Richard Register

The Galapagos Islands Richard Register

What do the Galápagos Islands and evolution have to do with the future of cities? Everything. The universe is everything, its changes through time called evolution. Can we learn something from evolution itself to make humanity's cities healthy instead of damaging to nature? Could cities actually build soils, help reverse human-caused global heating, protect the continuity and normal evolution of our genetic brothers and sisters who are everywhere around us, the plants and animals? We've begun to learn from ecology, which is evolution seen in shorter time spans - decades and centuries rather than millions of millennia into the billions of years - about, the importance of biodiversity and conservation of nature, recycling, renewable energy systems. We've saved the whales and developed in many places a strong preference for bicycles and transit over automobiles. But what to learn from the larger panorama of evolution? The largest panorama, actually, and its lessons for the largest creations of humanity: our built environments of cities, towns, and villages. They are so big we have to get this right.