According to Ian L. McHarg in his book entitled “Design with Nature; Processes as Values (pg.

103-
105)”, we can think the great city as a zoo to which the gregarious animals voluntarily make their
daily way by familiar trails to enter their cages, rather like the starlings whose penchant for bridge is
uncomfortably similar. The instinct of the caged animal to return to the wild is always carried on by
the most domesticated of all animals-man.

The book tackles also a research about Manhattan which offers a great alteration of opportunities
between city and country, from the greatest concentration of man to the wildest of nature. A
question was raised in the book that if the analogy of city as a zoo is offensive or very unpleasant,
will it make a difference if we reverse and assume that the city is the habitat of civilized man and
nature is the zoo? There could have been many zoos for terrestrial and aquatic creatures, in oceans
and bays, rivers and marshes, forests and meadow-a wonderful choice of zoological gardens where
the domesticated animals could visit the wild ones. But the question of who is behind the bars is not
easy to resolve, as anyone knows who has watched a contemplative gorilla in a cage.

The hinterland of Manhattan offered the greatest range of environments that could be enjoyed by
its inhabitants but it was not to be because of the inexorable growth that smear of low-grade urban
tissue expunging the city’s great richness and value.

The Staten Island which is a remote island situated along the circumference near Manhattan. This
Island would have ranked high among the splendid resources for the city population. It is indeed a
special place-its geological history made it so. Silurian schists which forms the spine of the island, but
the great Wisconsin glacier of Pleistocene time left its mark, for there lies the evidence of terminal
moraine. There are glacial lakes, ocean beaches, rivers, marshes, forests, old sand dunes and even
satellite islands. Among its treasures were beds of oysters and clams so extensive that the earliest
inhabitants could not conceive that they could ever be consumed. But like many other resources it
was rendered useless by pollution. Staten Island retained its quality as a bucolic haven rather than
any other area as near to Manhattan but in postwar period the speculative builders made it the
testimony to their shortsightedness and greed. Yet all is not lost; the Verrazano Bridge has opened
its floodgates to urban development, some splendid residues still remains which are the Greenbelt
and much of the southern part of the Island. Much of the land is owned by the city of New York and
is administered by the Department of Parks. Staten Island was and remains a unique resource of
New York City, but its value is fast disappearing.

The Island has come to be the result of the growth that is essential in mankind’s natural ways. It is
important to recognize the growth and activity of physical and biological process because this affects
mankind’s intervention.

According also to the book, land, air and water resources are indispensable

(other people perspective)