Tag: The Nature of Cities
Ecotone Urbanism: Design at the Intersection of Nature and City
The Power of Overlap Edmonton, my home city, sits in Aspen Parkland—a transitional ecosystem between the great plains to the south and the boreal forest to the north. Not quite prairie, not quite forest, it is a classic ecotone: an area of overlap that is richer and more diverse than either ecosystem alone. Ecologists describe…
Snow Farming—The Winter Gardening Hack You’re Not Using
Using Snow to Water Gardens, Insulate Plants, and Change Your Growing Zone As a gardener, winter presents an ideal opportunity to harvest, move, pile, and store water for the upcoming gardening season. It’s time to talk about snow farming. Snow farming goes beyond storing water. Strategically placed snow can reduce winter damage, increase the survival…
Self-Sufficiency is a Fantasy—Try Radical Interdependence Instead
Self-Sufficiency is Incompatible with Nature Self-sufficient naturalist is an oxymoron, but you wouldn’t know it from the thousands of off-grid influencers and YouTube creators promoting the self-sufficiency lifestyle. As a tree-loving, beard-sporting, plaid-wearing, soil-building white dude, I know I’m squarely in their target audience. But here’s the thing: self-sufficiency is a myth At best, self-sufficiency…
The Succession of Cities: Organic Patterns Shaping Urban Growth
Do Cities Grow Like Ecosystems? Until millennia, city building was an organic, bottom-up, incremental process beginning with a handful of people looking for opportunities at the confluence of waterways, trade roots, and resources. Speculating newcomers establish temporary structures, replaced over time with permanent buildings. Enterprising citizens set up shops to supply growing demands, and streets…
How To Grow a 1000-Year-Old Tree
Edmonton Public Library How-To Festival What would it be like to live in a world where people tended 1000-year-old trees? How might planting long-lived trees change our thinking about the future and our role in its creation? The following is a recording and edited transcript of a talk I gave at the Edmonton Public Library’s…
11 Woody Superpowers That Grow Better Cities
Trees have woody superpowers that, when used correctly, can grow better cities. We plant trees in our parks, boulevards, and yards, but for many of us, they’re little more than greenery in the landscape. But noticed or not, trees are silently making our yards, communities, and cities better places to live. Whether shading our homes,…
Researching Edmonton Heritage Trees
Supported by the Edmonton Heritage Council On the edge of downtown Edmonton, on the river valley slopes, grows a wild patch of goji berries, descended from seeds imported and tended by Edmonton’s early Chinese community. A few blocks West, surrounded by asphalt, the chestnut seed Walter Holowach collected in Vienna stands forty feet tall, casting…
What Makes A Heritage Tree? Part 1 -Time
Time, Novelty, and Narrative and the Value of Heritage Trees The 2008 book Heritage Tree of Alberta lists 28 trees in Edmonton that are said to have “heritage value,” but what does that mean? How can we define “heritage tree”? This article attempts to synthesize a definition of a heritage tree by comparing the twenty-eight…
Development and the Lifespan of Urban Trees
Tree Life Expectancy and the Cycle of Urban Development Since trees can live longer than buildings, development has an enormous impact on the lifespan of urban trees. While mature trees increase property value, they’re susceptible to damage from nearby development. Soil compaction from heavy equipment or storing materials, damage to roots from excavation, and regarding…
Creating Garden Microclimates
What a Poop Pit Can Teach Us About Garden Microclimates I stumbled upon pineapple pits while researching old botanic gardens. The Heligan Garden in Cornwall, England, was created in the 18th century by the Tremayne family. The garden fell into disrepair after the First World War but was restored in the nineties. During reconstruction, a strange…
Slow Landscaping – Slow Trees in Fast Cities
The Long Now Cities are fast-paced, ever-changing places filled with fast fashion, quick commerce, short election cycles, and perpetual development. What does living in the fast lane do to our ability to see the big picture and tackle life’s biggest challenges? How might fast-paced cities influence what musician and producer Brian Eno coined a sense…
Nature Is A Verb – Your Parking Spot Wants To Be A Forest
Nature Is A Verb Imagine a parking lot: hot, grey, dry, and dead. Parking lots are uninteresting, uninviting, and inhospitable to life. And they are turning into forests. Nature is a verb. Even the most meticulously paved asphalt has imperfections. Expanding and contracting with the rise and fall of the sun, asphalt forms cracks. It’s even…