Prioritizing nature-directed stewardship
Nature-First Cities: Restoring Relationships with Ecosystems and with Each Other
by Cam Brewer, Herb Hammond, and Sean Markey
Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024
$39.95 / 9780774868648
Reviewed by Ryan Mitchell
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Nature-First Cities offers a reconsideration of the relationship between our communities, cities, and neighborhoods, co-existing with our natural environment. Cam Brewer, Herb Hammond, and Sean Markey have penned an approachable, hopeful and illustrative work pining for micro and macro-level nature-directed stewardship from our very backyards to regional frameworks.
The book primarily looks at examples from Vancouver, including the former industrial lands of East Vancouver, in promoting nature-based strategies to prevent flooding, combat erosion, and provide green public spaces and biodiversity near city centres. Nature-First Cities connects these Vancouver neighborhood case studies and examples to cases in Boston, New York, Paris, and other Canadian locales, building a holistic narrative to nature-directed stewardship (NDS). NDS is defined as the design and implementation of networks of ecological reserves at multiple spatial scales.
The first chapters of the book examine the cost of expelling nature from cities, the role of early urban planning in evicting nature, and how we can welcome it back. The authors posit that instead of focusing on networks of existing ecological integrity, practitioners of NDS strategies should create restoration networks which will continue building to future ecological integrity. In the case of a watershed network for instance, this practice involves establishing watershed boundaries and limitations, identifying and restoring natural water movement, protecting existing fragments of the natural ecosystem, and restoring anchors of natural ecosystem character. This approach involves long-term planning, but also close analysis and input from guides, biologists, geologists, geographers, and other specialists, to ensure incremental adaptations will future-proof ecological benefits.
Nature-First Cities describes the early European and colonial treatment of nature as well in the book, not shying away from how North Americans historically took nature, biodiversity in flora and fauna, for granted. Communities were built along economic driver zones without integrating the natural environment, resulting in the destruction of many ravines, shorelines, estuaries and habitats. An increase in non- permeable surfaces directly led to considerable losses in local vegetation and tree coverage, to pave the way for areas like Vancouver’s East End shipping and manufacturing hubs.
Rather than spending vast sums of public funds on infrastructure that immediately begins to deteriorate (roads, highways, parking lots) investment in green infrastructure grows over time. An early argument made in the book is that since the majority of Canadians live in urban (and suburban) environments nature has been largely neglected as a priority. Thus, we are tempted to look for solutions to climate change in terms of human-made activity (e.g. more sewage plants, landfills, medical facilities, and high-tech/high-cost projects. This mode of thinking is short-sighted, according to the authors, perpetuating a cycle of treating nature as foreign, intrusive, and cumbersome to manage. More naturalistic, simplistic, and approachable solutions like car-free spaces, enshrining protections against development in flood-prone areas, and pedestrian pathways to forests and wildflower gardens inside of our neighborhoods will bring nature closer to us in our daily lives, in a better integrated manner.
The main chapters of the book outline a vision for nature-first cities, based on three core principles: nature, equity, and density. Diving deeper, the authors explain how the principles of NDS can be applied in rural, urban and suburban zones. One key feature of the book that is well-appreciated by this reader is the use of many full-colour street maps showing overlays of water and restoration networks both proposed and in progress. These are reminders that water and biodiversity run underneath and all around us, at all times, even under parking lots, roadways, through buildings and sidewalks alike where the natural environment is often forgotten. There are ample conceptual restoration images showing overlays of dedicated green space, enhancements to the existing natural network, and protective measures that can completely transform abandoned lots, underused spaces, and car-centric landscapes brimming with life just below the surface. In the position of the authors, these changes would be a boon for educating our youth in natural stewardship, providing new public spaces for our communities and vegetation for our local wildlife.
Much of this restoration work laid out in Nature-First Cities, is happening in real-time with municipalities creating sustainability master plans, and nature-based development in partnerships with residential developers among others. The final chapters of the book detail the process for bottom-up land stewardship, joining individuals, neighbours, and community groups. Nature-First Cities presents a call to action in restoring our connection to nature in our built environment, one that advocates, students, and any interested in a hopeful book in the climate change discourse will be excited to read.
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Ryan Mitchell is an avid reader and part-time editor passionate about people’s stories, history, film, and cities. His background is in sociology and urban studies, and he enjoys volunteering with local cycling initiatives, film, and street festivals. He is working towards becoming a city planner. [Editor’s note: Ryan Mitchell has previously reviewed books by Patrick M. Condon, Michael Fenn, Gordon McIntosh, and David Siegel (eds.), Perry Bulwer, Mary Soderstrom and Tamar Glouberman for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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