Originally published on Medium here: Invest In Your Home

Invest in Your Home

Nature is coming back to your home in the city. Environmental restoration is being hotly debated, voted upon, and financed in major metropolitan areas across the globe, with major several notable projects already completed. But is it worth the cost to taxpayers? I would argue in a word: Absolutely. Imagine walking outside your house and feeling the warmth of a summer day, sunlight filtering in here and there through the branches of the canopy above. A rich, earthy air fills your lungs as you breathe deep, the humid, musky smell of moss nearby. And there it is. The Cheonggyecheon river. A real-world example of how nature is becoming one with major metropolitan areas. But what does it look like? Take a journey with me as we explore some successful environmental restorations to urban areas, and why this effort is vital for human survival.

A few people are bustling about the Cheonggyecheon riverfront, which sometimes blocks the view, but you don’t mind. Suddenly a thought occurs: neither this river nor the beautiful ecosystem surrounding it existed 20 years ago. This was just a street, and not just any street: a massive multilevel, multilane highway butting up against the countless boxy buildings of downtown Seoul, Korea. Now it’s a vein of earth herself, a living, breathing world right out your backdoor. And you remember that no one even wanted this beautiful piece of Korea’s natural landscape. In fact, they fought against it, and a battle like this will likely happen again someday.

Someday there will be a ballot measure, or a homeowners association directive, or an ambitious ecological restoration effort that will need your support. You’ll have to pick a side; choose to spend your tax dollars, or your company dollars, or even your personal dollars on restoring the ecosystems we’ve carelessly torn down for millennia. So what do you choose? The truth is there is no choice. The choice is a lie. We must restore our ecosystems or die.

In 2003 Seoul finally overcame the public dissent, the budgetary arguments in the seat of government, and the overwhelmingly difficult task of redirecting a entire highways full of city traffic. The city began demolishing the concrete jungle to replace it with one native to the region. At the heart of this newly-restored jungle was the Cheonggyecheon River, a sprawling river once brimming with aquatic and amphibious flora and fauna. And for 33 years it was completely covered in asphalt and cement. During that time, records show that investment in the area decreased, air quality plummeted due to the traffic, and summer months were hotter for everyone due to the commonly known effects of an urban heat zone. Buildings began to empty and become dilapidated, and, to put it simply, life was leaving the area as it became a machine-dominated zone.

But what if, like Seoul, more cities chose natural ecosystem restoration? It would certainly bring life and beauty back to the region, but who has the money for that? Turns out, we have plenty. We typically our local dollars on large corporate favors, while our government hands out their own favors in the forms of subsidies to the same, sometimes larger corporations. We’re spending our money on absolutely the wrong plans, the wrong policies, and change that only makes the rich richer. Is it really so tough to choose natural habitat restoration over more money generation machines for the already obscenely wealthy? Let’s look at what happens when government gets in bed with the private sector. Here’s a real-world example from Australia:

You’re driving down the highway of Melbourne Australia when suddenly you hear the muffled cry of an ad for car insurance blasted over a speaker of a car travelling alongside you on the road. You grimace, remembering the justification that the government took to fund the roadways and overpasses nearby, and how extensively they intrude into the natural ecosystem of countless bird species and other animals in the region. Whatever their reasoning, the cost is obvious: Birds use calls to mate, and the calls are drowned out by traffic noise. One in six species of Australian birds is currently endangered. And this is just an obvious example.

In Texas, concrete and asphalt have been paved for miles, while natural waterways have been removed and only occasionally reworked. Entire areas that once soaked up water now act as a water repellant, making hurricane Harvey in 2014 wreak far more damage than experts even anticipated. And as these artificial systems break down, we see worse examples, like river water contaminating local water supplies, leading to black, poisonous vitriol spewing from homes in Jackson, Mississippi. Not only do we intrude upon natural ecosystems, but we destroy the potential for any natural ecosystem to adapt to the area. Swathes of deforestation, from the Amazon to Eastern Europe and Africa are a textbook example of this.

Do we think it’s worth saving money for real estate developers and massive corporate portfolios to dominate entire regions of the country, or for private sector special interests to act as an obtuse arm of capitalism? How do we weave nature back into our urban environments? Let’s take a step back and look at the opposite side of this coin. Let’s look at a real-world example of embracing ecosystem restoration, and how it played out in Medellin, Colombia:

You’re driving down the highway of Colombia and suddenly you hear the beautiful cry of a Keel-Billed Toucan, it’s mating call and the accompanying birdsongs of so many other species filling the air. You look above you at the entrance to a large tunnel and see an anteater hustling along a large green pathway that bridges the highway you drive. Just before the tunnel begins, you see the antlered head of a buck, leading a few does behind him across the same corridor. You smile and remember a frequent Colombian TV commercial: the Green Corridors project has created thirty-six of these vibrant, living corridors between natural locations and urban environments to date. The trend is just beginning.

What if we built neighborhoods, whole city blocks or remade them to support regional flora and fauna, so they can flourish once more. Wouldn’t this change the very idea of a city into something more natural, something that can work with a local ecosystem, not against it? This concept manifests in a beautiful suburban area outside of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where canal ways have been artificially built to support healthy incursions of water, account for flooding, and allow diversion of surplus water in a number of regions.

Above: A near-utopian water lane outside Almere, The Netherlands

Opponents of natural ecosystem restoration might ask: nature is nice and all, but who’s going to pay for all this? You certainly can’t afford it. And even if the government can, they don’t always act in the land’s best interest. But let’s not forget: the government is full of people who care about the natural environment just as much as the larger population. After all, what does all their work mean if the world around them falls apart in the meantime? And what are they fighting for, day in, day out?

Let’s remember what we’re fighting for: a safer, cleaner, more connected planet earth. In just a few minutes of exploration we clearly saw how a future with interconnected natural and urban environments is good for everyone. So what now? It’s simpler than you think: we must choose to invest in our own futures. And it’s not just to make our outside world look nice. It’s because it’s the right way to take care of this planet we’re so blessed to have. We must actively work to weave our natural and urban landscapes into one. Nature is everywhere; it is all connected. And at the end of the day, this whole planet is our home. Isn’t restoring our home worth fighting for?