Nature and the city

2018

A global assessment of where and how to conserve nature for biodiversity and human wellbeing This century will be remembered as the urban century. Our generation will witness the most significant urban growth in human history. By 2050, there will be 2.4 billion more people in cities, a rate of urban growth that is equivalent to building a city the population of London every seven weeks. Humanity will urbanize an additional area of 1.2 million km 2 , larger than the country of Colombia (Figure 1). Cities have been called humanity's greatest invention, a way of living that can bring many benefits, including increased economic productivity and innovation, greater opportunities for education and individual enhancement, and more efficient use of natural resources and energy. The urban century thus holds enormous opportunity for humanity. However, the urban century also presents a challenge to the global environment, both directly through the expansion of urban area and indirectly through urban energy and resource use. Urban growth is one of the main global issues that the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) must address to meet its ambitious goals. Governments must envision a positive natural future for our urban century, a future in which sustainable urban growth occurs in appropriate places while nearby nature is protected, restored, and enhanced. Nature in and near cities is crucial not just for maintaining biodiversity but also for ensuring human wellbeing, which depends on the benefits that nature provides.

2018

Environmental Sciences, 2008

The lifestyle of people living in urban areas has profound direct and indirect impacts on biodiversity. However, the role of urban lifestyle as a driving force of biodiversity change is not very well understood. This is partly because there is a gap between a social science approach focusing on lifestyle and a natural science approach focusing on biodiversity. We propose that the concept of ecological services and disservices is useful in connecting these approaches. Ecosystem services produced by urban green areas are the focus of a wide range of environmental studies, but disservices -such as safety issues in dark parks or pollen causing health problems -have gained only sporadic attention in environmental studies focused on urban ecosystems. We review and discuss different urban ecosystem disservices from a Northern European perspective. We conclude by addressing the key limitations and possibilities of the use of the concept of ecological disservices in urban biodiversity studies.

Urban Ecosystems, 2014

Cities concentrate risks and the adverse effects of dense populations, such as outdoor air pollution, chronic disease and the impact of extreme weather events. Governments and planning bodies struggle to heed and apply the abundance of unintegrated research that links aspects of the urban environment with urban residents' wellbeing. In order to promote human wellbeing in cities, a number of key features of the urban environment should be promoted. The medical science, urban ecology and urban design research already recognises the importance of some aspects, including providing walkable spaces, community space and greenspace. We argue that in practice, the provision of these three features is insufficient for human wellbeing. Emerging research demonstrates the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem functions to wellbeing. This paper outlines the concept of wellbeing and provides a summary of the three established features of urban environments that enhance residents' lives: the provision of walkable, community and greenspace. We then outline the importance of two vital but often overlooked links in the discussion of how urban planning contributes to wellbeing: biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Until governments and policies recognise the importance of these two elements, urban design and management for wellbeing is at best simplistic. It is important for biodiversity and ecosystem function to be considered during the design decision process. Urban designers and ecologists should recognise that their work has the potential to contribute to human wellbeing by integrating biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in their research.

Cities & Health, 2019

Increasing evidence shows that creating and maintaining relationships with nature is important for human wellbeing. Humanity has become a mostly urbanised species where people typically spend most of their time indoors. It is important then that strategies for deliberately bringing aspects of nature into urban spaces are explored. Design that responds to an understanding of people's innate connection to the living world can be termed biophilic design. This research defines a unique biophilic urbanism framework for analysing and mapping biophilic urban elements. Thirty characteristics of biophilic cities were identified and then used to map Wellington, New Zealand. Observations arising from the research include: 1/ while access to wild nature might be an important characteristic of a biophilic city, planned design interventions are also significant; and 2/ when identified biophilic elements form part of a larger interconnected spatial experience through time, positive effects may be enhanced. This can enable identification of strategic locations for biophilic interventions in the wider urban fabric to facilitate more effective urban nature experiences. This suggests that biophilic urbanism must encompass a wide range of human sensory information, and should be designed from a four-dimensional (i.e. including time) perspective. Keywords: biophilic design; urban design; urban nature; GIS mapping, Wellington, nature experience. 1.0 Introduction: evidence of the benefit of human-nature relationships Human survival is dependent on ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain (Bastian et al., 2012). This is because the diverse range of organisms inhabiting the planet affect ecosystem processes and functions, and therefore ecosystem services (Brook et al., 2013, Norberg et al., 2012). Ecosystem services are the benefits that humans (and other living organisms) derive, either directly or indirectly from the functions of ecosystems (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2016). At the same time that global biodiversity loss has accelerated (Ceballos et al., 2015), humanity has become an urbanised species. The trend towards urbanisation is rapidly increasingly globally, particularly in developing nations, with the proportion of total urban dwellers on the planet set to reach more than 70% by 2050 (Zhang, 2016). Combined with this, urbanised people in developed countries tend to spend high proportions (up to 90%) of time indoors (Matz et al., 2014). This has three important biodiversity-human relationship impications. Firstly, cities must be taken into account in terms of the large negative impact they have on biodiversity (Aronson et al., 2014). Secondly, because people are dependant on ecosystem services, which in part are supported by biodiversity, the abundance or lack of urban biodiversity directly impacts the majority of humans (Taylor and Hochuli, 2015). Finally, as urbanisation increases, cities tend to become more dense, and pressure on urban green spaces occurs. This means there is a risk that urban populations will experience negative psychologcal impacts due to a 'extinction of nature experience' (Botzat et al., 2016, Louv, 2008). It is then, vital to ensure that interior environments and indeed whole urban environments are designed, created and managed to enable meaningful human-nature connections (Turner et al., 2004). This last aspect of the nature-human relationship discussion is the main focus of this paper. An increasing body of international research details the benefits that arise when people have a direct or indirect relationship with the natural world (

2019

Cities will face many challenges over the coming decades, from adapting to a changing climate to accommodating rapid population growth. A related suite of challenges threatens global biodiversity, and many species face potential extinction. While urban planners and conservationists have long treated these issues as distinct, there is growing evidence that cities not only harbor a significant fraction of the world's biodiversity, but that they can also be made more livable and resilient for people, plants, and animals through nature-friendly urban design. Urban ecological science can provide a powerful tool to guide cities towards more biodiversity-friendly design. However, current research remains scattered across thousands of journal articles and largely inaccessible to practitioners. Making Nature's City fills this gap, synthesizing global research to develop a science-based approach for supporting nature in cities. We identify seven key elements of urban form and function that work together to maximize biodiversity, and we illustrate these elements through a case study in California's Silicon Valley. Using the framework developed in this report, urban designers and local residents can work together to link local parks, greenways, green roofs, street trees, stormwater basins, commercial landscaping, and backyards to support biodiversity while making cities better places to live. As we envision the healthier, and more resilient cities, Making Nature's City provides practical guidance for the many actors who together will shape the nature of cities. §

Australian Zoologist, 2006

Interest in urban nature has grown rapidly over recent years in Australia, and not just amongst ecologists and conservationists. Policy makers, social scientists, community groups, the media and urban residents in general have also begun to think about, represent and interact with the 'natural' elements of cities in new ways. There has been a proliferation of perspectives about urban environments and a proliferation of debates about the sustainable management of animals, plants, water, climate and landscapes in cities. Such debates are indicative not only of an unsettling of the terms of nature in Australia, but also of an unsettling of the terms of Australian society by global social flows. Having placed Australian cities in the context of such turbulence, this paper considers implications of the contested status of urban nature for the practice of nature conservation. It is argued that as they engage with the ideas, values and behaviours of urban residents, nature conservation professionals will be challenged to broaden their understanding of nature conservation and to question the present dominance of the goal of biodiversity conservation.

The urban environment is the new frontier for ecological improvement. Urban planting creates a richer ecosystem, enhances biodiversity, improves mental health,and alleviates some of the environmental externalities generated by urban areas (including pollution, runoff and heat island effects). This thesis examines the importance of improving city ecology and explores strategies by which to enact these improvements. Today, new measures-- such as restoration, reforestation, reconciliation and building green roofs-- must be taken to foster urban biodiversity. Developers often overlook the advantages of well-rounded planting programs due to their cost, but education can reverse this trend. Urban environmental research suggests that the benefits of urban greening far outweigh the costs.

Land

Today’s cities increasingly serve as the nexus between nature and people in times of strong urban growth and, in some cases, urban decline [...]

Sustainability

Limited exposure to direct nature experiences is a worrying sign of urbanization, particularly for children. Experiencing nature during childhood shapes aspects of a personal relationship with nature, crucial for sustainable decision-making processes in adulthood. Scholars often stress the need to ‘reconnect’ urban dwellers with nature; however, few elaborate on how this can be achieved. Here, we argue that nature reconnection requires urban ecosystems, with a capacity to enable environmental learning in the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains, i.e., learning that occurs in the head, heart and hands of individuals. Drawing on environmental psychology, urban ecology, institutional analysis and urban planning, we present a theoretical framework for Human–Nature Connection (HNC), discuss the importance of nurturing HNC for children, elaborate on the role of property-rights and the importance of creating collective action arenas in cities for the promotion of urban resilience b...