BIP Summer School Participatory Tools for Urban Nature Planning and Management
General, External sources ·Summary
The topic of this summer school has always been of personal interest for me. I grew up in Washington D.C. which has a big focus on city beautification and as a result did many projects on the McMillian plan, a comprehensive urban planning document created in the vein of the City Beautiful Movement which aimed to beautify cities through green space and monumental architecture. Moreover, I have a strong interest in spatial justice and in ensuring that cities are livable and accessible, which urban nature plays a huge role in. As such, I jumped at the chance to be a part of this summer school. I was also curious about what the BIP experience would entail. Participating in this summer school meant that I would have the opportunity to meet (both online and in-person) a variety of people from different areas of studies and cultures, who all share the same interest as me. It also meant that I would be able to take a deep dive into a specific study area and actually get to experience and analyze the area in the field for the week long in-person portion of the school. Luckily for me, this year the summer school was held in the same city I had been living in for the last few months as part of my first year in the CDE program, Salzburg, Austria.
Overall, I was I was impressed with and invigorated by how engaged everyone was in the course. Before the in-person portion of this summer school, we attended four virtual lectures to get to know each other and learn more about different topics related to public participation and urban nature. My favorite part of these meetings was the homework, or more accurately, I enjoyed seeing the results of the assignments at the beginning of the following class. At the start of each class, the professors took time to discuss our responses to the questions they asked us about urban nature in our hometown. It was very interesting to see the different forms and issues surrounding urban nature that exist around the world.
The week-long in-person portion of the course was great. Each day was a mix of lectures, practical exercises, and group work. During the week we covered a great variety of topics and I developed strong bonds with my groupmates from Romania, Germany, and elsewhere. It was fun to show the visitors around the city I had been living in for the last year, but there were still some places I had not visited yet.
The week culminated in a final project in which we were split up into four teams to analyze and present on the urban nature in a specific study area. I was part of the red team which was focused on the area to the east of the Hautbahnhof. Believe it or not, I had never been to this area of the city. I was surprised by how industrial it was, but we managed to find a few large parcels of nature. Unfortunately, both of these places were private property. After exploring our study area and doing some GIS analyses including NDVI, my group concluded that there was very little public nature in our study area. This was a surprising conclusion to reach considering that Salzburg is 58% nature and it has remained this way since 1985 when a law was passed protecting the existing green space and forbidding any loss of it. To help my group present our study area and our conclusions I worked to create an interactive web app that showcased the nature in our study area which also included pop up with some of the photos we took on our visits to the area. You can find the app and explore our study area here: CIVIS Team 4 Web App