Cities and the Transformation of Biodiversity Governance

The governing of nature has been an essential part of the story of urbanization. Whether through the conversion of rivers for transportation, the creation of urban drainage systems for wastewater removal or the installation of parks for their recreational and aesthetic value (Gandy, 2004; Gleeson and Low, 2000; Rydin, 1998), nature has played a critical role in urban development. Yet, conservationist thinking, which has dominated environmental governance and policy, has tended to equate the environment as belonging to either “rural” or “wilderness” places that needed to be protected from the encroachment of (urban) society (Owens, 1992). As a result, much of the governance of biodiversity at the urban scale during the twentieth century was focused on the designation and enforcement of protected areas (Vaccaro et al., 2013).