Vivek Shandas and Cities in the New Millenia
For the last 6 months, globally there has been some climate disaster news each month. For centuries, people have gathered in communities for protection. Protection from the elements, from intruders, from famine and other weather events.
This is an Inca community, surrounded by cliffs, for protection. Many European communities started atop hills a defensible position, or built walls for protection.
I often write about urban trees, and Vivek Shandas helped me put my ideas into a historic context. I was struck by comments by the Portland State University professor, that urban tree planting is merely the latest in a multi-millennia goal of human communities, to come together for mutual defense.
In an era of increased extreme weather events, cities must adapt and that means more tree canopy — for the cooling effect, for the calming effect, for the reduction in pollution, for weather impact reduction and 20 more positive changes to a city that are detailed here:
The original article on Shandas’ ideas was published in Reimagining the Civic Commons, on Medium. I was so taken with his observation of a historic context to urban trees that I wrote about it twice. But yesterday, when I interviewed Cecil Konijnendijk (another urban forestry advocate), I couldn’t find either article.
So with apologies to my longstanding followers, I am going to circle back to Climate Change and Green Space again, bringing it to full attention, rather than a reference to it. Shandas’ frames one of the most important trends cities within cities of the 2020’s.
As a species, we have designed our physical environment to reduce threats to us for millennia. So, while design that reduces threats from the environment isn’t a new idea, we had 35,000 years of a stable climate to understand how to reduce these threats.
As we start to experience climate destabilization from what we’ve known for our entire evolutionary history as a species, we need to ask ourselves what our new climate will mean for habitable spaces and how we design them in the future.
One of the most interesting aspects of urban temperatures is that there are multiple factors that influence how hot different areas in one place are. For example, the amount of green space and big trees is a big factor in heat variance; areas with trees are much cooler than areas without trees by 10 or even 15 degrees. Trees cool spaces by giving us shade and transpiring water.
Full article here:
Join me in planting or protecting a tree every Friday — keeping the young trees alive takes active effort — nature sprouts many seeds, but most of the seedlings end up dying as food for animals or from lack of water. 6 weeks ago, I used the example of three young plum tree sprouts that I was protecting. Here is an update
Why does SymSoil care? We focus on solutions to environmental issues, with a focus on soil biology. Trees and plants feed, and are fed by, the soil microbiome. Healthy soil influences water, carbon sequestration and human health. SymSoil holds a patent on the first scalable approach to manufacturing Soil Food Web products as an alternative to agrochemicals. SymSoil is a supporter of 100KTrees4Humanity, an urban tree planting project focused on action that moves us towards solutions to climate change with equity and inclusion.
I like complex ideas, and 100KTrees has plan for bringing trees to every community, with local support. The time has come to start articulating this plan and asking for help. So please follow clap and watch for more articles.
