Anthropology of the

City

15 March, 2022

Week 9

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Anthropology of Cities
– Essay Topics – must choose from the list
and
– Guide to Essay Writing - Instruction Sheet, APA format
for referencing – posted on Brightspace ****
– Office Hours – this afternoon, or email me to arrange via
ZOOM
3

“The idea of nature contains, though

often unnoticed, an extraordinary
amount of human history.”

Raymond Williams, "Ideas of Nature"

4 Nature and the City

Nature and Culture?

Nature versus Culture?

How has the ‘natural world’ come

to be seen as separate from the
‘cultural world’ ? Nature as distinct
from human?
5 Nature and the City

Ingrid Leman Stefanovic: “In Search of the Natural City”

- notes the bifurcation between

natural environments and urban culture

6 Anthropology of the City

Nature / Culture – a dichotomy; binary opposites

=> are spatially distinct in Western worldview

Seen as a pair of terms that are opposite in meaning:

Nature ----------------------------------- Culture
7 Anthropology of the City

William Cronon: an American environmental

historian http://williamcronon.net/
– In Western society, nature is a spatial area that is
meaningful; it is considered distinct from culture

– What meaning does nature carry?

8 Nature and Culture
- meanings are opposite
NATURE CULTURE
The realm of plants, animals The realm of humans
Instinct Social learning
Rural, Bushlands Settlement, Urban
Wild, Pristine Civilized
Raw Cooked
9 Nature and Culture

Stefanovic: nature ----------- culture

= a dualistic paradigm
- is a way of thinking about the world, culturally constructed
- ‘natural world’ is seen as separate from the ‘human world’
wilderness VS. the city
natural environment the built environment
10
Provides an ontological paradigm

0ntological paradigm – represents an ‘ordering’ of the world that is a

foundation of the Western worldview (taxonomy)
– ‘makes sense’ of the world: classifies those things that are similar
together, separates those that are different (sorting)
– May arrange them hierarchically according to a ‘social value’
– Important to understand re. nature and culture as it has affected
our attitudes towards nature, and our treatment of it
11
Nature --- Culture

15th century European thought saw all forms of life in

the world as a “Great Chain of Being” = a hierarchical
ordering:
God
Humans
Animals
Birds
Insects
Plants
Inanimate
(non living)
12 Nature and Culture
- the ‘Scala Natura’

The Great Chain of Being: ordered the world hierarchically,

according to ‘intellect,’ complexity, and sentience; has had a
persuasive influence on Western thinking and our relationship to
the natural world, animals, plants, environment
– The Great Chain begins with God and ‘descends’ downward from
God to the angels, humans, animals, plants, and minerals.to
– Humans were created by God in his image, and were to have
‘dominion over’ or power over all other creatures = supremacy
 Laws dictated what colours people could wear in society,
13 depending on their position or ‘place’ in society

GOD
Royal Men and Royal Women Purple

Noble Men and Noble Women Black, white, bright colours

Middle Class Men and Middle Class
Women

Peasant Men and Peasant Women Brown, tan, light colours (pastels)

Catherine the Animals

Great of Russia
 14
Medieval Christianity: nature was the creation of God, its beauty
(especially Paradise) demonstrated God’s benevolence was seen
The as divine and sublime – ‘wonderment’ and awe
‘meaning’ of 1600s to 1700s  with rise of secularism and science, nature lost
nature its divine quality and positive social value
- Frances Bacon: nature is there for the use of Man; science can
discover its mysteries
– Negative associations nature carries: ‘nasty, brutish, and mean’
– Romantic Period (1800s and after) – nature took on a more
positive value as an ‘idyll’ and alternative to urban congestion 
see rise of ‘landscape’ painting that reflects the social value of
nature as an ‘aesthetic’ or standard of beauty
15
Stefanovic: environs: the surrounding space.

Human space is built (not natural), and we

build it as we see fit
- yet use ‘metaphors of nature’ in our speech
such as:
- ‘a concrete canyon’ is a street surrounded by
skyscrapers
- ‘a concrete jungle’ : a modern city or urban
area filled with large buildings and regarded
especially as a harshly competitive,
unwelcoming, or dangerous place”
16 culture notes: use and meaning in contemporary
culture

– "Concrete jungle" refers to the urban city; first used in

cinema by Academy Award winning "The Lost Weekend"
(1945), directed by Billy Wilder, starring Ray Milland.
Milland's character, Don Birnam, a chronic alcoholic, and
binge drinker, speaks of others with the same condition in
the "concrete jungle" as the camera pans across a skyline of
Manhattan as an epilogue to the story.
- The Urban Dictionary
17 Nature and Culture

Stefanovic – how can we move beyond this dualism

– To see that humans do not live in a separate, non-natural
world
– To see that our built environment does not need to be
separate from the natural environment
– To understand that we are a part of and depend on
nature, just as the environment depends on us
18

With rising environmentalism in the 1970s, the ideal of

‘naturalism’ was envisioned for urban areas
This movement recalled other eras, drawing on ideals
developed 300 years ago.
19 The Natural City

– The aesthetic appreciation of

‘nature’ had developed since
the mid-1700s, when the
writings of Jean- Jacques
Rousseau extolled the virtues
of nature
– Nature= pure, unspoiled by
humans (Paradise)
20
Anthropology of the City

Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America

– New York’s Central Park, 1855-1860
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7tEkv2R
lk8

See also: The Best Planned City:

Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kht84Xa
Sn2M
21
The Urban Parks Movement

Frederick Law Olmsted – Central Park = the first landscape architect in

America
Curving pathways: serpentine
- curve is antithesis to straight lines and geometric forms = represent
power and control over nature
 22
The Natural City
– Early urban parks were developed in North America by
Frederick Law Olmsted, after touring the cities of
Europe
– You have viewed” “New York, 1825-1865: Order and
Disorder” (54-1.06min), U Ottawa Library:
http://digital.films.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/p_ViewVid
eo.aspx?xtid=44171#
Central Park, New York City
23 Frederick Law Olmsted designed
Central Park, New York City
24 – John Muir continued this ethic
with the development of the
National Parks Movement

– to protect US wilderness areas,

Yosemite National Park
– In Canada, see trend with Banff
and Jaspar National Parks
25 The Natural City

– Parc Mont-Royal /
Mount Royal Park in
Montreal
– Small mountain
landscape designed by
Frederick Law Olmsted
26 The Natural
City

– High Park, Toronto

27 William Lyon MacKenzie King Estate,
Gatineau (NCC)

– French and English gardens

– Architectural ruins = follies
– Represent ‘the past’, as in time passes and society changes vs
Ancien Regime = created by God, unchanging vs French
Revolution
– Neo-Classical
28
Anthropocene
- A term coined by the chemist Paul Crutzen for the
geological age (within the Holocene Epoch) when
humans, rather than natural systems, “act as the major
agents of geological change” (Cunningham & Scharper)
- By 2025, 2/3rds of the planet will live in urban areas,
most of them in mega-cities
29 The Natural City

Stefanovic: “The natural city calls for a plan for

another kind of thinking and planning “
*** A plan that does not ‘distance’ us further from
nature, that works to prevent its further degradation
during the Anthropocene, and that works towards
repairing and reviving it
30 Megacity: a very large city that has a population of more than 10 million
- is often made of two or more urban areas that have grown so much
that they are connected (agglomeration)
- example: Tokyo population over 14 million

Metropolis: from the Greek for ‘mother city’

– were initially places from which settlers were sent to discover, and
colonize other areas.
– Is now a descriptive term for large cities that are key centers of
national and regional socio-economic activity, sharing many of the
same characteristics with a global city.
31 Megalopolis is a cluster of well-networked cities is called a megalopolis, a term
first used in the early 20th century
– Bos-Wash – an example along eastern coast of the USA, connected to networks
of transportation and trade on land and sea

Global City – a term used since 1880s

– use described the English port of Liverpool’s involvement in global trade.
– Important to our modern idea of globalization, ‘term popularised by Saskia
Sassen in 1991 with the cities of London, Tokyo and New York serving as
examples.
– key locations within the world economy, acting as crucial centres for the global
trading of goods and services.
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mega-city
– “a very large city that has a population of more than 10
million people and that is often made of two or more
urban areas that have grown so much that they are
connected” (agglomeration)
– Cambridge Dictionary Online)
33 Anthropocene
Hilary Cunningham and Stephen Bede Scharper:
– Human activity affects all aspects of the planet’s life
systems
– What are the ecological implications of urbanization
and industrialization and consumerism/capitalism
= the modern lifestyle  ‘fast fashion’
34
City and Nature
– As more of the world is urbanized, our experience
of nature is “formed and framed” by cities
– William Cronin: we must take account of the
social and economic ecology of the city =
environmental history
35 City and Nature
Cities: produce vast quantities of

- pollution (industrial factories) - household

garbage and industrial waste
- water waste and treatment
- automobile exhaust = CO2; energy use
- land cover – cement, tar (oil) based pavement
36 City and Nature
Utopian visions of urban life – historical movements

– Ebenezer Howard’s “The Garden City” – tried to bring together

rural and urban living in England – started 1898 – ‘country and city
must be married’
– Founded the Garden City Association, UK
– Would be sustainable, self-sufficient, egalitarian
– An alternative to overcrowded, filthy, polluted 19th century cities
– First garden city in Letchworth, UK
37 Garden City = Welwym City, UK
38 Garden cities

– Well integrated garden / natural

spaces  Garden Suburbs
– Land held in ‘trust’ to prevent
development speculators
– “Greenbelts’ introduced
– Building codes and land use makes
use of greenery and park space
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Garden City Planning

– Lewis Mumford – ‘our will to profit’ must be

countered with our ‘will to green’
– Bring natural qualities, spaces into the city
- so they “co-mingle”
– Combine the human & biophysical, global & local,
culture and organic
 ‘public ecology’ ; design with nature
40 Ottawa – a greenbelt city

National Capital Commission (NCC)

– Ottawa’s Greenbelt Mer Bleu and
Stony Swamp
41 Cities and Nature

C40 – network of 90 mega-cities around the world co-operating and

provide leadership, share solutions to deal with climate change
- UN Environment, UN Habitat
Initiatives: - to reduce greenhouse gases
- provide clean air
- reduce car use, lower exhaust, develop transit routes, reduce
water use, reduce household waste, increase green business,
sustainability
42 C40 –urban climate movement
London, UK: 9.5 million people (2022)

– Climate risks: coastline flooding – assessment (flash or surface rainfall,

river, hurricane threats) and proactive responses ->
– Heat Island Effect in urban areas: temperature increase due to concrete,
urban density retaining heat - > assessment, monitor deaths and responses
– Million Tree Challenge – plant throughout the city – current: 422,037
planted
- Milan, Italy – will plant approximately 3 million trees in the city and its
peripheral areas by 2030.