Reclamation of Natural Space in Urban Areas

By Brent Langley

 

Natural spaces in urban areas are characterized by either innate or engineered biodiversity, including flora (trees, shrubs, perennials, grasses, aquatic plants, ferns, mosses, etc.) which, in combination with water features, modified soil and land contouring (when necessary), encourage local fauna (butterflies, bees, birds, squirles, etc.) to gather and utilize the ecosystem for food, water and shelter. 

During the past three hundred and sixty years, the human population has grown rapidly.  From 1650 to 1850, the worldwide population grew from approximately 500 million to 1 billion.  From 1850 to 1930, it doubled to 2 billion.  By 1975, it doubled again to 4 billion.  Today, the earth supports approximately 6.6 billion people.  The human population is projected to be over 7.8 billion by the middle of the 21st century. (Campbell and Reece: 1190-1191)

Movement toward urban communities rapidly increased in the mid to late eighteen hundreds as the Industrial Revolution took root.  Farming practices advanced, requiring fewer farmers to produce the necessary abundance.  Factories drew large numbers of workers to cities.    As cities grew, they outgrew their original bounds and continued to expand outward. 

During the beginning of the twentieth century, the automobile made it possible to travel long distances in relatively a reduced time.  Roads were paved to provide access for those wishing to travel and to improve interstate commerce.    Parking lots and buildings were built to house the new vehicles.  The city continued to grow outward because now people could live near the city and still access the city easily.

After World War II, when the middle class grew exponentially, the automobile became a widespread commodity.  The city continued to expand as people discovered the joys of suburban life free from the crowded city.   

Urban sprawl set in.  Urban sprawl, the spreading of a community to and beyond the outer fringes of a city, has become commonplace.  Urban density measures human population in a city.  It is defined as the number of people per square [mile] of land for urban use in a municipal or township boundary. Lower urban densities are indicative of urban sprawl; that is, low-density development beyond the edge of service and employment, which separates residential areas from commercial, educational and recreational areas thus requiring automobiles for transportation (TCRP).  The Southeast Michigan Council of Government (SEMCOG) notes that urban sprawl is ultimately a two-part process with "sprawling low density growth at the suburban fringe and the concurrent disinvestment and abandonment of older/urbanized communities" (SEMCOG, 1991). 

Urban sprawl and subsequent disinvestment and abandonment of urban centers have led to a number of widespread problems.   Among these problems are excessive developed land and neighborhood blight, air and waterway pollution, diminished wildlife habitats, the high cost of public works, and unequal distribution of public parks and recreation facilities.

Buildup of new commercial developments in outlying areas has led to abandonment of developments in urban centers, and resulted in unsupportable commercial property throughout urban and suburban areas.  To further aggravate the situation, many manufacturing facilities have closed down as they have become obsolete, more compact or moved operations overseas and out of state.  Abandoned properties drive down property values and further degrade surrounding neighborhoods.  In Grand Rapids, Michigan, urban sprawl, aggravated by economic downturn  has led to an excess of 11.5 million square feet of retail space alone (CB Richard Ellis).

Residential properties have suffered the same fate as retail and commercial developments, often as a result of the abandonment of urban areas by businesses.  When retail establishments, such as restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and doctor’s offices have moved beyond easy reach of the inner city, residents of the abandoned neighborhoods have also taken flight.  Because the decrease in services and increase in abandoned properties drives down the value of homes in the area, residential properties often become abandoned, left to be taken over by banks and local municipalities.  Grand Rapids currently has approximately 2,900 vacant homes.  That’s 7.4% of the total housing market.  Vacant homes remain empty for average of 500 days (City of Grand Rapids).

Restoration of natural spaces can accomplish several things at once in regard to property problems in urban areas.  Creation of natural spaces in abandoned lots beautifies the area, improving the look of the surrounding district and bringing property values up.  Beautification of a neighborhood also draws in businesses, improving its overall economic wellbeing by creating jobs, increasing tax base and reducing the burden on local citizens.  Jobs mean opportunity for improving residents’ incomes and their ability to maintain their homes.   In addition, by reducing existing commercial, retail and residential properties to match demand, property values and potential rents increase.  Finally, turning blighted properties, especially manufacturing facilities and other brownfields, into natural spaces, eliminates potentially dangerous areas and decreases cost of public oversight.

Air pollution has plagued cities since the start of the Industrial Revolution.  “In 2005, global atmospheric concentrations of CO2 were 35% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution” (http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2.html). In 2008 the U.S. emitted 5,921.2 Tg CO2 Eq.  This is actually a reduction in emissions over the previous eight years and below 2000 levels.  Most of these emissions are caused by burning of fossil fuels.  Current there is a push to find alternative, cheap energy sources that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and thus reduce our emissions.

However, there are currently ways to reduce the affect of emissions on air quality.  Creating natural spaces in our cities can help reduce CO2 buildup significantly.  Trees are especially good at sequestering and storing pollutants.  They can remove CO2, NO2, SO2, and O3.  According to the EPA, afforestation, the planting of trees where there previously were none, results in sequestration of 0.6-2.6 metric tons per acre per year for a period of ninety to one hundred and twenty years (Representative Carbon Sequestration Rates). It would take approximately

            Stormwater and waste management issues also derive from urban sprawl.  Extensive impervious surfaces, such as roads, parking lots, driveways, and roofs, interrupt the natural water cycle.  In the natural environment, precipitation percolates through the soil, watering plants and recharging reduced ground water reserves.  The balance of it runs over the surface of the earth until it reaches a body of water.  Wetlands, bogs, and riparian areas filter the water, removing pollutants before they can reach waterways. 

Since cities are full of impervious surfaces.  Very little storm water is infiltrates the ground.  Instead, it is routed by roofs, streets, and parking lots to sewers and thus carried to treatment plants to be filtered before being sent on to streams and rivers.  However, sewers and wastewater treatment plants are seldom equipped to handle heavy storm surges at peak flow.  Therefore, much of the stormwater is simply flushed through the system, along with the wastewater, thereby further polluting the waterways.  Even when water simply flows over the impervious surfaces directly into the waterways, it carries pollutants like oil, fertilizers, bacteria and various other particulates, thereby threatening the purity of our waters.

By adding and restoring natural spaces in cities, we can significantly reduce stormwater overflow entering directly into our waterways or treatment facilities.  Wetlands, swales bioretention ponds, rain gardens and wider riparian buffer zones in association with woodland and prairie plantings can reduce the rate of flow during and after storms, allowing rainwater to be filtered by plants and thus into the ground.  The reduced flow would reduce the cost of water treatment as well as decreasing the amount of pollutants entering our waterways. The hydrologic cycle (water cycle) can be largely restored using well planned plant community restoration in conjunction with use pervious roads and parking lots.

Wildlife habitats have been devastated by urban sprawl.  The creation of natural spaces, including greenways, corridors for animals to traverse the city in safety, can add beauty and diversity to long devastated areas.  We have the opportunity to restore those habitats, to bring back animals that deserted the area for open land away from the city.  Butterflies, bees, songbirds, and various other animals seek habitats that support their food, shelter and water needs.  Cities can be such places.

Uneven distribution of parks and recreation facilities can be corrected through the development of natural spaces in urban areas.  Those created habitats can be a place of enjoyment, relaxation, socialization and learning for the inhabitants of the city neighborhoods.  Many inner city residents have limited access to such places outside the city due to limited finances and transportation.  By putting them in the vicinities most depressed by urban blight, we facilitate the restoration of neighborhoods,  create places to gather in safety with friends and family, places to learn about nature near home, opportunities to enjoy the beauty of nature where once there was only an empty lot or an abandoned home or brownfield, polluted industrial properties.

Natural spaces in urban areas are characterized by engineered biodiversity, including flora, such as trees, shrubs, perennials, grasses, aquatic plants, ferns, worts, mosses, etc. which, in combination with water features and modified soil and land contouring, encourage local fauna to gather and utilize the created ecosystem for food, water and shelter. 

Stewardship should be our guiding principle when measuring how we use our resources.  Stewardship, according to Merriam-Webster, is “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to ones care”.  Abuse of our environment, often in ignorance, sometimes in exploitative ways, has led to destruction of natural space in urban and rural areas in the United States, and around the world.  Employing available technological and scientific advances, we have the ability correct past mistakes and prevent future problems.  We have not only the ability, but the responsibility to use what is available to restore the environment to the best of our ability.  Those with understanding and capability to positively affect change in their environment, whether social, economic or ecological, have the responsibility to do so. 

 

 

Bibliography

Biology; Eighth Edition, Campbell, Reece, Pearson San Francisco, CA 94111 2008

Brownfields 2010 Assessment and Revolving Loan Fund Grant Fact Sheet, Grand Rapids, MI, EPA 560-F-10-103 Apr 10.

CB Richard Ellis, Market View: Grand Rapids Retail, First Quarter 2009.

City of Grand Rapids, Michigan Official Website; http://www.grand-rapids.mi.us/index.pl?page_id=403

City of Grand Rapids Parks and Recreation Master Plan, 2010.

Creating and Implementing a Community Vision, City of Grand Rapids Planning Department

EMCOG, 1991

Forest Practices the Sequester or Preserve Carbon http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/forestry.html

Green Grand Rapids, Green Gathering: Ideas June 25, 2008.

 

Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 – 2002, Washington, DC 20460

U.S.A.  http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads06/04CR.pdf

McKnights Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation 10^th Edition, Darrel Hess, City College of San Francisco, Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458

Representative Carbon Sequestration Rates and Saturation Periods for Key Agricultural & Forestry Practices: http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/rates.html

Reducing Stormwater Costs Through Low Impact Development (LID) Strategies and Practices, EPA publication number 841-F-07-006, December 2007.

SEMCOG, 1991

TCRP 1998, TCRP 2003, Neill et al. 2003

Urban Forest Study – GVSU

Urban Ecosystems Analysis SE Michigan and City of Detroit: Calculating the Value of Nature, May 2006

U.S Dept of Interior U.S. Geological Survey 

http://www.ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html

Urbanization of Streams: Studies of Hydrologic Impacts, EPA 841-R-97-009, 1997

West Michigan Rising (blog) Green Grand Rapids: philgoblue  April 30, 2008, http://www.westmichiganrising.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=164.

http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/local_scale.html

http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/national_inventory.html

 

 

 

 

 

Naturalized Gardens in Urban Areas Part 1

The disciplines of landscape design/architecture and natural resource management intersect in the development and management of natural environments such as prairies, wetlands, woodland, lake and river basins.  Michigan never had extensive prairies like much of the Midwest.  This area is dominated by lakes and rivers, wetlands and woods.  200 years ago, Michigan boasted 14 million acres of wetlands.  In 1837, when Michigan became a state, almost all of its 36.4 million acres of land was  covered in forests. 

Years of rapid industrial expansion and urban growth left much of the natural beauty of Michigan degenerated.  In previous generations, the goal of our society was to extend the benefits of the industrial and information revolutions to everyone.  By doing so, life expectancy increased, health improved, education spread, poverty, true poverty, receded.

But the cost of such rapid growth was a general disregard for the natural environment.  Urban sprawl has expanded cities in such a way that there is no clear border between cities. Roads, development of neighborhoods, malls and industrial complexes are unconfined. As a result much of the beauty and health of the natural world has disappeared. 

This does not mean everyone disregarded the care of the natural world.  Conservationists such as Theodore Roosevelt did what they could to ensure a healthy environment.   Conservationism was dedicated to setting aside large swaths of land to keep those pristine.

"We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation." Theodore Roosevelt 

According the the Michigan DNR, over 11 million acres of wetlands have been destroyed since the influx of European settlers around 200 years ago. There are wetlands and woodlands throughout Michigan still.  However, today, Michigan boast less than 3 million acres, down from 14 million acres 200 years ago.  Although Michigan's State Forest system is the largest in the nation, with 3.9 million acres, most of the pre-settlement forests are gone. 

Yes, people have continued to bring ever elusive nature back into their lives by creating gardens, planting trees and flowers etc.  Of course, lawns still dominate the suburban landscape.  Because lawns are basically uncomplicated masses of grass, care for these is fairly straight forward, if environmentally unfriendly.  Unfriendly because they require constant care.

Lawns need more water to stay attractive than they generally get from natural precipitation.  So, water resources are diverted to keep our lawns beautiful. Weeds need to be controlled.  If you don't have time to pull them individually, you have to find another control mechanism.  The most common control is chemical.  Likewise, most lawns need regular fertilization to ensure proper nutrition.

So, the environmental footprint of a lawn goes beyond the energy used and pollution created by a lawn mower and edger.  Creation of weed control products and fertilizers requires significant energy sapping production facilities.  Precious water resources are pumped from aquifers, lakes and streams to keep our lawns green.  Lakes and streams can be replenished through natural annual precipitation.  Aquifers, however, take thousands of years to recharge.  Water costs energy (and thus money) not just to get it to the source of use but to return these resources to usefulness.  Water that runs off lawns and into sewers is then recycled at plants, once again requiring energy resources.  Environmental footprint of maintaining a lawn amplified.