Tim Beatley On Bringing Nature Into Cities

When Serenbe was in its early stages, people often tried to put a label on it. Terms like agrihood and eco-community came close, but never quite captured the vision. Then Steve heard urban planner and author Tim Beatley speak about biophilic cities and something clicked. A community shaped by a deep connection to nature and a respect for the living systems around us was exactly what he was trying to create at Serenbe.

Tim Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for more than 25 years. His work explores how cities and communities can become more sustainable, resilient, livable, and equitable. He is also the founder of Biophilic Cities, a global network connecting cities, researchers, and advocates working to bring nature back into the places we live.

In this conversation, Steve and Tim explore how growing up surrounded by nature shaped Tim’s work, what cities around the world are doing to reconnect people with the natural world, and why that connection matters so much to our everyday lives and wellbeing. They also talk about what each of us can do to build a deeper relationship with nature—starting right where we are.

Show Notes

• Biophilic Cities
• Biophilic Cities Journal
• Timothy Beatley 
• Start In Your Own Backyard
• Serenbe

Keywords: Tim Beatley, biophilic cities, biophilic design, biophilia, nature and cities, sustainable cities, sustainable communities, urban planning, urban design, city planning, regenerative design, resilient cities, livable cities, equitable cities, nature in cities, reconnecting with nature, urban nature, green cities, green infrastructure, environmental design, nature-based solutions, Serenbe, Steve Nygren

Are you interested in communities where people, nature, and businesses thrive together? Whether you’re a developer, urban planner, or simply curious about how thoughtful design can create lasting value and resilience, join us in Serenbe – September 28th through 30th – for the annual Nygren Placemaking Conference.

Are You Ready For Radical Common Sense? Visionary placemaker Steve Nygren chronicles the rise of Serenbe, a pioneering model of biophilic living outside Atlanta, and charts a path for others wishing to challenge the status quo, embrace optimism, and reinvent their communities…and themselves. 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:40

Welcome to season two of Start in Your Own Backyard, a series about the power we each have to shape the places where we live and in turn the world around us. I'm Steve Nigren, and this season I'm looking outward, sitting down with people who have shaped the way I think about the built environment, and others who are putting their ideas into action in communities of their own. I believe the built environment as it exists today is at the root of many of our biggest challenges. But I also believe it can be a powerful part of the solution. These are stories about taking agency, using the skills and resources we have, and starting wherever we are. Because meaningful change doesn't always begin with a grand plan. Sometimes it starts in your own backyard. When Cerembi was in its early stages, a lot of people tried to put labels on what we were doing out there in the Georgia woods. Terms like agrihood and eco-community felt close, but they never quite captured what we were trying to create. It wasn't until I heard my guest today, Tim Beatley, speak about biophilic cities that it clicked for me. That is, a community shaped by a deep connection to nature and a respect for the living systems around us was exactly what we were trying to create at CERNB. Tim Beatley is the Teresa Hines Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he's taught for the past 25 years. His work looks at how we can make our cities and communities more sustainable, resilient, livable, and equitable. But what I find especially interesting about Tim's work is his focus on something that sometimes gets lost in conversations about sustainability, our relationship with nature. Tim is the founder of Biophilic Cities, a global network that connects cities, researchers, and advocates who are exploring what it means to bring nature back into the places we live and why that matters so much for our everyday lives and well-being. In this conversation, Tim and I talk about how growing up surrounded by nature shaped the work he does today. The cities that are finding meaningful ways to bring nature back in, and what each of us can do to create a more connected relationship with the natural world, starting right where we are.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

What is a biophilic city? And we we don't have a rigid sort of definition or template, but it's a it's a city that cares about nature. It's a city that puts nature at the center of its design and planning.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

And so, Tim, I I know I've said it, but for our for our listeners, you are your work and your voice is such an integral part of us Serumbi deciding to label ourselves as a biophilic community. And of course, that has then led to the creation of the biophilic institute and really advancing that. Because while Bill Browning is the first person who I heard utter the words, he was with the Rocky Mountain Institute. It was it was a strange name to me. I didn't know how to spell it. I had to look it up. And clearly it wasn't in the forefront of my thought, it was kind of in the back of my brain. And as I was struggling, as people were trying to identify us as an agrihood, as an environmental community, as all these different labels, onubrinous, nothing was fitting. And I was searching. And then you and I were on the same conference schedule for, I think it was uh That's right, and in Raleigh. In Raleigh. Your presentation was right before mine, and you did this whole thing about biophilic cities. And I said, Oh my God, there it is right there. I remember that word. Tim is explaining who we are and what we are, and that has has done the path, you know, that that has created our path into the biophilic. Well, that's great. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Well, thank you. It's thank you for all you've done to make it a reality and to show people what it could can be like once you've built it.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So, what was your journey into realizing what this was?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah. You know, for a lot of us, I think it starts at a at a very early age, my my connections to nature. And by the way, I should say you're giving a nice giving some credit to me. And then you mentioned Bill Browning. Uh for me, the the biophilic framing of things uh was largely a result of interacting with people like Bill, Bill Browning, and also Stephen Kellard. I have to give him some credit. There was a rather uh amazing conference that he organized in the early 2000s, brought a lot of people together. And I had known Bill for a long time, but a lot of leading lights in the kind of biophilic design world, and it ended up with a in a book called Biophilic Design. Stephen Kellart, um, I don't think anybody, they were all the word cities hadn't really been applied. You know, connecting biophilic and cities, it was had been mostly thought of in terms of a building, building scale design and and and nature um inside and around a building. But our view is really, of course, that that it has to extend uh to the entire uh city. And in Sarinbee is certainly a great example of that, of uh a community that that puts nature at the center. But to go back to my my uh uh early life, I have to say the physical environment of my childhood was a big part of why I care about nature so much. I grew up in uh Alexandria, Virginia. I lived in a house that was a biophilic house that my dad designed and built himself that had it was surrounded. It was essentially a house in a forest with a lot of windows and a lot of connections to nature. Um, we didn't have air conditioning. You just had windows that rolled open, you know, opened, and every spring we got the screens out and put them in, and there was wonderful cross-ventilation and and bird song, and and the room that I that I had in that house until I went off to college was one that delivered all this nature. And then I was a free, a free-range kid or a feral kid, some would say. I had I had uh multiple tree houses, and I, you know, had a f fondness for animals. I kept snakes for a while. So I think, and I had a mom who was very much into birds, loved birds, and uh birds are a big part of my life now. So I think all those things shape, of course, your direction.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

So but did your dad call the design of the house biophilic or your mom your lifestyle bad?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

No, you know, he didn't. And I at some point in my I had the same kind of experience you did. I mean, I've taught here environmental planning for for 40 years and had had certainly been aware of the concept of biophilia. Uh, but really until the Kellert, that Kellert meeting, I hadn't really seen the power of framing it in that way. And in the early 2000s, that's when I started talking about it. And I I really love the term. We have a lot of language now in the green uh world, the green cities world, uh, nature-based solutions is often the way we describe things, nature-based solutions. Well, so biophilia, love of of living things, love of nature, love. To put love in the equation is different than talking about something in terms of a nature-based solution. I get into trouble with all my my environmental planning friends now. That the the fashion is now to talk about nature-based this, nature-based that. And I I like that maybe people understand what that means, but uh it's not a substitute for the idea of biophilia. So for me, that was per a perfect way to begin to think and talk about cities. We want to live in cities that love nature. And that that's my shorthand, you know, a city that loves nature and cares about nature. So anyway, that that's the beginning. And then there's a professional, you know, I went off to college and realized that you could actually become an urban planner and you could study that, and you could be, you could incorporate nature into cities, and I learned all about that. And anyway, it it's framed 40 years of my my research and writing work. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

So for our listeners in the p the audiences you walk into that have never heard the word, and then they look at you puzzled when you say, well, it's it's cities that love nature. Uh, how do you take the next two sentences to explain what biophilic cities or a biophilic design is?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, what does it what does it mean? Well, um, and that that we have this biophilic cities network that you you know, of course, Steve, that we started actually founded sort of spontaneously here at UVA in in 2013. And uh, if I forget to say this for the audience, I'd love for everybody to go see our webpage, biophiliccities.org. We have thousands of individual members, hundreds of organizations, but we have, I think, 35 now partner cities, cities that have joined, officially joined the network. And that's one of the things that we have a kind of open, active discussion about. What is it, what is a biophilic city? And we we don't have a rigid sort of definition or template, but it's a it's a city that cares about nature. It's a city that puts nature at the center of its design and planning. It is a at once a movement, it's a um planning and political movement, it's also this, our network, but it's also this vision, right? This vision of a city where it's not just a city that has points of nature or places where we find nature. You have to walk to that park or you have to go travel to that place in the city that is natureful. We we want to see the city as nature, we want to, which it is. We want to, it's embedded in a natural system. And so our vision of a bioflake city is a city where you're immersed in nature, where that nature is all around you, where it is uh seamless and continuous. Those that green roof connects to that upper level tree canopy that connects to that ground-level park. And uh and we're sharing those spaces with lots of other uh forms of life and lots of lots of biodiversity. So it is a city that is abundant in in nature and and creates the conditions for be being deeply rooted in nature and immersed in nature. But I should also say, Steve, that's more than a sentence or two, I realize. But it's also about the ethic of that city. So I do a lot of thinking and writing about ethics. And and so it's a city that isn't just defined by the presence or absence of nature, it's also how much do we actively engage that nature? Do we care about that nature? Are citizens likely to recognize common species of flora and fauna? Do we do we spend our time repairing that that nature or storting that nature, storting over that nature, uh protecting it, conserving it? So and what are the what are the policies and the the budgetary decisions that uh that reflect that that care and that concern and that engagement with nature at the local, at the city level. So there are a a lot of pieces to this, but in our network, we don't we don't assume that every city is perfect, right? That's that it we we we love the idea that this is a vision that cities are drawn to and that that people living in those cities are are drawn to, and that that there is the possibility of making even incremental, even small steps, right, in the direction of uh of becoming a more biophilic place.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Aaron Ross Powell And it's amazing how from the time that that that you started teaching about biophilic design, creating the biophilic cities, from the time we set off to to design and and and develop Cerambi, people have finally gotten the idea, I think, post-pandemic. And so we're seeing nature design, nature connection is really in our conversation and all planning. But you know, I'm becoming more focused as people are connecting that. Part about biophilic design is to where the conveniences of our systems do not interrupt nature. So it's not only connecting to it, it's just not interruption. So when you described your life, your biophilic life, it was a house without air conditioning. That means it's a house without the noise of the compressor. That's right. Exactly. And and it's one reason that that that to to meet those standards, we we we we now regulate for geothermal because it isn't that noise interruption into nature. And so you actually, in a very dense area, that's maybe 15, 18 units to an acre, you can still hear birds, you can still hear the laughter of children, the swaying of the trees. And in if you were in most cities, the conventional HVAC systems would drown out all those nature sounds. So so I I think as as people are starting to lean into nature, now we need to really define it even more as to what we mean.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's very true. And uh it's a great story about geothermal. I, you know, air conditioning, we know, conventional air conditioning consumes a lot of energy. We're in a period where we we we're trying to work on reducing our carbon emissions, and we want to be outside. And we, you know, we want uh the other part about air conditioning is the windows, as you say, the windows are closed, we can't hear the birds uh birds sing, but we we also have this sort of belief that we should be sitting in some room where the temperature variation never goes up or down, and and um, you know, it's a crazy thing. Um to live a to live your life in uh in an inside hermetically sealed structure when the when there's uh all this enchanting outside world, you know, beckoning. We want to get you outside. And we want to bring the outside in. Uh we want you to hear those bird songs. We also want you to go outside and and be and that was the other thing about growing up in uh the other the the urban uh city design part of my upbringing was that I could I could be a feral kid. I lived in a city where I walked to school and where I could be climbing trees and I could be outside and I could do all these things and and um and I, you know, the the world is a little bit different now, but it but w we we want to create those uh city city design conditions that that uh allow you indeed and propel you outside so that you're spending more time in the outside world.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

And you know, with our warming earth and the fires and the floods that are really happening all over the world, I think I think people are starting to tune in that, hey, m maybe maybe there is something in this climate change that that the humans are really affecting and and there's more and more interest. So is there uh with your network of biophilic cities, uh what are some of the great examples? And uh is there uh any efforts within the network uh uh addressing some of these issues?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Yeah, there's uh an awful lot going on, of course, in cities around the world and in cities certainly in our in our network. And one of the things that we know is that many of the things that we can do to uh incorporate nature will also help us to reduce our carbon emissions and will and will help us to adapt, right, to this to the changing climate. Trees, maybe trees and urban forests are a big part of the answer in most cities and something we're spending a lot of time on. We're just creating a new center for forest urbanism here at the University of Virginia. And a number of cities in our our network are have some form of uh tree uh protection, tree canopy uh program and setting, setting fairly ambitious targets uh for for uh tree canopy. We know that um if we're I've been talking about birds, if we're if we want to have birds in our lives and and want to hear bird song, um that means we uh need trees and we need trees and forests and native species, uh uh, especially in our cities. And that's what will be most effective at cooling those those places and reducing the need for things like air conditioning and and creating just general conditions for life, right? We've we're we're we've broken again. I guess July was the hottest month on record. It's kind of painful, right, to be to be in a city, be outside in in crossing a street or walking down a sidewalk without without trees and and forests around us. So we have a wonderful number of cities that have have been ratcheting up, actually, their tree protection standards. Toronto uh is a good example of that, creating stronger protection for for older, mature trees. Um, but then a lot of really creative things that that other cities are are doing. I mentioned again birds. Um uh New York City's now adopted a uh mandatory bird-safe design standards. Um San Francisco has and Toronto has as well. We we know now that when you when you design a building to be bird safe, that usually means fritted glass or something that will help birds to see that glass, that that facade as a danger. And the estimates are that we've we're we've lost, we lose about a billion birds a year uh in the U.S. alone to to window strikes. Very painful way to die, but a window strike. So so the Jacob Javitt Center in New York, for example, tire entirely retrofitted with with freighted glass, bird-safe glass, dramatic reduction in bird mortality. But hey, by the way, energy consumption in the building goes down and carbon emissions go down. So uh something we're doing to make that building and that space bird-friendly is also helping to address climate change. And same, the same on the adaptation side of things. Uh parks that we now know, or now a number of cities have parks, uh really new parks, re-parks, um, Toronto, uh Raleigh, a lot of places in our network that have been doing wonderful rethinking of what a what parks are. And one way we're rethinking it is they they are uh sponges. They are uh opportunities to retain and store floodwaters. And the case of New York, parks along the edge of waterways, rivers and and and harbor, edges that actually can uh withstand flooding and um can absorb flood flood waters and restoring uh the natural features that were there before development, like wetlands. So a lot of our cities are rediscovering that tidal parks and in places like Rotterdam, um, and uh this idea of water plazas or water squares that are designed to bring bring more open space, more uh uh public space and more nature into neighborhoods that need it, but that also uh help address the water uh challenges. And so 99.9% of the time, these are spaces that are that are available open for all these important public uses and for nature, but a certain amount of time they they are there to to to manage floodwaters and rainwater. That so a lot of our cities are doing things like that, um, multiple purposes, multifunctional investments in in green and blue uh infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

And so for our listeners that are curious about some of these things, are there two or three uh cities, projects, districts that you would suggest they look deeper into that's really showing some of the advancements in biophilic technology?

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Yeah. Yeah, uh again, I'll put a plug in for biophiliccities.org. So each uh city that joins our network gets their own um curated page. And so you could scan, you could just sort of scroll through a number of these pages that include photographs and and project profiles and and contact information, reports, and so on. But a few places to highlight maybe that are are doing especially uh wonderful work. Um, Steve, you and I have talked about Singapore. I know you're you're going to be going. Off to Singapore in the not too distant future, one of our original partner cities, a city, city-state, right, that has uh called itself for many years a garden city. Um more recently now it's changed its way, it's it it changed its motto to city in a garden, which is quite it seems like a small change, but really quite profound, closer to that vision of our seeing ourselves, seeing a city as an ecosystem. And then more recently now they've changed their motto to a city in nature. Uh that maybe the word garden implies a little bit too much uh human tending, right? And and they want to uh see themselves as as being a bit more wild, wild nature. Uh so that's a city that's done an awful lot, a very urbanized, vertical city that has expanded its green cover at the same time that it's accommodated more population and pioneered the idea of nature in the vertical realm. So so if you build a building in that, in that city, that city-state, you you are subject to uh something called the landscape replacement policy. So you have to replace at least the nature lost at the ground level, the footprint of the building, with as much or more nature in that vertical space of above it in the building. So wonderful green roads and and green walls and sky parks and and a number of projects uh where you have um open parks uh at at higher level floors that actually end up being cooler than ground level. It's really quite remarkable. And and designing buildings to you know facilitate movement of air and and cooling. And uh and so I I think Singapore is is maybe in maybe it's it in its own unique category. But a lot of the cities, every city in our network is really doing something phenomenal. So the whole uh stories of re- of urban regeneration and and urban rewilding, I think, are are remarkable stories. We just had a presentation a couple of weeks ago from colleagues in in Los Angeles. Actually, Los Angeles County has just uh maybe the first jurisdiction in the world to have set a target for deep having. There is this whole depaving movement that's that's that's been happening around the world, and a number of our cities are leaders in that, but but LA County setting a very specific target for the amount of land that, you know, the taking up the the asphalt and the concrete and and creating the ability for water to percolate and groundwater to be recharged and and birds to return and trees to be planted. And and that's a kind of rewilding, right? That that a lot of our cities are engaged in that, those kinds of uh efforts. I might mention just one more, and and there's so many to talk about, so many different cities. Um Busan in South Korea is another one of our recent uh partner cities, second largest city in South Korea. And they, you know, the the Korean story of how the forested mountain network has been re-regenerated uh after the um Korean War, um really remarkable story. Something like three-quarters or two-thirds of the country is in protected uh forested forest preserves. Busan as a city is now trying to bring cooling air back into the center of the city. So they have these things that they're calling windpath forests. So designing the planting of new trees in a way that facilitates the movement of air and capping roads and finding creative places to plant new trees and urban urban forests. And and so we've gotten a lot of um inspiration from learn learning about what our colleagues are doing in Korean, Korean cities. And and Seoul is another wonderful story. Many of your listeners will know about the Chonggy Chong River, the river that was in a pipe underground and under an elevated highway, and the wonderful story of how they took down that highway and brought the stream back to the surface. And it is a a a phenomenal green space, a kind of linear green park that crosses that that city. Delightful space. We have an article about that. Excuse me, reflecting on that project in our uh most recent issue of the Biophilic Cities Journal, which is a um online journal that is is I'd love everybody to look at. So then so many places, Steve. Too many places to tell you about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Yeah. We're gonna put all those links on uh on the uh podcast so they can tune in. Right. Earlier this week I saw the screening of uh Groundswell. I don't know, have you have you seen that uh that movie yet? This is coming to us from the folks of kissed the ground and the started that. But uh it it it it really talks about uh that that there is progress in regenerative agriculture and and and and and regenerative forestry, that that it's moving, that this is the this is the one of the biggest things we can we can do. And so in and literally they've gone around the globe, and uh it's uh it's really be sure to go see that.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

It uh I think regeneration, I I you when you asked me what a biophilic city is, and I I I sh uh we often talk about uh regenerative cities, and that is a big part of what a biophilic city is. And it's certainly about um agriculture, but it's uh more you know, broadly about re-regenerating s soils and and biodiversity and uh everything, really, that we can't afford to really um I I am actually a professor of sustainable community, so I I I have to embrace the idea of sustainability, which I do. It's very important, but we just uh we can't just sustain what we have. We've got to repair and restore and regenerate. Um and that's a key um kind of ethical underpinning of a biophilic city. So that that's an important story, important film. And I I do think also that we are in a time, a dire time, right, where we it it's easy to lapse into a sense of hopelessness about everything. But you as you say, there's there's good news, there are things that are happening around the world. And um that is one antidote to to this what's sometimes called eco anxiety that a lot of us are are feeling right now.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Aaron Ross Powell That's right. Uh governments, developers, people are waking up and they're uh there there's a lot of things moving in a positive direction. Now it's not nearly as fast as it needs to be or that we would like to see, but it is at an increasing pace, which is great. But while that's happening, what are the some of the things you think we're just totally missing on still that we need to start looking at?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Yeah. Well, I I think we've got cities doing just about everything. I think, you know, the the problem sometimes is we're not necessarily connecting all the dots. And and we're perhaps not always reaching the the people who can make it. You mentioned you you are uh a developer. You wear a lot of things, you wear a lot of different hats, and you were just telling me a bit about the story of bringing a lot of a lot of people together to talk about geothermal. And in a city, you know, we have a lot of professionals who have different kinds of training, different perspectives on the world. Uh, we have, you know, engineers, traffic engineers, we have people thinking about economic development, we have, you know, uh all kinds of different in interest groups that are, that are represented or thinking about their own particular silo. And I think bringing all those people together, or many of them together, to develop this understanding of a of a vision of a city, it's it's hard work, right? It's hard work getting maybe that traffic engineer or that civil engineer to begin to think about not just moving cars or not just designing something to be sustainable or in an earthquake or what all the all the sort of things you're thinking about, but also to allow for the safe passage of mountain lions, for example. So we, you know, I think we need to enlist the engineering world uh more broadly and in the service of nature, bringing nature back to uh cities. So that's just one example. And there are a lot of many different professions, many people who marit wear many had many different titles in a city, even in just the different agencies of a city government. We've been, we've been trying, we we advocate in our network that it would be good uh if the biophilic cities joining the biophilic cities network would be an opportunity to bring all of those different agencies and departments together to talk about what how they could work together to make that city more more natureful. So sometimes I feel like that's that's a missed um opportunity. Um and and the idea of multifunctional design, of course, goes hand in hand with this. If we can build that group that building that reduces energy consumption and and and uh lowers carbon emissions, but also does these other uh things, uh, that that's what we need to be need to be doing. Um I do think um uh uh tying into my my early childhood, my early experience growing up, I do think that we need to reimagine the educational system and and cities. We can talk about that, Steve. You have a wonderful example of a charter school there that suggests an alternative pathway. But um a lot of cities now are reimagining the schoolyards, right? They're converting those hard-surface schoolyards to to microforests in some cases or or uh schoolyard gardens. We're incorporating birds and bird watching and bird and nature knowledge into our into school uh curricula uh in some places, but not not enough of that is is happening. So I think to to uh create these uh biophilic cities of the future, we really need to be educating that next generation of folks who will have the literacy and and will have been encouraged to care about and and and and love nature and want to have it all around them in uh in cities. But we made a short film about about uh Chattahoochee Hills Charter School. Um every city should have schools like that where you don't have one single building, you have multiple buildings, and you're walking outside every day between the buildings, you're taking your assignments out to the forest, you're you're tending to the the farm animals, it's a f it's a partially a farm as well. So wonderful story. And uh so I I think that's kind of a uh I uh reforming how we educate in thinking about the important role that schools play um in in the creation of biophilic cities is is maybe another answer to your question.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Aaron Powell Very important. I mean, and I find that developments of regional impact, you know, it it goes through the various engineers and traffic planners. And uh we still have the idea that in 20 years we're all gonna be driving our own car, and I think that's changing rapidly. And there's that the there's a time that shared autonomous vehicles are are are really gonna change things. And I see very few people projecting plans into that and and and and how that could change that s some of these highways that we've been having can have those natural corridors for for the the the various uh species. And it's one of the best w ways to re-wild is keep those corridors. Absolutely. Yeah. Because we're not gonna need the lanes of traffic. Right. And we're not gonna need all the all the parking um either. People born in this century, they see cars as a burden versus my generation, you know, thought that was the biggest thing we could hardly wait. But now they're taking the keys away from my generation. So uh these two large population centers are are uh are gonna be moving in a very different way in 10, 20 years.

unknown 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

And we're not planning for it.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

No, I I I certainly agree with you. Um in the vein of of uh emphasizing some good news, I guess, um it is it is encouraging to see how codes have been changing uh uh in many cities around the country. Some of our partner cities now, Austin, Texas, and Edmonton, Canada, would be two examples of cities that have have now eliminated mandatory parking uh parking standards. And that that is a trend. And uh and as you as you say, so much of our urban uh space has been devoted to roadways and highways and cars and parking, especially, 25 to 40 percent typically on average in an American city, sometimes higher than that. So if you start to shift away from from that car-devoted space, spaces devoted to cars, parking especially, uh tremendous opportunities for doing incorporating more nature, for rewilding those spaces, for bringing species back to cities. We have a film, one thing I didn't say about the webpage is that we make these short films. I just mentioned the Chattahoochee Hills film that we made, and we have about 50 of these short films, and and uh one of them is about uh tiny forests, microforests in the Netherlands, and they have really been, really embraced that idea in a big way. Uh we have a few microforests here around campus and a and a few in in American cities, but uh they have a couple hundred of them now in the Netherlands, and then and one that we profile is one in the city of Utrecht, where they've taken 20 parking spaces, 20 car uh surface parking spaces, taken the pavement out, and planted uh several hundred trees in in this space, created essentially a microforest out of these 20 parking spaces. And this is the Miowaki method of planting trees close together and and self-competing, they grow fast. And and so um you can have a very diverse microforest, good for birds and nature, and a in a very quickly in a place that was car you know dependent. So the more we can shift away from cars, the more we have space for all these other things. That's definitely true. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

That shows a good example. So I know you know we we've talked about these great places that around the world that are doing things differently. We've talked about the ideal future, but so many of our listeners are living in places that maybe they're local government, these were designed at a period where none of these things were considered. But that's where they are. That's the, you know, they they aren't able to pick up and leave. And so what would you suggest folks that are living in in these places that that were built without all these understandings? Uh what can they do locally?

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Yeah. Yeah, so many things that they can can do. And and I I'm a a big fan of doing what you can. I mean, what little little steps can add up to a lot. Um so actually, just a couple few nights ago, I I was part of a group that uh there's a an organization here in Charlottesville called uh Release, Charlottesville. There's almost there's very similar organizations in lots of other cities. And this we one evening we're we're knocking on doors in a neighborhood that doesn't have as much shade, doesn't have uh that those older trees, you know, larger, older trees that provide that shade. And knocking on doors and through a grant from the Division of Forestry, the State Division of Forestry, we're able to offer uh free trees. And um and it it not everybody wants to plant a tree, but uh we we can make that easier um through the work of organizations like like that one, um, and and through small amounts of subsidy from local governments, planting a tree, uh finding space for uh a tiny forest, um, changing the way you think about your yard, your front yard, your backyard. It's still the case in that in a lot of cities you're not allowed to allow your grass to grow over a certain height, right? There are all all these ordinances that that require you to keep your gr grass tended and that that often outlaw uh the planting of native gardens, that is changing dramatically. Rethink that's those spaces around you, um, but also do other things, right? It begin to pay attention to what's going on at at that local level, that local government start to go to planning commission meetings and start to be involved. Uh there's so many things that can happen at at a local uh level. It's uh going back to trees. We we need the political support often to adopt a more a more stringent tree protection code to protect those older trees and stand up. Stand up for your trees, uh the large trees around you that might be in jeopardy. And actually, Steve, shortly after uh this podcast, I'm gonna talk to a citizen in California who has been working hard to protect a 75-foot coast uh redwood tree in his Californian um neighborhood. Um, that tree is called Rosie, and it is beloved by the neighborhood, but yet the city has uh issued a permit to allow its removal. It's a completely healthy, beautiful redwood tree, a tree that you would want uh in your neighborhood that that enhances your quality of life and your health and cools the neighborhood and brings birds and all those things. And it it's this one person who organized the entire neighborhood and appealed the permit, and there will be a process for um where the city council and this community will be looking at it and perhaps changing changing the outcome and protecting this tree. So, so it's about looking for places to regenerate and restore and repair, but it's also standing up and and saying, this is um important to me and and I want to uh this this natural uh element of the natural environment is part of part of part of loving it, is stand is is occasionally needing to stand up and speak on its behalf and and protect it. And uh it may not be as dramatic as a as a redwood tree, but it it it could be something uh very important to you and something that we a natural element or part of nature, part of biophilia that we take for granted and uh and yet need needs protecting. So there's so many things, I guess, that you you you know you can do. Look for the things around you, uh begin to have conversations with your neighbors. It's a lot of activism and and biophilic uh work going on at sort of neighborhood levels. And I think that's a really good place to start, neighbor a neighborhood association or creating a new organization. We have in the Biophilic Cities a lot of organizations that have recently been formed to do this kind of work. So there's a group called Biophilly, for example, in Philadelphia. But yeah, and and see uh if you can't get your city to to set some ambitious targets. What what find out? What is there a canopy target in your uh a goal for your community? Um what what what protections are there for the biodiversity places of high biodiversity around you? What about access to parks and and um and and the quality of green spaces and all the all the uh other kinds of nature that you you could be enjoying uh and experiencing and and and again think about schools. I think there's so many things that you can do that don't re necessarily require a decade to see outcomes. Um you can plant that that micro forest and it it'll be impressive in three years. I mean you can really change the world, change the change the change the city pretty quickly. And going back to the de having, figure out how, you know, can we um find places that where where the space can be converted and where rewilding can can happen. And one of the interesting things about this, the law the LA County, Los Angeles County example, they did a comprehensive analysis and discovered that that something like half of the paved space in that county is not really necessary, not really needed. It's it's it's um so this is value added. You know, we can we can take away something that's a negative and create something really really positive, um, life enhancing and nature enhancing in in your city. So I don't know, they're just a few ideas. Well Tim I know that we could uh go on for another hour because we we've certainly had those multiple hour conversations before but uh I I know we don't have the luxury to do to do that uh on the podcast but is there is there anything that you would like to leave the audience with in in a final thought well just to again to say we are excited about this this network of cities it's it's a little over a decade old it we are not a a a huge hugely funded uh organization it's a labor of love a lot of volunteer work on the part of cities but if you if you are living in a city and you'd like to participate in this network we'd love to hear from you and we have um some pretty big cities I mentioned Busan and and uh Los Angeles uh but then there are our relatively small cities also in this network and it's a a chance to bring us all together around this common vision of a deeply natureful biophilic place a place we all I think want want to live. So um yeah so we'd love your help in uh advancing this vision and this movement and in particular if your city would like to join there there is information on the website about about the process of uh for becoming a partner of a city and there's is a a bit of an application there but it's it's not not too too bad too extensive. So uh maybe that's the final thought.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Yeah well we'll add those links so people can connect uh with you through there and uh one of the local every everyone could do is uh be the rallying force to bring your city uh together to to really look into that so uh well Tim thank you for all you're doing for the megaphone uh uh around the world that that you have uh moving you know it feels like a few inches at a time but uh uh all of a sudden uh it it does change and so and thanks for the conversation today then thank you Steve and thank you for all you're doing and the wonderful example that Serenby sets for the world thanks well look forward to getting together again soon me too okay take care now bye