Welcome to PLIX Urban Ecology! Develop your learners' landscape literacy and environmental appreciation through hands-on exploration, data collection, and creation.

✋ Extended Interaction 🥰 Ages 8+ 🕐 1–1.5 Hours 👩‍👦‍👦 up to 15 Participants 🍎 1–2 Facilitators 🎨 Craft Materials

Workshop Structure

Each workshop is composed of three different elements:

1. 🌬️ Sensory Nature Walk: An introductory activity to spark curiosity in the topic of focus.
2. 🖐️ The Tangible Ecosystem: A field exercise designed to give participants hands-on experiences with the topic.
3. 🍂 Understanding Urban Soils: A come-together activity, where participants will work together to create a shareable artifact and reflect on what they've learned.

Learning Goals

We aim to:

• Provide learners of all ages with new skills to observe the ecologies of cities and suburbs.
• Facilitate the development of a critical eye—fit for detecting environmental challenge, nuance, and phenomena—as well as an ability to imagine more safe and equitable futures for city development.
• Cultivate a reverence for and love of place—adding value to mundane or familiar landscapes.
• Leverage local environments as living, dynamic classrooms for fostering landscape literacy.

In Your Library…

Some ideas for bringing these activities to your library:

• Run these workshops during a climate-related community event, like Earth Day 🌎
• Use these workshops as complementary education to community or library gardens 🌿
• Offer these workshops as a summer programming series for middle schoolers 🌞
• Borrow smaller activities from each workshop for a drop-in style public event 🎟️

What We ❤️ About This Activity

🌳 Offers the chance to understand ecology through creation Activities encourage hands-on crafting and visualization of interactions and processes within your local ecosystem.

👯 Encourages peer exploration and discussion Participants work together to explore local habitats and share what they observe.

👁️ Facilitates the development of heightened senses Fit for detecting and interpreting environmental challenge and nuance.

🏝️ Cultivates a reverence for and love of place Adding new interest to mundane or familiar landscapes.

🌃 Encourages civic engagement As participants learn to imagine more safe and equitable futures for town and city development.

PLIX Community Remixes

Main readings

• Ecological Urbanism: A Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities by Anne Spirn, 2012
• Spontaneous Urban Vegetation: Reflections of Change in a Globalized World by Peter del Tredici, 2010
• Soil as a Living System by Leslie Jones Sauer, 1999

Additional readings

• The Data Politics of the Urban Age by Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez, 2019
• Why Detroiters Didn’t Trust City Tree-Planting Efforts by Brentin Mock, 2019
• Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Experts, Policy-Makers, and Citizens in Environmental Governance by Karin Bäckstrand, 2003
• Greening Sprawl: Lawn Culture and Carbon Storage in the Suburban Landscape by Joan Nassauer, 2018
• Shade by Sam Bloch, 2019
• The Flora of the Future by Peter del Tredici, 2014
• Biomorphic Urbanism: a Guide for Sustainable Cities by Peter J. Kindel (SOM), 2019
• Water and the City: The Next Century by Howard Rosen and Ann Durkin Keating, 1991
• Vacant Land: a Resource for Reshaping Urban Neighborhoods by Anne Whiston Spirn & the West Philadelphia Landscape Project, 1991
• Reclaiming Common Ground: Water, Neighborhoods, and Public Spaces by Anne Whiston Sprin, 2000

Book Connections for Learners

• The Collectors by Alice Feagan Ages 3+
• Percy's Museum by Sara O'Leary and Carmen Mok Ages 3+
• Sam Sorts by Marthe Jocelyn Ages 3+
• Pitter Pattern by Joyce Hesselberth Ages 4+
• Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst and James Stevenson Ages 6+

These books are recommended by Clara Hendricks (Cambridge Public Library, MA)

📚 Recommend a book with this form!