Cities as Ecosystems: Valuing Nature in Planning 

Written By Harvard Urbanists

By Miah Ebels-Duggan

What does it mean to value nature? What is participation in nature? How do cities express their value systems concerning the natural world?

We often express the role of humans in nature as decoupled from, if not directly opposed to, what we term the “natural world.” This decoupling especially appears within our urban activity. What, then, is this natural world, and when did humanity become so divorced from it?

The Industrial Revolution tends to be an identifiable turning point for modern society’s ills. However, I argue that we should evaluate even its consequences from a view that places humans and human behavior within ecosystems alongside non-human animals and their behaviors.

As a species, we rely on our ecosystem’s resources and also provide ecosystem services that support the growth of new resources, which we and our non-human kin then reuse. Still, we’ve always been incredibly skilled at destroying the localized environments we inhabit. Now, we consume resources at a much higher rate than even the planet itself can sustain, wreaking havoc on the very basis of its natural balance. We stopped participating in nature as we should; instead, we sought to dominate it — and largely succeeded.

(I use the word “we” very intentionally to refer to the human population as a planetary phenomenon and its greatest effects on ecosystems. We must keep in sight that many humans contribute far less to and are hurt far more by the effects of this ecosystem overload1).

Returning to a world where the human species acts its part as another element in the natural systems established on Earth over billions of years does not necessitate massive depopulation to 19th-century levels, nor does it require that every person take up subsistence farming. Rather, it will take a turnabout in the way extractive and consumerist cultures make value judgments about nature and the way these value systems are integrated in planning for sustainable communities and larger populations. In a world as populated as this one is now, cities will be an integral part of building “habitats” for the human species which reflect our role and influence in nature. This is true for more reasons than I can explore here, but the observation that there is a finite amount of space on Earth, and most of it isn’t for us is a pretty good baseline paradigm. Dense housing, multi-use spaces, and infrastructure that favors non-consumptive living are all crucial to properly occupying our niche. But we also know that humans — and thus cities — must not separate themselves, physically nor culturally, from nature. How, then, do we plan our cities to fulfill our unique roles in the ecosystems we inhabit, from local environments to our home planet? I argue that a nature-valuing methodology for urban planning requires three things: acknowledgment of value plurality among communities and populations, analysis of socio-ecological feedbacks within the urban ecosystem, and an equity-focused approach to both planning and implementation.

Since 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an organization to improve the science-policy interface for ecosystem services, has developed the Nature Futures Framework (NFF). The framework is based on three overlapping “value perspectives:” “nature for nature,” “nature as culture,” and “nature for society.”2

The “nature for nature” perspective centers on the intrinsic value of the natural world; in other words, humans’ value status does not uniquely matter from this perspective. Note that this view does not preclude human activity from valuing nature intrinsically.

The “nature as culture” perspective brings humans into the equation, representing a group of value systems that see the role of humans as “one with nature;” this perspective recognizes human relationality to the natural world through cultural practices, tradition, spirituality, and community-building.

Lastly, the “nature for society” perspective views nature primarily through a utilitarian lens, centering the instrumental role of ecosystem services in cultivating societal and individual well-being. This view should not be misconstrued as extractivist; although it primarily values nature’s contribution to societal flourishing, it is dependent on the recognition of societies’ duty to sustain the natural world that provides for them.

These three perspectives should be viewed only as dimensions of a single spectrum, in which actions and judgments represent each perspective to varying degrees. The spectrum they form is intimately related to broader knowledge traditions that recognize nature’s inherent value, take part in this value through cultural integration, and build societies on the principle that nature’s gifts are of fundamental importance to human flourishing and that humans must reciprocate this gift-giving. Indeed, one may even argue that these perspectives aren’t even “dimensions” as such, but instead that they all have the same status within a framework that says that we are nature.

Rather than a view that siloes these three perspectives into their own, albeit overlapping, categories (left, adapted by Lembi et al. from PBL 2018), the NFF should operate as a single spectrum, intimately related to other holistic systems of valuing nature (right, IPBES Scenarios and Models).


Considering the “NFF as a spectrum” approach, let’s take as an example the phenomenon of urban food forests, where small lots — vacant areas, community gathering spaces, even backyards — host vibrant, biodiverse ecosystems focused on cultivating the gifts of fruit, nuts, and vegetables at a human-community scale. Food forests, once established, are generally managed only to promote the flourishing of the ecosystem (nature for nature, with human participation) rather than prioritizing efficiency or economic productivity. They exemplify nature as a societal good; food forest managers choose most of the species for their contribution to human nourishment. They also function as sites of community collaboration and bring food traditions back to their (literal) roots.

There are plenty of specific manifestations of urban nature to which people could apply the NFF, but this kind of framework is most valuable as applied to planning processes where it can influence the imagining and creation of ecological cities from the outset. An Urban Nature Futures Framework (UNFF) is best applied in a visioning-based, systems-analysis, equity-focused approach to city planning.

The UNFF is especially useful as a visioning methodology. Visioning is the practice of “creating a vision, [...] a representation of a desirable future state, as opposed to forecasting (likely future states).” 3 Visioning thereby encourages, implicitly or explicitly, discussion and demonstration of a community’s range of values. From the beginning and throughout the process, planning processes use visioning as a method of community collaboration wherein stakeholders engage with various media types to imagine and communicate their visions for a city’s future state. Consciously integrating questions about valuing nature into visioning exercises brings these conversations to the forefront of participation in society and nature.

A systems analysis approach is also particularly appropriate in this context. As with the study of ecology, and the functions of nature itself, systems analysis is concerned with the complex interactions — and especially feedback dynamics — within an area of focus. From a UNFF approach, systems analysis can be used to evaluate “socio-ecological feedbacks” within a city ecosystem. 4
 
 

Two systems analyses of nature-focused urban outcomes, illustrating the function of socio-ecological reinforcing feedbacks. From Mansur et al. 2022.


The need for integration of the UNFF is vital in the current moment. Urban areas, expanding rapidly worldwide, are projected to cover at least 1.7 million km2 by 2050.5 At the same time, 75% of global resource use6 can be attributed to urban life. Of course, this growth and consumption has potentially staggering consequences for the natural world. As urbanization progresses, it will be crucial to the well-being of all — people in cities, rural communities, ecosystems, and the planet — to actively value nature in planning and development processes. But as it stands, these processes are falling behind. A representative sample of urban visions did not “substantially and comprehensively include sustainability substance, instead narrowly [focusing] on optimizing the built environment, for example;” even existing initiatives fail to account for the complexity of a truly holistic ethic of participation in nature.7 Lastly, it is necessary here as much as in any city planning process to use an equity-focused lens. Consideration of values in the visioning process must be equitable, as must the process itself. Final planning outcomes must also strive to fairly distribute the costs, benefits, and timescales of projects within larger community contexts, which often requires a larger and earlier focus on the unsatisfied values of underserved or excluded areas and groups. Equity may be the only consideration I make here that does not involve some significant relationship to ecology. Though studies indicate our concept of fairness may not be unique to homo sapiens sapiens (it should be noted that this is a hotly-debated conclusion in its field)8, I believe that the way we work for justice in the face of the cruelest, most oppressive hierarchies to be found in nature is a demonstration of valuing other human beings that we don’t see in other species.

However, many societies have long extended this value to nature in some respect. In recent years, governments have also begun to recognize these value frameworks. Ecuador’s 2008 constitution codifying specified rights of nature, based on the sumak kawsay (“good living”) ethic of the Andean Quechua people, guarantees some standing to legal action on behalf of nature itself.9 Following Ecuador’s pioneering action, a handful of other countries have legally or judicially established similar rights, though none has specifically codified these in its constitution.10 Ireland is currently considering constitutional recognition of nature rights, which would make it the first EU member to do so.11 While this incremental progress at national scales has the potential to be transformative, it’s also vital that cities recognize their unique impacts on nature and their unique responsibilities to it. When we equitably facilitate the fulfillment of our role as participants in nature in city planning processes, we represent and respect the values of each member of the urban ecosystem, human and non-human alike.

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