Re-naturing our Future Cities

Abstract

Cities need nature. They thrive on riparian corridors, urban forestry and public spaces. Without urban nature, our cities would overheat, flood and become quickly unpleasant to live in. Therefore, a basic principle of urban planning is nature, and an understanding of the capacity and functionality of the natural environment is critical to our creation and management of sustainable cities. How we achieve this is, however, more variable and subject to a range of political, socio-economic and ecological factors, many of which have been explored within this book.