Apr 5, 2021

The Bird-Friendly City

Creating Safe Urban Habitats

Timothy Beatley

Hosted by Tricia Keffer

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Summary

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for over twenty-five years. His primary teaching and research interests are in environmental planning and policy, with a special emphasis on coastal and natural hazards planning, environmental values and ethics, and biodiversity conservation. He has published extensively in these areas, including the following books: Ethical Land Use; Habitat Conservation Planning: Endangered Species and Urban Growth; Natural Hazard Mitigation; and An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management.

In recent years much of his research and writing has been focused on the subject of sustainable communities and creative strategies by which cities and towns can reduce their ecological footprints, while at the same time becoming more livable and equitable places. His books that explore these issues include Biophilic Cities, Resilient Cities, and Blue Urbanism (Island Press).

In The Bird-Friendly City: Creating Safe Urban Habitats (Island Press, 2020), Timothy Beatley, a longtime advocate for intertwining the built and natural environments, takes readers on a global tour of cities that are reinventing the status quo with birds in mind. Efforts span a fascinating breadth of approaches: public education, urban planning and design, habitat restoration, architecture, art, civil disobedience, and more. Beatley shares empowering examples, including: advocates for “catios,” enclosed outdoor spaces that allow cats to enjoy backyards without being able to catch birds; a public relations campaign for vultures; and innovations in building design that balance aesthetics with preventing bird strikes.

Through these changes and the others Beatley describes, it is possible to make our urban environments more welcoming to many bird species.

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Tricia Keffer

Tricia Keffer has a BA in Psychology and an MLA in Landscape Architecture. The arc of her career path took her from beach portraits in Destin, FL to the parks in Paris, France. Her photography has been published in Delta Sky Magazine, BAE Defense Contractor Calendar, and two ADDY (Advertising) awards for Dale E. Peterson brochures. Her vacation portrait concept was featured on Good Morning America. She is working on her next adventure with her landscape design business Plants People Love Designs in Florida. In her spare time during the pandemic, she picked up an additional degree BA in Art and a certificate from Master Artist David Chang’s Portrait and Figurative Studio at FIU.

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