The Nature of Our Cities by Nadina Galle

THE NATURE OF OUR CITIES by Nadina Galle is a book which educates by highlighting some very scary situations. For example, she notes that “in 2018, the European Union recorded 104,000 heat related deaths among older people, over one-third of the global total.” In fact, she encourages her son “not to think about this day as the hottest it's been in the last 100 years but as one of the cooler July days that he and his children would experience in the next 100 years.” Galle, a Dutch-Canadian ecological engineer, travels the world and describes actions being taken to help monitor water needs of trees in Groene Loper park in Maastricht, Netherlands, or measuring heat across neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon, plus many more locales and activities. Her emphasis, as the subtitle suggests, is on “Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet” as it faces threats from urban growth and climate change. She writes eloquently about current research and innovations, concluding that “tomorrow cities must rely on emerging technologies - and repurposed older ones - to build durable ecosystems,” but lacks the ability to synthesize and point to specific action steps for her readers. Notes make up a little over fifteen percent of this text, but unfortunately, a list of resources and relevant organizations (like MIT’s Senseable City Lab where she had a fellowship) or perhaps even commercial suppliers or government entities is missing.