Part 1 of a series on the Forested City. Introduction. There’s a persistent myth about the dangers of the city, that compared to the country the city is an alienating and difficult place. Unlike the village where everyone knows your name, the city thrives on anonymity. Then there’s the troubled relationship with nature. In the movie version of the myth, the city screams HUMAN in capital letters. Urban dwellers are trapped in a world entirely of human creation, not knowing how plants grow or animals eat except as pots or pets. There’s some truth to the myth, since urban life is defined by light, noise and air pollution, and by electricity, clock time and air travel, all annihilators of natural rhythms and destroyers of nonhuman life. At the same time, one should be aware that farms are also entirely a human creation; we dream of idyllic villages but the modern corporate farm with its monocultured cash crops and extensive use of fertilizers and borewells isn’t any closer to nature than cities are. In fact, both the city and the farm have been subsumed under the empire of
Newsletter 39: Metamorphosis
Newsletter 39: Metamorphosis
Newsletter 39: Metamorphosis
Part 1 of a series on the Forested City. Introduction. There’s a persistent myth about the dangers of the city, that compared to the country the city is an alienating and difficult place. Unlike the village where everyone knows your name, the city thrives on anonymity. Then there’s the troubled relationship with nature. In the movie version of the myth, the city screams HUMAN in capital letters. Urban dwellers are trapped in a world entirely of human creation, not knowing how plants grow or animals eat except as pots or pets. There’s some truth to the myth, since urban life is defined by light, noise and air pollution, and by electricity, clock time and air travel, all annihilators of natural rhythms and destroyers of nonhuman life. At the same time, one should be aware that farms are also entirely a human creation; we dream of idyllic villages but the modern corporate farm with its monocultured cash crops and extensive use of fertilizers and borewells isn’t any closer to nature than cities are. In fact, both the city and the farm have been subsumed under the empire of