Book review: The Nature of Our Cities

 

Nadina Galle (left) and Lieve Mertens,
with Dutch language editions of the book
(Source: nadinagalle.com)

Galle, Nadina. The Nature of Our Cities: Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet. Mariner, 2024, 304 pp.

Anyone who wants to make healthy choices in America today knows how difficult it is. So many of us live in neighborhoods without green spaces to play in, without public transit or cycling infrastructure, or where temptations lurk in vending machines in every corner of our offices and schools. And suppose we manage to find the time to exercise in our stressful lives. In that case, the limitations of our outdoor spaces push us onto stationary bikes, where we either stare at news headlines that spike our cortisol levels, or "travel" through virtual landscapes from within a windowless basement gym. (2024: 194)

I finished reading Nadina Galle's book this morning on my back deck, enjoying what was an inexpressively lovely day in Cedar Rapids: the air was clear, the previous week's humidity had gone, a bee was investigating Jane's lilacs, and a variety of birds were making their presences known from high above me. It was the sort of morning where a person can revel in pure existence, regardless of personal problems or America's problems or natural disasters.

Much of the rest of the world is not as easily able to relax with a good book and a pad of paper. After the hottest-ever June in England and Spain, London experienced its hottest day of the year today. Heat deaths are reported in France, Spain and Portugal, and wildfires in Turkey have caused mass evacuations (Robins 2025, "Heatwave Across Europe" 2025). Wildfires across Canada earlier this summer produced smoke and haze even here in Iowa.  Many cities are experiencing increased rat populations as their climate warms (Simon 2025).

The Nature of Our Cities references other recent catastrophes: a record European heatwave in 2019 that was surpassed in 2022, a 2021 heat dome over the U.S. Pacific Northwest, a worldwide heatwave that began in the U.S. in 2023, the Camp Fire in California in 2018, heat wildfires and then massive flooding in British Columbia in 2021, and numerous urban tree die-offs and air quality alerts. Along the way she introduces us to a number of people working on improving their region's resilience to a climate gone haywire.

Even in Cedar Rapids (my backyard, specifically):
Trees tossed by derecho winds, August 2020

About halfway through the book, the focus switches to improving the public's opportunities to experience nature. The most willful climate change deniers cannot be reached, but surely there are a lot of people who already recognize the problem but don't fully realize their personal stakes. Besides, exposure to nature has many physical and mental health benefits (cf. pp. 160-161).

It's in this part of the book where we meet Menno Schilthuizen in the Dutch city of Leiden, teaching people about the enormous diversity of species in a single patch of lawn near the central train station (ch. 6); Blake Ellis, a California-based ecotherapist (ch. 7); Jared Hanley, a former financier who's developed an app that shows the extent of an area's ecosystem (ch. 8); and Richard Louv, who does public talks on the subject of Nature-Deficit Disorder, which term he himself coined (ch. 9). On each of the outdoor adventures during which these conversations occur, Galle lets her interviewees speak for themselves, with descriptions of the environs and additional amusing asides. She does not insist on herself, though it's clear she has a lot of expertise and experience in nature. (She holds a Ph.D. in ecological engineering.)

Her final chapter brings it home, because as the book neared completion, she also found out she was pregnant for the first time (ch. 9). She worries to us about bringing a child into a world that encourages screen time more than nature time. But along the way, as she discusses nature-based apps like AllTrails (p. 164), EarthSnap (pp. 149-151), iNaturalist, Park Rx America (pp. 186-188), Vira (p. 201), World Safari (pp. 234-237), and Giants of the North, a geolocated audio tour of Amsterdam (pp. 170-175), she argues that technology can help us experience nature as well as providing high-tech climate resilience tools.

A mile from the Coe College campus, across the street
from Washington High School: Woodsy trail in Bever Park

Cedar Rapids has a rich array of parks, including two spacious parks (Bever and Ellis) with older-growth wooded areas. Going forward, ensuring access to parks and natural space is a key part of the "complete neighborhood" concept the city has announced, and is listed as an objective for 2050 in the 2023 revision of the city's climate action plan. Funding for any such initiatives is uncertain, or course, and thus far the city's biggest climate action has been (federally funded) construction of flood walls. Whatever we're doing, or say we're doing, is far from offsetting the impact of the two big data centers about which we're very excited.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has disparaged
military research into the impacts of climate change

Climate denial is in full control at the national and state levels (in this state, anyway). U.S. government websites have removed information on climate change impacts (Borenstein 2025). The Trump administration previously clawed back solar installation and climate research grants; withdrew from the Paris climate accord January 21, 2025; threatened Environmental Protection Agency employees studying climate change with firing at any time (Friedman 2025); announced plans to end Department of Transportation climate programs (Pierre-Louis 2025); and fired nearly 1000 employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including all staff at tsunami warning centers (Nilsen and Luhby 2025). This week they're showing off the new federal prison camp built with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds on environmentally sensitive land in Florida's Everglades. Far-sighted public policy is just not going to happen anytime soon; the most we can hope is that they would leave cities alone to do what they can.

The climate doesn't care about politics, of course, and will continue to evolve whether we are prepared or not. Galle's engaging book, and all the people in it, provide hope that the natural world will continue to be accessible, publicly valued, and conducive to human life.

SEE ALSO:

I first encountered Dr. Galle when she was a guest on Gil Penalosa's excellent "Cities for Everyone" webinar series in July 2024. Her talk (38:15) is here.

Nadina Galle blog page

10th anniversary post: Laudato si'

Pope Francis, who died earlier this year

One of them, an expert in the law, asked [Jesus] a question to test him: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22: 35-40)

Way back in 2005, when Benedict XVI became Pope after the death of John Paul II, I expressed ambivalence to a friend about the new Pope's reputation for orthodoxy. The friend responded something to the effect that the Roman Catholic Church has its own imperatives, and since I'm not Catholic (true), it's really not my business.

I don't remember much from Benedict's eight-year papacy, but the emergence of his successor as a world leader of the first rank showed something I at least was not seeing in Benedict. Ten summers ago I eagerly devoured Laudato si' (Praise Be to You), Francis's second and best known encyclical, and later would read The Name of God is Mercy (Random House, 2016), which accompanied his declaration of 2016 as an International Jubilee of Mercy.

The revolutionary nature of Francis's papacy can certainly be overstated, as indeed can Benedict's orthodoxy. What made Francis such a consequential figure for Catholics and non-Catholics alike was not a shift in doctrine but a shift in emphasis, away from rules and towards caring. He spent many of the early sections leading up to a declaration that God has a "loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance" (para 76). Each human has a duty of care to every other human and to the natural world. None of his recent predecessors, whom he cites along the way, would have disagreed with that proposition, but by centering it in his ministry Pope Francis became such a consequential figure.

Pope Francis also centered the quality of mercy in his ministry; in calling for a Jubilee of Mercy, Francis argued that mercy is the paramount value of the Christian faith, and the major way in which God's followers manifest God in the world. 

(In my home state of Iowa this week, we're seeing quite a different approach from Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who invoked her "Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" while advocating massive cuts in Medicaid, the federal health care program for poor people (Henderson 2025, Alfaro 2025).)

Becoming Pope brings the opportunity to speak globally as the leader of a substantial body of Christians. No other Christian has a similar position; the fragmented and fractious Protestants have a collective action problem, as for that matter do Muslims. Unfortunately, for many years the loudest Protestant (and Muslim) voices have been angry and prejudiced and clannish, hardly a good witness for a merciful God. (Hence we have Senator Ernst, as mentioned above, or Vice President J.D. Vance claiming that St. Augustine advocated caring less about people not in your immediate family.) 

What Francis was able to do as Pope was to be that good witness for Christianity, often loudly. This is not to be naive about the institutional failings of the Catholic Church, with which Pope Francis struggled, not always successfully. But the overarching message of his papacy was a constant challenge to treat each other well, not overlooking how we design our places. Indeed, among his statements in Laudato si' was this urbanist nugget:

Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape. (para 153)

Subtract Francis's voice from the last 12 years, and who is filling that role, so prominently and consistently and persistently?

So, from this non-Catholic, thank you to Pope Francis for twelve years of world leadership, and much joy in whatever the afterlife brings.

Pope Leo XIV (Wikimedia commons)

To the new Pope, Leo XIV, you have big shoes to fill, as I don't need to tell you. May your ministry, in spite of all administrative demands, continue to center love and mercy in your message to the world! And may your hometown White Sox return to winning ways soon.

SEE ALSO: Willemien Otten, "A New Pope, A New Dawn," Sightings, 29 May 2025

Everything is connected, including housing issues

 

Panel (from L): Kennedy Moehrs Gardner, Sheila Sutton,
Meleah Geertsma, Cyatherine Alias

In Cahokia Heights (formerly Centreville), Illinois, there is a crisis that illustrates the gaps in the silos that inform our local policy discussions. As discussed by the "Housing, Water and Flooding" panel at the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago this week, there is an ongoing problem there with houses flooding during and after any measurable rain, including overflowing sewers. It's a multidimensional catastrophe that defies neat assignment of responsibility:

• As an ongoing situation, it's not a big storm that would call in the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency
• it's exacerbated by climate change that brings more severe weather events, but it predates the current emergency
• the Clean Water Act of 1972 is focused on water quality, not the quality of life of people nearby
• addressing its impact on the community is complicated by our characteristic view of housing as an individual concern
• the situation was exacerbated or at least complicated by the 1980 routing of I-255 through town
• the low property values (FEMA could offer $20,000 per house) as well as the perilous finances of both town and sanitary district (neither of which can afford the $70 million cost of sewer repairs) are a legacy of decades of racial discrimination.  

Flooded area in Centreville IL
(Flickr photo by Anstr Davidson)

The panel included representatives of agencies focused on housing or climate change: Kennedy Moehrs Gardner is an attorney for Equity Legal Services in southern Illinois; Meleah Geertsma is a policy analyst-advocate for the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance; and Sheila Sutton, formerly with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is an attorney for Alliance for the Great Lakes. The panel was moderated by Cyatherine Alias for CNT, ably so in what she said was her first moderating experience.

As they discussed this case, and examples from Chicago, East St. Louis, Zanesville Ohio, and other places, it became clear that housing issues are inextricably connected to climate change, transportation planning, and even political dysfunction. All are "variations of the same (structural) problems" (Geertsma). The Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance, Geertsma's organization, published a report, entitled A City Fragmented, that found City Council member prerogatives in Chicago decreased land available for multifamily housing between 1970 and 2016; when only 20 percent of land is available for multifamily housing, it drives up rents and reinforces historic inequities that began with redlining. Affordable housing tends to be in areas that are environmentally vulnerable (cf. Keenan and Bautista 2019). 

Climate change is already driving up the cost of homeowners insurance, which is an additional obstacle to affordability (Sutton). The South Side of Chicago has seen more house flooding since the reconstruction of the Dan Ryan Expressway in 2006. Housing issues themselves include both "historic destruction of black homeowner wealth" and housing supply and construction. Since disaster aid is based on property values, it tends to make white communities whole while leaving black communities worse off (Geertsma).

The key to addressing complex problems is complex conversations. Moehrs Gardner noted that "the law can only do so much," but that "getting everyone to the table could drive solutions and funding" for repairing affected neighborhoods. These conversations could be supported by the national government, which funded remedial sewer projects across the country in 1986 (Geertsma), but need to be locally-driven; as Pete Saunders points out, housing needs differ across cities and metros, and so certainly do environmental issues and racial histories.

SEE ALSO:

"Seattle Considers More Design Review Changes That Could Cap Number of Meetings, Create Quicker, Cheaper Process, and Let More Buildings Go Without Review," Capitol Hill Seattle, 11 November 2024

David Wessel, "Where Do the Estimates of a 'Housing Shortage' Come From?" Brookings, 21 October 2024

Everybody there was there

I took the city manager's one bag challenge!

 

VIDEO: City Manager Jeff Pomeranz introduces the 1-Bag Challenge (0:31)

I don't know how long this bag has been under my kitchen sink. It's been at least five years, during which time it has been taunting me: You care about your community? You call yourself an urbanist? Then why do I live under the sink--huh?!?!?!?! Yes, I am judged by the things under my sink.

The 1-Bag Challenge was made by Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz several years ago. The idea was to encourage people to pick up litter around town. The full bags can be put out with the weekly trash, without counting against the one-cart limit. Individuals can go it alone, or as part of a group. My neighbor Brook picks up trash in nearby Bever Park as part of his regular walks. Last August he reported on Facebook:

Lila and I picked up 3 big ol bags of garbage from Blake Blvd, Bever Park, 34th street and Cottage Grove. We cleaned that area 2 weeks ago and already it's trashed. Seems like folks buy a plastic bottle filled with colored juice, take a sip and throw it out the window. Rinse and repeat. I don't get it. There's a lot I don't get. So I'm pledging to pick up a bag of trash with every CD I sell. I've got some catching up to do. It's a good workout bending over and hauling that bag up and down hills and trails. Hoping others will dig in and do a little bit of clean up too. Let's teach the kids a better way. Thanks for the support!

Faced with challenges from both the city manager and an award-winning rock musician, I could no longer ignore the call of duty. Responding was another matter. My uncle, Dwight Nesmith, described his entry into service during World War II:

He worked his way through one and a half years of business school before his country called him to duty. They called, and they called. And finally, 10 months after Pearl Harbor, he went. (from That Wasn't Very Much of an Introduction, released on RPC in 1963)

Today, as I responded to the call to a much briefer and less risky duty, was breezy and pleasant, a window of loveliness before it turns hot again. So, no time like the present! I spent considerable time overthinking where to work. Where would I find the right amount of trash? I didn't want to walk for hours and find maybe two ounces. Bever Park is Brook's turf, so surely clean as the proverbial whistle. I was hesitant to work in a residential neighborhood where I might be patronizing. The trails through town have some encampments, and I didn't want in my ignorance and privilege to pick up someone's belongings. I finally decided to walk along 16th Avenue, which runs behind the Geonetric building where I have my "summer office," across the river into Czech Village. 

I unfurled the bag, which turned out to contain a pair of gloves. Handy! and it saved me using the gardening gloves I'd brought. The bag seemed huge, though. 

In the yard outside the building I found my first item--a take out soft drink lid:

I spent quite some time on that lawn. There were scraps of paper, cigarette butts, a few bits of plastic. I started to get light-headed from all the bending over and standing up, yet I didn't have very much to show for it. I began to wish someone would throw me an alternator or something.

I moved through the vacant lots between here and the river. Marlboro seemed to be the cigarette brand of choice; Casey's the source of snack packages. There were a few but not many beverage cans. (Is Iowa's superannuated deposit law still effective?) There were a lot of those colored flag things that people use to mark gas lines and such, but all lying on the ground, obviously discarded. I picked them up; by the time I was finished, the sticks had started poking through the bottom of the bag.

At the edge of the bridge, in the shadow of the new flood wall and branding arch, I found a bucket of... what? Tossing it in would add to my haul in a hurry. But it looked somehow official, like someone was going to use it to do some work right there. Moral dilemma!

I left it. Once in Czech Village, I found what appeared to be the hand of a clock by the Kosek bandshell:

I didn't see a clock nearby from which it would have fallen, so I bagged it.

I stuck to litter, but I could have gone for weeds instead. There were a lot of these guys: 

I never saw them before the derecho, and now they're everywhere. If you're from South Dakota, perhaps you know what they are?

As I moved along, and got more tired, my standards for what to pick up kept going up. 16th Avenue, the principal street of Czech Village, is, as it turns out, chock full of cigarette butts. How many cigarette butts would it take to fill this huge bag? Someone needs to bring a big vacuum. I stopped grabbing butts, and the size of paper for which I would deign to stoop kept getting larger. I started going faster, and eventually reached my turn-around point, where 16th and 12th Avenues meet. (Cedar Rapids geography is weird.)

This picture was supposed to include the bag, but apparently
that's a bag too far for this photographer

A guy walking his dog thanked me for what I was doing. He told me he lives on the other side of I-380 and picks up litter under the bridge. There's so much that he fills the city manager's bag and another of his own. He's ready for the 2-Bag Challenge!

I walked back along the other side of 16th Avenue. I found someone's Medical Assistance Eligibility Card. (Is this something important? I messaged them on Facebook anyhow. They didn't need it, so I shredded it.) Near Czech Town Station, I worked around a guy talking on the phone in an African language. 

Then when I crossed A Street, just before the bridge, I found the mother lode. Good! because I now had a respectable load in my bag. Bad! because why was there so much trash? Was it workers, or trail users, or both? All that litter sent the unmistakable message that this is not a place worth caring about. But it is! Isn't it?

On the south side of the bridge, I found two fish hooks. Yikes! By the time I got back to the parking lot, I was tired, and ready for lunch. 

I don't know what I learned from taking the challenge, other than what I already knew: we live in a disposable society. Litter gets to the ground a lot of ways, probably equal parts inadvertence and malice, with most of it there through carelessness. Whatever I did for the community today, I feel less a sense of accomplishment than I did a couple weeks ago when I did a few hours' semi-competent work on a house for Habitat for Humanity. The house will last, I hope, for many years. The clean up will last only until the next person loses a wrapper out their car window, or empties their ashtray on 16th Avenue.

That's kind of a discouraging note to end on, but I've been feeling kind of discouraged lately about the whole notion of common life on which this blog is based. We have a collective destiny, I'm more convinced than ever, but the fewer people believe it, the more that destiny is going to be painful.

My bag.
I put it under the car while I went back to work...
just in case!

Interior of my bag,
for any of you youngsters who are into garbology

CLEAN UP CR SITE: https://www.cedar-rapids.org/residents/utilities/clean_up_cr.php

SEE ALSO: "Oh Hell," Before Holy Mountain (written April 25, 2012) [towards a theology of littering?]

Young people of today, embrace walkable urbanism!

 

An invitation to speak to Coe's Topics in Environmental Studies class gave me a chance to explain walkable urbanism to a group of informed college students. As Jeff Speck argues in his essay, "The Wrong Color Green," walkable urban design is a more effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions than switching to electric cars and LEED-certified buildings without lifestyle changes--what he calls "Gizmo Green" (Speck 2012: 51-63). Speck's book also pointed me to this Center for Neighborhood Technology site showing--more or less--that transportation emissions in metropolitan areas come from car-dependent suburbia.

So how do we get people out of their cars and on their feet (or bicycles)? Speck and his co-authors had already described the prerequisites for most people: meaningful destinations, safe streets, comfortable streets, and interesting neighborhoods (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck 2010: 64-83).

The meaningful walk

Most people do not walk for the fun of it: "The first rule is that pedestrian life cannot exist in the absence of worthwhile destinations that are easily accessible on foot" (Duany et al. 2010: 64). The Mound View neighborhood northeast of Coe's campus has a grocery store, two parks, and several pubs all within an easy distance from most people's homes. When we lived in Mound View, we made regular summer strolls to this Dairy Queen:

Downtown Cedar Rapids is evolving into a walkable place, albeit with less in the way of life's necessities like groceries. (The pub pictured has closed, but there are plenty to take its place.)

The proximity of this grocery store to the Wellington Heights neighborhood means that a lot of people walk to it, in spite of the perilous crossing at 1st Avenue:

 

Walkable areas mix residential and commercial uses--take that, Euclidean zoning!--and are best based on a critical mass of locally-owned businesses. For some starter tips, check out the work of Stacy Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

The safe walk

Most people will not walk where they do not feel safe. People feel safe from cars when streets are narrow and/or there is a buffer between cars and pedestrians. People feel safe from cars when buildings are designed to facilitate "eyes on the street" (a phrase made famous by Jane Jacobs) i.e. windows not walls. In downtown Fairfield, people crossing the main street from the park to the shops have a short hop where they and the crossing area are both clearly visible. 

 

Photo courtesy of Ben Kaplan

Streets through Cedar Rapids's Wellington Heights neighborhood were widened and made one-way in the 1960s to facilitate the speedy movement of cars. Thankfully, the streets were redesigned in 2019--though still wide--slowing the cars, and making the neighborhood more walkable and neighborly.

The very suburban area around Westdale doesn't feel safe to walk. Cars are fast and loud, and there are many places where they turn onto and off of the main drags. Streets are difficult and dangerous to cross.

Edgewood Road, pictured above, is a classic stroad. Pete Saunders is hopeful stroad design can be repaired, improving housing supply as well as walkability: This kind of suburban infill could relieve pressure on hot urban neighborhoods, thus reducing the displacement of poorer families. If developers include affordable housing in the mix, it could bring more people closer to the jobs in suburban office parks that are currently out of reach for many city residents. Maybe, but it's expensive, unlike toning up a core neighborhood where the grid pattern already exists.

Jeff Speck has specific design recommendations for safe walking (2012, ch. 5). Slip lanes are not safe... period!

 

The comfortable walk

Flat, simple, continuous front walls, narrow streets, and rows of street trees create a "degree of architectural enclosure--the amount that it makes its inhabitants feel held within a space.... Whatever the cause, people are attracted to places with well-defined edges and limited openings, while they tend to flee places that lack clear definition or boundaries" (Duany et al. 2010: 74-75). The comfortable feeling of 8th Street SE, even though this section is largely comprised of parking lots, comes almost entirely from the strategically-placed trees.

Waterloo artist Michael Broshar brilliantly captures how the design of this Chicago street feels both comfortable and interesting:

The same feeling comes from Gustave Caillebotte's beloved "Paris Street-Rainy Day," even though Caillebotte intended it to depict alienation.

This intersection on the north end of campus does not feel comfortable or safe, which has hampered development in that neighborhood.

The interesting walk

"For people to walk," write Duany and colleagues, "a neighborhood has to be interesting: not terribly so, but enough to convey some notion of human activity" (2010: 80). I love discovering little side-yard gardens, like this one in Oak Hill-Jackson:

16th Avenue SW, the historic commercial street of Czech Village, features shops built to the sidewalk, generous windows, and occasional benches:

 

 

A mural brightens an alley in Iowa City. They had to get an exemption for the sign, too.

 

 

Another downtown mural doesn't quite do the trick. The tunnel creates a wall effect in spite of the whimsical colors, and doesn't feel safe.

 

 

What is not interesting? Garages. And parking lots. The Med Quarter is full of parking lots that create distance between destinations (anti-meaningful), do not show signs of human activity (anti-interesting), and when in active use are trickier to cross than even busy streets (anti-safe).

The most effective way to keeping the planet habitable is to get people out of cars and onto streets. For most people, that requires re-thinking how we design streets, neighborhoods, and towns.

SEE ALSO:

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (North Point, 10^th anniversary ed., 2010)

Diana Ionescu, "Cleveland Mayor Wants a 15-Minute City," Planetizen, 18 April 2022 

Charles Marohn, "To Fully Observe, We Need to Walk," Strong Towns, 25 April 2022

Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (North Point, 2012)