Climate & nature
Heat, water, flooding and green. The city facing a climate that no longer resembles the one it was designed for.
The city was designed for a climate that no longer exists. Heatwaves, floods and drought arrive at streets built for a different temperature and a different rain, and the difference between a neighbourhood that copes and one that does not lies in very concrete decisions: how much asphalt, how many trees, where the water goes.
This section gathers what we have published on climate change and urban ecology: the heat island, green infrastructure, trees as a public service, water and sanitation, biodiversity in the city, resilience to flooding. And the infrastructure that holds everything else up — energy, waste, networks — which is only noticed when it fails.
Heat does not fall equally on every neighbourhood.
Where there are trees it is bearable; where there is asphalt it hurts. And the trees, almost always, are where the money is.
- Urban ecology
Animal city: planning for pigeons, rats and foxes
Jennifer Wolch, Donaldson and Kymlicka: what a city planned for pigeons, rats, foxes and buried rivers looks like,…
7 min read - Infrastructure
Brian Berry: Cities as an Invisible System of Connections
Brian J. L. Berry showed that cities form systems ranked by flows of goods, people and information: central places,…
Brian Berry 3 min read - Infrastructure
Bent Flyvbjerg: Why Megaprojects Fail Despite a Rational Plan
Bent Flyvbjerg explains why megaprojects run over budget and time: power versus rationality in Aalborg, optimism…
Bent Flyvbjerg 3 min read - Urban ecology
Matthew Gandy: Urban Nature Reveals Power in the City
Matthew Gandy shows that water, waste, parks and expressways are nature produced by political decisions: urban…
Matthew Gandy 3 min read - Urban ecology
Unequal Connection: Stephen Graham and Technology in the City
Stephen Graham shows that transport, energy and data networks are a geography of power: fragmentation, bypass,…
Stephen Graham 3 min read - Urban ecology
Where Does Your Trash Go? Waste and Environmental Injustice
Household waste ends up burned or buried next to the neighbourhoods with the least power to refuse.
3 min read - Urban ecology
Water, a Resource Not Everyone Can Enjoy Equally
Who runs out of water first is decided by leaks, planning and distribution, not the climate. Cape Town's Day Zero.…
3 min read - Climate change
Shade in Extreme Heat: A Divisive Privilege and an Urban Right
Shade is survival infrastructure distributed unequally: redlined neighbourhoods are hotter, awnings are cut as…
3 min read - Climate change
Resilience Is Just a Mask for Resignation
How resilience went from physics and ecology to an urban agenda that asks communities to absorb risks they did not…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Green Gentrification: When Parks and Trees Push Residents Out
Green gentrification is the paradox of the sustainable city: the park that a neighbourhood fought for raises rents…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Smart for Whom? The Other Side of Smart City Rankings
Smart city rankings do not describe the city but define it: what they measure, what they omit, how weighting…
3 min read - Infrastructure
The 15-Minute City Conspiracy: How Proximity Became a Lockdown
How Carlos Moreno's 15-minute city, a century-old proximity idea, became a conspiracy theory after Oxford's 2023…
3 min read - Climate change
David Simon and Resilient Cities in the Global South
David Simon studies how Global South cities adapt to climate change with informality and few resources.
David Simon 3 min read - Climate change
Urban Resilience: How Cities Recover After Disaster
The Resilient City (2005) by Vale and Campanella explains how Chicago, Warsaw, Hiroshima or New York rebuilt after…
3 min read - Climate change
Vale and Campanella: Who Returns to the City After Disaster
The Resilient City by Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella shows that cities almost always rebuild, but resilience…
Lawrence Vale 3 min read - Urban ecology
Ian McHarg: Design with Nature
A summary of Ian McHarg's Design with Nature (1969): planning from the territory up, layered maps, and the origin…
2 min read - Climate change
Thomas Campanella: Urban Resilience in Times of Crisis
Thomas Campanella argues that a city's resilience is that of its citizens: New Orleans after Katrina, the green dot…
Thomas Campanella 3 min read - Climate change
Urban Resilience and Climate Change: Governing Climate with Justice
Urban resilience to climate change is a way of governing, not a technical attribute. What Pauline McGuirk's…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Karen Bakker: Why Water Privatisation Failed in Cities
Karen Bakker showed that water is an uncooperative commodity and that neither privatisation nor bureaucracy solves…
Karen Bakker 3 min read - Infrastructure
Graham and Marvin: Splintering Urbanism and Inequality
Splintering Urbanism explains how transport, water, energy and telecommunications networks stopped integrating the…
Stephen Graham 2 min read - Climate change
Harriet Bulkeley: Urban Climate Governance and Sustainability
Harriet Bulkeley explains how cities govern climate through networks, experiments and partnerships, and why that…
Harriet Bulkeley 2 min read - Infrastructure
Critical Infrastructure: Urban Vulnerability per Stephen Graham
Critical infrastructure fails more often and in cascade. What Stephen Graham's Splintering Urbanism and Disrupted…
Stephen Graham 3 min read - Infrastructure
Ash Amin: Everyday Life, Infrastructure and Social Cohesion
Ash Amin locates social cohesion in the ordinary: micropublics, lively infrastructure and services that treat…
Ash Amin 2 min read - Infrastructure
Urban Infrastructure, Power and Inclusion: Star and Larkin Explained
Urban infrastructure decides who belongs to the city. What Susan Leigh Star and Brian Larkin propose, Graham and…
3 min read - Urban ecology
City of Flows by Maria Kaika: The City and Its Invisible Flows
City of Flows (2005) by Maria Kaika shows how the modern city domesticated nature and hid its flows of water and…
Maria Kaika 3 min read - Urban ecology
Circular Urbanism: What It Is and How Cities Apply It
Circular urbanism applies the circular economy to the city: reuse materials, close loops and avoid demolition.…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Jennifer Wolch: Environmental Justice and Green Planning
Jennifer Wolch measured park poverty in Los Angeles and formulated the urban green paradox: the park that corrects…
Jennifer Wolch 2 min read - Urban ecology
Regenerative urbanism: polluting less is not enough
Sustainability asks cities to reduce harm. Regenerative urbanism asks them to repair it: to give back more to their…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Green infrastructure: the city that manages its climate
Parks, green roofs and wetlands are not ornament: they lower temperature, absorb rainfall and replace grey…
2 min read - Climate change
Urban resilience: adaptation and social justice
What urban resilience means for Timothy Beatley and Judith Rodin: adapting to climate, pandemics and disasters…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Right to Water and Environmental Justice: Swyngedouw and Davis
The right to water, recognised by the UN in 2010, is contested in the city. What Erik Swyngedouw and Mike Davis…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Urban biodiversity: Pickett, Cadenasso and Forman
How to integrate nature and city according to Pickett, Cadenasso and Forman: the city as ecosystem, green…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Reforestation: Benefits, Examples and How to Do It Right
Urban reforestation cools the city, retains water and improves health. What David Nowak, the Arbor Day Foundation…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Agriculture: What It Can and Cannot Do for the City
Urban agriculture improves resilience and food justice, not self-sufficiency. What Karen Seto shows about farmland…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Liquid Power by Erik Swyngedouw: Water, Power and Modernisation
Liquid Power (2015) by Erik Swyngedouw explains how dams, transfers and irrigation were the instrument of power…
Erik Swyngedouw 3 min read - Urban ecology
Sustainable Cities: Girardet, Beatley and Newman
What a sustainable city is and how it is built: Girardet's circular metabolism, Beatley's nature in urban design,…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Energy Transition: Form, Ecological Footprint and Economy
The urban energy transition needs compact cities, lower consumption and renewables. What Peter Newman, William Rees…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Political Ecology: Swyngedouw, Kaika and Heynen
Urban political ecology studies who gets water, air and greenery in the city: water as commodity in Swyngedouw,…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban waste management and the circular economy
How cities should manage waste according to Paul Connett (zero waste), Ken Webster (circular economy) and Daniel…
2 min read - Infrastructure
Urban Infrastructure and Competitiveness: Glaeser, Florida, Storper
Why urban infrastructure decides economic competitiveness: Glaeser on connecting people, Florida on talent, Storper…
2 min read - Climate change
Extreme Cities by Ashley Dawson: Cities, Climate and Inequality
Extreme Cities (2017) by Ashley Dawson explains why coastal cities are climate change's first victim and how…
Ashley Dawson 2 min read - Urban ecology
Circular Economy in Cities: What It Is, Cases and Limits
The circular economy keeps materials and products in use instead of discarding them. What Walter Stahel, Ken…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Territorial Planning and Compact Cities Against Sprawl
Territorial planning curbs urban sprawl with compact cities and protected land. What Richard Forman, Reid Ewing and…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Urban River Restoration: What It Is and Examples
Urban river restoration reopens channelised rivers to cut flood risk and heat. What Erik Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Water and Power: Urban Water per Swyngedouw, Kaika and Bakker
Water management in cities decides who gets water, at what price and who suffers droughts and floods. What Erik…
3 min read - Infrastructure
Sustainable Urban Energy: Key Ideas from Peter Newman and William Rees
Urban energy decides a city's footprint and resilience. What Peter Newman and William Rees propose, the three…
3 min read - Climate change
Cities and Climate Change: Mitigation, Adaptation and Examples
Cities emit 70 percent of energy-related CO2 and feel the impacts first. What mitigation and adaptation mean and…
2 min read
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Shorts
-
’s Green Myth One of Europe’s capitals… -
Killer heat -
Sponge Cities The city that stopped fighting water -
Cities Are Hiding SECRET Jungles on Their Walls! -
Total flooding. Why expanding a city under climate change multiplies flood risk -
HafenCity. The Futuristic District That Quietly Redefined a City -
Underground Cities. The climate solution isn’t above us… it’s hidden beneath our feet -
Color and Climate. The color that cools cities without air conditioning -
Healing parks. A tree on your street isn't decoration. It's a medical intervention -
Invisible infrastructures. The city’s most powerful highway can’t be seen -
Cities Are Running Out of Land… So They’re Building on Water -
vs Highways. Imagine a highway. Now imagine your city destroys it
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