Cart

Your Cart is Empty

Back To Shop

Cart

Your Cart is Empty

Back To Shop
Sale

Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City

Original price was: $30.00.Current price is: $24.00.

(In Stock)

SKU: IWF12956452 Category:

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. InUrban JungleBen Wilsonthe author ofMetropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that theWall Street Journalcalled a towering achievementlooks 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 inUrban JungleBen 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 citys 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 Jungleoffers the pleasures of historyhow backyard gardens spread exotic species all over the world, how war produces biodiversityalongside 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.

Hardcover, March 7th 2023

Reviews

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City”

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Cart

Your Cart is Empty

Back To Shop