Week 13

Swyngedouw invokes Jane Jacobs’ comments about cities being as natural as prairie dog colonies or beds of oysters.  Indeed, the tendency to aggregate and create built environments is not uniquely human, and I agree too much traction is given to the notion that cities are “unnatural” places.  Beavers build dams for themselves to live in and disrupt ecology while so doing.  Plastic is an unnatural material that we use every day.  We create plastic in chemistry labs, using formulas our brains have developed.  How does this differ, really, from animals like silkworms or vipers that fabricate materials and chemicals to achieve survival?  Would a city made of plastic be less natural than one made of wood? 

I am interested by the notion that cities are our evolutionary destiny.  Perhaps it is a defense mechanism that we are urbanizing, as if we are sensing the globe’s danger.   Though our population still expands, suggesting we are blindly heading toward self-destruction, the city might be our subconscious attempt to preserve our species.  The human race is contracting spatially into smaller, denser places.  With tighter infrastructure, and more efficient organization, we are positioning ourselves to meet the survival needs of a larger population without destroying our homeworld.