Richard Louv / Jan 03 2013
For Release Thursday, January 3, 2013
Citiwire.net
For many people, thinking about the future conjures images from movies like Blade Runner or Mad Max: a post-apocalyptic dystopia stripped of nature and human kindness. We seem drawn to that flame, but it’s a dangerous fixation.
There are many reasons for the attraction – global threats to the environment, economic hard times, decades of disconnection between children and nature – but there’s a fundamental problem with it. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that any movement – any culture – will fail if it cannot paint a picture of a world people will want to go to.
Despite undeniable successes, environmentalism is in trouble: Many recent polls describe a public with diminishing regard for environmental concerns. What we need now is a new nature movement, one that includes but goes beyond the good practices of traditional environmentalism and sustainability, and paints a compelling, inspiring portrait of a society better than the one we live in – not just a survivable world, but a nature-rich world in which our children and grandchildren thrive.
This new nature movement, inchoate and self-organizing, is already emerging.
It revives old concepts in health and urban planning (Frederick Law Olmsted, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Muir come to mind). It also adds new ones, based on research showing the power of nearby wilderness and natural areas to improve our psychological and physical health, cognitive functioning and economic and social well-being. Colorado University professor Louise Chawla describes the basis of the movement as “the idea that as humans we can not only make our ecological footprints as light as possible, but we can actually leave places better than when we came to them, making them places of delight.”
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Richard Louv / Jul 01 2011
For Release Friday, July 1, 2011
Citiwire.net
In 2009, Janet Ady of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stood before a crowd of grassroots leaders gathered by the Children & Nature Network. She held up an outsized pharmacy bottle. Within the bottle was a physician’s prescription — one that would be as appropriate for adults as it would be for children.
The contents of the medicine bottle included a variety of information, including a Web address to National Wildlife Refuges, a guide to animal tracks, Leave No Trace tips, a link to information on planting native vegetation to help bring back butterfly and bird migration routes, a Power Bar, and other items — including a temporary tattoo of migratory birds.
The label read: Directions: Use daily, outdoors in nature. Go on a nature walk, watch birds, and observe trees. Practice respectful outdoor behavior in solitude or take with friends and family. Refill: Unlimited. Expires: Never.
Here’s a cost-effective way to improve the health of children and adults.
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Richard Louv / Nov 21 2009
For Release Saturday, November 21, 2009
Citiwire.net
Remember the special place in nature that you had as a child–that wooded lot at the end of the cul de sac, that ravine behind your housing tract? What if adults had cared just as much about that special place as you did, when you were a child?
In the spirit of the Do it Yourself, Do it Now philosophy of the Children & Nature Network, here’s an idea whose time may be coming: the creation of “nearby-nature trusts.” Land trust organizations could develop and distribute tool kits, and perhaps offer consulting services, to show how neighborhood residents could band together to protect those small green parcels of nearby nature. What might these little parcels be called? How about “button parks?”
More about my suggested term later, but first let me tell you about the Carolina Thread Trail. Read More »
Richard Louv / Sep 04 2009
For Release Friday, September 4, 2009
Citiwire.net
Last month CBS’ “The Early Show” recognized the danger of what we’re now informally calling “nature-deficit disorder.” The show featured the 25 best cities in America for raising kids so they live healthy young lives that are connected to–not cut off–from the natural world. As coiner of the “nature deficit disorder” phrase (an informal, not medical term), I couldn’t have been more pleased. But more important, the media recognition underscores how critically important it is to help kids connect to nature, designing our communities to make it more possible.
The top three cities were announced by Backpacker magazine editor-in-chief Jonathan Don. Selected by his editors, they were Boulder, Colo., Jackson, Wyo., and Durango, Colo. Boulder was the magazine’s first choice, Dorn said, because it not only offers easy access to wilderness, but also to hundreds of miles of networked bike and running trails. After snowstorms, the city plows its bike paths before plowing the roads. It should be noted that most of the top cities on this list are destination locations–small, scenic, and relatively wealthy.
What about the rest of us, who aren’t able or willing to relocate? Read More »
Richard Louv / Jan 08 2009
For Release January 11, 2009
Citiwire.net
President-elect Barack Obama is reportedly considering a new American relationship with Cuba. That’s long-overdue good news. But the new administration should consider this cautionary note: “An invasion of one Madonna is equal to ten Marine divisions,” according to Miguel Coyula, a noted city planner in Havana.
When Coyula made this observation in 2001, he didn’t think that either brand of invasion–cultural or military–was a good idea. At the time, Coyula, concerned about the future of Havana’s unique architectural heritage, was speaking to members of the Citistates Group, a collection of U.S. city planners, professors, and journalists looking into Havana’s architecture and urban planning. The visit took place before the Bush administration severely limited the ability of delegations of American professionals to visit Cuba.
That day, Coyula, one of the first of many officials and private citizens that we interviewed, led us on a tour of his kingdom, the vast “Maqueta de la Habana,” a warehouse-sized scale model of every building, street and tree in Cuba’s largest city. The low-tech but impressive planning tool was made of scraps of recycled cigar boxes. The miniature buildings were color-coded–dark brown for the Spanish colonial period, yellow for the 1900-1958 period, and white for those few buildings built since the revolution. Read More »
