7. The living city: where are we on the path to urban sustainability?

Episode produced by Angelina Campbell, Andrea D’Souza, and Guangrui Li (Rui) This episode of Sync into the Earth explores the fascinating global topic of urban sustainability. Given the breadth of the topic, we focused on sustainability efforts that we, and likely our audience, are familiar with here in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We begin by defining urban sustainability, because this concept can be interpreted in different ways. Next, we dive into why urban sustainability is essential and why we as humans should care about it. This section provides information on the benefits humans gain from urban green spaces, such as positive physical and mental health effects. We further discuss the importance of this concept by looking at the ecosystem services biodiversity provides in an urban setting, and what urban biodiversity looks like. We end the episode by talking about the different ways that sustainability can be achieved in an urban environment. This includes speaking up against government plans and policies and working with members of your community to voice large-scale concerns and actions to be taken. We also mentioned individual efforts that are easier to achieve, such as planting a pollinator garden in your yard. We hope that this episode gives an insightful snippet on how to make urban living a little bit greener.