Playtime in urban cities has become an indoor activity for children due to limited access to natural outdoor environments. This product of urbanization makes the case for the introduction of biophilic design. However, playrooms are often neglected as a possibility in designing a natural space indoors. Interior designers and other specialists lack a reliable tool to identify and incorporate biophilic features into the design of these indoor environments in urban settings. The Biophilic Interior Design Matrix (...) (BID-M) developed by McGee and Marshall-Baker quantifies 52 of Kellert’s biophilic design attributes to assess their presence and absence within interior spaces. We expanded its use by testing the matrix in a new type of space, urban playrooms, and coded images of 45 children’s playrooms within Manhattan residential buildings in New York City, including assessing a larger sample and reliability rate compared to McGee and Marshall-Baker’s research. Inter-rater reliability of the overall design matrix and individual matrix items was measured with percent agreement and free-marginal multirater kappa. Reliability testing showed overall good reliability of the overall design matrix. Several matrix items had low reliability between raters. Our findings show that the BID-M needs to be modified to better assess urban interior spaces for children. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between AI urbanism and sustainability by drawing upon some key concepts of Bruno Latour’s philosophy. The idea of a sustainable AI urbanism - often understood as the juxtaposition of smart and eco urbanism - is here critiqued through a reconstruction of the conceptual sources of these two urban paradigms. Some key ideas of smart and eco urbanism are indicated as incompatible and therefore the fusion of these two paradigms is (...) assessed as an unstable basis for shaping sustainable AI urbanism. The concepts in question - modernity, science and nature – are subsequently redefined following Latour’s philosophical perspective, in an attempt to define a different theoretical basis for a sustainable AI urbanism in the Anthropocene. Finally, the principles of a design philosophy shaped by Latour are used to change the design culture that informs AI urbanism towards a more sustainable practice. This paper constructs and promotes a dialogue between the disciplines of philosophy and urban theory with urban design in the conviction that the principles produced by the former and the practices carried out by the latter must start a biunivocal relationship. The paper reveals that in order to change design culture in the field of AI urbanism, it is necessary to rethink some of the key ideas that inform the Western and modern worldview through novel philosophical reflections. (shrink)

It is well-established that the experience of nature produces an array of positive benefits to mental well-being. Much less is known about the specific attributes of green space which produce these effects. In the absence of translational research that links theory with application, it is challenging to design urban green space for its greatest restorative potential. This translational research provides a method for identifying which specific physical attributes of an environmental setting are most likely to influence preference (...) and restoration responses. Attribute identification was based on a triangulation process invoking environmental psychology and aesthetics theories, principles of design founded in mathematics and aesthetics, and empirical research on the role of specific physical attributes of the environment in preference or restoration responses. From this integration emerged a list of physical attributes defining aspects of spatial structure and environmental content found to be most relevant to the perceptions involved with preference and restoration. The physical attribute list offers a starting point for deciphering which scene stimuli dominate or collaborate in preference and restoration responses. To support this, functional definitions and metrics—efficient methods for attribute quantification are presented. Use of these research products and the process for defining place-based metrics can provide (a) greater control in the selection and interpretation of the scenes/images used in tests of preference and restoration and (b) an expanded evidence base for well-being designers of the built environment. (shrink)

For a long time, large-scale urbanexpansion has dominated the nature of the urban environment. In our times however, planners are often dealing with maintenance, modification, and redevelopment of urban situations that alreadyexist. Which are the implications of this fundamental change for theories and strategies of urban planning and design?

The city has featured as a central image in utopian thought. In planning the foundation of the new and ideal city there is a close interconnection between ideas about urban form and the vision of the moral good. The spatial structure of the ideal city in these visions is a framing device that embodies and articulates not only political philosophy but is itself an articulation of moral and cosmological systems. This paper analyses three different utopian moments in three different (...) historical epochs – Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1602), the Choson dynasty foundation of the city of Seoul (1395) and the modernist utopian urbanism of the controversial Le Corbusier (1887–1965). In this analysis attention is drawn to the cosmological and moral visions articulated in these three ‘images of the city’ (Lynch). The opposition between rationalistic/mechanistic and religious/traditional urban design can prove to be an oversimplification that obscures the complex interrelations between the moral geometry and the natural alignments of the ideal urban form. (shrink)

The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possible by this model in (...) the fields of urban planning, urban water systems, urban energy and transport systems, and urban food and nutrient systems. (shrink)

The process of urban landmark-based navigation has proven to be difficult to study in a rigorous fashion, primarily due to confounding variables and the problem of obtaining reliable data in real-world contexts. The development of high-resolution, immersive virtual reality technologies has opened exciting new possibilities for gathering data on human wayfinding that could not otherwise be readily obtained. We developed a research platform using a virtual environment and electroencephalography to better understand the neural processes associated with landmark usage and (...) recognition during urban navigation tasks. By adjusting the architectural parameters of different buildings in this virtual environment, we isolated and tested specific design features to determine whether or not they served as a target for landmarking. EEG theta band event-related synchronization/desynchronization over posterior scalp areas was evaluated at the time when participants observed each target building along a predetermined self-paced route. A multi-level linear model was used to investigate the effects of salient architectural features on posterior scalp areas. Our results support the conclusion that highly salient architectural features—those that contrast sharply with the surrounding environment—are more likely to attract visual attention, remain in short-term memory, and activate brain regions associated with wayfinding compared with non-salient buildings. After establishing this main aggregate effect, we evaluated specific salient architectural features and neural correlates of navigation processing. The buildings that most strongly associated extended gaze time, location recall accuracy, and changes in theta-band neural patterns with landmarking in our study were those that incorporated rotational twist designs and natural elements such as trees and gardens. Other building features, such as unusual façade patterns or building heights, were to a lesser extent also associated with landmarking. (shrink)

The experienced quality of urban environments has not traditionally been at the forefront of understanding how cities evolve through time. Within the humanistic tradition, the temporal dimension of cities has been dealt with through tracing urban or architectural histories or interpreting science-fiction scenarios, for example. However, attempts at understanding the relation between currently existing components of cities and planning based on them, towards the future, has not captured the experience of the temporal layers of cities to a satisfying (...) degree. Contemporary urban environments comprise both lasting and fairly stable elements as well as those that change continuously: change is an inevitable part of urban life. Different aspects of city life evolve with a different tempo: urban nature has its cycles, inhabitants their rhythms, and building materials and styles different lifespans, for example. Recognizing them becomes an especially important issue when future imaginaries are projected onto existing urban structures and when decisions about the details of urban futures are made. This paper aims at bringing environmental and urban aesthetics into the discussion about the possible directions of urban futures. The focus is on introducing the notion of aesthetic sustainability as a tool to better understand how urban futures unfold experientially and how aesthetic values of urban environments develop with time. This concept has some background in the field of design theory, more specifically in sustainable usage and product design, but it has not so far been used in order to study large scale living environments. The concept can prove to be a valuable supporting tool in urban sustainability transformations based on how it captures the experiential side of the physical and temporal dimensions of cities. (shrink)

Many critics have pointed to the failures of modernist urban design, which include its obliteration of thriving neighborhoods, isolation of functions and production of alienating spaces hostile to the human form. Less focus has been placed on defining the source of the modernists’ errors. This essay argues that these errors were in part due to neglect of the nature of fully embodied experience, a neglect manifested in an overwhelmingly visual disposition in embodiment. The author argues that a (...) visual disposition is implicated in the occlusion of place by the modern concept of abstract space. This concept of space and the visual disposition that is implicated in it undergird the utopianism and veneration for abstract forms that characterized the project of modernist urban design. The author concludes by suggesting that the basis for a humanizing urbanism should be the solicitation of all the senses in synesthetic interaction. This phenomenological critique can help us to see precisely where modernist urban design went wrong; it can also help lead us out of the false dichotomy between alienating modernism and orthodox traditionalism by establishing a basis for successful urban environments in embodiment rather than in any rigidly determined formula for urban design. (shrink)

City Living is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. More people live in cities than ever before: more than 50% of the earth's people are urban dwellers. As downtown cores gentrify and globalize, they are becoming more diverse than ever, along lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and age. Meanwhile, we are in the early stages of what seems sure to be a period of intense (...) civil unrest. During such periods, cities generally become the primary sites where tensions and resistance are concentrated, negotiated, and performed. For all of these reasons, understanding cities and contemporary city living is pressing and exciting from almost any disciplinary and political perspective. Quill R Kukla offers the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. The book draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of urban life. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order, but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, Kukla makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book concludes with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants. (shrink)

This article considers the design and ideation of early modern Palermo’s urban waterscape, which traced the contours of a hybrid fluvial-maritime system surviving from antiquity. Framing the city’s port as a repository of collective memory and a site of self-construction, it questions how interventions undertaken between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries - culminating in the ill-fated construction of the Molo Nuovo - recalibrated the interface between city and sea, and with it, Palermo’s identity. The port anchored the city’s (...) cultural and political ecologies, challenging the traditional divide between urban morphology and port planning. Using early modern Palermo as a guide, the article proposes a reinvestment in the interdisciplinary model of the urban waterscape, which regards water as a contested, socio-natural space. (shrink)

Increasingly, we live in an environment of our own making: a ‘world as design’ over the natural world. For more than half of the global population, this environment is also thoroughly urban. But what does a global urban condition mean for the human condition? How does the design of the city and the urban process, in response to the issues and challenges of the Anthropocene, produce new ethical categories, shape new moral identities and relations, and (...) bring about consequences that are also morally significant? In other words, how does the urban shape the ethical—and in what ways? Conversely, how can ethics reveal relations and realities of the urban that often go unnoticed? This book marks the first systematic study of the city through the ethical perspective in the context of the Anthropocene. Six emergent urban conditions are examined, namely, precarity, propinquity, conflict, serendipity, fear and the urban commons. (shrink)

Circular economy is a critical approach to realize the coordinated development of society, economy, and ecological environment. Given the fact that urban is a complex system in which human beings integrate material, energy, information, and natural environment and interact and influence each other, reviewing the urban circular economy research and development could benefit for having a better and comprehensive understanding on urban complexity. Mainly based on the Chinese literature studies from 1999 to 2020, this study aims to (...) present an in-depth analysis of the research themes, policy systems, and index system of Chinaʼs urban-scale circular economy, discuss the changes and evolution trends of themes, levels, and perspectives in time series, sort out the policy systems at both the national and local levels, and analyze the design principles and application fields of indicators. Finally, we propose that future development of an urban circular economy should be built based on modern techniques, technologies, and models. The construction of development mechanism on the circular economy should be framed as “government-led, market-driven, legal norms, policy support, technological support, and public participation” and inject concepts such as “Internet +,” “sharing economy,” “Internet of Things,” and “artificial intelligence.”. (shrink)

This book draws on the authors' wide range of experience, to provide a greater understanding of the different dimensions of environmental engagement. It is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, design and health sciences.

In this paper, I outline valuable insights that current theorists working in urban environmental ethics can gain from the analysis of nineteenth century urban contexts. Specifically, I argue that an analysis of urban areas during this time reveals two sets of competing metaphysical commitments that, when accepted, shift both the design of urban environments and our relationship with the natural world in these contexts. While one set of metaphysical commitments could help inform current projects in (...) urban environmental ethics, the second “de-animalized” or “cleansed” commitments that influenced the structure of post-nineteenth century urban areas could potentially harm projects in urban environmental ethics. Thus we need to be particularly careful when choosing a metaphysical base for our current urban environmental ethics, as, depending on your specific project, implicitly accepting certain commitments could inadvertently work against the overall goals of the project. (shrink)

Contemporary epidemiological methods testing the associations between green space and psychological well-being treat all vegetation cover as equal. However, there is very good reason to expect that variations in ecological "quality" (number of species, integrity of ecological processes) may influence the link between access to green space and benefits to human health and well-being. We test the relationship between green space quality and restorative benefit in an inner city urban population in Bradford, UK. We selected 12 urban parks (...) for study where we carried out botanical and faunal surveys to quantify biodiversity and assessed the site facilities of the green space (cleanliness, provision of amenities). We also conducted 128 surveys with park users to quantify psychological restoration based on four self-reported measure of general restoration, attention-grabbing distractions, being away from everyday life, and site preference. We present three key results. First, there is a positive association between site facilities and biodiversity. Second, restorative benefit is predicted by biodiversity, which explained 43% of the variance in restorative benefit across the parks, with minimal input from other variables. Third, the benefits accrued through access to green space were unrelated to age, gender, and ethnic background. The results add to a small but growing body of evidence that emphasise the role of nature in contributing to the well-being of urban populations and, hence, the need to consider biodiversity in the design of landscapes that enhance multiple ecosystem services. (shrink)

Architecture often relies on mathematical models, if only to anticipate the physical behavior of structures. Accordingly, mathematical modeling serves to find an optimal form given certain constraints, constraints themselves translated into a language which must be homogeneous to that of the model in order for resolution to be possible. Traditional modeling tied to design and architecture thus appears linked to a topdown vision of creation, of the modernist, voluntarist and uniformly normative type, because usually (mono)functionalist. One available instrument of (...) calculation/representation/prescription orders this conception of architecture: indeed the search for an optimal solution through mathematical calculation of a model itself mathematical, thus homogeneous and simple, is only possible when one or two functions or functional constraints are formulated, never more, and this, on a global level, therefore starting from a unique and homogenizing viewpoint. It is essential to grasp that, even applied to material and its properties or towards a particular esthetic or functional dimension, this viewpoint is thus abstractive and generalizing: disregarding singularity of context, insertion and relationship to the environment or local, social behavior. It leaves aside functional specificity and heterogeneousness – re-contextualized each time – of functions that the object or edifice are required to fulfill and optimize under diverse constraints, in their different parts. The computational turning point today’s digital design and computational architecture embody modifies these instrumental, original prescriptions, rendering them more flexible. Perhaps in light of this turnabout we should retrospectively interpret 20th century calls for modernism, functionalism and even biomorphism as being just as many ex post rationalizations in respect to techniques of strongly prescriptive modeling since our only instrument is a monolithic language, and so being, incites a top-down conception, (naturally weakly reactive to contexts), including forms whose overall appearance resembles in fine a living form. In order to liberate oneself from this and despite everything, emerge as its initiators, one has constructed from ideology and philosophy (of object, habitat, the urban) ex post, even while it is the instrument of modeling and conception that largely determines, normalizes and dictates ex ante, the possibilities and limitations of the creation of forms and living experiments4 in a given time. (shrink)

How can humanist principles of respect, dignity, and care inform and improve design for non-human lifeforms? This paper uses ageing and dying urban trees to understand how architectural, urban, and landscape design respond to nonhuman concerns. It draws on research in plant sciences, environmental history, ethics, environmental management, and urban design to ask: how can more-than-human ethics improve multispecies cohabitation in urban forests? The paper hypothesises that concepts of dignity and respect can underline (...) the capabilities of nonhuman lifeforms and lead to improved designs for multispecies cohabitation. To investigate the implications of this ethical framework, we 1) indicate injustices of current management in relation to natural and cultural histories of trees; 2) outline a conceptual framework that includes large old trees as stakeholders in urban communities; and 3) use this framework in a thought experiment with urban trees in Melbourne, outlining comparative design outcomes. Our findings show that the expansion of dignity to include nonhuman life is possible and plausible. Such an extension can justify and encourage design innovation for multiple species and sites. The resulting design practices will lead to improvements by supporting communities of trees at all stages of their life-cycles, including old age, death, and rebirth. This approach requires substantial shifts in accepted thinking and practices including history, ethics, aesthetics, regulation, and education. Design can play a significant role in the necessary transitions by demonstrating tangible and positive outcomes. In this context, history emerges as an essential tool that can extend societal imagination by situating possible future places in the context of ancient and ongoing geological, evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes. (shrink)

BackgroundIt has been well investigated that nature exposure intervention can restore directed attention and improve subsequent cognitive performance. The impairment of decision-making skills in mentally fatigued soccer players was attributed to the inability of attention allocation. However, nature exposure as the potential intervention to counter mental fatigue and improve the subsequent decision-making skill in soccer players has never been investigated.ObjectsThis study aimed to evaluate the effects of nature exposure intervention on decision-making skills among mentally fatigued university soccer (...) players. Moreover, different durations of nature exposure were also evaluated.MethodsA random control between-subject design was adopted. Players were randomly assigned into six groups with three different durations of the experimental group compared with the corresponding control group. All players were first mentally fatigued by performing a 45-min Stroop task; then, they viewed virtual photos of natural or urban scenes; and finally, they performed a soccer decision-making task.ResultsThe subjective ratings of mental fatigue were significantly higher following the Stroop task. Only Exp 3 significantly improved decision-making reaction time compared with Con 3. Moreover, the accuracy slightly increased in Exp 3 after the intervention.ConclusionIn line with attention restoration theory, nature exposure significantly improved decision-making skills in mentally fatigue university players. However, the duration must be 12.50 min for each stimulus to stay longer to attract involuntary attention. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume map out how technologies are used and designed to plan, maintain, govern, demolish, and destroy the city. The chapters demonstrate how urban technologies shape, and are shaped, by fundamental concepts and principles such as citizenship, publicness, democracy, and nature. The many authors herein explore how to think of technologically mediated urban space as part of the human condition. The volume will thus contribute to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from (...) the perspective of the philosophy of technology. This perspective also contributes to the discussion and process of making cities ‘smart’ and just. This collection appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the fields of philosophy of technology, urban planning, and engineering. (shrink)

Traditionally, analytic philosophers writing on aesthetics have given short shrift to nature. The last thirty years, however, have seen a steady growth of interest in this area. The essays and books now available cover central philosophical issues concerning the nature of the aesthetic and the existence of norms for aesthetic judgement. They also intersect with important issues in environmental philosophy. More recent contributions have opened up new topics, such as the relationship between natural sound and music, the beauty (...) of animals, and the aesthetics of gardens. Using these materials, it is now easy to include a module on the aesthetics of nature as one part of an introductory course on aesthetics, or even to design an entire upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar around the topic. Author Recommends: Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Readers coming fresh to contemporary debates may find the lack of attention to natural beauty in twentieth-century philosophy somewhat puzzling. This paper, which defends the view that nature cannot be aesthetically appreciated as such, presents this attitude in a particularly pure form. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This seminal essay marks the beginning of contemporary discussion of the aesthetics of nature. Many of its ideas and themes continue to reverberate in contemporary debates. Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000). This volume is a collection of Carlson's influential essays on environmental aesthetics. Chapters 4 and 5, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment' and 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', set the agenda for much subsequent discussion in the aesthetics of nature. Chapter 6, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', develops and defends the controversial idea that nature, unlike art, is always aesthetically good. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). In this paper, Berleant presents his influential idea of an 'engaged aesthetics' for nature. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. This article develops Saito's idea that ethical considerations play a critical role in the aesthetics of nature, and presents a novel argument for Positive Aesthetics for nature. Malcolm Budd, The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). This book collects Budd's papers on the aesthetics of nature, which contain important criticisms of Carlson's natural environmental model and the notion of Positive Aesthetics for nature. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). This paper argues for the importance of aesthetic appreciation that emphasizes emotional responses to nature. A philosophically sophisticated and influential treatment by a leading aesthetician. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. In this essay, an environmental philosopher gives careful and thorough consideration to the place of aesthetic considerations in environmental protection, focusing on Carlson's work. John Andrew Fisher, 'What the Hills are Alive With: In Defense of the Sounds of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 167–79. Reprinted in The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Most discussions of nature aesthetics focus on visual experiences; this essay is the first philosophical study of the aesthetics of natural sounds. A nuanced and original paper. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant. 'Introduction: The Aesthetics of Nature'. The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Eds. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), 11–42. A comprehensive review of the literature, this essay contains the best available bibliography on the subject. Online Materials: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/environmental-aesthetics/ Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id=17 Teaching Environmental Aesthetics: Allen Carlson's article on the American Society for Aesthetics Web site. http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/ Volume 6 of AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique: Papers by Thomas Heyd and Ira Newman on Allen Carlson's book Aesthetics and the Environment, along with a response from Carlson. http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=400 Paradoxes and Puzzles: Appreciating Gardens and Urban Nature: An essay by Stephanie Ross in the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics. Sample Syllabus for a three-week module in an undergraduate aesthetics course: This three week module can easily be adapted to fit shorter available class time or reduced reading expectations for students. A lighter two-week module, for instance, would drop the Hepburn reading and do either the Carroll essay or the Saito essay, but not both. Note that all readings for this module are reprinted in Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Reading: Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Discussion of Hepburn's essay will allow the instructor to bring out the distinctive issues and themes of the aesthetics of nature. Week 2: Objectivity or Subjectivity? Readings: Allen Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37 (1979): 267–76. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. This section covers two very different approaches to thinking about the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Consideration of these provides an opportunity for students to reflect on nature's relationship to art, and on the character of aesthetic experience itself. Week 3: Pluralistic Approaches Readings: Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. This section considers approaches that are motivated by perceived limitations of the two approaches mentioned above. In discussing these, students will focus on the significance, for the aesthetics of nature, of emotion and also of broader ethical considerations. Sample Syllabus for an upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar: Books on Syllabus: Glenn Parsons, Aesthetics and Nature [AN] (London: Continuum Press, forthcoming November 2008). Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture [AE] (London: Routledge, 2000). Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments [ANE] (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004). Week 1: Introduction Parsons, AN, ch. 1. Allen Carlson, 'Environmental Aesthetics'. The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes (London: Routledge, 2001), 423–36. Don Mannison, 'Comments Stimulated by Reinhardt's Remarks: A Prolegomenon to a Human Chauvinistic Aesthetic'. Environmental Philosophy. Eds. Don Mannison, Michael McRobbie, and Richard Routley (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 212–16. Ronald Hepburn, 'Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty'. British Analytical Philosophy. Eds. Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 285–310. Reprinted in ANE. Week 2: Imagination Parsons, AN, ch. 2. Thomas Heyd, 'Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories About Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2001): 125–37. Reprinted in ANE. Emily Brady, 'Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 139–47. Reprinted in ANE. Marcia Eaton, 'Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 149–56. Reprinted in ANE. Week 3: Formalism Parsons, AN, ch. 3. Carlson, 'Formal Qualities and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 3. Allen Carlson, 'On the Possibility of Quantifying Scenic Beauty'. Landscape Planning 4 (1977): 131–72. Ira Newman, 'Reflections on Allen Carlson's Aesthetics and the Environment'. AE: Canadian Aesthetics Journal /Revue canadienne d'esthetique 6 (2001) http://www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE/Vol_6/Carlson/newman.html>. Nick Zangwill, 'Formal Natural Beauty'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 21 (2001): 209–24. Week 4: Science and Nature Aesthetics Parsons, AN, ch. 4. Aldo Leopold, 'Country'. A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1966), 177–80. Carlson, 'Appreciation and the Natural Environment', AE, ch. 4. Carlson, 'Nature, Aesthetic Judgment, and Objectivity', AE, ch. 5. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Philosophy Compass 2 (2007): 358–72. Week 5: Positive Aesthetics Carlson, 'Nature and Positive Aesthetics', AE, ch. 6. Eugene Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Denton, TX: Environmental Ethics Books, 1996), ch. 6. Yuriko Saito, 'The Aesthetics of Unscenic Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 101–11. Malcolm Budd, 'The Aesthetics of Nature'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000): 137–57. Glenn Parsons, 'Nature Appreciation, Science and Positive Aesthetics'. British Journal of Aesthetics 42 (2002): 279–95. Week 6: Animals Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]), Pt. III, sec. VI. Holmes Rolston III, 'Beauty and the Beast: Aesthetic Experience of Wildlife'. Valuing Wildlife: Economic and Social Perspectives. Eds. Daniel J. Decker and Gary R. Goff (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 187–96. Glenn Parsons, 'The Aesthetic Value of Animals'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2007): 151–69. Week 7: Pluralism Parsons, AN, ch. 5. Noël Carroll, 'On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 244–66. Reprinted in ANE. Yuriko Saito, 'Appreciating Nature on its Own Terms'. Environmental Ethics 20 (1998): 135–49. Reprinted in ANE. Ronald Hepburn, 'Nature Humanized: Nature Respected'. Environmental Values 7 (1998): 267–79. Ronald Hepburn, 'Trivial and Serious in Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 65–80. Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, 'New Formalism and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (2004): 363–76. Week 8: Engagement Parsons, AN, ch. 6. Arnold Berleant, 'The Aesthetics of Art and Nature'. Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–43. Reprinted in ANE. Cheryl Foster, 'The Narrative and the Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics'. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 127–37. Reprinted in ANE. Allen Carlson, 'Aesthetics and Engagement'. British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1993): 220–27. Week 9: The Sublime Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews (Cambridge University Press, 2000 [1790]). Excerpts from sections 23–9. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968 [1757]). Excerpts from Pt. II, sections 1–8. Ronald Hepburn, 'The Concept of the Sublime: Has it any Relevance for Philosophy Today?'. Dialectics and Humanism 15 (1988): 137–55. Stan Godlovitch, 'Icebreakers: Environmentalism and Natural Aesthetics'. Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1994): 15–30. Reprinted in ANE. Malcolm Budd, 'Delight in the Natural World: Kant on the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Part I: The Sublime in Nature'. British Journal of Aesthetics 38 (1998): 233–50. Week 10: Aesthetic Preservation Parsons, AN, ch. 7. Janna Thompson, 'Aesthetics and the Value of Nature'. Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 291–305. Holmes Rolston III, 'From Beauty to Duty: Aesthetics of Nature and Environmental Ethics'. Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics. Ed. Arnold Berleant (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 127–41. Ned Hettinger, 'Allen Carlson's Environmental Aesthetics and Protection of the Environment'. Environmental Ethics 27 (2005): 57–76. Keekok Lee, 'Beauty for Ever?'. Environmental Values 4 (1995): 213–25. Week 11: Gardens Parsons, AN, ch. 8. Mara Miller, The Garden as an Art (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), ch. 1. Mara Miller, 'Gardens as Works of Art: The Problem of Uniqueness'. British Journal of Aesthetics 26 (1986): 252–6. Stephanie Ross, What Gardens Mean (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chs. 1, 7. Tom Leddy, 'Gardens in an Expanded Field'. British Journal of Aesthetics 28 (1988): 327–40. David Cooper, 'In Praise of Gardens'. British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2003): 101–13. Week 12: Art in Nature Parsons, AN, ch. 9. Carlson, 'Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?', AE, ch. 10. Sheila Lintott, 'Ethically Evaluating Land Art: Is It Worth It?'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 263–77. Emily Brady, 'Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art'. Ethics, Place & Environment 10 (2007): 287–300. Focus Questions1. Are there any important differences between the aesthetic appreciation of art and the aesthetic appreciation of nature? If so, what are they?2. Is preserving nature for its aesthetic value a coherent idea?3. What is the ugliest natural thing or place you can think of? How might proponents of Positive Aesthetics for nature deal with your example?4. Does the concept of the sublime have any significance for our contemporary experience of nature? If it does, what relation does it bear to our aesthetic appreciation of nature?5. Watch Rivers and Tides (2001), the documentary film about the British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. Ethically speaking, how do you think we ought to regard his art-making? (shrink)

In the summer of 2017, wildflower seeds were spread on a large, empty open space close to a motorway flyover just outside Copenhagen, Denmark. This was an effort to use non-mechanical methods to prepare the soil for an ‘urban forest’ to be established on the site, since the flowers’ roots would penetrate the ground and enable the planned new trees to settle. As a result, the site was transformed into a gorgeous meadow, and all summer long Copenhageners were invited (...) to come and pick the flowers. In this article, I critically examine different aspects of this project – including the role of design, the perception of nature–culture relationships, climate change, and flower-picking as an event – in relation to my personal experience of visiting this meadow both on-site and on social media. The different temporalities that clash at the site give rise to conflicting interpretations, and I suggest that the meadow can be seen as a living plant archive of the Anthropocene, both physically and digitally. In doing so, I introduce and critique key conceptual pairs, including archive/death and bloom/decay, suggested by Lee Edelman’s queer cross-reading of Jacques Derrida’s ‘Archive Fever’ and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I thereby contrast flower motifs pertaining to the cycles of blooming, decay, and nature’s (failed) eternal return in the meadow with the expansive futurity of the digitally mediated archive. (shrink)

Contemporary Arabic speculative fiction, particularly following the Arab Spring uprisings, is often interpreted as part of an emerging trend of Arab dystopias responding to political upheaval. These texts' ecological concerns, which produce diverse conceptions of futurity, are understudied. This article examines how urban futures are envisioned in an Egyptian speculative fiction text, Ahmed Naji's _Istikhdām al-ḥayāh_ (2014; _Using Life_, 2017). Putting _Using Life_ in dialogue with discussions on Gulf futurism and Arabfuturisms, the article first examines the text's depiction of (...) hegemonic techno-futurist visions, aimed at manifesting a global utopian future through urban design and development projects. The author argues that this futurist discourse, which has affinities with Gulf futurism, operates through the dual enframing of nature and history, and then demonstrates how the text resists this techno-futurist vision through an assemblage aesthetics that echoes Sulaiman Majali's Arabfuturism(s) manifesto. The novel's assemblage aesthetics, which is central to its conception of counter-futures, redefines the human relationship to urban ecologies and to literature through an emphasis on embodiment. (shrink)

Within the framework of a new interdisciplinary scientific scientific field – epistemological urbanism – the authors develop the idea of the human right to their city and show the epistemological nature of this right, which is explained by the fact that it is conditioned by the processes of cognition and scientific communication. Three main provisions are substantiated. Firstly, the city is an intelligent system. “The right to your city” is a specific right to scientific and intellectual production and consumption. (...) Such a right is not realized in every locality designated as a city, but only where there are conditions for intellectual dynamics – where art, education and science are developing. Secondly, the intellectual system of the city has autonomy. Each city has its own intellectual resource. Realizing the right to their city, citizens are involved in the activity of the city's scientific and intellectual autonomy. In other words, a city where there are opportunities to realize the “right to the city” generates an autonomous scientific school or a set of scientific schools. Thirdly, cities how research centers form a scientific network. Not a scientific consortium with common ideas and goals, but a network based on the principles of proliferation. The authors insist on the decentralization of science not for the purpose of its enclavization, but for the purpose of developing the potential, multi-vector and intellectual self-realization of urban communities themselves. It is shown that the development of science as a whole can be ensured by the heterogeneity of science itself : integration and differentiation give rise to an integration scientific and communicative process. (shrink)

Kevin Lynch's books are the classic underpinnings of modern urban planning and design, yet they are only a part of his rich legacy of ideas about human purposes and values in built form. City Sense and City Design brings together Lynch's remaining work, including professional design and planning projects that show how he translated many of his ideas and theories into practice. An invaluable sourcebook of design knowledge, City Sense and City Design completes the (...) record of one of the foremost environmental design theorists of our time and leads to a deeper understanding of his distinctively humanistic philosophy. The editors, both former students of Lynch, provide a cogent summary of his career and of the role he played in shaping and transforming the American urban design profession during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Each of the seven thematic groupings of writings and projects that follow begins with a short introduction explaining their content and their background. The essays in part I focus on the premises of Lynch's work: his novel reading of large-scale built environments and the notion that the design of an urban landscape should be as meaningful and intimate as the natural landscape. In part II, excerpts from Lynch's travel journals reveal his early ideas on how people perceive and interpret their surroundings—ideas that culminated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. This part of the book also presents Lynch's experiments with children and his assessment of environmental-perception research. The examples of both small-scale and large-scale analysis of visual form in part III are followed by three parts on city design. These include Lynch's more theoretical works on complex planning decisions involving both functional (spatial and structural organization) and normative (how the city works in human terms) approaches, articles discussing the principles that guided Lynch's teaching and practice of city design, and descriptions of Lynch's own projects in the Boston area and elsewhere. The book concludes with essays written late in Lynch's career, fantasy pieces describing utopias and offering new design freedoms and scenarios warning of horrifying "cacotopias.". (shrink)

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), strongly believes that heritage—natural and cultural, tangible and intangible—is fundamental to addressing the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper explores Liangzhu cultural heritage located in Hangzhou, China. It argues that cultural heritage is also a special kind of living narrative. In accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, cultural heritage narratives carry an important function in global sustainable development. Cross-media narrative development of Liangzhu site and ancient symbols are (...) explored, from the appearance of elements like "The God with Mixed Human and Animal Facial Features" in design products, to the consideration of the pioneer integration of 5G technology taking place in the city of Hangzhou, an example of sustainable urban development. (shrink)

The 2023 edition of the Venice Architecture Biennial Time Space Existence will draw attention to the emerging expressions of sustainability in their numerous forms, ranging from a focus on the environment and urban landscape to the unfolding conversations on innovation, reuse, community, and inclusion. In response to climate change, exhibited projects will investigate new technologies and construction methods that reduce energy consumption through circular design and develop innovative, organic, and recycled building materials. Participants will also address social justice (...) by presenting living solutions envisioned for displaced communities and minorities, while others will examine the tensions between the built urban environment and the nature surrounding it, identifying opportunities for coexistence. Time Space Existence not only aims to be a display but also a living workshop where established and emerging practitioners can work together and present their own visions of the status of architecture and the built environment nowadays. By bringing together ideas from across the world, the exhibition presents itself as a platform for exchange and experimentation and strives to stimulate an engaging dialogue that is inclusive of all voices. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore how children learn to form new relationships with nature. It draws on a longitudinal case study of children participating in a stewardship project involving the conservation of salamanders during the school day in Stockholm, Sweden. The qualitative method includes two waves of data collection: when a group of 10-year-old children participated in the project (2015) and two years after they participated (2017). We conducted 49 interviews with children as well as using (...) participant observations and questionnaires. We found indications that children developed sympathy for salamanders and increased concern and care for nature, and that such relationships persisted two years after participation. Our rich qualitative data suggest that whole situations of sufficient unpredictability triggering free exploration of the area, direct sensory contact and significant experiences of interacting with a species were important for children’s development of affective relationships with the salamander species and with nature in an open-ended sense. Saving the lives of trapped animals enabled direct sensory interaction, feedback, increased understanding, and development of new skills for dynamically exploring further ways of saving species in an interactive process experienced as deeply meaningful, enjoyable and connecting. The behavioural setting instilled a sense of pride and commitment, and the high degree of responsibility given to the children while exploring the habitat during authentic situations enriched children’s enjoyment. The study has implications for the design of education programmes that aim to connect children with nature and for a child-sensitive urban policy that supports authentic nature situations in close spatial proximity to preschools and schools. (shrink)

Technology extends human perception and it intervenes in relations to the environment. Life in cities is particularly affected by newest technological developments, and city dwellers are most shielded and disconnected from the natural world by these very same technologies. The term technology stems from the Greek techne, and it refers to an instrumental relation to the world—a manipulation and adaptation of the environment to human needs. However, by intervening in everyday life and modifying relations to the environment, technology also produces (...) new forms of life and is therefore also poetic in the sense of poiesis. It is clearly distinguished from literary works because it opens worlds of possibilities that are not fictional. This makes a reflection on its poeticity all the more urgent, because the large-scale advent of new technologies such as the industrialization or the digitization radically changes the modes of perception and relations to urban environments. Art works like literature absorb and articulate these changes and are therefore useful “strange tools” for putting on display the changing modes of experiencing cities. For instance, industrialization, explosive urban growth and the rapid modernization of cities overwhelmed the senses. In its very form and rhythm, modernist literature performs the fragmented and brisk-paced experience of modernity. The digital age ostensibly promises intelligibility and order, for digital technologies can survey and manage vast amounts of information. Smart cities are designed for this purpose and for offering tailored solutions to the inhabitants’ individual needs. However, data analytics cannot capture the phenomenological quality of lived experience. Art works can, and contemporary literary works put on display urban life-forms characterized by disembodiment and by exhaustive information on any subject that on its own does not translate into any sense of meaning or belonging. (shrink)

Introduction: Connectedness to nature is a concept that reflects the emotional relationship between the self and the natural environment, based on the theory of biophilia, the innate predisposition to the natural environment. However, the biophobic component has largely been ignored, despite, given its adaptive functional role, being an essential part of the construct. If there is a phylogenetic component underlying nature connectedness, biophilic and/or biophobic, there should be evidence of this record from early childhood. The main aim of (...) this study is therefore to describe the emotional attributions identified in five-year-olds. Methodology: Two studies were conducted. In the first, 94 children expressed their concept of nature and made basic emotional attributions to a set of 60 images of natural and urban environments, using a software designed for the study. In the second, 39 children repeated the procedure and provided explanations for their responses. Results: The main results show that, in general, children use both positive and negative emotions, which may be related to a three-dimensional model of emotional attributions to nature. The most widely attributed emotion is happiness, for the images of both natural and built environments. However, fear is the second most common attribution. The role of happiness could be explained by a feeling of security and familiarity that the habitat of the built environment contributes to, while the importance of fear in nature could show an adaptive response of the fear of wild nature in children. This interpretation could be confirmed when analyzing specifically the emotional attributions to the natural environment, classifying the images according to biological and ecosystemic criteria. Thus, for example, more emotional attributions are explained by the "pleasantness" attributed to primary producers and landscapes (e.g. flora), versus attributions of "harm" to the images of secondary and tertiary consumers (e.g. hunters). Conclusions: These results provide evidence in favor of a didactic procedure to study emotional attributions to images of nature in preschool children. They suggest the incorporation of biophobia as an important adaptive factor in connectedness to nature and a tripartite emotional hypothesis based on the valences of the attributed emotions. (shrink)

Comprising almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions and having an equally prominent role in pollution of soils, fresh water, coastal ecosystems, and food chains in general, agriculture is, alongside industry and electricity/heat production, one of the three biggest anthropogenic causes of breaching the planetary boundaries. Most of the problems in agriculture, like soil degradation and diminishing biodiversity, are caused by unfit uses of existing technologies and approaches mimicking the agriculturally-relevant functioning natural ecosystems seem necessary for appropriate organization of our (...) toxic and entropic agro-technologies. Our thesis is that eco-curative and sustainable uses of agro-technology require a paradigm shift from the chemical model of agro-systems to the ecological system-design model of agriculture. Particularly, following the new biomimetic paradigm of ecological innovation, we question in what sense can we mimic natural solutions in agriculture. We discern among Integrated agriculture and Permaculture, analyze their biomimetic status from the perspective of the philosophy of biomimicry, and argue that the former nature-mentored approach is a more appropriate solution for sustainable broadscale agriculture necessary for the growing world. However, it is not clear how this agricultural bio-integration will interact with the predicted automatization of work, urban demographic momentum, and the Earth system instability, and can the Permaculture alternative emerge as a social safety-net for the anticipated technologically-redundant or economically or environmentally endangered workers. We argue both for the importance to understand Permaculture as a social safety-net and as experimental testing ground for cutting edge biomimetic technologies. (shrink)

Comprising almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions and having an equally prominent role in pollution of soils, fresh water, coastal ecosystems, and food chains in general, agriculture is, alongside industry and electricity/heat production, one of the three biggest anthropogenic causes of breaching the planetary boundaries. Most of the problems in agriculture, like soil degradation and diminishing biodiversity, are caused by unfit uses of existing technologies and approaches mimicking the agriculturally-relevant functioning natural ecosystems seem necessary for appropriate organization of our (...) toxic and entropic agro-technologies. Our thesis is that eco-curative and sustainable uses of agro-technology require a paradigm shift from the chemical model of agro-systems to the ecological system-design model of agriculture. Particularly, following the new biomimetic paradigm of ecological innovation, we question in what sense can we mimic natural solutions in agriculture. We discern among Integrated agriculture and Permaculture, analyze their biomimetic status from the perspective of the philosophy of biomimicry, and argue that the former nature-mentored approach is a more appropriate solution for sustainable broadscale agriculture necessary for the growing world. However, it is not clear how this agricultural bio-integration will interact with the predicted automatization of work, urban demographic momentum, and the Earth system instability, and can the Permaculture alternative emerge as a social safety-net for the anticipated technologically-redundant or economically or environmentally endangered workers. We argue both for the importance to understand Permaculture as a social safety-net and as experimental testing ground for cutting edge biomimetic technologies. (shrink)

Ground-coupled heating-cooling systems (GCHCSs) exchange heat between the built environment and the subsurface using pipework buried in trenches or boreholes. If heat pumps in GCHCSs are powered by “green electricity,” they offer genuine carbon-free heating-cooling; for this reason, there has been a surge in the technology in recent years. Interference between adjoining installations is being reported, raising issues of sustainability in terms of performance, equitable sharing of natural resources, and localized ecological impacts. Using an analytical model for heat transport in (...) porous media, sensitivity analyses have been obtained for open-loop systems in typical hydro-geological settings for urban GSHCSs in the United Kingdom, revealing that breakthrough of injected water will likely lead to significant declines in system performance in less than 25 years for well spacings less than 300 m, unless injection rates are kept below 250 m3/d. Only by cooperatively planning will adjoining landowners in urban areas achieve large-scale sustainable system designs. (shrink)

This paper seeks to bypass assumptions that researchers in critical algorithmic studies and urban studies find it difficult to study algorithmic systems due to their black-boxed nature. In addition, it seeks to work against the assumption that advocating for transparency in algorithms is, therefore, the key for achieving an enhanced understanding of the role of algorithmic technologies on modern life. Drawing on applied assemblage thinking via the concept of the urban assemblage, I demonstrate how the notion of (...) urban assemblage can work as an alternative way to explore the distributed and potential dimensions of what has been termed as Urban AI phenomena. Rather than seeing Urban AI phenomena as black-boxed, unknown and opaque, the notion of urban assemblage locates such entities within the wider contests of the city: urban places, communities and politics, where human-algorithmic relationships gather and disperse. In addition, this approach focuses on the potentialities of Urban AI phenomena—how algorithmic systems can operate differently through different aspects of the city—which can be seen to manifest new forms of resistance, collective actions and democracy. I use a case study of an algorithmic system designed to facilitate digital democracy—vTaiwan—to exemplify how assemblage methodology foregrounds the role of cities as spaces and places for exploring the democratic possibilities of algorithmic systems. This paper concludes with discussion of how the assemblage methodology contributes to serve as a bridge between critical algorithm studies and recent studies of platform urbanism. (shrink)

Urban dwellers are more likely to develop mental disorders such as mood and anxiety disorder as well as schizophrenia compared to rural dwellers. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that even short-term exposure to nature can improve mood and decrease stress, but the underlying neural mechanisms are currently under investigation. In the present intervention study we examined the effects of a one-hour walk in an urban vs. natural environment on activity in the amygdala, a brain region previously associated (...) with stress processing. Before and after the walk 63 participants underwent an fMRI paradigm inducing social stress. Since there is a pronounced gap in the literature regarding interindividual differences in stress-related neural effects of urban and natural environments, we set out to explore sex differences. We observed that amygdala activity decreased after the walk in nature, but only in women, suggesting that women may profit more from salutogenic effects of nature. Moreover, performance on the arithmetic tasks improved in women after the walk in nature, whereas men performed better after the walk in the urban environment. To our knowledge, this is the first study to report differencial tendencies in men and women concerning the stress-related neural activity as an effect of acute exposure to urban vs. natural environments. Furthermore, our findings highlight the importance of sex differences when exploring effects of the environment on brain function and stress. Evidence for beneficial effects of nature on stress-related brain regions may inform urban design policies to focus on providing more accessible green areas in cities and this study suggests that sex differences in experiencing the environment should be taken into consideration. (shrink)

The biophilia hypothesis posits an innate biological and genetic connection between human and nature, including an emotional dimension to this connection. Biophilic design builds on this hypothesis in an attempt to design human-nature connections into the built environment. This article builds on this theoretical framework through a meta-analysis of experimental studies on the emotional impacts of human exposure to natural and urban environments. A total of 49 studies were identified, with a combined sample size of (...) 3,201 participants. The primary findings indicated that exposure to natural environments had a medium to large effect on both increasing positive affect and decreasing negative affect. This finding supported the anticipated emotional dimension of the biophilia hypothesis and lends credibility to biophilic design theory. Evidence was revealed in support of the affective/arousal response model. Immersion in environments indicated a larger effect size than laboratory simulation of environments. Methodological recommendations for future experimental research were few, however the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule outcome measure was recommended as a measure of both positive and negative affect for further studies. A combination measurement of stress related outcome variables was proposed to further explore the affective/arousal response model and its potential relationship to the biophilia hypothesis. The meta-analysis provides evidence for fundamental theories regarding human-nature connection, while revealing gaps in current knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of the overarching problems of the world today is that too many people see themselves as dominating other groups of people, and dominating nature. That is a root problem. And thus part of a core solution builds from Kohlberg’s commitment to a universal moral orientation, though extended to include not only all people but the more-than-human world: animals, trees, plants, species, ecosystems, and the land itself. In this article, I make a case for this form of ethical (...) extensionism, and then present psychological evidence for it in both children and adults, including studies with inner-city Black youth and their parents. Then I build on Piaget’s, Kohlberg’s, and Turiel’s emphasis that interaction with the physical and social world is a critical mechanism for development. My corollary is this: that to reverse the incredibly fast human-caused destruction of nature—the wellsprings of human existence—we need to deepen and extend people’s interactions with nature, and with its relatively wild forms, even in urban environments. Toward this end, I discuss my current body of research and framework for urban design based on what are referred to as interaction patterns. (shrink)

The relevance of preschool children's understanding of nature, its elements, how it affects the behavior of human beings and how human being influences it, it helps to the identification of the necessary elements for the design of programs that have a significant impact in the development of environmental identity and the implementation of environmental education in the school curriculum in Mexico, in order to achieve the derivation of attitudes to preserve the environment from an early age. Under this (...) logic, the objective of the present study was to identify the components of the concept Nature, from drawings made by preschool children in a desert environment, this through a visual discursive analysis. It was made by 118 preschool students, whose ages range between 5 and 6 years; enrolled in four different schools in Hermosillo, Mexico, three located in the urban area and one on the coast of the State of Sonora. Participants were asked to draw the first thought that came to their minds when they heard the word nature. As a result, it was obtained with the representations of the images, that all the drawings present categories such as plants, animals, water bodies, celestial bodies, abiotic factors, natural locations, locations made by man and others. Finally, it was discovered that the analyzes showed a generalized idea of what nature represents by including elements of known flora and fauna, however, they did not capture elements of the desert region in which they live. (shrink)

Epidemiological studies have shown that environmental green space contributes to the reduction of psychosis incidence in the population. Clarifying the psychological and neuro-functional mechanisms underlying the risk-decreasing effects of green surroundings could help optimize preventive environmental interventions. This perspective article specifically aims to open a new window on the link between environmental green space and psychosis by considering its core psychopathological features. Psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, are essentially characterized by self-disturbances. The psychological structure of the self has been described (...) as a multidimensional phenomenon that emerges from the reciprocal interaction with the environment through intrinsic and extrinsic self-processes. The intrinsic self refers to the experience of mental activity and environmental information as inherently related to one’s own person, which involves self-referential processing, self-reflection, memory, interoception, and emotional evaluation. The extrinsic self refers to sensorimotor interactions with the environment and the sense of agency, that is, the experience of being the source of one’s own actions and the multisensory consequences thereof. In psychosis, anomalous self-processing has been related to a functional fragmentation of intrinsic and extrinsic self-processes and related brain networks. Moreover, evidence from cognitive neuroscience suggests that green space could have beneficial effects on self-related processing. Based on the literature, it could be hypothesized that self-processing is involved in mediating the beneficial effects of green space for psychosis. Considering the multidimensionality of the self, it is proposed that urban green space design aimed at improving mental health ideally impacts the complexity of self-facets and thus restores the individual’s self. (shrink)

The university campus provides the backdrop to a student’s education and social journey. For many students, the transition from secondary school through to graduation can be one of upheaval, geographical, financial and social change. Evidence suggests increasing levels of mental health difficulties among UK university students. The university campus is a possible resource to mitigate wellbeing issues through facilitating the salutogenic effects of engagement with nature. This mixed method research examines the opportunity to integrate nature through interventions for (...) University of Sheffield undergraduate students. It uses a green prescription style activity and a specially designed mobile phone app. Through focus groups the participants’ experience reveals the necessity for a whole university approach that considers intervention and campus design simultaneously. This study’s findings qualify research into young adult’s experience of urban green spaces and their tangible connection to plants such as trees. Policy and practice implications include the requirement for a coherent approach to understanding the place-attachment aspects to nature in the university environment. Further afield, there is a need for collaborative wellbeing interventions and urban green space development within the UK context. (shrink)

The bioclimatic architecture is still fascinating to all of us. The lack of energy that the world is facing nowadays is forcing architects and engineers to implement smart solutions benefiting at the maximum from nature itself without considering the primary sources of energy that the world is actually using. Bioclimatic design has the roots in history, despite the fact that little attention has been paid to it throughout history. It is important to understand how natural systems operates, creating (...) closed or semi-closed systems that mirror the ecological systems on Earth. The components of bioclimatic design deal mostly with: climate type and requirements; adaptive thermal comfort; vernacular and contextual solutions; tools and assessment methods; microclimate; sun path; wind; rain; passive and active systems and responsive forms. The aim of the bioclimatic design is to improve the natural environment through the utilization of clean energy and renewable energy system; to reduce the need for energy for heating purposes; and to reduce the energy for cooling proposes, air conditioning and lighting. Furthermore, bioclimatic design involves changes in regulation, improves the house comfort, and also improves urban quality of life. Bioclimatic buildings also include the use of building elements such as walls, windows, roofs, and floors, in order to collect, store, and distribute solar thermal energy and to prevent overheating. The aim is to manage the energy flows providing comfortable conditions during the entire year and the entire day. Minimization of thermal losses and utilization of climatic conditions (climate; microclimate, sunrise) are other important issues to consider. According to many studies, the best orientation for a building in order to maximize the heat gain during winter is east–west and the primary façade should face south. Sustainability is mostly an outcome, rather than a goal or a process. The aim of all designers is to reduce the ecological footprints and to improve the quality of life. The energy sustainability and the use of natural resources must be an integral part of a sustainable development. Nowadays, there are softwares that are developed in order to carry out environmental assessment tools and standards, in order to draw conclusions about internal thermal comfort; uncomfortable times in the building during the entire year; the need for shading devices and their dimensions; energy use, energy cost, etc. Simulations are essential in the design process. Examples chosen as case studies participate to have a better insight into the overall approach of the bioclimatic design. Applying the principles of bioclimatic design remains still a challenge in redefining the perfect bioclimatic house. (shrink)

The provenance of “naturalized epistemology,” so called, is too recent for the hand of Quine not to be still heavily upon it. But like its older relative, “naturalism,” it is an idea rich enough to be coveted, and protean enough to be claimed, by diverse comers with different things in mind. While Quine's version of naturalized epistemology of science inevitably furnishes the backdrop for current discussion of naturalizing moral epistemology, it is important to pause over what “naturalized epistemology” can and (...) should mean in ethics. To what extent is Quine's example of an epistemologyofscience that helps itselfto sciencethe model for understanding knowledge of and in morality? Does it require a view of moral knowledge as reducible to, or in a fundamental way furnished by, science? Or a view of moral theory as sciencelike in some way? I argue that the appropriate analogy is instead a holistic and reflexive epistemology of morality that helps itself to moral judgments and standards seen as answerable to the experience of the kinds of shared lives they make possible and necessary. This approach neither privileges nor rejects wholesale what scientific inquiries might have to say. (shrink)

The legacy of apartheid spatial planning can still be seen in the dynamics of spaces in South Africa today. The elite (according to research is racialised and mostly white people) lives in well-located city areas, close to economic activity and rule social life that defines cities as stated in 2016 by the Socio Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI). Alternatively, mostly black South Africans are confined to urban margins in densified and poorly serviced areas, with low rates of (...) home ownership. The effects of these policies extend beyond the urban nature, as spaces on the margin by design tend to have fewer opportunities for education compared to urban areas, and there are spatial limits to black business ownership. This article seeks to discuss a case study on a church’s use of space during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), to show an inclusionary spatial dynamic that may be used in South African spaces. Firstly, it presents an overview of the unequal spatial dynamics in South Africa, particularly Cape Town, and dynamics during COVID-19. Secondly, it provides a historical overview of the Church of the Nazarene and its foundational beliefs. Moreover, it discusses a case study of renewed spatial dynamic in church using the Church of the Nazarene in Khayelitsha. Furthermore, the case study will be used to show the innovative way they reached their community during this time. The final part will discuss how this inclusive spatial dynamic reveals an innovative dynamic in the concept of the missional church, one that goes beyond the going out contextually, but allowing the outside in as well. Contribution: This article discusses the new spatial dynamic of the missional church which inspires inclusivity. The article uses literature around space, COVID-19, mission studies and church history. Furthermore, a semi-structured interview with a church leader at the Church of the Nazarene in Khayelitsha is used for a contextual case study. (shrink)

Naturalized bioethics represents a revolutionary change in how health care ethics is practised. It calls for bioethicists to give up their dependence on utilitarianism and other ideal moral theories and instead to move toward a self-reflexive, socially inquisitive, politically critical, and inclusive ethics. Wary of idealisations that bypass social realities, the naturalism in ethics that is developed in this volume is empirically nourished and acutely aware that ethical theory is the practice of particular people in particular times, places, cultures, and (...) professional environments. These essays situate the bioethicist within the clinical or research context, take seriously the web of relationships in which all human beings are nested, and explore a number of the different kinds of power relations that inform health care encounters. Naturalized Bioethics aims to help bioethicists, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, disability studies scholars, medical researchers, and other health professionals address the ethical issues surrounding health care. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Initiatives advocating for nature-based solutions, such as increased urban biodiversity, aim to promote public health as a part of creating sustainable cities. These initiatives are supported by a plenitude of scientific literature demonstrating the link between human health and nature contact. Despite these findings, positive human-nature interactions are declining worldwide, negatively effecting human development and health. We support an embodied approach to mental health. Taking this approach seriously illuminates how cities can be enhanced by modifying environmental (...) and social affordances and the ways in which urban dwellers interact with urban natural greenspaces. We argue that urban nature experiences can be used to promote mental health, but that indicators of environmental injustice need to addressed. (shrink)