Concept description:
I propose that ‘3 acres on the lake’ should remain just that; 3 acres on the lake. The area should remain a wild space within the city.

To create an unstructured spatial and social environment (that is currently seen as not contributing to the city’s civic image). The three-acre site should remain more-or-less as it is with as little disturbance to the plants as possible. A gravel path would be laid down and this would wind through the site, providing people (school groups, residents, tourists etc.) with access to this natural environment.

It is a little-discussed fact that a comparison between plants and animals present in a regenerating vacant lot, and those present in a landscaped residential front yard, or city park, reveals that the vacant lot generally has far greater floral and faunal diversity than the lawn or city park. Yet all efforts are usually directed at nurturing the latter and suppressing the former.

Text by Michael Hough:

Plants are fundamental to the maintenance of environmental health. They supply the oxygen we breathe and the water we drink, and maintain soil structure and healthy climates. In the city they are vital to urban health and in moderating microclimates, yet in most western cities they are planted as individual horticultural specimens, not as mutually dependent communities such as one finds in natural forests. The cultivated urban landscape that has been created by design is dependent on man to sustain it and consequently lacks natural complexity and sustainability. Studies of the impact of urbanizing regions on native birds and animals have shown how the native fauna declines as urbanization increases. The disappearance of diverse native species favours a few aggressive introduced species. These adapt readily to urban habitats since the ornamental plants and conditions of the city offer little in the way of food, shelter, or breeding places. So natural complexity gives way to environments that lack sensory richness and diversity - a central issue of sustainability.

I have become interested in developing urban design principles that will reintroduce a greater level of biological complexity into cities. This is important because natural diversity is more sustainable, it creates healthier environments, it costs less to maintain; and is more educationally useful for urban people, many of whom have become out of touch with the richness, complexity and beauty of nature. Let me give you a few examples.
Creating urban wilderness. It is possible, and necessary, to preserve natural areas in cities. It is also possible (and vitally necessary) to create them. Forests and wildlife all over the world are being depleted, and it is often the cities that provide us with the first opportunity to plant new forests and create healthy environments for the people how live there. The Dutch have understood this need and have been creating new urban forests in many of their housing developments, and have found that they provide more interesting and socially useful environments than conventional design. The initiative for new forests in many ways lies with the cities, since it is in the cities where most people live and where most environmental problems first arise.

Over the last five to seven years, I have been researching the best ways to recreate native woodland on land that has supported only turf grass for many years. We planted a number of plots in 1983 to test different planting methods. We were interested in different species associations, how close they should be spaced during planting, how fast they grow, how the ground plain should be treated, and what management is required as they mature. I used an approach that I have called Managed Succession, a method that simulates the way forests regenerate naturally from an open field to maturity, but which speeds up the rate of growth through management. This technique involves planting fast growing trees and shrubs first to which slow growing native forest species are then added when the right environments have been created. These slow growing "climax" species eventually take over from the pioneer species to form a natural hardwood forest. The fast growing pioneers provide the conditions under which the longer lived species can thrive in early stages. Early results of this work have shown that it is possible to achieve an early successional canopy 10 metres high in three to four years in our Canadian climate, and the beginnings of a natural forest groundflora. The government organization that sponsored this work has now been reforesting its roads and parkways using these methods.

In another experiment we used similar techniques to create a new landscape for an oil refinery near Toronto. The plan included the creation of a number of distinct habitats; a pond and adjacent new marsh, meadows and woodland. The principle of wildlife corridors also became an important part of the design, where a linear woodland was created along the refinery's edge to create a forested link with an existing natural stream. Over fifteen years wildlife has returned and natural processes have finished off the original design. About five years ago the refinery reported that deer had reappeared, jumping over the two and a half metre fences and breeding within the refinery itself. The importance of these kinds of landscape is that they are more diverse, they cost less to maintain, they have immensely greater educational value, and have great aesthetic appeal when they are mixed with more highly maintained landscapes. But most of all, the significance of this project lay in the fact that industry took the initiative and became interested in creating a healthy and restored environment. This refinery also has gone to great lengths to ensure that water drawn from the Lake for cooling purposes is returned in the same condition as it came out. It is seen as the cost of doing business.

The question of landscape maintenance is an important one for urban ecology since conventional upkeep of horticultural landscapes has become extremely expensive, and is often a reason for the sterile environments one often finds in western cities. I have been interested in finding alternatives to mowing grass, for instance, which is a universal preoccupation in my part of the world. Very simple alternatives are available that are cheaper, economically self-sustaining, and bring back rural practices into the city. For example, school grounds in Europe are maintained by sheep, that not only mow the grass, but fertilize it as well. A number of oil tank farms in Canada use sheep to mow the grassed slopes that contain the oil storage tanks. And geese, whose diet is grass, mow the lawns of Ontario Place. I'd like to take credit for this as part of our design for this park, but the geese arrived on their own and provide free entertainment for the children, as well as keeping the grass down. In Vancouver geese are used in the grounds of the city's water treatment plants where they not only cut the grass, but also chase unwelcome intruders away with their noise and aggressive behaviour towards strangers. Where it is practical and makes sense, the integration of rural practices into urban landscapes creates environments that are more diverse, are more sustainable, and are also cheaper to maintain.

Some conclusions:

In this talk I have shown you a number of examples of how ecological principles are applicable to the urban environment. It might be useful to summarize my presentation by outlining a few of the design principles that have inspired my work and which are essential to making environmentally healthy and sustainable cities.

The first is what I call Knowing the Place. There is the danger of suggesting solutions to cities as if they all had the same problems. One of the most important things to understand about ecological processes is that they are place specific. Every natural environment has different scenery that is a response to different climates, geological phenomena, soils, plants, cultural and historic influences. There are different solutions to every place because each place is different. The particular cultural and environmental conditions we find in Toronto, are very different from what they are in Istanbul, so the environmental design solutions will be different. As a designer concerned with our environmental future, I have observed how cities the world over today seem to look the same. Downtown Vancouver is like downtown Hong Kong or New York. The waterfronts of the south of France, look like the waterfronts on the west coast of Canada. The inherent natural and cultural qualities that make each place special and unique is being lost in favour of universal solutions to urban growth. One of the most important justifications for ecological design is to work with, and understand the place and, consequently, maintain the natural and cultural differences between one place and another.

The second is Diversity. Any living environment, if it is to be healthy, and sustainable, and economical, must be socially and ecologically diverse. So the greater the diversity of environments in a city, the greater their tendency towards stability and their ability to withstand stress, and the more useful and interesting they will be.
The third is Economy of Means. This is a principle that we badly need to follow in western cities. It implies that the greatest environmental and social benefits are available for the least energy and effort invested. Jane Jacobs, a writer on urban affairs of great distinction in North America, has suggested that the city must assume the role of supplier as well as consumer of resources. Materials that can be recycled, waste products that have other purposes, spaces that can be used in different ways, buildings that consume a minimum of energy and create environmental benefits from what they consume, are among the design requirements of ecologically sustainability. The use of rooftops in hot countries for generating solar energy and for living in the cool of the evening is an example of the economy of means principle. The incorporation, by industry, of environmental design principles into its operations benefits the environment and also saves money; in other words, ensuring environmental health becomes the cost of doing business.

The fourth principle is Environmental Education begins at Home. In many western cities children learn about world problems from TV but have little knowledge about natural systems in their own gardens at home. Another problem is that people rarely make connections between the resources that sustain them and the wastes they throw away. The mental connection between the water that comes out the tap in the kitchen, and the lake or river that supplies it, is not made.

It is often not understood that a sustainable environment has connections with economics, business, and resource exploitation, and an entire way of life. In Canada, for instance, many people are talking about the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect and global warming. At the same time we are developing new oil fields, and massive new hydroelectric projects, in order to continue economic growth and a non-sustainable way of life. The fact that global warming is linked to oil production is a difficult idea to understand, or accept.

As I said at the beginning, the design of cities has traditionally ignored nature. If, as is predicted by most international authorities, most of the world's population will eventually live in urban areas, it will be essential to design them differently, on ecological principles. The task of urban design is to recognize the importance of urban natural systems to enrich urban life and the necessity of understanding urban problems in an integrated rather than a piecemeal way, as a series of separate issues. It is also important to recognize that integrating natural processes with the design of cities does not mean ignoring technology. It means that environmentally benign technologies should be used to benefit and enhance the sustainability of life processes. This, I believe, is a good beginning for understanding and solving larger global problems.

Katie Holten
TupInstitute@hotmail.com

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