Josh Snow Email & Phone Number

Cities are where the majority of the global human population resides. In fact, by 2100, eighty-five percent of us are projected to reside in urban areas (OECD, 2015). So cities will remain the site where most of us encounter complex and interconnected socio-ecological challenges. Soil health and biodiversity are among these challenges. Soil stores more carbon worldwide than is contained in all plant biomass above ground (Terrer et al., 2021). Healthy soil prevents erosion and mitigates drought and flood due to its ability to absorb and store high quantities of water (Bünemann et al., 2018). Only recently has it become understood that soil requires continued care (de la Bellacasa, 2017), urban soils included. But soil ecosystems, like so many other ecosystems, are under increasing stress from anthropogenic activity (van der Putten et al., 2023). Globally, over a third of Earth's soil is degraded due to industrialization and modernization processes (Watts, 2019; Ontl & Schulte, 2012; European Commission, 2020), particularly through ongoing urbanization (Ferreira, Walsh & Ferreira, 2018).Recognizing soil's significance requires a paradigm shift in urban spatial planning and design. That is what my colleagues and I are working to develop now. A soil-positive form of urbanization, what some have called a ‘multispecies urbanism’ (Solomon and Nevejan, 2019), would not only lead to healthier soil (communities), but would also assist efforts to reduce emissions, improve the resilience of cities to climate change and adaptation, help restore biodiversity (Ojo et al., 2022) and provide much more open green space for our species and others alike.During my studies at TU Delft, I focused on soil in the Parana River Delta of Argentina, a 15,000km2 area of fragile wetlands that is increasingly disturbed by urbanization and agricultural processes. Specifically, I became interested in the peculiarities of the region, namely within the subbasin of the Matanza-Riachuelo river, the country's most polluted waterway that runs right through the middle of Buenos Aires and is home to more than 6 million human inhabitants. Currently I am applying a similar methodology in the context of Amsterdam with many diverse collaborators from myriad disciplines.