Querying Urban Biodiversity: Planning and Design for Biodiversity in Greater Boston

SCI 6518 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Globally, we are facing a biodiversity crisis. Over the past 50 years, global biodiversity has been estimated to have declined by an average of 70% (World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Index) and current extinction rates are estimated at tens to hundreds of times higher than the historic background rate. Increasingly, policymakers are recognizing that biodiversity is inextricably linked to climate adaptation, mitigation, and global sustainability, and that sustainable policy and planning must actively engage the issue.

Cities around the world are undertaking urban biodiversity plans that build on methodologies and tools of now commonplace sustainability, resilience, and forest plans. These biodiversity plans, however, are in their infancy, and the issues involved are infinitely more complicated. They need critical study and innovation.

This project-based seminar will ask theoretical questions: What does biodiversity mean? Why do we care? How do cities and their design influence regional biodiversity? How does design play a role in reshaping the city around a new set of animating forces? What is the relationship between biodiversity within a city’s limits and beyond its borders? What are the ethics of urban biodiversity planning? What are the rights of non-human organisms? Who has access to nature?  

And practical questions: What are the measures of biodiversity? How do we record, map and visualize existing conditions and opportunities for change? What historical planning models might translate to this moment and this subject? And finally, how do we shape data-driven biodiversity plans that goes beyond greenwashing to deliver action-oriented and design-driven solutions.

Co-instructed by a landscape architect and an urban ecologist, this project-based seminar will guide students toward a working knowledge of all aspects of contemporary urban biodiversity planning. We dive deep into the topics of biodiversity science in cities, landscape ecology principles and geo-spatial analyses that can be used to diagnose, project, and prioritize in biodiversity planning.  

The seminar will begin with a case-study analysis of biodiversity plans from global cities, asking how they define biodiversity, assess current conditions, and frame approaches to directed action. We will also look at other comparable planning models, such as urban forest plans, for tools and methodologies. We will then ask students to posit their own framework for assessing biodiversity and locating sites of risk, conservation, or opportunity. Through a series of workshops we will teach geospatial analytical tools that help students advance these frameworks into practical workflows. For their individual project work, students will test a specific analytical approach at the scale of the MAPC region, a neighborhood, and a selected site. They will identify challenges and opportunities and then provide an actionable set of recommendations based on the findings. We will be joined by guest lecturers and practitioners throughout the semester to learn, discuss, and debate: why urban biodiversity? Why now? And, in practical terms, how?

Students will be expected to be familiar or become familiar with spatial analysis. We will host three workshops to train students in basic GIS/spatial analysis tools and methods for biodiversity analysis and planning, including patch and habitat suitability analysis, connectivity and movement models, and prioritization models and mapping.