Imagine a city in which:
All hospital rooms have windows through which patients can enjoy sunrises and watch birds gliding overhead, rooms where patients can step outside upon a balcony and immediately encounter thriving grass and bushes and trees ...
Urban building construction actually attracts additional species of song birds rather than displaces them …
Individual trees are assigned their own serial numbers, thereby enabling people to better tend to and manage these trees in busy, frequently changing city spaces …
Every city neighborhood contains a butterfly garden …
High-rises include so much balcony and rooftop green space that the structures actually create new green space and even multiply the amount of green space that would have existed had the land been left vacant …
Well, the Biophilic Cities movement is here to tell you that these things are already happening (in Singapore; Wellington, New Zealand; Melbourne; St. Louis; and New York City, among others, respectively), and researchers, planners, activists and others are working to see more and more nature integrated into our cityscapes.
I recently attended a talk by Tim Beatley of the University of Virginia and director of the Biophilic Cities Project, a network of cities, organizations and individuals working to develop cities with “abundant nature in close proximity to large numbers of urbanites; biophilic cities are biodiverse cities, that value, protect and actively restore this biodiversity; biophilic cities are green and growing cities, organic and natureful …”
And that’s just the beginning. Go here to read more, or even sign on to support: http://biophiliccities.org
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