Green Housing = Improved Health: A Winning Combination

The case studies in this paper explore the relationship between housing and health. It explains how building affordable green housing provides health benefits to low-income residentsand it identifies the benefits of green housing for the environment and energy efficiency

Biophilic Cities and Healthy Societies

Biophilia holds that as a species humans are innately drawn to nature and to living things. Mounting research confirms the many positive health benefits of contact with nature, and the need for daily (and hourly) contact with the natural environment in order to live happy, healthy, meaningful lives. A new vision of Biophilic Cities is put forward here: cities that are nature-abundant, that seek to protect and grow nature, and that foster deep connections with the natural world. This article describes the emergence of this global movement, the new and creative ways that cities are restoring, growing and connecting with nature, and the current status and trajectory of a new global Biophilic Cities Network, launched in 2013. There remain open questions, and significant challenges, to advancing the Biophilic Cities vision, but it also presents unusual opportunities to create healthier, livable cities and societies

The Half-Earth City

At the intersection of the biophilic city and the global commitment to halt biodiversity declines lies the half-earth city. E.O. Wilson inspired the global effort to conserve and restore half the Earth, to sustain remaining biodiversity, necessarily focused on areas where the human footprint is small and the conversion of land to anthropogenic land use is less pronounced. However, given the increasing urbanization of the globe, cities must also play a central role in the conservation of global biodiversity. Holistic ecoregional planning must account for the impact of cities and work to ensure that urban areas are built in harmony with a world where nature receives half. Cities provide both a known challenge, but also lesser understood opportunities. Uncontrolled urban expansion and expanding ecological footprints are a primary driver of habitat loss and species decline. To the extent that these trends can be slowed or even reversed, cities can work to limit damaging impacts beyond the borders of cities. With their global economic influence, it is critical for cities to assume a leadership role in the stewardship of global biodiversity by participating in city-to-city diplomacy and supporting global commitments. Cities can contribute significantly to the half-earth vision by pursuing a more sustainable path of consumption, while also committing to a resolve to conserve irreplaceable biodiversity at the global scale. As growing science and the vision of the biophilic city suggests, cities can also provide for flourishing biodiversity within the borders of the city. Through the conservation of remnant habitat and the nurturing of unique human-influenced habitats found only in cities, new spaces and connections through and across the urban landscape can be forged. A central tenant of the biophilic cities’ vision is the acknowledgment that despite the many challenges presented by increasing urbanization, cities are laboratories for continued experimentation and identification of innovative means to balance an improved quality of life with continued flourishing of human and nonhuman species alike. The benefits derived from the integration of nature across the cities are well documented and manyfold. These include: improved health and wellbeing; increased community resilience in the form of the equitable distribution of critical infrastructure such as tree canopies; multimodal transportation; environmental benefits of enhanced stream health, improved water quality, and reduced flood risk; and the promotion of biodiversity through preserved and enhanced ecosystems and habitats. Thus, biodiversity conservation in the form of abundant and accessible nature is part of a larger biophilic city vision that seeks to reverse the negative trends of urban areas and “create healthy, resilient cities and towns for both people and biodiversity.” Indeed, cities are already at the forefront of biodiversity conservation and the goal of half-earth. The City of Boulder, Colorado, augments its own conservation within the city by building a seamless connection to surrounding national park and federal wilderness areas, and through these collective efforts more than half of the land within surrounding Boulder County is protected. Perhaps even more impressive is the feat of Singapore, a partner city in the Biophilic Cities Network, which has protected more than half of the city through a combination of large-scale, connected reserves and smaller scale neighborhood parks. This Article examines the law, policy and practices available to cities to nurture the unique biodiversity possible within urban landscapes and to contribute to the larger global effort to regenerate lost migratory pathways and core conservation areas, thereby contributing to the biophilic city and half-earth visions and halting the decline of global biodiversity

Resilience Planning: Forging a New Planning Paradigm

The environment has been a significant focus for planning education since the 1960’s. This paper traces the transition of environmental planning through the sustainability era to the emergence of a new and more accelerated transition that increasingly is termed resilience. It outlines the emerging characteristics of resilience and suggests they need to become part of a new paradigm in planning education – resilience planning

Urban river recovery inspired by nature-based solutions and biophilic design in Albufeira, Portugal

Mass urbanisation presents one of the most urgent challenges of the 21st century. The development of cities and the related increasing ground sealing are asking even more for the restoration of urban rivers, especially in the face of climate change and its consequences. This paper aims to demonstrate nature-inspired solutions in a recovery of a Southern European river that was canalised and transformed in culvert pipes. The river restoration project naturally tells the history of the city, creates a sense for the place, as well as unifying blue-green infrastructure in a symbolic way by offering areas for recreation. To improve well-being and city resilience in the long term, a regenerative sustainability approach based on biophilic design patterns was proposed. Such actions will provide greater health, social cohesion, and well-being for residents and simultaneously reduce the risks of climate change, such as heat island effect and flash floods, presenting the benefits of the transition to a regenerative economy and holistic thinking.Foundation for Science and Technology; PTDC/GES-URB/31928/2017; Erasmus+ programme of the European Unioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biophilic Cities Are Sustainable, Resilient Cities

There is a growing recognition of the need for daily contact with nature, to live happy, productive, meaningful lives. Recent attention to biophilic design among architects and designers acknowledges this power of nature. However, in an increasingly urban planet, more attention needs to be aimed at the urban scales, at planning for and moving towards what the authors call “biophilic cities”. Biophilic cities are cities that provide close and daily contact with nature, nearby nature, but also seek to foster an awareness of and caring for this nature. Biophilic cities, it is argued here, are also sustainable and resilient cities. Achieving the conditions of a biophilic city will go far in helping to foster social and landscape resilience, in the face of climate change, natural disasters and economic uncertainty and various other shocks that cities will face in the future. The paper identifies key pathways by which biophilic urbanism enhances resilience, and while some are well-established relationships, others are more tentative and suggest future research and testing