Building with nature: ecological design for next generation cities

Special Centennial Issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment explores ecological innovations for infrastructure in the face of climate change

CONTACT: Liza Lester, (202) 833-8773 ext. 211, gro.asenull@retsell

Rotterdam’s futuristic Dutch Windwheel design combines electricity generation, retail, tourism, and cultural iconography in an 174-meter (570-foot) tall ‘turbine’ (the updated windmill has no moving parts) encircled by an inner ring of offices, shops, and living spaces and a moving outer ‘Ferris wheel.’ The structure also deploys solar panels, funnels rainwater, and collects human waste for biogas generation. With a foundation in Rotterdam Harbor, it is designed to withstand environmental variability, including fluctuating sea levels. Central photo credit: © Windwheel Corporation; Architects: Doepel Strijkers. Background photo credit: VF Gabriel; license: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The Ecological Society of America turns 100 this year, with many reflections on the achievements of the discipline and the big questions for ecologists as we embark on a new century marked by great environmental upheaval. ESA’s journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment celebrates the centennial of the society with perspectives on the potential for ecological science to influence the design of the next generation cities and their infrastructure.

The November 2015 Special Issue on Innovations in the face of climate change examines innovations big and small, from massive technological installations like Rotterdam’s proposed next generation Dutch Windwheel to municipal planning and the individual construction and land use choices of city residents.

“Cities are emergent systems, with only 5 to 7 thousand years of history, mostly during the relative climatic stability of the Holocene,” said guest editor Kristina Hill, an associate professor at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. “We’ve never tried to operate a city during a rapid climate change, especially not on the scale of population we now have, with our largest cities housing upwards of 20 million people.”

New problems require new approaches that strive for harmony rather than control. Hill sees opportunities to solve problems created or accentuated by climate change by hybridizing the concrete-and-steel structures we have been designing for hundreds of years with living systems.

The articles in the November special issue tackle physical, legal, social, and technological interfaces with natural systems.

“It’s not about the preciousness of some rare thing that lives far, far away. It’s about the water and the wind and the plants in your city,” said Hill. “While we’ve observed that nature can be fragile, we’ve forgotten that nature is powerful. Our alterations of the planet’s climate are going to bite us in the rear end, in the near future it will be up to us to accommodate nature. I find that refreshing.”

Hill wants to start a cultural revolution in our relationship with natural systems, working with, rather than against, the force of tides, floods, and storms, and inviting non-human life into our living spaces. Ecosystem services have clear practical benefits. Vegetation brings cleaner air and water as cooler summer temperatures, and as well as beauty, recreational space, and habitat for our non-human neighbors into cities. Making the rhythms of natural systems visible also helps city dwellers connect with the natural world.

“Through ecology, we learn what it is to be human by learning about what is not human. Understanding human experience through other forms of life is so significant and fundamental,” said Hill. “Ecology is literally, etymologically, about the house. The problem of climate change is going to bring ecology home. We are talking to people about how they live—their houses. If we all live differently, we can change the world.”

The Dutch Sand Engine experiment in dynamic coastline management is an artificial sand beach designed to erode. Sand pulled away from the 126-ha peninsula by wave, wind, and currents spreads along the Delfland Coast of The Netherlands, naturally nourishing a shoreline that has suffered rapid erosion. The project, a collaboration of government, private industry, and academic researchers, was completed in 2011 and is expected to maintain the shoreline for the next 20 years. The peninsula is also popular with wind and kite surfers. Guest editor Kristina Hill reviews innovations in coastal infrastructure designed to work with storm surge, sea level rise, and other natural processes in “Coastal infrastructure: a typology for the next century of adaptation to sea-level rise,” on page 468 of the November 2015 Special Issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Credit: Kristina Hill.

Innovations in the face of climate change. (2015) Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment Volume 13, Issue 9. (Open access).

Guest Editor: Kristina Hill, University of California, Berkeley ude.yelekrebnull@llihzk

Clearly defining ‘restoration’ in law. Though mandates like the Clean Water Act have been powerful tools for instituting environmental protections in the United States, loose legal definitions of “restoration” mean that few mitigation projects install whole, functioning, and self-sustaining ecosystems. An Appalachian project with the narrow goal of restoring stream flow after mountaintop mining, for example, (left) delivers few of the resources of the natural ecosystem that was lost (right). Likewise, programs aimed at recovery of endangered species do not necessarily prioritize functional ecosystem recovery. Palmer and Ruhl examine the scientific and (U.S.) legal bases for ecological restoration and how the two may be more fruitfully unified in “Aligning restoration science and the law to sustain ecological infrastructure for the future,” on page 512 of this issue. Photo credit: E Bernhardt.

In this issue:

• 459      Guest Editorial : From research to action on climate change. W Collins                                                                                                                      
• 460      With and without warning: managing ecosystems in a changing world. ML Pace, SR Carpenter, and JJ Cole           
• 468      Coastal infrastructure: a typology for the next century of adaptation to sea-level rise. K Hill 
• 477      Wastewater-effluent-dominated streams as ecosystem-management tools in a drier climate. RG Luthy, DL Sedlak, MH Plumlee, D Austin, and VH Resh  
• 486      Urban climate and adaptation strategies. L Larsen  
• 493      Integrated adaptive design for wildlife movement under climate change. N-M Lister, M Brocki, and R Ament                                                                         
• 503      Computer and remote-sensing infrastructure to enhance large-scale testing of individual-based forest models. HH Shugart, GP Asner, R Fischer, A Huth, N Knapp, T Le Toan, and JK Shuman
• 512      Aligning restoration science and the law to sustain ecological infrastructure for the future. MA Palmer and JB Ruhl 

Funding: This Special Issue was partially funded by the National Science Foundation (grant # DEB-1541324).

The Ecological Society of America (ESA), founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 10,000 member Society publishes six journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org.