The New Eden

This book is about spaces swarming with life: local parks full of silver birch and wood pigeons, skyscrapers home to a nest of peregrines, even the city's subway crawling with mice. As countries around the globe suffer with the stark decline of biodiversity, there is another story to be told about the abundance of nature closer to home. Towns and cities support increasing levels of biodiversity - even more so than the nature-depleted areas of the countryside. Recent studies reveal significant numbers of animal and plant species in densely populated areas and how they are more likely to flourish than their counterparts in rural areas. As more of the human population flock to the city, it seems that plant and animal life are doing the same. Through a series of fascinating case studies, environmental historian JC Niala celebrates examples of co-existence between humans and nature from across the globe. This book asks what we are missing by overlooking nature in the everyday, and, by doing so, offers a hopeful vision of the future where biodiversity and human life thrive together.