City of Forests City of Farms: Sustainability Planning for New York City's Nature

Lindsay Campbell is a Research Social Scientist who received a close-up view of the massive PlaNYC 2030 and its accompanying MillionTrees Project roll-out from her job posting within the US Forest Service's NYC Urban Field Station. Sustainability plan PlaNYC 2030, which began in 2007 with great fanfare under the mayorship of NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, included a $400 million commitment to plant one million trees in NYC. This colossal project, under the direction of the NY Department of Parks and Recreation, inspired tree planting campaigns around the world.
In contrast, "urban greening practices such as urban agriculture, community gardens, and other interventions into local food systems received no mention in the 2007 version of PlaNYC." This omission occurred despite the fact that New York is home to "one of the largest networks of urban community gardens in the world."
Campbell asks, "why were urban forestry and agriculture treated so differently in the sustainability plan?"
While there are parts of the book that suggest Bloomberg was willing to leave the urban gardening movement high and dry, the real reasons and the politics at play in urban greening are more complicated. Certainly, from the onset, decision-makers involved in PlaNYC had a commodified view, describing the value of trees from an investment standpoint, while there was a perceived gap in any metrics regarding the value of urban farms and community gardens. Campbell was able to document how, over a number of tense seasons and against considerable odds, activists, researchers and everyday citizens replaced that gap with the measurable science and data that was missing.
Because of the "sales pitch" approach by advocates of PlaNYC 2030, the stakeholders in this form of "green growth" were very distinct, and the process of deciding who gets to set the agenda was considerably influenced by NYC's business elite. In the context of this difficult onset, grassroots activists, urban farmers and community gardeners throughout NYC organized and prepared a successful challenge to the forestry-led agenda by 2011. Campbell's journalistic book shines an intense light on various developments in PlaNYC2030 from 2007 to its more urban agriculture-friendly revisal PlaNYC 2.0 in 2011 to its continuing implementation up until 2015.
Urban agriculture while "entirely absent" from the first PlaNYC, was not at rest, and until there were serious and ratified goals set regarding the production of local food, activists were agitating for change.
Campbell found this touchpoint interesting enough to carry the book, and I think it does. The book is a very thorough biopsy of a time period in which a gargantuan effort was undertaken to transform a city. Without a strong challenge from social justice and grassroots urban agriculturalists, the Bloomberg legacy might have resulted in a very different picture.
The book supplies excellent charts in this book before even the close of chapter one, extensively comparing the urban forestry network in chart-form with that of the urban agriculture network. "I pay particular attention to how ideologies of environmentalism, sustainability, and neoliberalism overlap or compete," the book"s author declares in the introduction, and I believe she bears this claim out.
In examining the absence of food policy and planning in the PlaNYC 2007 strategy, we learn that food policy in those days was seen as something too vast, complex and too controlled by the private sector for any city government to bring under their jurisdiction. At the time, small-scale community gardens were not the only ones who felt leery of Bloomberg's plan. By the time the revised plan PlaNYC 2.0 rolled around in 2011, it was however positively influenced by food policy goal-setting changes. However, it was a hard road to arrive at that juncture. As well, some of the more mainstream critiques of Bloomberg's "sustainable city" initiative during the establishment of PlaNYC 2.0 insisted that the sustainability planning did not consider "the hinterlands and global commodity food chains" on which the cities were dependent. Other critics felt that sustainability plans in their current form did not challenge the political-economic structures of cities sufficiently to create real change. While PlaNYC pandered to commercial interests and received a huge amount of funding from NYC's business elite, it was also a model of independent municipal problem-solving and in many ways ahead of its time by tackling climate change and urban heat issues head on.
Not surprisingly, PlaNYC 2030 began with an idealistic but uniformed leadership driven by Bloomberg's dream and the project's considerable funding. In the early days, "sites were viewed by decision-makers as just green spaces on the map that could receive hundreds of thousands of trees." As a result many advisors quickly "took issue with the numerical tree planting goal and correctly argued that emphasis should be placed on creating healthy, native, multistory forests" because many sites for these early tree planting proposals had "nothing to do with feasibility."
By chapter six, Campbell has led us through some interesting years and forward in time beyond the Bloomberg years and into the de Blasio mayoral era. The de Blasio era was a time when the emphasis on social programming became more central than the trees. However, by this point in time, NY's urban grassroot's gardening movement had gone into gear. Here Campbell describes in detail the establishment of vast and entrepreneurial rooftop garden operations in NY. The demographics of the gardeners, the backyard chicken program participants and the beekeeping programs in NY are well-chronicled and reassuring reading regarding how some of these sustainability initiatives are playing out.
However, the impression that poor neighbourhoods and the people who live in them can be upgraded en mass did take its toll on NYC. It is well-known that treeplanting can beget gentrification. A number of ground-level garden sites were negotiated sites, for instance planted in movable beds, with the understanding that the site was not able to be affordably developed at that time but in the future would be turned into housing. This discussion is to me the most interesting, because the idea that the urban poor are intended to improve and move, or to continually shift to make way for development as a sort of civic duty, is highly problematic.
Fortunately, over the years of the PlaNYC 2030 sustainability implementation, there was a lot of emphasis on research. As well as research groups, activist groups such as 596 Acres sprung up, assisting in the visualization of those hundreds of vacant urban acres that required farming. Rooftop farm entrepreneurs as well played a role in urban food agriculture and their gardens were also included in the 2011 PlaNYC 2.0 revision.
Ultimately the urban agriculturalist won their point, and urban agriculture became ensconced within the 2030 goals. These goals included the assessment of land availability and suitability for urban agriculture, the creation of citywide urban agriculture program, and the ensured permanence of community gardens. The development of rooftop agricultural greenhouses, a determination of the capacity of the regional foodshed, and the development of state strategy for farmland and food production were also included. Barriers to food composting in community gardens were eliminated and agreed-upon goals to expose all city students to farms and gardens were also established. By cultivating student and citizen access to agriculture and relationship with an urban farm, a generational literacy in food production is today fostered. These were only some of the changes and goals set out in the document, many of which have been implemented, and their positive impact is clear.
The final chapters including one titled "Constructing the "greener, greater city" describes how there is no longer a lack of data now but "a proliferation of academic research and citizen-led science on urban agriculture..." and examines how much the planning implemented under public health rather than competitiveness functioned as programs for the sake of social justice. Soil testing, contaminant-free healthy and fertile soil and other ensconced PlaNYC 2030 sustainability values are also discussed.
How have things fared post-Bloomberg? The millionth tree was inevitably planted with great volunteer engagement. Even though de Blasio moved away from tree planting and slated over a dozen garden sites for development, "urban agriculture is on an upswing" regardless of city governance.
In closing Campbell looks to the urban farm movement future with hope that this movement can achieve "the critical mass necessary to scale up and affect citywide policy and natural resource management." Her challenge lingers long after the last page of the book.





Campbell, LK. (2017).City of forests, city of farms: Sustainability planning for New York City's nature. Cornell University Press.

Globalization and Urbanization: The Global Urban Ecosystem

James H. Spencer has worked with numerous NGO's and has taught urban and regional planning and political science in Hawaii and California. Instead of discussing rapid urban transformation in the North, this book takes a look at the places in the South where changes are occuring at an unprecidented scale. This rapid urbanization is most evident in South-East Asia, China, and Sub-Saharan Africa, where fast-paced changes are creating interesting challenges for city planners. Remarks the first chapter, "today we can watch patches of five-hundred-hectare developments in China, Vietnam, India, and Abu Dhabi sprout up almost overnight out of what only months before were pristine wetlands, hillsides and deserts."

While his interest is urbanization in the Global South, Spencer includes writing about places like New York City, and I found his chapter on New York regarding the forces that formed that city to be particularly insightful.

The first chapter, The Global Urban Ecosystem, describes a fascinating history of human civilization as well as the "emerging discipline of ecosystem science." Spencer asks, "what is a city?" and how does it change our personal identities? How do we adapt our behaviours, and how do animals who are impacted by the detritus of cities change and adapt? Clearly cities shape a larger ecology. “Because humans build, occupy, and transform them, cities come alive and develop personalities that represent many people,” says Spencer, sharing collective history and relationships of residents into complex interacting forces. The science of cities is never entirely reliably or empirically measurable as there are so many “second-order categories” that make it difficult to study cities unless they include race gender, age, cultural and socio-physical factors that are difficult to standardize. Here Spencer vividly describes the evolution of human gathering places to actual settlements with markets and resulting economic roles. Spencer's writing is rich in references to other scholars of urban development, and his discussions of Jane Jacobs's ideas and frequent references to Jacobs's work are admiring and set an upbeat tone.

Chapter two offers a deeper historical context to the phenomenon of urban growth, including a "natural history of the city," and a section introducing Lewis Mumford, considered the patrirach of urban planning. Spencer compares Mumford's ideas to other scholars such as Jacobs and later introduces the ideas of planners such as Frank Loyd Wright and Ebenezer Howard, founder of the garden city movement. Here it becomes clear utopian ideas in compassionate, human-centered city design and the garden city concept are important ideals to Spencer. “Utopian planners have long dreamed of an ideal society in which cities and settlements achieve human-scale interactions, social equity, and connections to the environment.”

The book then begins a multi-city tour of those places that Spencer has chosen as interesting comparisons in the urban realm. Here Spencer introduces the concept of "Do-Your-Timers" for people working in cities where rewards hover as potential and in the future. The first city Spencer has chosen is Saigon. Saigon is a city growing very rapidly yet there are still people who cook on open fires inside the house and do other things that identify them as rural people new to urban living. Only China is growing more quickly than Vietnam in terms of GDP. Vietnam signed a trade agreement with the US in 2000 that radically changed markets. As a result entrepreneurs have also flooded into Saigon from China as well as places as far away as North America and Africa to try their entrepreneurial luck. At the same time, Saigon is a textbook example of rural migration, with people coming in from rural places such as the Mekong Delta creating a population of new "Do-Your-Timers" whose numbers swell the labour force but also thwart city planners. Saigon has drawn people from many walks and has a surprising level ofnewcomer diversity. It is not just farmers who have become urban factory workers, as rural people have created an extensive economy including quasi-legal businesses on the fringes offering services such as haircuts and massage for new urban consumers.

In chapter four, Spencer turns his attention to the city of Addis Adaba, titling his chapter: "Do-Your-Timers" African style: Addis Ababa, the Unlikely Capital of Africa. This chapter has some excellent history about a very distinct city that is growing quickly, including through the migration of thousands of Chinese workers into Africa. The chapter describes how Addis Ababa came to be, its unique qualities and unusual aspects that make it an interesting point of study. In particular, the history of the region is unique. Ethiopia has never really been colonized by a major European power. Italian intervention in Ethopia ended after a decisive battle, and emperor Haile Selassie remained monarch from 1930 to 1975. During emperor Haile Selassie's reign his image was elevated with the establishment of Rastafarianism and the granting to hundreds of Jamaican families of Ethiopian land in an area just south of Addis Ababa.

With the overthrow of the royal lineage in 1975, a development strategy built on the model of the Soviet Union was attempted. There was a period of rapid growth both in terms of population and infrastructure, before a civil war put everything on pause. Once stability was restored, a modern airport arrived in Addis and it was made the home of the African Union, a designation which radically changed the character of the city as global investors could suddenly access the city. Interestingly, Addis Ababa still runs on a precolonial time clock and a unique calendar that would normally limit its ability to do busness. Added to this, Ethiopians speak a variety of local dialects, none of which are common in other parts of the African continent. However, the strong role the area has played historically make it a preferred choice by many international business people, including those who have flocked there to escape war or plan business in other parts of Africa, such as Kenya. Although China is investing highly in South East Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa is receiving a massive foreign investment growth rates as well through Chinese investors. Africa is also poised to be a massive market for China not only for things such as phone and technology services, but for many goods and commodities as well. At the moment, 64% of oil is shipped to China from Africa, but these arrangements appear "poised to expand" to mutual benefit.

Chapter five, The Indigenous City? Reconcycling an Old-Timers' Honolulu with a Global Society begins with a description of the lush beaches and beautiful Pacific mountains. The writer then remarks that to drive around Honolulu is to also discover that "the city and county of Honolulu-is a city of pack rats...its residents are accumlating and storing both material goods and garbage, as well as experiences, ideas and aspirations, faster than the pristine and isolated island can cope with them." The author describes it as a city "stranded in an ocean five thousand miles from the nearest major landmass," with a special series of challenges as a result. Spencer quotes Mumford in his assertion that for the residents of Honolulu, living among "lush tropical trees, plants, flowers and bushes," may have given them "license to neglect its insufficient physical infrastructure." Spencer describes the significant diversity of cultural infuences that define modern-dsy Honolulu, including the enduring legacy of the original and contemporary Polynesian culture on the place, as well Japanese and Chinese cultures, and a massive influx of tourists from the mainland United States, many in the form of sunbirds who stayed, bringing considerable wealth and an entire tourist and service economy with them. Recently the idea of "Ahupu'a" has been touted by Honolulu as a way to attract investors as well as convince international interests that Hawai'i is conforming to environmental practices. Spencer explains the concept of "Ahupu'a" is an ancient Haiwaiian land governance concept that creates a structure for a limited area of "complex socio-ecological regions" as a single place. The author also expresses doubt that, given the level of neglect some communities receive including that of basic sanitation services, "Ahupu'a" as more than a marketing ploy is not truly at work in Honolulu. The chapter examines a series of trends, including challenges with waste management, NIMBYism, the plight of poor and "minority" neighbourhoods, and underlying political crisis in in its identity as an "Old-Timer's" city.

The author suggests that Honolulu must not assume that much-needed change will develop naturally, but that great planning will be required to protect the poor and allow them the ability to escape slum-dwelling and participate in the economy of Honolulu, which is propped-up powerfully at the moment by tourism and service industries for the wealthy.he comments that just like the Hawaiian tourist industry was developed with the importation of sand from beaches as far away as LA., growth in Honolulu, if it is to avoid slums, must be planned to prevent urban sprawl by deliberately creating opportunities. a range of opportunities and services that support the poor of Honolulu are as essential as those that cater to newcomers, while efforts to equitably integrate the labour force with the tourist industy that sustains the city rather than allow tensions to remain unresolved will be the road to a more peaceful and equal city longterm. Whether this will deliver "ahupua'a" or simply provide a stronger footing for improving the lot of Honolulu's poor, the sudden differences created by tourist colonialism are a long way from a dream of a "new communalism" and must be addressed.

Chapter six, For All-Timer's New York City's Empire State of Mind was my favourite chapter, despite the fact that the author was not writing on a city in the South. Spencer found New York important to include because, in part, we think of New York as the quintessential city when it is actually much smaller than many cities and has many unique features about it that make it worth considering as both a typical and atypical representation of a city.

Spencer's New York chapter begins by discussing the “ecosystem” behind Jay-Z and Alicia Keys's iconic New York song, Empire State of Mind remarking that a “tense mix of survivalist bravado and creative inspiration that defines a place both celebrated and reviled.” It describes how New York for a time became synonymous with decay and violence. New York is also the city that “comes to mind in the context of globalization and urbanization.” However, the author points out that other cities long ago exceeded the growth of New York, and it is the "culture of urbanity,” more than anything else that keeps new York at the fore. “What today looks like a dynamic, exciting and timeless city has not always been so.” It remarks “digging deeper down into the mechanics of how this urban culture and identity function will reveal that a more universal set of characteristics underlies each of the unique cities in the global ecosystem, making them edgy and familiar, exciting, yet safe.”

New York is a city to which other are compared, when it is in fact, quite young. It has changed rapidly, and in the years following 9/11, “global and domestic shocks literally changed the face” of cities such as New York, where “concrete barricades, security gates, and bulletproof glass” popped up throughout the city, something that became refered to as fortress architecture,” while “smart city” tech allowed for remote monitoring of public spaces. Spencer poses that this created a “physically and psychologically damaged” city but also a “softer, more understanding one.”

Despite this daunting architectural shift, New York City continues to attract people and jobs with the "cultural attributes made possible by demographic and economic growth.” Spencer posits that the “secret to this ongoing vibrancy is a unique and attractive identity that permeates deeper than any physical attribute.” Yet New York is a city that is sweltering in the summer while bitterly cold and overcast in the winter months. It has other disadvantages. Spencer points out it is not as attractive as Boston or Washington. However, Spencer comments it is a city which somehow “resolves its own very material problems compared to other large megacities.” A very interesting example of this are the transit strikes in New York, which resolved in only a few days, while in cities like LA transit strikes were rocked by transit strikes that failed to be resolved for weeks. The author neatly surmises the difference: “Wall street executives take the bus from time to time...Hollywood executives don't.”

In the way that New York residents often bump shoulders with various social classes and find themselves crowded together with a range of talents, skills and economic backgrounds, it is also distinctly filled with people familiar with urban politics. These "shared infrastructures and spaces" have pressed together "diverse residents to confront and negotiate with one another on an hourly basis.” In other words, having to “hash out” their difference has made New Yorkers distictly resilient in living together “socially and politically” in a way that more spawling locations such as LA have not. This chapter also describes in detail the challenges of New Yorkers, in particular the history of the epic debates between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. It describes the damages and the benefits reaped by "Moses-built environments" something the city still copes with to this day. The last section of the chapter, "Immortality Through Reinvention," describes how Alicia Keys reinvented the song "Empire State of Mind" with her own lyrics, less explicitly celebratory, but more real than the first. Spencer describes recent examples of communities that were considered high-poverty and high-crime that have positively reversed their fortunes. He remarks that New York remains a city for all time, surviving, even thriving, against all odds, a strength derived from the cultural richness of diverse peoples dwelling together for many generations, which has allowed for the unique capacity of New Yorkers to address their political problems with original and compellingly human solutions.

The last chapter, The Global Ecosystem: A Globally Integrated Ecology of Everyday Lifereviews how ecosystem science has been a valuable tool in helping us better see the complex physical environments that create each setting in which gobalization is unfolding. Spencer's book reminds us that no city is truly "the global city" but each one has deeply-rooted and distinct characters and challenges, and that economics is only one function of many functions in a city. Contemporary relationships which strwngthen the unique character and the health of the poor in any city are the measure of worth in globalization, and those that impose are not. Urban planning "best practices" may do well to reframe their thinking as "informative practices," or "suggestive practices," as standardization wastes public resources and is not a path forward for any city. Much more powerful is the ecosystem lens, which helps us coherently understand the building blocks of cities, and how the fundamental differences allows each place to flourish in its own way. Leadership that is "creative, inspired by the human condition, but anchored to earth by realism" allows for the building of cities that thrive without interference, cities, concludes Spencer, that are "about both poetry and engineering.”

Spencer, J. H. (2015). Globalization and urbanization: The Global Urban Ecosystem. Rowman & Littlefield.

Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls: Reduce Water Runoff - Offset Carbon Emissions - Increase Biodiversity- Create Beauty

The authors are experts not only in the construction of green roofs, but on the history of the green roof movement, and have detailed its progress from the early days to contemporary times well. Nigel Dunnett and Noël Kingsbury have revised this book from an earlier edition, adding over 80 new pages. The result is a very authoritative tome on every aspect of green roof and wall creation.

The introduction spends a number of pages looking at different countries and discussing the policies and green roof advances in each of these places. There are many technical details in the book, enough to easily create small scale projects using only the information inside.

Green roofs are becoming an increasingly common sight, on innovative new buildings, on buildings with pre-existing design challenges and very frequently on commercial buildings with flat roofs. Many roofs are prepared as a habitat for local vegetation, and are not intended to grow any species other than those found naturally in the local flora. Still others have wetlands built into them, and become a familiar place for birds to land and nest upon.

Planting on roofs and walls is becoming a discipline of its own in the realm of ecology, as it creates a complex system of habitat for many creatures wherever it is constructed.

This book is beautiful and has a colour photograph on almost every page while most have two or three. For anyone new to the topic, discussions about retrofits required for supporting different types of roofs and networks, planting and watering systems, run-off questions and the integration of living roofs and walls into new buildings are all within these pages. The book was originally listed as a gardening book, but is now listed as architecture. It is a mix of both those disciplines, as well as a strong connection to urban ecology, and a discipline in its own right.

There are now many identifiable hybrid types of roof greening, as buildings are being created to support elaborate green roofs while others are merely adapted, some being extensively greened while others only contain a few green areas. Those green roofs involving high-input garden technique have been covered by several books, while this book is more interested in introducing these low-input roofs and their accompanying living walls.

Bioengineering is a term which describes constructing walls with the intention of integrating planting. Chapter 2, titled Why Build Green Roofs, explores in-depth the environmental benefits of green roofs, or bioengineering in action, including such positive spin-offs as increased biodiversity, which is also represented in graphs. Run-off and roof types are also represented, as are the benefits of green roofs regarding air pollution and carbon sequestration.

It is clear green roofs radically diminish the urban heat island effect as well, provided the buildings are sufficiently irrigated with a source such as recycled rainwater irrigation. The authors cite one particularly interesting study involving a hypothetical green roof coverage of 50% for Toronto's "downtown heat island," a study which found irrigated green roofs reduced the heat effect by a whopping 2 degrees, while unirrigated roofs were discovered to be of far less benefit but still created cooling. Information about recycling and irrigating roofs dispels the suggestion that green roofs and rooftop gardens become water intensive. Other analysis included noise reduction as a positive compliment, and the discovery that solar panels increase an uptick in effectiveness when placed on green roofs, as "the output of (photovoltaic) cells is higher at lower temperatures." The analysis also found that there has been insufficient effort in truly promoting green roofs at a city scale, despite multiple and even cost-offsetting benefits.

Chapter 3, titled Constructing Green Roofs, explores the almost limitless possibilities for construction, and forever dispels the idea that a flat roof is a requirement. The challenges of wind, types of irrigation, and concerns of fire risks are also discussed. Adding one of the better myth-busting facts, while thatched roofs are for instance a fire risk, a green roof is actually the opposite of a fire risk. There are no known green roofs fires in Germany, where there are millions of square feet of green roofs.

Green roof structural requirements are discussed and include underlying structural supports, a green roof deck, a vapour control barrier, and a "waterproofing layer or membrane." Additional covering protects this membrane brilliantly. Green roof materials are explored as methods of planting, growing medium, soils, soil depths and types of systems. The materials section Components of a Green Roof includes several excellent case studies with interesting photos and excellent designs explaining plant combinations for various purposes.

The second half of the book is dedicated to facade greening, the fine art of planting on walls. This was the section that interested me the most. This section begins with a discussion of climbers, something which humans have used for ages but only recently studied. Climber vines often require very little encouragement where there is brick, but a much more dense facade can be made using lightweight steel trellis panels and coconut fiber, as one example, which allows a mix of plants that establish quickly and penetrate the panels well. Different types of trellis such as grids and steel cables are designed for different plants, for instance bougainvillia has adorned buildings for millenia and loves a widely spaced grid. Steel ropes as well as glass fiber are materials which are durable enough to support plants on walls. The authors write, "for heights greater than two stories, choosing supports for climbers and their installation moves into an engineering rather than horticultural territory." However, the book does move into this territory, and I noticed that the earlier version of the book was listed as a gardening book, while this newer edition is listed online as on the topic of architecture. The book encourages plant facade builders to carefully consider design factors, aesthetics, and whether the plants need horizontal as well as vertical supports. As well the book adresess the condition of the wall receiving load bearing fixings, and various tensioning methods.

The authors then proceed to a number of incredibly beautiful case studies, where their limitations and challenges are analyzed in detail. One of the keys to success in creating a living wall is a constant source of water and nutrients to the plants. As the book remarks, "some extremely varied and visually attractive plant communities can be found growing on cliffs where there is a sufficiently constant supply of nutrient-laden water flowing over and down the rock surface. Often these plant communities are highly distinctive, frequently offering refugia for locally rare or highly specialized species. In the temperate zone, some of the best known are the 'coastal bluff' communities of cliff and canyon walls in the Cascade range in north-west North America." Natural hydroponics are occurring when nutrient-rich water trickles down cliff walls from decaying material above. Recreating this through an irrigation system is key to success. The book reinforces to us that green roof runoff is more than merely "a useful resource" and is nutrient dense water that belongs in an integrated plan. Water from roof run off, for example, can be used to irrigate wall plantings to a very positive effect.

The rest of the book is an extensive list of some of the best and most appropriate species for wall and roof gardening. It is an extensive plant directory including plant height and drought tolerance among other details and makes the rest of the book extra indispensable. I wished the book had a bit more detail about food that can be grown on roofs and walls, but the emphasis was a bit more on creating habitat, on reducing urban heat issues and on aesthetics, something the authors acknowledge at the introduction. I recommend this book strongly to anyone interested in green roofs and walls, not as a read but as a permanent fixture to their library.

Dunnett, N., & Kingsbury, N. (2010). Planting Green roofs and living walls. Timber Press.

Urban Biodiversity: From Research to Practice

This is a comprehensive volume edited by Alessandro Ossola and Jari Niemalä, packed with interesting essays from an array of leading researchers. There are forty contributors in all, including, in the tradition of all great edited essay compilations, several essays by the editors themselves. The book contains contributions from universities all over the globe, and include contributors from places as far-flung as Norway, Chile, Australia and South Africa.

The book is designed to underscore the extent of the research that is happening worldwide. Now that researchers have embraced urban biodiversity as a science, "its vast richness" and the importance of urban biodiversity "for the ecological functioning of cities" as well and innate value of urban species biodiversity for citydwellers, has created more research activity in the field than ever before.

The first essay, a collaboration with the editors and researchers, displays a chart with a rise in the numbers of papers published today containing the words "urban," "animals" "plants" and "biodiversity" in the same piece. It remarks that because of this new spike in research activity, cities are able to derive exciting new data. As a result, these new and more detailed studies cause cities to implement action policies, ensuring that urban biodiversity research does connect to real life practice and change.

The next essay discusses urban soil questions and soil management with many illustrations. The illustrations help describe the natural diversity of soil conditions found in urban settings, and highlights a trend where cities often need better functioning biota.

Chapter six, titled Urban Biological Invasion: When Vertebrates Come to Town was a chapter I found particularly interesting. This essay examined the role of mice and rats historically, the problem of grey squirrel invasions in Europe, and looked at a number of other species invasion trends. The essay presented various concerns as well as offering quite a number of solutions, and in general contained a lot of information in a short piece that was well-composed.

Chapter eight addresses biodiversity and social values and preferences, something that is rarely considered. It seems the public often prefers certain species of urban wildlife over others, and the interconnectedness of species is easily forgotten. The essay discussed challenging these perceptions and preferences, guided by awareness campaigns and integrating social sciences. To address biases that lean in favour of some urban wildlife above others, campaigns are built to encourage conservation appreciation in the broader public.

Chapter nine carries on with the examination of human roles in more depth, addressing biodiversity and psychological well-being. The essay asks how to deliver ecosystem services to people. The essay links biodiversity and wellbeing, presents stress reduction theory and highlights the way that biodiversity evokes an automatic positive effect. In reading this chapter I felt as if they were somewhat using the word "biodiversity" where nature might have simply sufficed in the past. However, it was done well and the intentions were of the highest. The authors also described strategies for enhancing a sense cultural good in cities while ensuring higher wild species diversity longterm. To imprint upon the public imagination the concept that "nature" requires "biodiversity" and that enhanced environmental literacy is worthwhile is an on-going effort that seems to be garnering results. The author also cites studies in this chapter, talking about the restorative emotional effects of biodiversity. Inviting more research, they also highlight gaps in information around biodiversity and its impact on public wellbeing, a topic requiring further study.

The final chapter, Urban Green Spaces: An African Perspective, was especially insightful. The chapter claims there are two ideologies at play in some parts of Africa, one derived from South African studies and universities, and those that intuitively develop close to the immediate bioregion in question. For creating biodiversity-friendly cities, conservation and ecological services, attention is required. The essay emphasizes that active citizen engagement is key, as well as some public acknowledgement that urban ecological studies in Africa still show a clear bias towards South African cities. The essay argues that bias has led planmers to overlook different management practices that might be quite essential for the success of services in places with requirements distinct from the South African model. The authors propose urban green spaces be integrated into the urban green infrastructure in a way that is planned and co-managed by all stakeholders...where both people and nature win."

There were quite a few more excellent essays in this small book and I really enjoyed all of them. The research was well-conducted and extremely well referenced. These are essays by scientists all over the world devoted to taking quite a grassroots approach to urban biodiversity. Their inclusion of so much input from social justice concerns was very encouraging. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the health of the cities in which they live.

Ossola, A., & Niemelä, J. (2018). Urban Biodiversity: From research to practice. Routledge.

Design Like You Give a Damn (2): Building from the Ground Up

This photography-dense 335 page follow-up to the earlier book of the same name is a punchy and unforgettable read. Edited by Architecture for Humanity, the book speaks to architects, designers and artists like myself who want to build projects, desings and installations sustainably, placing community at the fore. There are literally hundreds of inspiring case examples inside this book, all of them full of life and optimism.

The book is divided into sections, the first introductory section in light green addressing "lessons learned." All of the "lesson learned" examples represent projects that have been done in communities, in particular disaster recovery sites, which involve a team, an implementing agency and sponsors, a number of cases this being Architecture for Humanity, but many are the sustainablity projects of architectural firms and architectural schools as well. These teams represent variations of project management coordinators, design fellows, the actual designers, consultants, volunteers, a loan fund and numerous beneficiaries all working behind the scenes to bring a project to life.

Each section looks at various sustainability architecture gems, and examine many astounding case studies. The book is loaded with beautiful photographs that shine with excitement and hope.

Housing is the third section, underscored by the book's designers with forest green accents throughout. it is another exciting array of architectural design projects built to bring out the best in people and alleviate poverty in a sustainable way. The detail and effort that goes into each of these projects is evident, as these architects are trying to bring communities together and create positive living experiences and are somewhat competitive in meeting the challenge. Obviously the themes overlap.

The next and largest section is themed Community, but the efforts of the different architectural design teams in the Housing section now put Community under a high focus lens. There are also some very famous examples in the Community section, in particular the success story of the Highline in New York, The bridge school in China, and the Gimnasio Vertical in Venezuela with 15,000 users monthly. There are, however, many more examples in this largest section, all of them fascinating.

The slender section Basic Services and Materials follows, and these are shown in an installation place but have hundreds to thousands of version as they are designed for function, not architecture per say. Among these is the Emergency Water Bladder, a device developed in 1990 and still in use while being finessed, it is a life-saving way of storing potable water, and these bladders are used by Oxfam to serve thousands of people every day. It also has a section on ecological concrete additives, including the smog-eating concrete developed by a producer in Italy and used to design a church. Smog-eating concrete is infused with titanium dioxide and can trap and neutralize air pollution. Many photos showing the different concepts in action make this an interesting section.

The Politics, Policy and Planning section is almost as big as the Communities section and is the second last section in the book. It focuses on issues including paint and graffiti with fascinating statistics and maps, including where food deserts are most prevalent, how much the expense of removing costs taxpayers (Billions!) and how violence can be prevented through design. This section is as inspiring as the rest of the book, and is followed by the final Reference section, which is dense with information and links.

This book is like an entire course in gritty urban design in one book, with gorgeous photos and an energy that is super upbeat. I highly recommend it and I'm glad I read it. It provides excellent perspective and profoud inspiration to artists and designers, and I look forward to Design Like You Give a Damn 3.

Architecture for Humanity. (2012). Design like you give A damn 2 building change from the ground up. Abrams.

Design Ecologies: Essays on the Nature of Design

Edited by Lisa Tilder and Beth Blostein, this interesting book has twenty contributors comprising 16 essays and grew out of a symposium of the same name. The editors state that they have set out to explore how "ecological design" operates "synergistically across design disciplines." Blostein explain that while, "the nineteenth-century German biologist Ernst Haeckel defined ecology as 'the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism to the environment,' they would go further and add, 'in which each living organism has an ongoing and continual relationship with all elements."

In the first essay, designer Bruce Mau describes his team's Massive Change project. The Massive Change project was a series of installations that was originally curated by the Vancouver Art Gallery as a project on the future of design. The show was such a controversial success thst they then toured. Mau remarks, "conditioned by an apocalyptic future, people lose their ability to imagine a future. They become self-interested. The most insidious by-product of this doomsday thinking is apathy." Mau states that "a project which sees the welfare of all life," and promotes Stewart Brand's "enlightened self-interest" thesis, is a path of "informed optimism" as well as information sharing and new solutions.

The next essay, by designer Cameron Tonkinwise, poses the question, "if we designed our way into unsustainability...do we have to design our way out of it...or do we desperately need new, other-than-designing ways of responding to these large-scale problems?" Tonkinwise suggests perhaps either argument is too stark. He asks, "can we redesign designing?"

In his essay, Weeding the City of Unsustainable Cooling, Tonkinwise writes a detailed and lucid examination of the unenvironmental window air conditioner issue in New York, and the impossibility of demolishing everywhere that requires them. Tonkinwise asks, "so what would it take to accomplish the task of quickly removing window box air conditioners from New York?" Reminding us that early New Yorkers sweltered often without complaint and that air conditioners may have 'conditioned' humans to a false reality of what is normal in summer, he acknowledges that some people cannot live without air-con, and it would be ableist to assume otherwise. Likening a.c. boxes to a weed species, Tonkinwise asseses the massive "artificial dependencies" that they represent, and poses that the cooling of urban buildings must then be seen as "a constellation of colliding desires." The task must not become "a determination of the minimum atmospheric conditions necessary for existence as a requirement for totally rebuilt sustainable cities," says Tonkinwise. Instead, he calls for a pressing need to change and to create "new desires, not less desire." He concludes that only "reversible moves" avoid designs that do not arrogantly scrap everything in the hope of getting it right.

I found the essays in this book intriguing and provocative, with a range of discussions and intense examinations of both materials and the historic excesses of design as well as the worthiness of excess in certain contexts.

In "Green Screens: Modernism Secret Garden," essayists Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelis shine a hard light on green design. Evoking the previously under-examined social role of the fern bar, which was a windowless space popular in earlier decades where singles could meet, they point out that singles were also emboldened to connect in an atmosphere where a collection of indoor ferns were actually slowly dying. "The fern acts as a mediator of the impersonality of modern life...as something between the living and an object." Remarks the essayists, "as an early moment of ecological architecture, the fern bar makes the moral duplicity of green design apparent...But in giving themselves up, the ferns allowed their patrons to do what they really wanted, to seek self-gratification. The green movement today allows us this too...ratcheting up consumption, green design makes the world our fern bar."

The level of examination evident in the "fern bar" piece is typicsl of the essays in this book. Stylish and also at times vexing, it wasn't quite what I expected from writers critiquing the aims of their profession. The rest of the essays however are also like this, relentless and eloquent examinations of architecture and its role.

In the final essay, titled Towards a Productive Excess, author and editor Beth Blostein examines the days when architecture and power stations came together to create monumental designs celebrating the "glory" of energy production. In promoting new beginnings, Blostein proposes, "nothing short of a renewed architectural exuberance is required." Citing the example of energy-generating buildings that invite a new kind of city, she asks us to imagine the emergence of a "model of energy as an ever-convertible, fluid asset." Blostein couples this with her interest in movable and pre-assembled structures. She suggests we consider "HOK's stadium for the 2021 London Olympics," which was deliberately designed to be disassembled "after the games, and rebuilt for the next Olympic hopeful, Chicago." Says Blostein, "as a large-scale endeavor, this exuberant, pervasive energy production will allow contemporary culture and its technological needs to thrive and develop, and allow a place again for the delights of excess."

Tilder, L., Blostein, B., & Amidon, J. (2012). Design ecologies: Essays on the nature of Design. Princeton Architectural Press.

Urban Ecosystems: Understanding the Human Environment

The authors, Robert Francis and Michael Chadwick, are two King's College lecturers whose aim is to create a key resource for teachings related to urban ecosystems, have set themselves a difficult task. The book covers "both the physical and biotic components of urban ecosystems, key ecological processes, and the management of ecological resources including biodiversity conservation."

To do this within 220 pages seems impossible to me. The preface as well remarks that "the study of urban ecosystems and the field of urban ecology are growing at a fast rate, and it is difficult to keep up with the amount of published research around the world." The editors also explain, an "introductory book cannot be comprehensive," but is "synthesized from 600 sources."

Chapter one is an overview of the field and offers some key terms, explaining for the reader how to approach the book and the rate at which the fiel is growing. In the case of the term "ecology," the breadth of interpretations can result in some confusion at the best of times. The authors explain how the term urban ecology came to be defined as a biotic community that can encompass both an entire city and specific parks within the city as well. To make things more complicated, this introductory text points out that different places have entirely different definitions of what is "urban" s well. To emphasize this serious challenge in standardizing studies, there is a chart showing different countries around the globe and their different definitions of the actual term "urban." These variations also make standardization difficult, bringing the authors to emphasize how those new to the science must look at specific cases to define the particular ecosystem involved. As the book points out, context must be highlighted in every scientific study, but particularly that of urban ecology. The authors remark that context distinctions are essential when defining urban ecosystems functioning within a high proportion of built environments, or within a high population density. They also emphasize the need for drawing spatial distinctions between areas. The fluid identity of the  city is another special character of urban places that requires studies to explain context and spatial areas clearly, the authors remarking that shifting urbanization is a study in itself.

The book then goes on to elicit intrigue in those new to urban ecology studies, stating how underexplored the science of urban ecology still is and how each city is ecologically novel from the next and ever-changing. Diversity of species is also mentioned early in the book as a key issue conservationist researchers find vital to their studies. "Ecological novelty is also reflected in the types and diversities of species found within" any urban area of study. That these can exhibit "new ecologies and novel species assemblages," as well as "a 'recombinant' or 'mixo-ecology' that has not been seen before and which may be particularly dynamic and changeable," (p 14) makes urban ecological research all the more critical. Urban ecology is an environmental touchstone to species adaptation and supplies information about the mitigation of human impact that no other science can.

Chapter two and three talks about three dimensional structures of urban environments, inviting rewders to see them in all their dimensions, rather than simply the model on an architect's table without life. Form, structure and dynamics of both regions and landscapes define every urban environment. Essentially, the book tells us, urban ecology shapes and is shaped. Chapter four focusses on green space, including urban rivers. It was my favorite chapter. Urban rivers are often undergound, or buried by development, but they must not vanish from our awareness or our whole understanding of an urban place is in peril. Rivers are life. Paths and homes are often established along river routes first, as are animal dens and places that animals frequent, and these are creetures we share our world with. Chapter five introduces the importance of built environments, their impact, their success stories and their potential future design. Chapter six, urban species, and "assemblages," which is a term you will see used a lot in urban ecology, describes both those creatures that are well-studied in urban science, as well as those that hide well or are less observed by the human eye. Chapter seven, presenting issues involving the nature conservation of urban species, also presents the ideas involved in the science of urban "reconciliation ecology." Citizen science is also discussed, as in any city there is an army of potential observers and note-takers capable of studying ecological features of their immediate surroundings.

In chapter eight, urban and environmental engineering in urban regions is addressed. This is an interesting topic, if only because humans are often trying to manage the environment in ways that csn create significant changes to a pre-existing natural balance in an area. Chapter nine, a useful point of reflection towards the future studies we might see in the field of urban ecology, summarizes likely trends. I am very satified that the authors who set out on the difficult task of writing a key resource for interested future students of urban edology, have succeeded in their endeavour. The book is thorough and level-handed. It must not have been an easy task to compose such an in-depth book in such a short number of pages, and I beleive the authors have done a commendable job of presenting urban ecology to the public in a way that inspires potential new students to the science as well.

Francis, R. A., & Chadwick, M. A. (2013). Urban ecosystems: Understanding the human environment. Routledge.