Green Urbanism & Nature in the City

Nature in the City presents a technical view of political structure and activity as it relates to environmental phenomena, while Green Urbanism delves into examples of how cities and countries have organized politically to bring about environmental policy changes. Both texts highlight the importance of local, individualistic action as the driving force of environmental policy change as it relates not only to regions, but also how it trickles up to affect global interpretation and action on the environmental front.

If I were to apply the readings to an urban problem for which I am concerned, I would focus on the Dutch national ecological network (Green Urbanism, 202). Their national map begs the question of how much land humans need to inhabit, and how much land should be dedicated to species that cannot survive commingling with people (bears, wolves, etc.). Despite questioning the extent to which the Dutch are preserving natural areas, the idea of a national program that mandates a minimum amount of conserved land, rather that leaving the amount and placement of preserved land solely in the hands of local government, creates a more meaningful and useful (ecologically) array of natural areas, and shifts the burden of balancing preservation with increased tax dollars resulting from development out of the hands of those that would directly benefit from the latter. By doing so, the whole population benefits more than if the decisions continued to be made by local politicians vying for majority vote. The United States could implement a similar policy by expanding its national park system to place a majority of land under permanent conservation. It is very true that “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till its gone.” In the immediate political environment, the value of such action would be dismissed as unimportant because of the purported vast amount of land that is not urban, but in 50 to 100 years, the forethought of a past generation would likely be recognized as progressive.

An interesting perspective I noted in Nature in the City was the dichotomous interpretation of the current environmental dilemma. One perspective accepts the “hegemony of the capitalistic economy” and attempts to work within that framework to generate solutions to environmental degradation (38). The alternate perspective espoused by the authors is a fundamental restructuring of the interactions between humans and the environment. In Green Urbanism many examples provided highlight the ways in which current environmental action do not sufficiently challenge the capitalistic economic notion of environmentalism. The focus is on improving the self, with the byproduct being improving the environment. While anthropomorphic thinking is not itself a deleterious activity, bringing nature back to the city, no matter how ingenious or how green, will not prevent ecosystem collapse. The Dutch, as mentioned previously, and others that have adopted a national preservation policy, come the closest to addressing the need for urban boundaries that successfully and distinctly differentiate between human inhabited and other animal inhabited space.