Timothy Beatley

Professor of sustainable communities at the University of Virginia School of Architecture since 1986, Beatley began by studying land use ethics and coastal planning, and in Green Urbanism (2000) documented what European cities, from Freiburg to Copenhagen, did better than American ones in transport, energy and urban form. He was among the first to bring those examples into the North American debate.

Biophilic Cities (2011) formulated his central idea, taken from the biologist E. O. Wilson: human beings need daily contact with nature, and a city can be designed to offer it at every scale, from the balcony to the regional park, with trees, water, green roofs and wildlife woven into the urban fabric. The Handbook of Biophilic City Planning and Design (2016) turned the idea into tools for planners.

In 2013 he founded the Biophilic Cities Network, joined by Singapore, Wellington, Portland or Barcelona, and he has produced documentaries on urban nature. Critics warn that green also gentrifies and that biophilia says little about who gets access to nature; his answer is that the biophilic city must also be just, and that the evidence on mental health and urban heat makes nature an infrastructure that every neighbourhood needs, not a luxury for the few.