S30âS35. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.171058
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an Anti-racist. One World.
Pickett, S. T., & Grove, J. M. (2020). An ecology of segregation. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 18(10), 535â535. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2279
Schell, C. J., et al. (2020). The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay4497
Natural systems are putty in the hands of city planners and the wealthy. Intentional inequities, more frequently than not, shape cities. UEE builds the leadership skills that support change-making focused on fairness, equity and justice.
Antiracist thinking applied to the urban matrix means that we commit to making unbiased, equitable choices about the ways that water and air, roads and buildings, plants and animals, as well as humans, are considered in city planning. It is not as simple as it may sound. The equitable management of natural systems in Seattle, for example, deeply intersects with its politics, cultural and class matrix, racial and ethnic make-up, economics, and entrepreneurial dreams.
Power belongs mostly to people who have money. Most often, those who are impacted the most, have little say in the matter. Unless you understand how the policies that govern growth are created, it is easy to become a victim of someone elseâs desire. The disenfranchised are often not involved in decision-making unless advocates make it so. The graduate program I designed (Urban Environmental Education M.A.Ed. at Antioch University Seattle) prepares our students to understand and respond to these issues. Who benefits and who doesnât from the impact of growth on natural systems? What species gain or lose a survival advantage? What humans benefit or are deprived of health and well-being? How do we learn to navigate the rights of all in fair and just ways?
Natural systems are as complex as they are necessary, which we forget sometimes in our hurry to develop places for the comfort of humans. It is amazing how natural systems and their inhabitants continue to adapt amid the chaos and change. Coyotes wandering the streets of cities at night. Racoons are in trashcans. Rats find new homes when buildings are razed. Plants taking refuge in the cracks of sidewalks. Water runs wherever a track can be found. So how do we to apply antiracist thinking to natural systems in the urban matrix?
I tried something different in my graduate class 10 years ago to better understand this complex dynamic. Students were challenged to think about the conservation of natural systems in urban places by radically shifting their perspective. Iâve used it since with great success. First, we walk the streets or the land with observational intention, making notes and maps and taking the time to know all of a place. We use a technique from On Looking by Horowitz, taking multiple routes through a neighborhood as an insect or animal, a young child or disabled adult. Â Â Students step aside from their human identity and represent another life-form or aspect of place: topography, air, water, soil. Students research how and why different species, habitats, people would be impacted by development. In the end, a trial is held. Each student testifies from the adopted perspective: trees, animals, water, soil, humans. The resulting designs for development are unique and inclusive. Taking the time to consider equitably how each vested interest will fare from the new structural development stimulates creative thinking and a unique plan for the future of each place.
If we listen carefully to community members about how the city manages natural systems, we often find that residents know clearly and deeply about the impact that policies have on the natural systems impacting their health and wellbeing as well as their access. They know from experience how natural systems have been altered, destroyed or improved. The impact of policies are revealed through their stories, their concerns and their perspectives. Green spaces in cities supposedly benefit everyone. Except that, green spaces often raise property values and become expensive, more exclusive and less accessible to âeveryoneâ. Â Following one of our âwalksâ through the city, a student of mine noticed a subtle divide between public and private use of the garden space.
âI was here today with my Urbanizing Environmental Education class to examine the natural and social forces that shape contemporary Seattle. This walk around Belltown sparked a reading from the Urban Ecology class on the history of Seattle and the tensions between public and private that have plagued the city since its beginnings. Using this block as an example, known as the Cistern Steps, we walked a series of terraced plantings designed to clean rainwater as it travels through the city. These green terraced plantings echo the emerald rice fields of SE Asia. The steps are a haven of food and shelter for local wildlife. I was taken by the beauty and function until I noticed that they are âstepsâ. Meaning that anyone not able to walk or using wheels are banned. Here is a community-based project built on a public city block, that is not accessible to everyone. Plus, the sharp features embedded in the walkway by the expensive apartment dwellers abutting, made it impossible to sit or lay down. What is the line between public and private and who benefits in the end?â (Melani Baker, UEE 2016)
The Urban Environmental Education M.A.Ed. focuses on urban ecology through the lens of equity and inclusion, justice and leadership. We are out on the streets asking questions: Where and how is water directed through neighborhoods and why? What is the line between public space and private controlâŠand who does each serve? Which neighborhoods are most impacted by air quality? How is stormwater runoff managed? Who benefits from tree canopy? How is wildlife managed? Where do the homeless find safe harbor?
The UEE approach deliberately integrates the study of systemic racism and the resulting policies and practices that govern the growth of cities. When the truth emerges, it becomes pretty clear who is in charge and who benefits from the decisions. Natural systems are putty in the hands of city planners and the wealthy. Intentional inequities, more frequently than not, shape cities. UEE builds the leadership skills that support change-making focused on fairness, equity and justice. This means getting out into communities that are experiencing inequity and listening. It also means advocating for changes in the process of creating policies so that they are more inclusive. It means learning to use participatory action research so that everyone has a say and widely diverse perspectives are gathered. As Alicia Garza says in The Purpose of Power:
âOur wildly varying perspectives are not just a matter of aesthetic or philosophical or technological concern. They also influence our understanding of how change happens, for whom change is needed, acceptable methods of making change, and what kind of change is possible.â
â Alicia Garza, The Purpose of Power, One World, 2020, page 5
Ebony Walden is an urban planner, consultant and facilitator with over a decade of experience working to transform communities. Ebony is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Ebony Walden Consulting (EWC), an urban strategy firm based in Richmond, Virginia. At EWC, she works with organizations to design and facilitate meetings, training and community engagement processes that explore race, equity and the creation of more just and inclusive communities. Ebony is also an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the City.
Ebony Walden
Nine elements of an anti-racist urban ecology
We need more planners, environmentalists, institutional and civic leaders, across races and with a broad intersection of identities committed to confronting racism in urban ecology in an ongoing, diligent, and vigilant fashion to disrupt the status quo of white supremacy.
The notion that everyone deserves access to nourishing built and natural environments regardless of their race (or any identity) should be built into the fundamentals of placemaking, but we know that in reality, it is quite the opposite. Racism in the United States has created a tale of two cities in most places, one white and thriving, the other black and brown and struggling. In Richmond Virginia, for example, there is a 20-year difference in life expectancy between one predominantly black neighborhood and another predominantly white neighborhood. Likewise, communities of color have less access to green space, are more exposed to pollution, and are more likely to be impacted by extreme weather events due to climate change. If we are to move toward an urban environmental ecology where everyone has access to resources and opportunities, and there is equity in outcomes and participation, we need to be explicit about upending racism. Whether you call that advancing racial equity or anti-racism, what is necessary is that we are overt, action-oriented, and disruptive in thought, word, and deed.
An anti-racist is actively conscious about race and racism and takes action to end racial inequities, not only in outcomes and processes but in our own biased perceptions and behaviors. If the goal of urban ecology is balance between people and our built and natural environments, then an anti-racist approach to urban ecology would be paying attention to and disrupting the ways racism has produced inequities in that balance, burdening people of color in the process.
Examining the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of racial prejudice and discrimination in cities and how those have and continue to manifest in our natural and built environments.
Exploring the influence of race and culture in our own personal and professional attitudes and behavior.
Identifying and counteracting bias and stereotyping in our communities and the organizations and institutions responsible for our environmental and brick and mortar placemaking.
Dealing with racial tensions and conflicts that arise in our communities â around use, access to, and regulation of space. We need safe, inclusive, and culturally responsive spaces.
Identifying appropriate anti-racist resources to incorporate into our urban and environmental planning education and practices.
Developing new approaches to placemaking that take a diversity of ethnic and racial groups into consideration â using a targeted universalist approach that centers BIPOC voices, leadership, and decision making.
Developing equity assessments of new and existing policies, programs, procedures, and practices that shape the built and natural environments.
Assessing the hidden narratives evident in environmental and placemaking efforts and institutions, making them more inclusive and reflective of a broad range of people and experiences.
Ensuring that government and institutional policies, practices, and processes are consistent with equity goals and provide practitioners with the knowledge and skills to implement equity initiatives.
An anti-racism approach to urban ecology must be proactive in uprooting racism in the structure and nature of our cities â in its people, places, processes, institutions, and our urban and environmental planning efforts. To do that, we need more planners, environmentalists, institutional and civic leaders, across races and with a broad intersection of identities committed to confronting racism in urban ecology in an ongoing, diligent, and vigilant fashion to disrupt the status quo of white supremacy.
Charles Prempeh, PhD, is the Director of Research for African Christian-Muslim Interfaith International Council and holds a teaching appointment at the African University College of Communications, Accra, Ghana. He researches on religions, chieftaincy, politics, indigenous cosmological knowledge systems, and youth culture.
Charles Prempeh and Ibrahim Wallee
Decolonizing African ecology to promote sound ecosystems
There is a complex inter-mesh of racism, socio-political, and economic injustice that accounts for environmental degradation in Africa, all with colonial origins. Lands in Africa became the property of Europeans, with Africans enduring all forms of brutality. It must now be de-colonized.
Historically, different philosophical dispositions have influenced how human beings have interacted with the environment. Until the birth of modern science, human beings in the pre-industrial world had been at the mercy of the natural environment. They subsisted based on the natural orientation of the environment. So, either through hunting or gathering, the environment was the determining factor in human existence where the so-called primitive human being had little knowledge about progressâin the sense of humans dominating the environment. The idea of progress is a modern concept that followed a long historical trajectory of the invention of modern agriculture and science.
With the invention of agriculture in 9000 BC, humans learned how to rule over the environment. But things came to a head when modern science was born in the seventeenth century, with humans gathering momentum in controlling the environment. This crystallised the era of the industrial revolution, beginning in the 1730s.
Since the eighteenth century, human beings entered the Anthropocene phaseâas human activities began exerting a negative influence on the environment. But more central to the industrial revolution was the quest for material resources to feed growing industries in Europe. Prior to that, the need for human beings to work the large tracts of land in the Americas had resulted in the mass enslavement of Africans for about four centuries. The end of the slave trade was primarily a result of the industrial revolutionâeven though there were other secondary reasons, such as the advocates from humanitarian groups.
So, with the rise of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century and the increasing need for raw materials, Europeans had to develop their own philosophical traditions to rationalise the wanton exploitation of distant lands, especially in Africa. Just as Europeans had used socially constructed theoriesâsuch as the Hamitic hypothesisâto justify the enslavement of Africans, alternative theories were developed to justify the destruction of the ecological system of countries in Africa. We are particularly interested in the Hamitic hypothesis because of two mutually inclusive reasons: First; it denies Africaâs contribution to human civilization, and which leads to the west questioning Africaâs contribution to solving contemporary challenges, particularly ecological injustice. We, therefore, argue that critiquing this theory would help us chart new pathways in ensuring that Africa shares an equal table with the rest of the world to stem the tide against ecological injustice.
Framed as âlegitimateâ trade, European colonising powers, including the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Germans had to integrate the philosophy of property into the arena of colonisation in the late eighteenth century. Indeed, prior to this century, the notion of a property had been hotly debated among early English philosophers, including Thomas Locke. Thomas Locke had argued that whatever nature offers is free and that it becomes an individualâs property if an individual applies his or her labour to it. This led to the idea of terra nulliusâwhere nature was considered âno-man’s-landâ. Terra nullius was philosophical ammunition that inspired Europeans to set off destroying distant lands to benefit the metropolitan countries.
The above elaborations point to the historical origin of racism and inequality in using the natural environment. Lands in Africa became the property of Europeans, with Africans enduring all forms of brutality, including German acts of genocide, against the Herero people in Tanzania in 1904. More recently, Africa continues to be the dumping ground for electronic toxic waste from western countries, including Germany. For example, Agbogbloshie, a neighbourhood of Accra, is one of the dumping sites of electronic waste from the West. Similarly, the Chinese since the 1980s have also been complicit in working with their Ghanaian counterparts to destroy the countryâs water bodies through illegal mining, called Galamsey.
The above points to a complex inter-mesh of racism, socio-political, and economic injustice that accounts for environmental degradation in Africa. To address these issues, our paper explores how Africa and the world can work together to relieve the continent and the world from ecological injustice. Africa’s ecology needs to be decolonised. We argue that ecological decolonisation would be possible if Africans undertake the following steps: First, take pragmatic and strategic measures to minimise corruption within the environmental sector. Second, with Ghana, the country should engage all stakeholders, especially chiefs who are custodians of about 90% percent of land, to explore ways of overcoming ecological injustice. Third, countries in Africa should appeal to the international court to compel foreign countries and companies to stop destroying the ecology of Africa. Recently, in January 2021, Nigerian farmers in the Niger Delta won a court case against the Royal Dutch Shell company who were found culpable in oil polluting in Nigeria.
Ibrahim Wallee; is a development communicator, peacebuilding specialist, and environmental activist. He is the Executive Director of Center for Sustainable Livelihood and Development (CENSLiD), based in Accra, Ghana. He is a Co-Curator for Africa and Middle East Regions for The Nature of Cities Festivals.
Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA FRGS is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, USA. He is the originator of the concept of “just sustainabilities,” which explores the intersecting goals of social justice and environmental sustainability.
Julian Agyeman
Recognition, reconciliation, reparations? Just sustainabilities as an anti-racist, anti-colonial approach to urban ecologies
Two fundamental ârecognitionsâ before we can move forward: (1) we must recognize and acknowledge, openly, that in the U.S., we are on stolen land; (2) Second, we must recognize and acknowledge, openly, that in the U.S., urban planning is the spatial toolkit for articulating, implementing, and maintaining White Supremacy.
What our cities can become (sustainable, green, smart, sharing, resilient) and who is allowed to belong in them (recognition of indigeneity, difference, diversity, and a Right to the City) are fundamentally and inextricably interlinked. Yet we in the urban planning, urban ecology, and placemaking arena have focused almost exclusively on the becoming city, the city of âourâ dreams. But exactly whose dreams are these? These are not the dreams of those increasing numbers of people who are denied the right to belong through homelessness, racism, xenophobia, or being displaced by gentrification. We must build a broad coalition of politicians, city building professionals, non-profits, activists to weave a narrative around both urban belonging and urban becoming, together, using the concept of just sustainabilities as the anchor, or face deepening segregation, spatial and social inequities and injustices in our cities.
For the past 20 years, just sustainabilities has been used to explore the intersecting goals of social justice and environmental sustainability, defined as: the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.
But achieving just sustainabilities requires two fundamental ârecognitionsâ before we can move forward.
First, we must recognize and acknowledge, openly, that in the United States, we are on stolen land. Urban Indigenous cultures have been rendered largely invisible in most U.S. cities. Yet 78% of Native Americans live off-reservation, and 72% live in urban or suburban environments. Non-Indigenous planning and placemaking practitioners, urban ecologists, activists, and scholars alike must better support ongoing and emerging efforts to disrupt the erasure and displacement of Indigenous peoples, their histories and geographies, from the urban environment.
Second, we must recognize and acknowledge, openly, that in the U.S., urban planning is the spatial toolkit for articulating, implementing, and maintaining White Supremacy. Racial segregation today is the result of historic (and in many cases ongoing) practices such as the issuing of racialized real estate covenants, exclusionary zoning, redlining, racist housing and infrastructure policies such as building freeways through Black neighborhoods. While many of these practices have changed, their collective imprint lives on, proscribing the spatial practices of Black and Brown bodies, where they are, and aren’t allowed to go; where they can, and can’t live in cities.
Recognizing our cities as being on stolen land, our cities as being intentionally segregated, has to be the starting point for any emerging theory (and practice) of change. In re-narrating our cities in this way, we must acknowledge at all levels, the need for anti-colonial and anti-racist policies and practices. From there, we can begin to talk about reconciliation, restorative justice and reparations, as the examples below are beginning to do. Critical race theory and settler-colonial theory, despite what their political detractors say, have much to contribute to such discussions in terms of power asymmetries, rights, recognition, and cultural pluralism in how we imagine and design the built environment.
In June 2020, the City of Seattle announced it would transfer the Fire Station 6property at 23rd Ave and Yesler to community ownership (Community Land Trust), clearing the way for an Africatown-led redevelopment plan.
In July 2020, the city council of Asheville, NC, unanimously passed a resolutioncalling for reparations for the Black community, recognizing, acknowledging, and apologizing for both historical and contemporary systemic enslavement, racism, discrimination, and incarceration.
In October 2020, Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wuâs Food Justice Agenda notes that âFood justice means racial justice, demanding a clear-eyed understanding of how white supremacy has shaped our food systemsâ and that ânutritious, affordable, and culturally relevant food is a universal human right.â It includes provisions such as a formal process in which private developers would have to work with the community to ensure there is space for diverse food retailers and commercial kitchens, and licensing restrictions to discourage the proliferation of fast-food outlets in poorer neighborhoods.
In spring 2021, Participatory City Canada began working in K’jipuktuk/Halifax, NS. It is working with the Miâkmaw Nation on developing social infrastructure for reconciliation.
The good news is that conversations around anti-racist, anti-colonial policies and practices are increasingly widespread. The phrase White Supremacy, once the hushed subject of leftist discussions, is now a commonly used, if contested phrase. Now, we need to turn these phrases and conversations into a workable politics that recognizes rights, reconciles difference and restores human dignity.
Isabelle Anguelovski is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat AutĂČnoma de Barcelona. She is a social scientist trained in urban and environmental planning and coordinator of the research line Cities and Environmental Justice.
Isabelle Anguelovski, Anna Livia Brand, Malini Ranganathan, Derek Hyra
Decolonizing urban greening: Â From white supremacy to emancipatory planning for public green spaces
Decolonizing green city planning would involve prioritizing land recognition, redistribution, control, and reparations and developing new land arrangements as necessary to an environmentally just landscape.
Recent conversations around (in) justice in urban greening and public green space planning highlight the multiple dimensions of displacement, including housing loss (Dooling 2009, Gould and Lewis 2017) and social-cultural erasure that can affect socially marginalized groups. In addition to displacement linked to new real estate developments and increased housing prices, research in the field of green gentrification shows that municipal and private greening interventions can undermine residentsâ sense of belonging in nature and their neighborhood and (re)produce erasure and trauma through socio-cultural and emotional loss (Anguelovski et al. 2020, Brand 2015).
As we argue in a recent article (Anguelovski et al. 2021), exclusion and dispossession can also materialize when urban greening overlooks racialized minoritiesâ experiences in what have been and are violent, discriminatory, and segregationist landscapes (Brown 2021, Finney 2014) and leave aside the ways in which racialized residents have been surveilled, criminalized, or coerced in public space (Ranganathan 2017). The murder of Armaud Arbery while jogging in 2020 in Georgia (USA) is only one illustration of this control and criminalization of Black bodies, as the Black Lives Matter movement and others call attention to.
Anacostia, in the Southeast section of Washington, DC, has long been African American community. It was also a thriving business community before being impacted by urban renewal and public in the 1950s. Sixty years later, it is a new gentrification avenue, like much of Washington DC (Hyra and Prince 2015), much of it linked to new urban greening plans. In 2014, Anacostia received new attention when the New York City-based architecture firm OMA proposed its âavant-gardeâ plan for a $50-60 million green bridge â the 11th Street Bridge Park â which is expected to improve physical and social connections between the two sides of the Anacostia River while improving recreational and green spaces.
The 11th Street Bridge Parkâs is certainly envisioned with social equity at the center. Anchored around the 2018 Equitable Development Plan (EDP) led by the nonprofit Building Bridges across the River, the project does include resident-centered workforce training and development and support to revive local business on the local Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. Those efforts reflect the fact that new green assets can be strongly associated with resident-centered economic development and income generating ventures in order to achieve environmental justice for racialized minorities. The EDP also includes a Douglass Community Land Trust (CLT) and community-controlled housing and business development. The CLT uses, among others, the provisions of the cityâs TOPA (Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act) and DOPA (District Opportunity to Purchase Act), legislations and builds partnerships with local lenders and nonprofit developers (i.e., MANNA and LISC) for down payment assistance.
However, in our views, the project overlooks the deep segregationist and exclusionary legacies of racial settlement, their ongoing manifestations, and risks of new white privilege. The broader developments and transformation that the project contributes to accelerate vulnerability to green gentrification and displacement, with new large scale, high-end redevelopment projects such as Poplar Point and Reunion Square already banking on the value of the bridge park for future investments. As a developer told us, the bridge park project is a âfirst entry point. [âŠ] Our âgoal [is to] go in early to emerging neighborhoods [âŠ] ready for redevelopment and to buy property and redevelop it and re-tenant it.â Furthermore, while the CLT model is planned to secure permanent affordable housing, its pace and implementation structure is unlikely to address the deep and growing intergenerational and interracial wealth gap, nor secure permanent affordable rental housing to enough working-class residents living in a fast-gentrifying neighborhood.
Much of the CLT is also financed by international finance groups such as Chase Bank likely attracted by the prospects of redevelopment and rebranding in Anacostia. In contrast, Black and workers-owned businesses and commercial ventures remain limited, thus further anchoring what some plantation economies in Anacostia. Last, even though the project uses cultural activities and artistic renderings to highlight  the racial past of the neighborhood, it also illustrates how enduring racialized economic inequalities allow a certain type of greening and sustainability to be deployed, activating âcoolâ and âfun spaces, while risking invisibilizing and excluding dissonant or informal greening and land uses, as a resident shared with us: ââI will be good enough to serve you slurpies and hotdogs at the river festival, but not to live there.â In that greening, more emancipatory proposals such as land reparations to address a legacy of extraction and loss also remain under-discussed.
Our research thus illustrates is that the current development of 11th Street Bridge Park reinforces the false binary of urban greening (and eventual displacement) versus historic (and current) underinvestment while leaving green reparative justice limited. In contrast, decolonizing Green City planning would involve prioritizing land recognition, redistribution, control, and reparations and developing new land arrangements as necessary to an environmentally just landscape. It would also first mean to engage with the history of a multi-layered geography of dispossession and exclusion and include new cultural and symbolic recognitions of networks of resilience and care. It would allow for new institutional arrangements and the construction of alternative political power inspired in Black radical traditions. All in all, an anti-racist greening practice in the US and beyond would enact justice in newly amplified and life-affirming, emancipatory geographies for racialized groups.
References:
Anguelovski, I., A. L. Brand, J. JT Connolly, E. Corbera, P. Kotsila, J. Steil, M. Garcia Lamarca, M. Triguero-Mas, H. Cole, F. BarĂł, Langemeyer J., C. Perez del Pulgar, G. Shokry, F. Sekulova, and L. Arguelles. 2020. “Expanding the boundaries of justice in urban greening scholarship: Towards an emancipatory, anti-subordination, intersectional, and relational approach.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
Anguelovski, I., A. L. Brand, M. Ranganathan, and D. Hyra. 2021. “Decolonizing the Green City: From environmental privilege to emancipatory green justice ” Environmental Justice.
Bonds, Anne, and Joshua Inwood. 2016. “Beyond white privilege: Geographies of white supremacy and settler colonialism.” Progress in Human Geography 40 (6):715-733.
Brand, Anna Livia. 2015. “The most Complete Street in the world: A dream deferred and coopted.” In Incomplete Streets: Processes, practices, and possibilities, edited by J. Agyeman and S. Zavetoski, 245-266. Routledge.
Brown, Lawrence T. 2021. The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America: JHU Press.
Checker, Melissa. 2011. “Wiped Out by the âGreenwaveâ: Environmental Gentrification and the Paradoxical Politics of Urban Sustainability.” City & Society 23 (2):210-229. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2011.01063.x.
Dillon, Lindsey. 2014. “Race, Waste, and Space: Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental Justice at the Hunters Point Shipyard.” Antipode 46 (5):1205-1221. doi: 10.1111/anti.12009.
Dooling, Sarah. 2009. “Ecological Gentrification: A Research Agenda Exploring Justice in the City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33 (3):621-639.
Finney, Carolyn. 2014. Black faces, white spaces: Reimagining the relationship of African Americans to the great outdoors: UNC Press Books.
Gould, Kenneth A, and Tammy L Lewis. 2017. Green Gentrification: Urban Sustainability and the Struggle for Environmental Justice: Routledge.
Hyra, Derek, and Sabiyha Prince. 2015. Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington: Routledge.
Immergluck, Dan, and Tharunya Balan. 2018. “Sustainable for whom? Green urban development, environmental gentrification, and the Atlanta Beltline.” Urban Geography 39 (4):546-562.
Pearsall, Hamil. 2010. “From brown to green? Assessing social vulnerability to environmental gentrification in New York City.” Environment and Planning C 28 (5):872-886.
Pulido, Laura. 2017. “Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence.” Progress in Human Geography 41 (4):524-533.
Ranganathan, Malini. 2017. “The environment as freedom: A decolonial reimagining.” Social Science Research Council Items 13.
Safransky, Sara. 2014. “Greening the urban frontier: Race, property, and resettlement in Detroit.” Geoforum 56:237-248.
Safransky, Sara. 2016. “Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial City.” Antipode.
Anna Livia Brand iis Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the historical development and contemporary planning and landscape design challenges in Black mecca neighborhoods in the American North and South.
Malini Ranganathan is Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University, An urban geographer by training, Dr. Ranganathan focuses on environmental injustices, what she calls “environmental unfreedoms,” in India and the U.S, and their structuring by caste, race, and class.
Derek Hyra is Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy within the School of Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University.
Dr. Hita Unnikrishnan is an Assistant Professor at The Institute for Global Sustainable Development, The University of Warwick. Hitaâs research interests lie in the interface of urban ecology, systems thinking, resilience, urban environmental history, public health discourses, and urban political ecology as it relates to the evolution, governance, and management of common pool resources in cities of the global south.
Hita Unnikrishnan and Amrita Sen
The when, why and how of systemic racism within and across urban social-ecological systems: stories from India
Environmental organizations have to bear larger accountabilities towards protection of marginal urban communities, not only during incidences of risk but also when environmental management and its related implementation at all levels appear discriminatory and/or racist.
Back in 2009, one of us (Hita) was leading the life of a climate activist, and implementing projects aimed at reducing individual emission footprints. One of these projects involved replacing incandescent bulbs used by residents of slums in Bangalore with the then feasible gold standard of sustainability â CFLs or compact fluorescent lamps, and sending the collected incandescent bulbs for recycling.
Hita recalls: âI was very excited about what we were doing, and that we would enable at least one aspect of green living at no cost to marginalized communities. It was a small village on the outskirts of south Bengaluru. I remember doing the job with a sort of mechanical precision â enter a house, ask if we could replace bulbs, tell them why we were doing so, plug in the new bulb, collect the old one, thank people for their kindness and hospitality, and repeat the process in the next house. Until we reached this little hut with a thatched roof, set much lower into the ground than the road, and so you had to climb down a couple of steps to enter it. It was pitch dark inside the hut, and the only person inside was a very elderly woman resting on a bed. Not registering the fact that the house was in darkness, I asked her if she would allow me to replace the bulb for her. She replied saying that there was no bulb in the house, and the only source of light came from candles. Upon inquiring further with other people in the village I found out that this woman was a widow and belonged to a lower caste (social order in India), and thus she was kept away from even the illegal wire taps of local electrical poles that slum dwellers frequently use to meet their infrastructural needs. It was the first time I had come across systemic racism within communities and which extended into my own work as an activist, and needless to say, it has stayed with me since.â
Hita proudly displaying her haul of incandescent bulbs. Photo: Gunajit BrahmaReliving childhood while replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs in a marginalized community of Bengaluru. Photo: Hita Unnikrishnan
City environments are complex. They require a deeper understanding of the complexities of communal relationships existing in a place, before deciding on management interventions to address key urban social-ecological challenges. This is essential so that urban environments may be successfully managed through designing socially inclusive and equitable management methods that also address concerns of imparting ecological resilience through forging stronger community engagements and accountability with nature. Because they typically consume very little, marginal urban communities contribute least to unsustainable patterns of development, yet are most disproportionately exposed to environmental crisis in cities. It is also important to understand that unequal power relations between community members manifest through racial discrimination within and across communities, affecting who actually receives the benefit of urban interventions.
Environmental racism is structural and has historical roots. It can be largely explained through an inquiry on how structural biases shape common beliefs and practices. For example, the view that urban poor are justifiably fit to bear huge environmental costs and that it doesnât really matter if they are affected, more so in a city where they are unauthentic settlers without a legitimate space. Slums and informal settlements in the global South suffer most from the erosion of natural ecosystems in cities, since a large number of urban commons support human subsistence.[1] In India, villages in city neighbourhood areas are largely impacted by pollution that the cities emit and garbage that cities produce- a study reports how residents of Mavallipura, a village near Bangalore city, are affected by landfill and waste, leading to groundwater contamination and health hazards. In another instance, a recent paper speaking directly to environmental racism, points out how hazardous environments in specific racially segregated Black American neighbourhoods of USA rendered residents disproportionately vulnerable to Coronavirus- these residents were forced to settle in these neighbourhoods being subjected to redlining, a practice denying people of colour loans and resources while purchasing housing.
Quite similarly, in Indian cities, socio-political structures driving urban inequalities and stratification deeply account for a systemic failure in addressing both ecological as well as social needs. No wonder then that urban poor is mostly found around low-lying areas, or near storm water and sewage channels, and worse, they are blamed for their âunhygienic and unaestheticâ practices. These are the people who bear the biggest brunt of adverse environmental conditions â from flash flooding to vector borne and life-threatening diseases, they have seen it all.
Recent studies suggest how commons such as lakes in Bangalore, which were earlier critical urban infrastructures for communities, have morphed into fenced and recreational spaces, where people come to jog, meditate, and breathe fresh air. These new residents largely prefer that the fences keeping out native, marginal communities of the cities, who now must reside in neighbourhood squatters. Most often, cities reveal a version of environmentalism entrenched in an elite narrative where poor are a âmenaceâ to the city ecologyâthey cause pollution, stink, dirt, waste, and make surrounding landscapes filthy. At the same time, in the work both of us do with marginalized communities, we often hear stories of how certain castes within communities are kept away from âhygienicâ water sources such as open wells, instead having to walk longer distances to a lake to fetch water. Racism thus is entrenched both at the level of urban planning discourses, as well as within communities who are affected by those discourses.
A dwelling used by some of Bengaluruâs most vulnerable populations. Photo: Amrita Sen
Justice is therefore a critical imperative of urban environmental planning. We have elsewhere pointed out that inclusive ecological restoration practices in cities can comprehensively benefit communities and ecosystems, if they go beyond rhetoric to practice (Sen, Unnikrishnan and Nagendra forthcoming.[2] Environmental organizations have to bear larger accountabilities towards protection of marginal urban communities, not only during incidences of risk but also when environmental management and its related implementation at all levels appear discriminatory and/or racist. We have critical challenges in our struggle to restore environmental resilience in larger cities. It is imperative that we locate environmental justice as center-stage while designing sustainable cities. Doing so would fundamentally ensure stronger environmental commitments within and across heterogeneous urban communities.
Notes:
[1] Adegun OB. 2021. Green Infrastructure Can Improve the Lives of Slum Dwellers in African Cities. Front. Sustain. Cities 3:621051. doi: 10.3389/frsc.2021.621051
[2] Amrita Sen, Hita Unnikrishnan and Harini Nagendra. 2021. âReviving Urban Water Commons: Navigating Social-Ecological Fault Lines and Inequitiesâ. Special issue on âRestoration For Whom, By Whomâ (Edited by MarlĂšne Elias, Deepa Joshi, Ruth Meinzen-Dick), Ecological Restoration, 39 (1&2), 120-129
Amrita Sen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and a Visiting Faculty with Azim Premji University. Her research interests include cultural and political ecology, politics of forest conservation, urban environmental conflicts and Anthropocene studies. She is currently writing her book manuscript entitled âA Political Ecology of Forest Conservation in India: Communities, Wildlife and the Stateâ.
Abdallah is an architect, environmentalist and urban farmer. He works at the German International Cooperation (GIZ) and he is also the cofounder of Urban Greens Egypt, a startup aiming to promote the concept of Urban Agriculture in Cairo.
Abdallah Tawfic
Women in public spaces
Womenâs experiences and perceptions of public spaces differ from men’s and it is important to take these differences into account when planning and designing spaces. By applying an intersectional gender lens, womenâs specific experiences, needs, and concerns can inform the development of safe and inclusive public spaces.
Public spaces play a significant role in community life. They provide a space for people to foster social connections, engage in physical activity and provide access to green spaces. Being able to occupy public space can positively impact social, mental and physical health. However, in many countries around the world â and more in the developing world â there is inequality in who can access and use these spaces comfortably and safely.
Evidence shows that women are more likely than men to feel unsafe in public spaces, and can also feel that the space is not designed with them in mind and consideration. This is particularly true for women who experience other intersecting forms of marginalization, such as those women from migrant backgrounds, older women, or religious orientation.
âCities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.â This was the way the writer and activist Jane Jacobs described how spaces of our cities can be thought of in her book Death and Life of American Cities (1961). A recent UN report stated that 99.3% of women are being harassed in public (see Note). This phenomenon has been explained in many researches as the natural result of the gender segregation within the society. A society with a culture of males perceiving public space as their own territory while females perceive it as a daily ambush.
Experiencing the public space as a safe space that encourages equal social interaction among users with diverse interests, opinions, and perspectives is a luxury that has not existed before in Egypt, and the society and different movements are exerting efforts nowadays to change it. When the revolution sparked in Cairo in 2011, women marched to Tahrir square with the hope of freedom, change in the political regime, and the rights for safe means of speaking their minds in public spaces.
The social classes of Egyptian women in the early 20th century were divided with different shares of the public sphere. This has somehow improved during time, however, although today there are still some unexplained stigmas around male dominant public space activities, especially in informal areas. Coffee shops in informal settlements or âAhwaâ (short for coffee shop in Arabic) today remains a male dominant space. There are no rules that prevent women from enjoying a cup of tea and chat with friends in any âAhwaâ in Egypt. However, the Egyptian society was raised with the idea that this space is not a place for women, and Ahwas are considered marked zones for men only to enjoy their drinks and play cards.
Womenâs experiences and perceptions of public spaces diïŹer to men and it is important to take these differences into account when planning and designing spaces. By applying an intersectional gender lens, womenâs specific experiences, needs, and concerns can inform the development of safe and inclusive public spaces.
Good design is always the key to creating public spaces that are inclusive, accessible and safe for everyone in the community. In order to create these spaces effectively, design must acknowledge and accommodate the specific needs and experiences of all groups within the community, taking into consideration the cultural traditions and activities that differs from a country to another, and break down retroactive activities that has turned into old fashioned rooted traditions that doesnât make sense in our modern world.
Women protesters in Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, 22 November 2011. Photo: Mohamed Omar/ EPA
Note:
Braker, Bedour. (2018). Women in Egypt The myth of a safe public space. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327285947_Women_in_Egypt_The_myth_of_a_safe_public_space/citation/download
My heart is scattered across Colombia, Germany, the United States. and the Philippines. I have worked with incredible teams (Asian Development Bank, German Cooperation Agency, PIK Institute, etc.). Now back home, I’m currently leading the BiodiverCities by 2030 Initiative at the Humboldt Institute of Colombia. Editor of Urban Nature: Platform of Experiences (2016) and Transforming Cities with Biodiversity (2022). Volunteer at FundaciĂłn Cerros de BogotĂĄ. Friend of TNOC since 2013.
Live now! Claiming back the right to the city: A tale from Colombiaâs streets
Caliâs urban natures mirror deep wounds of racism and colonialism. Its urban development in the 20th Century was embedded in historical dynamics of labor exploitation and the trade of goods and commodities. The historical concentration of land by elites made of Cali a highly segregated city: it was a radicalization of space.
Iâm writing this short article with a heavy heart. I received this invitation from TNOC in the midst of social unrest in our country. Unexpectedly, the tax reform presented to Congress on 15 April 2021, was the straw that broke the camelâs back. The national strike on April 28th in opposition to this tax reform revived a social mobilization from November 21st of 2019, known as N21. Back then, the massive general strike was a response to shortages in public education expenses, but it was soon fueled by structural issues dealing with inequality, violence, oppression, poverty, and unemployment, especially youth unemployment.
LEFT: With signs and barricades, people re-signified Puerto Resistencia’s public space, formerly known as Puerto Relleno, a low income neighborhood in Eastern CalĂ. Photo: @InvisiblesMuros. RIGHT: Call, the resistance capital. Photo: @Keos36
This time the epicenter is the city of Cali, referred to these days as the Resistance Capital or Capital de la resistencia. A few public spaces in the city were even renamed by urban dwellers in light of the dynamics of rallies and meeting points, for instance, The Hill of Dignity (Loma de la Dignidad) or Port Resistance[i](Puerto Resistencia).
Monday, 5 May 2021: Independent press[ii] and human rights NGOs report 19 people shot to death in Cali, presumably by police and military forces. The victims were not performing life-threatening acts, some were singing harangues, and some were just walking back home or strolling along the grass. These violent and difficult circumstances in Cali but also those reported in the cities of Pereira, Barranquilla, Neiva, PopayĂĄn, Pasto, GachanzipĂĄ, Madrid and BogotĂĄ[iii] Â explain my heavy heart.
The Police’s Comandos de AtenciĂłn Inmediata (CAI, mini police stations) now turned into pubic libraries. The walls display the names of people presumably shot to death by police officers. Puerto Resistencia, CalĂ. Photo: @InvisiblesMuros
A low heat situation soon to turn into fire
But why Cali? Why this green and blue heaven, blessed by the majesty of the Andes mountain range to the west and the Cauca River[iv] to the east? In 2019, Cali was better off than the national average in terms of unemployment, so what made this happen? The impact of COVID-19 in livelihoods? Young people looking for opportunities who are neither studying nor working (“ninis” from the Spanish phrase âni estudia ni trabajaâ)? A struggle for the right to the city? A historical segregation pattern? All of the above?
Cali holds the largest afro-descendant population nationwide and it probably holds the second place in Latin America, after Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. By the mid-60s Cali became a receptor city of displaced communities forced to flee their villages due to our armed conflict, both afro and indigenous communities.
There is no doubt that Caliâs urban natures mirror deep wounds of racism and colonialism. Caliâs urban development in the 20th Century was embedded in historical dynamics of labor exploitation and the trade of goods and commodities. The historical concentration of land by elites undoubtedly made of Cali a highly segregated city in the 21st Century. This is what Professor Luis Carlos Castillo called the âRacializationâ (racializaciĂłn) of the space, the localization of poor classes in high-risk areas in the periphery of Cali[v].
The threat of mass movements in the slopes of Cali to the west are classified as âHigh risk (not mitigable)â, âMedium risk (mitigable)â and âLow risk (mitigable)â. On the other hand, the threat of river flood is significant along the plains to the east of Cali).Protests in BogotĂĄ, Colombia, May 2021. Photos: @laorejaroja
Beyond equity: Power relations and urban natures
How are weâas sustainability practitioners or urban ecologistsâengaging with notions of equity and social-environmental justice? Are we understanding equity as the fair access to markets with restrictive rights and access or (more complex notions related to) the devolution of rights and empowerment? In other words, are we understanding equity and social-environmental justice as the fair access to green areas or as the need of reshaping power relations in cities and political revindication of the powerless?
Iâd say âdistributingâ nature on equal basis may be the last film of the âJust and Green Citiesâ Trilogy. In line with notions of equity and social-environmental justice, the first movie will probably need to make explicit the idea that cities are highly contested spaces, where social groups strive to conquer the portion of land which can render the highest profit on capital investment[vi]. The second film could then reflect on Who is to decide what and how in cities? Whose voices are listened when it comes to protect urban natures? Whether an urban wetland should be kept as an ecological and social spot or transformed to give way to transport infrastructure expansion? Who is waving each of these narratives? Which groups are enjoying the right to the city? How race, class and gender play a role in this political participation? Finally, the closing film could touch upon distribution of and access to urban natures by exploring the role of urban design or the so-called Nature-Based Solutions to tackle access-related challenges.
Closing thoughts from my own limitations and aspirations
Maybe any post addressing the relationship between racism, colonialism, and the city may start by acknowledging oneâs limitations and inherited comfort. More than pinning down a reason to explain why Cali is the epicenter these days, in what follows I share my closing thoughts as a mestizo woman born in Bogota, in a privilege circle and with a sincere will of decentralizing my ways of knowing. What is happening in Cali makes me draw these preliminary ideas:
A social crisis I grew up watching on the news in rural areas is now taking a new form, adding up new layers and more evidently, taking a whole urban dimension.
The situation in Cali mirrors decades of segregation above and beyond the city itself.
A vibrant and creative youth claiming back the right to the city. A new social force is shaping the city i.e., Puerto Resistencia.
An invitation to listen and bond together. An invite to overcome polarization.
The above poses the question on the role of urban natures to heal (or to reinforce) social inequalities in Colombian cities. What will be the role of urban natures in Cali in pursuing a new citizenship? To what extend do we need to rethink the research we conduct, or the methods we choose so that power relations can be unpacked?
Finally, as Augusto Angel Maya would say, loving nature entails loving humans. We need to commit in respecting and protecting life in all its forms. âLife is sacredâ[vii].
The author speaking in the hills outside of BogotĂĄ
[vi] The social production of ecosystem services: A framework for studying environmental justice and ecological complexity in urbanized landscapes. (Ernstson, 2013)
Eric Butler, PortlandThough the relationship has grown from one of early tension to a deep and enduring mutual respect, the Friends of Tualatin Hills Nature Park continue the tradition of advocacy and stewardship that saved an amazing park for the publicâand transformed a park district into a regional champion for nature.
Georgina Cullman, New YorkThe Native Plant Law in New York City has been key; among other things the law mandates maximizing the use of native plants. The law requires the publication and regular updating of NYCâs Native Species Planting Guide, a resource for landscape architects and city gardeners.
Eduardo Guerrero, BogotĂĄEffective action depends on a combination of both formal and spontaneous synergies. The recipe to effective action is to reach a critical mass of committed leaders involving a multi-stakeholder common purpose.
Mark Hostetler, GainesvilleThe Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development manual, originally created for a USA context, can be translated and adapted to any region or country.
Hayato Hasegawa, Fukutsu It is important to understand how we can invite local people to practical nature restoration activities. The evaluation of social networks among local people and its structure, and management methods for building social capital for regional biodiversity restoration is an issue for the future.
Clara Holmes, New YorkThe Native Plant Law in New York City has been key; among other things the law mandates maximizing the use of native plants. The law requires the publication and regular updating of NYCâs Native Species Planting Guide, a resource for landscape architects and city gardeners.
Keitaro Ito, FukutsuIt is important to understand how we can invite local people to practical nature restoration activities. The evaluation of social networks among local people and its structure, and management methods for building social capital for regional biodiversity restoration is an issue for the future.
Mahito Kamada, TokushimaThrough multiple workshops, the citizen groups recognize that development of human resources is the one of the most important issues for advancing biodiversity conservation. As a result, Tokushima Prefecture set it as one of the key policies.
Marit Larson, New YorkThe Native Plant Law in New York City has been key; among other things the law mandates maximizing the use of native plants. The law requires the publication and regular updating of NYCâs Native Species Planting Guide, a resource for landscape architects and city gardeners.
Gilles Lecuir, ParisFrench Capitals of Biodiversity award:Â Over time, an informal network has been formed: of motivated and committed people, but also experienced, effective, and innovative municipal workers, whether they are technicians, politicians, experts, or researchers.
Kevin Lunzalu, NairobiYouth-led organizations such as the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network spearheaded campaigns to call for immediate action from the government to save the coveted fig tree and other green urban spaces in Nairobi.
SiobhĂĄn McQuaid, DublinIKEA has taken a community co-creation approach, opening up green roofs to citizens in London, putting football pitches for the community on the roof in Eindhoven, and public playgrounds on the roof in Utrecht. The possibilities are endless. Will other retailers and developers follow these examples for communities and for biodiversity?
Colin Meurk, ChristchurchNature is a great teacher and we are drawn to it. We need to get more of our zest and lessons from nature so we can be better planetary citizens and guardians.
Matthew Morrow, New YorkThe Native Plant Law in New York City has been key; among other things the law mandates maximizing the use of native plants. The law requires the publication and regular updating of “NYCâs Native Species Planting Guide”, a resource for landscape architects and city gardeners.
Tomomi Sudo, Fukutsu It is important to understand how we can invite local people to practical nature restoration activities. The evaluation of social networks among local people and its structure, and management methods for building social capital for regional biodiversity restoration is an issue for the future.
Pamela Zevit, SurreyUltimately, successful implementation of Surreyâs city-wide biodiversity conservation strategy is tied to political will, long-term support from the community and how broader societal values recognize the importance of nature as integral to a Cityâs health, well-being and resiliency.
This roundtable discusses examples where city governments, academics, civil society, developers, and/or individuals have become interested in biodiversity, implementing conservation policies, projects, or campaigns.
City-level action, such as formal regulation and city-sanctioned biodiversity strategy, doesn’t happen out of the air; it is the result of years of science, planning, and activism both inside and outside city administrations.
What works? What are the challenges and lessons learned?
One conclusion from these examples is this: many approaches can work, from activism to collaboration to city regulation and official biodiversity planning, but they need to be tied together somehow to create comprehensive solutions. Each takes dedication and planning, and must be resonant with the context. Indeed, we might say that lasting success requires action at multiple levels and with multiple stakeholders. City-level action, such as the regulation described in New York or the biodiversity strategy in Surrey, doesn’t happen out of the air; it is the result of years of science, planning, community work, and activism both inside and outside the city administration.
The Paris Metro region’s Agency for Biodiversity created in 2010 an annual competition called “French Capitals of Biodiversity”, which over time has created a rich network of interest for urban biodiversity. Friends groups such a Tualatin Hills (Portland) create plans to and support for biodiversity protection at various levels of society. As Eduardo Guerrero describes in BogotĂĄ: “Effective action depends on a combination of both formal and spontaneous synergies.” All success has a basis in committed leaders, both inside and outside of government, and a coherent sense of collective action.
Activist-leaning academics play a key role, as described in Japan and New Zealand. Such work can form the basis of formal action by the city. “Pracademics” such as Mark Hostetler and SiobhĂĄn McQuaid create useful guides and model for collective action by conservationists and developers. Such guides can lead directly to productive collaboration with business leaders. And there is direct activism, such as that described by Kevin Lunzalu in Nairobi.
All these levels have a place and can workâneed to workâsynergistically to create urban biodiversity conservation that produces results.
The idea of this roundtable is to have examples from all over the world. By exchanging ideas and examples of people working for positive outcomes in biodiversity conservation, people can adapt and try in their own cities.
David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director. David’s dad told him once that he needed a back up plan, something to “fall back on”. So he bought a tuba.
Siobhan is the Associate Director of Innovation at the Centre for Social Innovation in Trinity College Dublin where she heads up research and innovation activities under the themes of sustainability and resilience.
SiobhĂĄn McQuaid
Green buildings for biodiversityâwho are the industry leaders?
The European Commission identifies nature-based solutions (NBS) such as green buildings as solutions âinspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience. Such solutions bring more, and more diverse, nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes, through locally adapted, resource-efficient and systemic interventions. Nature-Based Solutions therefore provide multiple benefits for biodiversity.â
IKEA has taken a community co-creation approach, opening up green roofs to citizens in London, putting football pitches for the community on the roof in Eindhoven, and public playgrounds on the roof in Utrecht. The possibilities are endless. Will other retailers and developers follow these examples for communities and for biodiversity?
While many cities in Europe have started to invest in nature-based solutions such as urban parks or city tree schemes, little is known about the level of private sector awareness and investment in nature-based solutions. Given the increasing population growth in cities and the continued demand for new housing development and retail centres, at the 2021 TNOC Festival, we organised a plenary dialogue session asking, âHow do we activate the construction sector in mainstreaming nature-based solutions?â
We know from research in the UK and Switzerland that well designed green roofs can contribute to biodiversity with wildflower roofs being particularly attractive for insects and pollinators such as bees (Livingroofs.org). However while the market for green buildings is growing rapidly in some parts of Europe it is lagging behind in others. Rodolphe Deborre, Director of Innovation and Sustainable Development at the French construction giant Rabot Dutilleul pointed out that in France the construction sector lacks knowledge and therefore trust in nature-based solutions. In an industry traditionally driven by price there are many questions: how much will nature cost in the short and long term? Will the client pay extra for nature? How effective are NBS? Are they allowed under current regulations? In an industry driven for centuries by hard engineering and physics, there is little knowledge of ecology or nature and therefore little trust in it.
In contrast in Austria, the government has played an important role in stimulating both demand and supply for green buildings. Over 550 businesses are active in this sector supported by strong and supportive government policy including market incentives and a mobile outreach programme (MUGLI) which introduces people to a vivid first-hand experience of greening buildings. A climate certification scheme managed by GrĂŒnstattgrau (the national competence centre for green buildings) is in place which developers can use to demonstrate market leadership. In Austria this kind of certification is seen as a competitive advantage âcertified companies are industry front-runners. Research shows that they can charge 8% more for buildings with green infrastructure so thereâs a strong business case for investment.
But the changes needed go deeper than policy support and market incentives. Systemic change is needed throughout the education and innovation system to generate a new breed of architect, developer and investor who know as much about ecology as they do about engineering and business. Researchers can provide vital supportâproving the effectiveness of nature-based solutions and helping to reduce costs with new technologies. Unfortunately this kind of systemic change takes time. And with the current pace of climate change and biodiversity loss, time is not on our side. In the immediate short term, industry pioneers are needed to show leadership and demonstrate that NBS can work. Where the leaders go, others will follow…
The retail sector can play an important leadership role working with urban planners to envisage new city districts co-created with communities in mind. Johanna Cederlöf of IKEA explained how IKEA developed the plans for their new building at Vienna Westbahnhof in close cooperation with the local community. The community wanted more nature so the IKEA building was designed as a park which people can access even without coming into the store. IKEA have taken a similar community co-creation approach in other cities opening up green roofs to citizens in London, putting football pitches for the community on the roof in Eindhoven and public playgrounds on the roof in Utrecht. The possibilities are endless. Will other retailers and developers follow these examples and re-examine the possibility of green buildingsâfor communities and for biodiversity?
Keitaro is a professor at Kyushu Institute of Technology and teaches landscape ecology and design. He has studied and worked in Japan, the U.K., Germany and Norway and has been designing urban parks, river banks, school gardens, and forest parks.
Keitaro Ito, Tomomi Sudo, Hayato Hasegawa
Environmental planning project for establishing biodiversity policy with local government in Japan-
It is important to understand how we can invite local people to practical nature restoration activities. The evaluation of social networks among local people and its structure, and management methods for building social capital for regional biodiversity restoration is an issue for the future.
Fukutsu city is located in the southern part of Japan. The land area of the city is 52 km2 and the population is 65,770 (2020) and it has been steadily increasing. The city has coastal area to the west and is hilly to the east. In the tidal areas, we can find designated endangered species such as Horseshoe crab. In wintertime, migrating birds (such as Black-faced spoonbill) stay for several months around the coast and in paddy fields. There is a fishing port at the sea coast where we have extensive ecological system services. The farmers are producing vegetables in the fields and fisherman catch fish around the coastal area. Japanese people, especially the local people around here, they like fish for eating. (I usually eat vegetables and like fish for observingâŠ) Anyway, if we lost Fukutsuâs beautiful environment, nobody would get receive the benefits of ecosystem services, such as fish.
The coast and pine forest landscape of Fukutsu city.Horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus) : endangered species in Japan. Photo: Keitaro Ito
From 2014, we have been taking part in a project in city planning for urban biodiversity in Fukutsu city, Japan. Our lab (Keitaro Ito Lab, Kyushu Institute of Technology) has been directing the project in collaboration with Fukutsu city and high school students from Fukuoka Koryo high school and Fukuoka fishery high school. The projectâs origins result from the city governmentâs desire to make environmental planning part of the basic city planning, resting on the ecological characteristics of the city. They asked us to collaborate for establishing this plan, called the Environmental Master Plan and Regional Biodiversity Strategy.
The plan was completed in 2017. In this plan, we are thinking of sustainability and ecological services very close to our city. As we think of sustainability and biodiversity in the city, the plan will be very important for managing the city environment, but also in sustaining peopleâs connection to nature. Such connection is a key factor in sustainability, since without knowledge of nature, people will be less engaged with the idea of sustaining nature.
Black-faced spoonbill (Platalea minor): endangered species in Japan. Photo: Keitaro Ito
However, it remains a challenge to effectively conserve biodiversity and ecological system services in the city.
Unfortunately, people sometimes donât realise how the nature they live with is important. A lack of daily connection to nature has become normal for them, a situation one can easily observe in visiting local places in this country. So, one of our important roles is this: How shall we lead the people in a return to thinking about nature in Fukutsu?
We think it is important to think about the green places for environmental and ecological learning. Each green space has functions in this city, not only as habitat for creatures but also for providing places for ecological learning by children. Landscapes and natural environments afford habitats for play and learning. For example, children are not allowed in some river banks, but if we could evaluate and think of such places in terms of nature restoration and education, such areas could be multifunctional. Therefore, this project also aims to provide natural sites for childrenâs play and activity. It will help to create places in which young children will have sustained contact with nature in the city.
The abandoned bamboo forest in the Fukutsu city.The ecological learning in the forest. Photo: Keitaro Ito
Around the city, some of the forests have big problems too, such as the expansion of bamboo. Because of the lack of maintenance of forest by people, the forested landscape around the city has changed. As the bamboo comes to dominate the forest, the forest floor is dark in deep shade and other biodiversity is significantly reduced. In such abandoned forests, it is difficult to use for playing and learning place by people and children. The researchers of the Laboratory of Environmental Design have shared and discussed these problems with Fukutsu cityâs officers and local people for years in the process of planning. As an implementation of the plans, forest restoration project has been started since 2017.
However, we made plans for planning but sometimes it looks like pie in the sky. In our project, city plans for the environmental and the process of their formulation could be opportunities for building communities that can implement forest restoration contributing to conserve biodiversity and interact people with nature. These processes are intended to enhance social networks and trust among stakeholders and increase social capital for local peopleâs involvement in forest restoration in Fukutsu city.
Therefore, in association with city environmental management and plans, continuing discussion on how to restore and utilize nature as green infrastructure with various participants has become more urgent in present days. Re-recognizing traditional landscapes as green infrastructure could be given more consideration in city environmental management for regional biodiversity conservation and re-connecting people to nature. Furthermore, it is important to understand how we can invite local people to practical nature restoration activities. The evaluation of social networks among local people and its structure, and management methods for building social capital for regional biodiversity restoration is an issue for the future.
The discussion with local people for forest restoration.
References
Hasegawa H., Sudo T., Lin Shwe Yee, Ito K., and Kamada M. (2021) Collaborative Management of Satoyama for Revitalizing and Adding Value as Green Infrastructure, Urban Biodiversity and Ecological Design for Sustainable Cities , Springer, pp 317-333Â https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56856-8_14
Ito K. (2021) Designing Approaches for Vernacular Landscape and Urban Biodiversity, Urban Biodiversity and Ecological Design for Sustainable Cities , Springer, pp 3-17Â https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56856-8_1
Ito K., FjĂžrtoft I, Manabe T, Masuda K, Kamada M, Fujuwara K (2010) Landscape design and childrenâs participation in a Japanese primary school â planning process of school biotope for 5 years. In: Muller N, Werner P, Kelcey GJ (eds) Urban biodiversity and design. Blackwell Academic Publishing, Oxford, pp 441â453 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444318654.ch23
Ito K., FjĂžrtoft I, Manabe T, Kamada M (2014) Landscape design for urban biodiversity and ecological education in Japan: approach from process planning and multifunctional landscape planning. In: Nakagoshi N, Mabuhay JA (eds) Designing low carbon societies in landscapes. Springer, Germany, pp 73â86Â https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54819-5_5
Kamada M. and Inai S. (2021)Ecological Evaluation of Landscape Components of the Tokushima Central Park Through Red-Clawed Crab (Chiromantes haematocheir), Urban Biodiversity and Ecological Design for Sustainable Cities , Springer, pp 199-215 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56856-8_9
Sudo T., Lin Shwe Yee, Hasegawa H., Ito K. Yamashita T., and Yamashita I., Natural Environment and Management for Childrenâs Play and Learning in Kindergarten in an Urban Forest in Kyoto, Japan, Urban Biodiversity and Ecological Design for Sustainable Cities , Springer, pp 175-198Â https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56856-8_8
Dr. Tomomi Sudo studies for developing sustainable cities which can provide essential nature experiences for people and children. She has been implementing ecological learning projects for children in urban natural environment. She is studying also Landscape Ecology and Design in Japan and Norway. Her interest is how to develop the materials for ecological education and apply that for ecological design. She studies at Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan.
Hayato Hasegawa is a Ph.D. student at Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan. He implements the collaborations with local government, residents, and children for re-connecting to nature.
Marit Larson is the Chief of the Natural Resources Group (NRG) at NYC Parks. NRG manages over 10,000acres of natural areas including forests, grasslands and wetlands, stormwater green infrastructure and a native plant nursery.
Marit Larson, Georgina Cullman, Clara Holmes, Matthew Morrow
Promoting Biodiversity in New York City through Native Plants
New York City, despite being a densely developed metropolis of overâŻ8.4âŻmillion people, has made a commitment to protecting biodiversityâŻthroughâŻboth practice andâŻpolicy.âŻOne example is the Native Plant Law, which promotesâŻbiodiversity throughâŻmandating the use of native plants in public landscapes.âŻThis law is significant,âŻlessâŻas a stand alone measure, but because it rests on a history of critical actions, partnerships,âŻand commitments to protect biodiversity at different scales in NYC. Similarly, its effectiveness relies on ongoing efforts to protect open space and manage the health of our natural areas.
The Native Plant Law in New York City has been key; among other things the law mandates maximizing the use of native plants. The law requires the publication and regular updating of NYCâs Native Species Planting Guide, a resource for landscape architects and city gardeners.
Biodiversity has value at different scales; in urban areas, protecting or reclaiming space from development is critical. Beginning in the 1980s, NYC Parks worked to map natural areas across the city and then to protect them through the Forever Wild Program. Initiated in 2001, this program now works to preserve over 12,300 acres of habitat across the city. Around the same time, NYC Parks committed to reclaiming land from past degradation, most notably with the closing of Fresh Kills Landfill, the largest municipal landfill in North America, and beginning its transition to parkland.
Today, Freshkills Park boasts an expanse of grasslands that has welcomed back several rare and declining grassland bird species. Concurrently, NYC Parks pledged to invest in biodiversity with the establishment of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC). This municipal nursery, the largest in the country, collects seed of native species from the NYC area, and has pioneered the propagation and use of native plants. These species increase the plant diversity available for local restoration projects. Twenty years after GNPCâs establishment, NYC Parks has refined a diverse palette of native species that are successful in various restoration and landscaping projects and GNPC staff regularly provide recommendations to designers and practitioners.
In 2007, PlaNYC, the first sustainability plan for New York City, energized greening initiatives in the city. Increased focus on the importance of ecological services from a variety of governmental and nongovernmental organizations led to the passing of various green codes and laws (from zoning to stormwater management), including the first Native Plant Law in the City (§ 18-141 NYC Admin. Code). This law mandates maximizing the use of native plants and reducing the use of invasive non-native species in public landscapes. The law requires the publication and regular updating of NYCâs Native Species Planting Guide (NSPG), which provides native species planting lists for NYC habitats and native alternatives for common invasive plants.
Native plant raingarden the Greenbelt Native Plant Center. Photo: Michael Butts
Within NYC Parks, the planning guide has been a resource for landscape architects and city gardeners. The ready availability of species lists by habit and growth form in the NSPG, coupled with knowledge about current and historical plant communities in the city, has resulted in additional programs to promote biodiversity at an intermediate scale. For example, in accordance with the Forever Wild Program, only native street trees are planted within 100 feet of natural areas and no trees listed as âproblematicâ in the guide are planted within 500 ft of natural areas. The NSPG is also improving biodiversity in our landscaped parks. In 2020, NYC Parks launched âPollinator Placesââpublic-facing horticultural beds primarily made up of attractive native plants, with the intention that they would serve as educational opportunities for the public and as bridges for gardeners used to working with non-native plants.
The Native Species Planting Guide also has the potential to advance biodiversity goals even beyond the boundaries of NYC Parks. For example, in special zoning districts in Staten Island, proposed policy will encourage homeowners to plant native trees, and disincentivize the planting of non-native problematic species, citing the NSPG as a resource.
Urban areas are increasingly recognized as valuable corridors between larger natural habitats, and as refugia in and of themselves; thus, promoting biodiversity within cities is critical. Though NYC has had success in doing so at various levels, challenges remain. For example, native plant supply and availability are often not considered early enough in planning. Additionally, rules on maintaining landscaped areas are often at odds with ecological best practices, and on-going invasive species management needs are not considered. NYC Parks continues to work to meet these challenges to sustain biodiversity within our city.
Georgina Cullman, Ph.D. is an Ecologist for New York City’s Department of Parks & Recreation. As part of NYC Parks Natural Resources Group, Dr. Cullman conducts research and provides advisement to protect and enhance the city’s natural areas and biodiversity.
Clara Holmes is a Field Scientist with NYC Parks, specializing in Botany. Most of her field work consists of monitoring vegetation pre and post restoration, and tracking rare plant populations in NYC Parks. She holds a Masterâs of Science from Pace University and Bachelor’s of Arts from the College of Charleston.
Matthew Morrow is the Director of Horticulture at Forestry Horticulture and Natural Resources, a division of the NYC Park’s Department. In this role he works to educate and support the gardeners and gardens of the agency, as well as the various native flora and fauna of New York City.
Raising Awareness with Built Environment Professionals about Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development
When residential or commercial developments are proposed, there are many opportunities to conserve biodiversity. Primary decision makers that decide whether to implement certain conservation strategies or promote them are typically the development team (i.e., environmental consultants and developer) and city/county planning staff and elected officials. In collaboration with several colleagues and students, I created a 215-page manual called Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development, which outlines biodiversity conservation strategies throughout the development process. This manual was used in trainings or workshops that targeted development teams and city/county planning staff and elected officials.
The Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development manual, originally created for a USA context, can be translated and adapted to any region or country.
Part 1 of the manual discusses key ecological principles and is an introduction to biodiversity, threats to biodiversity and benefits to conserving biodiversity. Part 2 stresses appropriate actions to take across the three phases of a development: planning, construction, and post-construction. Building upon the concepts in Part 1, the planning section of Part 2 focuses where to build and where to conserve, such as prioritizing areas for wildlife habitat. For the construction section, it discusses construction management techniques to minimize impacts on soils, trees, nearby conserved areas, and wildlife habitat.
Also highlighted is how to install low impact development stormwater treatment train for water quality. The last section, post-construction, focuses on long-term management of the homes, yards, conserved open space, and neighborhoods. It discusses education strategies to engage with people in a community and how to fund long-term management plans. Overall, all three phases must be addressed in order to have successful biodiversity conservation over the long term.
How were the decision makers exposed to the manual? We first offered a 4-hour training course for city planners, environmental consultants, and developers. But why did decision makers come to a training? Some came because they were interested in the topic but also, in the United States, the planning and landscape architecture profession requires continuing education units (CEUs) every few years in order to retain certification through their professional societies (e.g., AICP â American Institute of Certified Planners). The course was approved by the professional society and after taking, participants received a CEU certificate. This was an incentive for built environment professionals to come to a training.
Decision makers also became aware of the manual and strategies to conserve biodiversity through our academic consulting group, Program for Resource Efficient Communities (PREC). Developers and environmental consultants, working on a development project, heard about PREC through our various trainings or by word of mouth. Often, they would come to PREC because they wanted to create a conservation development that conserves biodiversity, water, and energy. However, âcoming to the tableâ was often a result of local regulations that emphasize the construction of conservation developments. This highlights the importance of local regulations (and also the importance of raising awareness of local planners and officials!).
The end result of trainings/conversations with developers and environmental consultants is that it planted a âseedâ for folks to evaluate a property and strategize on how to implement biodiversity conservation strategies. Through PREC, conservation design and management recommendations were adopted on multiple development projects, from 32 hectares in size on up to 10,000 hectares in size. Some of these developments will house over 50,000 people. Also, trainings and conversations with city/county planners resulted in new policies or ordinances. For example, âno mowâ stormwater ponds were proposed in Alachua County, Florida as a way to improve biodiversity and wildlife habitat. However, without appropriate educational signage about the purpose of these no-mow ponds, they were mowed because residents did not like the âlookâ of them. I proposed installing informational signs around these ponds and the county made this a policy. It worked as ponds with signs are now being maintained more naturally and are not being mowed.
The Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development manual can be translated and adapted to any region or country. Currently, I am working with Professor Keitaro Ito (Kyushu Institute of Technology) and we have translated the manual for the Japanese context, planning to offer multiple trainings in Japan. If interested in adapting the manual for your area, please contact me to discuss (hostetm@ufl.edu). Â
Kevin Lunzalu is a young conservation leader from Nairobi, Kenya. Through his work, Lunzalu strives to strike a balance between environmental conservation and humanity. He strongly believes in the power of innovative youth-led solutions to drive the global sustainability agenda. Kevin is the country coordinator the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network.
Kevin Lunzalu
Nairobiâs green spaces saved through environmental and cultural activism
Known as the green city in the sun, the Nairobi Metropolitan area is home to some of the oldest individual trees in East Africa. A case in point is the iconic fig tree that is located along Waiyaki Way, west of Kenyaâs capital city, that is estimated to be between 125 to 150 years old. This particular species not only carries ecological significance to Nairobiâs urban population, but also cultural importance to various communities in Kenya.
Youth-led organizations such as the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network spearheaded campaigns to call for immediate action from the government to save the coveted fig tree and other green urban spaces in Nairobi.
The countryâs largest tribe by population, the Agikuyu, refers to it as âmugumoâ, and consider the fig tree sacred, as their forefathers used to worship under the tree and offer sacrifices to their gods. To this community, it is a taboo to cut down fig trees and a symbol of bad luck if the tree falls. Kenyaâs president, Uhuru Kenyatta comes from the tribe.
The Maragoli people have for a long time held the fig tree, known to them as âmukumuâ, to be a symbol of peace, under which conflicts are resolved. Additionally, many tribes in Kenya still use fig trees as boundary markers. Nairobiâs oldest fig tree caused environmental and cultural uproar in equal measures, in early 2020, when it wasearmarked for uprooting to pave way for the construction of the Nairobi Expressway.
In the quest to ease traffic congestion in Nairobi, traffic which costs the government an estimated $1.8 million annually worth of revenue, Kenyaâs capital is in the race to construct a 27 Kilometer expressway that will connect the cityâs Jomo Kenyatta International airport and Waiyaki Way in Westlands. Upon operationalization, motorists are expected to spend only about 15 minutes moving between these two points, a reduction from about 2 hours currently spent.
However, the $550 million project has come with adverse environmental costs, with hundreds of trees located along the route cut down, including the native Nandi flame species, which were reportedly planted in the 1990s. This permanent degradation of ecological lifeline and cultural values that some of these trees carried is what called for action from activists and other lobby groups, at least to save the most iconic ones, like the now-famous fig tree.
Environmentalists, cultural activists, and several urban dwellers took to the streets amidst the increasing need to stay at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to stop the government from uprooting the iconic fig tree. This followed months of deforestation by the Chinese-funded project that ripped the city of its most treasured green spaces.
Youth-led organizations such as the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network spearheaded campaigns to call for immediate action from the government to save the coveted fig tree and other green urban spaces in Nairobi. An online campaign was also set up directly engaging government entities including the Kenya National Highways Authority to spare the tree that supports a myriad of bird life and other species. A petition to call for protection of the tree was signed by thousands of people.
âWe are demanding that the city government listens to the environmental and cultural aspirations of its people, and reroute the road,â Jackem Otete, a grassroot coordinator at the Kenyan Youth Biodiversity Network said during a street match.
The outcry by members of public, environmentalists, and activists pressured the city government, resulting in a presidential decree to protect the threatened fig tree. In a press conference addressing the issue, Mohamed Badi, the Director General of the Nairobi Metropolitan Services said: âIt is now a presidential declaration that this [fig] tree will now be conserved.â The order forced the national highways authority and the Chinese contractor to reroute the ExpressWay.
â..that pursuant to Article 69 of the constitution, as read together with section 3 of the Environment Management and Co-ordination Act and all other enabling laws, this fig tree is hereby adopted by the Nairobi Metropolitan Services on behalf of the people of Nairobi..â read the declaration in part.
On eve of Christmas 2020, the president decorated the fig tree with lights to symbolize its significance and wish Kenyans well during the festivities. Since the presidential declaration, several conservation organizations have emerged, calling for protection of other green spaces in the city.
The “French Capitals of Biodiversity”: inspiring examples
Over time, an informal network has been formed: of motivated and committed people, but also experienced, effective, and innovative municipal workers, whether they are technicians, politicians, experts, or researchers.
Every year since 2010, a competition has been organized for French cities of all sizes to designate the “French Capital of Biodiversity”. Born in the context of the Year of Biodiversity and intended to contribute to the mobilization of local governments emerging from the COP Biodiversity in Nagoya, this program has gradually become part of the French landscape of ecological transition of cities and is now permanent, supported by the highest French national authorities (ministries in charge of the city and ecology) and internationally  by the Executive Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The “competition” aspect is a definite motivation for elected officials and technicians of the participating cities, who aspire to obtain national recognition. Such an award is a powerful tool for enhancing the value of their political action among their population. However, with an average of 80 participating cities and only 5 to 6 winners each year (one award per city size category and one champion in all categories), victory is obviously cannot the only motivation to participate.
Indeed, the competition is designed first and foremost as an educational tool, on the one hand through a demanding questionnaire that is a real source of inspiration, and on the other hand through the publication of thematic collections of exemplary: actions that ensure that all participating cities can share and disseminate their achievements, of which they are proud.
Over time, an informal network has been formed: of motivated and committed people, but also experienced, effective, and innovative municipal workers, whether they are technicians, politicians, experts, or researchers. Exchange days, inspiring field visits, and sharing of documents or advice have become commonplace, without replacing other formal networks (which are faithful partners of the competition) but rather complementing their action.
The French Capital of Biodiversity award is only interested in actions that have already been implemented, not in projects that are not yet complete. The aim is to encourage mayors to take action to preserve or restore local biodiversity, to reassure them that their projects are feasible, and to save them time and resources by allowing them to build on the achievements of their colleagues.
Here are a few examples of actions by award winners in recent years:
In Strasbourg (Alsace), the city has just obtained the classification of one of its alluvial forests bordering the Rhine River as a National Nature Reserve, the highest degree of legal protection in France. And this is the cityâs 3rd urban nature reserve! For the more ordinary urban environment, from the point of view of biodiversity, the city is deploying Urban Nature Parks, by district: a concept that mobilizes citizens, associations, companies, etc. around the issues of nature in the city.
In Lille (Nord)âa very dense and mineral cityâplanting pits are opened in the sidewalks to allow residents to plant climbing plants that will grow along the facades, forming a natural vertical vegetation. These are inexpensive, easy to maintain and help to cool the streets during heat waves. This is a movement initiated more than 20 years ago but which is accelerating: hundreds of public and private facades are now being greened every year.
In Rennes (Brittany), a vast natural park has just been created in the city center, which provides play areas, walks, and relaxation for city dwellers, but also provides a refuge for fauna and flora in non-accessible areas that have been put under great pressure by human activities. The park also serves as an expansion of the river flood zones: flooded a few days a year, the park protects the neighbouring houses and constitutes a wetland very favourable to a wide range of species. Thus, it is a good example of a nature-based solution to limit risks.
Flood expansion wetland, Prairies Saint-Martin urban park, Rennes
Finally, since 2019, the competition has been based on an additional approach that aims to help cities and villages that are not yet “biodiversity champions” to structure their nature protection projects, to amplify their ambition and quality, and to help with their implementation. This is the “Territory Committed to Nature” recognition. Naturally, we hope that in a few years such projects will become exemplary actions that will be evaluated and promoted as part of the “French Capital of Biodiversity” competition.
Dr Colin Meurk, ONZM, is an Associate at Manaaki Whenua, a NZ government research institute specialising in characterisation, understanding and sustainable use of terrestrial resources. He holds adjunct positions at Canterbury and Lincoln Universities. His interests are applied biogeography, ecological restoration and design, landscape dynamics, urban ecology, conservation biology, and citizen science.
Colin Meurk
A game of two halvesâthe personal journey.
Nature is a great teacher and we are drawn to it. We need to get more of our zest and lessons from nature so we can be better planetary citizens and guardians.
This metaphor, commonly applied to football games in which there is a mismatch between a teamâs performance in 1st and 2nd halves, may describe how aspirational environmental policies, paved with good intentions, can fail in the subsequent implementation phase. We are all familiar with “first half” rhetoric surrounding TBL (triple bottom line), multi-, inter- then trans-disciplinary consultation, engagement, collaborative learning, co-design, participatory democracy, and co-creation of solutions to wicked problems. These notions track the post-war rise in awareness and use of ecology, conservation, and biodiversity terminology. Yet, there seems to be a mismatch between 1st and 2nd halves or a different outcome according to who you listen toâthose inside the tent frequently talking up their immaculate processes and successes. That seems to be the challenge: getting feet inside the tent! Whereas consultation frequently engages children, “grass roots” community, business, (environmental) engineers, landscape architects, and indigenous peopleâwhich is all goodâseldom are professional ecologists involved. This is somewhat amazing when most of the worldâs emergencies are ecologically based.
The aspirations may be undone by career bureaucrats who donât know that they donât know; so outside the tent it becomes more who you know rather than what you know. It seems society has lost its innate ecological literacy (dis-enfranchisement, institutional memory loss, guardianship), maybe retaining a sense nature is important at some metaphysical level, but often, in ecology and conservation, the devil is in the detail.
We are of course dealing with different motivations for politicians (e.g., votesâa bit simplistic and cynical), bureaucrats (performance/promotion), and community/environmental advocates (global to local sustainability/well-being outcomes). But everyone has multiple agendasâpersonal, family, “group”, city, nation, or the team of 5 billion. New Zealand made a virtue out of being the team of 5 million in containing the Covid crisis. But it is hard to sustain the collective will when it is undermined by fake news on social media or mainstream shock jocks.
There is also mismatch between what is commonly understood by environment and ecology. The 3rd pillar of sustainability is most often stated as environment, rather than ecology. Technically environment covers the living world, but in popular use it seems primarily to relate to clean air and water, e-cars, solar panels, thermally efficient buildings, etc., in other words, “life” seems to be missing or an afterthought. So, we will choose street trees, from anywhere in the world, that have regimental growth forms, over an indigenous more scruffy tree form, without considering the loss of landscape wildlife functionality, place-making, legibility, and cultural connectivity.
Back to the question, we can all point to pockets of at least partial success and sanity. Christchurch Cityâs Travis Wetland park, protected in 1997, resulted from a juxtaposition of respected community campaigners backed by young ecologists, a champion council planner with experience of the international wetland conservation movement, a sympathetic elected Council, a deal with a developer, and subsequently a hands-on park ranger who has been fully engaged, working with a community trust in partnership. We have also endeavoured to copy Londonâs Biodiversity Partnership as a means of direct conversation, peer review, and mutual support between council staff and able, concerned citizens bypassing the charade of exhausting and fruitless annual plan submissions. Ratification is still pending! Now, the National Park City (biophilic) provides a brand to promote common vision, cohesion and interdepartmental synergyâif the city can be pro-active with “can-do” attitude.
It seems activist youth is having some impact around the world, dragging leaders kicking and screaming into taking urgent climate action. But there are powerful business-as-usual lobbyists who will prefer cosmetic or token changes to the needed fundamental reset of the prevailing economic paradigm. Thriving nature in cities and connection to peopleâs daily experience (e.g., Shinrin yoku) will be a vital componentâfor benefits to human physiology, psychology, well-being and reduced material consumption. Nature is a great teacher and we are drawn to it. We need to get more of our zest and lessons from nature so we can be better planetary citizens and guardians. Even if we know there wonât be immediate correction, we have to bring what to many will be unpalatable ideas into the conversation so when required it isnât a total shock.
Mahito Kamada is a landscape ecologist working as professor at Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tokushima University, Japan. His academic interest is on socio-ecological landscape at rural areas in Asia as well as Japan. He is now working as the president of Japan Association for landscape Ecology (JALE). He also works with citizen groups as the representative of a network organization on nature conservation in Tokushima Prefecture, and supports Tokushima prefectural office to make policies on biodiversity conservation.
Mahito KAMADA
An educational course provided to citizen groups for progress in biodiversity conservation
In this essay, I will give an example of actions of citizen groups collaborating with local government to complement the local biodiversity strategy of Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan.
Through multiple workshops, the citizen groups recognize that development of human resources is the one of the most important issues for advancing biodiversity conservation. As a result, Tokushima Prefecture set it as one of the key policies.
Tokushima Prefecture established local biodiversity strategy in 2013, through collaboration with citizen groups. Prior to this strategy a network organization, which consisted of 22 citizen groups of nature conservation in Tokushima Prefecture, was established in 2010 to exchange information and develop a common opinion on biodiversity conservation. The author became one of two representatives. The network proposed collaborative way for making the local strategy to the Governor. The network promoted workshops with regular people to discuss challenges and opinions on biodiversity and a proposed framework for the local strategy. In particular, they addressed what kind of challenges should be involved and what kind of measures should be adapted. Through these workshops, we came to understand how the public is a human resource to be considered and involved with the process of biodivserity conservation.
Workshop promoted by a network of citizen groups for making local biodiversity strategy.Educational course for developing human resource provided by citizen groups
Through multiple workshops, the citizen groups recognize that development of human resources is the one of the most important issues for advancing biodiversity conservation. As a result, Tokushima Prefecture set it as one of the key policies in the strategy. At a same time, the network made several education courses and opened them to public. Eight groups in the network provide programs in cooperating with researchers at universities; each group had a specific interest for a particular ecosystem such as natural and semi-natural forest, river, paddy fields, and estuary. Thus, participants in the course can learn about different ecosystems in a basin.
The educational course occurs over eight days. The first day is guidance on entire course and risk management during field works. Each program for the next 6 days has classroom learning and field work as practical training. In the final day, a workshop is conducted to review what was learned. The image below is the flyer for 2021 course, and its contents are as follows: (1) 25 April, Guidance, and risk management in the field; (2) 16 May, Natural Forest and its value for local people; (3) 5 June, wildlife and ecosystem service of river; (4) 4 July, ecosystem of semi-natural forest (Satoyama); (5) 25 July, life and knowledge of local people for using ecosystem services from semi-natural forest (Satoyama); (6) 21 August, wildlife in paddy fields and irrigation channel; (7) 5 September, wildlife and ecosystem function of estuary; (8) 24 October, workshop for reviewing what was learned.
The quality and quantity of the education is very high, it may be comparable to 2 units of a practical training class in an undergraduate program of a university, and thus it has been qualified as an official course by the government of Tokushima Prefecture. As a consequence, the prefectural office has started to pay 900,000 Japanese yen (ca.$US8,500) a year to the network as costs of conducting the course, and a person who completes the course has been qualified as a âbiodiversity leaderâ by the Governor. Some of the biodiversity leaders join the staff for the educational course and learn ways to manage and teach a course, acting as lecturers. These courses are a result of efforts for development of human resources over a seven-year period.
As an example of impacts from the course, in the final workshop in the course of 2020, a middle-aged lady, who is strawberry farmer, said that she learned about the important role of an estuary and recognize pesticides she uses are a risk to an estuary. She immediately decided to reduce pesticides in her farm.
My career path has reflected a passion for affecting change and has helped to culture long-lasting relationships with a diversity of government and non-government, academic, conservation and sustainability leaders and industry interests. Goals: To build a legacy of ecological literacy and stewardship among decision makers and local citizenry through reconciling the conflicts between human and non-human resource needs and improving the trust between society and science practitioners.
Pamela Zevit
City of Surrey Biodiversity Conservation Strategy:Â How did this happen?
Ultimately, successful implementation of Surreyâs city-wide biodiversity conservation strategy is tied to political will, long-term support from the community and how broader societal values recognize the importance of nature as integral to a Cityâs health, well-being and resiliency.
The City of Surrey, located in southwest BC, Canada, is the Provinceâs fastest growing city. With a population nearing to 600,000 and growing monthly Surrey is closing in on Vancouver. Larger in area than the City of Toronto, Surreyâs landscape supports over 2400 hectares of greenspace. Dedicated as parks, natural areas, and biodiversity preserves, much of these lands make up what is referred to as the Cityâs Green Infrastructure Network (GIN). In 2011, following the completion of a comprehensive ecosystem management study, Surrey initiated a city-wide biodiversity conservation strategy (BCS).
The BCS was completed and endorsed by Council in 2014. The Strategy acts as a framework to establish biodiversity goals and targets and conservation priorities for the City as part of an ongoing initiative originating from the Cityâs Sustainability Charter, adopted in 2008 (and updated in 2016). The BCS is intended to work in conjunction with the Cityâs Official Community Plan.
What were the ingredients that helped to raise awareness about biodiversity within the government or development team that led to a new biodiversity policy or project?
As with many jurisdictions, a key portion of high biodiversity areas within the City are located on private land. This limits the powers of the City in respect to imposing restrictions on development. In order to successfully establish support for the development of the BCS, and the subsequent establishment of the GIN, the cooperation and engagement of a broad spectrum of stakeholders was essential. To facilitate this, the City established a Stakeholder Working Group made up of 18 key community stakeholders from business and environmental groups, First Nations, neighbouring governments, and other partners.
The working group met four times throughout the process to provide feedback and recommendations. Public communication was ongoing throughout the development of the strategy, including regular press releases, use of social media, and public open houses and information sessions.
The BCS and GIN are recognized and interwoven in many of the Cityâs key strategic documents: Parks, Recreation & Culture Strategic Plan; Integrated Stormwater Management Plans; Shade Tree Management Plan; Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy; Climate Adaptation Strategy; Newton: Sustainability in Action Plan; and the Cityâs overarching Sustainability Charter.
What collaborations or processes, initiated by someone inside the government (city staff or elected official) and/or outside the government (academic, scientist, activist), led (or will lead) to new biodiversity conservation policies or actions?
To help further existing efforts to meet the intended objectives of the BCS, the City hired a Biodiversity Conservation Planner in 2019, whose role is to oversee implementation of the BCS at both a planning and operational level. One type of conservation target in the BCS is tracking indicator species. Starting in 2019 the City began accessing community science data through iNaturalist; it is using the platform to acquire and map data about where, and when various species occur across Surrey. Realtime data such as this has been valuable in identifying species at risk, newly detected invasive species, and various regulated species (e.g., migratory birds and raptors), information which the City can apply to inform land use planningâfrom the site to the landscape level (e.g., specific DPs up to neighbourhood plans).
The City is also partnering with the University of British Columbia to determine the best approaches and software tools to analyze various landcover data (e.g., Metro Vancouverâs Sensitive Ecosystem Inventory and the GIN) in an attempt to build a more comprehensive picture of priority conservation lands.
Beginning in 2021, the City is increasing the City-wide Parkland Acquisition development cost charge (âDCCâ) rate with the goal of providing funding to acquire GIN lands identified in the BCS. The increase will be phased in over 5 years. Approximately 441 hectares of GIN lands must be acquired, at an estimated cost of $1 billion over the next 50 years (roughly $20 million per year at present land values). Approximately 75% of GIN lands are within developable areas, thus are DCC eligible. The DCC was fully approved by the Province and Surreyâs Mayor and Council as of April 2021 and will go into effect in May 2021.
Ultimately, successful implementation of the BCS is tied to political will, long-term support from the community and how broader societal values recognize the importance of nature as integral to a Cityâs health, well-being and resiliency.
Eric Butler is a landscape ecologist and conservation advocate with a particular interest in the urban ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. He is currently working as a seasonal botanist with the Bureau of Land Management in central Oregon but normally calls the greater Portland area home. He has been a steering committee member with the Friends of Tualatin Hills Nature Park since 2013.
Eric Butler
Though the relationship has grown from one of early tension to a deep and enduring mutual respect, the Friends of Tualatin Hills Nature Park continue the tradition of advocacy and stewardship that saved an amazing park for the publicâand transformed a park district into a regional champion for nature.
Today, Tualatin Hills Nature Park in Washington County, Oregon, is a beloved community treasure. This 224-acre greenspace contains a popular nature center, the confluence of two creeks, 4.5 miles of trails, and a remarkable mosaic of wetland and upland habitats supporting exceptional biodiversity for a landscape its size.
A walk in the park might reveal anything from pileated woodpeckers to fairyslipper orchids to the parkâs unofficial mascot, the rough-skinned newt. Once, though, it was a forgotten piece of land perhaps destined for development. The story of how St. Maryâs Woods became Tualatin Hills Nature Park is a story of community advocacy, driven by passion, persistence, and a collaborative spirit.
The wooded surroundings of the old Elliot Homestead once served as the big backyard playground of St. Maryâs Home for Boys. The land had existed in a state of mostly benign neglect for a long time, but urban expansion was reaching the area, and in the 1970s, the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland was considering selling the property. Several local community members, who had been exploring the siteâs network of informal trails for years, wanted to see it preserved. After a bid to gain the interest of Oregon State Parks fell through, attention turned to the nascent Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District (THPRD), then a traditional turfgrass-and-ballfields operation just beginning to find its identity in a rapidly growing community. At the time, natural resources were barely on THPRDâs radar, and represented a responsibility they lacked the capacity to take on.
Advocates for a nature park were undeterred, and organized to testify at public meetings, rally their neighbors, and eventually pass a bond measure earmarking funds to acquire the park. It would take successive waves of community advocacy, however, to lead to the parkâs public opening in 1998; to acquire an additional 22 acres of critical habitat slated for development; and to support dedicated programs and staff for natural resources, trails, and environmental education districtwide. In the half-century since the notion of a Tualatin Hills Nature Park first began, an amazing thing happened: THPRD evolved from reluctant follower to farsighted leader in urban nature conservation. The ensuing years have seen them acquire dozens of new natural areasâmore than 150 in all, encompassing about 1500 acres of diverse urban ecosystems including spectacular sites like the scenic oak/prairie landscape at Cooper Mountain Nature Park or the wildlife-rich wetlands at Greenway Park. THPRDâs nature programs serve thousands of preschoolers, summer campers, teens, and adults every year. A thriving volunteer program welcomes community members to restore natural areas and maintain trails most weekends of the year. And, collaborations with other regional agencies have supported metropolitan-scale watershed enhancements.
The community advocates are still around, as well. The original group behind the campaign to acquire the Nature Park evolved first into an advisory committee and, later, to the Friends of Tualatin Hills Nature Park, which remains active to this day. The Friends work closely with THPRD staff to support park improvements and educational programs, using funds raised through their twice-annual native plant sales, and to welcome visitors and volunteers. Though the relationship has grown from one of early tension to a deep and enduring mutual respect, the Friends continue the tradition of advocacy and stewardship that saved an amazing park for the publicâand transformed a park district into a regional champion for nature.
Eduardo Guerrero is a biologist with over 20 years of experience in projects and initiatives involving environmental and sustainable development issues in Colombia and other South American countries.
Eduardo Guerrero
Collective action driven by a multi-stakeholder deliberation to conserve urban biodiversity in Bogotå
Effective action depends on a combination of both formal and spontaneous synergies. The recipe to effective action is to reach a critical mass of committed leaders involving a multi-stakeholder common purpose.
Bogota, a capital city of 8 million people located in a megadiverse country offers good examples of ongoing processes preserving and integrating biodiversity in urban development. The emblematic image of this city is Cerros Orientales (Eastern Hills), an amazing landscape feature you can see from every point, which permanently links citizens with nature. But, in addition to Cerros Orientales, we have urban wetlands and Bogota river as other key ecological elements, not to mention surrounding âpĂĄramosâ, strategic high-Andean ecosystems, themselves highly biodiverse and vital in terms of water regulation and carbon storage. So, one our main challenges is to preserve and restore Bogotaâs ecological network (what we call âEstructura EcolĂłgica Principalâ) the same as establishing green corridors connecting its key elements.
As part of a complex not easy process, nature is increasingly integrated to urban planning. Photo: Eduardo Guerrero
Within this context let me share some views in response to this relevant question:Â What actions actually are successful in activating city governments and developers to implement urban biodiversity conservation policies, campaigns, and projects?
Lessons learned in integrating biodiversity into city planning in BogotĂĄ
In this Andean megacity a promising process is taking place, not well coordinated but somehow effective, led by a deliberative group of committed public, private and community groups of interest. My hypothesis is that we are near to achieve in Bogota a critical mass of stakeholders representing a diversity of interests who share a concurrent vision and related goals regarding urban nature.
Effective action depends on a combination of both formal and spontaneous synergies. Local governments are not enough to ensure sustainable transformations. City administrations work on 4-year periods and consequently not ensuring continuity of programs and projects. On the other hand, developers and local communities represent a diversity of interests and expectations, which requires a common umbrella vision to focus on long run effective actions. Unanimity and full agreement are not realistic, considering the existence of some radical and biased positions. So, the recipe to effective action is to reach a critical mass of committed leaders involving a multi-stakeholder common purpose. Even amid conflicts of interest, misunderstandings, and sectoral and political biases, gradually more and more stakeholders value Cerros Orientales, urban wetlands and Bogota river as patrimonial and strategic elements of BogotaŽs natural heritage, essential for city prosperity. Some promising achievements, in the middle of a fervent deliberation, show a route of consolidation.
Cerros Orientales, Bogota river and urban wetlands are formally integrated into the BogotĂĄ planning main tool (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial) and are protected by judicial decrees in response to citizens allegations regarding the right to a healthy environment.
Cerros Orientales is a national protected area (forest reserve) and, as a complement, it was established an adaptation strip (franja de adecuaciĂłn) in the space between forest reserve and built city. Local government, developers and community organizations must coordinate actions to preserve it.
Regarding the BogotĂĄ river there is also a coordination process among environmental and local authorities in the territory comprising the river basin. Pressures and drivers of river degradation pose one of the biggest challenges toward a stable recovery of the river for the city.
The case for urban wetlands is quite interesting. Thirty years ago, they were not part of city planning. On the contrary, it was a regular practice to filling them with rubble as part of land preparation for housing and urban development. Fortunately, during this interval, a synergistic process involving gov and community stakeholders was successful in halting such an intense deterioration. Now, the complex of urban wetlands has been recognized by Ramsar Convention and local communities value them.
Challenges to consolidate ongoing actions
Of course, some challenges remain to solidify achievements. We need to consolidate a common ground around a shared vision, as well as a win-win mood, in such a way that interests and actions converge and complement. Paradoxically, we have a multiplicity of gov and non-gov similar initiatives under a diversity of organizations competing among them instead of collaborating. It is also critical to promote a governance based on transparency and participation, social appropriation, the building of trust and joint action. A particular challenge is to reconcile opposing political ideologies around common goals and promote city long-term goals ensuring continuity beyond successive administrations.
My conclusion:
Perduring successful actions are those engaging people with urban nature and promoting common goals among diverse public and private stakeholders, that is, actions generating equal and just benefits for all citizens, because of conserving urban biodiversity.
The recipe: social appropriation and a committed set of leaders representing most groups of interest, that work together in a complementary way instead of competing among them.
Human well-being and urban biodiversity are two sides of the same coin. Photo: Eduardo Guerrero
Even, or perhaps especially, in the midst of a pandemic, the importance of greenspace for human health is becoming more apparent. As we imagine a post-pandemic world, we can learn collectively to reevaluate what matters in our urban centers: diversity, equity, resilience, and of course, a walk in the park.
The COVID-19 pandemic has established a moment of immense global loss. In the midst of this public health crisis, our concerns for our families and communities necessarily take priority. Yet, addressing these concerns demands a look towards the future: to the reevaluation of global systems that may produce or obstruct the conditions for the next pandemic.
Emerging dialogue linking biodiversity conservation and public health management is a prime example of such reevaluation. The United Nationsâ recent report, âPreventing the Next Pandemic,â offers a valuable argument for the use of ecosystem management as a public health tool. Concurrently, The Nature of Cities site has hosted a global roundtable of urban biodiversity experts assessing the impact of the current public health crisis on urban ecosystemsâa resource that has grounded many of the arguments and observations made in this article. As we continue to learn how ecosystem biodiversity and public health influence each other, addressing this interconnectedness in urban areas will be uniquely importantâfor characterizing the most immediate responses to the pandemic within environments that host a growing majority of the worldâs population and some of its most critical biodiversity. The complicated relationship between urban biodiversity and the novel coronavirus offers essential lessons for our post-pandemic cities.
Urban centers and biodiversity must be re-contextualized during our present moment: who uses city spaces? What does use of urban greenspace look like during the pandemic? And how has COVID-19 challenged urban biodiversity management? These questions address the urban ecosystem stakeholders with whom I am most concerned: Homo sapiens, particularly policymakers and urban citizens. Critically digesting their experiences and choices can inform reflectionsâfour are presented hereâfor equity and resilience in the face of future public health crises. Lessons from the pandemic for research scientists are also incredibly salient, and much has been written about these already. Although an effort has been made to approach this topic from a global perspective, the cities whose stories are examined here are primarily English-speaking for ease of research.
This piece is written to address urban environmental conservation through the lens of a social-ecological system (SES) analysis. An SES is a framework for understanding complex ecosystems in which âmultiple sets of actors consume diverse resource units extracted from multiple interacting resource systems in the context of overlapping governance systems.â This definition is challenging to conceptualize and it may help to consider an SES as a unit in which humans interact with natural ecosystems in specific ways informed by institutions. The urban ecosystems with which I am concerned are greenspaces: sites of terrestrial urban vegetation that provide habitats for urban biodiversity, including private yards, public parks, and grassy sidewalks. This definition does not encompass previously developed sites (i.e. brownfields) or bodies of water (i.e. blue space). However, many topics addressed in this article are also applicable to these areas. The living organisms within greenspaces make up the urban biodiversity of the environment (a term that also applies to their structural and functional diversity).
Urban Biodiversity Hubâs definitions of âurbanâ and âbiodiversity conservationâ, as used by the organization. Urban biodiversity conservation offers a framework for understanding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban social-ecological systems. Source: www.ubhub.org
Around the world, the pandemic has reshaped the relationships between urban dwellers and their natural environments. These relationships are emerging and multidimensional, making them challenging to quantify and assess for significance. Nevertheless, public engagement with nature has long been a cornerstone of conservation and can offer illuminating lessons for biodiversity advocates. Themes of increased and diversified use of urban greenspace have begun to emerge and, importantly, bear implications for public health. However, access to nature is not shared equally by all, necessitating the question:
Who uses city spaces?
In the United States, the early months of the coronavirus pandemic were characterized by narratives of egress from urban centers. Those with the option sometimes left high-risk areas to avoid high levels of viral exposure and to access more affordable living with family and friends; others (those with means) sought safety in rural second homes. But, not all who left urban areas did so willinglyâmany were evicted.
Social distancing protocols take effect in Edinburgh, Scotland, presenting unique challenges to underprivileged groups without the means to follow best health practices, like staying home when sick. Source: “Let’s Keep a Safe Distance 02” by byronv2 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
The ones who remained may not have had much of a choice; either due to lack of economic means or the need to stay near employment sources, particularly for those jobs deemed essential. American cities have witnessed an incredible demand for the services of essential workers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, many of these workers are low-income or people of color, making them highly vulnerable to COVID-19. People without homes have also faced unique challenges; social distancing and quarantining can be especially difficult for those without a safe place to live. Because the pandemic has increased rates of homelessness and evictions worldwideâdespite government efforts to make it otherwiseâthese challenges are increasingly consequential. Those who continue to live and work in American cities in the midst of the pandemic often do so because they lack the means to leave.
In many South and Southeast Asian countriesâfrom India to Myanmarâmigration out of cities has occurred with greater magnitude, and in a different fashion: poor, migrant workers have left after their jobs disappeared in cities to head for their rural homes. Around the world, migrant workers who choose to stay at job centers face the prospect of living in packed dormitories, where the virus may easily spread.
In Thailand, international aid organizations have targeted COVID-19 education towards vulnerable individuals with limited ability to socially distance, many of them migrant workers from Myanmar. Source: “IMG_9861” by USAID Asia is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
The pandemic is shifting the demographics of city users and dwellers worldwide, spurred by urban inequities that are not new but are certainly garnering new attention. Social science scholars often frame these inequities within a question, first proposed by sociologist Henri Lefebvre in 1968: who has the âright to the city?â Our responses help to explain why urban (reverse) migrations are happening and highlight which city amenities need to be made more accessible in an age of sickness, stress, and uncertainty.
For example, patterns of Asian reverse migrations have implied that migrant workers typically work and live in cities temporarily but are not necessarily welcome permanently. In American inner cities (at least in the more affordable ones), vulnerable essential workers may work and live but may have less access to resources, like public parks, that are disproportionately located in wealthier neighborhoods. Likewise, homeless communities have limited rights to greenspace when their desired useâto stay overnight, for instanceâdoes not align with the official intended use of the space. Importantly, many European cities have begun to address homelessness during the pandemic by offering temporary housing in hotels and sheltersâa significant first step in synergizing social justice and urban planning.
This is just a small sampling of ârights to the cityâ-related issues exacerbated by COVID-19. Although a more complete analysis is beyond the scope of this piece, we must address who is living in cities and how they are living there before we can understand how greenspace is used in the age of COVID-19.
What does the use of urban greenspace look like during the pandemic?
Even, or perhaps especially, in the midst of a pandemic, the importance of greenspace for human health is becoming more apparent. Research has long observed the physical and psychological benefits of outdoor access, from improvements in respiratory function and physical fitness to stress reduction. The eminent biologist and conservationist E. O. Wilson was the first to coin the term âbiophiliaâ: humanityâs innate tendency to desire interaction with nature. These benefits for humans provided by the environment are called ecosystem services and are essential to understanding the importance of urban biodiversity.
Advantages for human health become only more poignant as efforts to limit COVID-19 also limit mobility, planning, and social gathering. Resultant stress and reduced exercise opportunities in urban populations have powerfully illuminated the value of greenspace for human health and wellbeing during the pandemic. Worldwide, rural parks and recreation areas have shut down as social distancing mandates continue, and funding and staffing for parks sputter. The result is a perfect storm: suddenly, urban greenspaces have become vital sites for recreation and leisure.
Signage in Dublin, Ireland urges greenspace users to socially distance as parks reopen. Source: “Take the right path in life” by through the lens of Cityswift is licensed under CC BY 2.0
While demand for greenspace has soared globally, accessibility to these spaces has fallenâdue in large part to mobility restrictions placed upon urban centers by city officials. In Barcelona, for example, March and April saw the imposition of fines for those caught running and cycling in public areas. Franceâs lockdown lasted for months, severely limiting access to public space. These observations should not be misconstrued as a call to defy public health measures. Rather, this moment can be harnessed as an opportunity to improve how urban greenspace is used and managed.
Many cities are doing just that. Seattle, Washington has sped up its adoption of new pedestrian-first crosswalks that improve mobility for runners and cyclists. Other urban centers from Mexico City to Berlin are adding bike lanes and considering permanent through-traffic closures on city streets. Experts have already begun to debate whether these changes may be maintained long-term, and what the implications may be for developing greener, more efficient, and less polluted cities.
The pandemic has not only increased urban greenspace use but also diversified it. Outdoor learning modules have been implemented in rural Kashmir to much acclaim. The National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative in the United States follows in the same vein. Notably, these outdoor education models have had success in European citiesâ particularly in Germanyâs âforest kindergartensââfor decades, where teachers harness the beneficial effects of biophilia in their approach to learning.
Children in Kashmir continue schooling in outdoor classrooms amidst social distancing guidelines to combat the spread of COVID-19. Source, with permission: Abid Bhat/BBC News
Biophilic education has also caught on at home, where children and adults are using citizen science to stay entertained and globally engaged. Urban âbioblitzesââcommunity events organized to record biodiversity by an interested public have moved to the backyard, where they can continue in a socially-distanced fashion. The online forum iNaturalist is a popular site for the events, which are occurring everywhere from New Hampshire to Kerala. Elsewhere, first-time gardeners are looking to the backyard for sustenance: to reduce their reliance on grocery stores, to develop a new hobby, or even to reduce stress. As the pandemic upends lifestyles and livelihoods, reconnecting with nature offers urbanites a means to adapt.
How has COVID-19 challenged urban biodiversity management?
The pandemic has caused local governments worldwide to go to newâand opposingâextremes when it comes to biodiversity management: some ecosystems are now more highly controlled than ever before, while attention towards others has fallen to the wayside.
Depleted budgets and lost workers have made urban greenspace maintenance an unaffordable or low priority expense for many cities. In Singapore, vegetation has been growing wild and untamed during its âcircuit breakerâ (lockdown) period, inviting new insects and delighting nature-enthused city residents. Elsewhere, cities under lockdownânotably lacking in traffic and snack-bestowing touristsâhave witnessed ever-encroaching wildlife on the lookout for food. Coyotes and foxes in American cities, deer in Nara, Japan, and those pesky Thai monkeys have all forced residents to reassess their relationships with local wildlife.
At the other end of the spectrum, the public health crisis has, in some cases, resulted in more highly managed human-wildlife interactions. Local and national officials in China have imposed new regulations upon wildlife marketsâlargely cited as a possible reservoir of SARS-CoV-2âgarnering praise from conservationists and public health authorities. Elsewhere, from Tehran to Tokyo to Venice, city workers are spraying antimicrobials in public areas to stop the spread of the virus, a measure that could have far-reaching implications for ecosystem health.
In Lopburi, Thailand, monkeys have long been accustomed to being fed (here, photographed in 2012). Reductions in social mobility (and thus food handouts) during the pandemic have led animals to encroach further upon urban centers, sometimes causing excitement for residents as well as nuisances and public health concerns. Source: “Feeding Macaques” by Buzz Hoffman is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Some of the negative impacts of returning wildlife in major cities have already begun to draw the attention of city officials. Lopburi has recently begun sterilizing its hungry monkeys to control their rapidly growing numbers and Singaporeâs grassy sidewalks have become a point of contention between local nature-lovers and the National Parks Board, which is mandated to maintain roadside greenery. Of particular concern for the Southeast Asian city is a rising incidence of dengue, a disease spread by mosquitoes that use stagnant waters amongst dense vegetation to breed.
Balancing biodiversity conservation, public health, and human livelihoods is no easy task for municipal officials, especially in the midst of a health emergency. Yet, the pandemic has made it abundantly clear that these issues are not independent of one another
Many cities have already proven this point. In Pakistan, the COVID-19 crisis has caused high levels of unemployment in urban areas, spurring the expansion of the countryâs 10 Billion Tree Program to make more tree-planting jobs available for those looking for work. Nairobiâs response to COVID-19 has involved expanding city parks for better social distancing and outdoor access, with city officials explicitly approaching public health management as a tool in climate resilience. In Amsterdam, planning for economic recovery post-pandemic has meant the adoption of policies that put human health and conservation first. And, even during its dengue and COVID-19 concerns, Singaporeâs National Parks Board has acknowledged localsâ appreciation for more ânaturalisticâ vegetation and has proposed the expansion of its Nature Ways.
Reflecting on Urban Environmental Management
The following four reflections build upon these stories of COVID-19 experiences, observing ways in which the pandemic can spur us to reimagine urban greenspace and urban areas more broadly. Importantly, responding to the pandemic has occurred across fields of expertise and benefited from collaboration among them. The following insights fall within such distinct fieldsâsocial justice, technology, microbiology, and public healthâand yet will be most useful if understood by urban residents and researchers alike, regardless of profession. A collective appreciation of the potential to restructure our urban systems with an eye to resilience must begin with an understanding of equity, leading to the first reflection:
Reflection #1: Accessibility is becoming a core value in urban greenspace planning
âRight to the cityâ literature can be a valuable framework for defining best practices as cities manage budget cuts in order to establish greater inclusivity in nature post-pandemic. Especially in light of the many beneficial ecosystem services that greenspaces may offer for public health, it is important to recognize that marginalized groups have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. That is, the people who have suffered the most from the pandemic are often also those with the most limited access to greenspace and ecosystem services. Therefore, recovery efforts must seek to redress these inequalities.
Collaboration between the spheres of urban planning, parks management, and public health will be key to addressing these inequities and powerful conversations among stakeholders have already begun to gather momentum. For example, integrating social justice principles within spheres of architecture and urban design is helping to re-conceptualize the functionality of citiesconcerning city user demographics. Simultaneous efforts to engage underrepresented groupsâstudents of color, for instanceâin urban ecosystem management are paving the way for more equitable greenspace use.
Reflection #2: Technology can be adapted as a resource for conservation
In response to the pandemic, cities, educators, and families have applied technology in creative ways to strengthen biodiversity engagement and management. Citizen science ventures accessed via smartphone have opened doors for communities to learn more about their local ecosystems and contribute to biodiversity conservation in the process. In an effort to support social distancing, parks departments had developed online mapping tools to inform greenspace users of activity and crowd levels by area.
Emerging technologies have also been co-opted to monitor and manage public health. Nairobiâs new air-quality sensors will provide valuable data about air pollution, a boon not only for managing environmental risks associated with COVID-19 but also for tracking ecosystem health. New York Cityâs Metropolitan Transportation Authority has opted not to use antimicrobial chemicals in some of its efforts to sanitize subways and buses, choosing UV light-emitting robots instead. Robots have also been employed in Singapore, where theyâre programmed to roam public parks and encourage social distancing.
Whether or not these technologies are explicitly intended to target the environment, many of them have the potential to link communities more strongly with nature and to aid in more efficient and less damaging ecosystem management. Yet, as the pandemic challenges cities to become âsmarterâ and âgreenerâ, it will be more important than ever to remain mindful of Reflection #1 (accessibility) and to implement technology in ways that are equitable and globally productive. Asking where and how technology will be useâand inevitably, who will use itâcan serve these goals.
Reflection #3: Broadening perceptions of ecosystem services to include the microbial world can benefit public health
In recent decades, the emerging fields of microbial and disease ecology have shown us that greenspaces have the potential to affect human health in ways beyond traditional understandings of ecosystem services. That is, our appreciation of nature as a source of clean air and clean water and a site for physical exercise and mental rejuvenation is expanding to include ecosystem services that act at the microscopic level. Microbial ecosystems (i.e. âmicrobiomesâ) have become more common in public vernacular; with respect to the human microbiome, for example, the benefits and detriments of probiotics and antibiotics are becoming well-known by the general public.
Growing widespread awareness of the human microbiome is an exciting first step in microbiology-based public health education. Yet, portraying the human microbiome as an independent entity limits the effectiveness of these efforts: challenging and broadening our understanding of the human microbiome to better address the greater microbial ecosystem should be a central aim of future microbial ecology research. Researchers, for example, have recently proposed re-imagining humans as âholobionts:â living, breathing microbial ecosystems whose members interact with other microorganisms in the greater environment.
This concept is especially useful for municipal public health dialogue, as it helps to inform how we frame urban ecosystem services. For example, reduced microbial biodiversity in the so-called âurban microbiomeâ has been documented and may have broad effects on human health. The hygiene hypothesis is a classic explanation of this proposed phenomenon, predicting challenges to immune system development in more developed, sterile environments. Recently, links between human health and human and ecosystem microbiota have been expanded to encompass even more disease outcomes, from the transmission of diseases to humans from other animal species (zoonoses) to the development of multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease.
The COVID-19 crisis offers a unique opportunity to contribute to this growing body of evidence. Of particular significance are emerging studies that propose limited coronavirus transmission in outdoor settings and possible links between asymptomatic infections and previous exposure to other coronaviruses. As the pandemic modifies human-environment interactions across ecosystemsâwhether through the wide-spread spraying of antimicrobials or the growing presence of urban wildlife in many citiesâit will be exciting to uncover how urban microbiomes have also changed.
Reflection #4: Recognizing synergies between public health, urban planning, and greenspace use will be the key to preventing future pandemics
The reflections above have implications for targeting environmental management in distinct and yet highly connected ways. For example, greenspace accessibility, technology, and public health methodologies may all affect ecosystem health and biodiversity. In turn, natural actors may influence various social components of a given social-ecological system. Antimicrobial resistance, for instance, is a result of a social practiceâthe growing use of antibiotics in medical and agricultural industriesâthat had an environmental consequenceâ the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant âsuperbugs.â What emerges is a highly interconnected social-ecological system from which indirect and unintended consequences can arise. No speciesâhuman or otherwiseâor habitat typeâurban or otherwiseâcan be independent of this system.
This social-ecological system concept has been applied in public health policy with increasing frequency, perhaps most notably within the World Health Organizationâs One Health model, an approach to public health policy that uses expertise from many sectors of ecosystem management, such as food safety and animal health, in its responses to disease. Addressing the COVID-19 crisis has demanded collaboration across these spheres of management and experts identify One Health as a keystone feature in planning to prevent future pandemics.
Actions informed by synergies between human and ecosystem health are already being undertakenâmany of which have been mentioned here. Furthering this work in urban ecosystems, in particular, will be an important next step, and will benefit from approaches that also adapt expertise in urban planning, education, and social justice. Notably, citiesâ best practices for responding to COVID-19 include changes to waste management systems, food systems, and ways of addressing housing and povertyâaspects of urban ecosystems that are also highly significant for this article but beyond its scope. Many of these municipal responses utilize principles of a One Health approach, although none address the model in its entiretyâlikely because the model was largely crafted for public health management at the national level and operates through national bureaus and agencies. Developing One Health schema for use at the local level is a promising strategy for grassroots global health efforts, especially as discussions concerning potential future pandemics proliferate.
What the COVID-19 pandemic has made most clear is that we live in a globalized worldâour social-ecological systems are highly connected and highly complex. Of equal complexity are humanityâs responses to this crisis; they have yielded mixed results but are not without innovation and compassion. The stories of loss and change-making told within this article reflect all of these themes but are less universal truths than context-specific examples of urban management in the pandemic age. That is, there is no âright wayâ for all cities to overcome COVID-19. Rather than provide a list of best practices for current public health and urban environmental management (which would inevitably be lacking), this article acts as a conversation starter for a diverse and multidisciplinary dialogue. As we begin to imagine a post-pandemic world, we can learn collectively to reevaluate what matters in our urban centers: diversity, equity, resilience, and of course, a walk in the park.
Kaja Aagaard, with Mika Mei Jia Tan and Jennifer Rae Pierce Middlebury, Los Baños, Vancouver
By night, Mika Mei Jia Tan leads the Urban Biodiversity Hubâs Steering Committee. In the day, she is Coordinator of the ASEAN Youth Biodiversity Programme at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Biodiversity Centre. An interdisciplinary thinker, she holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies (Conservation Biology) from Middlebury College, USA.
Jennifer Rae Pierce heads the Urban Biodiversity Hubâs Partnerships and Engagement team and is a steering committee member. She is a political ecologist and urban biodiversity planner. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on the topic of engagement in urban biodiversity planning.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, edible gardens have seemed to become an even more critical practice for cities experiencing lockdown, as food supply chains are upended and an edible garden plot close-by residents could enhance food security and mental health.
Edible urban gardens have gained increasing popularity in the Global North within the narrative of nature-based solutions for cities and as parts of urban green infrastructure, which reintroduce greenspaces and associated functions into built environments, with the aspiration of leading to a socially and ecologically more sustainable city. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, edible gardens have seemed to become an even more critical practice for cities experiencing lockdown, as food supply chains are upended and an edible garden plot close-by residents could enhance food security and mental health. Whilst Taiwan has so far successfully contained the pandemic, the Garden City programme (èșćç°ćććžèšç«), which allocates small edible greenspaces to nearby citizens, might be viewed as a far-sighted policy in this kind.
This article is based on work conducted as part of the âIFWEN: Understanding Innovative Initiatives for Governing Food, Water and Energy Nexus in Citiesâ project, granted under the Belmont Forum & Urban Europe Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative/Food-Water-Energy Nexus Programme (SUGI/FWE Nexus) and funded by a Ministry of Science and Technology Taiwan (MOST 107-2621-M-130 -001 -MY3) award to Wan-Yu Shih.
Whilst the programme is named after Howardâs “Garden City”, it is definitely not one of the followers of his spatial planning masterpieces. Rather, the âGarden Cityâ Programme in Taipei is a new type of urban farming that puts hundreds of small edible greenspaces into densely built-up areas to provide horticultural therapy, recreational opportunities, environmental education, and a breadth of social-environmental benefits through engaging citizens in food cultivation. The Taipei Garden City programme was officially launched in 2015 after a long incubation period of practices in local societies, which eventually formed a âFarming Urbanism Network (éœćžèŸČèç¶Č)â and proposed a White Paper that was accepted by the current mayor â Ko Wen-je. Since then, the programme has rapidly integrated gardens from previous policy legacy, such as allotment systems, low-carbon community gardens, Taipei Beautiful sites, and Open Green sites, with newly established gardens both on the ground and on the top of the buildings. This forms 733 gardens across Taipei City within five years, covering 19.75 hectares and involving 54,013 citizens (as of Feb 2020).
Four main types of gardens have been included in the programme:
Happy gardens (30%): the use of disused public lands for engaging local communities to plant vegetables and to maintain the site
Green roofs (11%): the use of rooftop on public buildings for engaging surrounding communities to plant vegetables and to maintain the site
School gardens (45%): the use of grounds and rooftops of schools (from primary to senior high schools) to engage teachers and students in environmental education
Allotment gardens (14%): larger privately-owned lands that are designated as agriculture zones and were created long before the Garden City programme and are mostly located in the urban outskirts
Apart from allotments established at the city outskirt and school gardens using schoolyards and buildings, the first two types of gardens are often created in the most populated districts of Taipei, which provides great accessibility to the citizens. As most central districts of the city have a population density excess of 20,000 persons per km2, finding available lands within such compactly developed areas for farming is challenging, particularly for those on the ground. Several mechanisms have been adopted or developed alongside the programme to secure lands amongst buildings.
A critical strategy was to lift the ban on the use of vacant lands and buildings owned by the public sectors (both national and city governments). A throughout inventory of available lands across the city was conducted and published to enable site seekers to find a suitable land. This has resulted in several rooftop gardens on public buildings, such as district offices, social houses, and hospitals, as well as relatively large gardens at ground-level, such as Zhong-nan Happy Farm next to Nangang metro station and Fujian Happiness Farm. Whilst garden sites established via this scheme are free of charge, their food production is subject to not-for-profit restriction and only allows for self-consumption or donation.
Zhong-nan Happy Farm is right next to the Nangang metro station Photo: Wan-Yu Shih
Another scheme used to increase ground-level gardens is converting parts of the area inside a park, which has been officially zoned as parks and greenspaces in the cityâs urban land use plan. This includes gardens, such as Huoxinren Farm at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Hakka Farm at Hakka Cultural Park, and Dexing Colourful Farm at Dexing Park. Amongst them, the land of Dexing Park next to the SOGO department store was donated by Shihlin Electric as part of its corporate social responsibility activities while its factory location was re-zoned from industrial to commercial use. The process of re-zoning was, however, completed before the Taipei Garden City programme was enacted.
Huoxinren Farm utilises parts of the area in the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park for cultivation Photo: Wan-Yu ShihColourful Farm is located inside Dexing Park in the commercial areas of Shilin District. Photo: Wan-Yu Shih
Attributing to these land acquirement mechanisms, which avoid the need of altering zoning and building codes in the urban plan and save time and budgets from land acquisition, the programme was efficiently implemented. However, the strategy inherent in the spirit of temporary use models of vacant lands from the previous policy – Taipei Beautiful programme, which incentivized temporary greenery on private vacant lands, is not without problems. One of the challenges is that many ground-level gardens sitting on government-owned lands, which are not zoned for greenspaces, are only temporarily available and subject to change for construction. The recent dispute on reclaiming the land of Fujian Happiness Farm for building social housing is one case in point.
“Happiness Farm” in the Fujian neighbourhood of Songsan District was created 7 years ago on a vacant lot owned by the Ministry of National Defence and was assigned as a garden city site under the Taipei Garden City Programme. The garden is located in the city centre, where the land is worth 20 billion $NTD, or 701,340,000 $USD (information based on the interview with warden). It has earned great popularity among local residents as a rare green space within the neighbourhoods to grow vegetables, to meet neighbours, and to ease symptoms of depression, and improve mental health. Over time the gardening activities also fostered good community coherence, as can be seen through the fast organisation of a self-help group when the community was informed to clear the place for social housing to be built by the National Housing and Urban Regeneration Centre. Although local residents keen on keeping this green space nearby, the land of the garden, which is officially zoned for residential use in the urban plan, provides little legal basis for their wishes. Unfortunately, this dispute wonât be the sole case. Sooner or later, many ground-level gardens will face the same problem.
The land of Happiness Farm at Fujian neighbourhood belongs to the Ministry of National Defence of Taiwan Photo: Wan-Yu ShihThe self-help group of Happiness Farm at Fujian neighbourhood to convey their opinions with the National Housing and Urban Regeneration Centre in a public meeting. Photo: Wan-Yu Shih
Fostering social coherence and resilience amongst urban communities is one of the strengths of the Taipei Garden City programme. The temporary use of available lands to engage residents for farming activities has benefited the social-environmental ecosystem of urban communities. This function is however not sustainable, as current land use mechanisms cannot sustain long-term farming and so social coherence might fade out over time when the garden disappears. Like many cities opt to create urban farms on the rooftop in face of difficulty to acquire lands, Taipei City too pays attention to the top of the building to carry on the programme in the future. However, community gardens on the ground are generally more popular in the case of Taipei since it is visibly and physically more accessible by local communities. Conversely, the use of rooftop gardens is often constrained by safety concerns and building management. It should not assume that the social function of a ground-level garden can be equally replaceable by a rooftop counterpart.
Allocating doorstep green spaces from densely built urban areas is critical but challenging. It requires enormous efforts to negotiate and coordinate between public and private sectors. The success of Taipei Garden City programme so far in terms of implementation and popularity amongst citizens is attributable to the existence of a champion in the government to facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration as well as active local communities to cocreate and to realise the policy. Many popular gardens however might vanish due to its temporary nature of land use and the on-going densification of the city. The pandemic crisis is catalysing urban transformation to be a greener living environment that provides equal and accessible green spaces for public health and well-being. It is also an important time for urban planning to rethink the human-nature relationship while designing the legal mechanisms for not only land use zoning, but also a possibility for nearby residents to suggest a rezoning.
Che-wei works for Classic Landscape Design and Environmental Planning (http://www.classic1990.com/). He is one of the key initiators of the âFarming Urbanism Networkâ (https://www.facebook.com/FarmingUrbanismNetwork/), which prepared a policy appeal for the âTaipei Garden Cityâ programme.
Today’s post celebrates some of the highlights from TNOC writing in 2020. These contributionsâoriginating around the worldâwere one or more of widely read, offering novel points of view, and/or somehow disruptive in a useful way. All 1000+ TNOC essays and roundtables are worthwhile reads, of course, but what follows will give you a taste of 2020’s key and diverse content. Which is not entirely about Covid, although it could have been.
2020 was difficult. Heartbreaking. I am sure everyone reading this has been battered by COVID. We all have lost people. So much of what we love about citiesâperforming arts, restaurants, diverse communities, employment…lifeâhas been gutted. I hear us talk about nature coming back, and the value of parks, and yet…and yet there has been so much human devastation. Now that we have seen how our cities around the world truly function at their most vulnerable, what possible excuse do we now have to not emerge solely committed to fixing it? Maybe in searching for a new post-Covid ânormalâ, we need to act on the idea that the old normal was a big part of the problem.
But COVID is not the only story of 2020. In many ways the “normal” work of the TNOC communities gains some new impulse.
Onward. In essays, roundtables, and reviews we continue to seek the frontiers of thought found at the boundaries of urban ecology, community, design, planning, and art. The Nature of Cities advanced in a number of ways in 2020. The number of contributors has grown to over 900, and we published 100+ long-form essays, reviews, exhibits, and global roundtables. Importantly, we’ve attracted more and more readers: over two million people have visited TNOC. And in 2020 we had readers from 3,500+ cities in 150+ countries.
TNOC is a public charity, a non-profit [501(c)3] organization in the United States, with sister organizations in Dublin (TNOC Europe) and Paris (TNOC France). We rely on private contributions and grants to support our work, and to demonstrate grassroots support to our organizational funders. No pay-wall exists in front of TNOC content. So, if you can, please help support us. Click here to help.
The Nature of Cities Festival
TNOC Festival pushes boundaries to radically imagine our cities for the future. A virtual festival that spans 5 days with programming across all regional time zones and provided in multiple languages. TNOC Festival offers us the ability to truly connect local place and ideas on a global scale for a much broader perspective and participation than any one physical meeting in any one city could ever have achieved. The TNOC festival will take place from 22-26 February 2021. You can register. You can propose sessions. Join us.
COVID. We are all confined to our homesâif we are lucky (more on that later). Which is something, since most of us are âoutdoor typesâ, âpeople typesâ. Can we find meaning, motivation, and renewed spirit for action in this contemplative but deeply strange time? We find ourselves wondering, doubting, planning our next steps or perhaps second-guessing our last ones.
How do we pick up the pieces? What pieces are even still available to us? Which pieces should we cast aside, and leave on the ash heap? There are a few key threads in this collection of 58 people from 24 countries, and many hopeful responses.
Now that we have seen how our cities around the world truly function at their most vulnerable, what possible excuse do we now have to not emerge solely committed to fixing it? Maybe in searching for a new post-Covid ânormalâ, we need to act on the idea that the old normal was a big part of the problem.
After a workshop held at âThe Nature of Cities Summitâ (Paris 2019), a group of TNOC contributors committed to meeting regularly in order to establish an ethical basis for water use and management.
This document is a preliminary draft of our understandings, hopefully a basis for many conversations and policy discussions as more and more stakeholders address the principles laid out. The document also represents a simple guide for ethical actions with regard to water.
Art and Exhibits
During COVID-19, The Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities, sometimes known as FRIEC, is bringing to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current exhibitions on urban ecological themes that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities. We did five such exhibits in 2020. All are remarkable. Here are two.
This exhibit draws upon the USDA Forest Serviceâs Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project, which is a dataset of thousands of civic stewardship groupsâ organizational capacity, geographic territories, and social networks. The show features 4 artists whose work aligns with the themes of community-based stewardship, civic engagement, and social infrastructure. Through photography, drawing, book arts, and performance, these artists reflect upon, amplify, and interpret the work of stewards and the landscapes and neighborhoods with which they work.
The exhibition emerged out of a need to enrich current conversations about resources, infrastructure and services in African cities. The images and stories shared here portray the diverse ways in which we resource our cities, the unique cultures that emerge because of this, and the value that private actors contribute to our societies. The dialogues which accompany this exhibition seek to invite more perspectives into the conversation on urban resources, to connect quantitative and qualitative understanding of our cities, champion the value of creative expression in meaning making, and reflect on internal and external portrayals of African cities.
We launched âStories of the Nature of Cities 1/2 Hourâ in 2020, a monthly series of readings from TNOCâs collection of very short fiction about future cities. Each episode is 30 minutes and features two readings and then a conversation between the authors and an urban practitioner. You can catch them live the first Thursday each month, or you can watch and listen to the recordings.
Using Google mobility data, Urban resilience researchers in New York, Barcelona, Berlin/Halle, Oslo, and Stockholm provide local perspectives on the importance of access to greenspace. While we hope the pandemic and its suffering soon will pass, understanding the importance of greenspace for urban resilience must continue with renewed force.
Humanity will not and should not abandon our cities because of coronavirus. Rather, we should view this horrible pandemic as a spur to improve upon, to make universal, and to include nature in humanityâs amazing invention of the Sanitary City.
Taking lessons from Singapore seems difficult as cities in each have their own strengths and legacies. What seems safer to say, however, is that Singaporeâs long history of urban ecological experiment can inspire others in the region and around the world.
A sustainable ecology of cities is possible when we successfully combine environmental and socio-economic dimensions equally in our plans and actions. In fact, it is the extent of their integration and inclusion that should form a criterion by which we evaluate our success.
White Elephant: 2. figurative. A burdensome or costly objective, enterprise, or possession, esp. one that appears magnificent; a financial liability. The history of green infrastructure implementation in Baltimore shows that what communities care about and care for has been co-opted into practices of maintenance for others. The current state of many facilities demonstrates this approach is not effective. It is time to experiment with a new way forward.
Neglecting gender and the unequal dimension of access and decision-making rights would doom environmental movements to failure. Let us be imaginative. What does it mean to revisit what the promise of equality means in terms of integrating the importance of gender in socio-environmental inequalities?
When commuters once again gather at the metro station, they will join the sound of fauna and the fragrance of flora in an atmosphere of palpable connections. Perhaps we may insist on sharing that space with a revived sense of the need for a radical redistribution of resources and care.
On the opening day, The Nature Conservancy invited politicians from Water, Urban Administration and Housing Construction divisions, press, and professionals across sectors of the city to bear witness to this innovative project. The green rooftop became not only a living space for nature, but also a living space for communities.
On 29 January 2019, New York City Council held a hearing on a trio of bills collectively known as âRenewable Rikersâ. Rikers is currently home to the most infamous prison in New York Cityâthe Rikers Island correctional facility an island penal colony with one lone bridge connecting it to the rest of the City. Renewable Rikers is an opportunity to end an old, but ongoing wrong. For too long, New York City has disproportionately sited its polluting infrastructure in low-income communities and communities of color.
What does anti-racism mean for my profession, the science of ecology? We must identify how ecology as a scienceâwhich is itself in part a social system of researchers, teachers, and practitionersâcan rise to the extraordinary crises that 2020 has highlighted so distressingly.
This work is long and has not been easy. Sometimes we are discouraged by lack of resources and understanding, by violence, by increases in poverty, by politics, by the realities of Colombia. But our hope is still alive, and we remain motivated to contribute our little piece of peace to the life of this beloved corner of the hills of Bogota.
City leaders and urban planners should use COVID-19 recovery strategies and associated resources to enhance existing green spaces, and to support those who are already motivated to maintain their physical activity into the future.
More people are changing how they use green and open spaces in New York during COVID-19, but we found the perception of access to these spaces remains unequal, and reduction in funding further compromises the ability of parks managers and city officials to manage these significant shifts in use.
By denying the existence of inequities within our beloved cities, we set the stage to create even more of them.
Two incidents stand out particularly from my memories as a young child. In the first one, I was perhaps 5 or 6 years oldâat that age when we ran out of the housing colony and into the streets to play a game of hopscotch or whatever else took our fancy. I remember playing with a child my age when another childâs parent came up to me and scolded me. âWhy are you playing with her? Donât you know she is of a lower caste?â I had no idea what caste was, but to pacify the irate woman in front of me, I, to my everlasting shame, agreed that I would not play with that child. The reason the incident has stayed on in my memory is that, in recounting it to my parents, I earned one of the biggest spankings I have ever received. My parents were upset that I was exposed to the one thing they tried to keep me away from. I had just treated someone differently, not to mention badly, simply because of the family she was born into. Worse, they found it difficult to explain this to someone as young as I was then, and I was left to ponder the incident over the years until I could finally make sense of it.
The second incident was also equally bewildering to me at the time. I was eight, it was the 14th of April and, here in India, the date is celebrated for a number of reasons. It signals the start of a new harvest year for many people across the country. It is also the birthday of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of Indiaâs constitution, a member of the countryâs famous untouchable or Dalit community, and someone who went against the social limitations imposed by his birth to shape the direction of the country post-independence. For me, a little school-going child, the day was simply another holiday in which to have fun. Coming from a privileged background, and belonging to the so-called âupper casteâ, while I knew that Dr. Ambedkar was an important person, I was oblivious of the struggles and lived inequities of his community, which he worked to address through drafting the Indian constitution. On this particular occasion, I had to run an errand for my parents at a small shop, an âupper casteâ family-run business. At the shop, the conversation went something like this:
Shopkeeper: No school?
Me: No, it is a holiday.
Shopkeeper: Why?
Me: Well, itâs Ambedkar Jayanti (the birthday of Dr. Ambedkar) and Vishu (the harvest festival as it is known in the southern state of Kerala, where I come from)
Shopkeeper (with a snicker): Oh, you celebrate Ambedkar Jayanti then?
Me: Yeah, doesnât everybody?
Shopkeeper (with another snicker, this one louder than the other, and addressing another group of customers): Oho! She celebrates Ambedkar Jayanti; (to me) You celebrate Ambedkar Jayantiâdo your parents know about it?
The group found it deeply hilarious and went on to have a huge laugh at my expense. I was unsettled, and, in a bid to escape from the situation I found myself in, denied celebrating the said holiday and ran back to the safety of my home.
These two incidents were my induction into the world of social privilege and, in recent months, I have found myself repeatedly going back to those memories and realizing that my social privilege did not just come about because of the family I was born into; rather it was further enabled and amplified because I could choose to walk away unscathed from both those events. I find myself thinking of that other young child, who in my ignorance I had snubbed, and who might have grown up with deep scars as a result of that and other experiences she would undoubtedly have been subjected to. I think what if it had not been me, but an actual Dalit child who was laughed at because he or she belonged to a community that celebrated Ambedkar Jayanti? And then I realize, while there may have been many such children who bear deep scars that cut into their very being because of events such as this, I was privileged because I was able to simply file them away as unpleasant memories. I had the choice to either remember them or forget them, and I had the choice to decide how much those events would influence me.
I was privileged. I had choice.
During my fieldwork as a Ph.D. student in Bangalore, I spent a lot of time documenting the traditional institutions that existed around lakes, the people who live there, and social changes in the area. One such institution was that of the neerganti or the village watermanâhis job was to manually operate the sluice gates of the waterbody and let out required quantities of water to individual farms that were irrigated by the lake. He was compensated for his efforts through a share in the total produce from the area. He was also a member of the scheduled castes and tribesâa dalit, an untouchableâsomeone whose social status was far beneath those of the farmers and other upper societal echelons, and because of which they were subject to many societal restrictions including their choice of water source. Today his profession is rendered obsolete because agriculture is no longer widely practiced, and, where it is still present, people use electric pumps for irrigation. In several interviews I have conducted with members of this community, I would often hear of how they did not wish to be associated with their former identity:
âIn the older days, we were untouchables, yes, but we were self-sufficient. We got our food and grain because of what we did. Today, we have to pay for our food, but people still look down upon us. Why should we call ourselves neergantis anymore?â
âWe have seen how it affected our parentsâhow they drank themselves to ruin because of societyâs taunts. It is why we choose not to be associated with the community and an occupation that we were once very proud of.â
That young child whom I had once snubbed was now grown up and she did not have a choice.
An old sluice gate, once manually operated by neergantis to allow precise amounts of water into surrounding farms. Photo: Hita Unnikrishnan
The ongoing COVID pandemic has only brought out the worst in us like never before. Each day brings with it a fresh wave of distressing visualsâthousands of people walking thousands of miles to reach their villages amidst a lockdown announced in the dead of the night, with about four hours of notice. A young child, asleep at the end of a trolley, being dragged along by his parents. A pregnant woman giving birth to her child on the roadside with no medical attention and plodding on with just a couple of hours of rest. Another toddler attempting to wake its dead mother, a woman who perished from hunger and thirst. Several people being sprayed with hazardous chemicals in the name of sanitization and disinfection. Muslims across the country being blamed for spreading the disease thanks to one particular congregation and conveniently forgetting a number of events across other religions also flouting rules of social distancing. A state callously oblivious to their plight, going so far as to treat all of these people like second class citizens in their own homeland. We have seen it all âfrom denying the hunger and thirst of the migrants, to actively stopping them from travelling back because that would adversely impact the construction industry.
As tragic as these events were, another set of voices were conspicuously absent – of those who depend upon natural resources for their lives and livelihoodsâfarmers, fishermen, commercial washer folk (dhobhies), urban foragers, livestock owners. Each of these groups of people would have found it exceedingly difficult to eke out their livelihoods, given that the countryâs many parks, lakes, and other urban green spaces were closed during the period of lockdown. This undoubtedly would have caused shortfalls in many resources âfor instance pasturage for the livestock owners, water for the farmers, or forage for the urban foragers. Given ongoing limitations to social interactions placed by the pandemic, we are still unaware of strategies that these groups of people have evolved in order to continue to sustain themselves and their families.
There is something else that continues to stand out amidst all these eventsâthe deep fault lines existing within urban spaces brought about by privilegeâor rather the choice that is enabled by urban privilege. On one hand, the vulnerable migrants were trekking across the country from the cities which once gave them hope and from which they now had to escape in order to reach their distant loved ones. On the other, urban middle to upper-class residents were worried that their supply of fruits and vegetables, which would once reach their homes in less than thirty minutes, would now take over four hours to be delivered. And all the while, in the background, was the ubiquitous television which continued to stream endless visuals of masses of people thronging railway stations, or walking long distances, sometimes with very limited food or water to sustain them. Against such stark contrasts were conversations I had with people around meâpeople fortunate enough to be able to continue calling the city their home. There were two distinct conversational tones that I found deeply interesting. First, and most prominent were the group of people who while expressing sympathy for the plight of these vulnerable populations, also laid blame at their feet for the aggressive spread of the pandemic. âWe are very sorry that some people have to go through this miseryâbut think about it Hita, if these people would only maintain social distancing and not trouble the government when it is doing so much for our protection.â The head of the country also apologized to âhis poor brothers and sisters⊠but there was no other way to wage war against the corona virus.â On the other hand, there were people who chose to helpâvolunteering and setting up helplines so these communities could have somewhere to seek help from, setting up neighbourhood task forces in order to provide domestic help, daily wage workers, and other vulnerable populations with support, food, and shelter.
This is, however, not the first time that these fault lines in urban planning have been exposed. Urban planning has historically been iniquitous and geared towards improving the lifestyles of the already privileged. During our long term research conducted into the socio-political and ecological changes driving the loss of lakes within Bengaluruâcapital of the south Indian state of Karnatakaâwe found that certain groups of people have been historically marginalized and continue to remain vulnerable to pressures posed by ongoing urban change. Take the story of a central lake within the city, the Dharmambudhi converted into the cityâs central bus station. Driven by colonial concerns of the sanitary city, and the belief that western technologies of managing water and sanitation were superior to native ones, this story is one of how existing forms of infrastructure were superseded by other formsâin this case, local water supply systems (lakes) by networked closed pipes enabling long-distance water transfer. Piped water supply systems were provided into the homes of urban middle to upper-class members of the community who began to dissociate themselves from the water body that formerly sustained them. This dissociation fed into other forms of urban developmentâit rendered the resource open to being repurposed in other forms, for example, stormwater channels connecting this lake to others within the network began to be built over into other forms of public infrastructureârailways and public utility structures among other things. As a result of this, the lakes themselves began to fall short of meeting the water requirements of those people, mostly those of marginalized urban residents and resource-dependent livelihoods who had continued to depend upon it for meeting their needs. Drought and famine ensued, causing widespread chaos, migration, and death, each event further spelling a death knell upon the already vulnerable water body. Today, memories of the former water body are evoked all around the landscape, for instance, through the names of roads (Tank Bund road, etc) or a solitary temple that still proudly proclaims its association with the former lake. The lake, meanwhile, has given way to another form of public infrastructure: a bus station evocative once again of the processes of change that drove the transformation of this urban space.
The cityâs iconic Majestic bus station, and formerly the Dharmambudhi lake. Photo: Hita Unnikrishnan
These inequities are not confined to the past either. Even today, urban transformations tend to prioritize the needs of the privileged over the marginalized. Waterscapes are seen as spaces of entertainment, recreation, and aesthetics. The result is widespread commercialization of water bodies, increasing efforts to landscape them with fountains, gardens, and night lights, as well as the widespread hoardings advertising real estate that promise spectacular lake views to its buyers.
Missing in each of these narratives about the urban space are the people who live in the fringes. Cities, especially those that have grown by engulfing their peri-urban boundaries, have a substantial population of resource-dependent peopleâmigrants who depend upon urban blue and green spaces to meet their domestic needs of food, shelter, and water, urban foragers who supplement their diet or income through harvesting local greens, farmers who cultivate on the banks of water bodies (even polluted as they are), livestock owners who make use of pasturage, and water supplies from these spaces, and so on.
One of the many luxuries offered by an enclosed privatized lake in Bangalore. Photo: Hita Unnikrishnan
Equally visible are voices of other privileged urban populations who either choose to draw attention to these urban fault lines or turn away while still acknowledging and sympathizing with those who may be affected by such changes. It brings home an important thought: yes, privilege is about power, about possessing sufficient bargaining power within communities, neighbourhoods, and bureaucracies, but privilege also confers upon people the ability to choose. That young girl whom I had snubbed long ago did not have that choice. Instead, I had choice and the ability to decide whether or not I wanted to continue playing with her. That I chose not to is a reflection of how societal conditioning allowed, or rather disallowed, me to exercise my own privilege.
Likewise, privilege gives people the ability to sympathize with others while yet staying distant, it gives people the choice to deny that systemic inequality has always been a part of the urban fabric, be it with respect to social or ecological interactions. For example, I have been told several times: âYou know issues of gender and caste are not part of a city like Bangalore at all. I am not denying that inequality in India exists, but it exists in backward towns and villages, not in a global cosmopolitan city such as ours.â
At the same, privilege also gives people the choice to fundamentally rethink what âurbanâ means, what âurban inequalityâ represents and who urban spaces actually support. It gives us a huge opportunity to rethink the fundamental inequities of our society and drive transformative change towards addressing them. In many cases, however, we choose to leave our privilege undisturbed because it allows us to exist within our own comfortable bubbles. The choice we make may not always be morally or ethically soundâwe simply make them because they either represent the path of least resistance or a cop out. This is not to say that individuals who make these choices are inherently badâin most cases we are simply unaware that we are choosing the easy way out. Perhaps what is needed is more introspection into the privilege we consciously or unconsciously exercise. Itâs probably important to remember that in singling out and denigrating an entire religion, we also affect individuals practicing that religion and who may also be part of our own inner circlesâpeople we consider to be close friends for instance. That by denying the existence of inequities within our beloved cities, we set the stage to create even more of them. We also need to reflect on the choices we make, its influence on the collective good of societies we live in, and the broader moral and ethical implications of what we choose. We may need to recognize that in choosing to be comfortable, we may unconsciously be enabling the opposite, not just for the countless faceless people that make up the population of a city, but also for those we deeply care about, can identify in a crowd, and can recognize as individuals in their own right. Â Because, in the end, it is always a choice down to governments, communities, and individualsâwe choose the kind of urban neighbourhood we live in and privilege plays an important role in deciding how, what, and who become part of that cityscape.
Gloria Aponte, MedellĂnWhen something is scarce it becomes more valuable, and liability is proportional inverse to availability. As the naturalist George Schaller says: âwe have to change our cultural relationship with the natural worldâ.
Katherine Berthon, MelbourneFor cities that already have high standards of water management, such as Melbourne, the code is not transformational, but may allow for confirmation and fine tuning of policies by highlighting strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to water management.
Carmen Bouyer, ParisThis ethical code can absolutely be applied to an art practice. It asks creatives to create images that convey a strong ethic regarding water, ecosystems, and people, creating ways to sense and respect the presence, wisdom and value of water everywhere. It asks artists to use materials that are fully non toxic, not polluting the waterways, and non-water intensive.
Paul Currie, Cape TownWhen joining The Nature of Cities Summit session on Greening Water Stressed Cities, we were one year past the worst drought Cape Town had experienced. I was intrigued that the water crisis was as much a political crisis as it was a technical one. I was intrigued to see climate change as a tangible, present experience, not the ever-approaching but distant concern.
PK Das MumbaiCity planners all along have refused to recognize the need and importance of building with nature, including integrating natural areas in the development plans. In Mumbai, the vast stretches of watercourses, waterfronts, creeks, wetlands, mangroves, natural flora and fauna, coastal edges, hills and forests are excluded and being treated as dumping grounds, both physically and metaphorically.
Meredith Dobbie, VictoriaScientific literacy is recognised as essential for full participation in society and preparation for life-long learning. Without it, water users are less likely to understand the water cycle and all its consequences for sustainable, and ethical, urban water use and management. With scientific literacy and programs supporting behaviour change, implementation of the code by water users is possible.
Casey Furlong, MelbourneWhile top-down management has an important role, it also has limitations, especially in countries with high levels of government corruption, or low levels of technical and governance capacity.
Andrew Grant, BathIt is interesting that we immediately structure our approach to urban water ethics around water specific awareness, governance, and technologies rather than placing it into a debate about our wider human life support needs for air, water, food and sensory wellbeing.Â
Gary Grant, London For general declarations, is best to avoid jargon, which many people will not be familiar with. Supporting texts could address that, as well as city-level or catchment-level interpretations, which might relate to the most pressing threats, local governance, cultural differences or economic practices.
Juliana Landolfi de Carvalho, CuritibaI believe that the key point of the âCommitment for Usersâ item is the emphasis on understanding the water cycle systematicity, with questions such as: Where does the water that I consume in my house come from? Where does it go to? What are the impacts of my water use on the environment? How can I reduce them? What shifts about consumption patterns can I take to reduce my impact?
Tom Liptan, PortlandIsn’t it strange: water is life, but most of us know so little. Understanding my local water cycle related to my drinking water system is quite complex, let alone the global cycles, so as a commitment I think local is of primary concern. Also understanding how our actions might or do affect other people’s water would be a part of local to local relationships.
Sareh Moosavi, BrusselsIn the Middle East, a number of design firms have refuted the idea of copying western-style green spaces with vast areas of lawn with high water requirements, and have experimented with new forms of linear urban parks in the abandoned dry water channels, often known as wadis. This requires innovative approaches in designing adaptive and flexible landscapes.
Harini Nagendra, BangaloreEthics and norms grow in the well fertilized water of imagination and culture. Keeping space for a diversity of imaginations to flourish in close proximity will be essential if we are to make the water code work in practice. The challenge will be to do this in a way that works across locations, cultures and imaginations.
Diane Pataki, Salt Lake CityMost American cities still fail to capture and recycle sustainable sources of water. And as I write, my city is filled with smoke from massive wildfires of unprecedented magnitude. It has never been more apparent that people, landscapes, and water are all interrelated, and we will suffer or succeed together.
Peter Schoonmaker, PortlandThe case for an âethical code for waterâ would be hard to make if water were universally unlimited, like air (before pollution) or starry nights (before cities). Itâs the limitation, or excess, that demands an ethic.
Naomi Tsur, JerusalemIt is often said that major conflicts of the future will be about water. The challenge for all of us is surely to make water a force for better and more ethical human behavior.
Mario Yanez, LisbonFor me, this ethical code is a plea for life. For my own rivers inside and those that run beneath my feet. For those that run freely further afield, and for the ones that move through the air and rain down elsewhere that eventually make their way back to me.
Naomi Tsur is Founder and Chair of the Israel Urban Forum, Chair of the Jerusalem Green Fund, Founder and Head of Green Pilgrim Jerusalem, and served a term as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, responsible for planning and the environment.
Introduction
Following the Nature of Cities Summit in June 2019 in Paris, a group of us continued the discussion that began in the seed session âGreening Water-Scarce Cities.â
Diane Pataki, Peter Schoonmaker and Naomi Tsur, who had put together the session, were joined by Paul Currie and Mario Yanez in a series of cyber meetings, through which we have attempted to collate and synthesize the creative ideas that had been presented at the seed session into an ethical code for water. It is our hope that this can become a useful basis for diverse parties and institutions in their efforts to address the challenges of water in our current climate crisis, in which no area is unaffected by changing water patterns.
We asked David Maddox to enable us to present our initial document as a theme for a TNOC Round Table Discussion, and look forward to seeing your comments, criticism, and in general addenda and corrigenda.
You, our fellow contributors and readers of TNOC are the first to see this document. It can be used by all, of course, but it is our hope to present it in 2021 at the World Water Forum in Dakar.
It goes beyond the scope of cities, but can certainly be a basis for cities to develop policy, educational programs and infrastructure. The initial responses to the code have been provided by the participants in the seed session.
Naomi Tsur, Jerusalem
Mario Yanez, Lisbon
Diane Pataki, Salt Lake City
Peter Schoonmaker, Portland
Paul Currie, Cape Town
Roundtable question:Â Water is essential to life. For many it is inaccessible, while others take it for granted. We propose here a code for the ethical use of water in cities. What works? What doesnât? Would you use this code to transform your city?
The ethical basis for water rights and obligations in cities
After a workshop held at âThe Nature of Cities Summitâ (Paris 2019), a group of TNOC contributors committed to meeting regularly in order to establish an ethical basis for water use and management. This document is a preliminary draft of our understandings, hopefully a basis for many conversations and policy discussions as more and more stakeholders address the principles laid out. The document also represents a simple guide for ethical actions with regard to water. Â
Acknowledging that there have been many explorations of water ethics, this document sets out some succinct observations and ethical principles related to urban water use and management and offers considerations for ethical water actions.
Declaration
It is a universally accepted truth that:
Water is the basis for all life on earth
People and nature have a universal basic right to clean, safe water
Ecosystem functions provide a wide range of water-related services (to people and nature)
More than half of the worldâs freshwater supply is currently allocated for human activities
Neither people nor nature are universally receiving their rights to water
While many experience water excess, many experience water scarcity
Climate crisis is changing hydrosocial cycles in fundamental ways
Almost all urban areas import water, with potential impacts on upstream and downstream ecosystems
All urban activities have an embodied water footprint
There exist many ecological, social and technical solutions to improve water access and management
The sourcing, treatment and distribution of water have energy and material implications, with wider environmental impacts
There is a conflict of interest between supply-driven business and the need to reduce consumption
Where water is privately controlled, there is risk of exclusion from water access
There is a mismatch between administrative boundaries and watershed areas
People are entitled to use water in manners which express their needs, cultures, values, and activities
People have an obligation to use water responsibly
All are responsible to protect and regenerate the integrity and functioning of water cycles
These obligations and responsibilities will only be fulfilled through the commitment and participation of National and Sub-National Governments, Civil Society, Academia, the Private Sector, Communities, Conveyors, and Individuals.
Commitment
I as a water user will commit to:
Understanding my local and global water cycles
Appreciating that natural fresh water is finite in global supply
Conserving water and using it mindfully
Being cognizant of and responsible for the upstream and downstream impacts of our actions
Reusing water multiple times whenever possible (cascading)
Reserving potable water for drinking and bathing
Preventing household pollutants from entering the water cycle
We, as water suppliers or conveyors, commit to all of the above, and also to:
Taking a watershed perspective
Educating ourselves, peers, residents, and children about how the water system works and our roles in it
Investing in consistent data collection, analysis and sharing
Investing in a hierarchy of water supply types, which allocates and cycles potable water, greywater, and blackwater appropriately (at multiple scales)
Preventing agricultural and industrial pollutants, and untreated wastewater from entering socio-ecosystems
Pricing water services effectively to incentivize stewardship while ensuring that the water system remains intact and that peopleâs basic needs are met
Operating in good faith when engaging with local communities
Participating in multi-stakeholder water governance processes
Contributing and adhering to water action plans and other policy instruments
We, as government, business and civil society at all levels, commit to all of the above, and also to:
Enabling governance of water which ensures stewardship and regeneration
Ensuring that everyone has access to clean water for drinking and bathing
Ensuring that water management is not monopolized, nor driven primarily by economic gain
Preparing for climate crises by adopting resilience strategies and appropriate infrastructures
Mandating swift action in the face of impending water crises
Ensuring collection and open dissemination of information, data, and best practices for water management and stewardship
Facilitating and investing in creativity, innovation and experimentation for appropriate technologies, and regenerative infrastructures and practices
Developing and enforcing suitable water policies and action plans for every city through multi-stakeholder engagement
Managing conflicts in water provision
Ensuring that diverse socio-cultural values, needs and practices regarding water are acknowledged and accommodated.
Way Forward
Our manifesto!âš Inundated with ideas!âš Now you should join us!
As a working document, we invite colleagues to comment, add to, and embrace this ethical code for water, for presentation and adoption at the World Water Forum 2021 in Dakar, Senegal.
Mario Yanez is dedicated to envisioning and inspiring a transition toward life-sustaining, regenerative human communities. As a whole-systems designer, he is working globally at various scales, implementing productive landscapes and ecosocial systems. As a scholar-practitioner, he is researching complexity and pathways toward cultivating wholeness in society and economy.
Diane Pataki is a Professor of Biological Sciences, an Adjunct Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning, and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah. She studies the role of urban landscaping and forestry in the socioecology of cities.]
Peter Schoonmaker leads the outdoor education program at American Community School Beirut, and is president of Illahee, a non-profit organization focused on designing new models for cooperative environmental/social/economic problem solving.
Paul Currie is a Director of the Urban Systems Unit at ICLEI Africa. He is a researcher of African urban resource and service systems, with interest in connecting quantitative analysis with storytelling and visual elicitation.
Peter Schoonmaker leads the outdoor education program at American Community School Beirut, and is president of Illahee, a non-profit organization focused on designing new models for cooperative environmental/social/economic problem solving.
Peter Schoonmaker
The case for an âethical code for waterâ would be hard to make if water were universally unlimited, like air (before pollution) or starry nights (before cities). Itâs the limitation, or excess, that demands an ethic.
Think back to all the cities and other places you have considered âhomeâ throughout your life. Go ahead, stop reading this short essayâtake thirty seconds or so right nowâand wander back through childhood, adolescence, university, early career, and so on, up to now.
Tell me, did water figure prominently or specifically in your memories? Did water quantity, quality, availability, cost âor any other attributesâcome to mind?
Me neither. Even though I spent part of my childhood in water-scarce southern California, and late teens / early twenties building an irrigation system. Lived in a temperate rainforest. And later spent a few years in one of the driest deserts in the world, where acquiring and rationing water was a daily activity. Where you packed 40 to 50 pounds of water (you measure it in pounds when itâs on your back) into remote study sites.
Maybe itâs different if your survivalâyour business, your farm, your family budgetâis acutely (like, life and death) affected by water. Even then, itâs likely many of us think of things other than water when we think of home.
Now I think about water all the time, wherever I go, but thatâs a professional hazard as an ecologist interested in policy and civic design. Travelling from Portland, Oregonâs abundant water sources and ample distribution system to Dubaiâs obligate desalinated / bottled water system is a shock. Then there are the ground-water dependent systems scattered throughout most rural areas in the western United States and indeed the world.
The point is, most of us take water for granted. Other people provide it, for a price, and water drains away after weâre done with it. Water rises to our attention only when thereâs too little or too much. And then, when our need is addressed, itâs on to other things.
The case for an âethical code for waterâ would be hard to make if water were universally unlimited, like air (before pollution) or starry nights (before cities). Itâs the limitation, or excess, that demands an ethic. Five of us have hammered out a draft of an ethical code for water. Five people with various water experiences and memories. Perhaps some of my colleagues have known water deprivation as both a daily and life-long existential threat. I never have. My experience is limited. The five of usâour experience is limited.
We need to comb through this document with more experience; to hear from people who have known acute water deprivation and oversupply, high costs and âtoo cheap to meter,â water as a daily focus and an after-thought, water at the center of their lived memory and water as a policy object. A water ethics that works for billions of people and the ecosystems they inhabit has to start somewhere. Maybe it starts with our memories of water. Take another thirty seconds.
When something is scarce it becomes more valuable, and liability is proportional inverse to availability. As the naturalist George Schaller says: âwe have to change our cultural relationship with the natural worldâ.
Paramos:Â Water Suppliers and Human Heritage
Talking about how the water system works, it is well known and understood that water flows in a cycle, which varies according with geographical and meteorological particularities of each place. Thus, the point where the water cycle meets the earth becomes quite important. How does land receive water? Through a pervious surface that is home for water? Or an impervious surface that tends to reject it? In the first case, slow release assures a balanced supply, while in the second storm water quick release will be the result.
One example of the first case are the so called paramos, a unique ecosystems located in the tropical area but on very high mountains between 3.000 and 4.500 m; mostly in the Andes in South America and Costa Rica. Paramos guarantee a very convenient water disposal equilibrium, regulating the water flow and avoiding soil erosion; they have been considered âwater factoriesâ because of the permanent disposal they provide. Additionally, their soils also have more capacity for fixing CO2 than soils of other ecosystems, which is an additional contribution to face the present global crisis of climate change.
There are just six areas in the world that have paramos ecosystems and half of them are located in Colombia. In this country there are 37 paramos areas, and those provide the 70% of the water supply for the population and activities. That is the reason why Colombia has been classified as one of the richest countries in water, counting with a very wide and abundant hydric net.
Belmira paramo, Colombia central mountain range. Photo: Juliån Monsalve, Msc. In Landscape Design
Historically paramos were even revered by native pre-Columbian groups, that had a very close relationship whit nature and deeply respected it. Nevertheless, in last decades and mainly at present, paramos are menaced by agricultural and mining activities that increase progressively in their surroundings.
In the national context, paramos have been considered an important heritage but just in 2018 the law (Law 1930) to protect them was declared when it was visualized that climate change could make them disappear. The vegetation on Paramos ecosystems is quite outstanding and it becomes lower on higher altitude. The most representative is frailejon, that reaches up to ten meters high, growing only one centimeter per year.
Frailejon flower in Ruiz paramo, Colombian central mountain range Photo: Valentina Hidalgo, Msc. In Landscape design
The Colombian public ministry asked UNESCO to declare paramos a World Heritage, for the first time in 2017. The petition continues at present, in order to formalize that deserved designation. Last internal national movements about had taken place during pandemic time, in August and September 2020, to once again file the petition with UNESCO.
Paramos are the origin of the water we enjoy in cities, so we urban inhabitants must apply the Code of water, in order to guarantee the water cycle in best quality and assure that ourselves, peers, residents, and children contribute in that sense.
When something is scarce it becomes more valuable, and liability is proportional inverse to availability. As the naturalist George Schaller says: âwe have to change our cultural relationship with the natural worldâ.
In the Middle East, a number of design firms have refuted the idea of copying western-style green spaces with vast areas of lawn with high water requirements, and have experimented with new forms of linear urban parks in the abandoned dry water channels, often known as wadis. This requires innovative approaches in designing adaptive and flexible landscapes.
One in four large cities face water stress, and water demand is projected to increase by 55% by 2050. Furthermore, projected impacts of climate change in water-scarce regions will mean prolonged droughts, and more frequent extreme rainfall events causing flash flooding. Having a code to reduce water use and regenerate water systems is therefore direly needed and welcomed. The systemic approach of the code and its attempt at covering the entire water system is testimony to the whole-of-economy approach required to tackle water issues in cities.
In our view, the code can further highlight the criticality of Invisible Water and the role of built environment professionals in tackling it. Water can be invisible in urban settings when it flows underground or when it only leaves marks in the landscape where it gushes during floods and rushes to the sea. Water is also needed to produce all goods, including food as well as construction materials. This embodied water is invisible to the urban consumer, or built environment professionals selecting construction materials, yet it has severe repercussions on draining water resources across supply chains, including in water-scarce regions elsewhere. We provide some thoughts about how built environment professionals can account for Invisible Water and we highlight implications to the code.
Invisible Water in Landscapes
Invisible Water in the city needs to be taken into account in any attempt to move towards more water sensitive cities. Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) considers a wholeâof-catchment approach in co-ordinating the management of land, water and other natural resources. IUWM aims to help cities progress towards a more circular economy, by closing the water loop, helping limit the discharge of (liquid) waste in waterways, and limiting the constantly growing need for additional water resources. Built environment professionals such as urban planners, architects, landscape architects, urbanists and construction engineers, play an important role in sustainable distribution, use, discharge, and reuse of water in our cities. They need to consider Invisible Water when making decisions on where to place new developments or implement Nature-based Solutions in urban areas. By considering the underlying ecological and hydrological systems (i.e. Invisible Water), decisions can be made to make the best use out of stormwater runoff and to optimize the required hard infrastructure (e.g. drainage pipes). This means understanding how water moves in and around the site depending on the topography, and accordingly restoring and creating green networks in the footprint of moist soil.
In the Middle East, for example, a number of design firms have refuted the idea of copying western-style green spaces often with vast areas of lawn requiring large amounts of water, and have taken on the challenge to experiment with new forms of linear urban parks in the abandoned dry water channels, often known as wadis. This requires innovative approaches in designing adaptive and flexible landscapes that can accommodate flooding in extreme rainfall events while serving as public parks in dry seasons. The Invisible Water flowing in shallow aquifers along these corridors can often support revegetation of the channel, and strategically planted “oases” with native plants can store water underground, but also bring water back to the surface on the long-term, a technique that was traditionally used by native desert inhabitants.
Designed by Heatherwick Studio, Al Fayah Park in Abu Dhabi is inspired by the landscape of wadis and cracked soil in sun burnt desert landscapes. The perforated canopy shades the sunken oasis, and helps reducing the amount of water lost to evaporation. Source: Image courtesy of Heatherwick Studio, used with permission
Embodied Water in the built environment
Invisible Water embodied in goods, products and services, including construction materials and activities, is similarly critical to address. Built environment professionals, across all disciplines, need to better understand the embodied water associated with their design choices, notably as embodied Invisible Water represents the largest part of the water use of a city, house and even transport modes. This can only be made possible by making relevant data fully accessible, transparent and consistent so that higher education institutions and practices can capitalize on this new knowledge and use it for training and design purposes, respectively. As such, the Australian Environmental Performance in Construction (EPiC) database of embodied environmental flows should be highlighted. Being available in open-access, as advocated for by the code (items 3 and 6), it has been adopted by multiple built environment associations and practices and is raising awareness about embodied water on the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Similar initiatives are needed in data-poor regions, which often happen to suffer also from water-scarcity, in order to relieve pressure on far-away aquifers. The Mediterranean region for example, will be significantly drier in the coming decades, potentially seeing 40 percent less precipitation during the winter rainy season. Yet, most countries in the South of the Mediterranean have access to very limited data to inform their designs in regard to Invisible Water.
The embodied water of construction materials is significant. Built environment professionals need access to reliable, transparent, consistent and accessible data to optimise their design decisions for this ‘invisible’ water. Source: authors
We propose adding the following commitments for built environment professionals:
Understanding the importance of Invisible Water, including underlying hydrological systems, but also embodied water flows for construction of materials and infrastructure assets
Taking account of water requirements of plants and materials used in designs
Learning from the past and traditional approaches of first nations peoples in sustainable water management
Mario Yanez is dedicated to envisioning and inspiring a transition toward life-sustaining, regenerative human communities. As a whole-systems designer, he is working globally at various scales, implementing productive landscapes and ecosocial systems. As a scholar-practitioner, he is researching complexity and pathways toward cultivating wholeness in society and economy.
Mario Yanez
For me, this ethical code is a plea for life. For my own rivers inside and those that run beneath my feet. For those that run freely further afield, and for the ones that move through the air and rain down elsewhere that eventually make their way back to me.
I am water. Every cell of my body contains water. Itâs an odd thought, but itâs said that we are walking bags of waterâan ocean within. Perhaps itâs more accurate to imagine ourselves as body-scale watersheds with life-giving waters continually cycling throughâfractals of a larger whole making our way through the various terrains of our daily lives.
My terrain at moment is Lisbon. A beautiful, mostly ancient City. I recently learned that many smaller rivers snake their way through the cityâs undulating hills eventually finding their path to the Tagus river, as it too makes its way toward the Atlantic Ocean. You canât see these rivers anymore, but Iâm told they still flow under the streets. When I take long walks down towards the Tagus I imagine them flowing under me.
Itâs too easy take for granted that I can turn on my tap and water streams out. On one of my walks a few days ago, a friend pointed out some remnants of the old Roman aqueduct that used to run through the city. Itâs amazing how much effort and energy is spent creating infrastructureâartificial riversâin our cities to bring freshwater in and deal with or dispose of âwasteâ water. Itâs clear we are not doing all this so gracefullyâmeasured by the degree we expend energy and apply technology to replace services freely given by ecosystems.
As one steeped in ecology, I know intuitively that at the right scale it is possible to participate regeneratively, to repair our water cycles and reverse desertification. But, what is the right scale? Many of our cities started as small settlements strategically placed along rivers or other bodies of water. They have rapidly outgrown the ability to participate gracefully within their watershedsâtaking too much water out of circulation, transforming it in ways that make it useable again. Cities, by definition, tend to overrun the local ecosystems that once sustained themâthen they go global.
These thoughts are very present with me as some friends and I are working towards establishing an intentional community 40 minutes north of Lisbon. I am leading the overall design of the 46-hectare site. It is beautiful land, a pleasant topography of clay-laden soils with several patches of healthy forest on it. There are no rivers on it, a few naturally-occurring springs, although when it rains a fair amount of water runs through it. I think a lot about the effort weâll go through to regenerate the productive capacity of the site, to prepare the site for 100 or so families who will participate in the water cycle there. I try to imagine us harvesting, storing, using and reintegrating water as part of living there, growing food and satisfying other material needs.
Water is life. One could say water is food is life. This notion becomes obvious to me sometimes as I work out how to keep produce alive when I bring it home from the market. I try to find the right balance of internal moisture. I bag the carrots so they remain crisp, set the bouquet of parsley in a glass of water with a bag over it, cut up and freeze peppers, and keep onions and tubers dry and well ventilated. Too much water and things rot. Too little water and they dry out. This is true for cells, organisms, cities, and bioregions.
All this to say that I instinctively came to the session on water scarcity and recognized that I wasnât alone in wanting to create a world of freshwater abundanceâin other words, a living world. For me, this ethical code we have drafted is a plea for life. For my own rivers inside and those that run beneath my feet. For those that run freely further afield, and for the ones that move through the air and rain down elsewhere that eventually make their way back to me.
Carmen Bouyer is a French environmental artist and designer based in Paris.
Carmen Bouyer
This ethical code can absolutely be applied to an art practice. It asks creatives to create images that convey a strong ethic regarding water, ecosystems, and people, creating ways to sense and respect the presence, wisdom and value of water everywhere. It asks artists to use materials that are fully non toxic, not polluting the waterways, and non-water intensive.
The code for the ethical basis for water rights and obligations in cities gives a rich overview of water related issues. What I like is that it offers a structured way to commit to adopting an aware and responsible relationship with water on various levels: as an individual water user, as a business, as an organised civil society group, or as a government.
In my view, the points that are presented to structure this commitment could be boiled down a bit more and reorganised to be more easily legible. For instance, I would engage more easily with The declaration  section that introduces the document if it was structured by themes: Water in general (1.)(2.)(5.), Climate (7.), Ecosystems (3.), People (4.)(11.)(6.)(15.)(12.)(13.)(14.), Urban issues (8.)(9.), Solutions/Obligations (10.)(16.)(17.)(18.).
In the Commitment section, I would also shuffle the numbers a bit. In the first part âI as a water user will commit toâ, I would have the commitments listed in that order that feels more intuitive to me: Understand (1), Being conscious (4.), Appreciate (2,), Conserve (3.), Reuse (5.), Reserve (6.), Prevent (7.). And in the third part âWe, as government, business and civil society at all levels, commit to all of the above, and also toâ I would organise the points in this order: Access to clean water (2.), Managing conflicts (9.), Governance of water (1.), Water management (3), Preparing for climate crises (4.)(5.), Water policies and actions plans in cities (8.), Open dissemination of information (6.) Ensuring diversity of water based socio-cultural ways (10.), Investing in innovation (7.)
Thinking of transforming my city, Paris, by using those guidelines I wouldnât know where and how to start. As a citizen I feel I have very little access to policy making regarding water (except by electing representatives every other year) and so wouldnât know to whom to address the Code here. A code that would have to be translated in French and accompanied by examples of actionable ways showing how those ideals can be applied locally.
But even though I am not in a position where I can directly transform my city regarding water ethics, I can commit to the code as an individual water user and I can support that movement forward and raise awareness through my artistic practices. This ethical code for water can absolutely be applied to an art practice. It asks creatives to create symbols, images and experiences that can convey a strong ethic regarding water, ecosystems and people, creating ways to sense and respect the presence, wisdom and value of water everywhere. It asks artists to use materials that are fully non toxic, not polluting the waterways, and non-water intensive. To do so in a radically honest way would totally change the way art looks and feels in my country.
Photo collage by Carmen Bouyer, extract from tnoc ethical code for water and photographs of the Seine river in Paris, 2020.
Andrew formed Grant Associates in 1997 to explore the emerging frontiers of landscape architecture within sustainable development. He has a fascination with creative ecology and the promotion of quality and innovation in landscape design. Each of his projects responds to the place, its inherent ecology and its people.
Andrew Grant
It is interesting that we immediately structure our approach to urban water ethics around water specific awareness, governance, and technologies rather than placing it into a debate about our wider human life support needs for air, water, food and sensory wellbeing.Â
âWater is the driving force of all nature.
âLeonardo da Vinci
If there is to be an ethical code for water in cities it must not be just human focussed. Yes, at the most basic level it is important that all humanity has equitable and appropriate access to clean and healthy freshwater to sustain our life. However, there must be a mechanism to balance our human urban water needs with those of all other life forms. In extremis could we survive as a species if we used all the available freshwater at the expense of every other flora and fauna species in the city? Imagine having a belly full of water looking out across a desert city with no trees , no animation from birds and insects, no scent from flowers and no sounds from barking dogs and howling monkeys.
It is interesting that we immediately structure our approach to urban water ethics around water specific awareness, governance, and technologies rather than placing it into a debate about our wider human life support needs for air, water, food and sensory wellbeing. How should we share freshwater across species that sustains all life in an equitable way but which ensures all of our human needs are met?
Another theme is how water shapes the identity of cities in different ways in different part of the world. My home city is Bath in the UK, named  Aquae Sulis by the Romans, is a city built on and from its water. The hot springs that emerge at the heart of the city fell as rain over 10,000 years ago on the hills many miles away and continue to give life to the identity of our city and its reputation as a therapeutic refuge. The surrounding landscape is alive with natural springs and the river Avon itself has carved out the distinctive natural topography of the valleys that create the setting for this UNESCO World Heritage Site. The point is this water based identity is an identity borrowed from times past. If we have an ethical approach to water in cities should we also consider the legacy for the future and not diminish the cultural and natural heritage that we have inherited.
Juliana Wilse Landolfi Teixeira de Carvalho is a PhD research student in Hydrogeomorphology Laboratory, Department of Geography, Federal University of ParanĂĄ. Curitiba / Brazil.Researcher on nature-based solutions for urban drainage, Urban Hydrology, hydraulic and hydrological modeling.
Juliana Wilse Landolfi Teixeira de Carvalho
I believe that the key point of the âCommitment for Usersâ item is the emphasis on understanding the water cycle systematicity, with questions such as: Where does the water that I consume in my house come from? Where does it go to? What are the impacts of my water use on the environment? How can I reduce them? What shifts about consumption patterns can I take to reduce my impact?
Urbanization is a global phenomenon that is growing significantly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, bringing with it impacts in different spheres and scales. Many of these impacts are verified in the urban hydrological dynamics and water management. Climate change associated with the growth prospect of urban areas brings up even more significant challenges related to these impacts. Changes in climate dynamics can lead to variations in the temperature or rainfall regime, shifts in frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events, thus, enhancing the hazard of floods, droughts, storms, and its social and environmental impacts (IPCC 2018).
Currently, about 55% of the world population lives in urban areas. UN-Habitat (2016) estimated that by 2050, the world population must reach ten billion, with around 70% of the world population living in cities. It is exceptionally alarming when merged with the UNESCO Water Report (2018), which states that by the year 2050, about 5 billion people will suffer from water scarcity at some level. Furthermore, the number of people at risk of flooding should increase from the current 1.2 billion to 1.6 billion, given that the urban population will be the most affected by these extreme weather events. These risks depend on the magnitude and rate of warming, geographic location, vulnerability, and the choices and implementation of adaptation and mitigation options.
In the urban environment context, it is essential to consider that cities are built on watersheds, and, therefore, the urban space configuration can affect the urban water cycle dynamics, changing the rates of water balance components, decreasing water security, and intensifying drought and flood risk.
Face to the urban growth, associated with climate change scenarios and water management challenges, the âcode for the ethical use of water in the citiesâ is urgent and necessary, especially in the poorest countries, where social inequality increases, territory management, and urban planning are shallow, and population awareness has not been a priority.
The eighteen basic principles listed in the code are consistent and realistic, recognizing that the universal right to clean and safe water is not being ensured to everyone. It covers climate change scenarios, upstream and downstream impacts of urban water systems; water private control as the risk of exclusion from water access; the necessity of watershed management; collective responsibility for water use, and collaboration among different entities in society to achieve stipulated objectives.
I believe that the key point of the âCommitment for Usersâ item is the emphasis on understanding the water cycle systematicity, with questions such as: Where does the water that I consume in my house come from? Where does it go to? What are the impacts of my water use on the environment? How can I reduce them? What shifts about consumption patterns can I take to reduce my impact?
The âCommitment for water suppliers, government, and businessâ are also consistent. I suggest adding an item about âinvesting in research about improving urban water management (water security, universal access to water, rainwater use, wastewater treatment and reuse, decreasing impacts on ecosystems; benefits of greening cities for risk management, Nature-based Solutions for water management).
There would be many benefits if this code were applied in my city. I live in Curitiba, the capital of the State of ParanĂĄ, southern Brazil. It is a densely urbanized city, whose metropolitan complex has more than 3 million inhabitants. The city suffers from several issues related to water management: urban flooding, water scarcity, water pollution, denaturalization of rivers and hydrological processes.
Currently, we suffer the most severe drought recorded in the last 100 years. With rainfall below the historical average, the level of our reservoirs reached less than 30%. The drought’s result is a severe rotation of water supply, which, unfortunately, disadvantages the poorer classes. In the pandemic context, where there is a recommendation to wash hands several times a day, thousands of citizens often suffer from water scarcity.
I understand that the application of this Code for the Ethical Use of Water in Cities could set up a different scenario from that we currently experience on water management during this drought period in my region. We could also have different scenarios related to urban floods that are recurrent every year, causing numerous demages to the population and the and public management.
UNESCO. 2018. The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018: Nature-based Solutions for Water. Paris, UNESCO.
Un-Habitat. 2016. World Cities Report 2016: Urbanization and development, emerging futures. United Nations Human Settlements Programme. https://www.unhabitat.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/WCR-%20Full-Report-2016.pdf
P.K. Das is popularly known as an Architect-Activist. With an extremely strong emphasis on participatory planning, he hopes to integrate architecture and democracy to bring about desired social changes in the country.
PK Das
City planners all along have refused to recognize the need and importance of building with nature, including integrating natural areas in the development plans. In Mumbai, the vast stretches of watercourses, waterfronts, creeks, wetlands, mangroves, natural flora and fauna, coastal edges, hills and forests are excluded and being treated as dumping grounds, both physically and metaphorically.
Let’s Demolish These Concrete Walls
There is urgent need for the recognition of all the natural and environmental conditions and their mapping through a well-planned participatory program. An open mapping and database are fundamental to an understanding of the natural resources and their sharing– an imminent objective of sustainability. Further, the democratization of planning is a significant step too in the struggle for rejuvenation and revitalization of all the natural assets and areas, indeed of water, waterbodies and watercourses, for the successful achievement of the very objective of sustainable urban development.
Historically, the waterbodies and watercourses, including rivers across Indian cities have been turned into sewer and sloid waste disposal channels. Most watercourses have been formalized by governments as sewage channels by constructing impervious concrete walls along both edges in order to âcontain the filthâ and to gain land through landfilling the wetlands in order to promote real estate interest. In many instances, the beds of the watercourses have been concretized too. As a result, the symbiotic relationship that exist between water and land are severed. Also, water and the surrounding land are starved of their nourishment and severed of the multitude of ecological services that that they both individually and together provide. Such rampant destruction of nature and the natural conditions have led to an alarming state of unsustainable urban development with devastating floods and submergence of vast areas– being just one of the many threats that we increasingly experience in cities world over, including India.
City planners all along have refused to recognize the need and importance of building with nature, including integrating natural areas in the development plans. The vast stretches of watercourses, waterfronts, creeks, wetlands, mangroves, natural flora and fauna, coastal edges, hills and forests are excluded and being treated as dumping grounds, both physically and metaphorically. Governments and planners are affected by a build-more syndrome. A syndrome that has been systematically promoted and inflicted under the principles of privatization and the free- market oriented development that is built upon just one objective, i.e. to fast track financial turnover and profit at any cost through private initiative– reflected in the ruthlessness of capital markets and the development ventures that is increasingly colonizing public assets, including attacks on the natural areas through indiscriminate landfilling. Governments behave the same way by directly undertaking landfilling works or legitimizing the effort by private agencies. Over the years, we have failed to evolve methods for evaluating environmental values and its benefits as being an integral aspect of development economy.
Under such dominant socio-political climate, people’s understanding of nature and the environment and their resolve to strengthen movements that would put pressures on their government on decisions pertaining to conservation, restoration and integration of the natural assets are marred. Therefore, struggles for the achievement of a sustainable development rooted in the idea of build-with-nature has to be popularized through concerted campaigns. Importantly, the socio-environmental movements would also have to collectively with other democratic rights movements plan and implement or facilitate the implementation of projects that demonstrate their multiple benefits and through that process gain experience in strengthening their movements. The idea of expanding public open spaces that include the integration of natural areas as an idea of open spaces could be one objective example. This is one effective means through which people will relate to the natural assets, including water and the watercourses. Such projects would inevitably include undoing many works that have been implemented over the years, including demolition of the concrete walls built along waterbodies, watercourses and the coastline.
Tom Liptan is a registered landscape architect and a retired environmental specialist for the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services. Liptan has assisted numerous municipalities, developers, consultants, multi-state corporations and government agencies with acceptance of ecoroofs and other landscape approaches used for stormwater management and healthy city development. His leadership on ecoroofs and green streets has also had an international impact. He has lectured and published widely, and is the author of the 2017 book Sustainable Stormwater Management.
Tom Liptan
Isn’t it strange: water is life, but most of us know so little. Understanding my local water cycle related to my drinking water system is quite complex, let alone the global cycles, so as a commitment I think local is of primary concern. Also understanding how our actions might or do affect other people’s water would be a part of local to local relationships.
The timing on this couldnât be better. Iâm currently applying to be on the Portland public utilities board, interview scheduled for 2 November. The board covers city water supply, stormwater and wastewater management. There are two separate bureaus; Water, and Environmental Services (BES) where I worked for 26 years. As you may be aware, I wrote a book about my 40 years of experience with primarily stormwater/drainage management. I touched on drinking water in a few places but my expertise is stormwater and natural waters. Although I know some about drinking water, Iâve found myself on a new learning curve.
So the first commitment is a good starting point: “1. Understanding my local and global water cycles.â I am a retired water management professional, what do I really know. Here are some randomly related thoughts.
My water purveyor is the city of Portland. From 1850-1895 the city used water from the local river until it became obvious that it was being uncontrolably polluted. This water source was unsustainable based on the known technologies to filter water at the time. So in 1895 the city purchased land in the nearby mountains, not the large snow covered Mt Hood, but the rain drenched watershed of Bull Run. Two dams were built which created two reservoirs and all water could be transported to Portland via gravity and a small amount of electricity is produced in the process. However, the west side of town is up hill so the entire westside must have water pumped up hill from the eastside.
This is just the tip of the Portland water storyâA 100 year struggle ensued to protect the forest from logging, it was recently successfully concluded with the US Forest Service. Sometime in 1960-70s the city decided to back up its almost pristine supply with another source, groundwater. This was smart but unbeknownst to the city would be fraught with challenges. For example several years after developing the wells the city planners designated the zoning for industrial uses. The water bureau freaked out and groundwater pollution prevention codes were hastily adopted vs. changing the zoning. In the 1980-2000 a project was required by state law to remove 50,000Â cesspools and replace them with a conventional sanitary pipe system at a cost to property owners of $10,000-20,000 each property. This was required to eliminate the risk to groundwater and the bureau required to implement the requirements was BES. Interestingly, in a recent conversation with a water bureau employee, he had no knowledge that this project ever happened. Once something like that is done and 20 years go by I guess itâs easily forgotten.
More recently, the state required BES to determine if its use of sumps for stormwater management might pose a risk to ground water. The person at WB didnât know about this either. He was a little concerned when I shared what I know of the results. There are 10,000 sumps in the area of concern above the aquifer. Based on what they found the sumps wonât be removed.
It points out to me that understanding my local water cycle related to my drinking water system is quite complex, let alone the global cycles, so as a commitment I think local is of primary concern. Also understanding how our actions might or do affect other people’s water would be a part of local to local relationships. Isn’t it so strange, water is life, but most of us know so little.
Something about else about water, which I didnât see in the code: Water is an elusive reality, both good and absolutely essential, yet how astounding that it can/does take on such huge physical dimensions and energy to cause death and destruction. From a tiny drop to an enormous tsunami.
One thing for sure, at least for me, is that the code is very thought provoking. I very much appreciate your invitation.
Gary Grant is a Chartered Environmentalist, Fellow of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, Fellow of the Leeds Sustainability Institute, and Thesis Supervisor at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London. He is Director of the Green Infrastructure Consultancy (http://greeninfrastructureconsultancy.com/).
Gary Grant
For general declarations, is best to avoid jargon, which many people will not be familiar with. Supporting texts could address that, as well as city-level or catchment-level interpretations, which might relate to the most pressing threats, local governance, cultural differences or economic practices.
Iâm sure that the draft code is a good summary of the discussions of the Paris workshop in 2019, however further condensation would make adoption by cities and organisations more likely. For general declarations, is also better to avoid jargon, which is too frequent in the draft and which many people will not be familiar with. In terms of explanation and detail, especially for specialists, a supporting text or texts could address that, as well as city-level or catchment-level interpretations, which might relate to the most pressing threats, local governance, cultural differences or economic practices.
I suggest something like:
Declaration
Human activities are responsible for the use of most of the Earthâs freshwater, which is finite
Whilst some people have more than enough clean freshwater, many others do not
Current patterns of consumption and management of clean freshwater have damaging effects on the natural environment and cannot be sustained, a problem that is being exacerbated by climate change
For civilization to persist and thrive and nature to be restored, we must all change the ways that we consume and manage clean freshwater
Commitments
As a consumer of clean water, I commit to:
Learning about the water cycle and its role in nature
Using water carefully and mindfully
Not wasting or polluting water
We, as water suppliers, commit to working in constructive partnership with citizens and governments to:
Increase everyoneâs knowledge of the water cycle
Improve the measurement of water consumption and impacts on nature and sharing that information with everyone
Invest in appropriate techniques that clean, conserve and recycle water
Prevent pollutants and untreated wastewater from entering the environment
Adopt pricing arrangements that ensure resilience and good stewardship whilst meeting the basic needs of all
We, as government, business and civil society at all levels, commit to:
Governance of water supply and management which is mindful of this Code
Swift and appropriate action in the face of the related global crises of water scarcity, climate change and biodiversity loss
Ensuring that everyone has access to clean water for drinking and bathing and that cultural and individual diversity is respected
Ensuring that water management is not driven primarily for financial gain
Ensuring collection and open dissemination of information and promotion of research, innovation and good practice
Adopting and implementing appropriate policies, strategies and plans with, and for, everyone
Paul Currie is a Director of the Urban Systems Unit at ICLEI Africa. He is a researcher of African urban resource and service systems, with interest in connecting quantitative analysis with storytelling and visual elicitation.
Paul Currie
When joining The Nature of Cities Summit session on Greening Water Stressed Cities, we were one year past the worst drought Cape Town had experienced. I was intrigued that the water crisis was as much a political crisis as it was a technical one. I was intrigued to see climate change as a tangible, present experience, not the ever-approaching but distant concern.
What is your first memory of water?
When asking this to groups of students or workshop participants, the answers have been some of the most poignant. Everyone and everything on the plant touches water. It is the substance that connects us all, and illuminates easily our different histories, geographies and life experiences. These memories of first baths, puddle jumping in the rain, drinking from a plastic bottle, being cleaned with a cloth, noticing waterâs taste for the first time, floating on lakes, splashing in rivers, or seeking hidden resources, show how water is tied to our emotions and relationships.
In this way, resources of water, food, energy, materials are entwined with who we are and how we engage the world. They are not simply enablers, technical infrastructures or disconnected flows, but have strong socio-political resonance. I use these resource flows as a lens for urban sustainability, with particular attention paid to equity of access and quality of the resource.
When joining The Nature of Cities Summit session on Greening Water Stressed Cities, we were one year past the worst drought Cape Town had experienced. I was intrigued that the water crisis was as much a political crisis as it was a technical one. I was intrigued to see climate change as a tangible, present experience, not the ever-approaching but distant concern. I was amazed by how radically water use could be reduced (halved in 18 months), and reminded again of the disjuncture between universal messaging and differential realities: should we really be asking those in informal settlements to reduce their already-low use of water? Given our different experiences of water, should there be one universal ethic for our relationship with water. Given a simplistic distinction between cities that flood and cities that experience drought (or even cities that experience both in a year), is is possible to provide one guidance to both situations at once?
I did not expect that the TNOC session would yield not a pragmatic technical or policy output, but instead lead to a series of deep conversations on the ethics posed by different realities of, and interactions with, water. In our conversations, we arrived at a notion of an ethical code for interacting with water. We explored how we might propose a set of responsibilities that many people and entities could relate to, and contextualise to their own cities and experiences. We organised these principles by those responsible for using, directing and regulating water. We know we have just scratched the surface, and continuously revisited the tension between a concise list and detailed explanation.
The journey to produce this ethical code has been fascinating and reflective, and I am looking forward to the next stages, as more people add their comments, critique and ideas.
Katherine is a PhD candidate at the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Group at RMIT university. Her passion for conservation biology and curiosity for understanding natural phenomena has led to a diverse research background in animal behaviour, spatial analysis, invasion biology and ecological theory.
Katherine Berthon and Casey Furlong
For cities that already have high standards of water management, such as Melbourne, the code is not transformational, but may allow for confirmation and fine tuning of policies by highlighting strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to water management.
The code provides a good summary of the challenges and divided responsibility in managing water at different scales, but there are some improvements to be made with respect to understanding the broader context and application of the code, as well as clarity in wording of certain points.
For cities that already have high standards of water management, such as Melbourne, the code is not transformational, but may allow for confirmation and fine tuning of policies by highlighting strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to water management. In this way, the code could be used as a kind of checklist, particularly for cities where water management policies are new or under development. Since many of the points are very general, it might be useful to have the code in tandem with case study examples to guide cities that do not already have appropriate policies or governance structures.
While top-down management has an important role, it also has limitations, especially in countries with high levels of government corruption, or low levels of technical and governance capacity.
The code would benefit from articulating how hierarchies (point 2.4*) and diversity in water supply types could be linked to different consumptive and non-consumptive uses, such as the need for potable water for cooking both in households and restaurants, or redirection of stormwater for gardens and parks. Water suppliers are in the best position to both allocate and prioritise water use from various sources to ensure water use efficiency. This includes consideration of desalination and recycled water systems as directly or indirectly supplementing potable water supply. We recommend that water suppliers be committed to investigating reuse of wastewater for potable purposes in the event of water scarcity, linking wastewater treatment, which already ought to be treated for the prevention of pollution (point 2.5), and provision of consistent supply under uncertain and changing climates. This is relevant to point 1.6 (i.e. if the drinking supply already includes suitably treated wastewater then it may be acceptable to use the drinking supply for all uses).
It would also be useful to articulate if, and how, the code intends to work within the broader governance context for water management outside of urban jurisdictions. Missing from the code, e.g. point 3.1, is an important concept of environmental water. Environmental Water Requirements (EWR) are the volume of water that is reserved for ensuring the ongoing functioning of freshwater ecosystems (Smakhtin, 2004 p v). Water use without appropriate regard to EWR can lead to over extraction, dry riverbeds and poor environmental outcomes (Vertessey et al. 2019, p 8-9). We recommend inclusion of a clause explicitly addressing the need for governance systems to ensure EWR are met.
While top-down management has an important role, it also has limitations, especially in countries with high levels of government corruption, or low levels of technical and governance capacity. Point 3.1 and/or 3.8 could be explicit about including a requirement for community consultation and/or other forms of democratic process around water allocation and environmental outcomes. Similarly, point 2.5 and 3.8 could be more explicit about regulation of excessive or irresponsible use, including penalties for water users (particularly industries) that pollute, damage or disrupt supply to other water users.
*Point numbers refer to the code section (1 = water user, 2 = water supplier, 3 = water governance), followed by the subpoint for that section (as listed in the code document)
References
Radcliffe, J. C., & Page, D. (2020). Water reuse and recycling in Australia-history, current situation and future perspectives. Water Cycle, 1, 19-40.
Smakhtin, V. (2004). Taking into account environmental water requirements in global-scale water resources assessments (Vol. 2) p. v
Vertessy et al. (2019) Independent assessment of the 2018-19 fish deaths in the lower Darling: Final Report. Accessed 30/10/2020. URL:Â https://www.mdba.gov.au/sites/default/files/pubs/Final-Report-Independent-Panel-fish-deaths-lower%20Darling_4.pdf
Dr Casey Furlong is a Senior Water Strategy Consultant at GHD, Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT, and Advisory Board Member at the WETT Research Centre. Since joining the water sector in 2011 Casey has worked in 5 teams at Melbourne Water, completed industry funded PhD and Post-docs, and has published a wide variety of content on water security, alternative water sources and Integrated Water Management.
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. She uses social and ecological approaches to examine the factors shaping the sustainability of forests and cities in the south Asian context. Her books include âCities and Canopies: Trees of Indian Citiesâ and “Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities” (Penguin India, 2023) (with Seema Mundoli), and âThe Bangalore Detectives Clubâ historical mystery series set in 1920s colonial India.
Harini Nagendra
Ethics and norms grow in the well fertilized water of imagination and culture. Keeping space for a diversity of imaginations to flourish in close proximity will be essential if we are to make the water code work in practice. The challenge will be to do this in a way that works across locations, cultures and imaginations.
All too often, we forget that sustainability is at its core a normative issue, a question of morals, ethics and norms of good conduct. An Ethical Code for Water is much needed, and serves to remind us of this all-important fact.
Could I think of using this Code in practice to transform my city? I speak of the city of Bangalore, one of Indiaâs largest and fastest growing cities, fueled by the IT boom, and running out of water. Located in a semi-dry environment, without access to a large river or any perennial sources of fresh water, Bangalore depends on a range of unreliable sources for its water supply, including water on tap from the drying, distant Cauvery river, depleting ground water mined from local borewells and supplied in tankers, and open wells and tanks fed by a mix of rainwater, sewage and industrial effluents. Summer headlines regularly warn that Bangalore is about to become the next Cape Town, running out of water soonâyet somehow the city lurches past another almost-drought year, and towards the next, without very much changing on the ground.
If we could get the various actors that are part of driving water use in Bangaloreâthe municipality, Government sewage and water supply board, water tanker groups, industries and companies that use large quantities of water, academics, civil society, and other relevant groupsâto sign on to a water manifesto, this would be an excellent one. The basic tenetsâof equity, sustainability, respecting limits to growth, vulnerability and resilienceâare all in place. Yet there are a number of challenges with creating an ethical code that works in practice. First of course, in contexts such as Indian cities, where different groups access water, from diverse religious, cultural and economic backgrounds, values can bring people together to forge a common shared understandingâbut a clash in values can also engender conflict. Water wars have taken place within countries and communities as well across different borders and diverse groups. The ethical water code, while identifying important sources of conflict such as the clash of interests between supply-driven business and the demands of reducing frivolous consumption, does not speak of differences in cultural and religious perspectives. Indeed it would be difficult to do so in a code that intends to work across contexts: such a code would need to be easy to accept both in societies where norms of water use are strongly driven by religion and culture, as well as societies where norms are driven by considerations of capital, and a host of other contexts. Yet in making the considerations of ethics broad enough to be accepted by all, there lies a challenge for places where customary laws are largely in force, but being challenged by new values emerging with “modernity”.
Ultimately, while codes lay out a desired goal and endpoint, they cannot in themselves specify the process by which we intend to reach such goals. Ideally, an ethical water code could help outline some useful signposts that can guide us towards the right path or set of possible paths. One such signpost, identified by many scholars and practitioners, is the need for polycentricity, or the presence of multiple levels and levers of governance. The ethical water code recognizes such a need. It identifies the need for multi-stakeholder engagement, specifically pointing to governments at multiple levels, civil society, academia, industry, communities, and individuals. A second signpost or metric is that of justice: the ethical code keeps this recognition at its core, fundamentally asking for people and nature to receive their due rights to water.
A third signpost, more difficult to accommodate in an all-encompassing water code, is the need to make place for diverse water imaginations. Across the Indian state of Karnataka, rural and peri-urban communities get together to sing songs to the God of the monsoon, Maleraya, asking him to pour down on themânot alone, but with his family in tow. Maleraya, in turn, will not respond until the 7 rulers of 7 villages get together, cook a communal meal, sit together for a bit, stand together for a while, and then ask him to rain downâhe does not respond to individual requests, only collective ones. He does not respond as an individual, but as a member of a community, a family of rain gods in the sky. As the city urbanizes, and the songs of Maleraya fade from our collective memory, we lose a core ethicâof water as a community resource, governed by a communitarian ethic.
Ethics and norms grow in the well fertilized water of imagination and culture. Keeping space for a diversity of imaginations to flourish in close proximity will be essential if we are to make the water code work in practice. The challenge will be to do this in a way that works across locations, cultures and imaginations.
Naomi Tsur is Founder and Chair of the Israel Urban Forum, Chair of the Jerusalem Green Fund, Founder and Head of Green Pilgrim Jerusalem, and served a term as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, responsible for planning and the environment.
Naomi Tsur
It is often said that major conflicts of the future will be about water. The challenge for all of us is surely to make water a force for better and more ethical human behavior.
Water Must Never be Taken for Granted
Water is the second most essential need for living creatures. Without air, we can survive for only a few minutes. Without water, we may last one or two days. Without food, the third essential, we can survive for much longer. I am not sure that we give water the respect it deserves, nor do we pay enough attention to the suffering caused in many parts of the world either by a lack or an excess of water. That is why I was more than pleased to be a member of the team that got together after the workshop on water-scarce cities that was held at the TNOC Summit in June 2020 in Paris. We all felt that the importance of water is such that there is a need to examine it from an ethical viewpoint. This feeling was strengthened for me by my own urban experience in Israel.
My city, Jerusalem, has been at the center of conflict from the time it was wrested from the Jebusite tribe by King David, some three thousand years ago. Situated high in the Judean Hills, from the very first the major challenge was to gain access to a reliable water supply. It was only in the reign of King Hezekiah that a channel was carved, granting access to the Siloam Spring from within the walls of the city. On the west side of Jerusalem, well beyond the city walls, natural springs provided water for the terraced agriculture of the Jerusalem hills. The terraces enabled retention of water, and in turn the sustenance of crops suited to the hilly terrain.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the whole city was contained within the famous walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent four hundred years earlier. One feature of Ottoman Jerusalem was the beautifully sculpted water fountains placed in different sections of the city, providing free clean water for residents and visitors alike.
Water has always been part of the story of Jerusalem, in an arid part of the world, with no rain for seven months of the year. When the city began to expand beyond Suleimanâs walls, no building, public or private, was built without adequate rainwater cisterns. These cisterns were what enabled the residents of Jerusalem to get through the siege in 1948, just as their ancestors had survived seven months of siege by the Romans two thousand years before.
Modern day Jerusalem is home to some 900,000 residents, and can no longer rely on cisterns and springs for all its needs. A new major water pipe carries desalinated water from the Mediterranean to the city. At least three quarters of Jerusalemâs sewage receives advanced treatment and is used for agriculture, as well as providing water for the cityâs public parks and gardens.
An important challenge for Jerusalem is finding beneficial ways to use run-off from the rainy season. The steep hilly topography results in most of Jerusalemâs precipitation running down to the Mediterranean on the west side, and to the Dead Sea on the east side of the city. We are told that the amount of rainfall in the five wet months is the equivalent of about three quarters of the cityâs total water needs. However, not only is it largely wasted, but it is also a major pollutant of groundwater, since it collects dirt and refuse before flowing down to the aquifer. In one major city initiative, the Gazelle Valley Park, a series of natural pools filters and cleans about one quarter of Jerusalemâs rainfall. We are used to the concept of a âgreen lungâ, but this nature park has resulted in a new urban anatomical term, âa green kidneyâ.
In collaboration with the Jerusalem Municipality, a special team of municipal experts and civil society has been established, the Jerusalem Water Forum, which is a water policy think tank for the city. It is proving to be a very useful arena for sharing ideas, and for promoting better water management in the city.
It is often said that major conflicts of the future will be about water. The challenge for all of us is surely to make water a force for better and more ethical human behavior.
Diane Pataki is a Professor of Biological Sciences, an Adjunct Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning, and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Utah. She studies the role of urban landscaping and forestry in the socioecology of cities.]
Diane Pataki
Most American cities still fail to capture and recycle sustainable sources of water. And as I write, my city is filled with smoke from massive wildfires of unprecedented magnitude. It has never been more apparent that people, landscapes, and water are all interrelated, and we will suffer or succeed together.
Living in dry cities of the arid American West, Iâve been fascinated with the apparent paradox of urban greening in the desert. How much water can we allocate to keep cities green as more extreme droughts threaten our drinking water supply? Are urban forests and gardens possible in a hotter and drier world? Will cities in arid regions be sustainable at all?
I started my career studying the water needs of natural and plantation forests in the eastern part of the U.S., where rainfall is relatively abundant. When I moved to the western deserts, I worried that that the water requirements of urban trees and gardens were on track to outstrip the dwindling water supply of cities like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City. I started a research lab to study the water demand of urban trees and landscapes, hoping to find solutions to problem of greening cities in the face of severe water shortages.
Over the years Iâve found that with one glaring exceptions (lawns), many cherished urban landscape trees and other plants require much less water than expected. Unfortunately, many American homeowners greatly over-water their landscapes. The history of water, land use, and governance in the United States has led to perverse incentives to over-irrigate, even in the face of drought. Water is often cheap, especially for the wealthy, leading to growing inequities and injustices in the costs and benefits of accessing and using water.
The American West, and many other regions around the world, continue to get hotter, drier, and more unsustainable. But our use of water, and more importantly our relationship with water, is not changing very quickly, if at all. Over irrigation is still everywhere, and most American cities still fail to capture and recycle sustainable sources of water. Yet as I write my city is filled with smoke from massive wildfires of unprecedented magnitude. It has never been more apparent that people, landscapes, and water are all interrelated, and we will suffer or succeed together.
Itâs been a privilege to talk with Naomi, Peter, Paul, and Mario about the ethical dimensions of the predicament in which we now find ourselves. What is the right thing to do with respect to water and all of the living systems on earth that depend on it? I hope you will find this dialogue intriguing, and I look forward to hearing many more voices and perspectives about our ethical obligations toward water, the land, and each other.
Meredith Dobbie is a landscape architect and research fellow at Monash University. Her research interests revolve around urban nature, landscape aesthetics and sustainable landscape design.
Meredith Dobbie
Scientific literacy is recognised as essential for full participation in society and preparation for life-long learning. Without it, water users are less likely to understand the water cycle and all its consequences for sustainable, and ethical, urban water use and management. With scientific literacy and programs supporting behaviour change, implementation of the code by water users is possible.
Australia has been at the forefront in acknowledging the importance of integrated urban water management and different water sources for fit-for-purpose use. Water sensitive urban design, including stormwater harvesting, treatment and reuse, is now recognised at all levels of government as essential for sustainable and liveable cities, although its implementation is still somewhat ad hoc. In Victoria, where I live, the Eastern Treatment Plant was constructed in south-eastern Melbourne in 1975 for treatment of sewage. Some of the treated wastewater is recycled for use in nearby suburbs for irrigation and other external uses. Many households have rainwater tanks, which are plumbed in to their houses for use in the laundry and for flushing toilets. However, treated wastewater is not yet used for drinking anywhere in Australia. A referendum was held in Toowoomba, Queensland in 2006, to use treated wastewater for drinking but it was defeated after a very effective, and emotive, campaign by those against the proposal. In Western Australia, though, treated wastewater is used to recharge groundwater aquifers, which provide water to Perth. It is evident that practice still lags behind policy. It is also evident from the draft code for the ethical basis for water rights and obligations in cities that personal practice, or behaviours, of water users must change (code items 3, 5, 6 and 7 in the commitment for water users). This can only occur with increased scientific literacy, which code items 1, 2 and 4 in the water user commitment presume.
Eastern treatment plant, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Source: https://www.water-technology.net/projects/eastern-treatment-plant-tertiary-upgrade-project-melbourne/
Scientific literacy is recognised as essential for full participation in society and preparation for life-long learning. Without it, water users are less likely to understand the water cycle and all its consequences for sustainable, and ethical, urban water use and management. Scientific literacy should include both knowledge about science and knowledge of science. Worryingly, it is decreasing in Australia amongst school students and adults. In 2018, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing showed that scientific literacy of Australian 15-year old students ranked 13th among 78 OECD countries, with six other countries at the same level (Should Australia worry about drop in PISA rankings?). Australiaâs ranking has been declining since 2009. Using a survey based on one developed by the California Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Science in 2013 reported that scientific literacy among Australian adults had also declined since an earlier test in 2010 (Science Literacy Report 2013). Most Australians had a basic grasp of key scientific concepts but, as an example of water-related knowledge, only 9% of respondents knew that 3% of the earthâs water was fresh. This percentage had declined from 12% in 2010. Generally, younger respondents, men and those with higher education were more likely to answer questions correctly. Worryingly, knowledge levels had dropped the most in young people.
Declining scientific literacy has attracted commentary about school curriculum content and how science is taught. Especially important is to engage primary school students more with science, and to ensure that those students who are interested in science can relate what they are taught in school to their own lives (Science curriculum needs to do more to engage primary school students; Science literacy is a crucial skill). The Australian Curriculum emphasizes the importance of scientific literacy in practice. This will be critical to enabling Australians to observe the code for the ethical basis for water rights and obligations in cities.
Changing behaviour is a greater challenge than ensuring scientific literacy, I think. Behaviour change can be in response to regulations or it can be voluntary. A regulatory approach might involve price increases to reduce water consumption. This approach, though, does raise issues for a code concerned with ethical water rights and obligations. Certainly, higher prices disadvantage those with lower incomes, which is hardly ethical. Voluntary behaviour change is preferable. There are many influences on voluntary behaviour change (Guide to promoting water sensitive behaviour), including awareness, skills and knowledge, costs versus benefits (e.g. financial, physical, emotional, mental), social norms and personal values, emotions, cognitive biases, and contextual factors (e.g. availability of alternative water sources). These all demand our attention if we aspire to change peoplesâ behaviour in line with the draft code. However, they can be considered as nested, i.e. awareness, skills and knowledge, personal values, emotions and cognitive biases are personal attributes, which are likely to influence assessments of costs versus benefits and influence responses to social norms (although they help establish them) and contextual factors.
Scientific literacy can contribute awareness, skills and knowledge that support the code, thereby promoting behaviour change. Such knowledge can also help shape personal values. What then of emotions and cognitive biases? What can we do to manage these to facilitate behaviour change?
Cognitive biases are assumptions and (mis)perceptions that people have, which can influence behaviour or affect responses to new information. People are inclined to compare new information with what they already believe and to discard the new information if inconsistent with the old. It can be hard to convince people that new information is correct.
An example relevant to the water code is the Yuck factor. This is an immediate emotional response of disgust to the notion of drinking recycled water, associated with the perceived dirtiness of the water and a fear of contamination (Psychological_aspects_of_rejection_of_recycled_water). Opponents of recycled wastewater in Toowoomba used the Yuck factor in their campaign in 2006 to great effect. There is some debate whether emotional responses precede or follow cognitive responses, i.e. whether we feel before we think or think before we feel when we experience, or even consider, something and express a preference (Feeling and thinking). The idea of feeling before thinking makes sense to me. And here lies the potential for behaviour change consistent with the code, especially problematic item 5. People might initially dislike the idea of reusing treated wastewater, but with scientific literacy, thinking can override feeling, so that recycling water can become acceptable.
I believe that, with scientific literacy and programs supporting behaviour change, implementation of the code by water users is possible. I look forward to seeing how the code develops further to become a document that inspires and supports the ethical use of water for the benefit of all.
A review of Ecological Mediations, by Dr. Karan R Aggarwala, Xlibris, 2010.
The sciences meet the arts in the poetic renderings of Dr. Karan Aggarwalaâs 2010 collection, Ecological Mediations(Xlibris). An optometrist by training, Dr. Aggarwalaâs poetic view of the world reflects years of science met with a holistic ecological view of the mechanisms of our world. His inspiration draws clearly from personal experiences and stories of his family. He writes his heart on the page, without frivolous language or construction. This clear-cut style serves as the connecting force for the wide-reaching themes of the collection.
I am a man the day I feel
responsible for my thoughts, feelings, and actions;
my past, present and future.
(excerpt from âTwenty-oneâ, pg. 169)
One of the interesting highlights from this collection is the way that Aggarwala views humanity and the human experience as not only a connection between family, friends, and other physical beings, but also as an ephemeral experience that questions the role of spirituality and religion in the position of humans in the natural environment. Aggarwalaâs style does not lean toward pushing religious agenda but gives pause and consideration to the way that spirituality can connect people with their purpose, their family, and their environment. Each poem in the collection holds its weight as a stand-alone story that paints a picture of moments in a personâs life. They donât have to be connected, or even feel related, but Aggarwalaâs words paint the picture of a whole, holistic life through unrelated experiences that continue to build a full picture of what it means to be human in an ecological environment that calls for cooperation and coexistence that is constantly taken for granted. This collection does not take that connection lightly and works to build moments into the collection that remind the audience of a forgotten connection to their peaceful and tenuous world.
Given was I instead,
a universe of inter-related cells and tissues,
that work in harmony only so long
as I want them to.
(excerpt from âMy territoryâ, pg. 28)
Aggarwalaâs medical background shines through as a new view on a very essential connection between the human experience and the natural world. The structure of the poems in this collection highlight the harmony of the human body in a world that can be affected by beauty, disease, climate, and physical breakdown. Poems such as âConfused withâ and âMy territoryâ connect the ideas of the ethereal found in religion with the relation of cells and physical beings. The medical technicality of Aggarwalaâs clear knowledge does not weigh the piece down and instead builds an interesting view into physical action and movement that could easily be missed by everyday readers. Highlighting these biological moments adds another layer to the hope and the connectivity that holds the collection together as a body of work.
Ecological Mediations is a conglomeration of many themes and feelings that ring true for our current world that thrives on corrupting our ecological beauty and resources. Aggarwala is able to commiserate with and appreciate the natural world, both for the way that it truly is and for the way that humans sometimes trick themselves into believing it is.
The style of these works, as a whole, plays with the line between attract and destruction as humans interact with their surroundings in a way that creates ecological and emotional drain. Each poem creates an individualized space to question what it means to be human, to interact with the natural world, and to search for meaning through interpersonal relationships and connections to a feeling of world religion.
Good things there are
many more to do;
for some of these callings
we are relying on you.
(excerpt from âMessage for Jyotiâ, pg. 132)
With the state of the world as it is, I find comfort in reading the original spaces that Aggarwala has created as a selection of independently impactful poems. The collection does not feel like it is meant to be read from start to finish as a narrative parade of poems. Instead, Aggarwalaâs attention to sculpting individual spaces serves as a reflection of the way humans feel multiplicity, always searching for a new way to see, imagine, and connect.
Camilo Ordóñez Barona, MelbourneAs peopleâs use of parks and greenspaces with trees changed due to physical distancing measures, we are adapting our research to consider previously unexpected changes in peopleâs behaviour in these spaces.
Joy Clancy, TwenteWe need to know how previously existing gender inequities are influencing energy poverty and whether the measures taken to address the effects of the virus also are biased against people experiencing (enhanced) energy poverty.
Christina Breed, PretoriaAs parks remain closed after three months and will most likely remain so all winter, it would be interesting to hear if peopleâs general appreciation of access to urban green open space increase as a consequence.
Mark Champion,WiganCommunity work has been severely reduced and there is little formal consultation and capacity development. Arts projects have been curtailed. Citizen Science recording has been suspended.
Ian Douglas, ManchesterI have helped in the setting-up of a small pilot project in Uganda to help young unmarried mothers train to become beekeepers and entrepreneur honey producers, but this work is suspended due to lockdowns.
Pete Frost, WalesThe new All Wales Green Space Data Set is likely to become even more important to help show where green space can be used to take healthy recreation during times of social distancing.
Lincoln Garland, BathGlobally the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to notably increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings.
David Haley, LondonAdopting a whole systems approach, the project will conduct workshops and interviews with each community of stakeholders to learn, analyse, and assess their present state of confidence, vulnerability, resilience and futures prospects.
Yun Hye Hwang, SingaporeThe pandemic opens new opportunities for landscape architects to care about resource optimization as a core strategy in the design and management of urban green spaces.
Jane Houghton, YorkTo address the inequalities in access to greenspace highlighted by Covid-19, we are developing additional maps to show where high numbers of homes that do not have access to private gardens are located in areas of greenspace deficiency, and areas of health inequalities.
Christian Isendahl, GothenburgThe main messages of my researchâhow urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solutionâhas become even more urgent in the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.
Philip James, SalfordIGNTION includes establishing a Living Laboratory at the University of Salford monitoring and demonstrating the performance of Nature Based Solutions designed to combat climate change. But all data collection is delayed.
Sarah Lindley, ManchesterMany more people now appreciate just how important local urban green and blue spaces are for the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Indeed, the importance of those spaces has itself increased. However, not everyone can benefit.
Patrick M. Lydon, OsakaThe Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities is making a commitment to bring to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current transdiciplinary exhibitions on urban ecological themes, that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities.
Nancy E. McIntyre, Lubbock My university placed some restrictions on research expenditures and travel, initially delaying our project; some of our study sites remained closed to access.
Stephan Pauleit, MunichWhat does Covid mean for green space standards which? How can they better take on board extreme events and resilience thinking?
Joe Ravetz, ManchesterPERI-CENE is a pilot project aiming to set new agendas for peri-urban and climate change, in theory and practice, at local and global levels.
Graham A.W. Rook, LondonIt will be important to learn how immune repertoire, immunoregulation and gut microbiota relate to resistance versus susceptibility to the virus, and the possible relevance of microbial inputs to urban versus rural susceptibility.
Richard Salisbury, Manchester  In the short term, due to the social distancing measures, all practical volunteering has come to a halt. This is having an impact on conservation and some areas are becoming undermanaged.
Alan Scott, LondonThe lockdown has stopped all our work and all staff are furloughed. While this can be endured in the near term, longer restrictions will be a problem.
Richard Scott, Liverpool We must be bold and imaginative and use inclusive language in a world desperate for positive futures right now.
Monica L. Smith, Los AngelesThere are anecdotal media reports of wild animals re-integrating into city margins, which seemingly demonstrates resilience and niche-construction although this remains to be studied in more detail.
Marcelo Lopes de Souza, Rio de JaneiroOur research has changed because the interface between environmental injustice and public health becomes even more evident, so that we will surely give it more emphasis.
Miriam Stark, HonoluluOur planned 2020 archaeological fieldwork was cancelled, which gives us time to explore and write about resilience strategies in historical responses to climate change in Southeast Asia .
Katalin Szlavecz, BaltimoreDue to COVID-19 pandemic, all field work has been suspended (at least in Baltimore).
Joanne Tippett, ManchesterThe pandemic has shown that rapid change is possible, and opened a space of opportunity to reimagine our urban spaces and relationship with the natural world. The need for meaningful engagement has never been more important.
Piotr Tryjanowski, PoznaĆ I measure sounds level in the cityâin the same places since 2017âand it looks as if there is a big change.
Tim Webb, LondonThe explosion of mutual aid groups witnessed during the COVID-19 outbreak is evidence of strong community spirit. Encouraging that spirit will speed our economic recovery and make cities more resilient against biological, ecological, meteorological, economic, civil or political strife.
Mike Wells, BathGlobally the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to notably increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings.
Phil Wheater, ManchesterThe COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the flow of the work in two main ways: through social distancing preventing planned face-face meetings; and because the Public Health staff involved in the project have other priorities at present.
Ian is Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester. His works take an integrated of urban ecology and environment. He is lead editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology” and has produced a textbook, “Urban Ecology: an Introduction”, with Philip James.
Introduction
Covid demonstrates again the importance of urban green and open spaces. But what of the work required to care for and understand such spaces? This is significantly impeded by the pandemic.
COVID-19 presents challenges to society in every direction. Urban nature and greenspaces are suddenly being used more intensively by people who cannot exercise in indoor gyms and swimming pools and by others who just want to escape from the confines of their apartments or houses for an hour or so. Many are engaging in wild swimming in local lakes, while considerably more are exercising in local parks and woodlands. Images and videos are circulating of animals that have ventured into quiet city streets, from penguin in South African towns to wild goats in Llandudno, north Wales and elephants in Thai cities. Reduced traffic means that many urbanites can hear and see more birds and become generally aware of the nature on their doorsteps.
However, the people who manage and care for urban nature and community access to, and engagement with, the urban blue and green spaces; those who develop policies for urban greening; and those carrying out research into urban ecology are themselves affected in their work and activities by COVID-19 lockdowns and related impacts. This Global Roundtable permits a range of these people to give their personal views of how COVID-19 has affected what they do in relation to urban nature.
At its April 2020 meeting the UK Urban Ecology Forum decided to compile a list of reactions to COVID-19 from its members and from the contributors to the Second Edition of the Routledge Handbook on Urban Ecology, the Forumâs major publication. The Forum asked people to provide a brief report on current urban ecology/ urban parks/ green infrastructure activity and present and future impacts and opportunities for that work arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents were asked to provide 100-150 words describing their current work, research or project and a further 100-150 words describing how this activity is changing, or will change, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and any links to the desperate need for action to the climate emergency and the extinction crisis, with comments on any new opportunities that were likely to open up.
The UK Urban Ecology Forum is a network of people, including ecologists, artists, managers, planners and researchers, involved with the environment and nature conservation in urban areas. It seeks to: raise awareness; stimulate research; influence policy; improve the design and management of urban systems; and push urban nature conservation up the social and political agenda. It was established to provide advice to the nature conservation bodies of the four countries of the United Kingdom under the leadership of the late George Barker, formerly the Urban Nature advisor to English Nature (Natural England). It has produced influential guidance on urban greenspace policies and practices, particularly on standards for accessible natural greenspace in town and cities and on the need for standards that can help to achieve high quality adapted and attractive green spaces that people will want to use and will therefore help them get to know their neighbours and build stronger communities.
Many of the Forumâs members are also contributors to the Handbook of Urban Ecology The other contributors to the Handbook of Urban Ecology also come from a wide range of backgrounds and from countries in all continents. The editors had a deliberate policy to try to achieve a nationality and gender balance. Their experiences are governed by the particular expertise on aspects of the urban environment and by the cultures and practices of the places where they live and work. Several work outside their countries of residence and have been particularly constrained in what they can do by lockdown regulations in more than one country
Those managing urban greenspaces note that while volunteer work has virtually ceased and no one is available to deal with invasive species such as Himalayan balsam, some important major projects can be finalised (Mark Champion; Richard Salisbury UK). In London (UK) Tim Webb sees that society has cleverly transformed parks into a crucial element of our lives as places where we can both distance ourselves from others, while simultaneously coming together as communities. Patrick Lydon (Japan) shows how the pandemic has led to new types of virtual art exhibitions on urban ecological themes.
For many engaged in interaction with the community, project progress is hampered by not being able to hold face-to-face meetings (Phil Wheater and Pete Frost, Wales, UK). However, plans are being made elsewhere for workshops and interviews with communities of stakeholders to learn, analyse and assess their present state of confidence after the pandemic, and their future vulnerability, resilience and prospects (David Haley, UK). Natural Englandâs People and Nature Public Survey will endeavour to capture visiting and engagement with greenspaces and nature in response the COVID-19 measures (Jane Houghton, UK).
The Lee Valley Regional Park, London, UK. Photo: Tim Webb
For the future, the hardship of confinement to apartments or houses without gardens may, according to Mike Wells (UK), increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings. Alan Scott (UK) sees the challenge facing nature conservation being to take this increase in interest and turn it into long term support. Stephan Pauleit (Germany) stresses that changes in public behaviour in response to crises will have to be more thoroughly considered in future planning. Richard Scott (UK) argues that new international urban accessible natural greenspace standards should combine carbon capture, and biodiversity, and creative conservation delivery, and make urban greening a transformative global movement.
Some researchers are asking questions on how the influence of COVID 19 on demographic and income factors (preferential deaths of old men, significance of deprivation, ill-health and ethnicity in vulnerability to the pandemic) may aggravate inequality and energy and food poverty (Joy Clancy, Netherlands; Manuel Lopez de Souza, Brazil). Others have messages for the future such as how urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solution (Christian Isendahl, Sweden). There are also questions about how efforts to shield older people may inadvertently make them more exposed to very high temperatures (Sarah Lindley (UK). Fundamental questions remain about how microbiota in human immune systems relate to urban environment and to human resistance or susceptibility to COVID-19 (Graham Rook, UK).
For academic researchers the chief issue is being unable to carry out field work: Ida Breed (South Africa; Philip James (UK); Nancy McIntyre, Miriam Smith, and Katalin Szlavecz (USA), However, some recognise fascinating new questions, such as how does COVID-19 affect the behaviour of urban birds and their predators? (Piotr Tryjanowski, Poland).
Richard Scott is Director of the National Wildflower Centre at the Eden Project, and delivers creative conservation project work nationally. He is also Chair of the UK Urban Ecology Forum. Richard was chosen as one of 20 individuals for the San Miguel Rich List in 2018, highlighting those who pursue alternative forms of wealth.
Richard Scott
We must be bold and imaginative and use inclusive language in a world desperate for positive futures right now.
Bringing wildflowers to towns and cities
Nature is about opportunity. We are in a game changing moment in history. We need a changing of the guard, and the application of solutions we already know about, and those yet to be discovered, practical solutions that show love and respect for nature in building sustainable futures, and work with culture and social need.
It is about habitatâour own householdâ75% of humanity is likely to be urban by 2050. At this moment, we must reach to our strengths and experience. Society must not slip back to old ways, and habits. We must reflect a joy for life, showing how to forge real pathways for a âhabitatâ and a home we are proud of living in. We must reflect biodiversity and the reality of the climate emergency and extinction crisis, and the critical resources of Air, Land and Water, and the biodiversity and culture this brings together.
Right now it is important to demonstrate the carbon capture ability of all habitats, it is not just planting trees, it must be mosaics of habitats, which respect soil, both as a resource for food production, but also recycling unproductive urban substrates, for biodiversity and creative conservation. New international standards should combine carbon capture, and biodiversity, and creative conservation delivery, and make it a transformative global movement.
Bringing wildflowers back home, is a simple way to begin new conversations, applying the potential of seed and the purpose of the sower, delivering this joyously with people.
We must be bold and imaginative and use inclusive language in a world desperate for positive futures right now. As David Attenborough said recently to the Landscape Institute (November 2019).
âPeople have to realise, the world is on our doorstep⊠we are part of natural systems, and if we wish to to save ourselves we have to save these natural systemsââŠ
âTo do his we need to bring people face to face with the beauty and complexity and importance of the natural world âŠand to bring the realities of the natural world to the understanding and the love of human beings worldwideâ.
Dr Mike Wells FCIEEM is a published ecological consultant ecologist, ecourbanist and green infrastructure specialist with a global outlook and portfolio of projects.
Mike Wells and Lincoln Garland
Globally, the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly for those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to notably increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats for people both in the public realm and on buildings.
Much of our work is currently overseas in large habitat restoration projects as well as urban ecological design and Ecomasterplanning. Some of thisâin the Middle Eastâis proceeding but other elements have been (we hope temporarily) curtailed. In the UK we continue with ecological monitoring at some project sites and to undertake and ecological surveys in relation to planning applications in both the urban and rural environments.
Temporarily, the ability to cover all taxa in necessary baseline surveys is being compromised in some instances (e.g. bats in buildings). Some clients have closed down the majority of their construction/onsite operations and progress on planning and design is less rapid because the response time of some Local Authorities and regulators has notably increased.
Berewood: a new housing and landscape initiative for 2,550 homes in the West of Waterlooville Major Development Area.
Several of the wealthier, but still developing, countries are employing overseas expertise in the progressing of a new sustainable and greener urban agenda and are referencing climate change more often in this endeavour.
The to which extent there will be greater tolerance of working remotely on overseas contracts remains to be seen. Many overseas cultures are still deeply-rooted in face-to-face meetings culture.
Globally the effects of isolation in cities on psychological health and wellbeing, particularly for those living in apartments without outdoor space, are likely to increase the drive for the provision of biodiverse and biophilic habitats both in the public and semi-private realm, including on buildings.
The tolerance of the illicit exploitation of wild animals, and purveying of related items alive and dead, both in cities in the developing world and within certain cultures where such practices are currently prevalent, may reduce as a result of both internal and international pressure.
Lincoln is Associate Director at Biodiversity by Design, an environmental consultancy in the UK. Lincoln has been working as an ecologist and eco-urbanist in consultancy, academia and for wildlife NGOs for more than 25 years. He has a particular interest in developing sustainable ecologically informed landscape-scale approaches to development and land management, with a particular emphasis on the urban realm and ecotourism. Contact Lincoln by email: lincoln.garland@biodiversitybydesign.co.uk
Richard is the neighbourhood engagement officer for Manchester City Council at the Chorlton Water Park in the Mersey Valley.
Richard Salisbury
In the short term, due to the social distancing measures, all practical volunteering has come to a halt. This is having an impact on conservation and some areas are becoming undermanaged.
I work for the parks service and oversee the management and maintenance of parks and greenspaces in my designated area. A large proportion of my role is to engage with local community groups and lead practical conservation and maintenance volunteer tasks in parks and greenspace. We also work with partners to ensure a variety of events and activities are taking place in our parks.
My work also involves a lot of public meetings with our “friends of the park” group to discuss issues as site improvements. I am also required to regularly meet on site with contractors to discuss on site operations and infrastructure improvements.
In the short term, due to the social distancing measures, all practical volunteering has come to a halt. This is having an impact on conservation and some areas are becoming undermanaged. The adverse impacts if this continues would involve scrub taking over sensitive areas of reed beds and grasslands. Also, invasive species such as Himalayan Balsam which we usually remove could get a foot hold in new areas. I am hopeful that volunteering will resume eventually but with social distancing measures in place. There may also be some benefits to wildlife. For example, currently mowing of football pitches and amenity grasslands has been halted in certain areas. This could lead to greater biodiversity
All events and activities in parks are currently cancelled. I imagine these will be gradually be brought back but with some social distancing in place. All community meetings are also cancelled but there is a possibility these could be conducted through video meetings in the short term. Essential contractor works are currently continuing but with social distancing.
Waterfowl on the frozen lake surface at Chorlton Water Park, Manchester, January 2011
Katalin Szlavecz is Research Professor, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. Her research includes study of the diversity and ecology of soil invertebrates, soil biogeochemical cycling, urban ecosystems, and invasive species. She is a CoPI of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study LTER.
Katalin Szlavecz
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all field work has been suspended (at least in Baltimore).
Project 1. This study is to characterize the change in forest fragment soils over a period of 17 years along an urban-rural gradient in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. Overall, carbon and nitrogen did not change which may indicate a steady-state forest floor system or a slower rate of change than what is detectable in 17 years. Changes of pH and Ca in urban soil properties over time indicate a different developmental trajectory than native soils.
Project 2. This study is a collaboration among scientists in Helsinki, Baltimore and Singapore, the three cities representing different climatic regions and biomes. We are looking at the influence of plant functional types and soil biota on soil derived ecosystem processes. We measure at soil microbial diversity, enzyme activity, decomposition rates and soil nutrient dynamics in old and young urban parks under different trees producing labile and recalcitrant litter types.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all field work has been suspended (at least in Baltimore).
Druid Hill Park in Baltimore Photo by Bruce Emmerling, Wikimedia Commons
Graham Rook is an immunologist and emeritus professor of medical microbiology at UCL (University college London). He is interested in the role of contact with the microorganisms from the natural environment in educating and regulating the immune system.
Graham A.W. Rook
It will be important to learn how immune repertoire, immunoregulation and gut microbiota relate to resistance versus susceptibility to the virus, and the possible relevance of microbial inputs to urban versus rural susceptibility.
The Old Friends Hypothesis; using an evolutionary framework to define the microbial inputs that are essential to the developing immune system
The repertoire and regulatory settings of the immune system of each new individual are set up in early life using information from the environment into which the individual is born and will therefore need to confront. Thus, in early life the immune system requires inputs of data and signals from the microbiota of the natural environment as well as from the organisms that colonise the gut and other tissues. Lack of these inputs compromises the efficacy, and above all, the regulation of the immune system, leading to an increased prevalence of immunoregulatory disorders such as allergies and autoimmunity, as well as to long-term consequences of chronic background inflammation such as metabolic, vascular and psychiatric disorders. My current efforts are aimed at understanding within a Darwinian and urban/rural framework, the molecular nature of the microbial signals that we require, and their precise mechanisms of action.
Illustration of SARS-CoV-2 virus
The microbiota of the modern home bears little resemblance to that of the shelters of our evolutionary past, or of homes built until recently with natural products (timber, thatch, mud, dung-based render). Moreover, the microbiota of the natural environment is increasingly distorted by industrial and agrochemical pollution, monoculture and climate change. The resulting species losses and distortions lead to ecosystem instabilities. Meanwhile the creation of large unnatural animal communities by industrial farming and âwetâ markets encourages the evolution of novel pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2. We are then obliged to confront these pathogens with immune systems that have not received, in early life, the inputs that are required to optimise the immune systemâs repertoire and regulatory mechanisms. It will be important to learn how immune repertoire, immunoregulation and gut microbiota relate to resistance versus susceptibility to the virus, and the possible relevance of microbial inputs to urban versus rural susceptibility.
Patrick M. Lydon is an American ecological writer and artist based in Korea whose seeks to re-connect cities and their inhabitants with nature. He writes The Possible City series, is co-founder of City as Nature (Daejeon). He is an Arts Editor here at The Nature of Cities.
Patrick M. Lydon
The Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities is making a commitment to bring to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current transdiciplinary exhibitions on urban ecological themes, that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities.
City as Nature produces art and media projects that re-connect humans and our cities with the environment. One current project, the Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities, partners with an interdisciplinary cast of experts to produce experiential, transdisciplinary events, stories, films, and exhibitions. These projects use the arts and storytelling in local cultural contexts, with participants from varied background, to broaden our social views and understandings of how cities, humans, and our ecosystems are interdependent, with the aim of growing resilient roots for social and ecological wellness.
Our ecological art exhibitions with the âTyphoon Queensâ in Kyoto was canceled just days before we were set to open, due to COVID-19. We went ahead virtually instead, building a new virtual platform within a matter of days. The artists installed the show and substituted an in-person audience for an “online” audience, thanks to The Nature of Citiesâ new virtual galleries at the Urban Ecological Arts Forum. Over 700 people attended the virtual opening, far more than would have fit within the physical gallery space itself.
The Urban Ecological Arts Forum at The Nature of Cities is making a commitment to bring to life virtual exhibition spaces, highlighting current transdiciplinary exhibitions on urban ecological themes, that would otherwise be impossible to experience due to the closure of cultural facilities. We are expanding this work to support more spaces in more countries.
Camilo is a research associate at the University of Toronto. His interdisciplinary research is about the social and ecological issues of nature in cities. He works in Canada, Latin America, and Australia.
Camilo Ordóñez Barona
As peopleâs use of parks and greenspaces with trees changed due to physical distancing measures, we are adapting our research to consider previously unexpected changes in peopleâs behaviour in these spaces.
Current work:Â Despite annually planting many small trees, Australian cities remove thousands of large trees every year. While the environmental benefits of having abundant trees are known, the ecological and social consequences of removing trees are not. Removing trees from parks or streets may have important effects on wildlife and people who use or inhabit these spaces, but we do not know how. This project will fill these gaps and evaluate the effects of tree removal on wildlife density and behaviour, and on social behaviour and psychological states using an experimental before-after, control-impact design. The knowledge emanating from this project will help city councils and other stakeholders quantify the ecological and social benefits of trees so they can more effectively account for these in the decisions they make.
Possible Future Changes:Â During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures, people had limited access to parks and greenspaces with trees. As peopleâs use of parks and greenspaces with trees changed due to physical distancing measures, we are adapting our research to consider previously unexpected changes in peopleâs behaviour in these spaces. Nevertheless, our research generates knowledge that will help improve the cities we live in by enhancing the social and biodiversity benefits that urban greenspaces with trees provide. This is increasingly important in a post-COVID19 world, as people try to recover, or find new ways to enhance, their social and psychological resources through increased contact with urban nature.
Monica Smith is an archaeologist whose principal research interests are the human interaction with material culture, urbanism as a long-term human phenomenon, and the development of social complexity.
Monica L. Smith
There are anecdotal media reports of wild animals re-integrating into city margins, which seemingly demonstrates resilience and niche-construction although this remains to be studied in more detail.
Ancient Urban Water Management
Collaborating with my Indian colleague Prof. R.K. Mohanty of Deccan College (Pune), our archaeological research of the past 15 years has focused on the ancient city of Sisupalgarh in eastern India. Most recently we have used our data to evaluate urban-hinterland food networks; the management of hinterland excess water at times of both predictable seasonal monsoon flooding and occasional exceptional cyclone flooding. As an outgrowth of that site-specific research, I have been collecting data from site reports all around the globe about the extent to which ancient cities were subjected to flooding on a regular basis, and the implications of those floods for urban management and the demonstration of âgood governanceâ through mitigation and prevention efforts.
Library-based work is severely curtailed at the moment; once the current labor-intensive term of online teaching has been finished, I may try to use publicly available databases such as the Hathitrust library to fill in gaps in the database of global urban flooding at archaeological sites (though archaeological site reports, as bulky and arcane documents, are probably among the last items to be scanned in research libraries!).
A more promising angle of research will be experienced by the graduate students working with me who are focused on the role of animals in ancient urban contexts. There are anecdotal media reports of wild animals re-integrating into city margins, which seemingly demonstrates resilience and niche-construction although this remains to be studied in more detail and with an eye towards factors such as neural plasticity, different speciesâ behavioural patterns, and the long-term effects of urban animal behaviour after people start to move around in cities in greater numbers when the lockdown is over.
Part of Sisupalgarh; Photo by Rajku6070 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21412552
Ian is Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester. His works take an integrated of urban ecology and environment. He is lead editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology” and has produced a textbook, “Urban Ecology: an Introduction”, with Philip James.
Ian Douglas
I have helped in the setting-up of a small pilot project in Uganda to help young unmarried mothers train to become beekeepers and entrepreneur honey producers, but this work is suspended due to lockdowns.
Routledge Handbook of Urban Ecology (Second Edition)
Since 2016 I have been the lead editor of the Handbook of Urban Ecology initiated by the UK Urban Ecology Forum. The work has been done in my retirement, from my home. However, it has involved fantastic collaboration with contributors from 37 different countries. Through the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, I have helped in the setting-up of a small pilot project in Uganda to help young unmarried mothers train to become beekeepers and entrepreneur honey producers. As Chairman of the Human Ecology Foundation, I helped to secure some funding for the project.
My wife and I decided to self-isolate on 14 March and we have not left our house and garden since then. While it is annoying not to be able to revisit the floodplains and slopes areas, particularly to check in river channel changes and newly designed multi-functional flood basins with considerable urban ecology benefit, our large garden with part of the remains of a 200-year old woodlands, gives us plenty to do and inspiration for thinking about wider urban ecology issues.
However, the young women beekeepers have had their training interrupted. Their project supervisor and local expert appraiser are unable to travel from Kampala to the project location in eastern Uganda. We have had to find some extra funds to meet the costs of assistance from other apiarists who live closer to the women in eastern Uganda.
Changes in the meandering channel of the River Mersey at Urmston, Greater Manchester between 1984 (left) and 2000 (right). Photos: Ian Douglas
Pete Frost is Natural Resources Wales Urban Green Infrastructure Advisor. His work is to find ways to ensure there are enough green spaces of the right kinds in the right places to make Walesâ towns and cities better places for people and nature.
Pete Frost
The new All Wales Green Space Data Set is likely to become even more important to help show where green space can be used to take healthy recreation during times of social distancing.
All Wales Green Space Data Set
Natural Resources Wales is building a Geographic Information System (GIS) data set to show all green space in Wales. When complete, it will show where green space exists in urban areas, if it is likely to be natural and whether people are likely to be able to get into it. It is based on mapping done by the Ordnance Survey and includes data from local authority surveys. The data set will only be available to public bodies until its contents have been checked by the local authorities who contributed to it.
The blend of accurate base mapping from the Ordnance Survey and local intelligence from local authorities should enable public bodies to get a more detailed picture of where people can actually go to experience nature near to where they live.
The All Wales Green Space Data Set is likely to become even more important to help show where green space can be used to take healthy recreation during times of social distancing, which may last until the discovery of an effective treatment for Covid-19 or the eventual development of a vaccine. The data set will also inform Welsh Planning Policy, and in particular the statutory Green Infrastructure Plans which all local authorities must produce. The data set will enable local authorities to identify opportunities to improve green space quality or provision to ameliorate the effects of climate change and provide habitats for biodiversity.
The Dingle, Llangefni. A local nature reserve in the heart of the town of Llangefni, Anglesey, Wales. Photo: Pete Frost.
Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, Philip is a leading urban ecologist in the UK. Philip has had a major impact on teaching and research on the environment, particularly with reference to urban areas.
Phil Wheater
The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the flow of the work in two main ways: through social distancing preventing planned face-face meetings; and because the Public Health staff involved in the project have other priorities at present.
I am currently working with Public Health Wales as an advisor on their forthcoming Health Impact Assessment of Climate Change across Wales. This project was planned to last about one year and involve a literature review, stakeholder workshops, specialist participant interviews, case studies and a series of appraisals. This assessment covers effects of climate change on human health in urban areas as well as in rural areas. The impacts on many rural infrastructure systems also have direct and indirect impacts on urban populations. Many of these impacts are associated with ecological change. Smaller projects covering allied aspects of human health issues (including in urban centres) associated with environmental and climate change are also planned alongside this more major project.
Currently the main project has achieved a number of milestones. The literature review has been developed and is now going through a series of iterations and refinements. Both planned workshops (one for policy makers and one for operational managers) have been completed and the results fed back to participants and are due to be appraised shortly. The case studies are progressing (albeit at a slower pace than before). The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted the flow of the rest of the work in two main ways: through social distancing preventing planned face-face meetings; and because the Public Health staff involved in the project have other priorities at present.
Street trees, in the city centre of Cardiff, the capital of Wales
Sarah is a quantitative geographer specializing in the use of geospatial analysis to understand the outcomes of human-environment interactions. Her main research interests are urban air pollution, climate adaptation and urban ecosystem services and are motivated by the need to develop sustainable responses to current and future environmental challenges.
Sarah Lindley
Many more people now appreciate just how important local urban green and blue spaces are for the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Indeed, the importance of those spaces has itself increased. However, not everyone can benefit.
The main focus of my current research is the influence of the urban environment on human health and wellbeing, with a particular emphasis on the natural environment. Particular specialisms include air pollution, environmental risk, urban climate, climate adaptation and the regulating ecosystem functions of urban green infrastructure. My mode of working is collaborative and multi-disciplinary, though with a strong emphasis on geographical information science. I have worked with researchers from various branches of environmental science, ecology, engineering, arts and heritage, planning, philosophy and public health. I carry out my work in the UK and also overseas, for example in Africa and Asia. Much of my work has relevance for practice and policy, leading to work as a UK government advisor and a lead authorship role for the Inter-governmental Platform for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services. Recent work includes www.ghia.org.uk and www.climatejust.org.uk. Also see https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/sarah.lindley.htmlGreen Structure Map for Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
In the wake of the response to COVID-19 and restrictions on movement, many more people now appreciate just how important local urban green and blue spaces are for the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Indeed, the importance of those spaces has itself increased. However, not everyone can benefit. There are marked differences in neighbourhood provision of green and blue space according to age and income, and peopleâs local health status is clearly linked to the quantity, quality and proximity of green and blue spaces (Dennis et al., 2020). It is not only the amount of cover which is important but also its quality (e.g. characteristics like structural diversity which influence the effectiveness of local environmental regulation such as air quality, temperature and noise).
Although the current the current pandemic has led to a reduction in some urban environmental hazards, we must also think about climate-related events like heat waves might increase risks for people living in highly built up areas, with no private garden space and fewer opportunities to access good quality spaces. We must consider how our efforts. My work will be continuing to explore these issues, helping to understand how biodiversity, climate and urban environments are central to health and wellbeing, especially in the context of our ageing population.
Dr Joanne Tippett is a lecturer in Spatial Planning in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester. Action research funded by the Sustainable Consumption Institute and 250 staff in Tesco led to the creation of the RoundView Tool for Sustainability [www.roundview.org].
Joanne Tippett
The pandemic has shown that rapid change is possible, and opened a space of opportunity to reimagine our urban spaces and relationship with the natural world. The need for meaningful engagement has never been more important.
Empowering and inspiring custodians of future landscapes through innovative community engagement
The heart of my research is applying systems thinking to collaborative system change. I ask: How can we imagine a sustainable, regenerative future; and how can different groups of people work together effectively to realise such visions? This research has led to the development of a physical toolkit for stakeholder and community engagement, called Ketso, which is used in a range of environmental and landscape projects around the world. My current work includes helping to deliver innovative community and school engagement with the Carbon Landscape Project, which aims to restore and connect habitats in the peri-urban landscapes between Manchester and Liverpool (UK). I am also working with the National Trustâs Quarry Bank and artist collectives Future Everything and Invisible Flock, exploring the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution to inspire new thinking about ecological futures. A year-long art installation will hopefully open in this former cotton mill in Autumn 2020.
Lancashire Mining Museum in the Carbon Landscape
The pandemic has shown that rapid change is possible, and opened a space of opportunity to reimagine our urban spaces and relationship with the natural world. The need for meaningful engagement has never been more important. We will need to harness the ingenuity of communities and those working across all sectors to realise the potential to âbuild back betterâ. We need to make sure that everyone is heard in this dialogue, to have a better change of building an equitable and fair future. We have been trialling new approaches to engagement, to maximise the value of the hands-on, shared visual language of Ketso in remote workshops. This has required a shift in thinking in the Ketso team, as we have spent decades developing tools for people to build their ideas together in the same physical space. We are looking forward to rolling out this new approach to help deepen and widen the dialogue about the future.
Adapting the hands-on kit for remote meetings: Ketso ConnectEngaging with community members and stakeholders to develop ideas for the Carbon Landscape: A workshop using Ketso
David makes art with ecology, to inquire and learn. He researches, publishes, and works internationally with ecosystems and their inhabitants, using images, poetic texts, walking and sculptural installations to generate dialogues that question climate change, species extinction, urban development, the nature of water transdisciplinarity and ecopedagogy for âcapable futuresâ.
David Haley
Adopting a whole systems approach, the project will conduct workshops and interviews with each community of stakeholders to learn, analyse, and assess their present state of confidence, vulnerability, resilience and futures prospects.
Crisis = Danger + Opportunity: Cultures of critical recovery
This research focuses on critical recovery through “ecopedagogy”. It emerged from questioning the effects of long-term trauma on communities experiencing peristaltic coastal and riverine flood disasters, and includes species and cultural extinction. In other words, considering recovery as a complex evolutionary dynamic of destruction and creation. Through critical dialogues the intention is to enable people to learn for themselves how to move from being victims to survivors and from survivors to proactive, self-determined, ecologically resilient societies. These issues have become starkly in focus as we consider the new normal of post-Covid-19.
Flooding in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England, 2009
Adopting a whole systems approach, the project will conduct workshops and interviews with each community of stakeholders to learn, analyse, and assess their present state of confidence, vulnerability, resilience and futures prospects. The workshops will incorporate creative arts processes to disrupt peopleâs “normal” perception and cognition and thereby transform their perspectives and narratives of how they live with the world.
In addition to creative trauma and bereavement therapy, the sample communities will engage in initiating their own emancipatory economic, life support systems through full community participation across business and the third sector. As disasters bring opportunities as well as danger, this paradox may enable communities to become self-determined by generating their creative cultures of resilience. Integral to the whole systems approach for addressing the climate emergency and extinction crisis, each urban terrain, their human and other than human communities will be considered as distinct ecosystems.
Philip leads the Ecosystems and Environment Research Centre within the School of Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Salford, UK. Researchers in this centre investigate how the processes of natural variability and man-made change work.
Philip James
IGNTION includes establishing a Living Laboratory at the University of Salford monitoring and demonstrating the performance of Nature Based Solutions designed to combat climate change. But all data collection is delayed.
IGNITION
Ignition to develop innovative financing solutions for investment in Greater Manchesterâs natural environment. This investment will help to build the city regionâs ability to adapt to the increasingly extreme impacts of climate change.
Working with nature, solutions such as rain gardens, street trees, green roofs and walls, and development of green spaces can help tackle socio-environmental challenges including increases in flooding events, water security, air quality, biodiversity and human health and wellbeing.
River Irwell near the University of Salford, Greater Manchester, England
IGNTION includes establishing a Living Laboratory at the University of Salford monitoring and demonstrating the performance of Nature Based Solutions designed to combat climate change.
All construction work on the University Campus has been halted and as a result the installation of the nature-based solutions has fallen behind the planned schedule. Tenders have been let for the installation of the green wall, green roof, street trees and rain garden. Construction work will commence after the re-opening of the campus.
Jane is now Project Manager at Natural England for the development of a new National Green Infrastructure Standards Framework which is a commitment in the Governmentâs 25 Year Environment Plan to green our towns and cities to deliver multiple benefits for health and wellbeing, climate resilience and prosperity. She has wide experience of advising on and managing green infrastructure in central and local government.
Jane Houghton
To address the inequalities in access to greenspace highlighted by Covid-19, we are developing additional maps to show where high numbers of homes that do not have access to private gardens are located in areas of greenspace deficiency, and areas of health inequalities.
Green Infrastructure Standards Project
Natural England and Defra are developing a national Framework of Green Infrastructure Standards, which is a commitment in the Governmentâs 25-year Environment Plan. It aims to deliver more good quality, interconnected GI, at a local and landscape scale, and
mainstream GI as essential infrastructure in place-making and in associated planning and land use decisions:
âą provide the multiple benefits communities need and want, consistently across England, and in particular for disadvantaged urban populations;
âą help the country recover from Covid-19 by ensuring good quality green infrastructure is available to all.
Londoners are planting on their streets, gardens, and balconies, Photo: Tim Webb
The Framework of Green Infrastructure Standards comprises principles of good GI, benchmarks, guidance and mapping of GI across England, to be made available through a web- portal, and for incorporation into national planning guidance, initially, with a longer-term aim for it to be incorporated into the National Planning Policy Framework. Natural England is leading a project to develop, test and refine the Standards and Guidance for soft launch in 2021.
We are looking at opportunities to work in collaboration with local authorities and others for urban nature recovery, green streets, and addressing inequalities in access and health. To address the inequalities in access to greenspace highlighted by Covid-19, we are developing additional maps to show where high numbers of homes that do not have access to private gardens are located in areas of greenspace deficiency, and areas of health inequalities. This will enable greenspace providers to identify and plan how to address the inequalities in access. In terms of evidence, we have added questions to our ongoing People and Nature Public Survey to capture visiting / engagement with greenspaces and with nature in response to Covid-19 measures. We are also in discussion with several universities about research to understand the role of nature during Covid-19 measures, its impact on health and wellbeing, and analysis in relation to inequalities in health and inequalities in access to greenspace.
Mark has 35 yearsâ experience of Nature Reserve management, 15 with the RSPB and 20 with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust where his main concern is managing and designing wetland on post-industrial sites.
Mark Champion
Community work has been severely reduced and there is little formal consultation and capacity development. Arts projects have been curtailed. Citizen Science recording has been suspended.
Maintaining and enhancing the environmental and conservation interest of the Greenspace of Wigan. This includes 1500ha of “nature reserve”, including 4 SSSIs 1 SAC and approximately 80 locally designated sites. Our work also involves community liaison and developing links with these communities. Work is mainly within the wetland context on the restored post-industrial land.
Much of our recent work has been multiple benefits work on reducing flood risk within the urban landscape by using the wetlands to provide ecosystem services.
Community work has been severely reduced and there is little formal consultation and capacity development. Arts projects have been curtailed. Citizen Science recording has been suspended, as have training courses for our volunteers. However conservation work is continuing and has included finishing some funded capital projects. Staff led surveying has been modified to fit the criteria set out by the UK government.
Westwood Flash, on of the Wigan flashes: wetlands on areas of coal mining subsidence
Miriam Stark works at the University of Hawaiâi in the USA where she is Professor of Anthropology and Director for the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. With a Masters and PhD degree in Anthropological Archaeology, Miriam has worked in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years.
Miriam Stark
Our planned 2020 archaeological fieldwork was cancelled, which gives us time to explore and write about resilience strategies in historical responses to climate change in Southeast Asia.
My research explores state formation and urbanization in the Lower Mekong Basin, where I have run archaeological research projects since 1996. The region has a 2500-year long history of these processes, and my work focuses on a nexus of topics that revolve around urban forms, political economy, and environment. My work in three different regions of Cambodiaâs Lower Mekong examines these interrelated processes through time: the Mekong Delta (Takeo Province), the Greater Angkor region (Siem Reap Province), and the rice granary of Cambodia (Battambang Province). Subtropical Southeast Asia lies in the worldâs most susceptible region vis-Ă -vis climate change, and environmental scientists have begun to concentrate work in Southeast Asia to model potential future outcomes: including work on ancient cities such as Angkor.
Our planned 2020 archaeological fieldwork was cancelled, which gives us time to explore and write about resilience strategies in historical responses to climate change in the region. New opportunities that we hope will open up include collaborations with conservation and climate scientists, both to deepen our understanding of long-term climate records for the Lower Mekong, to build a richer database of the regionâs wetland fauna and how it changed through time, and to explore strategies that premodern Khmers used in times of climatic and environmental stress. Archaeological work with conservation scientists has begun to yield productive results in mainland Southeast Asia (e.g., Suraprasit et al. 2020 https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.00067), and we see great potential for extending such work to include riverine species now under threat by Mekong River dam projects. Studying archaeological collections like fishbones could provide a critical baseline for research on environmental and species change.
Nancy is a landscape ecologist and Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech University. Her research focuses on how land conversion affects animals, particularly birds and insects.
Nancy E. McIntyre
My university placed some restrictions on research expenditures and travel, initially delaying our project; some of our study sites remained closed to access.
I have only one urban ecology project at the current time, focusing on regional wetlands, which are being greatly affected by land-cover change. The project was supposed to start this summer, comparing odonate (dragonfly and damselfly) diversity at urban wetlands and three types of non-urban wetlands in western Texas. Because the four wetland types could be placed into alternate groups according to hydroperiod or salinity (and also differed in surrounding land cover and water chemistry), the objectives were to examine whether hydroperiod, salinity, surrounding land cover, or water quality were the most important assemblage drivers for this charismatic and ecologically important group of insects in this semi-arid region.
My university placed some restrictions on research expenditures and travel, initially delaying our project; some of our study sites remained closed to access.
Wetland restoration under the Wetlands Reserve Program in Texas, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68778699
Stephan is an academic landscape planner at the Technical University of Munich where he currently directs the Centre for Urban Ecology. He has a strong interest in urban green infrastructure planning and research on the growth and functioning of urban trees deeply fascinates him.
Stephan Pauleit
What does Covid mean for green space standards? How can they better take on board extreme events and resilience thinking?
Green City of the Future
The project explores ways to better integrate green infrastructure for climate change mitigation and adaptation into the current planning processes for urban densification. Munich, capital of Bavaria, which experiences strong growth, is chosen for this transdisciplinary project where academics from landscape planning, architecture, social sciences and economics collaborate with planners and environmental experts from the city administration.
This research is about promoting resilience to cope with extreme climatic events. In line with this, I think COVID 19 highlights the need to consider that human behaviour may rapidly change in times of crisis and that the value of green spaces may increase a lot. Or similar. I just thought that it is not about behavioural change alone (i.e. needing more space around you) but also that value of green open spaces where you can walk freely and meet if allowed became so obvious during this epidemic.
For instance, people suddenly need more open space to keep at a distance. What does this mean for green space standards which, I guess, are based in a rather static view on what people need in terms of green space provision? How can they better take on board extreme events and resilience thinking?
Yun Hye Hwang is an accredited landscape architect in Singapore, an Associate Professor in MLA and currently serves as the Programme Director for BLA. Her research speculates on emerging demands of landscapes in the Asian equatorial urban context by exploring sustainable landscape management, the multifunctional role of urban landscapes, and ecological design strategies for high-density Asian cities.
Yun Hye Hwang
The pandemic opens new opportunities for landscape architects to care about resource optimization as a core strategy in the design and management of urban green spaces.
A cost and ecological benefit of less-manicured greenery
This research aims to develop landscape management strategies to reconcile the discrepancies between the economic and biodiversity values of less-manicured urban greenery. Specifically, this research engenders the following research questions: What are the relationships between the various types of landscapes and resource consumption/maintenance intensity? What landscape interventions attain the greatest resource savings at a minimum cost while contributing to urban biodiversity?
The research objectives are: to quantify required resources of various types of maintenances from initialization, installation to operation and maintenance; to analyse/compare the cost benefits of less-manicured landscapes vs resource intensive maintenance; to estimate cost and ecological benefits of multiple landscape scenarios.
Ecological and economic benefits of a more naturalized maintenance regime could not only provide benefits to the urban nature and national economy, but also to the human health and energy efficiency. This regime could result in ecological resilience and resource independence of cities through the reduction of labour intensive and non-essential inputs, as well as less carbon emissions on the long run. The pandemic opens new opportunities for landscape architects to care about resource optimization as a core strategy in the design and management of urban green spaces.
A migrant worker, a newcomer to Bukit Timah area of Singapore, gives back by trimming grass in neighbourhood. Source: www.straitstimes.com
Joe is the Co-Director of the Collaboratory for Urban Resilience & Energy at the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester, UK. He has pioneered the art of strategic thinking for sustainable cities and regions, which brings together environment-climate policy, urban planning and design, new economics and governance, innovation and futures studies, systems thinking and complexity science.
Joe Ravetz
PERI-CENE is a pilot project aiming to set new agendas for peri-urban and climate change, in theory and practice, at local and global levels.
Peri-cene (Peri-urbanization and climate-environment)
The impact of climate change on cities is well known âbut the “peri-urban” hinterland, the areas between and around cities, is often overlooked. Yet the peri-urban contains most urban growth, and also the greatest impact on local and global environments. The peri-urban also is a resource for climate adaptation & ecosystem services.
Early stage of a SuDS scheme in peri-urban Sinderland Brook, Greater Manchester, 2008
The PERI-CENE project will provide the first ever comprehensive assessment of global peri-urbanisation, with its climate impacts, risks and vulnerabilities. It will host the co-creation of forward pathways, in a Policy Lab of 21 city-regions from around the world, along with in-depth case studies in Chennai (India), and Manchester (UK).
PERI-CENE is a pilot project, paving the way for more detailed follow up. It builds on recent EU projects and data resources, and on existing clusters of expertise in Chennai, Manchester and Stockholm. We aim to set new agendas for peri-urban and climate change, in theory and practice, at local and global levels
Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor of socio-spatial development and urban studies at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.He has published ten books and more than 100 papers and book chapters in 6 languages
Marcelo Lopes de Souza
Our research has changed because the interface between environmental injustice and public health becomes even more evident, so that we will surely give it more emphasis.
Social Struggles and Environment: Environmental Protection, Right to Adequate Housing and Land Use Conflicts in Brazilian Cities
The research project corresponds to the analysis of the conflicts around environmental justice that have emerged in several Brazilian cities during the last twenty years as a result of incompatible land uses and goals: more specifically, as a result of the clash between popular demands for adequate housing and a humane quality of life, on the one side, and some particular capitalist interests or government projects (related to the location of polluting industries or waste incinerators close to working-class residential areas, or as a result of âgreen evictionsâ), on the other side.
Marcelo on fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro
The research projectâs coordination has been affected in two different ways by the current COVID-19 pandemic: first of all, because fieldwork has become impossible due to social isolation measures and self-quarantine; secondly, because the interface between environmental injustice and public health becomes even more evident, so that it will be surely more emphasised.
Christina (Ida) Breed is a senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture in the University of Pretoria. Her research is concerned with open space design and how it relates to natural and cultural contextual issues and identity. Her research demonstrates the importance of the landscape design as part of green infrastructure, urban ecology and social-ecological resilience. She is trained in urban ethnography and makes use of qualitative research methods.
Christina Breed
As parks remain closed after three months and will most likely remain so all winter, it would be interesting to hear if peopleâs general appreciation of access to urban green open space increase as a consequence.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services for Tshwane
The research project consists of small patches of native grassland plant assemblages implemented as a design experiment in two urban areas in the City of Tshwane. The aim of the project is to monitor the comparative effect of native versus non-native grassland species on providing urban ecosystem services (ES) and functions, and support for biodiversity. This has not been previously tested in urban areas in South Africa and can assist landscape architects and designers in providing ES through urban green space implementation.
Current research activities include the monitoring of arthropod activity (biodiversity), plant cover (functions) and stress (tolerance), and visitorsâ perceptions (sense of place).
Lockdown restrictions have influenced access to the premises of the gardens which affected the seasonal monitoring periods that were predetermined. Some studies on pollinator movement between patches and microclimatic effects on arthropod activity were completely cancelled for 2020. Insect monitoring scheduled for July can proceed.
Interviews scheduled for April/ May when vegetation cover is usually at its maximum, could not take place, because no visitors have been freely allowed on the premises since lockdown started on 26 March. Telephonic interviews are not considered as a viable alternative, because the physical experience of the gardens on visitors is considered important. Interviews will be rescheduled for November, if visitors are again moving freely by then. As parks remain closed after three months and will most likely remain so all winter, it would be interesting to hear if peopleâs general appreciation of access to urban green open space increase as a consequence.
Native grassland assemblages as part of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Tshwane (BEST) project, South Africa. Photo: Christina Breed.
Piotr Tryjanowski is a full professor at Poznan University of Life Sciences; his research focus on ecology, One Health concept, climate and urbanization processes.
Piotr Tryjanowski
I measure sounds level in the city, in the same places since 2017, and it looks as if there is a big change.
Birds in urban areas (density and flight initiation distance)
For 10 years (or more) I have studied bird communities in PoznĂĄn (Poland), focused on differences according to urbanization gradient (from rural places, to glass-plastic city centres). I study mainly birds, but also collected data on some mammals, not only on densities, and species behaviour, but also on changes in behaviour. It was funded by several national and international grants.
I see a lot of potential opportunities. The lockdowns have affected people, but how affected are birds? There are two possibly different scenarios: back to wild, or a second, lack of habituation, because less people. I also measure sounds level in the cityâin the same places since 2017âand it looks as if there is a big change. How COVID-19 may also affect not just small birds and people, but also predators (hawks, cats)? Another fascinating story.
What are our âdesperate needsâ? We need really good research.
Alan has been active in the urban ecology movement in the UK for over 35 years. For the last 24 years he has had his own company (Complete Ecology) which specializes in management plans for wildlife sites and practical conservation management, particularly in urban areas.
Alan Scottt
The lockdown has stopped all our work and all staff are furloughed. While this can be endured in the near term, longer restrictions will be a problem.
Complete Ecology Limited (the company I set up in 1996) carries out practical nature conservation on sites of ecological importance, mostly in and around London. Our work covers habitat management (grasslands, woodlands, etc), site maintenance (litter, repairs), habitat creation, access improvements (footpaths, boardwalks), installing site furniture (benches, bins), interpretation (information boards, signs), species protection (e.g. reptiles/amphibians fencing and translocation) and many other tasks. I also carry out consultancy work including site/ecological surveys, management plans, design and planning advice. Our clients are mostly in the voluntary and local authority sectors, but we have also work for schools, developers and statutory agencies. We have worked in every London borough and in some cases have been involved on the same sites for over 20 years. This gives us a good knowledge of conservation issues affecting the entire capital which we are able to use in advising and managing a huge variety of sites and habitats.
From http://www.completeecology.com/nature-gardens
The lockdown has stopped all our work and all staff are furloughed. Fortunately, it is our quiet time of year (bird breeding, etc) and most work can be postponed. The challenge will be to work and travel whilst maintaining social distancing. Suitable risk assessment and safety precautions will hopefully overcome this. The longer term however is more of a problem as many of our clients will be short of funds and may see other issues as a higher priority.
On the plus side many people have been using open spaces and have started to value them more highly, especially the more natural elements. The challenge facing nature conservation will be to take this increase in interest and turn it into long term support. I feel that we need to emphasis the value of natural ecosystems to combat global warming and the health benefits of natural greenspaces in all our work. It is also useful to look at how changes in management could save costs in what will be very cash strapped times.
Joy has a PhD in Engineering (alternative fuels for small stationary engines). She joined the University of Twente in 1989. Joyâs research has focused, for more than 30 years, on the social dimension of small scale energy systems for developing countries. Gender and energy has been an important factor addressed in this research.
Joy Clancy
We need to know how previously existing gender inequities are influencing energy poverty and whether the measures taken to address the effects of the virus also are biased against people experiencing (enhanced) energy poverty.
Gender and Energy Poverty
My current work is applying learning from the Global South about gender and energy poverty in the context of the North with the intention of drawing policy makers attention to issues they appear not to recognise by providing evidence and policy recommendations. Encouraging womenâs participation in the energy transition in diverse roles as entrepreneurs, employees, policy makers is also a field of interest. Within a community of gender researchers we are examining how we do gender and energy research, for example what we count and how we count it.
COVID-19 has an influence on demographics and on income which both are factors in energy poverty. Women in the retirement age group in Europe, due to a gender earnings gap at an earlier stage in the life cycle, are more like to live in income poverty than men. This situation is exacerbated by womenâs longer life expectancy than men. Male mortality as a consequence of viral infection seems to be significantly higher than for women. Age also is a factor. The increased viral mortality of older men leaves a larger group of women without sufficient income to pay energy utility bills. In terms of those in employment, women dominate the service and retail industries in which job losses been high. We need to know how these effects are influencing energy poverty and whether the measures taken to address the effects of the virus are also biased against people experiencing (enhanced) energy poverty.
Christian is Professor of Archaeology, Dept of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg. His main research specialization is the prehistory of the Lowland Maya of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.
Christian Isendahl
The main messages of my researchâhow urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solutionâhas become even more urgent in the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.
Ongoing research on urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global South, with particular reference to urban food commons
My research can be broadly characterized as an integration of applied archaeology and historical ecology that ultimately aims to generate practical insights for addressing contemporary challenges, particularly urban food security and sustainability. The geographical focus is Latin America, over the last decade particularly in the Maya Lowlands, in the Amazon, and in Cuba. My research is interdisciplinary, and providing the long-term and comparative perspective of archaeology I work together with urban scholars, geographers, soil scientists, agronomists, etc in integrated pastâfuture research.
I think that the main messages of the research I am doingâhow urban and peri-urban agriculture may increase urban food security both in times of crisis as well as a long-term solutionâhas become even more urgent and evident in the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic. I find that the archaeological record lends support to the idea of urban food commons as well as the need to safeguard local food systems.
Tim Webb grew-up working on small farms before turning to environmental journalism and activism. Now Secretary of the UK Urban Ecology Forum and a founder of the National Park City Foundation, heâs worked on coastal realignment projects, species relocations and habitat management.
Tim Webb
The explosion of mutual aid groups witnessed during the COVID-19 outbreak is evidence of strong community spirit. Encouraging that spirit will speed our economic recovery and make cities more resilient against biological, ecological, meteorological, economic, civil or political strife.
London National Park City
After five years of campaigning and endless meetings with ward councillors, community groups, activists and London Mayoral candidates, in July 2019, the capital was declared the worldâs first National Park City. Unlike a National Park, it has no planning powers or funding benefits. It is a roots-up movement, a vision and a place to explore. The ambition is to make London, and other cities, greener, healthier and wilder.
Simple, low-cost ways of helping local people engage with nature in their streets. Photo: Tim Webb
Our growth plan was to celebrate the first anniversary with a series of public events and the launch of a new volunteer force called our Rangers. Weâd already secured funding from the outdoor clothing and kit company Timberland, and recruited two volunteer coordinators to deliver our Rangers programme. COVID-19 has made a planned
summer festival of events across the capital impossible. Weâd already started our Ranger programme and didnât want to lose momentum, so decided to push on but with a new twist. Our Rangers are not like traditional rangers, having been recruited for their community engagement skills, whether that was as a rapper, an artist, food grower, bee keeper, teacher or academic. The one common thread is a desire to make society better than it is.
Our coordinators found themselves operating in novel ways. The first full meeting of the fifty plus Rangers was virtual. Everyone contributed. There were some presentations and some obligatory instruction regarding expenses, insurance, health and safety. Everyone got talk about themselves and how they envisioned their inputs contributing to the shared goals of making London greener, healthier and wilder.
The COVID-19 lockdown meant parks had taken on a new importance in society, which should help us in the long term. Somehow.
In mid-May 2020, our Rangers were planning a series of interventions, using digital technology, word of mouth, music and art to engage Londoners in new ways with life in a National Park City. We are rewilding Londoners, re-wiring brains to perceive our built environment as an enhanced natural landscape of mosaic habitats, all interlinked and waiting to be explored on foot, by bicycle and, at some point in the future, by public transport.
Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, signing the London National Park City Declaration in 2019. Photo: Tim Webb
We have mapped the citiesâ green and public spaces, adding walks, history, culture and encouragement. A city full of active citizens would be a powerhouse for new green technologies of clean energy, food production, transport, waste management and physically active people. This is becoming reality in London and other urban centres. Weâve even partnered with the official National Parks to ensure connectivity with the wider environment beyond urban fringes.
Our active Schools arm and new Development Forum draw upon expertise from across the built environment. This combination of community, expert and civil input will inform a route map for others, enabling us to fulfil our International goal of having a family of at least 25 National Park Cities by 2025.
The explosion of mutual aid groups witnessed during the COVID-19 outbreak is evidence of strong community spirit. Encouraging that spirit will speed our economic recovery and make cities more resilient against biological, ecological, meteorological, economic, civil or political strife.
If farmers can listen to nature, can the office workers, educators, and politicians do so too? In these difficult circumstances, it seems many of us are already practicing.
Itâs afternoon in the middle of the work-week, and our local park is filled with people as if it were a holiday. There are little kids wildly chasing pigeons, and slightly bigger kids carefully stalking beady-eyed herons. There are teenagers racing on foot along the pond, and families sitting on rocks taking portraits. Watching from the sidelines, several calm-looking old men are drinking beer. Typical denizens of the park on most weekday afternoons, the old men seem unfazed by the extra commotion.
Of course, all stay a distance from each other.
Weâre in the middle of a pandemic.
A mother and her children in Sumiyoshi Park, Osaka, Japan. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon (CC BY-SA)
During a time when our familiar ritual visits to restaurants, shopping malls, sporting events, and office cubicles are no longer a thing, people in our old neighborhood on the edge of Osaka seem to be taking leave of their home offices early, heading out into the nature of cities to play with their families and the birds.
Itâs not terribly unique to this neighborhood of course. The choice to spend more time in nature is a phenomenon taking place in nearly every industrialized country where the economic and social shutdown is occurring, subject to varying logistical and governmental constraints.
When I talk of such news to friends in rural Japanâa group highly saturated with farmers and artists, mind youâmost arenât surprised. What is happening, they say, is that humans are remembering now, something that we had forgotten during our âpre-coronaâ days, sitting in traffic or at desks in climate-controlled cubicles.
We had forgotten that we are “ecological beings”.
As I watch the increasing number of people standing under trees, next to streams, or sitting on rocks watching herons, I canât help but think that many of us are using this time to connect with a part of ourselves that we had been neglecting for a long time.
âEveryone has the ability to know nature, to listen to nature, and to follow nature.â This is a common refrain from Japanese natural farmer and author Kawaguchi Yoshikazu. âListening to natureâ is the basis of everything that happens at his farm. As a result, he and thousands of other like-minded farmers in both rural and urban areas across Japan accept and embrace weeds, bugs, and other parts of the natural ecosystem to degrees that would be unthinkable to most of us. For them however, it works.
If farmers can learn such ways from nature, what about the rest of usâcan office workers, educators, and politicians listen and find answers in similar ways?
Some psychologists claim that all humans are gifted with “ecological perception” and that our ecological crisis has its roots in ignoring this gift. Perceptual psychologist Laura Sewall says this perception can be regained simply by practicing, for âif one chooses to listen, the landscape speaks.â
In these difficult circumstances, whether we are aware of it or not, it seems many of us are already practicing.
If we listened in this time of slowness, a time where bird songs triumph in place of what used to be morning rush hour, might we learn how to live and work more sustainably once this pandemic is over? If legislators, activists, and business leaders listened to the winds, as the skies turn deep blue and the bellows of smog-generation subside, would they hear the story of a world where we feed, house, and care for all living beings?
Or, if sitting in the park with our children and the birds is important now, will it suddenly become unimportant when we all go back to the office, and the skies are brown again, and the cars have out-shouted the birds, and things are back to ânormalâ?
It seems for too long, weâve called this “normal”.
The fact is, we knew a long time ago how to accomplish social and environmental well-being. There exists today, no technological barrier to a world where both humans and our environment are healthy and thriving. There is no functional barrier to a world where the song of birds in Manhattan is louder than the rush of cars. There is no economic barrier to a world where the air in Beijing or Los Angeles or Oakland is clear and safe to breathe. At the root of these issues, there are only social barriersâdecisions that you and I and our leaders make each day about what is important in our lives, and what we put our energies toward.
This might feel an overly simple, far-away thought in light of the heavy, tangible, social, economic, and political barriers we encounter each day.
But these barriers can only exist in a society whose social, economic, and political structures rest on foundations of abuse and extraction in the first place, structures which assume nature as a resource rather than a living, breathing, co-habitant with which our success as a species is inextricably intertwined.
Within our current framework, a majority have undoubtedly lost far more than others. All of us howeverâfrom corporate CEO to starvation wage workerâhave equally lost a fundamental piece of what it means to be human on this Earth.
Now, at a time when the phrases “shelter in place” and “social distancing” have come into the public lexicon; when a chorus of fear and worry drones and glows from every smartphone, tablet and television; and weâre sitting in a park with kids and families and the old men and the birds, somehow, we feel a puzzling comfort we canât remember feeling in this life.
Early cherry blossoms in Sumiyoshi Koen, Osaka, Japan. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon (CC BY-SA)
No one knows what the damage to human life will be when Covid subsides. Through all the hardship we are now encountering, one hopes, at least, that this pandemic will have slowed us down just enough to help us listen deeply, to care more, and perhaps to ask ourselves what, exactly, we are working in service to anyway.
Is it to technology, industry, progress, and gross domestic product? Or is it to pigeons and herons in the park, to blue skies, to our neighbors, and to living fully and truthfully this precious life?
With this time in relative isolationâa time during which I hope we can all find ways to reach natureâat least we have a chance to practice listening.
With luck, we might even figure out a few answers from what we hear.
Patrick Lydon
Osaka
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of YES! Magazine.
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a) City ranking producers 
LALI comes as a declaration of fundamental ethical principles to promote the recognition, valuation, protection, management, and sustainable planning/design of Latin American landscapes through the adoption of agreements that recognize local, regional, and national diversity and values, tangible so much as intangible, of landscape, as well as principles and processes to safeguard it.
LALI work through clusters which translates itself as a network, a system that is nourished by cooperation, cocreation, pacts, and the charitable work of key people in Latin America. It grows and becomes stronger through its Clusters. The Ancestral Landscapes Cluster is one of those which aims to recognize, recover, and disseminate the values -tangible and intangible- of ancestral communities/landscapes, inhabited and given meaning by the different native peoples of Latin America, to contribute to their appreciation, understanding, and protection.
What do tulips and daffodils do for our urban ecosystem? What relationships do they support besides being eye candy for people? What is the carbon footprint of growing and transporting ornamental bulbs? Confession: I like tulips. But we can no longer devote public money and public lands to single-function plants. We cannot limit native understory species to natural areas. All New Yorkers should have everyday exposure to plant biodiversity. Letâs plant native early spring bloomersâtrout lily, spring beauty, mayapple. To those who might argue that certain species cannot thrive in certain urban environments, I do not accept these limits, and neither should you. I have seen native species growing in âunlikelyâ places. We should redesign and manage our cities to support more nature and greater ecological function everywhere.
