A new approach to urban design is needed. This would treat biodiversity as an opportunity and a valued resource to be preserved and maximised at all stages of planning and design. In contrast to traditional approaches to conserving urban biodiversity, biodiversity-sensitive urban design (BSUD) aims to create urban environments that make a positive onsite contribution to biodiversity. This involves careful planning and innovative design and architecture. BSUD seeks to build nature into the urban fabric by linking urban planning and design to the basic needs and survival of native plants and animals. Figure 1. Steps in the biodiversity sensitive urban design (BSUD) approach (click to enlarge).Author provided BSUD draws on ecological theory and understanding to apply five simple principles to urban design:
protect and create habitat
help species disperse
minimise anthropogenic threats
promote ecological processes
encourage positive human-nature interactions.
These principles are designed to address the biggest impacts of urbanisation on biodiversity. They can be applied at any scale, from individual houses (see Figure 2) to precinct-scale developments. Figure 2. BUSD principles applied at the scale of an individual house.Author provided BSUD progresses in a series of steps (see Figure 1), that urban planners and developers can use to achieve a net positive outcome for biodiversity from any development. BSUD encourages biodiversity goals to be set early in the planning process, alongside social and economic targets, before stepping users through a transparent process for achieving those goals. By explicitly stating biodiversity goals (eg. enhancing the survival of species X) and how they will be measured (eg. probability of persistence), BSUD enables decision makers to make transparent decisions about alternative, testable urban designs, justified by sound science. A striped legless lizard.John Wombey, CSIRO/Wikimedia, CC BY For example, in a hypothetical development example in western Melbourne, we were able to demonstrate that cat containment regulations were irreplaceable when designing an urban environment that would ensure the persistence of the nationally threatened striped legless lizard (Figure 3). Figure 3. Keeping cats indoors greatly enhances other measures to protect and increase populations of the striped legless lizard.Author provided
What does a BSUD city look, feel and sound like?
Biodiversity sensitive urban design represents a fundamentally different approach to conserving urban biodiversity. This is because it seeks to incorporate biodiversity into the built form, rather than restricting it to fragmented remnant habitats. In this way, it can deliver biodiversity benefits in environments not traditionally considered to be of ecological value. It will also deliver significant co-benefits for cities and their residents. Two-thirds of Australians now live in our capital cities. BSUD can add value to the remarkable range of benefits urban greening provides and help to deliver greener, cleaner and cooler cities, in which residents live longer and are less stressed and more productive.
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Why a walk in the woods really does help your body and your soul BSUD promotes human-nature interactions and nature stewardship among city residents. It does this through human-scale urban design such as mid-rise, courtyard-focused buildings and wide boulevard streetscapes. When compared to high-rise apartments or urban sprawl, this scale of development has been shown to deliver better liveability outcomes such as active, walkable streetscapes. Mid-rise, courtyard-focused buildings and wide boulevard streetscapes created through a biodiversity sensitive urban design approach.Graphical representation developed by authors in collaboration with M. Baracco, C. Horwill and J. Ware, RMIT School of Architecture and Design, Author provided By recognising and enhancing Australia’s unique biodiversity and enriching residents’ experiences with nature, we think BSUD will be important for creating a sense of place and care for Australia’s cities. BSUD can also connect urban residents with Indigenous history and culture by engaging Indigenous Australians in the planning, design, implementation and governance of urban renaturing.
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Why ‘green cities’ need to become a deeply lived experience
What needs to change to achieve this vision?
While the motivations for embracing this approach are compelling, the pathways to achieving this vision are not always straightforward. Without careful protection of remaining natural assets, from remnant patches of vegetation to single trees, vegetation in cities can easily suffer “death by 1,000 cuts”. Planning reform is required to move away from offsetting and remove obstacles to innovation in onsite biodiversity protection and enhancement. In addition, real or perceived conflicts between biodiversity and other socio-ecological concerns, such as bushfire and safety, must be carefully managed. Industry-based schemes such as the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star system could add incentive for developers through BSUD certification. Importantly, while BSUD is generating much interest, working examples are urgently required to build an evidence base for the benefits of this new approach.
Wolves on Wall Street, but perhaps the time of shareholders’ rule is drawing to an end.
robert cicchetti/Shutterstock In the early days of industrial capitalism there were no protections for workers, and industrialists took their profits with little heed to anyone else. Following the growth of the labour movement, the establishment of trade unions and the founding of the welfare state in the first half of the 20th century, corporations in decades after World War II embraced a more open, stakeholder capitalism, where profits were shared between employees, managers and shareholders. This led to a flourishing middle class as workers and communities benefited from the success of the corporations of which they were part. But since the 1970s the pendulum has swung back towards a system where profits are shared less widely, causing major upheavals in society and the fortunes of labour and the middle classes.
In the US, labour’s share of income had been close to 70% until the 1970s, but had shrunk by the beginning of the 1980s even as profits increased. In the 21st century this accelerated: in 2000, labour’s share of income in the US accounted for some 66%, whereas corporate profits accounted for a little over 8%. Today, labour’s share has fallen to 62% while profits have risen to 12%. The same trend is repeated in the UK, where labour’s share of income has reduced from almost 70% in the 1970s to around 55% percent today. Where has the money gone? For decades, real incomes for workers have largely stagnated while those of top executives have skyrocketed. In 2017, the top executives of America’s largest companies enjoyed an average pay increase of 17.6%, while workers’ pay in those companies rose barely 0.3%. In 1965, the chief executives of the top 350 US companies earned salaries 20 times that of their workers. By 1989 that had risen to 58 times, and in 2017 the ratio was 312 times that of workers. Not surprisingly, compared to the middle-class prosperity that followed 1945, recent decades have seen widening inequality in society. The status quo overturned, capitalism has been hijacked by a profiteering elite. The question is whether society can find an alternative approach that shares the wealth more widely. Shareholders uber alles This trend coincided with the emergence of shareholder value as the overwhelming corporate ethos, as the interests of shareholders take primacy over those of other stakeholders in the business. With executives incentivised to maximise profits, meet quarterly share price targets and ensure profits are returned to shareholders, they have been able to game the system to ensure they receive excessive remuneration, while at the same time cutting costs and squeezing wage growth in search of higher profits. British housebuilder Persimmon this year paid its chief executive a £110m bonus, decried by critics as “corporate looting”. Outsourcing and offshoring have been examples of such cost-cutting, profit-driving initiatives: outsourcing low-skilled work is thought to account for one-third of the increase in wage inequality since the 1980s in the US. The percentage of US workers associated with temporary help agencies, on-call workers, or contractors increased from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% by 2015.
Pressure to maintain share prices and ensure profits return to shareholders have shrunk the share of company profits received by labour.Alf Ribeiro/Shutterstock Economists have been puzzled by stagnant wages and increased inequality. But as I highlighted as far back as 2007 and repeatedly since, the emphasis on shareholder value has contributed enormously. Management and leadership consultant and writer Steve Denning wrote this year that “shareholder value is the root cause of workers’ stagnant salaries”, with a corrosive effect on societal cohesion and stability – he believes the current rise of populism is one example of the fallout. Demands for greater profits continue, as companies are pressured by share portfolio managers and activist investors to increase their profitability and share price. Private equity firms, which invest in companies in order to maximise returns, have expanded into many sectors of the economy. Most recently, this has seen the doctrine of maximising profits enter the residential property and home mortgages market. The pendulum swings back? Despite the stranglehold of shareholder value on corporate thinking, events suggest the pendulum may once more swing back to favour workers and other stakeholders. In the US, the government’s Committee on Foreign Investment warned that in its attempt to take over telecoms giant Qualcomm, Broadcomm’s private equity approach could compromise its target’s technological leading position in pursuit of value for Broadcomm shareholders. In the UK, there was opposition to the takeover of engineering conglomerate GKN by turnaround firm Melrose. Airbus, one of GKN’s major customers, argued that Melrose’s focus on shareholder value and short-term returns meant it might not be committed to long-term investment. A chorus of voices has emerged advocating alternatives to the short-termist and shareholder-focused model of capitalism. The chief executives of investment and asset managers Blackrock (the world’s largest) and Vanguard, global engineering firm Siemens, and consumer goods giant Unilever have pursued a more stakeholder-centric model of capitalism. For example, Unilever by measuring its progress against environmental and social as well as financial targets, and Blackrock by investing in businesses that favour long-term investment over short-term profits. Organisations such as the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, have emerged, seeking to ensure that all stakeholders in the business and their interests are included. Prominent US senator Elizabeth Warren recently introduced the Accountable Capitalism Act to Congress. This would require company directors to consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders, not just shareholders, in company decisions. It requires that workers are given a stronger voice in decision-making at large companies, such as electing 40% of company directors. As a way of addressing self-serving incentives, executives would have to retain company shares for at least five years after receiving them, or three years in the case of stock buybacks. Finally, we cannot ignore that business schools played a critical role in how shareholder value emerged as the overwhelming corporate ethos – and they continue to indoctrinate new generations of students with the dogma of shareholder value today. Business school deans and faculty members should urgently revisit their curricula to ensure graduates understand the damaging impact of shareholder value on society and to emphasise alternative approaches. Almost ten years ago, Jack Welch, who for many years championed shareholder value while at the helm of General Electric, pronounced that:
Shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy … your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.
It is past the time that business schools should smarten up, jettison this “dumb” shareholder dogma, and start teaching a version of capitalism less damaging to the interests of society.
Seven years after Tahrir Square became the focal point of the Egyptian Revolution, towering metal gates now control access.
Ahmed Abd El-Fatah/Wikimedia, CC BY Today’s urban public spaces tend to represent governments and cities rather than people and citizens. In the past seven years, disturbing scenes of protests in city squares have been seen across the Arab world and Europe, but these public protests existed long before the 21st century. So how can city squares support or inhibit protests through their spatial characteristics and settings? Public squares have been considered as places of encounter and exchange since the time of the Greek Agora and the Roman Forum. While often the sites of protest, these spaces also can reflect the idea of power and constrain revolutions and social uprisings.
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Neighbourhood living rooms – we can learn a lot from European town squares Design and scenography can be used to intensify agoraphobia, or a fear of public spaces. Thus these spaces of expression can, at times, be silenced, putting at risk the geography of freedom of speech. Reminders of the power of the state Public spaces around the world have been not only places for people to gather and interact but also to demonstrate and, at times, to face their death. In 2014, Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev was at the centre of the Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution. It was a deadly revolution of dignity.
Yet the consequences of other protests largely attest to how the design of these spaces can intimidate protesters.
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Four years after the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine: key gains and losses In 1989, students demonstrated in Beijing during the so-called Tiananmen Square protests, which ended in a massacre. This immense city square of the capital is now known for its “strange emptiness”, as Evan Osnos described it. Benches and shade trees have been removed to discourage public gatherings. The monumentality created by the forbidden city and the government buildings, including the Great Hall of People, adds to the feeling of emptiness and intimidation. The 44-hectare public square is now considered “the opposite of a public space”:
Its totalitarian scale dwarfs the individual and forces people to feel subservient to the power of the state.
Red Square, Moscow, has been the scene of both public demonstrations and state parades. In Egypt, seven years after the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, people tend to be cautious about expressing their views in public. Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the protests, is at risk. Towering metal gates have been erected around the square to avoid protests. These stand as a reminder of the powerful state control that the regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has reasserted over public spaces. Protest in the Arab world: the case of Tunisia Tunisia’s Habib Bourguiba Avenue was the main stage of the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. This public space, considered the historical, political and economic heart of the city, is broad and lined with trees and government buildings, hotels and street cafes. The two paved and heavily trafficked roads on either side of the median strip isolate the pedestrian “island”.
Habib Bourguiba Avenue.Majdi Faleh This staging of the avenue reflects the power, control and prohibition of protests during 23 years of dictatorship. Other intimidating landscaping elements add to the obstacles for demonstrators who might wish to use the public space for political debates. Despite intimidation through design, Tunis’s layout made L'Avenue, as Tunisians like to call it, the perfect place to stage the Arab Spring.
Police and protesters clash in the popular uprising that forced Tunisia’s longtime dictator to flee in 2011. This avenue, planned in the time of French colonisation (1881-1956) for the city’s elite, resembles the Parisian Avenue of Champs-Élysées. Interestingly, even Haussmann’s celebrated Parisian boulevards, built under Napoleon III in the 1860s, were designed to help quell the city’s rebellious populace.
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Australians don't loiter in public space – the legacy of colonial control by design Strategically located near the end of Habib Bourguiba Avenue is the Interior Ministry, an icon of dictatorship and control. The “austere” grey facade and black wrought iron windows and gates create a sense of control. Its brutalist architecture, which has architectural similarities with the FBI headquarters in Washington DC, participates in shaping the public space. Razor barbed wire fences have surrounded the avenue during the time of protests. Landscaping around the ministry played a role in blocking protesters from getting closer to the monument of control. Habib Bourguiba Avenue is named after the first president of Tunisia, a tradition for main avenues in Tunisian cities. A simple Google search produces a list of major and small Tunisian cities forced into this autocratic system of political nomenclature as an instrument of control. The image of power and control starts with the name of the place. It continues at the end of the avenue intersecting with the previously known Place 7 Novembre, named after the date of former dictator Ben Ali’s ascension to power in a coup d’état.
Ibn Khaldun Fenced Garden with a banner of the dictator Ben Ali in the background (2009).
In Arabic, it reads ‘In deed, all my ambition is for Tunisia’.Majdi Faleh During the time of dictatorship, architects did not play an active role in shaping social, cultural and political encounters in public spaces. Contemporary public spaces in Tunisia were designed timidly or marginally, creating conflicts between architecture, the local people and the oppressive state. Even green spaces were planned but never designed, as per the planning policies. Many were replaced by commercial centres. Metal fences are noticeable landscaping features around the Ibn Khaldun Statue, small gardens and public parks. The fences turned these spaces into enclosed and sometimes marginal parks. Large propaganda banners of the former dictator added an element of fear to these public spaces and helped deter protesters. The government gated property creates a sense of intimidation and constraint. Designing for protests: an architect’s perspective In designing public squares and avenues, architects should learn from these past dilemmas. The public square should not be represented as the city’s gated property or as a walled garden. It should be a space that provides citizens with opportunities to engage in political and social debates. In the wake of the Arab Spring, rethinking spatial qualities of public spaces is crucial to provide “liberated” citizens with adequate places to communicate their political views and free cultural expression. In Tunisia’s post-revolutionary era, public spaces have increasingly become places for expression and social engagement.
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Why Tunisia's latest protests are about more than a hike in taxes Governments, not only in Tunisia but across all countries, should plan the streets for artists and protesters to create stages for their events and to communicate their ideas. Tunisia still has a long way to go. Majdi Faleh, Teaching Assistant, University of Melbourne This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
