The craze for farms has even reached our urban parks. When the High Line, the former railroad-turned-park, opened in Manhattan, the editor of the design magazine Dwell praised the park’s success. But he said nothing about the wildflower beds weaving through the abandoned tracks, yearning instead for the addition of “vegetable gardens or chicken coops.”
Yet landscapes designed solely to put food into our mouths result in the further loss of winged wildlife. A better way to reimagine our public spaces is through the multifaceted eyes of insects, the original locavores.