Greens and Greening: Agriculture and Restoration Ecology in the City

Abstract

Push and shove, push and shove: today, most people in the world live in cities. We know they seek healthy lives. Restoration ecology can advance the quality of their lives, a greening of the urban sphere to advance a long laundry list of ecological services. Parallel to our work in restoration is a huge new movement to add agricultural activities in the urban core. This grew from the need to bring locally-grown fresh and affordable food into our cities, but has now added additional economic and social vitality to our cities that had been lacking. The need for food security is a foundation of our lives, but these urban islands of greens also show us they can supply recreation and leisure, new small business activity, and the charm of agricultural landscapes into our paved quarters, as well as, themselves, bringing many other ecological services. At the same time, restoration ecologists in our cities have