Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture and urban planning, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
“Cities all around the world have made rapid (and astounding) progress in their integration of sustainability design and green infrastructure into development standards. Can the innovators that are driving these changes imbed a sense of civic sacred within urban landscapes? Planners and elected officials typically shy away from the concept of sacred when discussing green infrastructure, parks, and open space systems. Sacred is an ambiguous word, often interpreted as aligned with faith or spirituality and not an appropriate subject in the public realm. And sacred can also imply exclusion, by either the social or cultural group that acknowledges a sacred place, or in being a landscape that is distinctive and away. Yet as our cities grow and lives get busier people seem to be craving the respite and opportunity for mindfulness that a nearby sacred space can offer.”
“Cities need nature, as I wrote in an earlier essay. But what is not so well understood is that nature also needs cities. There is simply no way we can protect and maintain a beautiful, thriving, natural and rural landscape outside of cities if we continue to spread highways and suburban sprawl across the countryside. Healthy, robust, beautiful cities where people want to live are critical to the protection of nature…In between cities and true wilderness is the “working landscape” of rural America – farms, forests, fisheries, ranchland, and more – where humans must act as stewards of the land’s natural resources. We need our rural landscape and its bounty to be sustained in order to survive harmoniously into the future.”
Urban Ecology Center Study: The Value of Connecting Kids to the Natural World
“Most kids are back in school by now; that means their outdoor play time is dramatically reduced. That assumes, of course, that children actually spend time playing outside and exploring nature. Data suggests otherwise. ‘Children don’t play outdoors on their own very much at all,’ Cheryl Charles says. She’s co-founder of the international outreach organization Children & Nature Network. ‘They tend to go from an indoor environment at school to an indoor environment at home or even at a neighborhood center,’ she says…But organizations such as Milwaukee’s Urban Ecology Center are out to change that.Its branches – one east of the Milwaukee River off Locust Street, another in Washington Park, and a third in the Menomonee Valley – work with neighborhood schools to help connect kids to the urban natural world.”
How Cities Can Battle Climate Change with Resiliency Planning
“Climate change is not going away, so cities large and small must adopt resilient and collaborative strategies not only to cope with the mounting risks they face, but also to survive. It’s no longer a matter of picking and choosing what piece of crumbling infrastructure to repair with scarce funds this year or next — the entire urban organism has to deal with rising waters, super storms, health and food security, air and surface pollution, and increasing numbers of residents. The stakes are even higher as populations worldwide increasingly cluster around urban areas…Cities need a new way of thinking about the design, planning, building and management of essential infrastructure — including energy, mobility, water, sanitation, shelter, information, emergency response and other critical services, the report continued. Basically, they are the first responders in the critical early stages of a crisis and in many regions, the only entities around for support, resources and reconstruction as the crisis ebbs and wanes.”
