The city is not the opposite of nature. It is one of its possible incarnations - a complex arrangement of relationships between people, animals, water, air and space. How we plan these relationships depends on whether we live in a friendly and healthy city or a concrete jungle. And this is decided not in grand strategies, but often in documents we don't even know exist.
One thing is certain - most of us are up to our noses in the word "eco". "Eco" is everything, the word has become a sticker on every product, a slogan in advertisements, and in effect an empty marketing ploy. Meanwhile, ecology itself has nothing to do with trends or fashion. The word comes from the Greek oikos - "house", "habitat", and logos - "word", "science". Ecology is simply the science of relationships - how different organisms live together, coexist, sometimes hinder each other, sometimes help; how they affect each other and the environment they create.
If we look at the city from this perspective, we understand that it is a huge ecosystem. It is an interconnected vessel, a great network of interdependencies - people, birds, trees, soil, air, streets, squares, canals, buildings. A collection of relationships that affect our lives every day, though we often don't notice them. The city at the same time is not the opposite of nature. The question, however, is: are we conscious stewards of this ecosystem, do we treat it as a set of isolated and fenced-off plots of land or as a network of dependencies?
The invisible mechanisms of urban life
In space planning, the concept of ecosystem services is increasingly emerging. It sounds technical, almost official, but there is something very everyday behind it. Something that affects each of us, although we rarely realize it. It's the shade of the tree under which we shelter from the July heat. It's the birdsong outside the window that wakes us up at dawn. It's the lawn or the inconspicuous bushes that hold water after a rain instead of letting it run off directly into the sewer system. It's a river whose current brings coolness and ventilation between blocks. It's also something you can't see with the naked eye: air purification, the circulation of water in the ground, soil fertility, and the opportunity to observe nature right next to a streetcar stop.
The ecosystem services provided by a city have changed with the development of societies. In the past, productive functions were the most important - cities were surrounded by fields, orchards and farms. People primarily drew from nature for food, wood, raw materials. Such were the beginnings of cities, which grew on the basis of an agrarian economy. Over the following centuries, greenery appeared in quasi-urban spaces in the form of gardens and park arrangements, but it was not available to everyone. Baroque gardens, romantic park assumptions and English landscape gardens served aesthetic, health and social functions, but for a few. They were designed with the elite in mind - palace owners, merchants, urban notables. Greenery was meant to be decoration, a sign of status, a setting for Sunday strolls, to be diligently controlled, kept under strict designer control - never a common space. In the industrial age, nature was relegated to the background. Greenery was sometimes thought of as the "lungs of the city." It wasn't until the effects of this industrial revolution began to wear off - in the form of smog, dirt, pollution - that the importance of nature's regulatory services began to be recognized. With the emergence of the idea of public parks, it also began to be recognized that access to nature should not be a privilege - greenery, fresh air, shade and the opportunity to relax should be a common good.
With this new view of public space also came the need to think differently about the role of the city. It is no coincidence that it was at this time that the idea of spas - places that were supposed to be the opposite of a dirty, noisy city - became popular.
In Poland, the first laws regulating spas appeared as early as 1922. The law defined them broadly: as spas - localities with thermal or curative mineral water springs, and as climate stations and sea bathing places. Moreover, at that time there was a category of "spa having a public utility character" - such places were subject to special care and state support, because their importance for public health was recognized. Polish legislation has a rule that the word "Zdrój" can be added to the name of a place that has the status of a health resort. The etymology of the word itself speaks volumes. "Zdrój" and "health" come from the same Proto-Indo-European root meaning "that which is good," "of good wood." But does this idea continue to hold true?
In the publication "City-Health. Architecture and Sense Programming," Joanna Kusiak and Bogna Świątkowska put it very aptly, writing: "A modern city-health is not only about graduation towers and walks by the river, but above all a healthy organization of public life." This is an important reminder that urban space can - and should - act like a spa. Not for a while, not for a select few, not on the weekend, not spot-on, but on a daily basis, for everyone. A spa city is not a tourist attraction or a marketing slogan, but a vision of the city as an environment that supports the lives and health of its residents. One that gives breath on hot days, encourages movement, fosters relaxation and builds social ties. In this sense, the city's ecosystem services are just such a "health" - a source of everyday well-being that often goes unnoticed.
ecosystem on paper
Only that such an urban "health" does not appear by itself. It is not a metaphor detached from reality, but a very concrete consequence of how we design our cities. Ultimately, it comes down to what, where and for whom we choose to plan. Ecosystem services will not come into being without conscious action. It is in urban planning that we write down whether such goodness will be experienced in our city. Will the space become a network of places that support health and well-being, or just a collection of investments subordinated to current interests. How the various elements of the urban ecosystem will coexist in the daily rhythm of the city is determined by planning procedures and tools - those that delineate the boundaries of green spaces, define the functions of plots of land, decide where a tree can be planted and where a block of flats can be erected. And although it sounds technical, it is there, at the level of the plan, that concern for the urban ecosystem begins.
Here comes a tool that - though difficult and unreadable for most residents, often overlooked by those in power and bent by builders - remains the best thing we have: the local development plan (LDP). It is in it that we will find a record of where and how we can build, where the road will run, and where there will be greenery. At the municipal level, clues to the idea of coexistence are to be found in the study of spatial conditions. It is in these planning provisions that the decision is made whether we support urban ecosystems or break them up.
However, caring for ecosystem coexistence in the city requires not only provisions on paper, but also a well-thought-out structure. In planning the greenery and layout of urban nature, two approaches can be distinguished: a network of small elements - pocket parks, backyards, squares, green roofs, places scattered around the city like nodes in a network; extensive natural structures - large parks, forest ranges, river valleys, wastelands, allotments.
Wise planning is not about choosing one of these solutions. It' s about ensuring that these elements form a coherent system - a continuity that allows people, animals, water and air to move, breathe, and roam through the city. This was precisely the vision of Anna Ptaszycka, author of the book "Green Spaces in Cities." As Prof. Tadeusz Tolwinski wrote in the foreword to her book, for Anna Ptaszycka, greenery was not a decoration or a luxury, but a common good and a space that affects the balance between man and nature: "Looking for ways to restore balance in human life - balance in its relation to nature and in its individual and social development against its background - this is the goal of this work." As early as the 1950s, Ptaszycka wrote about the need to create a system of green seams that would allow residents to "migrate out of the city." In her work, she proposed a concrete vision that today - in an era of climate crisis and rapid change - seems more relevant than ever. She envisioned a layout in which one can leave one's backyard and, without interrupting one's walk through parks, squares, river valleys, wastelands and allotment gardens, reach the outskirts of the city and beyond, towards the forest or open areas.
Wroclaw. Designed land division. Green areas designed based on existing park and forest complexes - study from 1949
illustration from the book by Anna Ptaszycka
Copenhagen
Ptaszycka's vision, although created in a completely different political and social context, is reflected in many cities around the world today. One example is Copenhagen, which has adopted the Urban Nature in Copenhagen 2015-2025 strategy, a document that calls for the creation of new green spaces and the improvement of existing ones. The plan talks about combining the care of biodiversity with the needs of residents, who can move through the city with an uninterrupted green belt while enjoying the shade of trees, urban meadows and water corners. As part of the strategy, among other things, the city pledged to plant an additional 100,000 trees, and developed the Green Planning Tool to enable systematic assessment and planning of urban greenery. The policy was widely praised for its approach, which takes into account not only nature conservation, but also improving the quality of life for residents - by increasing access to green spaces and involving local communities in decision-making processes.
Over time, however, there were also criticisms. As the end of the strategy approached, residents and experts began to point out the challenges of implementing some projects. One example is the planned construction of the artificial island of Lynetteholmen, raising concerns about the impact on the marine environment and carbon emissions. Critics also point to the need for greater transparency in the decision-making process and more effective consideration of the opinions of local communities. Despite the controversy, the city's actions remain an important example, including in managing with crises. For at the same time, Copenhagen was facing very specific climate challenges. In 2011, the city experienced catastrophic flooding caused by heavy rainfall. Material losses reached one billion dollars. This event became the impetus for rethinking how the city could better cope with extreme weather events. The result was the Cloudburst Plan - a comprehensive climate adaptation plan to create a system of green streets, retention parks and other infrastructure with a dual function: in times of drought to serve as recreation areas for residents, in times of downpours to serve as retention reservoirs.
Singapore: a city in nature, not next to nature
Thinking of the city as a space steeped in nature, rather than opposed to nature, has found surprisingly consistent implementation on the other side of the globe - in Singapore.
Singapore, a city-state of just 728 square kilometers, is one of the most densely populated places in the world. And yet nearly half of its land area - about 48 percent - remains covered with greenery. This is not leftover undeveloped land, but the result of years of planning policy. Since the 1960s, Singapore's space has been shaped with ecological dependence in mind - initially under the banner of the Garden City, later transformed into the ambitious "City in Nature" plan enshrined in the Green Plan 2030.
As part of this policy, a nationwide Park Connector Network of more than 370 kilometers of green corridors was created, connecting parks and nature reserves into a coherent structure. Streets were planted with trees, and it was established that new developments must include green roofs or vertical gardens. One example is the now-famous Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, where a concrete canal has been turned into a meandering river surrounded by floodplains that simultaneously protect against flooding and provide recreational space. Singapore did not limit itself to creating greenery for aesthetics alone. The planning approach has been linked to education and active involvement of residents. As part of the One Million Trees Movement, one million new trees are to be planted by 2030 - more than half of which are already growing. The greenery is supposed to mitigate the effects of the urban heat island, improve air quality and provide access to nature in a dense, urbanized environment.
Over time, however, critical voices have also begun to emerge around this strategy. Despite declarations of nature conservation, some experts point out that Singapore's urban development has not stopped and is leading to the clearing of secondary forest fragments and the reduction of natural habitats. Although the authorities plan to increase protected areas to 12 percent of the country's land area, many local ecosystems are threatened by developments. Another challenge is conflicts at the interface between people and wildlife. As populations of some species - such as macaques - have increased, problems have arisen over their presence near human settlements. Articles in local media raise questions about whether Singaporeans are prepared to live in close proximity to wildlife.
Doubts also surround the social dimension of the strategy. Researchers point out that while greenery is ubiquitous, not all residents benefit from it to the same extent. In some neighborhoods, access to well-maintained green spaces is limited, and this leads to obvious inequalities in access to ecosystem services. There are also claims that despite intensive efforts to green the city, many residents remain unengaged or unaware of the value of these areas.
Barranquilla
Singapore has been planning its green network methodically and systemically for years, but not all cities have had the opportunity to do so. Often the relationship between space and nature was shaped differently - through neglect, conflicts over access to common areas, or a lack of reflection on the importance of natural ecosystems. It was only when the effects of these decisions began to wear off that the need to regain ties with the local landscape emerged. This was the path taken by Barranquilla, Colombia, among others.
For years, the city functioned as if the Magdalena River area was invisible to it. The banks of the river were degraded, occupied by informal settlements, landfills and industrial areas. Access to the water was difficult, and the river itself became a barrier instead of a gathering space. In 2016, the Barranquilla government decided to change this. The Gran Malecón projects and the BiodiverCity strategy began the process of restoring access to the river, not only by cleaning up the area, but also by creating new public spaces, parks and wetlands. The goal was to combine the needs of residents with the restoration of local ecosystems. The riverside wasteland was transformed into an attractive place for rest, recreation and meetings. Reclaimed land began to serve as natural floodplains, promoting water retention and flood protection.
These projects quickly gained local and international recognition. Today, the Gran Malecón is seen as one of the most ambitious public space revitalization projects in Barranquilla. The Malecón has become a gathering place, a recreational and cultural space, and a showcase for the city's new identity. More than 19 million people have visited it since it opened in 2017, and its popularity continues to grow. The project has also been recognized in international architectural competitions, highlighting its importance in the landscape of contemporary urbanism.
BiodiverCity's strategy also focuses on ensuring that the city's development goes hand in hand with protecting ecosystems and increasing residents' access to green spaces. It includes efforts to stabilize the shoreline, protect mangroves, restore wetlands, and develop educational trails to help residents learn more about local biodiversity. The program has won acclaim as an example of integrating nature into everyday urban life and the community. An important aspect of this project was the involvement of local communities and the private sector. The city not only gave the river back to the residents, but also created a space where nature and daily life coexist.
Rio de Janeiro
Also noteworthy is Rio de Janeiro, which since the 1980s has faced the consequences of chaotic urbanization. City authorities noted that uncontrolled deforestation of the steep hills on which informal settlements were being built exacerbated the risk of erosion, flooding and landslides. The hillsides became the site of natural disasters, threatening the lives and health of tens of thousands of residents. In response to these problems, the Mutirão Reflorestamento (Social Afforestation Program) was launched, based on cooperation with local communities. Beginning in 1986, the city, together with favela residents, began the process of reforesting steep areas. The program involved restoring vegetation and involving people in taking care of their own surroundings. Favela residents were hired to work on the project: they planted trees, built terraces to protect the slopes and took care of the new plantings.
Sugarloaf, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Photo: Hiroki Ogawa © Creative Commons 3.0
The results have been impressive. The slopes, previously prone to mudflows and erosion, have been stabilized. Streams and springs that had dried up or were polluted began to regenerate. During the first ten years of the program, 1.2 million seedlings of native trees and shrubs were planted on 670 hectares, affecting the safety of some 140,000 residents from 57 communities. There have also been benefits that were not initially in the spotlight: improved air quality, lower temperatures, and the return of diverse plant and animal species. In subsequent years, the program was consistently expanded. In 2007, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the city government announced that 4 million trees had been planted within Rio de Janeiro's borders. Six years later, in 2013, the effort had already covered 3,000 hectares in 150 locations across the city, with 800 employees involved and a total of more than 6 million seedlings planted. In 2019, City Hall celebrated the planting of 10 million seedlings on 3,400 hectares. Over time, the program has expanded to cover more areas of the city, including coastal mangroves. At the heart of Mutirão Reflorestamento's success was the belief that effective environmental protection begins with the cooperation and involvement of local communities, who become caretakers of their immediate environment.
The program, which has been running continuously since 1986, is today considered one of the most important environmental initiatives in Rio de Janeiro's history. The sum of activities has contributed to the restoration of portions of the Atlantic rainforest (Mata Atlântica) within the city. A teaspoonful in the endeavor is the fact that participants had no formal employee benefits during the course of the program.
Despite the difficulties that arose, Mutirão Reflorestamento remains an example of a successful urban ecosystem adaptation initiative and is regularly cited in international reports as a good practice that combines environmental and social action. The program has also been recognized by UN agencies, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and private foundations for its effects and long-term impact on Rio de Janeiro's landscape.
Durban
Similar practices have also been used on another continent. Durban, South Africa's third most populous city - after Johannesburg and Cape Town - and the largest city in the KwaZulu-Natal province, is grappling with one of the most pressing challenges of modern cities. The effects of climate change are not an abstraction here: residents are experiencing heat waves, torrential downpours, and sea levels are also rising. Added to this is the gap between rich neighborhoods and poorer suburbs. The city government has decided to get involved... the forest.
The Buffelsdraai Community Reforestation project has decided to restore degraded land in the buffer zone around the city's landfill. Native coastal forests began to be restored on the former sugarcane plantations, and local residents were included in the work from the very beginning. The program envisioned a Community Ecosystem-based Adaptation (CEBA) model, in which people living adjacent to the site could grow seedlings in their homes and participate in the greening process, receiving food vouchers or financial support for education in return. By 2022, nearly one million trees had been planted, restoring biodiversity and the site's ability to store carbon. Employment among local residents has also increased, and local communities have begun to benefit from the newly created gardens and green spaces. One of the challenges the project faced was maintaining the sustainability of these activities - it was not enough to plant the trees, they also had to be cared for and linked to the daily lives of the residents.
A view of Durban, South Africa in the morning
photo: below © Creative Commons 2.5
Freiburg
After the examples from South America and Africa, we move to Europe - to Germany, where care for the urban ecosystem took a completely different form. This time it wasn't about fixing the effects of crises, but about consciously planning a space from the ground up - one that would support urban ecosystem services and the daily needs of residents from the start. In Freiburg im Breisgau, a lively university town on the edge of the Black Forest, known for its mild climate, medieval old town and picturesque Bächle streams, the decision was made to design a neighborhood where greenery, water retention, silence and local community would be embedded in the urban layout. Freiburg is famous not only for its Gothic cathedral with its imposing 116-meter-high tower, but also for its extensive recreational areas - such as the Schlossberg hill, which overlooks the city. It was here, on the site of a former military base, that Vauban began to be built in the 1990s - a neighborhood designed not for the investor, but for the residents.
Vauban was not a reaction to a disaster or an attempt to correct the mistakes of the past. It was a proposal for a new approach to city planning: one that takes into account the relationship between the environment and daily life from the outset. The city set an ecological framework - such as limiting automobile traffic, mandating the construction of low-emission homes, and a stormwater management system - but left it up to future residents to co-determine the appearance and functioning of their neighborhood. Local communities were actively involved in the planning process. So-called Baugruppen were formed - groups of families that together designed their buildings and common spaces.
The result was a neighborhood where green intermingles with architecture, children can run freely on car-free streets, and communal gardens and community spaces are part of everyday life. Implemented solutions, such as inconspicuous but effective rainwater absorption ditches, called bioswales, solar panels, planned space for public transportation and reduced private parking spaces, have helped create a space that is both people and environmentally friendly. The project was not without its difficulties. A long planning process, sometimes complicated negotiations between resident groups, and later a rise in real estate prices that made it difficult for lower-income people to live there showed that even the best-planned neighborhood does not solve all the problems.
Masdar
Masdar's inclusion in this list is perhaps surprising, as it represents a very different approach to integrating ecology with urban planning. Announced with flair in 2006 as the world's first zero-emission city of the future, Abu Dhabi's Masdar City was to become a model realization of the eco-city idea. The UAE authorities planned to create a new district for 50,000 residents, completely free of car traffic, based on renewable energy and modern urban technologies. The acclaimed British architectural firm Foster + Partners was responsible for the project, and the vision was supported by substantial state and private funds.
In reality, however, Masdar City turned out to be an example of ambitions that fell far short of economic and social realities. After the 2008 financial crisis, the pace of investment slowed sharply, and assumptions had to be revised. In 2016, the original goal of creating a zero-carbon city was officially abandoned, and the planned completion date was pushed back from 2016 to 2030. By then, only about 300 people - mostly students and academics affiliated with the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology - lived in Masdar. The futuristic network of autonomous vehicles, which was supposed to be the flagship transportation solution, was never fully realized - the system proved too expensive and technically difficult to implement on a larger scale. Despite this, Masdar City gained international publicity. The project was awarded and honored for its innovative approach to energy, technology and urban planning. These accolades, however, have failed to erase the impression that Masdar has remained an unfinished vision whose potential has not been fully realized.
The streets of Masdar City, almost empty and devoid of urban bustle, have become a symbol of the limitations of the strategy of building an "ideal" eco-city from scratch. Critics point out that the project has highlighted the pitfalls of urbanism based solely on technology and capital: huge upfront costs, lack of demand for products and services in an artificially created space, and difficulties in creating a viable social fabric. Unlike efforts based on revitalizing existing cities, Masdar was a top-down project - imposed by the state, with no organic connection to the daily lives of residents and local communities.
a story of relationship
Let's go back to the beginning of this story - to what ecology actually is. Not a marketing slogan, not a sticker on products, but the science of relationships. About how organisms affect each other and how they co-create the environment in which they live. A city, no matter how much we order it, concrete it or "design" it, is just such a system of relationships. It lives not only because of people, but also because of all those connections that often escape our attention.
Urban planning, the article says, is nothing more than an attempt to put these relationships on paper. What goes into a local plan, strategy or study, investment decisions, affects the functioning of this ecosystem. Will it work like a healthy organism in which nature and development support each other, or rather like a machine that stutters in moments of crisis - during a downpour, a heat wave, a shortage of greenery.
The cities I have written about - Singapore, Barranquilla, Durban, Rio de Janeiro, Fribourg, also Masdar City - show how different strategies for shaping urban ecosystems can be. Sometimes they are long-term and consistent, sometimes they are a reaction to a crisis or an attempt to correct previous mistakes. In some cases, planning failed because it failed to recognize that an urban ecosystem is not formed by design alone - it needs people, their habits, relationships, and local context.
What these stories have in common is that the city is never a neutral backdrop for life. Every spatial decision - where a park, road, housing development, playground or wasteland will be built - affects its ecosystem. We can plan space so that it supports nature and our daily needs, but we can also miss the moment when the last piece of open space turns into another parking lot. For the city is not the opposite of nature. A city is a transformed, designed space, but still a habitat for relationships. This is why urban planning tools are so important. They allow us to see how decisions made today affect the shape of the city in ten, twenty or fifty years. It is not enough to write down in the plan that a park will appear. You have to plan how people will be able to use it. Consider whether it will become an excuse to raise property prices. Pay attention to who will have access to it, and who will be excluded. Ecology in the city, then, begins not with spectacular projects, but with questions: for whom are we planning the space? What relationships are we sustaining and what relationships are we interrupting? Are we building a city for all the organisms that live in it - people, birds, trees - or only for short-term interests? And are we willing to look at the city as a shared ecosystem for which we are responsible.
{AuthorAiB}
Read more: A&B 5/2025 - ECOLOGY,
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