The Urban Biome: Greening the City and the Regenerative Role of the Citizen Practitioner

In the context of climate change, an explosive world population, exponentially increasing rates of urbanization, as well as, environmental and infrastructural degradation, challenges that were once confined to the realm of environmental and social scientists are now of primary concern for urban planners, as well. It has become increasingly clear, in the last decade, that our responses to those challenges are neither sustainable nor realistic, moving us away from the rhetoric of „sustainability‟ towards effective and meaningful „regeneration‟. In this perspective, the notion of the Urban Biome, with its holistic and balanced perspective of life in urban regions, is essential for effective and meaningful urban planning responses that are grounded in modern day reality. Central to that notion is the concept of the “citizen practitioner” which reverses the conventional hierarchy that dominates municipal planning and policy-making bodies, where decision making authority resides with elected officials and technocrats with little input, in the form of direct citizen engagement, from individuals in that region and their communities. This paper calls for aligning bottom-up citizen practitioner engagement with responsive approaches utilized by planning and decision-making bodies towards regenerating our Urban Biomes.

Keywords: Urban, culture, engagement, climate-change, citizen-practitioner, urban-regeneration, sustainability, Phronesis.