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2016 | Book

The Power of Urban Nature: The Essential Benefits of Biophilic Urbanism Read chapter Read first chapter

Handbook of Biophilic City Planning and Design

Author: Timothy Beatley

Publisher: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This volume offers practical advice and inspiration for ensuring that nature in the city is more than infrastructure—that it also promotes well-being and creates an emotional connection to the earth among urban residents. Divided into six parts, the Handbook begins by introducing key ideas, literature, and theory about biophilic urbanism. Chapters highlight urban biophilic innovations in more than a dozen global cities. The final part concludes with lessons on how to advance an agenda for urban biophilia and an extensive list of resources.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

The Background and Theory of Biophilic Cities

Frontmatter
1. The Power of Urban Nature: The Essential Benefits of Biophilic Urbanism
Abstract
Human beings need contact with nature and the natural environment. They need it to be healthy, happy, and productive and to lead meaningful lives. Nature is not optional, but an absolutely essential quality of modern urban life. Conserving and restoring the considerable nature that already exists in cities and finding or creating new ways to grow and insert new forms of nature are paramount challenges of the twenty-first century.
Timothy Beatley
2. Understanding the Nature of Biophilic Cities
Abstract
Nature takes many different forms in cities, and it can be experienced in many different ways. To a certain degree, however, nature is a social construct. In this book we argue that nature comprises all the life and living systems in and around cities, from the birds and mammals we can see to the immense populations of invertebrate and largely invisible nonhuman life around us. Increasingly, the nature in and around cities takes the form of green rooftops, green balconies, or vertical facades and gardens on high-rise buildings. These are human-designed and constructed, of course, yet we also respond to them in positive ways, and they do provide an element of nature in an otherwise gray and asphalt urban world. This book focuses mainly on the impact of outdoor spaces in cities, but we acknowledge that there is an important role for indoor nature as well. This chapter details important new ways of seeing and understanding cities as places of nature.
Timothy Beatley
3. The Urban Nature Diet: The Many Ways That Nature Enhances Urban Life
Abstract
The nature we experience in cities can be understood in many different ways. This leads to some important questions about how much exposure to nature we need to feel healthier and happier, and what forms promote these positive responses. We might refer to this as the urban nature diet.
Timothy Beatley
4. Biophilic Cities and Urban Resilience
Abstract
Cities in the United States and around the world face many challenges. Some are relatively new, such as climate change and food and water scarcity. Other challenges are cyclical but common—poverty, adequate and affordable housing, provision of jobs, and economic activity, including adapting and responding to economic downturns. Investing in nature, it turns out, helps in addressing almost all of these challenges and contributes to more resilient cities and urban citizens in several ways.
Timothy Beatley

Creating Biophilic Cities: Emerging Global Practice

Frontmatter
5. Singapore City, Singapore: City in a Garden
Abstract
The island city-state of Singapore occupies a relatively small space—about 700 square kilometers (270 sq. mi.)—on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, and is home to some 5.4 million people. Designing and planning for a dense living environment is critical and the vast majority of the population lives in high-rise buildings. And yet this city is remarkably green and full of nature, creating a new model of Asian vertical green living that may represent a compelling model for other cities and parts of the world. As Poon Hong Yuen, the CEO of the National Parks Board, or NParks, told me on a recent visit, this is simply a matter of necessity for this dense, land-scarce city.
Timothy Beatley
6. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: From Cream City to Green City
Abstract
Milwaukee is perhaps best known for its beers and its brewing history. While most of its breweries are now gone, it is a city innovating in many other areas, particularly in forging new models for urban sustainability and greening. Settled where three rivers come together, and perched on the shores of Lake Michigan, it is a city with considerable natural assets and beauty.
Timothy Beatley
7. Wellington, New Zealand: From Town Belt to Blue Belt
Abstract
Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, is a city of around 200,000 people. It has a long history of progressive environmental plans, policies, and initiatives, and in recent years it has been further extending and developing these commitments to becoming a city of nature.
Timothy Beatley
8. Birmingham, United Kingdom: Health, Nature, and Urban Economy
Abstract
Cities today face a myriad of issues, including very poor air quality, the need to adapt to climate change, a variety of diet-related health problems, rising obesity, and a lack of physical activity. These are complex and challenging issues. One potential solution is to develop more integrative, holistic models that can tie these problems together and provide integrative, catalytic solutions.
Timothy Beatley
9. Portland, Oregon: Green Streets in a River City
Abstract
The city of Portland, Oregon, is situated in the US Pacific Northwest at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. The city is known for its close proximity to an abundance of beautiful natural scenery, including the Columbia Gorge, Mount Hood, the high desert, and the Oregon Coast. Portland also has an impressive amount of nature within city limits, and many people and organizations there are dedicated to stewarding this nature. Like many US cities, Portland also has a significant amount of impervious surface in the form of pavement, buildings, and other hardscaping. Throughout the city’s history, many efforts have been taken, with more under way, to find places for vegetation and wildlife, even in the densest areas, fostering biophilic urbanism at multiple scales across the city.
Julia Triman
10. San Francisco, California: Biophilic City by the Bay
Abstract
San Francisco has often been understood as the gold standard when it comes to sustainable cities. It has an impressive waste recycling rate (currently exceeding 80 percent in its landfill diversion rate) and has set the ambitious goal of reaching zero waste. It has a long history of supporting solar and renewable energy and has formally adopted the precautionary principle, using it to do such things as shift away from the use of pesticides and herbicides for vegetation management in its parks and natural areas. It has also has been participating in our Biophilic Cities Project as a partner city for several years.
Timothy Beatley
11. Oslo, Norway: A City of Fjords and Forests
Abstract
On almost every physical measure—protected nature, tree canopy coverage, access to parks, and ability to walk and hike in the city—residents of Oslo have access to an extraordinarily high degree of nature.
Timothy Beatley
12. Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain: Nature in the Compact City
Abstract
The European Green Capital of 2012, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, is a beautiful, natureful city. Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital of the autonomous community of the Basque Country in northern Spain and dates back to 1181. It is a relatively compact, concentrically developed city with 28,000 hectares and has a population of approximately 240,000 people. It is also one of a few European cities boasting the largest proportion of green areas per inhabitant, roughly 25 square meters (30 sq. yd.) per capita (2012-Vitoria, Gasteiz 2012). Because of this compactness and the region’s geography, residents feel connected to the countryside and the mountain ranges that provide their water.
Carla Jones

A Global Survey of Innovative Practice and Projects

Frontmatter
I. Biophilic Plans and Codes
Abstract
The City of Toronto is considered one of the leaders in green roof policies. In 2009, Toronto became the first city in the world to enact a green roof bylaw. The City of Toronto Act (COTA) gave the City Council authority to pass a bylaw requiring and governing the construction of green roofs.
Timothy Beatley
II. Citizen Science and Community Engagement
Abstract
New York City, with its soaring skyscrapers and bustling street life, wouldn’t strike most as the ideal setting for wildlife viewing, night hiking, and sleeping under the stars. But New York City, the densest city in the United States, is also home to over 29,000 acres of parkland, including 51 nature preserves, 600 miles of shoreline, and a vast network of hiking trails covering all five boroughs. And in fact, what might surprise most is that overnight camping, or perhaps more appropriately, urban camping, is in fact possible without ever needing to leave city limits.
Timothy Beatley
III. Biophilic Architecture and Design
Abstract
This striking 82-story tower graces the skyline of downtown Chicago, just north of Millennium Park. Designed by architect Jeanne Gang (and Studio Gang), the building includes a mix of uses—the lower levels of the structure are a hotel, but there are also condominiums and rental apartments in the building as well. It includes a number of green features, such as a large podium park on its third level, the use of bamboo, and low-flow plumbing fixtures.
Timothy Beatley
IV. Restoring and Reintroducing Nature into the City
Abstract
After centuries of degradation resulting from industrialization, pollution, and general neglect, urban rivers around the globe are being reclaimed by the cities they traverse. The Los Angeles River is one such waterway being revitalized and reimagined as an urban amenity. As several public and private projects come to fruition, many Angelenos are hopeful that the city will reengage with their river, restore its ecosystem, and celebrate it as a valued natural asset and cherished public space.
Timothy Beatley
V. Other Biophilic Urban Strategies
Abstract
The city of Rio de Janeiro is to many synonymous with spectacular natural beauty—sea and beaches with dramatic mountains lurching abruptly skyward, like Corcovado mountain rising more than 2300 feet. The combination of mountains, sea, and lush Atlantic Forest create the conditions for a biophilic city. But it is not a perfect story, as population growth and development have nibbled away at these qualities. More than 6 million live in the city, and more than 12 million in the Rio metropolitan area, making it Brazil’s second-largest city. Pierre-André Martin, writing in the Nature of Cities blog, notes that even though the city has protected large natural areas—about one-third of the city’s land area—the city continues to lose its more accessible, everyday nature. As Martin says, these larger parks “are at the edges of the city with few entrances and distant from the central cores. On the one hand they provide excellent stages for conservation, but their remoteness means that most residents have little contact with nature except for distant views. Natural landscapes in Rio are more background than foreground” (Martin 2012). As Cecilia Herzog writes, urban biodiversity and nature conservation have not been high on the list of political priorities lately (Herzog 2012).
Timothy Beatley

Successes and Future Directions

Frontmatter
13. Lessons from the World’s Emerging Biophilic Cities
Abstract
The presence of nature—imagining buildings, neighborhoods, and cities immersed in nature—helps to create a positive image of places we will want to live in the future. Trees, native vegetation, food-producing gardens, and abundant contact with flora and fauna feed our need for wonder and meaning, and these are qualities and conditions at the core of biophilic design and planning. I frequently say that, in the language and practice of biophilic cities, the philic is as important as the bio; that is, the advantage of this language is that it embeds a value statement about the need for contact with the natural world, and our innate connections with and caring for it. It is not a neutral word, and not simply a factual statement about the benefits and services provided by nature (a meaning that tends to be conveyed by commonly used terms such as green infrastructure).
Timothy Beatley
14. Overcoming the Obstacles and Challenges That Remain
Abstract
Achieving the vision of biophilic cities will require efforts to tackle some of the major impediments and obstacles faced. These will vary from city to city, region to region, but what follows are some of the most important or common obstacles.
Timothy Beatley
15. Conclusions: Reimagining Cities of the Future
Abstract
As Planet Earth lunges forward toward a higher and higher percentage of world population living in cities, it is timely to rethink how these cities function and feel to those living in them. It is a fundamental premise of this book that nature is not something optional, but, rather, absolutely essential to living healthy, interesting, and meaningful lives. There has been a virtual explosion of research and literature connecting nature, and contact with nature, with a host of positive mental and physical conditions—nature has the power to calm us, to reduce stress, to put us in a better mood, as well as to enhance our cognitive performance. In a world of otherwise diminishing resources and where conflict and strife seem endemic we can use some additional empathy and generosity. We are facing a host of health- and environmental-related conditions and calamities from overharvesting ocean fisheries to abysmal air quality in many cities of the South, to of course the overarching concerns of climate change. As the ideas and cases presented here suggest, returning to nature, and returning nature to cities, will help on all of these fronts. And from an economic calculation there are few investments that will deliver a greater, more substantial and long-lasting payoff than those that involve nature and natural systems.
Timothy Beatley
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Handbook of Biophilic City Planning and Design
Author
Timothy Beatley
Copyright Year
2016
Publisher
Island Press/Center for Resource Economics
Electronic ISBN
978-1-61091-621-9
Print ISBN
978-1-61091-822-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-621-9