Last April, I decided to take my students at Boston College out for a quick “forest bath.” Forest bathing is a trendy term for an old idea, which is that getting out in nature is helpful physically, mentally, and spiritually. And doing this exercise got me thinking: Is there an equivalent way to help people connect with the built environment? Is it possible to go “infrastructure bathing”? What would that even look like?

What do we lose by seeing ourselves as separate from nature? Let’s start with an example about carbon. Where are carbon dioxide sinks in urban areas? In this post, I’ll explore how dividing cities into “green” versus “gray” makes us overlook the complexity of how carbon cycles through the environment.