Urban Transformations

Part 1: Re-Naturing the City

The now familiar photo of Metro Manila at night taken from the International Space Station shows the
beauty of the city’s sparkling lights floating in the backdrop of darkness mirroring the stars and space
from where the photo was taken. It also, less romantically, underscores a reality of urban development
—the strong dichotomy between city and countryside or between the built and the natural, and the
hard line that seems to separate the two.

Cities, from the most fundamental economic perspective, are the concentrations of surplus. They are
where labor, markets, goods, people, knowledge and wealth accumulate and are exchanged and
reproduced for further accumulation. They are the engines of growth, generating 80% of global
economic output. What is less emphasized is how the economic engine of cities rely on its hinterlands
for food, water, energy and resources needed to support urban activity. Similarly, the byproduct of
cities, which come in the form of waste and pollution, are returned to nature and the hinterlands in a
linear relationship of extraction, production, consumption and waste.

The comfort and overall prosperity generated by cities has increasingly detached modern society from
nature. Urban dwellers are not immediately aware of the impacts of our lifestyle on our environment
such as where our waste goes or where our food comes from. We have disassociated ourselves from
the land, cutting off the connections between man and nature. We are not aware of the effort it takes
to bring food, water and energy to our homes or how wastes are processed after we discharge them
because of the invisibility of the process to us.

The crises of pandemics, climate change and of resource, food and water scarcity are ultimately borne
out of the disengagement of society from nature. More fundamentally, expelling nature from our daily
urban life creates a deficit in our innate biophilic nature. As human beings, we need to connect to the
outdoors, with other living organisms, with the sun, fresh air, the soil and in so doing, connect with
other people as well.

Should nature and cities be mutually exclusive, opposing forces that are inevitably and perpetually bound
to a zero-sum arrangement? An antinomy of two essential forces in opposition?

How Much Green?

If we are to quantify the economic benefit from nature, we derive an estimated at $125 trillion per year in
ecological service provision per year, an amount that is more than twice the global GDP (Constanza et al.,
2014). These benefits that are supplied by nature that might otherwise be provided through expensive
technology and built infrastructure such as (absorbing pollution, treating waste, etc.).

And yet, despite the social, economic and survival necessity of the natural environment, we have
continuously reduced its presence in urban areas where 60% of humanity are currently living. This is
most pronounced in Metro Manila which has only 5 square meters of green open space per inhabitant,
compared to the minimum 9 square meters recommended by the WHO and lagging behind other cities in
Asia and the rest of the world in green open space provision according to a 2011 research by the
Economist Intelligence Unit that studied 120 cities worldwide.

How did we come to this level of deficiency? A large part of it is because urban spatial development has
largely followed the rationality of free market economics with little emphasis on (or at the expense of)
ecological rationality and human well-being. The Philippines, typical of developing countries, issubject to
increased environmental pressures caused by urban sprawl and real estate speculation which generate
more environmental as well as social and economic exclusion.

Reconnecting Man and Nature through Nature-based Solutions

The search of an ideal where nature is brought back into cities has been the holy grail of urban planners
throughout history. From greenbelt cities, green wedges, vertical gardens to biomimetic cities, nature-
based urbanism and the Ecopolis, countless concepts from architects and planners have sought the
ideal environment where nature is reinserted into artificial realm.

Re-naturing cities can take many forms and scales but in the simplest sense, it is creating space for
habitats where species can thrive allowing them to perform natural functions such as cleaning the air and
water, processing waste, producing food, absorbing carbon dioxide, conserving the soil and reestablishing
biodiversity.

Renaturing can involve ecomimicry which emulates ecosystems and ecological communities as a basis
for designing artificial systems like factories, cities, farms and settlements. Or it can involve eco
engineering which combine systems ecology with engineering design to arrive at solutions for the
built environment that require less materiality and aim to achieve harmony between materials
and structure by imitating nature’s efficient processes.

Inviting nature back into cities requires making room for it. It means connecting outdoor areas to create
continuous green networks. It means integrating it in our buildings and creating more outdoor space for
vegetation as much as we can—balconies, roofs, walls. It also means envisioning indoor spaces with bio-
habitats. It means redesigning infrastructure to replicate processes that occur in nature.

In order to ensure that such renaturing occurs on a scale sufficient to reconnect all urban communities
with nature, designs must provide multifunctionality in terms of ecosystem service provision—for
instance, an urban farm that simultaneously produces food, builds biodiversity, creates a cooler micro
climate and promotes social interaction.

Ultimately, urban renaturing is about reconciling society with nature. Any sustainability effort will
fall short without this goal. In mind. In fact, Cities should aim beyond sustainability and work
towards regeneration for as environmental expert Herbert Girardet said, “There is much less to
sustain today than when the term was first used in the 80s. We have to start thinking in terms of
regenerative development. This means working towards giving back to nature as much we take.”

Joel Luna is founder and principal of JLPD, a masterplanning and development consultancy practice.
www.jlpdstudio.com
Manila by night. Photo: Paolo Nespoli from the ISS

The Green Heart inside Singapore’s Marina One Building by Gustafson Porter
Forest City by Stefano Boeri

Rewilding Cities. Gardens by the Bay, Singapore. Photo: Sergio Sala