Rethinking The Relationship Between Civilization And Nature

NPR Blogger and astrophysicist Adam Frank takes to the streets of Seattle to tell Audie Cornish why he believes we ought to think of cities and nature in a more holistic way.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/09/26/351678774/is-civilization-natural

Slivers of the past

If one looks closely, the stories are written into the land. Narratives are abundantly embedded in the interstices of the soil, water, and air and help give form to place. It is not uncommon to see slivers of the past all around--in the ruts of previously well traveled roadways now grown to forest; the brick steps that remain long after the house is gone; a rambling rose that was once planted by a forgotten hand. The landscape teems with the specters of those who have walked here before.

Urban Moundscape

It’s been said that some of our most common roadside weeds such as dandelion, thistle, plantain, and chicory have chased humans from Europe to America by following their dump heaps. Similarly, Native Americans have called urban weeds ‘white man’s footprints.’ Wherever we travel, weeds are sure to follow. Just as the seeds from last year’s pumpkin have sprouted in my compost pile, our debris has its own working and thriving ecology. National Geographic News (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/1409010-detroit-mounds-debris-dumping-vacant-lots/) reports that biologists in Detroit are scouring urban dump heaps for interesting plants. Illegal dumping is a common urban problem in any city, yet is rife in the Motor City which has its own host of other problems. Like the jungle ruins of Ankor Wat, nature shall persevere. Thirty foot trees are now emerging from piles of brick and shopping carts and festooned in goldenrods and asters. But not for long as the new city administration has made this urban blight a priority for removal. No doubt they should curtail illegal dumping, but maybe preserve some of these new urban mounds.

Bedbugs, or bug beds?

 

         Image from Wikipedia Commons

Park Wonsoon, Seoul, South Korea's mayor, made headlines recently because of his support for installing insect hotels in the city's public parks. In a July 8, 2014 article for the GlobalPost.com, Seoul city environmental advisor Yang Gyoung-gyu, explained that because the city of Seoul had developed so quickly that it lacked insect biodiversity ("Seoul's eccentric mayor is building hotels for insects. Yes, bugs" by Geoffrey Cain). So the city is adding insect habitat and living space in its overly-tidy parks and greenspaces. The critter hotels are packed with various woods and grass species for a variety of insect types. And they look pretty cool too. Unfortunately, the article also refers to Mayor Wonsoon, now in his second term, as "eccentric", "quirky", and "progressive." You can read  the article at http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/south-korea/140704/seouls-eccentric-mayor-building-hotels-insects

Resilience

Brooksville, Mississippi

If you ever find yourself traveling on Hwy. 45 alternate about 30 miles south of West Point, Mississippi, you have landed squarely in the burg of Brooksville, and there are two stops that you need to make. One is at Old Time Bakery, a delectable throwback of a baked goods store that is run by Mennonites. And no more than a few hundred feet from their front door, sits one of the coolest abandoned schools that I have yet seen in the state of Mississippi. The Brooksville school closed years ago, but its decaying Art Deco shell is still intact. The smooth building lines and curved glass-block walls were a charming and unexpected find. I didn't venture inside as a shadowy figure holding a 40 ounce beer quickly disappeared into the shadows. It is a now a place for the homeless, ghosts, and memories to live. I leave this as a short homage to its existence.

In a Country Once Forested by Wendell Berry

The young woodland remembers
the old, a dreamer dreaming

Of an old holy book,
an old set of instructions,

And the soil under the grass
is dreaming of a young forest,

And under the pavement the soil
is dreaming of grass.

Website Review: The Metropolitan Field Guide

Subtitled as "ideas and resources for the design of urban wildlife habitat," this thoughtful website takes a comprehensive look at urban ecology. The Metropolitan Field Guide is a delightful potpourri of nature observations, plant profiles, book reviews, wildlife topics, and a host of resources. Kelly Brenner, the website's author, has a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture and has an avid interest in urban wildlife habitat. While centered in the Pacific Northwest, the site does a good job of including universal urban topics and ecology.  The photographs and poetry pieces are a nice touch. Check out the blog at http://www.metrofieldguide.com

Motor City Madness

Because of its fine architecture and electrified streets, Detroit, MI was once called ‘Paris of the West.’ Now it is mostly known as a demoralized too-big-to-fail city of ruins with thousands of decaying houses and businesses. I’ve experienced the horrific aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and driving through downtown Detroit—and both looked very similar. Except that one was a natural disaster and the other economic. But from the ruins of the ashes (arson is a popular Detroit pastime), the Motor City fathers have a golden opportunity to reinvent their city and make it better. But will they?  The previous mayor’s administration attempted just that with a visionary document called Detroit Future City (http://detroitfuturecity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/DFC_Full_2ndEd.pdf). In it they proposed green neighborhoods with local parks and the return of large amounts of vacant land to forests and fields, known as ‘alternative use areas’. The long-term vision of these use areas was to shift it to an ‘ecologically and environmentally sustainable state’ (Detroit Future City). Detroit’s sprawling infrastructure is failing, and under this plan the non-use areas would be decommissioned to ‘diminish the cost and maintenance burden on city systems.’ This is a plan that is so sensible and forward-thinking that it’s scary. Perhaps too scary, as Mike Duggan, the newly elected Detroit mayor, has instead used his “Every Neighborhood has a Future” campaign to promise that neighborhoods will be restored (Mike Duggan Neighborhood Plan). The phrase ‘it will come back’ has been promised for over 30 years now in Detroit and its surrounding cities (see the film Roger and Me for graphic details). Duggan’s proposed solution is instead is to reconstitute the Detroit Land Bank, which will take control of the maintenance and resale of 60,000 city-seized properties. (Imagine the lawn mowing contract for that!) Duggan promises to get rid of city blight by demolishing structures and mowing lots, taking the property, and to make it ready for resale. The problems with this plan are, 1) the land bank will inherit a massive maintenance budget; 2) the city infrastructure of roads and utilities will continue to fail, and, 3) who is going to buy this property? Industry and Detroit’s tax base has left--years ago. I know this, I grew up in the Detroit area and my family still lives there—barely. I visited Detroit a few years ago and stopped the car in the middle of Conant Street in Hamtramck (once a small ethnic neighborhood of Polish immigrants), and wept. Big old crocodile tears. I wept for the strong sense of place that this area once had, a place where old ladies (babkas) would sweep their stoops and sidewalks every morning, a place where we went to the church fair for the pastries that locals made. My aunts and grandmother were PROUD of escaping a desperate and murderous Eastern Europe 100 years ago, and to come to be successful in America. Our fathers and uncles worked hard in the factories, often working two shifts to make ends meet. They were proud of their new country, their city, their house, and their children. But that pride left long ago on a one-way ticket out of town. I now saw a city in ruins and all the things that these good people had worked for dashed against the rocks. But I will admit there is a poignant beauty in those ruins, like looking into a still, dark pool. Sumacs were popping up from the once manicured front lawns, it was quiet and it no longer had the noise of the city. And I saw increasingly returning wildlife.  What I would have given to be able to grow up near the open lots and woodlands that were now emerging, instead of the concrete suburb in which I was corralled. Pheasants are now repopulating Detroit’s northeast side  (‘City lots become wildlife habitats’, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 16, 2008), Eastern cottontail rabbits are common (www.naturaldetroit.us), and bald eagles have now returned to the once polluted Detroit River (‘Detroit River showing new signs of life’, Detroit News, Apr. 8, 2010). Life is returning once again. Come on Detroit, we’re pulling for ya. You were one of our great cities of American strength and industry. And you have an opportunity to be great again—by demonstrating that a once-bloated city can downsize into smaller livable communities with a locally-based economy. But we need to see you move forward, not backward. 

Green Infrastructure and Scale

Lately I've been thinking about how some landscape projects are restricted by available space. For instance, its fairly difficult to establish new conservation areas or stream buffers in many dense urban cores because there just isn't enough room amongst the hardscape and buildings. Conversely, for rural properties where there are plenty of farms, fields and forests, it looks odd to see a tiny green roof or green wall. Other than demonstration, what are these small scale projects in a large greenspace really accomplishing? So it occurred to me that some of these best management projects are scale dependent upon the available space. And while there may be real opportunities for a downtown urban farm or a a rural vertical farm, it may be practical to think about appropriate sized projects according to available space. If we use New Urbanist terminology along the urban to rural transects (Newurbanism.org), we might prioritize our best management practices according to the following graphic. Does it make a better environment to have many small greenspaces in a large area like the Portland park system or just one large one like Central Park? What are your thoughts?

Crack Gardens

I've always admired the tenacity of trees, shrubs, grasses and vines to be able to thrive in the harshest of urban conditions; including rooftops, building sides, gutters, culverts and roadway cracks. These 'crack gardens' are most often colonized by early pioneer plants which do an important job of paving the way for other plants to become established, and mimic how plants colonize old lava flows or exposed rock faces. How these plants survive a lack of soil or rooting space, little nutrients or access to water during droughts, and extremes of heat or cold is a complete mystery to me, and gives me great hope in the reclamation of our most damaged landscapes. They can also be hauntingly beautiful in their own linear or spotty way. Here are a few crack gardens that caught my eye:

Old Royal Drive-in Theater, Meridian, MS

San Antonio Botanic Garden, TX

Felder Rushing's designed 'Crack Garden' Driveway, Jackson, MS

Managing for Urban Biodiversity

 

Filbert steps, San Francisco, CA

How does one increase the plant and animal biodiversity in a city? Alexis Alvey gives us four places to start in her 2006 article in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, entitled "Promoting and preserving biodiversity in the urban forest" (5, 2006). Alvey suggests that landscape management should increase the biodiversity in all available parts of the urban forest; including street trees, parks, woodlots, abandoned sites, and residential areas. There are four steps that she recommends to concentrate on: 1) developing a tree inventory, 2) planting for biodiversity, 3) urban parks and woodlots, and 4) residential areas and people. Establishing a tree inventory is a great place to start and creates baseline data from which to make decisions. Software programs such as i-Tree and CITYgreen are available to use for data collection and organizing. Planting for biodiversity simply expands the city tree palette to include more diverse species. Municipal landscape regulations are increasingly recommending or mandating that street tree monocultures are no longer to be used. Adding a diversity of species by planting in existing parks and woodlots is a simple way to increase biodiversity through arbor day plantings or annual planting efforts. Finally, Alvey concludes that public education about diversifying yards and gardens is crucial to create an informed public.

Cities and biodiversity

Biodiversity occurs at multiple scales, from site to citywide to regional to global. At the urban level, how a city is designed, planned, and managed can have significant impacts upon its region and other parts of the world. Just as the collective outputs of farmers, industries, and municipalities from 40% of the North American continent have created an aquatic dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico about the size of the state of Connecticut. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most productive commercial fishing regions in the world, and this hypoxic zone displaces the shrimp, oysters, and fish that feed a global market. Similarly, the collective actions of a city’s property owners impact its levels of urban biodiversity. We all know the drivers of loss of biota in urban systems, but how can we think about it at a municipal scale? Authors de Oliveira, Balaban, et al discuss this in their article entitled "Cities and biodiversity: Perspectives and governance challenges for implementing the convention on biological diversity at the city level" (Biological Conservation  144, 2011). In it, they outline six avenues of improving biodiversity at the municipal scale: 1) development and implementation of proper housing and infrastructure policies; 2) provision of a good network of urban green spaces and functional aquatic habitats, 3) support of sustainable productive uses of biodiversity in urban areas; 4) improvements in public transportation and more compact cities; 5) increase the awareness among urban residents and decision-makers, and 6) stronger links with national and international networks. They make the case that cities can make significant strides in biodiversity levels for the following reasons:

• Cities can be an efficient form to protect biodiversity. Municipalities that reduce sprawl and their development footprint maximize more space for forests, agricultural lands, and biodiversity.
•  Cities are involved in policies to tackle global problems. The development of a City Biodiversity Index by the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) created a ranking system for biological health in urban areas.
• Urban residents tend to be more educated and environmentally sensitive.
• Policies can be more effective at the city level scale.
• There are opportunities for a win-win situation between biodiversity conservation and other benefits. Areas for biodiversity conservation are similar zones for other ecosystem services.
• Convergence of movements on biological diversity and urban planning. Urban planning is more accepting of including biological components, just as biologists are more accepting of the biological relevance of urban areas.

There are definitely some challenges to enacting policies and gaining community acceptance of increasing biological services in urban areas. But as this report concludes, “cities are fundamental players to achieve the objectives of the CBD, as most of the world population lives in cities today and many of the important decisions that affect biodiversity are made in cities.”

The Proximity Principle

Vacant lands are often viewed as the waste products of a city. As they have outgrown their prior use, current land owners speculate that the land value will increase through time and become more valuable. Vacant urban lands typically have a low annual tax burden so there is incentive for the landowner to hold onto the lot (Albert Hartheimer, Affordable Housing and the Land Value Tax Perspective, 2014). But there is another advantage to keeping open green space within communities: property values increase when they are located close to a green space. In the past few decades there have been numerous research articles that support this claim, and John Crompton of Texas A&M University calls this the Proximity Principle. In Crompton’s 2007 article in Leisure Studies (Volume 63, No. 1), he writes that “communities are often confronted with the difficult decision of land use development. Often the assumption is that developing the land for residential homes offers more revenue to the community than developing parks and open spaces. Several factors show that this assumption is in error. The evidence shows that preserving open space can be a less expensive alternative to development.” He concludes that maintaining open space does not take away from a community but is instead an integral part of its economic health.

Schools Need Nature Too

It's been well established that being exposed to nature based places in everyday life is a major determinant of sensitivity to environmental issues (Sebba 1991; Rohde and Kendle 1994). Richard Louv took this one step further and called it a disorder if humans are separated from natural processes (Last Child in the Woods, 2005). In his 2012 interview with Camping Magazine (Jan/Feb), Louv argues to do something about this by "building natural play spaces at schools and in neighborhoods, promoting the use of biophilic design for schoools (thus making them much more conducive to learning and creativity), working for the return of recess and field trips, and creating nature-focused schools, especially preschools" (p. 27). A growing body of research supports the many benefits of children being active in nature-based play, including stronger immune systems, being more physically active and less overweight, more resistance to stress and behavior disorders, being more creative, reduction in bullying behavior, and reducing the symptoms of ADD and ADHD (http://www.kidsafewa.com.au/naturalplay.html 2014). The benefits are clear, so why do our schoolyards continue to resemble prison yards? For 30+ years I have designed and built school gardens for a number of settings--from small school vegetable gardens to entire native plant school campuses. It isn't difficult to find a well-intentioned teacher (usually science) who wants to take classes out in the schoolyard for nature-based lessons. However, it is difficult to get a majority of teachers, maintenance personnel, neighbors, or administrators to buy into the idea. And when that inspired teacher leaves so usually does the garden. It's even more difficult to find funding for garden construction or for upkeep and maintenance. But it's not impossible either. Louv is correct in his assessment that schools are a perfect place to work in a bit of natural play space. We need more examples of inexpensive yet creative schoolyard designs that the parents and school administrators can buy into. For a few inspired case studies check out http://www.natureplaywa.org.au/case-studies

The Flora of the Future?

Intriguing essay by Peter Del Tredici that was posted this month entitled The Flora of the Future: Celebrating the Botanical Diversity of Cities. Peter is an associate professor at Harvard GSD and author of Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast. In it he makes a case for novel ecosystems, which are “a system of abiotic, biotic and social components that, by virtue of human influence, differ from those that prevailed historically, having a tendency to self-organize and manifest novel qualities without intensive human management” (Hobbs, Higgs, and Hall; Novel Ecosystems). In other words, these are plant and animal systems that differ from natural systems and have formed because of humans. These have been occurring wherever humans have lived for millennia and have followed our dump heaps. Del Tredici maintains that we have to recognize that these not only exist, but are spreading due to urbanization, globalization, and climate change. These are our new urban ecosystems. Interestingly, he defines a few new ‘infrastructural taxonomies’ that are urban places where survivor plants co-exist—chain link fences, vacant lots, median strips, stone walls, pavement cracks, specialized microclimates, and river corridors. He acknowledges that some of these plants are problematic, such as the invasive exotics or plants that cause problems for people. Del Tredici’s thesis is that landscape architects should embrace these common urban systems and enhance their potential in design. And he’s right, designers should be looking at the potential aesthetics of our most common and biologically significant landscapes. A goldenrod growing on a railroad bank and a goldenrod growing in a perennial garden bed are the same species. The only difference is intent, and it will take very creative solutions to get public acceptance. You can view the full article at http://places.designobserver.com/feature/flora-of-the-future-urban-wild-plants/38417/

Wall and Piece

"Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy."

--Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

Book review: Edgelands-- Journeys into England's True Wilderness

Sometimes it takes takes a poet or an artist to get us to look at something that's right in front of us. Such is the latest book that I am reading called Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wilderness (Vintage Books, 2012). Deliciously written, the authors are English poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. As children in the 1970s they wandered the industrial wastescapes of Liverpool and Manchester, which became their boyhood playgrounds. Today, they serve as literary ambassadors to escort us deep into these edgelands. Chapters are broken into landscape type or elements that are common to all edgelands: paths, dens, canals, ruins, pallets, wire, and containers. These forgotten lands and cast aside items are not the romanticized visions of Claude Lorraine ruins, these are real places in all their naked glory. But their text takes on an ugly beauty with texture and color, like watching a steel drum rust into a beautiful patina. Here's a sample from their Introduction, "Somewhere in the hollows and spaces between our carefully managed wilderness areas and the creeping, flattening effects of global capitalism, there are still places where an overlooked England truly exists, places where ruderals familiar here since the last ice sheets retreated have found a way to live with each successive wave of new arrivals, places where the city's dirty secrets are laid bare, and successive human utilities scar the earth or stand cheek by jowl with one another; complicated, unexamined places that thrive on disregard, if we could only put aside our nostalgia for places we've never really known and see them afresh."

Does My Backyard Matter When It Comes to Urban Biodiversity?

 bee balm

Yes. Even if you have a tiny property that is surrounded by a sea of concrete, your greenspace is important. In fact it becomes even more crucial to insects and wildlife if there are few other choices available. Jean-Pierre Savard et al state in their 1999 paper, “Biodiversity concepts and urban ecosystems,” that all scales of biodiverse landscapes are critical “ranging from individual plants to the entire city itself and even its surrounding areas.” That’s because urban ecosystems work on multiple levels which are linked together (Allen and Starr, 1982). Let’s say that you plant a nice row of bee balm in your flower bed which are dined upon by a few hummingbirds. Your plants are valuable because they form a part of the hummingbird food chain that exists in your neighborhood. While some properties have landscape types that are best suited for nesting or shelter, others comprise the daily hummingbird food buffet. This is why hummers become so territorial when they find a good food source. There is an even more important reason for you to encourage biodiversity on your property—because you can influence your neighbor’s landscapes. If they see your yard full of butterflies and hummingbirds after the addition of a few plants, they may be inclined to plant a few as well. Don’t believe me? Take a look at neighborhoods that paint the bottoms of their trees white, there is no other explanation for collateral tree painting. So you should never feel that it’s hopeless to create a greener environment, because your backyard is one of the most valuable places to start.

Chicago Parks Are Using Natural Lawn Care Basics

The city of Chicago is telling its residents that having dandelions in lawns are okay. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Park District is avoiding the use of herbicides in 90 percent of its public lands. Michael Thompson, director of Chicago Honey Co-op, says that dandelions bloom at an important time for bee development and provide a crucial food source for pollinating insects. The city is also trying to save on annual lawn maintenance costs. Weedkiller applications cost the city an average of $240 per acre per application, which the Tribune estimates at $1.4 million in city savings.

My new book on the Crosby Arboretum is out

While not exactly urban, the Crosby Arboretum is an early public garden example of how to heal heavily disturbed agricultural lands through restoring natural process. Located in Picayune, Mississippi, The Crosby Arboretum, Mississippi State University Extension, is dedicated to displaying exhibits of regional plant communities to a visiting public. Biologists Sidney McDaniel and Chris Wells, landscape architects Ed Blake and Andropogon Associates, and architect Fay Jones created a miniature jewel of a native plant garden in the Pearl River watershed. The Crosby Arboretum uses the natural processes of prescribed fire and woodland succession to guide its landscape management. I was fortunate to get involved in the early stages of this ASLA and AIA award-winning garden, and served as its site director/curator for 13 years. My new book, The Crosby Arboretum, A Sustainable Regional Landscape (2014), published by LSU Press, traces the history of the Gulf Coast landscape, the arboretum origins, the design of the landscape and architectural exhibits, and subsequent care and management. The book is now available through your favorite local or online bookstore. For more information, check out an interview on the book that I did at http://msulalc.blogspot.com/2014/04/q-with-bob-brzuszek-about-his-new-book.html

Drifts of Spring Beauty and Henbit in an analogous color composition

Keep the weeds in the lawn?

When I was a kid, my mother would give me a kitchen knife to dig dandelions out of the lawn. Now it seems that I should have left them. Sarah Lovell and Douglas Johnston state in their 2009 paper in Ecology and Science that residential yards can have a role to play in contributing to ecological function, especially those that have a range of environments (shrubs, trees, ponds, grassy areas, etc.). Take the common lawn. Herbicided and clipped lawns contribute little to biodiversity but weedy lawns can enrich it. Lovell and Johnston state that "a simple example of a site-level opportunity for improving biodiversity in a residential area is the replacement of a conventional turf lawn with a  mix of prairie species." If you don't want to replace the lawn, some plants are perfectly suited to co-existing with turf and lawnmowers, including plantain, lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata), and spring beauty (Claytonia virginica). These early spring wildflowers can be overseeded into a lawn if you don't have them. How do you manage for them? Simply don't mow for a while until they are finished blooming and have set seed.

Proof of the second law of thermodynamics

                                          Entropy.

Research supports the need for more prairies and meadows in urban landscapes

Most everyone loves butterflies, but who knew that butterflies are good indicators of urban landscape health? The reason is that adult butterflies are very sensitive to extreme changes in temperature, light and humidity; which can be extreme in downtown urban areas (Erhardt and Thomas 1991). A 2002 study published in Biodiversity and Conservation finds that "species are restricted in their distribution in the landscape by the availability of suitable habitat," rather than being able to disperse to available habitat patches (Wood and Pullen 2002). The authors conclude that cities should focus on providing more biodiverse grassland habitat rather than trying to connect existing patches.

Somewhere in Alabama

Study shows that urban environments contain high levels of biodiversity for a range of wildlife

Patches of derelict urban lands can provide valuable wildlife habitat for a wide range of taxa. A study published in 2006 by researchers from 4 universities evaluated 50 "derelict" sites in Birmingham, England. Their study, entitled "Biodiversity in urban habitat patches," found that wastelands provide rich habitats in the city. The research combined field surveys of the sites and sampled plants, beetles, insects, and selected mammal species; and looked for correlations of biodiversity to the nearness of green corridors. Interestingly, they did not find a correlation between species richness to proximity to corridors such as railways or rivers. They did find, however, a correlation of species richness to the proximity of another derelict site. Meaning that if another abandoned property was nearby, the biodiversity increased. They conclude in the paper, that "planners can have a positive impact on urban biodiversity by slowing the pace of redevelopment and by not hurrying to tidy up and redevelop brownfield sites." (Angold, P.G., et al, "Biodiversity in urban habitat patches," Science of the Total Environment 360, (2006), 196-204.)

Out of Gas

I was born in a nondescript suburb of Detroit, Michigan amidst a sea of urban sprawl. Unable to breathe in the gridded streets, my childhood was spent wandering the railroad tracks and industrial yards. It was there that I noticed my first wildflowers and urban wildlife. Since then I moved to a state that has more country than city. Ironically, Detroit now has more country than city. Go figure.