Robert F. Young

Planting the Living City

Problem: Critics have problematized infrastructure for its inability to keep pace with the rising social and ecological impacts of urbanization. Researchers identify urban green infrastructure (GI), including urban forests, as an important strategy for providing public goods and increasing resiliency while reducing ecological footprints and social inequity in metropolitan areas; however, realizing these benefits through planning is still uncertain ground, as most contemporary urban GI endeavors in the United States are small, individual projects rather than integrated, community-wide efforts. This underinvestment has left planners with little experience in developing GI at a metropolitan scale. Purpose: We address this deficit in infrastructure planning by studying plannings role in advancing large-scale, urban tree-planting initiatives (TPI) in eight major U.S. cities and one metropolitan county. In this study, we explore stakeholder perspectives on successes and setbacks in TPI planting, stewardship, business, and outreach plans. From these perspectives, we identify possible best practices that can better inform future efforts to plan GI on a metropolitan scale. Methods: From a review of the literature, we identified ideal planning elements researchers and practitioners considered fundamental to well-planned, urban forestry-based GI programs. We interviewed key stakeholders (n = 86) in eight major cities and one metropolitan county (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Baltimore, Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque, Sacramento, and Salt Lake County), using multiple-choice and open-ended questions to explore their perceptions of TPI successes, failures, and opportunities for improvement. We used this data to compare TPI planning and implementation with ideal urban forestry and GI planning elements, to identify TPI best practices, and to locate TPI program elements such as business and stewardship planning in relation to traditional infrastructure. We discuss these findings in light of opportunities to bring GI into the mainstream of metropolitan infrastructure planning. Results and conclusions: We found that cities employed a spectrum of planning strategies to advance TPI, ranging from highly institutionalized, data-driven initiatives to decentralized, grassroots efforts. Participants viewed TPI as bringing GI to the mainstream; however, uncertainties in funding and long-term stewardship belie this perspective. Lacking access to traditional infrastructure financing, several TPI used creative development and contracting strategies to maintain program funding and momentum, while others stagnated. Additionally, programs lost momentum when mayors who launched TPI were not reelected. Successful underfunded initiatives focused on community-level engagement. However, institutionalized, diverse funding structures and robust, agency-level commitment to maintaining and expanding urban forests were considered most effective in advancing urban forestry-based GI. Overall geographic distribution of TPI, and the relatively sophisticated financial and institutional approaches achieved by New York and Seattle, provide insight into possible national strategies to advance metropolitan-scale GI. Similarly, Los Angeless and Baltimores use of focused corporate sponsorship and community engagement to advance underfunded programs could inform international GI efforts. Takeaway for practice: Through large-scale TPI, planners are beginning to engage in planning metropolitan-scale GI as a conscious strategy to address urban ecological issues and deliver public goods. Initiatives benefit from being launched early in an administrations term. Further, detailed, data-driven planting plans, combined with diversified funding sources and the institutionalization of tree-acquisition in the capital budget, can enable TPI to establish a) long-term contracts, b) control over supply chains, and c) stability in recessionary times. Contracting with grassroots and advocacy organizations to perform education and fieldwork can provide means for underfunded programs to maintain momentum toward meeting TPI goals; however, accessing traditional infrastructure financing mechanisms and institutionalizing stewardship plans are fundamental to long-term expansion and maintenance of investments in metropolitan GI. Research support: None.

Hyperintense MRI lesions in bipolar disorder: A meta-analysis and review

Background: Cortical and subcortical hyperintensities in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are thought to represent areas of ischemic damage to brain tissue. Researchers have focused on the possible role these lesions may have in psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder. In 1997, the proposed ‘vascular mania’ diagnosis suggested utilizing not only the presence of strokes, but also confluent hyperintensities in its diagnostic criteria. This study was conducted to use meta-analytic techniques to investigate the association of hyperintensities and bipolar illness and to evaluate the current state of the literature. Methods: Using the PubMed and MEDLINE databases, we conducted a systematic literature search of studies investigating hyperintensities in subjects with bipolar disorder and controls or other psychiatric illnesses. We identified 44 publications from which 35 studies were included for review and 27 were selected for meta-analysis. Summary statistics of the prevalence were estimated through odds-ratios and confidence interval. Heterogeneity of the results across studies was tested using Q-statistics. Results: Meta-analysis identified an odds ratio of 2.5 (95% CI 1.9, 3.3) for hyperintensities in bipolar subjects compared to controls; however, there was significant heterogeneity among the studies (Q-statistics = 32; p = 0.04). This finding was most prominent for adolescents and children where the odds ratio was 5.7 (95% CI 2.3, 13.7). Deep white matter hyperintensities (odd ratio 3.2; 95% CI 2.2, 4.5) and subcortical grey matter hyperintensities (odds ratio 2.7; 95% CI 1.3, 2.9) were more strongly associated with bipolar subjects. There were no differences between bipolar subjects and controls for perivascular hyperintensities (odds ratio 1.3; 95% CI 0.8, 1.9). Though hyperintensities were numerically greater in bipolar subjects, meta-analysis did not demonstrate any significant differences between bipolar subjects and unipolar depression subjects (OR 1.6; 95% CI 0.9, 2.7) nor subjects with schizophrenia (OR 1.5; 95% CI 0.9, 2.7). Conclusions: This meta-analysis continues to support the association of bipolar disorder and hyperintensities, especially in the deep white matter and subcortical grey matter. It also highlights the increased incidence in children and adolescence with bipolar disorder. However, hyperintensities are not specific to bipolar disorder, but appear at similar rates in unipolar depression and schizophrenia. Thus, the role of hyperintensities in the pathogenesis, pathophysiology, and treatment of bipolar disorder remains unclear. Further studies are required that are large enough to decrease the heterogeneity of the samples and MRI techniques, assess size and location of hyperintensities, and the impact on treatment response. Coordination with newer imaging techniques, such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) may be especially helpful in understanding the pathology of these lesions.

Interdisciplinary foundations of urban ecology

Researchers have identified urban ecology as a new field integrating social and ecological science. Critics have portrayed the field as under-theorized with negative implications for research and urban environmental planning. Unprecedented urbanization and historical bias against research integrating social and ecological systems are identified as driving this deficit. Researchers have called for new integrative approaches to address this issue. In response, this paper applies ecology’s analytic framework of “patch dynamics”, Kuhn’s concept of “normal science” and Mazoyer and Roudart’s “evolutionary series” to demographic data and historical texts to perform an analysis of interdisciplinary contributions to theory applicable in the field of urban ecology. The subsequent exploration reveals a rich history of interdisciplinary inquiry along the nature/society divide. The paper concludes that these “largely ignored” contributions offer urban ecology the opportunity to claim much broader depth as a field gaining access to precedents and innovations accomplished during the field’s early theoretical development. Drawing upon this history, a framework for ecological urban development is suggested to inform and assist contemporary research in urban ecology and planning.

Goal attainment in urban ecology research: A bibliometric review 1975–2004

AbstractWe analyze a core literature of urban ecology (all articles published in Urban Ecology and Urban Ecosystems from 1975–2004, n = 261) to support a reflexive analysis of the field. We structure this critical analysis based on criteria derived from programmatic statements made by scientific societies, research funding organizations and academic institutions regarding what urban ecology should be. Specifically, we assess the extent to which the literature reflects, and has evolved to reflect, a commitment to strengthen and expand the discipline of ecologycreate a transdisciplinary enterprise, andcontribute to social and ecological wellbeing through applied research and policy engagement.Findings indicate that the literature strongly reflects these commitments, as these three tenets usefully describe the field and its evolution. We do, however, identify a tendency over time toward a more strictly disciplinary orientation. Ecological science is increasingly dominant and threatens to crowd out other scientific perspectives. This trend suggests that the field is maturing in the institutional sense, but perhaps at the cost of intellectual diversity, which many believe to be the basis of innovative solutions.

The greening of Chicago: environmental leaders and organisational learning in the transition toward a sustainable metropolitan region

Urban sustainability literature calls for new governance relations to support green urban agendas. Privileging non-hierarchical relations, this literature fails to address the means by which organisations create these capacities. The author interviewed public, private and community environmental leaders in metropolitan Chicago regarding their disposition toward creating boundary spanning organisations (BSOs) in addressing the Citys Environmental Action Agenda. Their responses reflect engaged efforts to enhance cross-boundary sharing of information, resources, and power. However, they also reflect the decisive role of central authority in initiating this process. These findings suggest the complexity of urban governance in transitions toward sustainability and the opportunities they provide to explore the implications of on-the-ground practice.

Mainstreaming urban ecosystem services: A national survey of municipal foresters

Researchers and advocates are calling for ecosystem services management to advance from theory to implementation. To do so, they argue, requires two things: information on the science and practice ecosystem services management to be more widely developed and distributed, and support for ecosystem services management be incorporated into decision-making. These changes require adding to urban ecology an understanding of the political and information relationships supporting work in this field. To gain insight into these relationships I surveyed the national membership of the Society for Municipal Arborists about their efforts in managing municipal green space to produce ecosystem services. A significant percentage of respondents reported their organizations currently engaged in managing green space assets to produce ecosystem services and predicted such activities would increase over time. Foresters noted they relied on public and informal peer relationships as primary information sources in these efforts and reported little interface with private sector entities, viewing the latter, rather as most likely to constrain their efforts to enhance the production of ecosystem services. While foresters noted that they sought information from public and academic sources, the foresters themselves were less frequently sought out for their expertise. Respondents, however, foresaw becoming engaged in more reciprocal relationships around information exchange. The private sector’s absence in these relationships suggests insufficient legal and regulatory structures necessary to support private engagement in the growing demand for urban ecosystem services. The broad base of local grassroots and public support, however, suggest the emergence of constituencies that could lay the basis for new coalitions to advance green infrastructure and its related ecosystem services into the mainstream of municipal resource management.

Toward a pragmatic program for critical urban ecology

Our essay responds to the critique of Dooling et al. (Urban Ecosystems in press, 2007) of our previously published article “Goal attainment in urban ecology research: a bibliometric review 1975-2004 (Young and Wolf, Urban Ecosystems, 9:179–193, 2006). We identify our critics’ concerns as rooted in a project of deconstruction of scientific inquiry and a redefinition of the boundaries separating academic disciplines from each other and science from society. While we identify important differences with our critics, we largely support this critical project, as evidenced by our previously published empirical research. In exploring the relationship between critical and positivist approaches to urban ecology research and how we might work toward an integration of nature and society in thought and action, we defend pragmatic approaches to empirical research as well as disciplinary projects as legitimate and essential elements of urban ecology research. We argue in favor of theoretical and methodological pluralism. Rather than define urban ecology through exclusionary projects that would limit the scope and significance of urban ecology research, we reaffirm our call for diverse sets of actors inside and outside university settings to engage and support each other in order to develop and strengthen analysis and pursuit of sustainability.

The biophilic city and the quest for paradise

Purpose – This paper explores the possibilities for global concepts of paradise to serve a cross-cultural urban environmental discourse. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more widespread mobilization of support for biophilic urbanism. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology deployed in the paper draws from original and secondary sources from a variety of regions, cultures, and religions surrounding the concept of paradise. These concepts are then compared and contrasted with the discourse of biophilic urban environmental planning. Findings – The comparison of cross-cultural descriptions of paradise finds strong similarities across cultures. In addition, it finds close, symbolic connection between secular and religious concepts of paradise and the scientific attributes of urban biophilic planning. These connections open the possibility for closer unification between secular and religious discourses in the pursuit of the development of more biophilic urban designs. Originality/value – Th...

The Oregon Way Planning a Sustainable Economy in the American West

This article explores Oregon’s attempts to transcend the boom/bust cycles of its historically natural resource–based economy to establish a more diversified, resilient economy based upon advanced manufacturing and sustainable technology and practices. Drawing upon Fredrick Turner’s and Harold Innis’s theses of North American development, I explore Oregon’s economic dynamics through state and federal data and Oregon’s recent economic initiatives. Results reflect an Oregon still reliant upon natural resource and industrial commodities, leaving it highly vulnerable to global markets. Efforts toward “greening” the state’s economy, although embryonic, show signs of setting Oregon on a more independent, self-reliant economic trajectory.