The Importance of Nature and Wildness in Our Urban Lives

Abstract

For several years now I have been administering an interesting slide-based survey to my new graduate students. I call it the “what is this?” survey, and it consists largely of images of flora and fauna native to the eastern United States. Interspersed are other images, political and corporate. I ask students to tell me everything they can about the images I present, and the results are usually rather discouraging: Few students are able to name even common species of birds, plants, or trees. Sometimes the results are amusing (and would be more so if they weren’t so sad).KeywordsCommunity GardenUrban Heat Island EffectUrban NatureGreen NeighborhoodNature WalkThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.