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Bringing Nature Back to the City

Andy Warhol’s Do It Yourself (Landscape) 1962 painting by numbers emphasizes the alienation of city dwellers from the direct experience of nature. For Any Warhol landscape was not misty hills in the countryside, but gleaming rows of supermarket shelves. 

The designers of the fifties were determined to invent newness to distance themselves from the ugliness of two World Wars. By the 60s, the “false joy”, as it has been called, became a very real celebration of the city, with its consumerism, plastic products and mass culture.

50 years on, the world is aghast at enormous plastic islands floating on the oceans, and the effects of climate change. As more than half the world population lives in cities, connected by motorways that slice through forests, mountains and valleys, what we consider nature, has shrunk dramatically.
Progress is now a sober discussion on sustainability, eco-friendly and recyclable products . Cities are expected to house 75% of the world’s population by 2030. Planners continue to pile up citizens in higher and higher apartment blocks. And environmentalists grow hoarse pleading for more open spaces, green and  “livable” cities.

For city developers barren lands are seen as potential properties, rather than a finely balanced wildlife and plant habitat. Mirza Nadeem  Beg, a banker turned bird photographer, posts  and hosts pictures on his facebook of more than 30 species of birds spotted  in Karachi, many in DHA’s phase 8,  while we all know that new development and housing will push them further out.  University of Karachi is one of the few areas left in the city that are a haven for wildlife.  We can still spot monitor lizards and the occasional sand boa snake. University of Karachi scholars, S Shahid Shaukat and Abid Raza have conducted a fascinating study of the birds on campus and their nesting and feeding habitat, deploring the occasional clearing away of what is seen as untidy plants.

Urban dwellers have a conflicted relationship with nature of inclusion and exclusion.  Andy Warhol also said: “I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own”. T.F. Powys short story, “Lie Thee Down Oddity” explores the innate human urge to control and tame nature.  Cinema keeps returning to themes of the unpreparedness and vulnerability of urban humans when faced with survival in nature.

For all our urban discomfort with nature, a romantic nostalgia makes us buy mogra attar, place rose petals on graves, design flower patterns on textiles, frame paintings or photographs of landscapes for our walls, and enjoy planting our gardens. We watch National Geographic or Animal Planet on TV, keep birds, deer, or goats as pets, visit the city zoo or feel privileged to watch turtles laying eggs on the beach.  WHO recommends a minimum of 9 square metres of green space per person.  The global approach to green spaces has evolved to accommodate growing housing needs.  Along with designated parks,   other ways of adding  green spaces are roadside planting,  roof gardens, gardens incorporated in elevated walkways, and  vertical planting on the sides of buildings  as introduced by French botanist Patrick Blanc.  Planting should encourage an ecosystem of birds and insects for which indigenous plants should be used.

Like the “Open Mumbai” proposal, Karachi has rivers and nalas to restore, creeks mangroves and beaches, neglected parks to cultivate and surrounding lands to forest. Unfortunately the removal of nurseries from greenbelts in the recent blitz on encroachments on pavements and roads makes any plans to bring nature back to Karachi near impossible, given that Karachi is a semi desert, and that the only source for plants are commercial nurseries.

Durriya Kazi
December 10, 2018
durriyakazi1918@gmail.com










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