Q & A with Professor Nina-Marie Lister, winner of the 2021 Margolese Prize

Professor Nina-Marie Lister, School of Urban Planning (SURP) was recently announced as the 2021 winner of Canada’s most prestigious prize in urban planning and design. Since the announcement of this award Lister has been featured in both national and architectural and design media.  

Throughout her career, Nina-Marie Lister has developed research, academic, and community partnerships, and advocated for more ways to help people connect with nature in cities. This year she has won the prestigious Margolese National Design for Living Prize (external link) , offered through the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA). This prize awards $50,000 to a Canadian who has made a significant and positive impact through design on the built environment and is one of the highest and richest honours in the Canadian design community.

The Margolese National Design for Living Prize is open to any Canadian who is doing outstanding work in a field related to the built environment. Margolese Prize candidates are addressing rapidly changing social, ecological and cultural challenges. Their contributions have demonstrated tangible and far-reaching impact and benefit, reflect the power of design to enhance social, cultural, or economic well-being, and inspire others or lead to replicate similar initiatives. Lister is being recognized for her behind-the-scenes work to build partnerships that find innovative solutions to complex planning challenges. In partnership with Lister’s Ecological Design Lab (external link) , ARC Solutions (external link)  was a catalyst for a federally-funded, multi-year international partnership grant involving 27 organizations across North America to create “safe passage” for humans and wildlife across roads. Through the Safe Passages (external link)  project, Lister developed integrated planning solutions and collaborative design research for next-generation wildlife crossing infrastructure. This work has resulted in several innovative wildlife crossing projects across North America, from fibre-reinforced plastic bridges (external link)  to dual-use concepts for people and wildlife. Most recently, the project team contributed to the integrated design process for the world’s largest wildlife bridge (external link) , a “super crossing” in Los Angeles at Liberty Canyon, to provide safe passage for the endangered California Mountain Lion and other species at risk (external link) . This precedent-setting (external link)  private-public partnership will provide a safe and sustainable passage for wildlife across 10 lanes of the Pacific US-101 highway and is scheduled to break ground in December 2021.

Since the announcement of this award Lister has been featured in both national and architectural and design media. I was grateful to have an the opportunity for an extended conversation about her work and this award. 

This is amazing news. How does it feel to be recognized for your work in this way? 

It’s fantastic! Honestly, so many of us work for many years in academia and we can’t do this expecting reciprocity or recognition. Our job is in service to the public and to support communities, so when people recognize you in this way it is often unexpected and can be a really lovely surprise. I didn’t know that I’d been nominated until I was shortlisted and needed to provide more information for the jury, and even then I wasn’t expecting it.  

Your leadership and the partnerships that you’ve built, like the partnership with ARC Solutions and the Ecological Design Lab are helping to protect landscapes and endangered wildlife. What do you want people to know about this work? 

In the past, the Margolese Prize had emphasized the built environment, essentially bricks-and-mortar projects of architecture. This year the prize committee recalibrated the prize to include design contributions to society, culture and ecology -- projects working to make a positive difference to the living world. So this is a significant acknowledgement for people working across landscape and culture. It is an important signal and clear recognition that we can all contribute to good design for thriving places. People, ecology, wildlife and living processes are essential to flourishing cities. That’s what I want people to take from this award: that culture and nature are connected, and both are needed, together. Good design is a design that improves the living world for all. The jury is signalling that building relationships and integrated processes for better, ecologically friendly design matters, and that it is a critical part of the built environment and good design.

I often speak to academics and activists about how long it takes to make change. Your perseverance is having results. What advice would you give to those who are struggling to make change? 

Well, it’s true that changes are clearest in hindsight. That isn’t very inspirational (or even encouraging) but it is real. We only recognize change over time. The material of my work is the living world and applied ecology, which is often slow and imperceptible to people in busy cities.  I know this work -- both the research and the successful application to infrastructure design (for example) takes time. I want people to understand that the measure of our success isn't always immediately tangible, especially when we work across scales of space and over time. We also very often over-emphasize the scale (and responsibility) of the individual. We need to work collectively, together to lobby governments, corporations and other organizations bigger than ourselves in the face of urgent and complex issues of climate change and biodiversity loss. My research, practice, and service are focused on community and future generations; so you can’t do this work alone, nor can you expect accolades (although it sure is wonderful and energizing when you receive recognition like this!). I’ve been engaged in this area of research and applied practice for 25 years with the same commitment since I entered grad school. It may be slow work, but it has never been more necessary to develop novel solutions to the complex problems facing us. That keeps me going!

What are different ways people can get involved with this kind of work in their communities? Do you have suggestions to help people get started?

Given the urgency of our times, contrasted against the necessarily slow work of research, I see an emerging role for design activism, which is one trajectory of my practice. There is an important role for advocacy and leadership by those of us with expertise and the public platform of the university. I want to help people recognize that they are empowered to make positive change, together, without necessarily shouldering the work alone, by themselves. Design activism is about helping to provide people and their communities with the knowledge, tools and capacity to take action. This was a motivating factor in the bylaw challenge I was involved with this year. For example, I didn’t set out to design a natural meadow garden for any reason other than the project aligned with my principles and perhaps that made for a practical experiment related to my research. I also didn’t intend to make this a public project as it is my family’s home and our private space. Yet the Bylaws for Biodiversity (external link)  project only came into being as a research project because a city bylaw officer issued me a citation. This was really a timely opportunity for me to act to correct an outdated and flawed bylaw. Challenging that bylaw (and designing the revised bylaw) was really an empowering act for an entire community of natural garden advocates and new gardeners alike. I fought the citation by refusing to mow my family’s garden, and refusing the exemption that was offered principally as an act of both resistance and activism through leadership: first, using the example of family’s garden and its design, to make the case that natural gardens are vital to support local biodiversity, and second, that citizens have the legal right to grow the gardens they choose, so long as they do not harm human or ecological health and safety. With this work, I hope that others can be supported and their voices and actions amplified. 

We can engage proactively to conserve and protect natural areas at multiple scales: most easily and directly, we can start in our own individual space. If we own land, steward a yard, or even a public-right-of-way, we can choose to plant native species, or with a community group. We can also take action together, and that becomes a movement for change. My work contributes to public education and support, to share knowledge and tools that both individuals and communities can use to support wildlife and biodiversity, from small spaces in our front yards -- private and shared -- to large parks and wilderness. The biophilic cities project, and the bylaw challenge we issued specifically is very tangible this way. 

As part of our Safe Passages (external link)  partnership grant, my lab developed a wildlife crossing education exhibition (external link)  at the Toronto Zoo. It has since become part of their permanent exhibition and is helping kids and their families understand how animals move through the landscape and occasionally need to cross roads and how we can help facilitate their movement patterns through good design. This exhibition and the public education work are directly connected to larger infrastructure projects that my lab has been involved with, like the wildlife crossing bridges over the TransCanada highway in Banff  (external link) and Jasper National Parks, and more recently at Liberty Canyon (external link)  near Los Angeles. These are highly collaborative, integrated design projects which show that our infrastructure can also support nature. It can (and should) also be beautiful and inspire wonder. When ecologists, artists, and civil engineers come together, collaborating to reconnect landscapes, this results in creative projects of hope. Most people respond with delight and surprise, realizing that the creatures around us also need freedom and space to roam and thrive -- and this can also help increase public support for this work. 

What are ways that cities and the business community can make a difference in the area of physical design and biodiversity? 

We know how to design and build green infrastructure that supports other living creatures. This isn’t a science or technology problem anymore, but rather it is a problem of political will. When everyday citizens -- the public at large -- can see, understand, and appreciate this kind of infrastructure, we know more will be built, more frequently. From wildlife crossings to green roofs or bird-safe buildings, we know that there are real, tangible, available design solutions to the challenge of biodiversity loss. We have robust data and design knowledge, and we are beyond “prototyping” now. For instance, Toronto developed and implemented North America’s first green roof bylaw (external link)  which requires green roofs on new commercial buildings over a certain size. Since the inception of the bylaw, Toronto has added more than 600 new commercial green roofs, including several here at Ryerson. Yet the technology remains unaffordable or inaccessible for many individual homeowners. We do however see the environmental and health benefits of green roof technology, which should make it more affordable over time. 

Another powerful example is directly related to urban planning and design: data show (external link)  that almost 30% of North American migratory songbirds are disappearing and that this loss is connected to human activity, and buildings specifically. Tall towers that are lit at night along with an abundance of curtain-wall windows (glazing) in cities are deadly to birds: these structures and the windows specifically will confuse and disorient migrating birds who often migrate at night and will collide into the glass. In response to the science, and with leadership from organizations such as FLAP (external link) , Toronto has developed North America’s first bird-safe design guidelines (external link)  (developed in part with contributions from Ryerson’s urban planning interns) and other cities have followed suit. New buildings are now required to include bird-safe glass to conform to Toronto’s green standard (external link)  and there is a movement to extend these guidelines to the residential sector (external link) . Individual homeowners can take action in several ways: they apply bird-safe film to their own windows to mitigate the risk to migrating birds; they can ask for bird-safe products from window manufacturers; and of course, they can pressure their local governments to demand legislation and incentives to use bird-safe glass. The point is that we have the science, technology and design capacity: it’s the political will we need, and this comes from both businesses and private citizens. 

Your work is about building connections and working across disciplines that are often siloed. What would you like to say to fellow academics and researchers about working together in the way you have?  

University research by its nature fosters areas of deep specialization. We also collectively realize we need both multi- and interdisciplinary work to solve complex problems that cut across fields of specialization. Problems like climate change and biodiversity loss are complex problems involving many sciences, social sciences, humanities and of course political culture. This realization and the work that ensues across the disciplines can lead to new tools, new methods of working, and applied applications in practice. Academics are encouraged and supported by national research funders to work more collaboratively as well. Ryerson is a university that places a high value on community-based collaborative research, and I’m very proud of this aspect of the university. Advancing creative and collaborative scholarship is also part of the way we teach urban planning and how we work with the students who come to us. We welcome and celebrate the diversity of people and skills needed to do collaborative work--both within the university and our broader communities of practice. To be clear that collaborative work isn’t easy, and it is often slower and more complicated than working alone, but we have a good record and a positive space for collaborative, creative applied research and practice at Ryerson.

A big part of your work at the Ecological Design Lab is connecting students and grad students with communities. What would you like students to know about your work?

Our work is not confined to theory; it’s defined by bringing theory into practice, together with the communities it engages and affects. Ecological Design is inherently interdisciplinary, really a new “transdiscipline” that sits between ecology, landscape studies, urban planning, engineering and design. We work closely with allied professions of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering, all of which are also practice-based, experiential and applied fields. Together these disciplines work for better, healthier, more equitable and sustainable cities. In our studio-based learning and research, we design with and in communities where our work makes a difference to people, and this is a very rewarding way to learn. I find this really ignites students’ interest and commitment to practice even while they are still in university. I bring to my teaching the same commitment through collaborative learning. I want students to know that we are learning together, and this starts from a place of curiosity, compassion and humility -- this is the basis for community-based learning and the “deep work” that is needed for a better world.

We’ve spoken previously about your advocacy for natural gardens and the barriers you faced in our own city.  Do you think this will help more people see the importance of incorporating nature in our city? Do you have an update on your work to change garden/zoning regulations in cities?

With a team effort, we did it! Together with an expert advisory committee and many community supporters, Toronto now has a revised bylaw. Carly Murphy (external link) , (MPL ‘20), a graduate student in my lab  (PDF file) developed a model bylaw (external link)  which she shared with the City, and which we developed into several options together with the advisory committee. On July 16th, 2021  (PDF file) Toronto City Council passed a revised bylaw  (external link) which now allows citizens to grow natural gardens, as-of-right, with no permit required. Although there is still work to be done to ensure that bylaw enforcement upholds the intention of the bylaw, we consider this a “win”, and recognizing that many people have been closely engaged in this work for a long time.

This has been an exciting year for you. What do you see in your future? What is next for you?

The great gift of the Margolese Prize is that it affords space and time to invest in creative work. I am both excited and grateful to have a chance to take some time to slow down, to think about which trajectories will emerge and which to follow. It’s also good to be uncertain in this context: I don’t know exactly what shape the work will take or what the outcomes will look like, but I know it will be collaborative. I’m continuing research and applied-design work with colleagues on green infrastructure and wildlife crossing projects in British Columbia, Alberta and California. I will also be spending time at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (external link)  in the winter on green infrastructure research and a design project on urban re-wilding. Where that leads is not yet clear, but I know it will be a creative adventure focused on flourishing landscapes that connect people to nature!

Lister is an internationally recognized leader in ecological design. She was awarded Honourary Membership in the American Society of Landscape Architects (external link)  and an inaugural senior fellow of the Society for Humans and Nature. Lister was named an “Inspired Educator” by the Canadian Green Building Council’s excellence and leadership awards and was nominated among Planetizen’s Most Influential Urbanists (external link) . 

As a community leader, Lister serves as a member of the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel, chair of the SSHRC Banting Post-Doctoral Fellowship (external link)  Committee, and advisor to the international Biophilic Cities Network (external link) .

Lister is a senior fellow of Massey College (external link)  and was visiting professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design (external link)  from 2010 to 2014. She will return to Harvard in 2022 to teach a graduate research course on (re)wilding landscapes. She is the editor of three books, including the highly-cited volume The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability, the ASLA-awarded Projective Ecologies, and the author of over one hundred scholarly research articles and professional practice publications.