- Email: [email protected]
The granite garden: Urban nature and human design
364
(3% of the Greater London owner-occupiers lack a fixed bath etc) persists: there is nothing on subjective orientations to houses and places, on the social meaning of housing or, in regard to the interesting questions hinted at by Pahl (p. 113) on the varying income-generating opportunities offered by differing areas with different housing stocks (e.g. for permanent or holiday letting, home working, gentrification etc). As with earlier historical interest in ‘the urban’, the emphasis on the ‘have-nots’ and unemployed may be morally legitimate though more attention to processes of de-urbanisation, the outer city and expanding high tech, greenfield urbanism in growth areas would have suggested more about the future. Pahl concludes that ‘the local context will have greater salience in the 1980s’ and suggests that urban sociologists are returning to detailed ethnographies of local populations. Unless this approach is undertaken within a larger, non-local framework of the world economy and with reference to other societies, cultures and economies, urban sociology - whether as humanistic education or as a guide to policy - will atrophy into the narrow and dismal science it frequently was before 1970.
Brunel
URBAN
NATURE
AND HUMAN
A.D. KING Sociology and Environmental Studies University, Ux bridge UB8 3PH, Great Britain
DESIGN
The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, Anne Whiston Spirn. Basic Books, New York, NY, U.S.A. 1984. 334 pp., $ 25.95. Cities, these most complex of artifacts, can be conceptualized as consisting of many subsystems, Some (spatial, technological, economic) have been much studed; others (human, energy, natural) much less so. This book seeks to rectify the ommission regarding natural subsystems. It considers air, earth, water, life (plants and animals) - and finally the natural urban ecosystem as a whole, concluding with examples of a dystopia and utopia. The stress is always on design implications. All this makes the book innovative and potentially useful. Although many of the topics have been covered elsewhere (e.g. in this Journal) the systematic treatment of the full range of natural subsystems in a single place is new and worthwhile; so is the emphasis on design. There is a great deal of useful material and one strength is a series of interesting examples/case studies from a number of countries. In spite of these, however, the book is very US oriented and shows no sensitivity to cultural differences or issues. This is one of the faults which, on balance, outweigh the positive issues. A review article could be written listing the faults and arguing them (with references), but I will only make some very general comments.
The material in the book often seems randomly assembled so that the useful and interesting data is difficult to extract from the necdotal, irrelevant or trivial. Design suggestions and case studies are often too specific (at the ‘how to’ level) or overgeneralized. The author is a victim of the Romantic fallacy. In spite of some evidence to the contrary in the book itself she regards cities of the past as cleaner and healthier than those of today. In fact, cities today are arguably the cleanest and healthiest they have ever been. In any case evidence is missing - as for many other assertions in the book. This is part of the exaggeration and alarmism characteristic of the more extreme segments of the so-called environmental movement. It is also typical of that movement, as it is of most designers, that a set of values and perceptions are assumed and never examined: what they see as important and desirable is taken as self-evident and normative. This assumption, clearly wrong, is never examined. One result is excessive generalization neglecting the variability of perceptions, cognitions, preferences etc. of different groups for which there is so much evidence. Sweeping generalizations about traditional cities, ‘primitive’ settlements, univeral preference for public squares, water symbolism or the centrality of streets to people’s lives (among many others) are often wrong and always grossly oversimplified; much more evidence must be given to be convincing. The auther cautions (p. 105) against the use of a single label for something as heterogeneous as urban soils yet ignores the much greater complexity and heterogeneity of human settlements. There are major gaps in the coverage and even the bibliography: to mention just one there is no reference to the most thorough urban ecosystem analysis by S. Boyden et al., The Ecology of a City and its People. There is no MES (Man-Environment Studies) material, critical to ‘human design’. Neither are humans included among the city’s living systems, either as major components, or creators, of the urban ecosystem. The result is that recommendations, eg streets for trees may be totally wrong for people (e.g. too wide); buildings which discourage pigeons and starlings may conflict with human needs for complexity; parks designed for species diversity may be in conflict with certain latent functions demanding long edges; parks treated as a ‘forest’ may be at odds with human perceptions, status considerations, definitions of environmental quality of parks, various activities in parks etc etc. There is thus a constant problem with sub-optimization and a neglect of the inherent conflicts among requirements, the resolution of which is the essence of design. The concern for trees is weakened by the now standard attack on dispersed settlements. This is not only at odds with expressed preferences for housing types and settlement form. These forms also typically support more trees and other vegetation than do parks in many cities! Moreover, the energy use data for dispersed settlements are not clearcut; recent data (quoted in D. Brodsly, 1981, pp. 142-146) suggest that caroriented cities may be more economical in cost, and even more energy efficient, than those relying on rapid transit. In any case much more serious analysis is clearly necessary.
366
It is assumed throughout that the problem is known and just needs to be solved. In fact, defining the problem is typically the difficult task; moreover, from a human point of view ‘the problem’ has multiple perspectives which need to be analyzed and resolved. The complete lack of linkages to other approaches to the city is a serious problem. Since ‘human design’ is an important aspect of the book, at the very least MES must be considered; the neglect of a potentially fruitful link in the very sophisticated MES literature on natural landscapes is particularly puzzling. An even more serious problem, finally, is an implicit and simplistic environmental determinism. Clearly cities will always be designed for human needs. Natural systems are best seen as providing possibilities, setting limits and constraints. In order to use natural systems in that way in design, and to integrate them with insights from work on all the other sub-systems, one requires thorough, solidly based knowledge and research on the systems which form the subject matter of this book. While this book may do something to raise awareness among some it is, unfortunately, not the book which at first glance it seems to be - or which is needed. AMOS RAPOPORT School of Architecture and Urban Planning, The University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201, U.S.A.
REFERENCES Boyden, S., Millar, S., Newcombe, K. and O‘Neill, B., 1981. The Ecology of a City and its People. ANU Press, Canberra, A.C.T. Brodsley, D., 1981. LA Freeway. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 165 pp.
(3% of the Greater London owner-occupiers lack a fixed bath etc) persists: there is nothing on subjective orientations to houses and places, on the social meaning of housing or, in regard to the interesting questions hinted at by Pahl (p. 113) on the varying income-generating opportunities offered by differing areas with different housing stocks (e.g. for permanent or holiday letting, home working, gentrification etc). As with earlier historical interest in ‘the urban’, the emphasis on the ‘have-nots’ and unemployed may be morally legitimate though more attention to processes of de-urbanisation, the outer city and expanding high tech, greenfield urbanism in growth areas would have suggested more about the future. Pahl concludes that ‘the local context will have greater salience in the 1980s’ and suggests that urban sociologists are returning to detailed ethnographies of local populations. Unless this approach is undertaken within a larger, non-local framework of the world economy and with reference to other societies, cultures and economies, urban sociology - whether as humanistic education or as a guide to policy - will atrophy into the narrow and dismal science it frequently was before 1970.
Brunel
URBAN
NATURE
AND HUMAN
A.D. KING Sociology and Environmental Studies University, Ux bridge UB8 3PH, Great Britain
DESIGN
The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, Anne Whiston Spirn. Basic Books, New York, NY, U.S.A. 1984. 334 pp., $ 25.95. Cities, these most complex of artifacts, can be conceptualized as consisting of many subsystems, Some (spatial, technological, economic) have been much studed; others (human, energy, natural) much less so. This book seeks to rectify the ommission regarding natural subsystems. It considers air, earth, water, life (plants and animals) - and finally the natural urban ecosystem as a whole, concluding with examples of a dystopia and utopia. The stress is always on design implications. All this makes the book innovative and potentially useful. Although many of the topics have been covered elsewhere (e.g. in this Journal) the systematic treatment of the full range of natural subsystems in a single place is new and worthwhile; so is the emphasis on design. There is a great deal of useful material and one strength is a series of interesting examples/case studies from a number of countries. In spite of these, however, the book is very US oriented and shows no sensitivity to cultural differences or issues. This is one of the faults which, on balance, outweigh the positive issues. A review article could be written listing the faults and arguing them (with references), but I will only make some very general comments.
The material in the book often seems randomly assembled so that the useful and interesting data is difficult to extract from the necdotal, irrelevant or trivial. Design suggestions and case studies are often too specific (at the ‘how to’ level) or overgeneralized. The author is a victim of the Romantic fallacy. In spite of some evidence to the contrary in the book itself she regards cities of the past as cleaner and healthier than those of today. In fact, cities today are arguably the cleanest and healthiest they have ever been. In any case evidence is missing - as for many other assertions in the book. This is part of the exaggeration and alarmism characteristic of the more extreme segments of the so-called environmental movement. It is also typical of that movement, as it is of most designers, that a set of values and perceptions are assumed and never examined: what they see as important and desirable is taken as self-evident and normative. This assumption, clearly wrong, is never examined. One result is excessive generalization neglecting the variability of perceptions, cognitions, preferences etc. of different groups for which there is so much evidence. Sweeping generalizations about traditional cities, ‘primitive’ settlements, univeral preference for public squares, water symbolism or the centrality of streets to people’s lives (among many others) are often wrong and always grossly oversimplified; much more evidence must be given to be convincing. The auther cautions (p. 105) against the use of a single label for something as heterogeneous as urban soils yet ignores the much greater complexity and heterogeneity of human settlements. There are major gaps in the coverage and even the bibliography: to mention just one there is no reference to the most thorough urban ecosystem analysis by S. Boyden et al., The Ecology of a City and its People. There is no MES (Man-Environment Studies) material, critical to ‘human design’. Neither are humans included among the city’s living systems, either as major components, or creators, of the urban ecosystem. The result is that recommendations, eg streets for trees may be totally wrong for people (e.g. too wide); buildings which discourage pigeons and starlings may conflict with human needs for complexity; parks designed for species diversity may be in conflict with certain latent functions demanding long edges; parks treated as a ‘forest’ may be at odds with human perceptions, status considerations, definitions of environmental quality of parks, various activities in parks etc etc. There is thus a constant problem with sub-optimization and a neglect of the inherent conflicts among requirements, the resolution of which is the essence of design. The concern for trees is weakened by the now standard attack on dispersed settlements. This is not only at odds with expressed preferences for housing types and settlement form. These forms also typically support more trees and other vegetation than do parks in many cities! Moreover, the energy use data for dispersed settlements are not clearcut; recent data (quoted in D. Brodsly, 1981, pp. 142-146) suggest that caroriented cities may be more economical in cost, and even more energy efficient, than those relying on rapid transit. In any case much more serious analysis is clearly necessary.
366
It is assumed throughout that the problem is known and just needs to be solved. In fact, defining the problem is typically the difficult task; moreover, from a human point of view ‘the problem’ has multiple perspectives which need to be analyzed and resolved. The complete lack of linkages to other approaches to the city is a serious problem. Since ‘human design’ is an important aspect of the book, at the very least MES must be considered; the neglect of a potentially fruitful link in the very sophisticated MES literature on natural landscapes is particularly puzzling. An even more serious problem, finally, is an implicit and simplistic environmental determinism. Clearly cities will always be designed for human needs. Natural systems are best seen as providing possibilities, setting limits and constraints. In order to use natural systems in that way in design, and to integrate them with insights from work on all the other sub-systems, one requires thorough, solidly based knowledge and research on the systems which form the subject matter of this book. While this book may do something to raise awareness among some it is, unfortunately, not the book which at first glance it seems to be - or which is needed. AMOS RAPOPORT School of Architecture and Urban Planning, The University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201, U.S.A.
REFERENCES Boyden, S., Millar, S., Newcombe, K. and O‘Neill, B., 1981. The Ecology of a City and its People. ANU Press, Canberra, A.C.T. Brodsley, D., 1981. LA Freeway. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 165 pp.