Regions 13(Warren1998,Atkinsonet al.1999,Ravetz2000,Steinitz and McDowell 2001,
White2002,Register2006,Moore2007).
Many challenges remain, though, to create a body of literature and work use-
ful to society that combines the urban-region scale with major environmental
dimensions and their human uses. Ecologists are challenged by the idea that
ecological conditions within an urban region really matter, much less that they
are of major importance (Sukoppet al.1995,McDonnellet al.1997,Pickett 2006,
Grimmet al.2003,Musacchio and Wu 2004, Kowarik and Korner2005). Architects
may highlight the importance of greenspaces for amenity and aesthetic bene-
fits, but are challenged to deal with the many powerful environmental forces at
broad scales (Norberg-Schulz1980,Calthorpe1993,Duanyet al.2000,Register
2006).Engineers are challenged to recognize the significant construction, main-
tenance, and repair benefits of designing and building with, rather than against,
nature (van Bohemen2004). And on and on. As cities explode with people and
roll outward over valuable land, a powerful regional and ecological perspective
is needed. Indeed environmental and recreational resources often require the
broadest spatial perspective for the urban planner (Robert Yaro, personal com-
munication).
Bioregions and ecoregions
The idea of linking the bio-physical and cultural dimensions in region-
alism is well-illustrated and strengthened in literature and art (Buell2005).
Wordsworth was especially a poet of England’s Lake District and Henry David
Thoreau an interpreter of New England (USA). The American Southwest came
alive in the art of Georgia O’Keefe and the landscape-detective eyes of J. B.
Jackson. Grant Wood’s regionalism art portrays a US region of cornfields, tree
groves, farms, and hedgerows (Corn 1983). Tom Roberts’ and Arthur Streeter’s
late nineteenth-century paintings, unencumbered by English landscape forms,
revealed real Australian landscapes (Radford1996).
In this waybioregionalismintegrates the geographical terrain and the ter-
rain ofconsciousness (Berg and Dasmann1977). A major drainage basin is
thebig picture and one portion of it is, e.g., colored green or yellow by the
inhabitants who sink in roots there over time. As a place-based sensitivity
(Buell2005), the meshing of ecology and culture at this spatial scale provides
abioregion dimension, usefully grounded between local culture and thinking
globally.
The bioregion concept applies well to the city and its region (Snyder1990). A
culturally and economically diverse populace congregates in a spot. Is its sense
of place the city, or the city with its surroundings? In a place-based bioregion,