Abstract
It is well-established that cities need nature for critical ecosystem services—from storing carbon, to reducing temperatures, to mitigating stormwater—and there is growing momentum to seek out strategies for how these services can intersect with urban design and planning efforts. Social scientists and conservation planners increasingly point to urban residents' need to breathe fresh air, encounter the natural world, and have room to play. It is less obvious, perhaps, whether nature needs cities in order to thrive. The evidence from both urban planning and conservation planning is increasingly “yes.” As changes in land use and land cover sweep the planet, cities are becoming important refugia for certain wildlife populations. In recent years, urban planning has embraced the concept of “green infrastructure” as a way to embed green space across metropolitan landscapes to draw on the inherent benefits nature provides to cities, as well as to create habitat for wildlife. We explore this evolving view of cities and nature in the fields of urban and conservation planning. We argue the time is ripe to bring these worlds together, and, using our empirical work, establish that cities matter for monarch butterflies, other pollinators, and at-risk wildlife species.
Highlights
It is well-established that cities need nature for critical ecosystem services—from storing carbon, to reducing temperatures, to mitigating stormwater—and there is growing momentum to seek out strategies for how these services can intersect with urban design and planning efforts
We argue the time is ripe to bring these worlds together, and, using our empirical work, establish that cities matter for monarch butterflies, other pollinators, and at-risk wildlife species
More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas1, as does over half the world’s population (UN DESA, 2018)
Summary
More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas, as does over half the world’s population (UN DESA, 2018). To understand the ecological landscape from a monarch’s perspective, we conducted field sampling to estimate how much milkweed is currently on the ground and quantified the potential space for planting additional monarch habitat (i.e., the amount of grass/shrub land cover identified using high-resolution imagery and LiDAR data9) in different land use classes within four major metropolitan regions: St. Paul-Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City and Austin. While some stakeholder groups are singularly focused on the monarch, others may be more interested in broader habitat creation and/or wary of the regulations that singlespecies conservation can bring This information was used to highlight best practices for engaging urban stakeholders and to develop approaches that connect to community interests and assets (e.g., social justice initiatives, green infrastructure planning, urban farming efforts, public art) in engaging a wide cross-section of urban residents to take actions aligned with wildlife conservation goals
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