![]() The hypothesis has been tested not just in labs but in offices, hospitals, schools, slums, and suburbs in Korea, throughout Europe, in the United States, and especially in Japan.Īn attachment to nature is embedded in Japanese culture, expressed in a formal movement known as shinrin-yoku, which translates roughly as “forest bathing.” The Japanese are fond of walks in the woods and believe these deliver real benefits, which is a demonstrable assertion. More to the point, though, Wilson’s hypothesis says that satisfying these desires makes us physically and emotionally healthier. This is all real stuff.”īiophilia remains in each of us, expressed in traits like preference for waterfront property or an apartment with a view of a park. “When I was growing up, being an environmentalist was like, ‘If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.’ It meant you were opposed to economic growth and anything having to do with money,” Barrett said. With that in mind, I went to talk to Mayor Barrett about the transformation that is under way in his city. Part of the reason for including Milwaukee, he told me, is the city’s explicit attention to and understanding of the larger idea. In interviews, Beatley and Stephen Kellert, Wilson’s co-editor on an early book about biophilia and a chief proponent of biophilic design, both stressed that the idea includes-but more crucially goes beyond-concepts like green building and simple sustainability to capture the innate human attachment to nature and increase well-being by honoring it.īeatley has developed a list of criteria that includes this extension and has compiled a list of biophilic cities worldwide: Portland, Oregon San Francisco Phoenix Singapore Wellington, New Zealand Oslo Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain Birmingham, England-and Milwaukee. Wilson’s idea has given rise to the closely related concepts of biophilic design and biophilic cities, the latter actively promoted by Tim Beatley, a landscape architect at the University of Virginia. ![]() Now this bit of arcane evolutionary theorizing has wended its way through a web of disciplines and experiments, through education and public health, landscape architecture, psychiatry, urban planning, and banking to become a playbook for politicians like Barrett, who is consciously using environmental science to loosen the bind of the rusty belt. In evolutionary terms, attentiveness and attachment confer fitness. In a 1984 book, Wilson argued that love of nature makes humans more attentive to their surroundings, just as affection allows attachment to and knowledge of a loved one’s face. Wilson, offered up the biophilia hypothesis- biophilia, from the Latin, meaning love of life, all life, as in nature. Three decades ago, the reigning eminence of conservation biology, E. Political scientists no doubt can explain his popularity in their fashion, but the more satisfying analysis comes from an ant man. Wisconsin may be a national poster child for dysfunctional politics and red-blue tensions, yet Barrett, a Democrat, is serving his third term, winning reelection twice with more than 70 percent of the vote. Because a closer look at the city reveals whole vats of lemonade where once were heaps of lemons. Foreclosure, blight, drugs, failed schools, homelessness, brownfields, pollution, decay, and crime: there’s plenty to justify the term, and Milwaukee has it all. The old-line manufacturing cities of the upper Midwest preceded the rest of the nation in collapse by decades. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is known for taking prickly offense at the term “Rust Belt.” Nonetheless, the belt fits.
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