How to make more natural cities

Cities are growing more than ever before in history, and they are consuming huge amounts of natural surface in the process. The challenge of making this process sustainable in time and minimizing the impact of human’s constructions is becoming more and more relevant.

There are many solutions to this problem, and here I will try to mention briefly what I think that should be done

 First of all, I think cities are systems that should be managed in an integrative way with their natural surroundings. There are different considerations that can be taken to do this, for example one can plan cities in relation to socio-natural risks, in other words, events that could be potencially dangerous because they expose people’s life or infraestructure to natural disasters. So the urban territory should be thought avoiding risky places or with appropiate mitigation mechanisms.

Other perspective that one can take to integrate cities to nature is by making urban equipment greener in vegetation. By this I mean that streets, parks, squares  and even private property  should count with trees.  Middle size cities and Metropolitan cities, like Santiago, can take this option as an oportunity to regulate temperatures and humidity of their inner environment, at the same time that they assure a livable space to all their inhabitants. Planting native species of trees can make this happen, and they won’t compromise the city budget in maintenance or watering.