Urban Habitats and the Degradation Myth

From the City of Austin’s Nature in the City program –

Austin Nature in the City is proud to present
Nature in the City: Urban Habitats and the Degradation Myth
With Kevin Anderson
*This is a Brown Bag Lunch and Learn

Since the 19th century, books about urban natural history have documented the richness of habitats and diversity of species to be found in American cities. However, traditionally in America, biologists and ecologists study nature in “wildlands” and so view urban nature as degraded and disturbed in comparison. Urban nature worthy of professional study and protection is whatever remnant habitats remain from before the city was built, and the rest is a problem to correct. However, in recent decades, the rapid growth of urban ecology in America has begun to rewrite this simplistic degradation myth into a more complex story of urban biodiversity across a wide range of urban habitats and to rediscover historical books of urban natural history that add more texture to the story.

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The 2017 Lunchtime Lectures will explore the complex relationship between the city and nature in America. Our American narrative of nature celebrates wilderness or “pristine nature” and rural or “pastoral nature” in contrast to the degradation of urban landscapes. However, we are now predominately a country of urbanites who have only recreational contact with wilderness or pastoral nature. To compensate for our urban “nature deficit”, we have incorporated “green space” into our cities – preserves, parks, farms, and gardens – to allow for contact with officially sanctioned approximations of wild and pastoral nature in the urban landscape. Ecologists are called on to mediate and to assess whether it is a real ecosystem, and thereby add another chapter to the narrative entitled “urban ecology” in which science measures ecological cycles and ecosystem function in the city. The 2017 Lunchtime Lectures are an attempt to disentangle this complex story of ecology, culture, and the American City and, perhaps, to give us all a better understanding of urban nature and the role it plays in our lives.

Kevin Anderson Ph.D.
Kevin is a geographer and philosopher researching the nature of, and the nature in, urban wastelands. He studied at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania [BA], Durham University, England, Ohio University [MA] where he taught philosophy and symbolic logic. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin with a dissertation entitled: Marginal Nature: Urban Wastelands and the Geography of Nature. His research interests include sewage treatment, soil ecology, and sustainable agriculture, urban ecology and sustainability, riparian ecology, environmental history, philosophy, and literature. He is a co-founder of the Texas Riparian Association and the Upper Tisza Foundation in northeastern Hungary. He runs the Austin Water-Center for Environmental Research which focuses on soil, sewage recycling, and environmental trace contaminants; rivers, riparian ecology, and alluvial aquifers; cities, biodiversity, and avian ecology.

Brought to you by Austin Water Utility, Center for Environmental Research (CER), The University of Texas, Texas A&M University. Nature in the City – Austin is sponsored by the Community Trees Division, and helps to implement the Imagine Austin and Urban Forest Plans.

Mark Your Calendars! The 2017 Calendar for Kevin Anderson at One Texas Center can be found here: http://www.austintexas.gov/event/2017-nature-city-kevin-anderson