A City Designed by Trees

Our favorite tree on a morning in early Spring in Osaka, Japan. Photo: Patrick M. Lydon, cc by-sa

“Seeing trees as sacred is not an anomaly; it’s the fact that we’ve somehow lost this fellowship that’s the anomaly.” Awake a few hours earlier than necessary, we are on bicycles heading through urban infill, in a part of town that used to be Osaka Bay. Moving inland, we pass through a few old shopping […]

Hearing from the Future of Cities

“What I like about this landscape is that it’s not painted… I can move around into it and feel it. I think about all the things I can find there. But, after I leave this picture, something always changes, and I do too.” —Gabriela Villate, 7 years old People see a face in the landscape, […]

SALT: Restoration + Recreation = Water in California

“The Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland was created by visionary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead whose designs “staged nature”. Our miniature tent in this setting considers the compromise between anthropogenic interests and non-human nature.” It is late June and we are up to our knees floating a small tent sculpture in a containment pond filled […]

Socioecological Science is Failing Cities. The Humanities Can Help

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” — Max Planck As a graduate student, I was often assigned to read the foundational work of pioneering ecologists such as […]

Are We Truly Connected in Today’s High Frequency World?

In September last year, the IUCN World Conservation Congress—Planet at the Crossroads—brought together in Hawai’i more than 10,000 participants from 180 countries, including top scientists and academics, world leaders and decision makers from governments, civil society, indigenous peoples, and business. It presented a unique opportunity to discuss the unprecedented challenges facing our planet. “If we […]

Leveraging Environmental Arts for Education and Sustainable Futures

Cities around the world are using the arts to enhance urban aesthetic experiences and motivate innovative environmental activism. Manifesting as flash mobs, immersive street theater, bike parades, pop-up installations, zero-carbon concerts, and participatory storytelling, artists are using their creativity and ingenuity to draw attention to and propose solutions for the environmental challenges of the 21st […]

Photo Essay: Untold Stories of Change, Loss and Hope Along the Margins of Bengaluru’s Lakes

Before becoming India’s information technology hub, Bengaluru was known for its numerous lakes and green spaces. Rapid urbanization has led to the disappearance of many of these ecosystems. Those that remain face a range of challenges: residential and commercial construction, pollution and waste dumping, privatization, and so on. Today, Bengaluru’s lakes are principally seen as […]

Social Practice Artwork: A Restaurant and Garden Serving up Connections to Urban Nature

Three months ago, we opened a slightly audacious restaurant and garden in a working-class suburb of Osaka, Japan with the intent of connecting people more deeply with food and nature in their neighborhood. Experimental and temporary in nature, the project was approached not as a business or social enterprise, but as what might be called […]

What are “Garden Cities” Without a Garden Culture? How a Cultural Connection with Nature Can Build a Truly Sustainable Future

This marks the fourth year that my partner Suhee Kang and I have been studying, working with, living with, and learning from individuals in East Asia and the U.S. who are at the forefront of the sustainable (agri)culture movement. During this time, our primary goal has been the making of a documentary film, “Final Straw: […]

We Should Look at Urban Nature More Through the Eyes of Children

Environmental perception by people is complex and dynamic. Individuals are active agents in their perceptions of nature—not passive receivers of information—while the environment is a global unity on which environmental processes within cities are based. Cognitive, interpretive and evaluative components are all incorporated into the perceptual processes of individuals. The world we perceive is a […]