Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Urban Jungle by Ben Wilson - Available

Urban Jungle

The History and Future of Nature in the City

by Ben Wilson
John Sackville
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
In this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior.
Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle Ben Wilson—the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called “a towering achievement”—looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis.
Whether it was the market farmers of Paris, Germans in medieval forest cities, or the Aztecs in the floating city of Tenochtitlan, pre-modern humans had an essential bond with nature. But when the day came that water was piped in and food flown from distant fields, that relationship was lost. Today, urban areas are the fastest-growing habitat on Earth and in Urban Jungle Ben Wilson finds that we are at last acknowledging that human engineering is not enough to protect us from extremes of weather. He takes us to places where efforts to rewild the city are under way: to Los Angeles, where the city’s concrete river will run blue again, to New York City, where a bleak landfill will be a vast grassland preserve. The pinnacle of this strategy will be Amsterdam: a city that is its own ecosystem, that makes no waste and produces its own energy. In many cities, Wilson finds, nature is already thriving. Koalas are settling in Brisbane, wild boar may raid your picnic in Berlin. Green canopies, wildflowers, wildlife: the things that will help cities survive, he notes, also make people happy.
Urban Jungle offers the pleasures of history—how backyard gardens spread exotic species all over the world, how war produces biodiversity—alongside a fantastic vision of the lush green cities of our future. Climate change, Ben Wilson believes, is only the latest chapter in the dramatic human story of nature and the city.
Front cover photograph: The Milan Vertical Forest, 2007–2014, Milan, Italy by Boeri Studio. Cover photograph by Andrea/EyeEm. Cover design by John Fontana
 
Typology: Architecture, Vertical forest. Design team: Stefano Boeri (founding partner); (executive architects) Davor Popovic, Francesco de Felice; (project architects) Phase 1—Urban planning and preliminary project: Frederic de Smet (coordination), Daniele Barillari, Julien Boatyard, Matilde Cassani, Andrea Casetto, Francesca Cesa Bianchi, Inge Lengwenus, Corrado Longa, Eleanna Kotsikou, Matteo Marzi, Emanuela Messina, Andrea Sellanes. Phase 2—Detail project: Gianni Bertoldi (coordination), Alessandro Agosti, Marco Brega, Andrea Casetto, Matteo Colognese, Angela Parrozzani, Stefano Onnis. Consultants: Arup Italia s.r.l. (structural engineering); Deerns Italia S.p.A. (facilities design); Tekne s.p.a. (detailed design); LAND s.r.l. (open space design); Alpina S.p.A. (infrastructure design); MI.PR.AV. s.r.l. (contract administration [DL]); Studio Emanuela Borio and Laura Gatti (landscape design)

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 7, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593666692
      • File size: 273374 KB
      • Duration: 09:29:31

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 14, 2022
      “The city is an ecosystem,” contends historian Wilson (Metropolis) in this thorough exploration of urban ecology. He studies metropolitan “edgelands”—“the middens and rubbish dumps, the abandoned sites and empty rooftops, the strips of land behind chain-link fences”—suggesting they act as life support systems and mitigate the effects of climate change. Wilson covers the founding of the first cities in Mesopotamia around 5000 BCE, where the bounty of food sources afforded by the wetlands freed up time to develop infrastructure and trade, and continues through to the present day. He describes how developments in such seaside locales as Staten Island’s Oakwood Beach are being dismantled so that the marshes can return and serve as a buffer between rising sea levels and communities further inland. Wilson is optimistic about the progress being made to ameliorate ecological damage, detailing such “rewilding” projects as the transformation of a garbage dump into a park in New York City and Amsterdam’s efforts to function “as a healthy local ecosystem” by achieving zero waste. Wilson’s account of these efforts makes a convincing case that the natural world extends farther than commonly acknowledged, and the trivia is delightful (London pigeons take the tube to travel between their nests and food sources). Stimulating and wide-ranging, this will change how city dwellers view their relationship with nature.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      John Sackville narrates a history of urban greenery, providing an assertive tone to the author's claim that our messy cities are full of biodiversity. Wilson looks back on calls for natural habitats in and around cities, which resulted in more plentiful parks and gardens in urban areas worldwide. Sackville gives the growth of banyans, or fig trees, in Southeast Asian cities a touch of drama and indignantly narrates twentieth-century responses to weeds. He ensures that notes of caution can be heard in Wilson's account of Hurricane Sandy, with its warnings against further attempts to conquer swamps and lowlands. Happily, Wilson also points out successful projects, such as Dutch flood planning and Singapore's rooftop gardens. At the end, Sackville emphasizes Wilson's plea to curb dependence on cars. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check Out What's Being Checked Out Right Now