Lessons from the United States – Area Development.nu

This book is a plea to the landscape architect as a key player in understanding how to make the best use of the landscape associated with the challenge of climate change. This is the statement in Richard Styles’ preface: He refers to the natural architect who is always at home in nature as’ native ‘. This is in stark contrast to other actors who appear to want to rediscover nature in the city.

Policy Overview

Introduction to the book entitled Flexibility as a factor of urban growth, Outlines the challenges of climate change and the biodiversity crisis and provides a beautiful, concise and accessible overview of policies developed since the 1980s. It goes through all the IPCC reports and provides insights into the development of SDGs and global plans for cities. Expansion⁇

Inclusive city

This is a very valuable introduction for policymakers to put in the background of the current situation. The preamble ends with the definition of ‘opposition’, which states that a city must be all-encompassing, with reliable public services and consistent wealth. Urban nature should serve residents and visitors, regulate the microclimate and prevent excess or scarcity of rainwater. Since the tasks for a city are highly ecological, it is important to promote local awareness and involve the community.

Less risks

Of course, urban nature is not the only adaptation. It also reduces climate change by storing CO2. Precisely the urban environment is highly vulnerable due to its high density, economic significance and dependence on inflexible gray infrastructure. These risks are mitigated by growing cities Elastic So they face less damage or recover more quickly from natural disasters.

In the release the cities are explored from north to south. Their history and problems, their policies and their plans are discussed. Throughout the book, the differences between North America and South America are very clear in this way. The way people in these areas integrate their socio-economic systems into natural conditions shows a specific relationship with the geographical characteristics of each area. This will lead to greater urbanization – or not.

Green streets

Starting in the north, both the Canadian cities of Toronto and Vancouver have set strong and clear policies on their climate goals. It has been given a concrete shape by interventions such as Green Streets, Waterfront, Green roofs and urban agriculture. An interesting thing in VancouverCitizens’ Created a toolkit that could support people to involve the civilian community in creating a resettled city.

All three U.S. cities, New York, Detroit and Houston, have drawn up a climate action plan. Within this project, projects are being developed that address the effects of climate change as dynamics in a design. Governors Island (western 8 landscape architects) in New York and Hunterpoint (SWA / Palsley and Weiss / Manfredi) and Buffalo Bayou Park (SWA) in Houston are designed for landscape and climate. Parks can be used and enjoyed differently with different water levels.

The latter project is the result of the work of a group of residents who have been involved in the area’s equality, participation and cultural development for over 35 years. In the shrinking city of Detroit, population growth is linked to the climate challenge, providing green activity for all vacant spaces. Groups of residents in particular are supported in community projects with greenery.

Cities on the South American continent present a completely different problem. Less government control and more informal construction make implementing anti-climate change policies and making cities less powerful more powerful. Bogota and Madeleine’s projects in Colombia currently focus mainly on green networks in the city. Sophisticated designs include transport infrastructure and green links in cities. In Medellin, 100 new parks are part of this network, and the surrounding buildings are getting greener.

In Brazil, the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Manaus and Brasilia are described. Ambition in Rio de Janeiro Carbon neutral Turn more polluted areas into healthy green areas. This scope is mainly designed by projects.

Global climate

Manas is the capital of the Amazon region. It is of global importance: the Amazon is the largest landmass in the world, thus regulating the global climate. If the world warms up to 4 degrees, the Amazon will become savannah. The top layer of soil in the area is not fertile and dries out completely. Here, planning regulations and strong government are important in conjunction with the efforts of citizens. This should prevent economic activities such as soybean production for the world’s livestock from being wiped off the Amazon map. The publication deals with this issue very clearly and shows a botanical garden designed as an exhibition of rainforests.

A completely different example is Brasilia: a city that provided large-scale new housing construction in the 1950s. Integrating the city with the natural environment was taken up by modernists as an industrial task. Their compact large-scale construction can also be seen as a way out Track Keep it as small as possible. The book discusses examples of civic projects that have taken ecology as a guide in the concept of the development of urban agriculture and the eco-village in a designed public space.

Learning from the United States

The last part of the South American line is Montevideo in Uruguay, which is located in a region prone to subtropical and flood prone areas. Here we read about an interesting planning approach to this flood risk by evacuating people from these zones.

In the results, various examples are categorized according to the type of intervention that makes cities more flexible. An interesting piece of advice, among other things, is the Certificate of Urban Green Ambition (such as LEED). ExpansionWith regard to the Dutch situation, after reading the publication, the question remains: what can we learn from the relationship between interventions, Social practice And planning tools in American examples?

Environmental area

At the Delta Urbanism Research Group at TU Delft, we have been exploring the concept of ‘ecosystem participation’ for many years. This concept recognizes that people and urban organizations are part of an ecosystem. It stimulates activities that interact naturally with nature, so participate instead of standing on top of it. Furthermore, the concept of participation deliberately engages with local sensitivity and culture, restoring a new harmonious relationship between natural systems and human technologies.

Customized solutions

So environmental participation is an important new perspective. This gives a better position to the natural systems as a partner in urban development. In addition, it recognizes that urban landscapes are complex ecosystems that need to be understood in context and that solutions are needed accordingly. Research with students provides insight into how the concept works and what the concept is about natural-based solutions in particularly vulnerable geographical areas.

The participation of citizens and other stakeholders – as we know from the examples in the book – can be structured in three stages: planning guidelines, Social practice And physical intervention. Working with civil society in particular can be seen as self-help that can establish and maintain more stable relationships with the environment.

New balance

Finally, reading this publication raises the question: what natural landscape are we really dealing with in the city? What is nature here? This question is difficult to answer in heavily altered terrain. What was and should be the new balance between man and nature in the urban landscape? How can nature benefit us if we live in a city without climate? The examples in this book show that it makes sense to shift our anthropological approach (environmental crisis is seen primarily as a technical problem) to an environment-centric approach. With the awareness that people will benefit by restoring natural systems.