Urbanism vs. Environmentalism

This s a critical response I wrote to Guha’s Environmentalism: A Global History (2000). It was an EfS course requirement in the winter semester of 2018. To summarize, the urban ideal in the developed, Western realm promoted industrialization, land degradation, ethnocentrism, capitalism, and over-consumption. While these themes contradict environmentalism, I believe that today’s urban world and modern sustainability practitioners can reconcile these two historically opposed entities.

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Urbanism vs. Environmentalism in the Developed World

A recurring theme in Guha’s Environmentalism: a Global History (2000) was of the contrast between the urban world and the natural world. As someone who values both, this resonated with me. Historically, the rise of urban centres has led to the slow and often silent death of the environment. As Guha demonstrated, rapid industrialization in the 1800’s improved the economy so much that few people saw the damage it was doing to the earth. William Blake, an English poet, lamented the ‘dark Satanic Mills’ that caused environmental and social issues in England (p 5), while the likes of John Ruskin and William Morris (classified as ‘Back to the Land!’ environmentalists by Guha) feared the destruction of early urbanization (p 13). The success of the early city was often dependent upon the depletion of the natural world as well as the countryside. Forests, small countryside towns, and rivers often changed their entire purposes of being and ultimately suffered for the sake of the human. Moving away from the early days in England and looking at the ‘American Dream’ of the 1950’s, cities have evolved into places of over-consumption and endless material want; this is an echo of the colonialist past that often led to the creation of such spaces. Modern cities, much like the colonies of the past, are often built on ideologies of progress and competition for the sake of personal gain, and with very little true regard for the non-human.

Indeed, the modern city is a completely man-made construct, and is therefore inherently human-centered. As the urban population climbs, humans will need more and more resources and deplete the earth of its beauty. Even ‘sustainable’ cities like Vancouver are guilty of over-consumption; our standard of living in the Western world necessitates luxuries like private automobiles, private lawns, CFC emitting refrigerators, and air-conditioned shopping centres. These habits have formed a baseline, which many urbanites would refuse to give up since it is their norm.

Many cities have created a dominant narrative of sustainability. To use a familiar example, Vancouver is trying to be the ‘Greenest City’ by 2020. While, of course I love this, sustainable initiatives largely benefit the human. To be specific, this narrative is mainly accessible to those with a certain degree of privilege. While Vancouver loves diversity and has called itself a ‘City of reconciliation’ (this, to me, is an area that needs a lot more work to be done), it is still at its core, a developed urban centre. Most First World cities are inherently places of capitalism, which is rooted in the colonialist idea of personal gain for the sake of it. People are often drawn to City and away from small towns or farms by ‘Success! Ease of Life! Riches!’. These distractions leave little space for other ways of being, learning, or doing. This way of living is so heavily mediated and adored, that alternative ways are reduced. The progress and luxury of the Northern and Western countries was (and perhaps still is) something that the developing world aims to achieve, regardless of the gap between the elite and the impoverished in those places. This low-key capitalism is so subtle, normalized, and widely accepted that it is rarely noticed. It is a sort of hidden colonialism of the mind that we rarely see, yet it influences our ways of being; those of us who benefit from it love it.

While I have demonstrated that urbanism and environmentalism are often at odds, I do not believe that they are mutually exclusive. Conservation of rural and natural protected areas alone is isolating and often for the escape and consumption of those with a certain degree of privilege; it does not speak to the degradation of the urban core. To echo Lewis Mumford, regional planning, if done in a good way, could uplift the earth as a whole (p 60). To be a pure environmentalist and live out in the wild within one’s footprint is a nice sentiment, but ultimately does not contribute to social change. We can work within the system we hope to change. For both views to coexist in the same space, significant social shifts must occur. As Aldo Leopold stated, we must create a harmonious relation to the land, and foster a ‘mutual and interdependent cooperation between [all forms of life]’ (p 56). Could we evolve from ‘human-centered design’ to an even more bio-centric way of thinking? Indeed, to be an environmentalist and an urbanist is to see human as equal to nature and to value the interconnectedness of all life (think Arne Naess’ Deep Ecology, p 84). It is to keep nature in mind when making land-use decisions. Many Indigenous people, as well as some Western folks, have held this view long before the planet reached this critical state, but mainstream urban human action tends to silence it. In order to reconcile any tension that exists between urbanism and environmentalism, we need to challenge the dominant narrative. I believe that we must make space for many voices that speak in different ways for sustainability and balance. I agree with Patrick Geddes that present ‘carboniferous capitalism’ and the myth of the machine could be replaced with a new myth of life and cooperative relation with the forces of nature (p 77). Only then could we co-create a city that works in tandem with nature rather than against it.

Picture 1: "Should I Be Worried?". A piece by local artist Justin Langlois. This was a collaboration between the City of Vancouver's Public Art and Sustainability Groups. This piece aims to bring to light the sustainability issues we face in Vancouver. Perhaps we should be more worried than complacent, and act with more urgency.

Picture 2: Juxtaposition of park, built environment, and mountains.