This page is under development. It will lead to articles on urban habitat issues and on volunteer opportunities. Currently, the habitat teaser on the right leads to archival content on the Hendersons' backyard habitat. Follow links given below to some native plant and habitat resources.
As our population grows, so does our need for land. We already have a shortage of natural habitat and housing—and increasing pressure to use land for farming, transportation, natural habitat preservation and restoration, fisheries restoration.
We face projections that our population will double in a generation. We know we need more housing and infrastructure to support that. We know we need more farmland.
We are also facing growing scientific understanding that habitat destruction has already harmed our civilization—for example, the wetlands we destroyed have in turn taken a big bite out of the fish the ocean produces.
Here, we explore ways to bring natural habitat into our urban space, into our cities, towns and suburbs. We explore this on three frontiers: biological, emotional and functional.
In the biological frontier, we look at restoring site-specific native plants to our municipal spaces.
In the emotional, we look to tear down a sense of separation between gray space and green space, through use of design elements that unify man-made structures with landscaping.
In the functional, we seek ways to accomplish the things we are already doing, but only with less need for land and resources. For example, the sort of transportation reforms that can move more people and goods using narrower transportation corridors and with no reliance on fossil or fissionable fuels.
Meeting the challenges posed by these three frontiers will help improve the quality of our lives and the viability of our society. Our degree of success or failure will affect not only the quality of our lives, but our longevity and the number of species that survive or go extinct.
Though the effects are not easy to see, our inadequate regard for the environment is already responsible for one of the planet's mass extinctions. It is also responsible for economic losses in the hundreds of billions of US dollars each year caused by disease, death and property damage.
More to come in mid June 2005.
Volunteer Opportunities
Regional Habitat Projects
Habitat & Gardening Resources
Habitat/Biological
Though they once had to fight a battle with the City of Lawndale to keep their backyard habitat, the Henderson Family has done one of the best backyard habitat restorations in Southern California. Read about their yard, and the battle they fought here.
Design/Emotional
San Antonio's RiverWalk is entirely a man-made environment, using a series of locks to divert waters through a municipal space. However, unlike typical urban gray space, RiverWalk provides urban green space, using a variety of design elements to unify urban structures with nature rather than isolating them.
Technology/Functional
There is virtually no scheduling system for routing truck traffic. Rail systems uses routing technology largely available 100 years ago. Many improvements on land use demand and environmental impact can be made on rail, trucking and shipping technology. The same improvements can help the environment and improve the flow of goods movement benefiting labor, commerce and the environment.