This site is a work-in-progress. I started it to chronicle various urban-nature encounters during my academic sabbatical in 2023-24 but then re-considered it as a more ongoing occasional thought-space.
I have been trying to write a book, tentatively titled “The Spliced City,” that explores the complex dimensions and meanings of what I call “ecological restor(y)ation.” In order to ground myself and avoid getting lost with too many strands, I decided to focus on two real places I already knew well, investigating the controversies over the restoration of the Ballona Wetlands close to my current home in Los Angeles and on the recently completed renaturalization of the Emscher river in my German hometown of Dortmund.
Most of the encounters chronicled here take place by the Ballona Wetlands but there are others from various places around the world, including Germany, Japan and Australia.
I understand urban environmentalism as a rebalancing act that sees and seeks to reestablish diverse forms of nature in the metropolitan realm, foregrounding efforts towards ecological resilience with a strong awareness of the habitat needs of many different humans and other species.
The Spliced City 