Imaginary Cities
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
[Originally posted to Where] There is an interesting perspective on cities in a short essay by Matthew Gandy, titled “Urban Nature and the Ecological Imaginary.” In referring to urban nature, Gandy includes both concrete elements and abstract ideas. The ecological imaginary is an example of the latter, as in the use of scientific metaphors (such as organism and metabolism) to represent cities. This way of thinking seems to have gained momentum in response to industrialization, as urban areas were increasingly viewed as separate from and harmful to nature. Thus planners sought to reconnect cities with a natural ideal.
According to Gandy, urban space is produced through a nature-culture synthesis. In other words, cities take shape through our actions in combination with biophysical processes. Kevin Lynch found that “the quality of a place is due to the joint effect of the place and the society which occupies it” (Good City Form, p. 111). Gandy proposes a political approach that recognizes this co-evolutionary dynamic and moves away from the idea of cities as unnatural.

Andrew Revkin of the New York Times has posted a thoughtful 
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