On this episode of Parts Pervilion, we introduce a new vocab word for you, biophilia. Yes it's a word, and yes we'll explain what that means. Paudy and welcome once again to Hearts Pavilion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host, David Schultz. If you live in a big city, you might be familiar with this feeling. You're walking down the street one day and all of a sudden you notice everything around you was built by someone at some point.
Nothing around here can be described as quote unquote natural. The grass, the trees, the flowers, maybe even the animals that were all placed there by humans. It kind of makes you long for an area of pristine, untouched nature. Sure you could drive an hour or two and go to a national park, but who has time for that.
That's where biophilia comes in. There's a movement within the urban planning world to create pockets of little natural areas within cities, and not only has environmental benefits, but apparently it can be good for your health. Who knew? Bloomberg Environments. Adam Allington recently did a story on one biophilic landscape, in particular Washington, DC's Kingman Island. The city recently decided to make this island basically a nature refuge right in
the middle of the city. I wanted to find out more about this, so I dragged Adam down there to explain to me what exactly this is. Adam, thank you for joining me. Here. We are on Kingman Island. We're in the middle of the Anacostia River in DC, and we're in kind of a nature preserve. There's just not really much going on here except for grass and trees and sort of a lot of mud. What's so special
about this place? Well, Kingman is a bit of an oddity in terms of Washington d C. It's in a river, the Anacostia, which you know, a lot of people unless you live here, you think of DC, you probably think of the Potomac River, which is much bigger. The Anacostia is a smaller tidal river on the east side of the district. And Kingman Island was actually built by the Army Corps of Engineers in nineteen sixteen as part of
a dredging project. And this was all of the dredge and the silt and everything that they built up over time. So this is a man made island. This is a man made island. Everything you see on this island today was just dropped here by flying birds and seeds and grew naturally. So it wasn't part of any real development project, per se. So and we should mention, you know, we're
in the middle of the Anacostia River. The river cuts right through the city, so we are even though we're on a nature preserve, and there's you know, it's kind of very lush and verdant. I guess it would be if we're a different time of year. You know, we're in the middle of the city. You might overhear a helicopter overhead, or there's actually a subway station that goes right next here. So this is a nature preserve right
in the middle of the city. And I gotta say, having lived here for a long time, you know, I know that DC real estate market is kind of insane. It's pretty overheated, real estate costs are very high. How were they able to take this plot of land right in the middle of the city, I imagine is pretty valuable and just do absolutely nothing with it. That's a good question. There have been plans proposed for Kingman over the years, At one point there was talk of putting
an amusement park out here. At another point that we're going to turn it into parking for Robert F. Kennedy Stadium just across the River's where the Washington football team used to play, we should say, exactly. And so, for one reason or another, none of those projects came to fruition. It's also in a part of town that is, you know, while it is right in the district itself, it's not you know, where most people in the district go. So it's a bit out of the way, and they just
never really got it together to develop this island. And because of that, now they have forty six acres of nature that they can really use in a different way than they would have maybe in decades past. Oh but here comes the subway. There it goes. So you wrote a really fascinating story where you said that the DC local government wanted to create this place in the name of biophilia. First off, what exactly is that bio That's a word that I'm not really familiar with. What is biophilia.
Biophilia is a term that was kind of coined in the nineteen eighties. It literally means you know Latin for love of life. It's this idea that humans are hardwired to need connection to nature and that the more nature you can inject into their daily lives, the happier they'll be. And that means you know, not just like say going to a state park every other month on the weekend. It means nature in your office, nature on your way to work, nature in your home, nature in the inner city. Yeah.
Actually like building nature into buildings using natural building products, natural light, gardens, you know those all of those things are part of this sort of new trend in development where you can actually attach an economic value to nature. So it's not just having a city that's really urbanized and then you know a park on the outskirts are out side of a city where people go. Sometimes it's you know, mixing the two and creating no barriers between
the urban environment and the so called natural environment. But you mentioned that this is you know, can create some economic benefits. Can you really put a dollar amount on this? People have tried. I mean, there are there's been studies of hotels in the Philippines that have you know, Philippines are really into biophilia and you know, forest bathing in Japan is this trend where for a forest bathing, forest bathing,
Google it. It's a thing. There's this network of cities called the biophilic Cities network, of which DC is a part, where people really have these plans to develop their cities as living, breathing ecosystems for the people who live there, but also for animals and habitat. Kingman is this opportunity to preserve habitat for animals, but also to kind of form this catalyst for development of the whole east side
of the district. So it's kind of a win win, I guess for the ecosystem and also for the people who live in the city. They get the benefit of this natural area where they can go and sort of reconnect with nature. I guess yeah. I mean it's not often you have forty six acres right smack deb in
the middle of a city to do something with. And I think it's part of a new new way of thinking that Okay, we're not just going to let the developers take this, We're going to preserve it as a natural habitat, and that in itself will be the development draw that will bring people to this island and connect the neighborhoods and provide this place where people will want to be closer to Kingmen. They'll want to put their
businesses over here. Home values will increase at some point, hopefully, and that nature is the is the defining asset here to draw on. Well, you mentioned, you know, home values increasing. Since we're in DC, we have to sort of bring up the G word gentrification. This is something that per meates almost every discussion of sort of you know, local land use and how we use public spaces in DC.
If we create you know, places like this like Kingman Island that are sort of biophilic and where people like to go, and they do end up raising home prices, how do we know that the benefits of that will just sort of accrue all to sort of rich people and sort of landowners who already live here, and that it'll make it'll price out people who are low income residents who are renting. That's a great question, and I think it's something that a lot of people are talking about.
You do run the risk in some areas, in some cases of creating something that can get away from you a little bit. And I look at the High Line project in New York City. They you know, converted from an old elevated railway and now it gets something, you know, like five million visitors a year, and the properties around the high line I can attest are just astronomically expensive, exactly that, and it's changed the whole character of the neighborhood and people that are you know, have been pressed
out of it. And so that's a concern in the case of Kingmen here, you know, it's an island in the middle of a river, and the plans for Kingmen from the city are you know, relatively modest. Four and a half million dollars for improvements to the paths and you know, adding some outdoor classrooms and things like bathrooms. This isn't going to be like a big riverfront development project that's going to you know, completely alter the character
of this area. It's just going to be this island in the middle of the river that people will hopefully discover and start coming to more. Yeah. That was actually one of the things that really caught my eye about your story was that it seemed like, unlike with other ideas for creating parks in the middle of an urban area, there won't really be a lot of amenities here, like there won't be a dog park or tennis courts or anything like that. This is just going to be what
it is now. Like you know, there might be some you know, bathrooms and stuff, but other than that, like this is it. So it seems like that's what really distinguishes this from other kind of urban green spaces across the country. Right, And it's also right in the middle of the river, and the Anacostia River is a big flyway migration path for for migrating birds. The southern part of the island is going to be preserved as a critical Nature area, so you won't be able to bring say,
your dogs down there, your pets. It's just going to be for these kind of endangered species that they're trying to bring back, bald eagles, river otters, beavers, things like that that you often don't associate with life in the big city. But Kingmen Is is really critical as cities try to stitch together ecosystems that can benefit humans but also animals too. White bald eagles in the nation's capital. That would be something to see if that actually does
end up happening. Yeah, definitely, you know you can. You can. The tweets right themselves you know all right, Well, that was Adam Allington here on Kingman Island in the Anacostia River. For more of his reporting onious various subjects, go to our website at BNA News dot BNA dot com. This week's episode of Parts Rebellion was produced by my myself with hell from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. The music for Parts Pavilion is a message by Jizarre. It was
used as a Creative Commons license. You can find out more at betterwith music dot com. Thanks for being here, Adam, Thank you. That's the Orange Line. That's my train right there. That's the train you take. That is