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  • SPOTLIGHT

What bats can teach us about urban design

Kate Jones thinks the natural world can inspire a dialogue about cities that are sustainable and healthy for humans and other animals.
By
  1. Rachael Pells

When I was an undergraduate student at the University of Leeds, UK, I volunteered to help out with a bat-conservation study. Someone put a tiny common pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus), the country’s smallest bat species, in my hand, and it was love at first sight.

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Nature 608, S28-S29 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02216-7

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This article is part of Nature Spotlight: Smart cities, an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

References

  1. Jones, K. et al. Nature 451, 990–993 (2008).

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  2. Gibb, R. et al. Nature 584, 398–402 (2020).

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  3. Redding, D. W., Moses, L. M., Cunningham, A. A., Wood, J. & Jones, K. E. Methods Ecol. Evol. 7, 646–655 (2016).

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  4. Maes, M. J. A. et al. Nature Sustain. 4, 851–858 (2021).

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