Third Nature

The city and Magna Mater Nature constitute a couple with remarkable drive. The balance of their relationship either creates a city or demolishes it, along with its citizens. The extensive metropolises of the 20th century, which mostly banish the natural element or restrict it to tree alleys and parks, are from suffocating to unlivable. Adding to the mix cities like Athens, destined for the dominance of cars, we get a flammable and greasy cocktail with an especially rancid taste. 

For maintaining this challenging equilibrium many different solutions have been given through the centuries, and at the same time, countless urban situations have been constructed, which manage the natural and the artificial within the city’s creeks. New York’s Central Park, in the 1858 competition, would have expanded over only a few blocks if it weren’t for the proposal by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who envisioned its form as well as its suitably colossal size. New York of the right-angled grid system of Manhattan and the financial exchanges of Wall Street, wouldn’t be what it is but for the many hectares of simulated nature within it. Another typical example is Paris, with Haussmann’s axial boulevards and the Promenade Plantée linear elevated walk and many other interventions of urban character, where nature is introduced to the corpus of the city unaltered through surgical incisions.

Central Park, New York, | cntraveler.com

Frederick Law Olmsted | New York Times

Central Park Competition drawing, 1858 | centralparknyc.org

Promenade Plantée, Paris | The Guardian

The need for contact with nature and the recognition, finally, of its value has been increasingly gaining momentum these past few years. A defining factor, unfortunately, has been the critical condition of climate change, resulting, however, in positive urban planning initiatives. Barcelona, already since 2016, has begun designing the Superblocks-project of which I happened to be a part. It’s the unification of nine city blocks to limit the space sacrificed for cars and replace it with plantations and bike lanes. Berlin is following a similar direction with the Berlin Autofrei initiative, a campaign motivated by the direct democracy recognised by the German constitution, aiming to transform the Ringbahn interiors, a 88 sq km expanse, into an urban oasis sans cars and with open spaces filled with greenery. 

Barcelona Superblocks will be automobile free and lush with vegetation | miro.medium.com

Parallel to the strategic gestures on a state and urban level, suggestions and proposals on a user level also appear, like the modular constructions of Citydecks, based on a rationale of infiltrating public space, usually functioning as stops, seats, planting vessels of limited capacity etc. Proposals of such nature, with no central planning, that aim to become an organic part of a city’s everyday life, can’t easily be successful as they are based from their conception on the logic of the attachment, of adding something to the urban corpus. 

Modular urban interventions | citydecks.de

Urban cultivation is seemingly the most recent trend for the difficult issue of city and nature, and in this case elements of self-sufficiency, economy and hygiene are introduced. Even though it seems like a fresh idea, archaeological findings prove that the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in Central America had developed the technology of hydroponics with their floating gardens, chinampas, that were part of the greater urban landscape. 

Modern day Chinampas | preventionweb.net

Nevertheless, this idea is new, beautiful and gaining ground once again. It’s gaining ground even on the ceilings of buildings, as endeavoured by Canadian company Lufa, with hydroponic crops over a 15.000sq m area inside rooms in Montreal. At the same time, in London, the Growing Underground farm is located 33 meters under the Clapham area of South London and it’s supplying the surrounding markets. The question at hand is whether urban farms have a future so that small self-sufficient communities can be created, able to cultivate foods as well as the relationships of the entities that constitute them, human ones as well as the rest of each ecosystem, or if they will transform the urban gaps of the contemporary metropolises into another zone of expansion of economic and productive activities. The future is in our hands, as it always has been. 

Lufa Farm, Montreal | media.timeout.com

Growing Underground, London | mylondon.news