How does the creation and Care of Green Spaces Affect Resilience in Times of Crisis?

1. Landscapes of Resilience —
Understanding How the Creation
and Care of Green Spaces Can Affect
Resilience in Times of Crisis
Session 44

2. Project funding from:

3. • Speed Talks
– 5 min x 4 presenters
(25 mins)
• Speed Dating
– Break into three
small groups (15 mins)
• Roundtable Wrap-up
one ? ea. for Lindsay, Traci, & Keith
Road map for today…

4. Research and experience suggest that green spaces serve as catalyzing mechanisms
that confer resilience within systems across individual, family, community, and
social-ecological scales and over time—including immediately post-disturbance,
during stages of recovery, and over long term processes of neighborhood and
community change.
Today
Real-world cases
-- How might the benefits of these catalytic spaces come from the physical design,
the way in which site users interact with green space, and the processes involved in
site creation and maintenance?
– How do acts of civic engagement, active stewardship, and collective remembering
in post-disaster recovery contexts “fit in” to social-ecological resilience ?

5. Presentation given May, 2014
RESILIENCE 2014
Montpellier , France
Keith G. Tidball, PhD
kgtidball@cornell.edu
www.civicecology.org
Community-based Ecological Restoration to Enhance
Resilience and Transitions after Surprise and Crisis
in the

6. Why do humans turn to nature, and
restoring nature, in the wake of conflict
and disaster?
Of what use might greening in human
vulnerability and security contexts be in
managing social-ecological systems for
resilience and transitions to peace?

7. GREENING IN THE RED ZONE
Greening in the Red Zone --
• creation and access to green spaces
confers resilience and recovery in systems
disrupted by violent conflict or disaster.
• provides evidence for this assertion through
cases and examples.
• a variety of research and policy frameworks
to explore how creation and access to green
spaces in extreme situations might
contribute to resistance, recovery, and
resilience of social-ecological systems.

8. What is a red zone?
“Red Zones” refer to multiple settings (spatial and temporal)
that may be characterized as intense, potentially or recently
hostile or dangerous, including those associated with terrorist
attacks and war, as well as in post-disaster situations caused by
natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.

9. What is greening?
• “Greening” is an active and integrated approach to the appreciation,
stewardship and management of living elements of social-ecological systems.
• Greening takes place in cities, towns, townships and informal settlements in
urban and peri-urban areas, and in the battlefields of war and of disaster.
• Greening sites vary -- from small woodlands, public and private urban parks
and gardens, urban natural areas, street tree and city square plantings,
botanical gardens and cemeteries, to watersheds, whole forests and national
or international parks.
• Greening involves active participation with nature and in human or civil
society (Tidball and Krasny 2007)—and thus can be distinguished from notions of
‘nature contact’ (Ulrich 1993) that imply spending time in or viewing nature, but
not necessarily active stewardship.

10. Some examples
Replanting of the Urban Forest of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Living Memorials creation throughout
NYC, Washington D.C. , and Shanksville,
PA after 9/11
Establishment of Band-e- Amir National
Park in the midst of conflict in
Afghanistan
Conservation efforts in demilitarized
border lands in the Korean peninsula and
between Greece and Cyprus
Restoration of Iraq’s wetlands, supported by community-based natural resources
management among Iraq’s Marsh Arabs & partnerships with the scientific community

11. Why GRZ?
• Contributes shared sense of identity / rebuilding identity post-crisis
• Leads to improved psychological, cognitive, and social health
• Fosters deeper sense of self-worth as an individual contributes to the
community’s overall well-being
• Serves as basis for framing place meaning and identity, and for
empowerment through demonstrable opportunities for community
organizing
• Restarts ecosystem services producing systems
• Because greeners often form partnerships with NGOs, government, and
universities, greening contributes additional benefits to polycentric
governance approaches

12. Joplin, MO USA (Tornado 2011) NYC,NY USA (Hurricane Sandy 2012)
Sudden surprise vs. long term degradation (or rigidity) of system?
Little vs big? Regional differences? Institutional differences?

13. Traci

49. Lindsay

50. GREEN SPACEAND STEWARDSHIP IN NEW YORK CITY’S
POST-SANDY WATERFRONT COMMUNITIES
6 May 2014
Resilience 2014
Lindsay K. Campbell, Erika S. Svendsen, Nancy J. Falxa-Raymond, Gillian Baine
USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station – NYC Urban Field Station

51. Research questions
• What are the uses, functions,
and values of parkland as
conveyed through people’s
behaviors, descriptions, and
narratives?
• How have perceptions of and
interactions with parkland been
influenced by Hurricane Sandy?

52. Study area
Source: http://www.nycgovparks.org/

53. Social Assessment of Park Users
• Spatially explicit:
• Interior zones
• Edge
• Observations of:
• Human activities
• Signs of human use
• Randomized interviews

54. Civic Stewardship -- Frank Charles Memorial Park
• First responders: informal group of retired friends
• Chronic disturbance: tides and aging
• Acute disturbance: Sandy

55. • Physical features & material qualities: what’s there
• Park amenities and infrastructure
• Natural features (shade, breeze, views, etc.)
• Proximity
• Activities: what you do
• Sports & rec
• Socializing
• Stewardship, nature rec
• Work
• Benefits: what you get
• Enjoyment
• Refuge (quiet, peace, solace, etc.)
• Place attachment: what is sustained
• Social ties and networks: family and friends
• Historical legacies
Why do you come to this park?

56. Acknowledgements
USDA Forest Service
NYC Parks & Recreation
Natural Areas Conservancy
The TKF Foundation
Jamaica Bay Restoration Corps
www.nrs.fs.fed.us/nyc