Before I get back to the topic at hand—for those of you who might’ve missed my Newsletter sent out on Aug. 11th, take a 12-minute escape from the chaos of the world and check out my latest project, an original composition for 2 pianos evoking the ascent of a fictional, endangered tropical island from sea to summit. It accompanies a sequence of snapshots cropped from my various worldviews depicting idealized and imagined islands and mountains. (I can tell that not many people clicked on it :-D.)
This blog is intended to be more about places than about me, and that’s true for this project as well. But I think it’s fair to say that more than anything else I’ve created so far, this video shows what I’m really about.
(Start with your volume way up and be patient—it begins very minimally at 0:26 and slowly builds. If you’re on my mailing list, go to the Aug. 11th Newsletter for more background on the music itself.)
Now, returning to the subject of urban wilds….
In my last post I wrote about identity, specifically an “ecological sense of place,” as one benefit of preserving islands of natural habitat in urban areas. This time I’ll lead into another potential benefit that’s even more abstract in that I doubt it would be possible to measure or isolate: such islands can act as a reminder that no matter how successful we end up being at pulling back from our current trajectory of destroying the planet, we’ll always be in control of its fate (at least as long as that fate doesn’t include our own destruction).
Though a broad generalization, it’s fair to say that throughout human history (especially in the West) civilization and the natural world have been trapped in an oscillating oppositional relationship, with one viewed “sacred” and the other “profane.” (Michael Dennis and Alistair McIntosh expand on this idea in “Landscape and the City,” Landscape Urbanism and its Discontents.) Cities were first glorified as tiny islands of virtue and security in a sea of mystery and hostility, but later came to be seen as zones of moral decay as urban life began deteriorating and technology began to render nature less threatening. Today, remnants of both these attitudes seem to coexist and compete. Power through growth and technology has produced in many minds a perception of human invincibility, translating into a feeling of superiority over a natural world seen as not necessarily hostile but still something to be subdued, with little to offer us. For others, that strength has created the sense that we’re destroying ourselves and taking nature down with us, an attitude driving us to place extraordinary value (arguably not always justified) on the pieces of it that we’ve spared. In both of these cases nature is seen as something “other,” to be either conquered or idolized depending on how much we fear it relative to ourselves.
New York City skyscrapers viewed from Central Park. Frederick Law Olmsted designed the park as an antidote to the ills of urban life.
The Ramble in Central Park, a “wild” landscape intended to impart what were seen as some of nature’s beneficial qualities: complexity and intrigue. It’s largely artificial, having been planted from scratch with largely non-native species, but has transplanting what would’ve been experienced as “wild nature” into the city had any effect on how the urban-nature relationship is viewed? More thoughts on that later.
Roderick Fraser Nash’s “island civilization” concept (Wilderness in the American Mind) essentially proposes that we level the playing field, viewing neither side as the aggressor or the victim. This “separate but equal” relationship—islands of urbanization and cultivation surrounded by preserved and restored ecosystems—would give meaning and context to both nature and humanity. For humanity, it would preserve a “baseline” reminding us of our origins, against which we can measure our progress and to which we can return for inspiration and rejuvenation.
Yet we know how “separate but equal” tends to work out, at least when dealing specifically with people (and it’s not irrelevant that our alternating views of nature as sacred and profane have often included its “exotic” and “uncivilized” inhabitants, encapsulated by the idea of the “noble savage”). Fully realized, the “island civilization” model would restore the world to a spatial condition that originally led to, or at least reinforced, the development of that oppositional relationship. How might that spatial model be modified to embody a more productive relationship between nature and civilization while still keeping them spatially distinct? More to come on that soon.
Darren
Puerto Ayora, the largest population center in the Galápagos lslands. For the most part the town is compact and its boundary sharp (at least on the east side; the western half is a failed, partially-built lower-density development that should never have been approved).
Civilization meets nature at the edge of Puerto Ayora. The sharp edge feels like a dramatic threshold, underscoring the fact that you’re about to enter something different and special. Those adjectives are truly understatements in the case of the Galápagos environment—if there’s any place where the “island civilization” concept should be strictly applied, it’s here. But these islands haven’t avoided the image of an unequal “other,” whether that means inferior to us or superior; both attitudes exist and have brought their own problems. While something as straightforward and tangible as the form of the urban perimeter can’t be held responsible for reinforcing these attitudes, let alone generating them, there is value in thinking about how it might symbolize a more cooperative relationship. And if not here, than for larger urban areas in other places.