Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Constructive the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.
Richard Grande here for constructive voices. Welcome to the third episode in our mini series that explores the exceptional book by Alexandra Stead, portrait to landscape, a landscape strategy to reframe our future.
Part three explores historical choices of city locations, streetscapes, peri, urban landscapes, real case studies from England, the roles of a water and air, and much more. Over to you, Jackie.
Good afternoon or good morning. This is Jackie from constructive voices, and I'm here for the third time. Third time lucky. Not that the other ones haven't been with Alexandra Stead. We're going through her wonderful book in a fair bit of detail.
For those who haven't listened, this is session number three. So episode number three in terms of the podcast, and we highly recommend that if you listen to this and you realise you haven't heard the others, go back and listen to them first, because there's a logical progression to how we're recording and we're literally going through the book and discussing the various ideas and topics that are in the book. So do go back and listen, number one. Number two first, and then come back to this one. So, Alexandra, just a quick introduction because everybody else will have listened to the other episodes, I believe.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Right. Well, thanks so much for having me again, Jackie. As you said, my name's Alexandra Steadhouse. I'm a landscape architect and urban designer that's based in London, and I've written a book called portrait to a landscape strategy to reframe our future. And that's what I'm very excited to speak to you more about today.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Fantastic. So let's hop in. You use quotes wonderfully throughout the book.
So Alexander Pope said, but treat the goddess like a modest, fair, nor overdress, nor leave her holy bare. Now, that's just a tiny excerpt from one of the important quotes that you've used, where it leads us perfectly into part three of your book, which is what we're discussing today. Landscape matters. Can you just, like, draw the listeners in a little bit to what part three is all about?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Sure. Well, in part three, I really sort of delve into what landscape is. You know, it's so many things.
And so I talk about the various definitions of landscape as a noun and as a verb. I talk about the functions and processes, the different types of landscapes that we encounter across the globe. And then I also, then sort of further into this part of the book, start distilling overarching design principles that are based on all these ideas about landscape. What the key elements are and what the key components are that we have to protect and restore in order to bring about restoration of the planet. So I really kind of distilled down out of all this information what the key elements are for the listener.
But going back to Alexander Pope's quote, I think one of my favorite lines in sort of the broader quote that you started with is in all, let nature never be forgot. And I love that that, you know, in everything, we should always have nature in our mind. It should always be front of mind, really, about how we're interacting with nature. So I love that. And he also, he also has a wonderful line about the genius of a place and how it's so important to be in tune with that character and the functions and the beauty of a particular landscape. So I really love that quote, and I think it's one that many of your listeners will probably be familiar with.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: For sure. For sure. And he obviously felt that we should use common sense, follow nature and aligning with the unique context of a place. So you're not just talking nature in general. No, you're tuning into that place as well. And obviously, whilst that seems really simple, you know, on some levels it just seems ridiculously simple. But that's not really what we've done. When you, when you think about our so called, you know, developed western world.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: That'S so true, Jackie. Yeah. It does make complete sense to work with the landscape, as Alexander Pope makes so clear. And yet, as you say, so much of what we've done in our development, in our development of landscapes across the globe in terms of urbanization and agricultural use and industrialization and how we're working with the land, often we're just imposing structures and infrastructures on a landscape rather than working within a landscape. And sometimes with complete ignorance about the natural processes and systems that are occurring within a particular place.
And I love that Alexander Pope says it's nonsense.
It doesn't make any sense to do that. And it's almost perverse when we do that, you know, to completely ignore this wonderful, this wonderful fabric of life and to not work within it is ridiculous, really. So, you know, when we think about, for example, I'll just use an example of this, a watershed and how important it is that all, you know, a watershed is sort of an area of land where all of the water that drops on it drains into one water course, for example. So in a watershed, there's this wonderful process of hydrology taking place that all works together in unison. And yet so oftentimes we'll go and put a development maybe right at the base of it, where that piece of land actually floods.
And we do this all the time in development.
We put developments in areas of floodplains which we know have the consequence of flooding and destroying property and infrastructure, and yet we keep doing it. So that's just one of these examples of something that's ridiculous and nonsense and very foolish to be ignoring nature in those ways.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: I guess if we were to just comes to me as I'm listening to you. I guess if we were to compare it to, like a human scenario, you've got a young child who plays, will say the piano absolutely beautifully. So, you know, such talent that we can't get over it. And then we decide, you know, the parents of that child or the teacher say, yes, that's all very nice, but, you know, to make money, you need to be an accountant.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: It's not that different, is it?
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's a great analogy, actually. To try and impose something that is just so, so alien to a particular life, and yet to try to impose something else on it is absurd.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: That's it. But as you know, obviously very well and better than many people, when we have treated nature in this way, something magical happens to. And you do definitely have some great examples of this in your book.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Ah, so when we do. When we always keep nature in mind. Yes, well, yeah, there are some great examples that I'd love to speak with you about today. I suppose one of the examples that I talk about in my book is sort of an older example because it's a place that everybody is familiar with, and it's Central park in New York. So Central park, it may not sort of align with everything I'm saying there, but the fact is that a place in a very metropolitan center was protected and reserved for nature and for people to connect back to nature for their own health and well being. You know, it was understood that this access to nature within a city environment would really preserve the health and well being of the people living there. And, you know, it's a really important example because it shows not only is it, is it supportive for our own psychological health and our physical health, but also spiritual health and the health of the economy. So I wanted to highlight that as well, because we're not doing these things. It's not that integrating nature is working against our current economic structures or against growth and development. In fact, it supports it and it can make it more sustainable.
So if we take a look at Central park, which I think all of your listeners will know about. It apparently is the most filmed location in the world. And so it has that draw. People love Central park, and it carves out about 340 within the center of the city. It's mainly self sustaining in terms of biodiversity, and it has a huge range of animals, from red tail hawks, gothic bees, loads of trees, thousands and thousands of trees. It's got about 150 acres of aquatic habitats. So it functions very well ecologically, socially. It's such a magnet. It's a huge draw for people living there and visitors. So it acts as New York's gathering place. It really provides the spirit and the heart of New York, I would say. And it brings about 40 million visitors annually. So that draw shows just the magnificence of the place and that it also then creates a huge economy around this landscape. All the people that are employed there in foods and restaurants. It's drawn a huge amount of cultural institutions around on the edges, you know, the art museums and museums. And then the other economic benefits of that are that it contributes to property values immensely. So the landscape architect that designed Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, together with Calvert Bow, documented the land values around Central park. So there's three surrounding wards. And found that before construction and then after construction, it had increased tenfold, whereas the other neighboring communities that weren't right on the park had doubled in value in the same time. So you could see that there was a huge economic benefit to the property values around the park as well. So I just wanted to highlight that, that when we do things that are in line with nature and that they're supporting nature, they can also bring economic benefit. It does not have to be incompatible. In fact, they're very compatible and complementary, definitely.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Now, and actually, if we think about history, it's the Romans that, you know, leave a trail and fascinating places that they were going around and defining by various values that were connected with nature, predominantly about where they would place their cities.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: That's right. You know, so many ancient cities are closely inscribed into a particular landscape, and they were selected because of the landscape. So they were looking, you know, ancient civilizations, including the Romans, were looking for sites that were able to support life and that also were a defensible location where they could feel protected, where they'd have access to navigable waters, where they'd have access to fertile soils. So, for example, if you take the case of London, the Romans chose that particular site where the City of London is, because of its particular location on the river, which is fordable and affordable, means that you can. It's narrow enough that you can have a bridge over it, and it's deep enough that it allows marine vessels passage at that point. So that particular spot on the Thames river is like that. And, you know, and then the Romans established on the north bank, and that's because it was easy to moor there. There were south facing, fertile slopes. It was a defensible position. There was access to fresh water, to fish, to the possibility of growing food there. So all of these things made it a very desirable location. And they were very aware of this. And also ancient civilizations were also very aware of the terrible consequences of choosing the wrong landscape and what could happen to life if they chose the wrong landscape. So we could learn a lot from looking back at these ancient civilizations.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: I suppose the sad reality is, Alexandra, that later some of these places, or a lot of these places were really badly harmed by what we like to term progress. And a huge strain has been also put on human habitats because of all of this.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: So true. I mean, well, again, if we just take the example of London, you can see that as the years went by and the city grew and grew and grew, eventually that landscape that was so attractive to the first settlers then just became overwhelmed with layers of infrastructure and concrete and asphalt and buildings and, you know, the many streams. There were many, many streams in London. Now they're almost all buried and part of the storm sewer network because they had become so full of human waste and contaminants. And, you know, and I don't know if you're familiar with an event that happened. I think it was in the late 17 hundreds. It was called the great stink in London. Yeah.
And it was a particularly hot summer, I believe. And so all of this waste that was being discharged from the various streams around and then flushed into the Thames, it began to ferment and become incredibly foul smelling. So at that point, they realized, okay, we have to do something about this. But what they did was not try to really clean up the rivers, you know, instead, they. They put them all underground. They put all the streams underground, culverted them, and, as I said, made them part of the storm sewer network. And then. So, yeah, so at that point, it was. It all just became engineered, and that was their way of delivering the waste outland to the North Sea. And that's kind of the same system that is still in place. All the storm sewers get flushed further out in the Thames rather than in the city itself. But we still have the same problem in places like Essex and out towards Kent, where all that waste is still being discharged.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Obviously a big problem in the UK right now. Yeah, or in some parts. Now, one of your ideas going to more cheerful topics, because it's not. And I'm so glad I don't live in those areas.
One of your ideas is actually to rethink streetscapes.
How do you envisage this working?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Right. Well, in my book, I do sort of make special mention of streetscapes in urban cities, because streets account for 25% of most urban land areas. And so when you think about that, when you think about the quarter of land is being used as streets, well, imagine if we use those streets in a very dynamic and vital way, rather than just designing them, typically for cars, for vehicle travel. So that's the way most of our streets have gone, isn't it? I mean, originally it was mostly for people movement and other forms of transport. Then it all became about cars and was overly engineered in that way. And not only just the space for vehicle movement, but also the space for car parking takes up a huge amount of the urban landscape. So if we think about, you know, you can still have vehicles on roads and plan them in a way that is vital and that allows for other life to exist in those places. So, for example, I worked on a project in Vancouver many years ago, about 25 years ago, when I was first starting out in my career. And here we worked together with the community to look at how we could redesign the streets. So we narrowed the pavement areas to as narrow as they could be for safe vehicle movement.
We made as much permeable space as possible, so either in gravel or in other planting areas, or in structured grass that people could actually park on, we allowed for natural stormwater management. So rather than having the water run off directly into storm drains and get it off the road, we had it run off into these swales on the sides that would naturally filter pollutants and slow the movement of water so that it could recharge groundwater and enter streams more slowly.
And we also had an area at the end of the road for flood attenuation. So again, a larger area, a ponding area, where the water could flow to be held in times of high storm water, and then naturally filter into streams.
And this particular location had a stream at the end of the road, so it was particularly important. And salmon had existed in this stream years before, but hadn't for many years because of the urbanization around, because of a culvert. And then suddenly, once this road had been implemented, and we also had a larger culvert put in, which was made to be more habitable for stream life as well.
The next year, salmon came back into that stream. So just like that, the salmon knew that this was a place for life, to support their life. And, you know, this was all done again for no extra cost. It wasn't more expensive, and it was beautiful. The residents loved it. It was done in coordination with them. And it shows what can be done when, you know, some coordinated thought goes into these things. When people are bringing together their expertise from engineering, from landscape architecture, from planning to the local residents, when we all join together, we can create these beautiful streets that are enjoyable for everybody.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And obviously highly functional. So that's the, you know, it's the two. It's the two main things. Absolutely ticked. Boxes are ticked. Everybody should be very happy.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So what are peri urban landscapes?
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Well, peri urban landscapes are landscapes that are on the edge and that surround urban areas. So they often are kind of susceptible to suburban sprawl. A lot of these areas hold much industry.
Sometimes some agriculture is situated in these areas, but they often have been grown to support the cities within which they surround.
And they end up facing a huge amount of pressure from these urban areas because urban areas can't really support themselves. There's such density in urban areas that the demand for space, for their waste to grow, their food, for the industry that supports them, for the housing, all of this then spreads out into peri urban areas. And so these are also landscapes under incredible pressure and facing huge burdens. And an interesting, interesting fact, actually, about most urban areas is that they tend to be often within estuaries. So about 22 of the 32 largest cities in the world are within estuaries. And so this is across the globe. We find many cities within estuaries, and therefore, these peri urban areas are also within estuaries. And so we see the decline of marshlands and wetland habitats that surround the cities and have often been considered wastelands. You know, not just wetlands are often considered these wastelands, and that's how they were perceived often for the. For the last number of decades that, oh, well, we'll just dump our waste there. We'll put industry there. You know, factories can line the rivers, would get rid of this mucky marshland, you know, so that's been. That's been sort of the psychological perception of these places. And yet marshlands and wetlands are teeming with life. They perform so many valuable services for us, and it's something that's been forgotten and just overlooked. And so they face incredible pressure.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: If you think about, I suppose, Alexandra, when it comes to our ecological footprint, we really desperately need to shift to a perspective of preservation, stewardship away from what currently is happening in so many places, you know, depletion, exploitation. How do you feel we can achieve this?
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Well, it sounds like you're aware of the ecological footprint concepts. There are actually a couple of scholars from the University of British Columbia that I attended, Mathis Wackernegal and William Rees, that came up with this concept of the ecological footprint and that was talking about the land area necessary for resource consumption and waste discharge per person, really. And so we know that the global human population is accelerating, expanding incredibly quickly. But what often isn't is kind of front of mind is that the exploitation of the world's resources per capita are accelerating at a much faster rate. So while, so while each of us needs a certain amount of area now, each of us needs a larger area of land to support us because, you know, we're such a consuming culture, we have so much now, and each one of us requires so much of us to support our lifestyles. So they came up with this idea of ecological footprint and then within their book, talk about the necessity then not of managing these resources, but of managing ourselves on the land. And so always keeping nature in mind. So going back to that same principle again about keeping nature in mind, and that's how we really must then move forward in our plans and our policies for growth and development to keep nature at the front of mind. So shifting, and now, as I like to say, from portrait to landscape, moving from a very human centric approach to an ecocentric approach that keeps all of nature in mind in that full community of life.
I think it was also in their book where they talk about landscape not being the backdrop, but being the play itself, and that the landscape is the community.
It isn't just the stage for our life to happen on, it is part of the play itself and a huge part of the play. So, you know, we can't think about our existence separate from the land's existence. We really must start to understand how we are all integrated and how we are so dependent on the land which sustains us. So I think their concept really brings that to light to show how heavily we've been walking on this planet and now it's time to change. So, for example, going back to London, I think London is quite a good example.
They highlight in their book that London's footprint is actually 120 times its land area.
So that's how much space Londoners actually demand and to support all the activities of the city. And a lot of this is from overseas, a lot of it's global.
But then a lot of these pressures, as I say, get pushed out into these peri. Urban landscapes as well, surrounding. So, yeah, I think their concept really brings to light and makes it a very sort of graphic expression, one that our minds can grasp easily just about how large our footprint is and the kind of pressures that we're putting on the world.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Like, obviously, that's a great way to illustrate what that is, how massive demand that we're now putting with such a great example, such as London.
What are your examples of how we can, you know, put this right? Because you have some good ones in the book.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well, so going back to this idea of always keeping nature in mind in terms of our policies and our development and growth, one example that I can speak of from my own experience is a project that we did in south Essex. So the same place that I was just talking about that has had so much waste pushed out into their landscape, so much industry, port infrastructure.
We were asked to develop a green and blue infrastructure study for all of south Essex. So the group there came together. It was a formation of six of the local authorities came together, understanding the intense pressure that they were under as a region, because it's a government target area for growth and development. But at the same time, they're dealing with a lot of community deprivation. They're dealing with issues around pollution, a huge amount of pollution there, as I said, sea level rise, flooding, drought, at the same time as the flooding.
So there's all these pressures, lack of connectivity. And so they knew they had to come up with a very coordinated approach that could look at all of these issues together. And so we were employed to.
To work with them on a green and blue infrastructure study. And so that was looking really at how stormwater management, climate change, biodiversity decline, heat stress, air and water quality, health and well being, all of these things can be addressed through nature based solutions, or these are often called green and blue infrastructures. So there we had the opportunity to do a wonderful study, and I say wonderful because it was done in collaboration with such a wide group of people, so many stakeholders involved, and we were able to look at a landscape in a really sort of vital and dynamic way by looking at the region rather than being isolated to a particular site, which so often is done, you know, that things are looked at in a very confined way. But this was expansive and it allowed us to look at that whole region then, and how the whole estuary was working together.
So because of that then we went through the process of understanding the baseline conditions. So we layered and layered and layered all of these different conditions around the geology, around the hydrology, around where I. The human populations were, around where the importance habitats were located. You know, so many layers of information around heritage and culture and connectivity.
And we could see then in how these things were working in relation to each other and where these major conflict points were occurring, but then also where the largest areas of opportunity could open up. And so to address. So to address the region in a holistic way, we came up with an overarching strategy that was really prioritizing establishing regional landscapes as the backbone that would protect and support any other human development, but they would also protect and support the existing populations of wildlife and important ecosystems and drainage areas, while also supporting adaptation and climate adaptation. As sea level would rise. So converting a lot of farmland, that's all along the coast, back to marshland, areas that are able to absorb storm surges and sea level rise, and also to allow habitats to then be replenished in the area. So it had this kind of approach, you know, looking at building connectivity, not just for people, but for wildlife and ecosystems, looking at how we can integrate nature conservation into agricultural areas, how we can plan for growth and development. These were all sort of these key moves then that came out of the green and blue infrastructure study and completed a very holistic and integrated approach for.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: The region that leads us wonderfully on. And it's an area I know relatively well myself, so I can very much visualize. I know not everybody listening will. Will have that same advantage. It has such a mixture of communities. Some what we would call in are in slightly dodgy areas, some much more upmarket, is, you know, quite, quite a good mixture there. So it's an excellent example and obviously a wonderful project to be able to speak about. But it leads us on to the chapter rural and wilderness landscapes very nicely. And there you've got another one of your excellent quotes. This time it's Sir David Attenborough.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Would you like to read it out and then lead into the chapter?
[00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
So he says, we have replaced the wild with the tame. We regard the earth as our planet run by humankind. For humankind, there is little rest for the living world, the truly wild world. That non human world has gone. We have overrun the earth. So Sir David Attenborough says that in his life on our planet, it's quite a lot of doom and gloom there.
But yes, we can talk about how we can sort of work our way out of that doom and gloom position.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Very good.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Maybe to just sort of expand a little bit on what he's. I don't know if you've watched his film. He has a wonderful film called a life on our planet, and then he also has a book that's the same. And so there he really talks about what he's seen over the course of his lifetime, which is almost a century now. And so, you know, he can actually remember times that the planet was much, much more wild than it is now.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: And sure, even I can remember times like that.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure you can. Even. Yeah, I can. You know, I'm just over 50 and even just, I'm in Vancouver now, and I can see just how much this place has changed and how much green space has been lost, although it's still very green, I must say.
But yes, I mean, so he, he's witnessed since 1950 wild populations having more than having, in fact, across the globe.
And so he outlines how very little wilderness remains, and what does remain is rapidly declining.
So this is also the problem. You know, I think there's only five countries in the world now with known wilderness. And so that would be Canada, Russia, Brazil, the US and Australia.
So those apparently are the five countries with any remaining wilderness left. And then, so that's about 23% of land area is wild, but only 13% of oceans is truly wild and not being completely overexploited by commercial fishing and that sort of activity. And even when we think, well, you think, well, 23% of land area sounds all right. But actually, a lot of the areas that do remain as wild are places like tundra or areas that don't have a huge amount of biodiversity. So in contrast, areas like tropical rainforests that do have amazing biodiversity, they're being lost at substantial rates. So places like the Amazon rainforest, for example, under intense pressure, and most of this pressure is because of agriculture. So, for example, palm oil is a very important product around the world, used in all sorts of foods and cosmetics and that sort of thing. And so these rainforests are being cut down, decimated and replanted with these monocultures of palm oil trees. And so when that happens, of course, all of the wildlife is also lost, and many of these species are already threatened with extinction. So, like orangutans, Borneo, elephants, sumatran tigers, all of these wonderful species are also threatened. So this is a massive problem and it's still happening. You know, there's still wilderness being lost daily, and a lot of it is due to agriculture and our expansive agriculture.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's then, in turn, very obviously, to feed people.
Lots of us, I mean, that's a whole other subject. Lots of us probably overeat to begin with because we just become. Because that's culturally acceptable. But anyhow, another discussion you do have. You do have some fairly amazing, not in a good sense, food waste statistics that I find really shocking. So that 14% is lost between harvest and retail and then another 17% is wasted between, you know, the mixture of households, food service and retail.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: And the losses and the wastes altogether, they translate into 38% of the total energy usage to get, you know, in our global food system. I mean, that's. It's not quite half. Of course not. I'm exaggerating there, but I don't think, you know, let's say it's almost 40%. That's horrifically shocking and that you might like to discuss, you know.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Well, I also talk in here about global food production because it does have such a massive effect on biodiversity and habitats and wilderness loss around the world.
So, you know, it's quite ironic, really, that we're losing all this valuable and important areas of nature just to support our own food and eating habits.
So. Well, I can give you a couple of more statistics. So, for example, farmland covers 38% of the earth's land surface, and much of this is important, habitable land, you know, so high quality land has been converted into farmland, and three quarters of fresh water withdrawals around the world are for irrigation, not for drinking. And a third of croplands are used for livestock feed production. So this is another. Wow, it's unbelievable how much farmland is used to grow fodder crops for livestock and then for the livestock to feed us. So, you know, when we think about the population of the globe, oftentimes I often hear people saying, oh, well, you know, our planet isn't big enough to feed the world's population. Well, that's actually not true at all. And as you say, you know, so much of the food that we currently grow is lost or wasted. So when you think about, when you think about farmland in the world and a huge amount wasted, a huge amount going to feed livestock, we have plenty of space. Space is not the problem. Space is not the problem. It's the way that the food systems are currently running and the approach to our current food system. So, you know, and the way that the landscape then is destroyed to make way for this industrialized agriculture system. So right off the mark, you have forests and other landscapes decimated. So often it's forests, woodlands, grasslands that are most often converted into agricultural land, oftentimes wetlands and marshes. As I said, too, they're often converted.
So immediately you lose all that biodiversity. You also lose a lot of soil structure because of all the root systems that are lost and the vegetative cover that protected the soil. So now the soil is left barren, then it's exposed to tilling and harvesting and fertilizers and pesticides, and fresh water is contaminated and polluted. And, you know, just the. The whole host of issues that comes along with industrialized agriculture. So it really highlights how we must then convert these agricultural areas back to places where nature can thrive and the two can exist harmoniously. So that is what the regenerative agricultural movement is all about. It's about looking at how we can support nature at the same time as supporting food security.
Because right now we have a type of food system that doesn't sustain food security in the long run.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: That's it. That's it. And for those who are apart from worrying about food and not being able to get maybe as much meters they might like and all of that stuff, there's probably a level of ignorance about soil itself and how that sort of feeds into, you know, all aspects of, obviously, biodiversity and on our own lives. So going on to your next chapter, which is called design for life, commodity to community.
We have to have one of your quotes in there, and this is Aldo Leopold this time, which we abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
So now I know you've painted really a comprehensive system of like, a very badly broken system that we have. And I'm not disagreeing at all, unfortunately. But in this chapter, this is where you really. You start to paint a some, you know, more promising pictures of an abundant life that lies really just beneath our feet.
And it's probably a great time for you to delve into soil and some of the fantastic, fascinating examples that you feature in this part of the book.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Sure. Well, yeah, it's true. We've spoken a lot about sort of the brokenness that we're experiencing with nature. And so in this. In this chapter, I really try and take a pause and present something that's more uplifting, I would say, than the doom and gloom of some of the previous chapters. And I think Leopold puts it so beautifully when he says that the land is a community to which we belong and not just a commodity that we withdraw from. So I often like to talk about how it's like a relationship. I think I might have mentioned this to you in our last podcast, that our relationship with the land is like any other relationship. You know, it's dysfunctional if you're always just taking, taking, taking from the other person and never giving. Well, it's the same with the land, the same with our relationship to the land. We have to give back while it supports us and sustains us. Then we need to nurture it, too. And there's another remarkable fellow named Jeff Lawton, who runs the permaculture Research institute. And so they're all about teaching methods of agriculture that support nature and that support food security. And they kind of have shown through many examples how this can be done in any region of the world. But he talks about how there's a real paradox now with agriculture, because the word agriculture came from the words agrarian, which really means soil and culture, which is the enrichment of soil. And so it was all of agriculture was really about the enrichment of soil. And now we have a system that is all about the depletion of soil and everything that our current agricultural system does. And, you know, the industrialized agriculture is about depleting soil. So now we need to resurrect this idea of working with the earth. And so, well, and just saying the word earth reminds me, well, you know, our planet is called the earth, and this is for good reason. It's because our ancestors understood the importance of the earth and of the soil. And actually, if you look across all cultures, it's often the name for the planet is often based on either words for ground or soil. And so this is something that our ancestors knew well and appreciated very much. And we've sort of forgotten this over time. But of course, it sustains life, and it's that great, powerful supporter of life. And we eventually then die back down into the earth, too. So without proper care for the soil, we can't have life. And some of the things that I just like to remind people that soil can do are, you know, it enables healthy plant growth. It provides food for us. It functions as a reservoir that holds water and then replenishes our groundwater systems. It filters pollutants beautifully, it decomposes waste. It harbors billions of organisms, and it acts as a carbon sink, which we've also talked about. So these are just some of the many benefits of soil and its incredible qualities and characteristics. But right now, we're losing soil at an alarming rate and topsoil in particular, which is just the top about 20. This happens through urbanization where soil is stripped away in the construction process.
It happens in agriculture or logging and other human activities. It's really stripped away.
There's now people are starting to recognize that we need to now focus back on soil like Jeff Lawton and this permaculture research institute. But there's also projects like the great Green Wall in Africa. This is one that I mentioned in my book too. It's apparently sort of the largest project, largest nature project on the planet. And it proposes a swathe of vegetation that extends 7000 km in length and it's about 16 km wide and it's in the Sahel region of Africa. So this region had become really sort of burdened with drought intensive agriculture. And the landscape had really just become barren and people in the region were not able to. To feed themselves. So there's been this big push to then restore this landscape. And originally the idea was to make. Well, it's called the great green wall because the idea was to make it mostly trees. But what they've realized is that it's not just about trees. It has to be a much more kind of integrated and whole system. So they've reverted back mostly to traditional farming methods and just employ really simple strategies like ways of retaining water because they don't get a lot of rainfall in this region. So it's important that whatever they get, they're able to capture and hold. So they do this by just placing. They've made sort of a simple grid like structures in many of these areas with little pits that capture water. And then they surround a lot of planting areas with stones again, that hold the water in. And they've also found that layering vegetation. So having some trees for shade and layers of vegetation then can support a much kind of more integrated and biodiverse planting than that will support each other. If you just have a monoculture of trees or whatever it is, then you're not developing a real sort of integrated system or a natural system. So anyway, they found that by using these simple traditional techniques that farmers used to use before, before colonization actually of the region, which changed a lot of the way they approached the landscape. They've reverted back and now they're seeing huge restoration of that landscape that had been become desert. Now they're seeing it blossom again. So that is amazing. That's just one example. And then.
Do I have time for another one?
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah, go on.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Okay.
I thought I just mentioned Jeff Lawton again. So he has with his research institute been involved in many pioneering projects around the globe. One of them is called greening the Desert project in Jordan. And Jordan is a very remarkable place because it's the lowest place on the planet. It's 400 meters below sea level. And so it's a very challenging kind of landscape to revive and to restore. So it deals with extreme temperatures, very low rainfall, rocky soils on quite steep hillsides. But they, through methods such as using rainwater harvesting, natural wastewater treatment, recycling, introducing diversity of plants and trees that are appropriate for that location, the use of shade and wind buffering and nitrogen rich mulches, along with solar power, they've been able to restore an area in just a few years of a piece of landscape that was completely barren. Again, the local people, not able to grow food there, and now, through these more traditional methods, have been able to restore this landscape. And when you see the pictures, you'll see it's a lush landscape now. And so this model is being replicated in many places throughout the world to show how we can regenerate these landscapes.
[00:50:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's a great example, and in a way, it kind of leads and wraps over the next question, which was going to be about water, you know, and obviously, that is something that I think that humans in general have more of an appreciation for it than perhaps I. Earth, you know, talking about the average human. But it goes deeper than this, really, doesn't it?
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. I think most people probably do kind of understand the importance of water perhaps more than the soil, I guess. In my book, I refer to it as the lifeblood of the earth because it circulates through, you know, the skin of soil that we have enveloping the globe. It circulates into our oceans and up into the atmosphere, so it's constantly circulating. And one really remarkable fact about water is that it's finite. It doesn't ever decrease, and it doesn't increase. We always have the same amount of water, but what doesn't remain constant is its level of availability for us or its level of quality access. So, you know, a lot of the earth's fresh water now is becoming less accessible to people because it's been siphoned off a lot for irrigation.
Many countries will dam it, use it for electrical power and these sorts of things. So there's. There's many ways that fresh water is often being used, so it's becoming less accessible, and it's also highly polluted in many parts of the planet.
So fresh water isn't as available, even though it might just be as abundant as it ever was. But just to give some few stats about water here too, that are quite interesting, we've got 71% of the Earth's surface being water, but 97.5% of that is salt water, and only the remaining 2.5% then is fresh water. But most of this 2.5% is frozen in ice or is inaccessible in underground aquifers. So only zero.
[00:52:53] Speaker A: Fascinating.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Two 6% is readily available in ponds and lakes and rivers and streams, you know, so it's a very, very small percentage of all the water on the planet is actually accessible to us. So we must treat it with great care. And I'll just mention an example here of the sponge cities in China. I think now this concept is becoming more known by other cultures around the world. I saw it recently in a Guardian article, actually in London, talking about should London become a sponge city? But anyway, this whole concept was first brought about by Professor Yu of a landscape architecture company called Turnscape. And he came up with this idea of sponge cities as a way to deal with some, some environmental challenges that northern China was facing. So they were having a lot of trouble with floodwater management and ecosystem restoration and also urban heat stress. So for all of these reasons, you know, the chinese government, I suppose at first was looking at the typical sort of engineered solutions about dealing with stormwater management. But you then suggested, well, we can do something that's a much more integrated approach and has many more benefits beyond floodwater management. If we introduce these sponge cities, and they're called sponge cities because the sponge represents the earth and its ability to absorb water, that sponginess. So, you know, these porous landscapes that can store, capture water.
So it's just a whole new approach to dealing with urban water quality issues and flooding issues. So in China, he actually was able to work with the government and finally convince them in 2015 to invest in 30 pilot projects throughout northern China. And many of these are now completed, and they actually have a plan to. I think it's about 80% of chinese cities now will have these sponge city projects. And so what they are are wetlands within urban areas that are then able to help filter water to improve the water quality, to absorb stormwater in times of great storm. So you can see they have some photos showing the landscapes when they're not in the storm season and then the landscapes during storm season. And so they're all planned and designed to allow for flooding to happen in a very planned and managed and controlled way so that nobody is at risk or properties aren't at risk or people's lives aren't at risk, but at the same time, it's brought a huge amount of biodiversity back into the cities.
It's provided places for people to go and to recreate and to socialize.
Improved air quality, it's reduced urban heat. You know, it has so many benefits and so. And it's not as expensive as the engineered solutions as, you know, the typical hard and gray concrete infrastructures that we.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: Put in place, or the repercussions when the storm hits. And engineered solutions didn't stand up to it anyhow.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: Exactly. And they failed. Yes, that's right.
[00:56:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: So there's some great ideas, like around water, and there's many, many more projects, but that's one really significant one.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no, it's a fantastic example. Now, we would be very remiss if we were to leave out air. So let's talk about air.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: Right, yeah. Soil, water and air. The three must work in harmony, and they're all the three key elements of the land, really. So air, I think, is something that most of us take for granted, except for when we're struggling with air pollution. And I think that's something that's become more obvious to many of us recently.
So, you know, it's just a very thin film surrounding the globe, but it safeguards all of life on Earth.
It acts as a shield against ultraviolet radiation from the sun. It provides insulation, so it keeps the planet at just the right temperature, not too hot, not too cold, just right for our life, and it protects us from meteorites. That's something that my son taught me. Actually, my precocious son taught me that actually the atmosphere, and this is an important thing. So meteorites will just burn up when they come through the atmosphere, otherwise we'd be hit a lot more often from flying objects from space.
So, anyway, tell your son thank you.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: That's very, very important.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: So the WHO has now reported that 99% of people worldwide are living in areas with unhealthy air quality. So it's a pervasive problem is everywhere. And I know that certainly in places like London, where I reside, or Vancouver, which I'm in, often are suffering, oftentimes because of fires, but also because of, like, smoke from wildfires that blow down into the Vancouver region. But in London, it's more to do with just the air pollution from all the emissions. So, you know, this human activity is really changing the atmosphere's composition and making it much less supportive of life. And, you know, we're all very aware of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, aerosols that significantly affect air quality, dust and smoke. As I said, you know that places like Vancouver are now suffering because of land use changes or more intense fire seasons that are occurring. So all of these things make a huge difference. So we really need to be thinking about the way we're changing the composition of the atmosphere and thinking about how we can use nature and work with nature to begin to restore our air quality.
So places like Singapore, I think are really interesting to look at. You know, that is a very dense urban place. I think it's Asia's most dense city or country even. There's five and a half million people living there, but they have a very small island, so it's just 270 sq mi.
And since british colonization in the early 18 hundreds, the majority of flora and fauna has vanished. So 95% of what was there is gone, which is quite tragic. And so now the Singapore government has put in place the green plan and that was really motivated by issues around air quality and quality of life, access to green space, you know, things like this, water quality and public health. So the government there put in place a plan and their vision is that Singapore be a city in a garden. And you might have seen images of Singapore, you know, these amazing super trees that they have. There's often images shown in various tourist magazines and that sort of thing showing how green Singapore now is. So they've made a significant, significant change there. They've invested heavily into the recreation of their islands landscape. And so they have green roofs, green walls, green, everything's green. And a project like gardens by the bay in Singapore is a very iconic one. It is kind of their, their signature project and that's the one that holds the super trees. So anyway, air quality is also now significantly improved and it's much better than many asian cities now. So all of this has an effect on improving, well, not only the air, but the water and the soil and the quality of life for all residents in Singapore, not only including human but wildlife as well, you know, so the benefits are far reaching. So, yeah, I'd say soil, water and air. These are the three key elements of the land that we really must be prioritizing, keeping in mind and planning for in our, in all of our developments and all of our plans for growth into the future.
[01:02:23] Speaker A: Definitely. And you've made so, you know, you've given so many excellent examples, not just today, obviously, on our other interviews as well. Just finally, Alexandra, you do wrap up this section three of the book with something called the community of life.
[01:02:42] Speaker B: What exactly is that, well, going back to Leopold's quote, for example, when he says we must consider land to not be a commodity, but to be the community to which we belong. And so I'm really kind of referring back to that sentiment that the community of life is all life on the planet is not just human. We are just one of many, many life forms and one of many, many residents. And so when we think about, you know, as a landscape architect, somebody involved in the design and development industry, I would really like to encourage people to not just be thinking about planning for ourselves, but planning for all forms of life. And we can do this. You know, we can think about what is, for example, you know, urban design. We normally think about that from a human perspective.
But how about if we were to think about it from the perspective of the soil, or from the perspective of the water, or the perspective of the air, or the plants that are growing there, or a bird in the sky? You know, what. What is it like for these other life forms? And we are very capable of designing for all life. We don't just have to design for humans. And when we do design for all life, we are also designing for ourselves. They are not separate. They are not incompatible. And, in fact, they are very compatible.
So I suppose, just to wrap up that section, I wanted to encourage people to be thinking, let's not ask what we can extract from nature, what we can take from nature, but let's think about what we can contribute back to nature, what we can give back to nature, as in any healthy relationship, like we were talking about earlier. So we have to transition from this very human centric worldview to a more community focused perspective. And by that, I mean embracing the whole community of life, like, like Einstein said. And, you know, we spoke about in one of our earlier episodes, to embrace all of nature in its beauty.
[01:04:59] Speaker A: And that is absolutely perfect. To finish up third episode on your book, Alexandra. And I'll. I've been really looking forward to our next session, where we obviously get to the end of your book, and we talk about that as well. Thank you so much.
[01:05:14] Speaker B: No, thank you, Jackie. It's been a pleasure.
[01:05:16] Speaker A: This is constructive voices. Constructive voices. The podcast for the construction people with news, views, and expert interviews.
