News
- Gardening – It’s Time to Get Creative!:: Examples illustrating “the idea of small- space gardening is being able to display and marvel at nature in a more intricate and special way”.
- Promoting the benefits of planting trees in cities:: “We tend to focus on cars and roads and development, but in the background is always nature that also affects people’s lives.”
- What You Don’t Know About the Wild Animals in Your City:: “We share our cities and suburbs with the furred and the feathered, but our understanding of them is fraught with misinformation. An excerpt from The Urban Bestiary provides a modern perspective on the wildlife we take for granted or even despise.”
- Urban dwellers fight back to restore natural habitat:: “Tucked away in the Adelaide parklands there are small areas of bush that are more reminiscent of the landscape much further from the city.”
- UK urban meadows hope to help pollinators get buzzing:: Researchers have planted flower meadows in four UK cities as part of a study to improve understanding of urbanisation on insect pollinators.
- Lincoln Park Zoo’s Nature Boardwalk Prairie is Thriving in Middle of City:: “It’s been about three years since the boardwalk opened, and finally, the 14-acre prairie has grown into its shoes.”
- Biodiversity where you least expect it: A new beetle species from a busy megacity:: “In a 83-hectare green island amidst the unnatural ocean of countless man-made edifices, researchers of the Ateneo de Manila University have discovered a tiny new species of aquatic beetle, aptly named Hydraena ataneo.”
- Urban Birds Are Rising Earlier Because of Traffic Noise:: “Most city dwellers have been woken up at some point by the chirping of birds outside their apartment window, but a new study in the Journal of Avian Biology suggests that it might be the other way around: Humans—or, more specifically, their vehicles—are making so much morning noise that they rousing these urban birds earlier than normal.”
- City birds ‘cope better in cold’ than those in woodland:: “Urban breeding birds fared better than their woodland counterparts during 2012’s cold, wet weather for the first time in 10 years, a study has found.”
- A new kind of NIMBY: Nature in My Backyard:: “I’d like to propose a new kind of NIMBY, one that is positive and reflects a true sense of caring for our communities. Let’s go green and say yes to Nature in My Backyard.”
- The Power of Unkempt Wilderness in the Hearts of Berlin and Buenos Aires:: “People want cities that are livable, resilient and smart (Christiane Weber), in which they can appreciate, be aware and celebrate worthy things.”
- Offices are turning their roofs into edible gardens and bee sanctuaries:: “The urban roof gardens aim to increase city sustainability and engage employees.”
- Urban Nature, Is There Anything Else?:: “Cities are the vortex of the consumption of Nature…. One might even say that cities are where there is the most Nature, transformed for our use, planted for our pleasure, essentialized for our wishes, wants, and desires, and most importantly, for economic activity.”
- Ecological Design as Performance of an Urban Nature:: “With conviction that the values of inhabitants of cities shape environmental futures, I will flip the question posed by the Senior Scholars and ask: How is an urban ethic critical to 21st century nature?”
- Bye-Bye Golf Courses, Hello Nature Preserves:: “At least half a dozen courses across the country are being converted to nature preserves or parks. From New Orleans, Louisiana, to Portland, Oregon, wildlife advocates are funding this work in a variety of ways, including private donations and federal grants.”
- Rare brownfield wildlife under threat:: “A new report by wildlife charity Buglife, highlights the alarming loss of wildlife-rich brownfields in the Thames Gateway. Some brownfield sites in the region can support rare and endangered wildlife including nationally important invertebrate populations.”
- A wing and a prayer: Developers and the city seek various measures to reduce bird deaths from night lighting:: “In the third part of this series, we examine an overlooked element of high-rise living — birds, and how builders are helping them stay on their flight paths.”
- Roof gardens flourish in London:: “High above London’s teeming streets, once unloved concrete spaces are being transformed into bountiful fruit, vegetable and wild flower gardens.”
- Urban Wildlife Refuges Highlight Nature That’s Closer Than You Think:: “Eight new partnerships across the country encourage urban communities to engange with natural spaces.”
Resources
- Bird-Friendly Design — Part Three: Glazing Solutions:: “Designing a new structure to be bird friendly does not need to restrict the imagination or add to the cost of construction. Architects around the globe have created fascinating and important structures that incorporate little or no exposed glass.”
- Nature in Movement: Bird Flyways as Engines of Economic Growth and Conservation for City Managers:: “It is not easy to find ways to raise awareness of the beauty, as well as the critical role, that living beings, all 30 million species of them, play in giving us our health, food, air and water in our cities. One interesting approach I’d like to propose here is to appropriately manage the natural attraction we have for birds and other animals…”
- Designing for Biodiversity: A technical guide for new and existing buildings:: “The new book from BCT looks at providing solutions and ideas for architects and designers when it comes to working in harmony with nature.”
- How to create a wildflower meadow:: “They’re pretty, but establishing a wild flower meadow is a difficult task.”
- More bugs, more plants: a crash course on biophilic cities:: “A biophilic city is a city which successfully integrates nature into the urban landscape, from trees and parks, to vertical gardens and green rooftops.”
- Cities as Refugia for Threatened Species:: “…we can move beyond living with a fairly common and limited pool of urban adapted species in our cities by explicitly creating urban ecosystems that provide habitat and resources for a diversity of organisms, including threatened species.”
Design
- Wanted: a head for heights and herbaceous borders on the living wall:: “10,000 plants in 80 rows of windowboxes entirely cover the 68ft tall façade of Victoria’s 100-year-old Rubens at the Palace Hotel, just along from Buckingham Palace.”
- Rare Habitat Roof In The Pipeline:: “Plans to create the UK’s first ever ‘green roof’ using the unique Whin vegetation of Northumberland National Park have just been announced. The roof will combine the rare and nationally significant Northumbrian wildflower grassland and wild mosses that grow in the National Park to expand the area of this declining habitat.”
- Natural History Museum Civic Realm Competition:: “A crucial early initiative is the successful resolution of the Museum’s Grounds that make up over half of the site area. This two-stage competition invites designers to help re-imagine the grounds and create a new civic public realm as a fitting setting for this much-loved building and Collection.”
