Blue Urbanism by Timothy Beatley

B lue u rBanism

Blue Urbanism Exploring Connections between Cities and Oceans

Timothy Beatley

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright © 2014 Timothy Beatley All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M St NW, Suite 650, Washington DC 20036 Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beatley, Timothy, 1957– Blue urbanism : exploring connections between cities and oceans / Timothy Beatley. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-61091-404-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-61091-404-X (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-61091-405-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-61091-405-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. City planning.

2. Environmental protection—Planning. 3. Coastal zone management.

4. Sea level. 5. Urban ecology (Sociology). 6. Marine ecology. I. Title.

HT166.B39273 2014 307.1'216—dc23 2013043041 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: biomass, bioremediation, carbon reduction, climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, coastal resilience, distributed energy systems, geothermal energy, green streets, hydrogen power, infrastructural ecologies, renewable energy, siting public utilities, smart grid, solar power, stormwater management, urban resilience, waste combustion, water scarcity, waste-to-energy facilities, water treatment and storage

Dedicated to all the marine life we don’t (usually) see and the many individuals in cities who work tirelessly to understand and protect it

Contents

Preface: A New View of Cities on the Blue Planet Acknowledgments Chapter 1:

The Urban-Ocean Connection

Chapter 2:

The Reach of Cities: Connecting Urban Lifestyles and

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Ocean Health

19

Chapter 3:

Satisfying Urban Fish Eaters Sustainably

43

Chapter 4:

Urban Design for a Blue Planet

61

Chapter 5:

Reimagining Land Use and Parks in the Blue City

85

Chapter 6:

Engaging Urban Dwellers in Marine Life around Them 103

Chapter 7:

New Ideas for Connecting Oceans and Cities

133

Chapter 8:

Forging a Blue Urban Future

155

Notes

167

Index

179

Preface: A New View of Cities on the Blue Planet

The title of this book is perhaps, at first blush, an odd one—after all, there are no cities under the sea. Partly, the title is meant to surprise, to startle, and to perhaps induce a bit of “what does that mean?” I hope such an effect will both spark conversation about how intimately connected our cities actually are to oceans as well as increase awareness. What does it mean that our profoundly blue planet is becoming even more profoundly urban? And, optimistically, what are the ways we might harness the political power and creativity of urban populations on behalf of ocean and marine environments?

This book is an argument for heightened awareness and partnership among city governments, planners, designers, scientists, and urbanites to become part of a more complementary, mutually sustainable relationship between city and ocean. There are many positive stories, initiatives, and examples of the ways in which the urban and ocean can intersect, but we need more—and are capable of much more meaningful—engagement with ocean life.

We live on an amazing marine planet, and the oceans influence our lives in more ways than we often realize: weather systems, food sources, even our modern, complex power and transportation systems rely heavily on ocean resources. And yet, we have virtually ignored oceans and marine environments in modern planning, policy, and design of cities. Even in the most progressive cities, planning is mainly focused on the beginning phases of climate-change sea level rise, and little more. But, as this book explores, our city planning can and should undertake protection of marine life and ecosystems, just as we have put protections in place for terrestrial systems. Although 70 percent of our planet is covered by oceans, a xi

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mere 1 percent of this area is protected from exploitation in marine preserves or protected areas.

In recent years, oceanographers and marine scientists, such as Sylvia Earle, Daniel Pauly, Nancy Knowlton, and Jeremy Jackson, have done much to raise awareness about the profound ways in which we are connected to oceans and the current dire plight of much of the marine realm. Because it is so difficult for us to explore and spend time in the ocean, we tend to undervalue and underappreciate the marine environment, yet our survival as a species is inextricably connected to its ecology and environmental health.1 Consensus is growing within the marine science community about the multitude of threats to our oceans, which are experiencing a combination of industrial overfishing, excessive pollution and waste, and the severe impacts of climate change. David Attenborough has produced a telling documentary titled The Death of the Oceans, while coral reef expert Jeremy Jackson refers to the coming “Ocean Apocalypse,” assembling a bleak picture of future oceans that have lost their abundance and complexity.2 Now, while some opportunity still exists for amending our overexploitative relationship with oceans, it is time for cities and their citizens to rise to the occasion and harness their political power, growing economic wealth, creativity, and ingenuity to promote better ocean stewardship.

My conviction that cities and urbanites can and will, under the right circumstances, take on ocean conservation arose during a six-month stay in Western Australia in 2005. Many residents in the greater Perth area were aware of, and sensitive to, issues concerning marine and coastal environments. In particular, there were heated debates over whether to allow resort development to take place along the highly biodiverse Ningaloo Reef. What was proposed—a massive hotel complex—would have been located on the shore’s edge in precisely the worst location for preserving marine biodiversity.

I was startled to see so many “SAVE NINGALOO” bumper stickers; it seemed they were everywhere in Perth. I was amazed at the

Preface

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Figure 0-1: Wellington, New Zealand, has close ties, both geographically and culturally, with the Pacific Ocean. (Credit: Tim Beatley)

sense of outrage and concern for a marine environment that was more than 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) away from Perth’s city limits. Citizens held rallies and wrote letters expressing their concern that the development would negatively impact the reef. In the face of these protests, the state’s premier (the equivalent to an American governor) eventually responded to public opinion and vetoed the project. This story has stayed with me as a remarkable example of how urbanites, even those hundreds of kilometers away, can care for and advocate on behalf of the ocean world.

But the new threats to ocean health and marine life are so dire that protecting oceans for the future will require the work of cities and urban populations in unprecedented ways, today and in the years ahead. These combined, new efforts must represent a shift toward embracing an ethic I call “blue urbanism,” a variation of the more commonly used phrase which reflects much of my previous work and writing, “green urbanism.”

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Green urbanism argues that we can and must integrate ecological designs, practices, and technologies into dense urban environments. It holds that the efficiency of scale produced by humans living together in cities results in lifestyles that are generally more resource efficient, with reduced consumption and shorter supply lines (e.g., promoting local food sources and building materials) as well as a shift toward a “circular metabolism,” which relies on renewable energy produced by and integrated into built environments. Increasingly, we recognize that living in compact, dense, mixed-use cities is one of the most important ways we can move toward sustainability.

As this book argues, however, this green urban agenda often ignores oceans and marine environments (as a mea culpa, I managed to write a leading book about green urbanism in 2000 without mentioning oceans!).3 Rarely is there an acknowledgment of the ultimate “blue” home and context in which cities and urban populations exist, or of the need to take into account protection and health of marine environments as an explicit urban agenda. It’s time to address this all too common oversight.

Blue urbanism is also related in important ways to E. O. Wilson’s concept of biophilia—the innate attraction and emotional sustenance that humans (especially those who live in urban environments) feel for nature.4 The effort at advancing green cities has often focused on designing places and spaces that conserve energy, reduce waste, minimize water consumption, and so on.

These are all essential steps, often facilitated by creative design and technology, but the agenda of “green” cities often forgets the actual or literal green: the nature—trees, birds, parks, and greenspace elements—that we need to be healthy and happy. When we scan the oceanscape for a glimpse of a breaching whale, or watch pelicans flying in formation, or engage the ocean world through snorkeling or beachcombing, we are responding to a deep need to see, touch, feel, and experience other wondrous lives found in ocean and marine environments.

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xv

What would it mean to live in cities designed to foster feelings of connectedness to the ocean? How and in what ways can we take the benefits we receive from oceans into account in our city plans, practices, and policies? Many local governments have taken initial steps, such as imposing bans on plastic bags and on destructive practices such as shark finning. These actions, which have yielded impressive results, reflect how urban populations can create effective positive change for ocean health.

The case of shark finning—the gruesome practice of cutting off the fins of sharks and discarding the bodies, largely to supply the Asian shark-fin soup market—is an interesting way to begin to see the potential political power of cities and urban populations. More than 70 million sharks are “harvested” annually, and the practice is beginning to have alarming impacts on shark populations.

Bans on the sale of shark fins have been adopted in a number of American cities, and now four US states have enacted a ban, including Illinois, a state that is hundreds of miles away from the nearest wild shark. Even in cities like Hong Kong, which sees much economic benefit from the shark-fin trade, there are changing opinions and debate. It is not always easy or quick, but change is possible. For seven consecutive years, an elite Hong Kong runners group has run the city’s Standard Chartered Marathon in full-body shark costumes.5 The image is humorous, to see the smiling faces of each runner beaming through an open shark mouth. The matter is serious to the runners, however, with the marathon a highly visible way to raise awareness about shark finning. Combined with other efforts in the city to change attitudes, the acceptance of shark finning seems to be waning. In fall 2012, Hong Kong–based airlines Cathay Pacific decided to stop allowing cargo containing shark products on its flights. Like the protection of Ningaloo Reef, or like San Francisco and its banning of destructive, polluting shopping bags, Hong Kong may become a poster city for changing attitudes to prioritize the health of the ocean and marine creatures.

Local city governments have many options to influence policy

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Preface

Figure 0-2: Shark fins in a storefront in Bangkok. (Credit: oldandsolo via Flickr)

and behavioral changes that reduce harm to oceans. City policy can support new projects and initiatives that educate and connect urbanites to the ocean resources around them. Governments can set standards for building design that both restores habitat and offers unusual windows to the aquatic world, and can award municipal building contracts to architecture firms and developers who embrace a “blue urbanism� approach. They can fund programs through the local aquarium or push for more sustainable fisheries and support the production of local seafood through techniques such as aquaponics. And they can nurture new awareness of the wonders found within the deep waters of our oceans, and the threats to healthy aquatic life, through a host of actions from establishing ocean sister cities to city-sponsored ocean expeditions and more.

Other approaches for government action include applying older, conventional tools in more unusual and innovative ways, such as

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Figure 0-3: Orange Anthias in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea. (Credit: NOAA/Mr. Mohammed Al Momany, Aqaba, Jordan)

extending the powers of land zoning, a common practice and tool at the local level, to ocean and marine environments. Cities perched on the edge of the sea can create new designation and protection of “bluebelts,� an equivalent or parallel of the greenbelts we have established in more terrestrial settings.

In some ways, blue urbanism is a natural extension of the ways our modern environmental sensibilities have already been aiming.

But it emphasizes more strategically integrating the consideration of ocean issues into our personal choices, urban planning, and government priorities. A blue urbanism approach to planning and activism is guided by the principal understanding that we are all connected on the blue planet and that human choices concerning the consumption of materials, energy, and food will impact marine organisms and ecosystems and ultimately return to influence our own health and well-being. Blue urban cities consciously acknowledge that their ecological footprints extend beyond their immediate

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communities, and that there is a hinterland that supports and sustains them. As such, policies are carefully considered regarding their impact on oceans.

Ultimately, the challenge will be to grow a new urban culture that is profoundly aware of its ocean and marine context. We need a Homo aqua urbanis. I believe it is possible to quickly cultivate a new urban sensibility that not only recognizes oceans but makes them the central organizing framework and narrative to our lives on this indisputably blue planet. The chapters that follow tell many stories of individuals and cities making progress, and the many positive ways these new ocean sensibilities can manifest. Blue urbanism challenges us to imagine how we, as “terrestrial urbanites,� can understand our role as citizens of the sea and understand the ocean’s role as part of our urban environments. Appreciating that we are inhabitants of the blue world, we must begin to develop a more robust system of stewardship over this mysterious and beautiful, yet easily overlooked, realm of Earth.

Acknowledgments

This book grew directly from an essay, “Blue Urbanism: The City and the Ocean,� that appeared in the online journal Places in 2011.

Special thanks are due to Nancy Levinson, the editor of Places, for her encouragement of this article idea. I would also like to thank Heather Boyer, senior editor at Island Press, for encouraging the idea of blue urbanism as a book, and especially editor Courtney Lix, for her many terrific suggestions and clever ideas for reorganizing the text and topics and for her successful efforts at crafting a readable, informative book.

Many individuals gave generously of their time in helping me write this book, including a number of marine and coastal leaders who shared their ideas through interviews. Any richness in the content and stories of this book is due to them and the inspiring work they do. I hope I have conveyed at least some of their enthusiasm for and dedication to protecting the marine environments around cities.

As always, this book would not have been possible without the immense support of my wife and two daughters, who share a love of the marine world.

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Chapter 1

The Urban-Ocean Connection

O

are intimately intertwined in numerous ways. The ecological services provided by a healthy ocean are immense—from the weather patterns that have given rise to our modern civilization to the oxygen-producing effects of life in the sea to the benefits of carbon sequestration. All cities, no matter how close or distant from an ocean, receive benefits from marine resources. The world’s oceans are a major carbon sink, soaking up an estimated 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, likely delaying the severity of weather-related climate change. Food from the sea—fish, mollusk, and plant—is a significant source of sustenance and protein for most of the world’s population. Much of the development of modern society draws on ocean resources, from goods moved along shipping channels to deposits of oil under the ocean floor. ur urban future and ocean world

1

2

Blue Urbanism

As oceanographer and ocean explorer Sylvia Earle eloquently explains, oceans are key to everything: “The ocean drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, holds 97 percent of Earth’s water, and embraces 97 percent of the biosphere. Far and away the greatest abundance and diversity of life occurs in the ocean, occupying liquid space from the sunlit surface to the greatest depths.”1 Earle continues, arguing that we all have an essential stake in healthy oceans: “Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.”2 Urban consumption and production activities depend in many ways on resources provided by ocean environments, sometimes directly, other times more indirectly. The pressures are many and multifaceted, often bordering on abstract because the supply chains and international treaties that incent exploitative behavior are far beyond the day-to-day activities of most of us. But to create blue urban cities, we must examine the current policy relationship between our oceans and cities, and the nascent alternatives to harmful practices.

Urban Demands on Ocean Resources Our oceans provide plentiful resources, from food to oil to wind power. And yet, evidence indicates that most of the standard practices for extracting these resources are significantly harming ocean health. I call the incursions of modern urban life into the marine realm a form of “ocean sprawl.” Busy shipping lanes, development of wind farms, drilling rigs and industrial fishing boats—all impact the integrity of ocean ecosystems as they provide goods and services to humans.

Arguably, oceans are the source of the natural resources that form the foundation of our modern lifestyles. There are increasingly

The Urban-Ocean Connection

3

intense direct pressures to extract resources from ocean beds, such as new proposals for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. When we fill up the fuel tanks of our cars, we usually aren’t thinking about how dependence on oil-based transportation has real consequences for our oceans. For many of us watching television during the summer of 2010, the images of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico were gut-wrenching. It was a visceral and painful reminder of how our oil-soaked and car-dependent lifestyles severely impact marine environments. And while there have been discussions about the adequacy of our regulatory system and the appropriate amount of offshore and deep-sea drilling as well as a recent settlement that charged $4.5 billion in damages to BP, little has actually changed.

This reliance on fossil fuels has created perhaps the greatest threat to our oceans: climate change. Marine scientist Jeremy Jackson paints a discouraging picture of the changing chemistry, biology, and biophysical functioning of oceans that are rapidly heating up, with a likely increase in sea surface temperatures of 3 to 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Changes in global sea temperatures have already resulted in significant shifts in the distribution of marine species, and more will occur as species seek to adapt, if they can, to these temperature and habitat changes.3 Ocean stratification, and reduced ocean mixing, will further contribute to the declining complexity and productivity of ocean ecosystems. The mixing of ocean water layers serves essential ecological and biological functions. In many parts of the ocean, for instance, nutrient upwelling (or the movement to the surface of nutrients otherwise trapped in lower layers) provides important food sources for species that form the base of the ocean’s food chain.

The oceans have served as a “giant reservoir of carbon,” likely reducing and moderating the impacts of our profligate fossil fuel use.4 The cost to oceans and ocean life has been high, as acidification of ocean waters has been a continuing death knell for coral reefs and threatens to further disrupt essential marine food chains.

4

Blue Urbanism

Phytoplankton and other marine organisms form their shells from calcium carbonate, and as the pH of ocean waters decreases, this becomes more difficult because carbonate becomes less available.5 On a more optimistic note, the oceans may also represent our best hope for a more sustainable global future, as they hold great potential as a source of renewable production of energy that can ease our current fossil fuel dependence. Offshore wind production has many advantages over land-based turbines, and a number of offshore wind projects are now under way in US waters and around the world. The promise and potential of offshore wind are great indeed, and the US Department of Energy’s Wind Powering America initiative estimates the US potential at some 4,150 gigawatts, or about four times the nation’s current energy production.6 While many of these energy technologies and opportunities represent a positive trend toward more sustainable, lower-carbon models, they also create new pressures on offshore marine environments (impacts on fish movement and habitat, for example) and must be designed and sited carefully to ensure impacts are minimal.

The rise in global trade over the past half century has increased our use of the ocean as a critical transportation zone as well. Immense levels of cargo ship traffic providing global transportation of everything from car parts to T-shirts to cell phones have begun to seriously threaten whales, for example, which are maimed or killed when struck by huge transport vessels. Some progress has been made to reduce these whale fatalities by requiring modification of shipping lanes into and out of major port cities to minimize threats.

Working together with the shipping industry, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has recently established new shipping lanes and procedures (including a “real-time whale monitoring network”) for traffic into and out of the San Francisco Bay.7 Nevertheless, the impacts of shipping traffic on whale species can be severe, with multiple fatalities of blue whales, a species that seems especially vulnerable, reported in recent years along the California coast.8

The Urban-Ocean Connection

5

Finally, more people in the world get protein from fish than from any other source. We harvest vast amounts of fish and other seafood in ways that are profoundly unsustainable and that look increasingly like the industrial food production systems on land— shortsighted, environmentally destructive, and highly mechanized and subsidized. Most global fisheries are either at or beyond their productive capacity, yet over the past several decades, the reach of global fishing fleets has been extreme and unforgiving. As the World Wildlife Fund reports, the global fish catch has increased fivefold in the past forty years or so, a function of ever larger and more destructive trawling as well as other destructive fishing techniques, such as purse seining and long lines, that exploit ever more distant parts of the ocean and its depths.9 New estimates (still conservative) suggest that more than 70 million sharks are harvested annually for shark finning, which is wasteful and cruel, and likely holds significant ecological implications.

The Long Reach of Polluted Waters Coastal cities have treated our oceans as garbage dumps and open sewers for centuries, believing they were too massive and expansive to be damaged or altered. Now, science tells us otherwise. The accumulation of plastics in the ocean is one of the more publicly recognized problems, and yet new studies indicate the effects are worse than we thought. Researchers at the University of California at Davis recently discovered that certain kinds of plastic, especially those made from polyethylene (plastic water bottles, plastic shopping bags), absorb large amounts of toxins from the water, compared with other plastics. Additionally, the study found that as the plastics degrade, they adsorb even more toxins.10 The research concludes that marine organisms thus face a “double threat” when they ingest plastics—if a turtle happens to survive eating a plastic bag it has mistaken for a jellyfish, for example, it may instead be slowly poisoned.

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Blue Urbanism

Figure 1-1: NOAA divers free an entangled Hawaiian monk seal at French Frigate Shoals, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, during a marine debris survey and removal cruise. (Credit: Ray Boland, NOAA/NMFS/PIFD/ESOD)

How to stop the pollution and staunch the flow of plastics to the ocean is a serious challenge, but one that urban policy makers are beginning to address with plastic bag bans and fees. But cleaning up the existing trash is perhaps even more challenging. A research team in Australia recently concluded that if we were able to today completely stop the flow of plastics to ocean (a miraculous accomplishment), it would be five hundred years before the ocean garbage patches—gyres—stopped growing in size.

Closer to shore, the impacts are equal, if not more intense. Oceans have served as a major dumping ground and liquid landfill for the discarded waste and detritus of urban life. Where would we put all of this waste if it couldn’t go directly into the sea? From plastics to municipal solid waste of various kinds to untreated wastewater, we have designed our cities to take advantage of the vastness of the ocean, believing that we could deposit anything with impunity.

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7

But research shows that this kind of uncensored disposal is greatly impacting ocean ecosystems.

In addition to plastic waste, land-source air pollution from urban areas is a significant problem for oceans. Coal-burning power plants, built to satisfy profligate urban energy demands, send large amounts of mercury into oceans, for instance, and the threats to both ocean life and human health are on the rise. A recently released United Nations Environment Programme report documents a doubling of mercury levels in the top 100 meters (300 feet) of ocean water over the past one hundred years.11 Industrial agriculture, which can occur thousands of miles from the coast, has begun to impact ocean health as excess nitrogen and phosphorus are washed downriver and poison estuaries, where rivers meet the ocean. The chemicals catalyze algal blooms that monopolize all of the available oxygen in the water and create “dead zones,” wiping out nearly all ocean life within the bloom. The dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico is the best known, but there are more than four hundred dead zones worldwide, and this number is predicted to increase in the years to come.12 This has direct implications for human health, since exposure to toxins released from algal blooms can cause illness and even death.13

The Value of Healthy Oceans The problem we find ourselves with is the long-standing “tragedy of the commons.” As with many things related to the natural environment, costs imposed on marine and ocean organisms and environments are external (externalized), are largely hidden, and result from the cumulative impacts of many decisions and behaviors.

Therefore, it is quite difficult to change policies and behaviors that negatively impact our oceans because there isn’t one obvious causeand-effect relationship but many direct and indirect influences.

And yet, there should be a strong incentive to study, understand, and change behaviors and policies that degrade ocean health.

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Blue Urbanism

We know that the ecosystem functions provided by the ocean carry a huge economic value. The Global Partnership for Oceans has nicely summarized much of this knowledge, including some important statistics: 350 million jobs globally are dependent on oceans, and the annual trade in fish and seafood generates $108 billion. The economic value of ecotourism related to coral reefs alone totals some $9 billion.14 A key premise of blue urbanism is that large economic benefits result from maintaining healthy oceans; large social, environmental, and economic costs are associated with diminishing ocean health; and future urban decisions should reflect and be guided by an understanding of these costs and benefits.

Other industries, which you might not initially think of, see great benefits from examining and studying marine life. For example, many drugs have been developed from compounds found in marine creatures. Well-known corals, sponges, and tunicates already provide components used in anti-cancer, anti-malarial, and anti-viral drugs.15 In the engineering sciences, studying ocean organisms can offer tremendous insights for materials development, propulsion studies, and regenerative design. From building design inspired by nautilus shells, to automated cars that are packed together and move like schools of fish, to swimsuit fabric that mimics sharkskin, we have learned much from studying ocean creatures.16 At the Engineering School at the University of Virginia, researchers working on behalf of the US Navy have been developing a new underwater vehicle, attempting to replicate the highly efficient, graceful locomotion of manta rays.17 Green, photosynthetic bacteria living deep in the ocean, some 2,400 meters (7,200 feet) under the surface of the Pacific, were recently discovered. They survive in such an inhospitable place by taking energy and nutrients from only a small amount of light and by taking sulfur from hydrovents.

These bacteria hold secrets for how life can occur in the most difficult environments and may offer insights into how to survive changes on our own planet as well as help us understand where to look for life on seemingly lifeless planets.18

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9

Figure 1-2: The remote operated vehicle “Hercules� descends on a mission. (Credit: Mountains in the Sea Research Team; the IFE Crew; and NOAA/OAR/OER)

Changing Our Stewardship of Oceans The good news is that many places hold great potential for positive, restorative interaction between urbanites and the sea. Many cities, from Boston to San Francisco to Miami, are perched on the edge of amazing ocean environments, offering tremendous potential for enhancing quality of life and forging meaningful contact with the ocean.

We need to profoundly reorient the perspectives of urban populations to develop awareness and emotional connections and to harness the tremendous potential of cities and urban populations on behalf of ocean protection and conservation. Creating cities full of (terrestrial) nature and using energy and resources of all kinds sparingly remain important, but our efforts to create a sustainable society will fall short if we do not focus more attention on the marine and aquatic worlds. This means rethinking stewardship of and negative impacts on both the nearshore environments we are most familiar with as well as the open ocean and deep marine worlds

10

Blue Urbanism

that we are only beginning to understand, which lie far beyond the immediate surroundings of cities.

The pride of place felt by residents of American cities rarely extends to include the marine world, but it should. In a recent interview, Brian Meux, of the organization LA Waterkeeper, told me about the giant kelp forests just offshore from the millions of residents of this sprawling city. Most don’t even know this marine world exists, never mind being proud of it or wanting to take personal steps to care for or protect it. Brian hopes this will change: “My dream is that people here are as proud of our kelp forests as Hawaiians are of their coral reefs.”

To expand this dream beyond LA to coastal cities around the world means we must nurture a love of the ocean environments around cities and urban centers. On a recent visit to Seattle, I joined Janice Mathisen, who directs the Beach Naturalist program for the Seattle Aquarium, at Golden Gardens Park. The tide was out, and a mysterious world was on display: exposed rocks and seaweed, a wondrous world of anemones, sea stars, and moon snails. But most urbanites, if they even choose to visit and look at the tidal pools, lack the knowledge to identify what they see. Urban residents need some help in understanding this magical, nearby world, and here programs like the Beach Naturalists play an essential role. The program trains several hundred volunteer naturalists in the ecology and life found in the intertidal zone, and these volunteers patrol the city’s parks to help people understand more about life in the tidal pools. People are increasingly intrigued and curious about nature when given the chance to observe it directly and to interact with wild creatures respectfully.

From my research on biophilic cities, I have found that this is particularly the case for people living in highly urbanized environments. When given the chance, with the right combination of coaching and prodding, residents of urban areas can learn to see and appreciate the nature around them in ways that deliver important improvements in health, well-being, and quality of life.

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Figure 1-3: A sea life mural alongside a parking lot in New Orleans provides an unexpected reminder that we live on a blue planet. (Credit: Tim Beatley)

Some cities are beginning to understand this important marine wildness and its role in enhancing connectedness and quality of life. Wellington, New Zealand, a city surrounded by water, is actively cultivating its connections to the marine world. These efforts include a new marine reserve on one of its shores, a marine education center providing children and adults alike the chance to touch and see marine organisms, the world’s first marine bioblitz (engaging the citizens in the recording of marine diversity), and a powerful new vision of its “bluebelt,” a complement to its historic and highly prized greenbelt system. Like Seattle, Wellington has abundant marine and coastal nature—many residents spend time scuba diving and snorkeling, boating, hiking along the city’s shoreline, and watching the summer phenomenon of manta rays and eagle rays that come into the harbor (and the orcas that follow them).

It is true that in coastal cities especially there is immense “wildness,” often just meters away, and engaging this ocean world can be fun and therapeutic, providing great benefits to mental and physical

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health, as the experiences of cities like Wellington and Seattle demonstrate. The good news described in this book includes the many stories that show that, if given sufficient opportunity, urbanites do want to learn about and spend time in and around ocean environments. The charisma of ocean animals like sea turtles and whales, and the beauty of marine environments beyond their daily purview, can also foster feelings of stewardship and concern.

Creating Change at the Personal Level From my work on biophilia, the human affinity for nature, I think that opportunities for direct, emotional connection with the ocean and marine life hold great promise for repairing our dysfunctional relationship with the oceans. Many people already connect with the ocean on a personal level through boating and scuba diving and snorkeling, among other activities. By one estimate, there are more than 22 million certified scuba divers in the world. These individuals have a deeper (literally!) connection with the sea, and as we will see in chapter 7, some divers are becoming stewards of California’s kelp forests.19 From whale watching to beachcombing, opportunities for visceral and firsthand experience of the marine world are more easily attained than we might think, especially in the many coastal cities perched on the sea-land edge. According to the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association, in 2012 a record 20.3 million passengers traveled on cruise ships globally, and this recreational sector is growing.20 While cruise guests are often highly distracted, and the cruise industry’s environmental record is less than stellar, I hold out hope that there will be opportunities to connect cruise travelers to the ocean—putting the “ocean” back in “ocean cruise.”

Interest in whale watching is on the rise, with positive impacts on job growth and economic opportunity. Along the northwest coast of the United States, residents can observe the amazing migration of grey whales, some eighteen thousand of them, passing

The Urban-Ocean Connection

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Figure 1-4: A green sea turtle swims off the coast of Saipan, an island in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean. (Credit: David Burdick)

along the Oregon coast between March and June. The whales are never very far offshore, often less than half a mile from the coast, on their return migration north from calving grounds in Mexico.

Excellent and frequent opportunities exist for urbanites to see the whales, including programs such as Whale Watching Spoken Here (described in chapter 6), which helps people understand more about this impressive natural event.

The economic potential of whale watching offers much hope for the development of nonexploitative ocean resources. An international team of researchers published an analysis of the global economic potential of whale watching in 2010, with a focus on developing economies where this activity has been less prominent. They concluded that the total global economic benefits of whale watching could generate $2.5 billion.21 A remarkable amount, it suggests the hidden potential of nonextractive, less destructive approaches to utilizing ocean and marine environments. Perhaps just as importantly,

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Blue Urbanism

it indicates the existence of a strong desire on the part of many human beings to connect with the beauty and immensity of ocean life, and the potential to engage people in protecting and restoring the health of marine ecosystems.

The Wonder and Diversity of Marine Life Marine scientists have proven that the ocean is much more biologically diverse, when understood at the phylum level, than terrestrial environments, with much more mystery and wonder (and many more benefits to mankind) yet to be discovered. This provides one of the best opportunities for connecting urbanites to the ocean and inspiring a sense of stewardship for healthy oceans.

In October 2010, the Census of Marine Life released the results of its decade-long study of marine biodiversity. The Census’s findings significantly adjust our estimates of how much life exists even in very deep and inhospitable ocean environments. Nancy Knowlton’s book Citizens of the Sea is a visual record of the wondrous life described in the Census: sea dragons (Phycodurus eques) that disguise themselves as seaweeds, green bomber worms (Swima bombiviridis) that escape from predators by releasing “sacs of glowing green fluid from [their] neck[s],” noisy grunt fish gnashing their teeth, orange roughies (Hoplosthethus atlanticus) that may live up to 125 years in the seamount habitats, icefish that utilize a kind of antifreeze in their blood to survive in chilly arctic waters, and the ominous-looking fangfish (Anoplogaster cornuta), an ancient predator lurking in deep waters.22 The stories and unique biology of these ocean “citizens” are seemingly endless and beyond the imaginations of most fiction writers.

At the phylum level especially, there are wondrous forms of life with biology and life cycles distinctly different from anything found on land. One species of jellyfish native to the Caribbean, Turritopsis nutricula, has even evolved a cellular process called transdifferentiation that allows it, once it reaches maturity, to essentially

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begin its life again, leading to its apt description as the immortal jellyfish. And more life is just being discovered, often found in the vast parts of the ocean that have not previously been explored or seen. Researchers on a recent month-long diving expedition to the northwest Hawaiian islands—the new Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument—discovered ten new species of coral.

Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who studies these environments, argues that there may be more biodiversity in the deep sea—the largest living zone on the planet—than anywhere else.23 He says: “A million or more undescribed species, with biological adaptations and ecological mechanisms not yet imagined, may live within the vast volume of the deep-sea water column. . . . The animals in this huge habitat make up essential links in the oceanic food web.”24 This marine biodiversity is not only fascinating and wondrous but a storehouse of immense value, with unlimited lessons for solving complex modern environmental, health, and engineering problems.

While we understand so little pertaining to the immense biodiversity of the sea, one thing is clear: this vast range of life is severely threatened. The human reach, indeed the urban reach, is now so great that even deep pelagic environments—places three hundred feet or more below the surface—are being altered by effects of human activity from overfishing to anthropogenic climate change that affects water temperature and pH levels.

But because of our natural limitations, the human population in general has a hard time seeing how we are affecting this remote ocean life, and cannot appreciate the ways urban living might impact places as remote as deep-sea ocean habitats. How do we generate sufficient interest in and support for habitats that are physically remote and emotionally disconnected from the vast urban populations whose consumption patterns and governance decisions most affect them?

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Blue Urbanism

Creating Change at the City Government Level While individual engagement is powerful, it must work in tandem with public policy, led and driven by government at a local level and scaling up to national policies and international agreements. In this book, I will primarily examine the city or urban level because it offers special opportunities to address both personal engagement and policy, although it is at times difficult to exclude the (necessary) role of national and international jurisdictions. For example, establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs) usually occurs through national and state governments, but as we will see in chapter 4, coastal cities often have their own opportunities to establish “blue parks” and to extend their land use plans to better account for and protect the watery ecosystems around them.

Partly driven by the need to confront sea level rise, and to find more creative ways to adapt to climate change, many coastal cities are exploring new and interesting ways to plan and design the interface of the sea and land. Some cities, as we will see later, have extended the concept of greenbelts to include “bluebelts” and are beginning to include ocean impacts in their comprehensive plans and visions for the future in such a way that the city environment is actually more livable and welcoming, and also fosters a healthier nearshore ocean environment.

City governments in places like San Francisco, London, and Singapore are also setting positive examples by enacting legislation that minimizes impacts of urban consumption and lifestyles on marine environments. From plastic bag bans to bans on the sale of shark fins, there is a growing mandate for regulating and prohibiting activities that harm ocean life. This is part of the blue urbanism approach to city life and governance I am encouraging.

This book will explore the many facets of blue urbanism, which I believe can take many forms. Chapter 2 will look in more detail at the connection between the urban lifestyle and ocean health as well as how we might reduce the urban pollution and detritus that

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Figure 1-5: Visitors admire an exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in Monterey, California. (Credit: ©Monterey Bay Aquarium, photo by Randy Wilder)

makes its way into oceans, employ more renewable energy, and create “greener” ports. Chapter 3 will focus on global fishing operations and emerging examples of sustainable fisheries as well as the influence of urban consumption patterns. Chapters 4 and 5 will examine redesign of buildings and public space to foster resilience to climate change and rising ocean levels as well as extending urban spatial planning and conservation into marine environments.

Finally, chapters 6 and 7 will explore how cities might nurture new opportunities for physical contact and emotional connection with the ocean’s edge and engage residents in ocean research and restoration projects.

From New York to Rotterdam, this is a fertile time for coastal cities to explore and experiment with new relationships to water, and many of these new ideas—from reimagining urban shorelines as dynamic, softer edges that respond and adapt to tide and storms, to floating buildings and cities that occupy the watery edges of cities —are examined in the chapters that follow.

What is striking today is that there seems to be not one tipping point toward irreversible ecological damage to our oceans but many. And the threats are often connected to demands from urban

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Blue Urbanism

populations and modern development needs. Yet, as the following chapters will explore, there are also many ways to rethink traditional approaches to policy making and urban development, and there are promising opportunities for creating a more holistic approach to stewardship of the ocean environments that offer us so many fundamental benefits.