I was at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) event in Abu Dhabi last week, speaking at the Cities forum about happiness and nature in cities. There was lots of interest and engagement on the topic of the benefits of nature in the urban context, which was fantastic!
Two simple messages from me:
1. It’s time we move beyond ‘urban green’ to ‘urban nature‘ – especially in arid cities where the indigenous nature is often not green (think blue, yellow, red, brown).
2. We need to plan and design multi-functional urban nature spaces with the aim of providing sustainability, well-being, and resilience benefits to cities.
While the above two messages are important and applicable in any urban context, they are especially pertinent for arid cities where water is limited and where challenges have frequently been addressed in the past with ill-suited solutions imported from a different context.
We can reap tremendous benefits from urban nature if we do it right. There are proven well-being benefits, such as improved comfort and reduced urban heat island effect from the shade, as well as positive mental health impacts, including reduced stress and improved happiness. There are also documented environmental and social resilience benefits through nature-based stormwater management solutions and through community gardening, for example. Of course, ecological diversity and protection benefits are also valuable in and of themselves.
Thank you to The National for covering the talk and helping spread the message.
More of my thoughts on this topic here, here, and here.
Some of the latest science here and here.
More on Arup’s work on Rethinking Cities in Arid Environments here.