Urban
Introduction
I first thought of writing about the difference between the sylvan and urban environments. But the more I thought about both environments, the more I realised that nothing is cut and dried. There is so much overlap and complexity to consider here. There is only one environment, we are all part of it. The environment is not some place we visit.
Human-built places are a product of our desire to live where we believe we can somehow protect ourselves by forming a functioning community. I realised that in nature all things do this. Humans and non-humans alike all build things and stay together as active communities. Just as we can imagine a thinking forest where there is a relationship between all living and seemingly non-living things, cities are also infused with networks we have woven into the fabric of everything we build.
I thought about displacement. Displacement is a very real thing. As we develop human living spaces we transform the natural environment. Plants and animals lose their domain and either adapt or die. The energy we voraciously consume to light our lives, cook our food, control our microclimates and travel change the very air we breathe. It is changing our planet in ways that threaten the survival of not only mankind but all living things.
There is an abundance of current literature and media that bring the current state of our environment into sharp focus. Despite this ever-increasing awareness, many of us remain oblivious and some of us are optimistic about the future providing that there is a tangible change in human behaviour.
Urban
Remembering my last trip to New York to visit my sister (sitting on the left), she took me through Manhattan. I was overwhelmed by the sheer size and the number of people.
At the top of the iconic Empire State Building, I took a handheld shot of the city as night was falling just to try and capture its vastness.
All of this was made by human hands using stone, wood, metal, glass and plastic. We took the stone, wood and metal from the earth and remoulded them to create these structures. We transformed elements to create glass and plastic.
For us humans, symmetry is an aesthetic we pursue in our designs. Where possible roads and streets are straight so that we can move between the built environment as easily as possible.
Before European settlement and only a few hundred years ago, this was all forest. A sylvan realm. The first nations of the Americas only took from the earth what they needed and lived in harmony with the forest. Nature also incorporates symmetry in its organic design.
Manhattan early evening.
From the windy rooftop of the Empire State Building, I imagine I am an ant wandering with my comrades along a meandering pathway ever compelled to bring my burden home. The headlights of cars are like my eyes searching through the gloom created by the shadows of the tall buildings. My family are with me. We are of one mind. We move in harmony toward our home. our subterranean space of safety where we nurture our young and feed our mother. There are no homeless amongst our kind.
Liverpool Street Station 12 December 2018. She sleeps just outside the entrance.
The entrance to Liverpool Street Station and the irony of welcome.
The city is full of sound. Music, from all directions accompanied by the honking of car horns. Wind whistling between buildings. A confused riot of the sound of people laughing, crying, yelling, and talking. Musicians playing in sheltered doorways seeking reward. While I walk I see everyone moving with a singular purpose as they plot their course. They seek their own shelter, their fenced-off walled homes where they nurture their young and feed each other. Some of us are homeless.
Outside the Empire State Building 20 W 34th Street Manahattan.
There is no doubt that from a human perspective, where possible, we build what we consider pleasing to our eye. We borrow our design from the natural world. Our human acts of transformation consume the forests of the earth. If unchecked, our acts of creation are ultimately acts of destruction.
