ABSTRACT

The way we think about ourselves in relation to other creatures and organisms may or may not lead into greater concerns about environmental protection, and greater action in our lives to shape cities, with better results for biodiversity. The dominant religion, science and mainstream philosophical traditions of modern western culture all work to smother ways of thinking that would include values directly in nature. Yet, according to Aristotle, all living things have souls, understood as the functioning of their innate characters or forms. Plants have powers of nutrition and reproduction and thus have vegetative souls; animals have these powers with the additional capacities of locomotion and sensation, giving them sensitive souls. Human beings have all the previous functions plus the conscious abilities to calculate and reflect, producing rational souls. For many thinkers today there is increasing sensitivity towards the rights and sensations of plants and animals. There is an emerging worldview recognizing subjective valuings beyond the human that expresses itself by thinking through and proclaiming human duties, owed directly to entities in nature, as well as to fellow human centres of value. Jason Byrne argues that genuinely recognizing and coexisting with urban nature is challenging. Pet euthanasia, wildlife extermination, pest eradication, pollution and ecosystem appropriation will need to give way to new practices that include plants and animals within the circle of moral considerations – an ethics of caring and respect based on kinship but also difference. The natural history of urban areas and their fringes developed from the late nineteenth century interests in the natural world and concern about the preservation of natural open spaces on the fringes of cities. Natural history societies were established in Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol during the 1860s. Such natural history societies have been extremely important in documenting and recording the flora and fauna of their local areas. Richard Jeffries published Nature Near London in 1883. The Hampstead Heath Society published a natural history of the heath in 1910. R.S.R. Fitter’s London’s Natural History appeared in 1945. Such works were the precursors of the development of urban ecology. Ian Douglas and David Goode trace this history in the UK and in other countries showing urban ecology has become a world-wide concern with bright future prospects. In Britain, Section 21 of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, 1949, gave local authorities powers to declare and manage Local Nature Reserves (LNR) on land in their area of jurisdiction and owned or leased by them or subject to appropriate management arrangements with the owners and occupiers of the land concerned. It also encourages Nature Conservation Strategies (NCS), the first of which – the West Midlands NCS – was produced in the early 1980s. This legislation enabled areas within cities to be protected and made accessible to the public. Many urban local nature reserves were on derelict, brownfield sites. For example, Saltwells LNR was designated as the first Local Nature Reserve in the West Midlands metropolitan county in 1981; now covering over 100 hectares, it forms one of the largest urban nature reserves in the country. The process has also promoted Green Networks and Green Infrastructure which integrate greenspace firmly into development planning for new residential areas and new towns. David Goode traces how ecological concerns and natural greenspace values have gradually been incorporated into planning guidance and practice, emphasizing the important roles played by key organizations such as the urban ecology school in Berlin led by Herbert Sukopp. The way in which the economic benefits of urban greenspace have been calculated in the past might be criticized as the ‘sums have been done wrongly’. Nevertheless, such economic assessments have become powerful drivers for deleterious change in cities, badly affecting biodiversity. Adequate economic examination of the ‘externalities’ through environmental economics, will show how economic valuation should have led to better, greener cities. Anna Chiesura and Joan Martínez-Alier argue that if urban ecology is to contribute to urban sustainability, distributional and ethical issues cannot be ignored. They point out that ecological

economics moves beyond the obsession of ‘taking nature into account’ in money terms, and attempts to avoid clash among incommensurable values by accommodating in the discourse concern for value pluralism, distributional and social equity issues. Together these contributions show that urban ecology has wide connections, requires collaboration between varied professions and works for both society and nature to improve human and ecological well-being.