TNOC’s Mission: We believe the route to cities that are better for both people and nature is through transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. The mission of The Nature of Cities is to curate joined conversations about urbanism across ways of knowing and modes of action. We create transdisciplinary, publicly available, and widely disseminated programs, events, knowledge, and engagements for green city making. We strive for cities worldwide that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just.

TNOC is an idea hive

The Nature of Cities is an international platform for transdisciplinary dialogue and urban solutions. We curate the sharing of diverse, transformative ideas about cities as ecosystems of people, nature, and infrastructure. We are committed to the design and creation of better cities for all: cities that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just.

Cities are ecosystems of human habitat. A growing movement in urban social-ecology holds that city building requires a green lens—that urban design with, and not against, nature improves both the global environment and the lives of people. TNOC aims to support and propel this movement by curating a network of thought leaders and publishing their ideas. We now comprise almost 750 contributors from around the world: practitioners, scientists, artists, engineers, ecologists, social scientists, architects, designers, landscape architects, planners, activists, urbanists, entrepeneurs, government officials—all working to propel a transdisciplinary, participatory, and transformative movement for cities.

The Nature of Cities is three legally independent sister organizations, all non-profit charities, including The Nature of Cities, The Nature of Cities-France, and The Nature of Cities-Europe. TNOC is a “frontier organization” interested in ideas and solutions at the fizzy edges where science, design, policy, innovation, and the arts meet—an idea hive that puts different approaches and points of view together, to discover what novel perspectives might emerge.

We work in three principal ways. First, we publish a virtual magazine and discussion site featuring, in multiple formats, the diverse work and ideas of our contributors around the world. Second, we pursue partnerships and special projects related to our mission, such as in art, culture, and science. Third, we create innovative and interactive live and online events and conferences that engage diverse voices from multiple ways of knowing and modes of action into joined conversations focused on specific challenges. The most recent of such events was The Nature of Cities Summit in Paris, in June 2019, which brought together 371 people from 52 countries: a transdisciplinary event that mixed scientists, planners, designers, and artists into joined conversations in interactive workshop settings. TNOC’s team is likewise widely involved in diverse events, from arts festivals to workshops on urban food.

TNOC was founded and is curated by Dr. David Maddox (New York City). (With thanks to and inspiration from Mike Houck of Portland, USA.) Write to us at [email protected].

Why do we publish in English? One of the core purposes of TNOC is to share city-building ideas across disciplinary boundaries and geographic frontiers. For better or worse, English is the language that is more likely to be shared among city-builders around the world. Further, we have not wanted to narrow the reach of our essays by publishing regional versions only in that region’s language. The ideas need to be shared more broadly. We simply don’t have the money to translate all of our essays—and anyway, which language(s) would we choose? We have responded with two imperfect solutions. First, Google Translate is embedded within the site, so readers can choose from their broad list of languages. This tool is improving, and it is certainly better than nothing. Second, we offer to all of our authors that they can provide a second version of their essays in a second language (of their own translation).

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Cities are fundamentally ecological spaces. They are ecosystems packed with trees and vegetation that comprise an urban forest. They house birds, insects, small mammals, diverse ecological habitats, and more. They are connected to suburban and rural areas along ecological gradients. Human well being, social justice and effective urban design is intimately connected to the health of urban ecosystems. Cities are habitat for people, and urban design with nature at the center is essential to resilience, sustainability, livability, and justice.

We believe that the nature of cities—by which we mean cities as ecosystems of people, green and blue nature, biodiversity, and built infrastructure … habitat for people—needs more voices, more perspectives and expanded conversation about its critical importance for people and how it can be promoted, conserved, managed, and in some cases designed for the good of all.

The Nature of Cities is a platform—a virtual magazine and media site—for diverse content and conversations on these themes, including essays and virtual roundtables. In the near future we will introduce other styles of conversation. We are a collaborative of 600+ writers from many disciplines and from many places around the world. New columns are published thrice weekly and rotate among our roster. Virtual Roundtables, in which a dozen or so writers respond to and discuss a specific question, appear every month. Podcasts and book/event reviews appear more or less monthly.

We are, by design, a diverse group, and our ideas about the nature of cities emerge from wide-ranging perspectives.

Our contributors include activists, designers, practitioners, biologists, ecologists, sociologists, economists, architects, artists, landscape architects, nature writers, leaders of community organizations, public space managers, lawyers, and leaders in international organizations.

We live and work in 27 countries and six continents, from the Global North and South. We are men and women. The study, understanding, and management of urban nature is fundamentally multidisciplinary and many-voiced (or should be), and the diversity in our collective honors this fact.

Yet we remain a work in progress, always striving to make sure we write from many perspectives.

Our intended audience is everyone interested in creating better cities that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just—cities that effectively function as ecosystems and are better habitat for people.

Our readers have visited almost a million times, from over 3,700 cities and 150 countries, and are as diverse as our writers.

We crave dialogue and comments from our community of readers. So please keep in touch.

Each of the opinions expressed in publications on our site are the author’s own and emerge from the vantage point of his or her discipline, but the core themes of our writing are human habitat, nature, ecosystems and biodiversity in urban settings, especially as they relate to sustainability, resilience, livability, and human well-being.

Rights to each essay and its images are held jointly by the authors and designers / photographers of the particular piece and The Nature of Cities. Rights to the site as a whole are held by The Nature of Cities®.

Board of Directors:

Pippin Anderson, Cape Town

Marcus, Collier, Dublin

Marta Cecilia Fajardo, Bogotá

Valerie Gwinner, Washington

Mike Houck, Portland

Gilles Lecuir, Paris

David Maddox, New York

Siobhán McQuaid, Dublin

Rodolpho Ramina, Curitiba

Mary W. Rowe, Toronto

Huda Shaka, Dubai

Chantal van Ham, Brussels

Former members of the Board:

Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm

David Tittle, London

Leadership:

David Maddox, Executive Director, New York

M’Lisa Colbert, Associate Director, Montreal

Editors:

Patrick Lydon, Osaka (Arts & Events)

Carmen Bouyer, Paris (Arts & Events)

Malerie Lovejoy, Oxford (Fiction)

Emmalee Barnett, Springfield (Editorial Intern)

Special Projects:

M’Lisa Colbert, Montreal

Valerie Gwinner, Washington

Mark Watkins, Phoenix

China Editor中国“微信”编辑:

于悦洋

Yueyang Yu/Braven

Fellows:

Raymond Cha, New York

Katrine Claassens, Montreal

Bram Gunther, New York

Webmasters:

Arturo Lira Pérez, Las Vegas

Karen Tsugawa, San Francisco

Legal status: The Nature of Cities® is a 501(c)3 Public Charity (as recognized by the U.S. Department of the Treasury), a nonprofit corporation registered in the State of New York. The Nature of Cities® is a registered trademark. TNOC Europe is a registered Charity in Ireland. TNOC France is a register Association in France.

If you find value in what TNOC does, please consider supporting us with a one-time or recurring gift.

Donate

History: Our site is currently design and maintained by Arturo Lira Pérez. The TNOC site launched on 12 June 2012, originally designed by Pure+Applied. The site was extensively redesigned in 2014 by Juan Pablo Gomez at jupago.com

Citing TNOC: To cite content from TNOC, use the following format:

Author last name, first name. Year. Title of article. The Nature of Cities. Publish date. Web: URL of content.

Interested in contributing to TNOC? Write us and tell us a little about yourself and the kinds of things you want to write about.

©2012-2018 The Nature of Cities®. The Nature of Cities is a registered trademark. All rights reserved.