Conference 2003
Greening the City:
Bringing Biodiversity Back
into the Urban Environment
Abstract:
The
Ecologies of Liveability — Why Cities Need Biodiversity
 Dr
J Morgan Williams (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment,
New Zealand)
On the southern plateau
of Brazil is a 310 year-old city, Curitiba that has focused sharply
on liveability for its citizens for over 35 years. A core element
of the city's 1960's vision was for Curitiba to be the 'Ecological
Capital of Brazil'. This vision translated, as the city started
to grow rapidly, into a huge park acquisition programme, protection
of heritage buildings and associated vegetation and prioritisation
of pedestrians over cars. The ecologies of quarries have been restored
and the city's green "lungs" fully flexed. It appears Curitiba
civic leaders knew in the 1960's that a 'green' city is a healthy,
prosperous and highly liveable city. In an effort to understand
the motivations for the focus on ecologies, 20 New Zealanders visited
Curitiba in April 2002.[1]
Three decades after Curitiba
overtly focused on "greenness", cities and towns in Aotearoa are
once more (we did in the past — per our Hagley Parks and green
belts) focusing on the values and value of a vegetated biologically
diverse city — on a macro and micro scale.
My team and I have carried
out a number of studies on aspects of New Zealand's desire to protect
or enhance urban and peri-urban biodiversity. In 1997 we examined
the management of amenity values[2]; 1998 the sustainable development
of cities[3]; 1998 the management
of vegetation in North Shore City[4];
2001 the development of peri-urban lands and high natural values[5]
and in 2003 development in icon landscapes in three other countries.[6]
Drawing from my international
and national experience, I will discuss societal, legislative and
institutional arrangements and capacities which I believe are major
"shapers" of the ecologies of liveability. These include such matters
as the scope and context of environmental learnings in our communities,
councils and business worlds; the understanding of how a city's
biology is part of it's wealth and the capacity of the RMA to manage
cumulative effects.
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