News
- Camera Trap Tuesday: Islands in Los Angeles:: “What Griffith Park, one of the largest urban parks in America, is surrounded by, however, is freeways. And homes, and businesses. Urban sprawl.”
- What Is the Point of Zoos?:: “I am also a great advocate of zoos that focus on native species and their ecosystems, and I hope to one day see, or hear about, an urban exhibit that truly links zoos with the cities that surround them.”
- Biodiversity can flourish on an urban planet:: “Research shows that cities can in fact support biodiversity and this can have major implications for conservation efforts.”
- Wildlife Oases in New York’s Concrete Jungle:: “A resourceful researcher discovers that urban green roofs attract surprisingly large numbers of migratory birds and their insect prey.”
- Off-Season Visits to New York’s Newest Naturalistic Parks and Gardens by Harry Wade:: “In the garden, winter’s effect on perception and thought is gradual, accumulating meaning in layers, like the season itself.”
- 9 Simple Ways to Bring More Wildlife to Big Cities:: “Cities and suburbs need to plan for wildlife, partly to minimize conflict, but mainly to welcome and promote newcomers to the neighborhood.”
- Sea wall ‘eco-engineering’ can help boost biodiversity:: “Slight modifications to sea defences – at little or no extra cost – can boost the level of biodiversity found in intertidal zones, a study has shown.”
- A first in Romania: ‘Ovidiu’ Green Trail, a budding protected urban biodiversity project:: “The city of Oradea will soon be boasting Romania’s first protected urban biodiversity area, stretching on the banks of the thermal stream Peta.”
- Study shows urbanisation’s impact on biodiversity:: “A dataset, described as the largest of it kind to date, has assessed the impact of urbanisation on biodiversity levels around the globe.”
- Language of love; Can biophilia capture the heart of our cities?:: “Timothy Beatley’s Biophilic Cities Project is proof that one word can start a global conversation.”
- On Urban Ecosystems:: “Renewed attention to the ecological health of our environment continues to reveal the crucial services functioning environments provide and ways in which we can harness ecological restoration for the benefit of humans and larger systems.”
- Cities could be wildlife refuges of the future (+video):: “With more species going extinct, we must consider the potential of urban environments to serve as refuges for the survivors. Studies show that cities can support, protect, and even evolve wildlife biodiversity, providing opportunities for innovative approaches to conservation.”
- Unnatural Nature:: “Embracing the city by transforming industrial blight into urban amenity.”
- Bringing Nature Home:: “In order to combat environmental and social hazards, Simmons wants to bring nature back into the built environment using ecological design. He envisions an ‘eco-metropolis’ in which we keep, fix, and build using ‘nature’s technologies.'”
- How Cities are Becoming One With Nature:: “A biophilic city has abundant nature in close proximity to the people dwelling there. They have powerful, biodiverse ecosystems that are actively protected by the community.”
- Architect Joyce Hwang earns coveted ‘Emerging Voices’ award from Architectural League of New York:: “Associate Professor of Architecture Joyce Hwang, whose eco-sculptures provide habitat for bats and birds and call attention to misunderstood or ignored ecological conditions, has received a 2014 Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York.”
- London Flood Strategy Proposal : Recovery of its Hydro-logical Network:: “A series of urban valleys will be created through London, following the paths of the existent or hidden rivers within the urban area.”
- They really are concrete jungles! Why you’ll never think about cities the same way again:: “While urban development might seem like a blight on the environment, the truth is actually much more complicated.”
- Native bees are better pollinators, more plentiful than honeybees, finds entomologist:: “They are two to three times better pollinators than honeybees, are more plentiful than previously thought and not as prone to the headline-catching colony collapse disorder that has decimated honeybee populations.”
- Roundabout way to grow flowers helps to boost the bees, research reveals:: “A scheme in Scotland that covered urban roundabouts and grass verges in wild flowers has proved a big hit with bumblebees flies, new research from the University of Sussex has revealed.”
- Urban gardening: how to go green in the city:: “Gardening urbanites are greening our pleasant land. Tucked away in apartments, ecologically ambitious city gardeners are making the most of any space they have, even if it’s just a windowsill, balcony or piece of wall, and growing fresh produce.”
- Restoring nature to modern cities:: “Now, a new Museum of Vancouver exhibition is re-examining this rich ecological past – and pushing for a better relationship between humans and nature.”
- Rebuilding the Natural World: A Shift in Ecological Restoration:: “From forests in Queens to wetlands in China, planners and scientists are promoting a new approach that incorporates experiments into landscape restoration projects to determine what works to the long-term benefit of nature and what does not.”
Resources
- Bumble Bee Watch:: “Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees.”
- Yale Urban Ecosystem Services Symposium:: Videos of the speakers are available to watch.
- The URBES Project:: “URBES (Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) is a three-year research project funded by BiodivERsA that aims to bridge the knowledge gap on the links between urbanization, ecosystem services and biodiversity.”
- A global analysis of the impacts of urbanization on bird and plant diversity reveals key anthropogenic drivers:: “Urbanization contributes to the loss of the world’s biodiversity and the homogenization of its biota. However, comparative studies of urban biodiversity leading to robust generalities of the status and drivers of biodiversity in cities at the global scale are lacking.”
- The Role of Vegetation in the Urban Policies of European Cities in the Age of the Sustainable City (PDF):: The awareness of biodiversity and the exploration of the services provided by ecosystems both lead to the development of ecological networks based on green spaces in and around the city.
- Assessing the Resilience of Water Bodies to the Stormwater-Related Effects of Urban Development:: “This paper proposes a conceptual framework for evaluating the resilience of urban water bodies to stormwater-related development effects.”
- Complex Eco-environmental Study on Urban Area (PDF):: “One of the main goals of the TÁMOP project called “Complex eco-environmental study of the cities in the Western Transdanubian region” was the study of the interaction between urban and natural areas.”
- Knowledge for biodiversity in urban planning. Case studies from Norway (PDF):: “Compact city development has obtained a hegemonic status as a model for sustainable urban development in the Norwegian context as well as internationally.”
- Greening the Grey: An Institutional Analysis of Green Infrastructure for Sustainable Development in the US (PDF):: “Green infrastructure is more than a bioswale or a green roof or a forested corridor – it’s a different way of thinking about infrastructure.”
- Opportunity or Orientation? Who Uses Urban Parks and Why:: “There is growing recognition that interactions with nature provide many desirable human well-being outcomes, yet increasing urbanization is degrading the quality and quantity of nature experiences.”
- A Study on a Regeneration of Urban Commons Through the Nature Friendly River Management and ‘Finding Home Place’ (PDF):: “Zempuku-ji River, running through the central part of Tokyo, has been restored by NFRM, but restoration of the urban river seems not an easy challenge.”
- Urban Agriculture: The Allotment Gardens as Structures of Urban Sustainability (PDF):: “This reflexion comes from a look over the city, particularly the relationship between the 8 built and the open spaces that constitute it.”
- Ecology, Design and the Human-built World in Northern Landscapes:: “Northern landscapes have experienced fewer of the negative ecological effects that follow urbanisation compared with many ecosystems at lower latitudes, but demand for resources and a warming climate will lead to expansion of human settlements throughout northern regions in the near future.”
- Bird–building collisions in the United States: Estimates of annual mortality and species vulnerability:: “Building collisions, and particularly collisions with windows, are a major anthropogenic threat to birds, with rough estimates of between 100 million and 1 billion birds killed annually in the United States. “
Design
- Stefano Boeri’s Vertical Forest gets planted:: “Every plant has been chosen by botanists to thrive in it’s particular orientation and microclimate within the structure. Moreover, a specialized maintenance company will keep the vertical forest in good health in the years to come.”
- Urban Water A New Layer in The City Landscape by Jelena Kotevska:: “Urban Water A New Layer in the City Landscape is an attempt to investigate the possibility for ecological treatment of Skopje sewage wastewater, which currently pollutes the river Vardar with use of the available city landscape.”
- Pete V. Domenici U.S. Courthouse–Arid Region Urban Landscape & Water Harvesting Retrofit:: “The Courthouse became one of the first projects to achieve certification from the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES), landscape performance-based accreditation awarded to projects that enhance local ecology.”
- Barking Riverside Green Roof Experiment: Phase 2 (PDF):: “The incorporation of green infrastructure into cities can help alleviate these problems and contribute to the provision of ecosystem services.”
- Proposal for Silvertown Docks wins Royal Docks competition:: “Silvertown Docks proposes a new type of marina for the Royal Docks that balances the past with the present. Once used as a graving dock for shipbuilding and repair, the site is transformed into a unique series of spaces that encourage both ecological and human uses.”
