situating urban ecological
TRANSCRIPT
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Situating Urban Ecological
Experiments in Public Space
Alexander J. Felson and Linda Pollak
Urban environments are poorly understood in ecological terms, in part because they are complex, but also because the discipline of ecology, since its inception as a fi eld of knowl-edge in the early twentieth century, has avoided people.1 In-creasing the quantity and quality of urban ecological research is critical to developing strategies to address climate change, mitigate and reduce ecological degradation, increase the re-silience of cities, and improve health. Such research requires innovative methods that extend beyond the discipline of ecol-ogy and suggests the reformulation of design approaches to relationships between nature and culture in cities.
Building a knowledge base for urban ecology requires es-tablishing experiments in urban spaces, to enable scientists to analyze both visible and hidden ecological information — to study fl uxes of energy and matter in urban ecosystems and how they change over the long term, and understand how the spatial structure of ecological, physical, and socioeconom-ic factors affects ecosystem function. The complexity of cities, however, limits the ability to conduct experiments. Further, engaging cultural, economic, and political factors is beyond the expertise of most ecologists.
For most of its history, the discipline of ecology has repressed the fact that all environments are the result of an intertwin-ing of human decision-making and biological processes. The long-dominant ecological theory of the climax state did not attribute signifi cant importance to landscape history, instead understanding succession as a trajectory toward a point of ultimate stability and viewing land-use changes as landscape artifacts. It is only recently that ecologists have broadly ac-knowledged that no site is untouched, and that changes in the environment brought about through human activity play a signifi cant role in the defi nition of ecological systems. The recognition of disturbance as fundamental to ecological sys-tems and supportive of biological diversity is part of a set of related shifts, including an understanding of ecosystems as more open and interconnected, in the context of new theories such as emergence, resilience, and patch dynamics. 2
Yet the concept of disturbance has a different signifi cance for an urban site.3 Historical and present-day management
and movement of energy and resources create unique pat-terns and dynamics at regional, continental, and global scales, which cannot be understood on the basis of research carried out in other places. Even adjacent sites may share few mate-rial characteristics; most urban soils are the result of fi ll, of-ten including concrete or other debris, and building elements are as likely to come from other continents as from regional locations.4
The degradation of ecosystem processes in urban areas re-fl ects the fact that the design of cities has tended to prioritize human activities — including vehicular circulation, public use, and safety — over other living systems. The dominance of im-pervious surfaces reduces habitat and connectivity, blocking soil processes and increasing storm-water runoff, altering watersheds, and conveying contaminants into water bodies; lack of soil, leaf matter, vegetation, and subsequent food webs hinders biological processes.
Although there is signifi cant investment in making cities more sustainable, there is comparatively little knowledge of how ecological processes in cities actually work. Much of what constitutes knowledge of urban ecological conditions has been derived from translation of research of nonhuman-dominated environments. Ecologists shifting to urban study sites have tended to focus on the occurrence of remnant eco-logical patterns and processes, such as extant wildlife and
“ Public Utility: CITY SINK,”
a proposal for the design and
deployment of urban carbon
sink infrastructure in New York
City, Denise Hoffman Brandt,
Van Alen Institute New York
Prize Fellow, Spring 2009. CITY
SINK investigates the physical,
economic, and policy potential
to catalyze urban carbon seques-
tration reservoirs, or sinks, and
reframes urban planting practices
as an ecologically operative
program.
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fl ora. However, the complex interactions in urban environ-ments, the compromised biological integrity of urban sites, and the possible infl uence of social and cultural factors on biological patterns preclude typical ecological assumptions and research approaches, making it diffi cult or impossible to adhere to research practices such as replication and limita-tion to a single variable.
Undertaking ecological research in cities involves new chal-lenges : dealing with regulatory constraints, political complex-ity, and project boundaries in terms of adjacent land uses, connectivity, setbacks, and other aspects of zoning and pri-vate property; persuading public and private entities of the value of research; and convincing stakeholders to accept the presence of experiments. Integrating human behavior into ecological experiments requires working within and across social boundaries, inventing strategies for grasping qualita-tive as well as quantitative data at a nexus of human, biologi-cal, and physical activities.
Designers can fruitfully collaborate with ecologists to inte-grate ecological experiments into urban spaces.5 Collabora-tion can occur at multiple scales — from an individual build-ing to neighborhood confi gurations and regional planning — to identify and develop experimental sites. Beyond helping to
navigate hurdles of property ownership, politics, and regu-lation, facilitating movement through review processes, and playing an advocacy role through different phases of a project to ensure its realization, designers can engage the social and cultural dimensions of an urban environment, making experi-mentation an integral part of urban life.
A critical aspect of situating an experiment in a populated environment is the interface between research and public space. The most common strategy of siting ecological research in nonhuman-dominated environments has been to keep it “below the radar,” that is, to enable it to pass unnoticed. In an urban environment, however, not calling attention to some-thing is not an adequate means of protecting it.
The boundaries of a site can be understood as a multifunc-tional dynamic zone serving the outside as well as the inside of the site : integrating as well as protecting an experiment, giving it a public surface, making a spatial and informational contribution to urban space, providing a culturally recogniz-able public identity to enhance an experiment’s meaning and perceived value. It is not only that ecological experiments in public space may have an educational or demonstration com-ponent, but rather that this component is integral to the so-cial /cultural program of situating experiments in cities. It is
Identifying the traits that enable
species to dominate highly
urbanized surroundings may help
to predict and possibly mitigate
the biotic homogenization occur-
ring in these areas.
As part of the NYC Reforestation
project, researchers spray marking
paint to communicate to the Parks
Department and volunteers the
desired location of high-diversity
10 m x 10 m plots, each containing
six species. The Parks Department
augered the holes in preparation
for a day in which volunteers led by
researchers arranged and planted
more than 10,000 trees across
New York City.
For the NYC Reforestation project,
a typical sampling method is used
to evaluate existing vegetation
and soils on plots to be planted for
long-term research. Trees are
identified and caliper is recorded,
shrubs are identified, and percent
cover of herbaceous species sam-
pled. Testing includes soil com-
paction and sampling (S1– S10), and
readings of existing canopy cover
(D1-D4). Additional baseline data
where feasible include stem counts
for herbaceous plants and seed-
bank sampling.
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the connection — telling people what is going on — that would allow the existence of the experiment in the shared space of a city to make sense.
Collaboration may foster larger, more formative roles for ecology, creating new ecologically driven programs and form. By embracing design, ecologists can enable their research to become integral to the development of cities and public space. The design of public spaces as research environments may be understood as a hybrid practice, providing opportunities to infl uence cities in new ways, to monitor, evolve, and adapt to changing urban ecological conditions.
This essay is a prolegomenon to a longer
work on collaboration between designers
and ecologists in support of urban ecologi-
cal research.
1 In the early twentieth century, F. E. Clem-
ents, the founder of modern ecology and
the originator of the ecosystem concept,
made a decision to study the natural world
exclusively and therefore avoid human
influence and human-dominated environ-
ments.
2 Until the 1970s, there was no major par-
adigm shift in ecology. Much of what was
ecology in the 1970s was built on theories
that are now considered outdated.
3 There are questions about whether
the concept of ecological disturbance is
transferable to cities, which are cata-
strophically disturbed and do not
have the same biological resilience as non-
urban areas. Typically ecologists describe
the threshold as the point at which an eco-
logical system no longer functions the way
it once did and does not return to a previ-
ous condition.
4 Unbuilt sites, from empty lots to urban
wetlands, have often been used as dump-
ing grounds for material excavated to build
tunnels, subways, and other infrastructure
and buildings.
5 For the purpose of this essay, “urban”
includes any intensively built environment.
“Designers” include architects, landscape
architects, urban designers, engineers,
planners, artists, and others involved in the
making of public spaces. Although this dis-
cussion focuses on public space, it is pos-
sible to consider private buildings, infra-
structure, and landscapes as potential
sites for situating ecological experiments.
Interventions proposed for
abandoned lots in Brooklyn
introduced ecological research
units as amenities for the
community.
Ecologist Steven Handel’s
research at the Freshkills Park
site has informed the planting
of small, pioneer clusters of trees
and shrubs that could attract
bees and birds, which act as
pollinators and seed spreaders.
The Queens Plaza Bicycle and
Pedestrian Improvement Project,
by Marpillero Pollak Architects,
extends from New York City’s East
River along a 1 1/3-mile length
of heavily traveled wide roadways,
coinciding with the exposed steel
structure of the elevated subway.
The “rooms” are like huge lanterns
visible from near and far, their
luminous presence revealing the
hidden orders of the existing
structure as they appear to float
within it.
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The two matrixes of images
belong to an issue-driven research
by Linda Pollak on specific aspects
of urban environment: they show
traces of phenomena in which
natural forces interact with urban
infrastructure at a threshold
between pedestrian and vehicular
fields. Both address the role of
water in relation to hard surfaces,
which are part of pedestrian
public space, and which belong
to multiple groundplanes.
The matrix of images of historical
cuts and patches documents
a method of intervention, showing
traces of human action on the
surface in support of storm-water
infrastructure.
The matrix of images of curbs
is a registration of forces of distur-
bance, showing effects of storm-
water runoff, including erosion,
differential settlement of materials,
and growth of vegetation.
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