Introduction We are all confined to our homes—if we are lucky (more on that later). Which is something, since most of us are “outdoor types”, “people types”, can we find meaning, motivation, and renewed spirit for action in this contemplative but deeply strange time? We find ourselves wondering, doubting, planning our next steps or perhaps …
Author Archives: KarenTsugawa
Who Takes Care of New York?
Civic leaders and community members regularly put time and energy into caring and advocating for the environment. We call these acts of care stewardship. Beyond improving green and blue spaces, stewardship can also lead to other types of civic action. Local stewardship groups can strengthen social trust within a neighborhood. People who come together around …
Artists in Conversation with Water in Cities
Introduction As human beings who inhabit bodies made mostly of water, connecting to water as an element means connecting to a large part of who we are. Yet more than this, the artists in this roundtable teach us that if we pay close attention, water can help us connect in profound and useful ways to …
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Artists in Conversation with Air in Cities
Introduction Artists in Conversation with Nature in Cities In the late 1960s, an American artist Alan Sonfist, proposed an artwork consisting of reintroducing native plants and trees of New York City bioregion in lower Manhattan, the Time Landscape environmental sculpture and urban forest became one of the first visually apparent collaborations between artist and nature …
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New York’s Central Park as Muse, as Imagination, as Home
A review of: Painting Central Park, by Roger Pasquier. 2015. ISBN: 0-86565-314-3. Vendome Press, New York. 197 pages. Buy the Book For the past two years, I’ve invited people to pick free food on Swale, an edible public park built on a barge in New York City. Creating something unexpected is a technique that I’ve utilized on …
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To whom does a city’s nature belong? Is it a common pool resource, or a public good? And who decides?
Introduction We believe that urban green spaces and natural resources have value. Much of the writing at TNOC describes urban open space, in its various forms, as one of the key drivers of cities that are more resilient, sustainable, and livable. But who manages urban open space and natural resources? Who “owns” them? Who gets to …
Visions of resilience: Eighteen artists say or show something in response to the word “resilience”
Introduction Resilience. Resilient. It is is the word of the decade. As sustainability was before it. A challenge with both words, directed at us, and especially as they relate to specific ideas and actions, is this. While they exist so well in the realm of metaphor, they are more difficult in reality. The same can be said …
There’s a Social Element to the Nature in Cities
Thanks to a bunch of canny coyotes doing what coyotes do, we have recently been reminded of the increasing presence of nature in cities and the human interaction with nature, both in New York City and other cities. And these lessons are applicable not just to the many cities where humans and nature interact, but …
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Encountering the Urban Forest
For all the critical scholarship that is written about the harnessing of volunteer labor in caring for urban trees (see, e.g., Perkins 2009), it never squared with my experience of engaging in stewardship. Following attendance at a human geography panel on ‘powerful objects’, I came to realize that my leisure practices were missing from my …
Stewarding Memories: Caring for People, Trees, and Land
“We will never forget.” After September 11 (2001), this claim was made in countless political speeches, memorial eulogies, bumper stickers, carved stones, tattoos, and tee-shirts. But we do forget. Time rolls on. We age. New people are born who have no lived experience of the tragic occurrences of that day. So too, does the landscape …
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