Building a Sense of Place - Center for Urban Green Spaces

Cities and Nature
Building a Sense of Place
A natural, healthy city provides
more than merely a collection
of discrete initiatives, but it is
a holistic phenomenon, serving
as the originative condition and
taken-for-granted ontological
ground for humans to dwell
safely and in harmony with the
natural world.
driven less by computing individual
material things but more concerned
with revealing the invisible and
often mysterious relation between
discrete entities.
How is such originative thinking
revealed in urban planning? The
concept of the natural city certainly
incorporates technical efficiency
of design, but it must also seek to
uncover originative meaning as
well. So for instance, designing an
urban core must include calculating
population growth projections,
developing efficient transportation
solutions and managing sustainable
energy use. It must rely upon new
technologies, such as green roofs, it
must incorporate urban wilderness
areas and it must build bicycle
paths and walkways that privilege
the pedestrian over polluting
automobiles.
But also, urban planning and design
must proceed as more than simply
a technical calculation of such
individual functions. For instance,
to build thoughtfully means that
we must seek to preserve or build
a sense of place – and doing so is
less a calculative craft than an art of
uncovering a holistic fit and the right
balance between social, cultural,
economic, technological, regulatory,
aesthetic, ontological and ecological
concerns. A natural, healthy city
provides more than merely a
collection of discrete initiatives,
but it is a holistic phenomenon,
serving as the originative condition
and taken-for-granted ontological
ground for humans to dwell safely
and in harmony with the natural
world. A natural city provides the
condition of the possibility of what
Aristotle called “a good life.”
In that regard, the natural city invites
a new ethic of place. “Ethics” here is
understood less as a listing of rules
and principles to follow but rather,
it points to the ethos of dwelling
itself as the contemplation of our
belonging to the natural world that
gives us life. Such an ethic invites
a careful listening and respect for
differences amongst cultures and
world views. It evokes a “reverencefor-life”,
as humanitarian Albert
Schweitzer put it, and a recognition
that human beings are in the presence
of a rich, living presence of nonhuman
animals and ecosystems, all
of which are a valuable part of our
world without which our cities and
we ourselves could not exist.
To be sure, institutionally, we
continue to separate cities from the
natural world. The United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP) sits
independently of the United Nations
Centre for Human Settlements
(UNCHS). Governmental “urban”
or “housing” Ministries and
Departments operate separately
from Parks and Natural Resource
units, as if urban and wilderness
areas were disparate entities.
Universities teach urban planning
independently from environmental
or forestry programs.
But the time has come for an
alternative vision – one which
re-integrates natural and urban
environments, first in the way that
we think and then institutionally,
socially, and architecturally in
terms of how we plan, act and build
genuinely natural cities.•
April 2013
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