Category: Urban Green
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Beyond the Nocturnal Veil: Exploring Diurnal Roosts of Fruit Bats
While there are many preconceived notions about bats, very little is known about their daytime roosting habitats and habits. This piece explores the diurnal roosts of fruit bats within the urban landscape of Delhi.
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Early Birders get to Learn!: Birding at Dheerpur Wetlands with the CUES Team
That eagle you spotted in Delhi is probably a Black kite, and that parrot might be a Parakeet! Welcome to the world of birdwatching with the first semester students of MAED, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, who visited the Dheerpur Wetlands and learnt about restoration ecology, urban wetlands, and the surprising biodiversity of cities.
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Beautiful Dragonflies of the Not-so-Beautiful City
This article investigates dragonflies in the city. While they are specialists in flight, very little is known about their pre-metamorphosis aquatic life. Since urban areas create niches where multi-habitat creatures like dragonflies can flourish, should cities be chastised as unwise, unsustainable endeavours or can they be reimagined as housing nature in changed forms?
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Gatekeeping “Access”: Exploring Caveats to Public Greenspace Use for the Urban Poor
Planning processes institutionalise the will of the politically powerful, shaping cities where equal access to urban public greenspace is several steps too far for the urban poor, quite literally and quietly figuratively. Environmental justice scholarship needs to integrate quantitative and qualitative measurements of access to understand what influences greenspace use along socio-economic indicators.
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Bats: The Night Workers
Shiwani As the sun goes down, the nightwalker, or rather, I would say, night fliers come out, one can see colonies of bats flying in the sky and sometimes wandering near a tree or plant. On one such night, as I stood on the balcony, sipping a cup of tea, I observed some bats visiting…
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A Brief on Control and Management of Invasive Phragmites for Wetland Restoration
Shiwani One of the important steps in wetland restoration is managing the invasive or weed species (SER Report, 2019). A common invasive plant that is a threat to the ecological health of wetland ecosystems is a family of grasses called phragmites (Phragmites karka). These are dominant wetland plants and are found all around the world,…
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Living Legacies
Fizala Tayebulla Heritage is a legacy of important tangible and intangible assets passed down through the generations. An individual, a family, a community, or even a city or country could inherit a heritage property. There are three forms of heritage recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): Cultural, Natural and Mixed.…
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On the Aesthetics of Urban Nature
Vijaylakshmi Suman The vision of a world-class city comes with socially produced aesthetic criteria. It draws a distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, the visible and the invisible, the legal and the illegal as a process for the making of world-class urban improvements. According to such an aesthetic mode of governance, development projects in…
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Urban Wetland and its Importance
Vijaylakshmi Suman World Wetlands Day is celebrated every year on 2 February to raise global awareness about the importance of wetlands for the environment and the people. This day also marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetland in 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian…
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Defining ‘Urban Greenspace’
Vijaylakshmi Suman One of the aspects which I am planning to analyze for my doctoral study is how urban greenspaces are defined and understood by not just the people living around it, but also by planners and researchers. As part of the research process, I have been looking at several studies to find common definitions…