Timothy Beatley

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for over twenty-five years. His primary teaching and research interests are in environmental planning and policy, with a special emphasis on coastal and natural hazards planning, environmental values and ethics, and biodiversity conservation. He has published extensively in these areas, including the following books: Ethical Land Use; Habitat Conservation Planning: Endangered Species and Urban Growth; Natural Hazard Mitigation; and An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management. In recent years much of his research and writing has been focused on the subject of sustainable communities and creative strategies by which cities and towns can reduce their ecological footprints, while at the same time becoming more livable and equitable places. His books that explore these issues include Biophilic Cities, Resilient Cities, and Blue Urbanism (Island Press).

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More Bugs, More Plants: A Crash Course on Biophilic Cities

Cross-posted at TheCityFix We need nature even more these days. As more people live in cities, nature offers a potent remedy to many of the environmental, economic, and emotional challenges presented by urban living. To address this, a new approach to urbanism has arisen – a “biophilic” urbanism – based on the assumption that contact with nature and the natural world is absolutely essential to modern urban life.
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Nature in Our Alleys

One key premise of our concept of Biophilic Cities is that nature is (and ought to be) all around us, nearby and readily accessible.