Eric Strauss gave a talk at Boston College entitled “Urban Ecology: A New Science for Revitalizing America’s Cities.” Among other things, he illuminates important ties between urban ecology and social equity.
The quality and character of the urban landscape is how people view nature. If most people are living in cities and most young people are growing up in urban areas, how we care fore the cities and how we care for open space in the city is defining to them the role that humans play in the environment.
‘It’s not good enough to take young people on a meaningful experience and take them out to an area that is pristine, and then bring them back to the city. It’s a subtle (or even not-so-subtle) way of saying, “you know what? Where you live really stinks. what you need to do is stay in school, make enough money so you can afford to move on out to someplace that’s better,” as opposed to empowering people to love the neighborhoods they’re in and saying, “I can take a role in transforming the neighborhood.”
I think this idea reflects the ideas and philosophies that led me to choose to site my program in a semi-urban, low-SES neighborhood, and gives me hope for the future of the urban ecological movement to go beyond the current limited state of conservation and reach out to all people.
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