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the urban naturalist

11. The Wounded City

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Environmentalists have long spoken about the wounded earth, those with spiritual leanings will say that they can feel, in the presence of a clear cut forest, a sewage-choked stream or a toxic strip mine, the cries of the trees and of mother nature. The rationalist, who is an environmentalist, will, instead, talk about the lost diversity of rain-forests that are burned and of coral reefs that are bleached. They will remind us that the next cure for some terrible illness could come from the still unexplored life-forms there. In any case, most people, who are not bound by harsh economies, prefer to know that, someplace, non-human creatures thrive. That someplace, beyond the pesticide-laced wheat fields and strip-malls, we can still find abundant animal life.

Since the city is manifestation of nature, it too can become wounded like the earth. The wounded city is the wounded earth, but in the wounded city the environmental disasters are inflicted directly upon human beings. Like a well-managed rain forest the city is filled with diversity. The diversity is economic, intellectual, artistic and cultural. Just as the diverse environments for plant and animal life may hold the cures to our ills, so too, in the tiny economies of the city, solutions to any crisis we face may dwell, the art lives here too that could heal a nation. And when we must change our values and the way we live, the new ideas arise from the incubator of the city. Fantastic people and strange enterprises find a kind of ecological niche in the city, and like rare orchids, or birds of paradise, we may not even know that they exist, or what cures they hold for the ills of the future.

The wounded city is scared by neglect and misguided development. Masses of buildings stand empty, more still stand in ruins. Where new development occurs it occurs with relentless repetition, like invasive vines that come to dominate once rich forests. The city itself spreads out, flattened by miles of highway, engulfing entire regions in endless development that consists of only a few enterprises and only a few floor plans for homes and other buildings. The tragedy in this is that these developments destroy green diversity while, simultaneously, sucking life from the concentrated human economic and cultural diversity of cities. It is not so much that any one chain-store or agricultural method is, in and of itself bad, but rather the scale and monotony of development fails to form the healthy ecological harmony required to sustain human life through ever changing circumstances. Whatever it produces, it necessarily does so in excess, and no other forces hold it in check.



In the wounded city once great places rich with many meanings and memories for many people are forgotten. They have no stories to tell. We no longer understand the hieroglyphics of our own creations, knowledge is lost, and with it culture and art. We find ourself rendered naive and unprepared for the future, ready to make the same mistakes again with no lessons from history to guide us.

We hear the cries of the wounded city as we hear the cries of the wounded earth. The voice is not that of mankind, but of mother nature. To "save the earth" we must also save the unique ecology of cities. The people who care about cities, who try to heal these wounds are the urban naturalists and they are, in every sense, environmentalists.

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From: The Urban Naturalist.