Alija Dürrenberger – The Nature of the City

Is there anything we can call “urban nature”? In the city, we have nature in the form of public parks and private gardens, flower-bedecked balconies, houseplants and cut flowers. We use plants for greening our walls and roofs and the spaces that are left over by the side of intersecting roads. That is what we might call “specific urban greenery”. But there are other kinds of nature everywhere in the city. To get a wider picture of the varieties and their potentials, urban nature can be classified into four categories: “Anarchy” describes wild nature that spreads its seeds and grows wherever it can. It offers a great potential for biodiversity. ‘Culture’ involves all agricultural crops that we use for food. Urban food helps to save resources, such as fossil fuels. “Transformation” covers specific urban greenery that is used to design the city. More greenery means a better city climate. “Artefact” defines nature that is not natural, but rather artificial. It holds potential in the fields of aesthetics and identification. Three visions of new kinds of urban nature are suggested. The first one takes the latest manifestation of urban nature, the post-industrial nature growing on brownfield sites, on a journey that ranges from wilderness, to cultivation, to transformation to artefact. The second concept tries new combinations of the four categories of nature and their principles. The third vision dissolves the borders between nature and city to create something new interstitially regarding the “nature” of cities.