City as it relates to Nature

• Because of a city's large physical inertia, they are long lasting.
  • Subject to many different metaphors throughout its history

• Changing metaphors due to due to:
  • Cultural change (even if the city remains the same)
  • City change (even if the culture remains the same)

• Geographically there is a large variation in perceptions of cities across the globe at any time
  • Cities exist on many scales

• List of 7 metaphors

• Ancient Pagan cities were seen as homes and gifts of the gods

• Early Christian perception of the earthly city as the counterpart of the cosmic city...Heaven
  • Seen as part of a bigger scheme

• Dark Ages perception one of spiritual and secular refuge from wilderness, pestilence, banditiry
  • Civilisation within the city walls

• Cities seen as civilising forces
  • Centres of creation
    • Revitalised in the European Reformation, Renaissance and Enlightenment
      • Development of sciences

• Associated with the development of biology

• Cities appeared to have a life of their own
  • They were born, grew, matured and died
    • Terms of sustainability finite

• Their functions were analogous to bodily functions
  • Breathing, eating, excreting, reproduction etc

• Heavy dependence on nature noted

• Viewed as a part of - rather than apart from - nature

• Resurgent as a metaphor during times of morbidity and mortality
  • Later part of the Industrial Revolution
  • During times of heightened disillusion with technology and modernism

An advance of the organic view - Allows for visions of sustianability. Cities wil keep operation as long as they are in balance.

• Focuses on the internal structures (organs)

• Reflecting developments in Ecology from the late 19th Century.
  • Greater emphasis placed on the interaction between the city and its environment

• Sociological input in the mid-20th Century and systematic ecological input during the late 20th Century contributed to urban ecology
  • Today's most influential approach to urban analysis and management

• Popular notion of 'Back to Nature' entwined with ecological metaphor.
  • Cities were seen as out of balance and un-natural
    • Proper environmental management might be able to 'restore the balance.'

A universal concept that combines:

• System analysis
• Notion of natual bioregions

• The focus is on identifying the biophysical opportunties and constraints in each landscape 
  • Ensuring we don't exceed the the environmental limits

• Each city should adjust their ecological footprint to fit the limits of the bioregion within which it is sited
  • Every scale could be more sustainable when aware of limits and opportunities

• Practical limitations of this are enourmous

• Seen as mechanistic
  • Products of human ingenuity, especially during the Industrial Revolution.

• Seen as the physical embodiment of power
  • Integrated and powered the various discrete but interdependent components. 

• Technocratic management would ensure the progress of cities
  • Traditional organic or cultural views of a city were associated with rural folk and cultures
    • Dismissed as Backward

• Became a powerful icon of modernisation and Man's ability and wish to conquer Nature

• Gender differences. Female organics and masculine machines.

• Cities began to be percieved as forsaken by life/God
  • In part from organic and ecological movements
  • Compare to Sanctuary

• Seen as morally and legally corrupt. Unsustainable and Irredeemable
  • Mankind as the agent of spiritual and environmental desertification
  • Civilisation, urbanisation and humans seen as destructive, not creative forces

• Based on the assumption that only wild areas were sufficiently remote to be untouched by humanity. And should be left that way.
  • As centres of human activity, cities are the places most alienated by Nature
  • Wilderness became iconically good, not bad (as it had been in other metaphors)
  • Environmental management seen as destructive.
  • Unbridgeable gap (duality) between Man and Nature
    • Old idea in the west, but foreign to other cultures

• Developed during the Space Race (expanding public interest in astronomy) and is also part of the cities as ecosystems view
  • Emphasised cities as all-consuming Black Holes

• Deserts are inert and spatially isolated
  • Unless involved in expansion through a process of desertification

• Destructive nature of cities evidenced by ecological footprints and Life-Cycle Analysis
  • Through their hinterlands, cities consume vast amounts of energy, material, labour, capital and ideas
  • Spoil huge areas with their waste
    • Emphasised by radical development theory in the 70's and 80's

• This view offers little hope for redemption or sustainability of cities
  • Why should we bother with sustainability efforts?

• An alternative and more recent idea.
  • A challenge to the idea that cities lack biodiversity
  • Rejection of the old ideas and binaries (Man vs. Nature)
  • Rediscovery of the natural history of cities

Cities:

• Are biodiverse due to habitat diversity
• Have abundant and healthy flora and fauna because of reliable resources and less predators
  • Protect some rare and endangered species.
  • Contain species long adapted to humans
• Offer great opportunity for conservation
• Offer the largest engagement with nature
• Are ecologically dynamic
• Are subject to natural or near natural environment processes
• Need environmental management
• Misleadingly seen as the only site of human disturbance

• Today western perceptions are influenced by all of the potentially compteting metaphors

• The conflict between the desert and new nature views poses fundamental challenges for environmental management and notions of sustainability
  • If a city is a bastion of nature then doesn't it reduce the value of wilderness for nature conservation and human engagement with nature?

• The conflict stems from the differences between nature of nature, nature of knowledge and the nature of truth

• If a city remains a biological desert or a vortex, and continues to exploit nature
  • Possibilities of it being environmentally sustainable are low

• The machine analogy is more contradictory
  • Promises progress or decline depending on your view of technology.
  • Machines are not inherently sustainable (linear systems
    • Technology viewed by some critics as inappropropriate

• Alternatively, the dualism between city and nature may be entirely misleading.
  • The prospects for sustainability may be greater than we currently imagine.
    • Something entirely different?