4–7 June 2019 → Paris, France
The Nature of Cities
The Nature of Cities — EuropeA movement for collaborative and transdisciplinary green cities
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The Summit is finished, but check back here in the coming weeks and months to find various outputs and next steps.
See the final draft version of the full program here.
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Click here to see a list of planned field trips. Check back, because more will be added.
SEED SESSIONS … are workshops on ideas of all kinds, conversation among diverse points of view united by a green perspective. All of these are planned as workshops: after brief scene-setting presentations, each moves to discussion in various formats to explore the ideas and potentials.
SEED WORKSHOPS: THE COMPLETE LIST
Download the complete schedule as a PDF. Note that it is subject to change.
| Tuesday afternoon, 4 June (Plenary in the morning) | ||
| Approaching Wholeness: Cities And their Bioregions | The health of an ecosystem lies in the vitality of interactions among its denizens and habitats. First, we will survey how bottom-up social innovations are leading citizens to reconnect urban and rural in social food projects, agritourism, smart villages, maker networks and more. Then we will break into design micro-clinics and work on practical ways to make our cities whole again. | Mario M. Yanez, John Thakara, Naomi Tsur |
| Wild, stray and care: Exploring multiple ways people co-exist with urban nature | This session seeks input from multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral perspectives using the conceptual frame of “wild, stray and care” to discuss what types of urban nature exist. Explore how people engage with nonhumans in cities, and what strategies could be implemented to overcome conflict and transform cities into harmonious multi-species spaces. | Ferne Edwards, Amy Hahs, Hwang Yun Hye, Kevin Sloan |
| Creative ways to support child stewardship of urban biodiversity | How can we prepare the children of today to become the protectors of global biodiversity tomorrow? Bring your creative ideas, experiences or interest in interventions that can promote nature stewardship in children/youth living in cities. This is an open discussion to exchange ideas, and build new networks around urban stewardship initiatives. | Bronwyn Cumbo, Brent Jacobs, Marthe Derkzen |
| Financing city greening : experiences and possibilities | Green spaces in cities offer many benefits for the health and wellbeing of citizens. But it is challenging to finance the implementation and maintenance of these nature-based solutions. This session advances discussions on financing nature-based solutions by building on the outcomes of the European conference on innovative financing for creating green cities held in Manchester in March. | Chantal van Ham |
| A stick or a carrot? – How can cities retain existing trees and plant more trees on private lands? | Municipal officers, advocacy groups, practitioners, and researchers will share experiences and collaboratively develop a suite of mechanisms to retain and increase urban trees and canopy cover in private lands | Camilo Ordonez-Barona |
| Experiences in green spaces and implications for urban design | People’s perceptions and use of green spaces vary considerably across and within cities. The session will explore ways to capture these perceptions and design green spaces so that they provide more benefits to urban dwellers. We will discuss different assessment methods and use design thinking approaches to explore their implications for designing new green spaces. | Perrine Hamel, Thibaud Griessinger, Spencer Wood, Emma Vilarem, Roy Remme, Noémie Fompeyrine |
| The Unifying Act of Sowing Seeds | How can opportunities for seed production be twinned with urban landscape change? The National Wildflower Centre is weaving together partners in an attempt to scale up projects into movements and to reverse biodiversity loss. How can experience best influence policy and planning decisions for cities across the globe? | Richard Scott, John Little, Grass Roof Company, Polly Moseley, Northern Flowerhouse |
| An Inclusive Vision of Biophilic Cities | Biophilic Cities will lead a workshop to explore how the collective vision of a natureful city varies across unique and diverse urban environments and cultures. | JD Brown, Tim Beatley |
| Exploring urban habitats: more than human and other odd perspectives | Adopt an odd perspective (plant, animal, element) and explore scores with us: catalytic instructions to frame a relationship between participants and ecological processes in the urban context through time. | Elliott Maltby |
| How to connect people with nature in cities? #NatureForAll | Design your own strategy to influence audiences to connect with nature. Learn to apply smart communication and behaviour change methods. Exercises in small groups. We will share latest proven methods! | Peter Paul van Kempen, Karen Keenleyside, Katalin Czippán |
| Talk, Map, Act: Strengthening Environmental Stewardship through Storytelling | Who takes care of local places? As government budgets strain to address all kinds of pressing issues the work of the civic realm is increasingly important. A growing network of grassroots stewardship groups is stepping in to fill this gap But their work often goes unrecognized. In this session, we will lift up the stories of stewards who care for their place. You can reflect on your own experiences caring for the environment, and to add your story to our archive of stewardship stories. | Laura Landau, Lindsay Campbell, Erika Svendsen, Michelle Johnson, Nathalie Blanc and Tischa Munoz-Erickson |
| Living in Harmony with Nature: contribute together to Cities and Subnational Governments Action Agenda for the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework | The workshops will bring metropolitan areas, cities and subnational government’s together to brainstorm on recommendations for an action agenda, a roadmap and a sequence of milestone events paving the way towards a post 2020 biodiversity framework at CBD COP15, with ambitious commitments for Nature & People. | Didier Babin, Oliver Hillel, Ingrid Coetzee |
| Use of Immersive Technology in Biophilic and Habitat Design | Immersive technology is rapidly being adopted within many disciplines but has yet to be used to create immersive experiences showcasing biophilic designed habitats that can benefit ecosystem services. How can we use this technology to encourage uptake and quality of urban greening whilst benefiting biodiversity? | Ashley Welch |
| Health benefits from urban nature therapies for health promotion and disease prevention | In this session we will discuss the health outcomes from nature based interventions: urban gardening, garden therapy, plant foraging, phytotherapy, forest bathing and forest therapy for health promotion and disease prevention. In a world cafe format, we will work on development of new nature connection and nature therapy projects for knowledge and practice sharing between practitioners, scientists and policy makers. | Vitalija Povilaityte Petri, Katriina Kilpi, Anna Leonard |
| Implementing urban nature: mind the system! | Despite their positive contribution to addressing sustainability challenges there is a lack of systemic integration of nature-based solutions in urban planning and design. Please join us in exploring the roles of the construction, regulatory and finance sectors in explaining the status quo, and pathways to their improved integration. | Alexander van der Jagt, Hade Dorst |
| Me, Us, Them – Convening planners, ecologists and designers to build long-term collaborations | The job of academic researchers is to build knowledge. The job of planners and designers is to apply intention to shape our environment. How can we carry out these very different activities… together? What values and goals do we share, or not? How can we help each other do our best work? | Sarah Jack Hinners, Diane Pataki, Katie Coyne |
| Nature and Cities: A Balancing Act | Join kinetic artist Kevin Reese and facilitator Valerie Gwinner* to explore the “missing pieces” in the balance between nature and cities. Participants will collaborate to create a visual metaphor — a mobile (a suspended work of art) —to capture the competing factors and then to re-envision the next steps toward balance. | Kevin Reese, Valerie Gwinner |
| Wednesday afternoon, 5 June (Plenary in the morning) | ||
| Spreading the London National Park City idea | London will cut the ribbon on the National Park City idea in July, and several cities are considering doing it also. Can you imagine your city as a “national park city”, with many green spaces adding up to multiplicative effect? How could it be accomplished? What would it look like? Join in a discussion of a new set of guidelines and recommendations for building such park networks in other cities. | Alison Barnes, Paul Currie, Ingrid Coetzee, Gillian Dick |
| Modelling Paris: Minecraft for citizen engagement in urban revitalisation | Tools for citizen engagement in urban design. Session participants receive a certified training on using Minecraft to support transformation of neglected urban spaces. Participants will train on a model specifically designed for the TNOC Summit of Les Passarelle in Paris—an area currently slated for re-design by the City of Paris. Design ideas resulting from the workshop experiment will be published in a digital exposé at TNOC website and presented to the City of Paris. | Christelle Lahoud |
| Our Right to the City that We Want | Urbanism offers opportunities for better lives, better networking and better services in general. However, in many parts of the world, unplanned urban expansion is exacerbating existing inequalities and placing extra pressures on urban infrastructure, increasing inequality and slum population and slum like conditions. In some cities, people are mobilising around specific issues, around human rights—but not yet over their right to shape their city, to shape the urban processes in their city. | Fadi Hamdan |
| Place: A Personal Affair. An Experiment in the “Psychoanalysis” of Particular Places | Places, like people, have personalities. this workshop, to undertake the study of the placehood of particular places. Participants are invited to propose a place about which they feel strongly. Each participant will be required to take its place it on the couch, so to speak – that is, to take on the role of personifying their chosen place, providing the words and images that would substitute for its impossible self-expression. | Joe Rabie |
| Setting Urban Nature Goals; Sharing the New York City Experience | New York City Nature Goals 2050 is a citywide initiative composed of over 75 organizations that developed shared environmental goals and targets that apply to all ecosystems and human communities. We’ll use this format to create international urban nature goals. We’ll brainstorm a top 5 functional goals for nature in a city. Then discuss what is needed to contribute to the 5 goals. Last, we will develop actionable targets. The workshop also connects to the session “Towards Harmonised Measurement”. | Bram Gunther, Eric Sanderson |
| Mapping green heritage in your city | This workshop is designed to generate a conversation about promoting and building networks of green heritage, and to think about how intangible elements (historical, cultural) are important components in i) understanding the value of urban green space and ii) building public constituencies to protect and grow these spaces. We hope to build on this workshop with the creation of a ‘green heritage network’ and create ‘seed’ projects in new cities. | Karen Jones |
| Including diverse voices in urban adaptation planning | How can we ensure that everyone benefits from living in a climate proof city? Diverse voices need to be included in adaptation planning, but how do we make it happen? This session invites planners, resilience thinkers, designers and activists to explore justice in climate adaptation planning. | Marthe Derkzen, Timon McPhearson, Huda Shaka |
| Why don’t we have more green housing? | We all want energy and water efficient housing, but we don’t all want to pay for it. For affordable housing, any increment to cost can be a serious barrier to access for low and moderate income households. These barriers have been especially acute in developing countries. We’ll discuss challenges and potential models for achieving energy efficiency in housing and for financing it. | William Britt Gwinner |
| Actions Towards a Sustainable City: Walking and Participatory Governance | Transitioning to sustainability is not just about greening and technological devices. It has to do with how people cultivate versions of ownership and become stewards for their community. In this session we will visit specific sites with histories of participation and adaptive planning. Along the way we will talk about walking and its many manifestation in the urban environment. The “minutes” from the session will be a drawing of the route with discussion highlights as “points of interest” along the way. | François Mancebo & Matthew Jensen |
| The art of trees and plants meditation | The relationship between art and nature. From Leonardo to Fukuoka. The aesthetics of germination and growing process of a plant. Biodynamics and imaginative capacity. Plant inner image. Practice: Participants are invited to participate to the performance/meditation “how to build an inner image of a tree”. | Emilio Fantin |
| Smarter trees for smarter cities? Exploring the interface between green space management, “smart” planning, and digital technologies | Through narrative cases and facilitated interactive discussions, we work with participants to identify and explore applications for existing and emerging digital technologies in urban forest and green space management. | Nadine Galle |
| Building a framework for integrating nature into urban planning; using lessons from Africa | A fundamental shift in planning and decision making is required by cities; one that incorporates ongoing learning and knowledge construction, reflection and relationship building. Baring this in mind, this session aims to develop a framework that can support cities with a more effective methodology for integrating nature into planning. | Jess Kavonic, Ellika Hermansson-Torok, Pippin Andersson, Ingrid Coetzee |
| Assessing the value of nature in cities | A tool to assess the value of nature in cities, adapted from the Protected Areas Benefit Assessment Tool, developed for World Wildlife Fund in 2008. The tool is a set of steps allowing a a dialogue between different types of stakeholders and then enables the analysis of their perception about the values of protected areas. This tool has been adapted and implemented in an urban context in Colombia, and will be deminstrated using a natural feature in Paris. | Carolina Figueroa |
| Open, reproducible research in urban environments | Transparency and reproducibility in research are critical to scientific and societal progress. In this session, we will share interdisciplinary perspectives on what openness and reproducibility mean in the context of urban research. We will identify barriers to information sharing and discuss how researchers, institutions and publishers can work together to overcome these. | Jamie Males |
| The city re-scripted | It is not always easy for practitioners from different fields – research, field work, activism, etc. – to find a common ground for imagination. This workshop invites participants from all backgrounds to join an experiment in radical storytelling. Using materials ranging from science-fiction novels to live tweets, we will explore the idea of ‘commoning’ through collective writing and shared narratives of the nature of cities. | Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro |
| Urban Living Lab Playground: The Game | This is an interactive game through which players will co-create a storyline to fight against a common climate-related challenge affecting our cities today. By exploring an unusual group of urban stakeholders – a pregnant woman, a local business owner, or the mayor of a city– , and the different Urban Living Lab personnel, players will have to make use of a wide range of co-creation tools to bring the city together and address this challenge through collaboration. | Spela Zalokar, Clara Mafé, Ines Vaittinen |
| Exploring different visions for urban water daylighting | Multiple benefits flow from daylighting waterways. However, even suggestions of deculverting provoke disagreement on water’s meaning and role. We’ll discuss the challenges and opportunities of engaging communities in this process. | Mark Usher, Janice Astbury |
| Spatial interaction of green roofs: how does it work? | How can ecology and spatial planning be combined to maximise the biodiversity of green roofs? In this session we will explore the factors that make a green roof an attractive urban habitat for fauna based on the most recent studies. Together we will discuss the optimal spatial distribution of green roofs in a city, and how to achieve it together with governments, real estate developers and other stakeholders. | Rens de Boer, Marc Barra, Maxime Zucca |
| Thursday morning, 6 June (Plenary in the afternoon) | ||
| Towards harmonized measurement: a workshop on urban nature indicators—Part 1 | Measuring and monitoring are essential to the effective management of natural capital in urban areas. With an eye to the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and the expectation that cities should make measurable contributions to global biodiversity targets, this session will address: 1) What programs currently support cities to monitor natural capital and track contributions towards biodiversity targets? 2) What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of existing urban natural capital indicators and how might they be harmonized and standardized? 3) Which emerging technologies, platforms, and programs can be harnessed to support urban natural capital and biodiversity assessment? | Russell Galt, Jennifer Pierce, Melissa Barton |
| Urban nature/s and economic growth: compatible or discordant? | Nature-Based Solutions are projected to deliver economic growth and jobs, in addition to multiple benefits across a range of social and environmental challenges, including climate regulation, biodiversity and ecosystem loss. Yet research indicates that NBS with clearly pro-(economic)-growth agendas tend to compromise issues of social justice and even ecological/biodiversity protection goals. In this session we ask: do the multiple expectations projected upon NBS warrant reality checks? And what can we learn from degrowth theory for the type of nature/s compatible (or not) with growing cities? | Filka Sekulova, Isabelle Anguelovski, Panagiota Kotsila, LAura Colucci-Gray, Helen Toxopeus |
| How to make green cities more inclusive: European examples of co-design and co-implementation” | Join a hands-on guided exercise with co-creation experts and European cities to learn their techniques for co-creating local nature-based interventions that are inclusive and internationally replicable. | Clara Jean Grimes, Alice Reil, Katharina Hölscher, Katrien Van De Sijpe |
| Citizen science as an instrument to raise awareness on urban nature | Citizen science can open up the eyes of your citizens to the value of nature near to them. Together we search for the citizens science project that fits your city. | Gitty Korsuize |
| The Challenges of Inclusive River Restoration Projects in the Urban South | This session highlights questions of inclusion when river restoration projects take place in challenging economic, social, ecological, infrastructure and fiscal conditions. Brief presentations triggering debate. Networking around a policy-oriented agenda. | Juan Miguel Kanai, Demian Rotbart |
| Signaling Water: Google Dada Haiku Slam Flags | Bring your wordsmithing skills to craft poems about water to be read along the Seine River. Participants will work in teams to create a Haiku or Tanka based upon Google searches of short phrases related to their water concerns. | Robin Lasser + Marguerite Perret + Bruce Scherting |
| Evolution of biodiversity in urbans areas | The evolution of biodiversity in urban areas is a new topic with recent interesting results from the research, followed by a discussion. | Jean-Jacques Perrier, Luc Abbadie, Bruno Barroca, Colin Fontaine, Isabelle Dajoz |
| Periurban green infrastructures: nature facing urban development | Cities are growing and this growth is still gained mainly on surrounding green areas. It’s time to think how nature could penetrate cities and suburban or periurban areas. We need to find new solution to reverse this trend. We’ll use table discussion to create a collective reflection. | TOURNAIRE Guillaume, Aurore Meyfroidt, Sylvia Pintarits, Alessandro Betta |
| Being the City’s Metabolism | This interactive session explores hidden resources which support city living. We will embody different urban flows and co-create provocative questions that challenge research communities, private sector and governments to innovate. | Paul Currie, Ingrid Coetzee, Jess Kavonic |
| You Read Me? Making Energy Policy Legible with Strategic Information Design | An in-depth look at tools for visualizing nuanced climate policy alternatives and techniques for catalyzing previously-reticent publics. A particular focus will be on infographics that insure participation in complex decision making processes. | Sam Holleran, Bernd Riedel |
| Being good neighbours: Scaling-up from individual to collective wildlife actions | We will explore how a ‘scaling-up’ of wildlife-friendly gardening can be achieved in communities. Through facilitated discussions involving perspectives of multiple stakeholders we will produce a set of actionable recommendations. | Tristan John Pett, Toos van Noordwijk, René van der Wal, Laura Colucci-Gray, Robert Feller |
| Tools and games for better dialogue among stakeholder: Examples from Africa | This session will provide localized innovative sharing of lessons learned and dialogue techniques that have global relevance for developing effective collaboration mechanisms to enable mainstreaming of information into planning. Participants will be exposed to these lessons and conversation starter methods through interacting and participating in a number of “games” that have been designed under ICLEI Africa projects. Through exposure and “learning by doing”, the session provides the platform for participants to upscale the relevant dialogue methods into their own settings and activities. | Jess Kavonic, Ellika Hermansson-Torok, Pippin Anderson, Ingrid Coetzee |
| Greening cities in the face of water scarcity | In a polarizing world where half of us have too much water and the other half have too little, all of us share the need to green our cities. Numerous cities and organizations have identified strategies for provision of drinking water, water conservation and distribution in pursuit of a sustainable future. This session will discuss ways of doing this in regions where water is increasingly scarce. We will demonstrate how cities around the world are meeting this challenge and successfully managing greenspace even in periods of severe drought. | Diane Pataki, Naomi Tsur, Peter Schoonmaker |
| Planning for Nature Based Climate Adaptation | Interactive session Nature-Based Climate Adaptation. We will demonstrate tools for planning of Nature-Based Solutions and explore with participants how these tools can effectively support the planning and implementation process | Reinder Brolsma, Gerben Mol, Helena Hulsman, Monserrat Budding |
| Blue Urbanism: How can we enable healthier coastal cities through blue city plans, practices, and policies? | Coastal cities experience rapid urbanisation and population growth worldwide linked to the diverse economic and social benefits flowing from proximity to the sea. Transitioning coastal cities into ‘ocean cities’ is a restorative blue urban pathway to healthier, happier and sustainable city living. Hear about the global blue urbanism movement, therapeutic seascapes and the city marine parks concept and share your ideas on how we can help deepen feelings of connectedness to the ocean and make our cities bluer. | Simon James Pittman, Tim Beatley, Kate Moseley |
| Engaging the unusual suspects in urban nature | Looking beyond the climate-leading cities of Europe, recent research has shown that other smaller cities are facing real challenges in engaging citizens in developing alternative and sustainable business and governance models for urban nature initiatives. In this “Therapy session” we invite participants who have experienced first-hand the challenges of civic inertia, lack of entrepreneurship culture and resistance to change to share the ‘good, bad and ugly’ of their experience before we identify together 10 tipping points for cultural change. | Siohban McQuiad, Marcus Collier |
| How can we use Street Art to promote greener cities? | TNOC’s Nature of Graffiti site (http://thenatureofgraffiti.org/) collects images of nature-themed street art from around the world. What can we do with this unique collection to promote advocacy, community, and green cities? We will visit the nearby and graffiti-rich Butte aux Cailles neighborhood and talk about the power of street art to create dialog, action, and awareness and discuss potential collaborations (e.g., writing, dance, photography, video, contest, etc.). | Valerie Gwinner |
| Intertexting Investigation | The participants gather in groups progress in the city according to predetermined trajectories. Groups exchange text messages, photos, videos, sound recordings, etc. relating to the impressions of the spaces in which they are. The various productions collected are reconstructed and staged in a second time, with reading in choral form, visual and sound presentations. It’s about collectively highlighting feelings about atmospheres and places. The objective is to : to develop new methods of investigation on the territory; to use digital writings to build dialogues and visuals based on the urban environment; to favor the development of collective narratives on the experiences of materiality; to experiment cartographies relating to subjectivities in dialogue.
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Nathale Blanc |
Special Events
Several special experiences are planned:
FRIEK—Forum for Radical Imagination on Environmental Knowledge
A corps of artists, dancers, poets, and other arts-based practitioners offer a platform of exhibits, spaces, workshops, and happenings that challenge the framework of established knowledge. Attentive to the urban landscape, and partnering with human and non-human companions, FRIEK helps us imagine new ways to weave our own work and ideas into a broader transdisciplinary fabric. FRIEK is a permanent table / installation / hang out at the Summit, placed in the lobby space at the Auditorium. All are welcome to stop by any time, to explore new ways to imagine the nature of cities. There are also seed sessions embedded in other programming, from writing workshops and graffiti discussions, to collective sculpture and murals. Arts programming at TNOC Summit is led by Patrick Lydon, Carmen Bouyer, and Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro.
Farm to table dinners: Two dinner at a local farm-to-table restaurants. Short talks on urban food and the “farm to table” model by the chef, an urban farmer who supplies the restaurant, and a scientist, followed by conversations, wine, and dinner at the tables. Very limited seating. (Special fee.)
Summit party: Light food, drinks, dancing and many small idiosyncratic spaces to hang out and talk. At Les Grande Voisin, a reclaimed urban space that was formerly a hospital complex—now it houses artists, small startups, and new immigrants.
Field Trips: A variety of trip around Paris, organized by ARB-IAU (formerly Nature Parif), Versailles, and others; and led by various practitioners. To see the list, CLICK HERE.
Daily Schedule
The program details are still in development, but the flow goes something like this:
Day One, 4 June 2019
Morning: Plenary Dialogues
Afternoon: Seed Sessions, Skills Sessions, MicroTalks, Networking cafes
Evening: Gala / Party (at Les Grands Voisins)
Day Two, 5 June
Morning: Plenary Dialogues
Afternoon: Seed Sessions, Skills Sessions, MicroTalks, Networking cafes
Evening: Farm to Table Dinner Special Event (limited seating), at Le ReCyclerie.
Day Three, 6 June
Morning: Afternoon: Seed Sessions, Skills Sessions, MicroTalks
Afternoon: Plenary Dialogues and Closing
Evening: Farm to Table Dinner Special Event (limited seating), at Tempero.
Day Four, 7 June
Field trips around Paris, organized by ARB idF and others, and a public event.
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