Environmental history and future of a Nordic city CECT, Spatiality and visualisation of culture/nature relationships: theoretical aspects, 22-24 October 2009, Tallinn
Jan 12, 2016
Environmental history and future of a Nordic city
CECT, Spatiality and visualisation of culture/nature relationships: theoretical aspects, 22-24 October 2009, Tallinn
Why city? What is a city?
• A city is the most complex and intensive socio-ecological system on earth
• OK – let’s make it even more complex by asking how has it changed over time
• How to make sense of the urban environment and its historical change?
Environmental history?
• Environmental history explores the interaction between human beings and other species and elements of nature in time– How has nature affected human societies?– How have human beings conceptualised,
utilized and affected nature?
• EH studies focused first on the countryside and nature conservation, not on cities
Background & aim:
Holistic studies of a specific city
Some books on the environmental history of Helsinki
in the 19th and 20th century
All these books including our own have a common problem: fragmentation
Time
Issue
Space
Approach
What is the problem?
• Firstly, edited books are needed in new fields of studies as they provide new information by means of case studies
• Thereby one understands the development of different sectors, yes - but what happened to the city as a whole?
• How the develoment of given sectors was related to the development of the urban society?
• How to solve the problem of fragmentation methodologically?
One possible solution – cross-section approach?
Time
Issue
Space
Moving from vertical to horizontal approach also in historical studies?
So what is a cross-section?
CITY
SOIL
FLORA
&
FAUNA
AIR
WATER
In cross-section approach the interaction of a city with its physical environment
is studied vertically, that is, spatially in a holistic manner
during a limited time period
Different cross-sectionsin terms of time depending of our needs
A cross-section of what?
• Culture signifies how people adopt to a given physical environment
• Human beings (body/mind) need material resources to use their non-material resources – and vice versa
• In conclusion, A) the human culture (non-material, society) is dependent on
• B) material culture (organisms/artefacts) that is dependent on
• C) environmental culture (abstraction of air, water, biomass, minerals; other uses of nature), that is, modification and domestication of nature,i.e., of the planet Earth
One step forward?
• Cross-section approach focuses on environmental culture to describe and explain how and why a city dis/functions
• Now the aim is to focus on four main phases of urban environmental culture in Helsinki
1) preindustrial urban society and the environment
2) industrialising ” ” ” ”
3) industrial ” ” ” ”
4) deindustrialising ” ” ” ”
Four cross-sections to be studied
Four cities in
one place?
PRE-INDUSTRIAL HELSINKI
INDUSTRIALISING HELSINKI
INDUSTRIAL HELSINKI
2000
Helsinki
The future city?
Helsinki 2050?
A class city of the early 1900s?
A city of low consumption of the 1950s?
An organic
city of the 1850s?
A homogenious ecocommunist city machine?
(CCCP)
A semi-environmental socialdemocrat suburban zone?
Green individually orientated
garden cities?
A non-environmental
conservative city of elites?
A neoreligious city that adapts to changes
spiritually?
Helcynborg – a city a of technospecies
that will survive ecocatastrophies?
A conservative unenvironmental business city of
elites?
Backcasting:Dystopias:
Predictions:
Some conclusions
1. We do not recognize anymore the dependence of our culture of the environment – hence we have to explore it!
2. However, we need new methodological tools to make sense of the socio-ecological complexity and intensivity of cities, in particular
3. Environmental culture approach signifies here connecting human (material) culture to its environmental basics
4. Cross-section approach signifies a shift from vertical approach towards horizontal approach in order to connect events to structures also in historical studies
5. So let’s move from a City to a BioDiverCity
Thank you for your attention!
Comparing historical and contemporary phases of development
Environmental Kuznetz curve
Environmental culture
• City as a – political– social– economic– cultural
system in a given period and place
• Household is the basic socio-ecological unit of a city
• Rest, work, leisure• individual needs • Active citizens
• Urban governance of the following non/material resources and/or processes
– Air– Water– Soil– Biodiversity– Energy– Transport– Disaster mitigation
Interactive circles/layers of environmental culture
Relatively natural processes and elements
Environmental culture
Material culture
Human culture
Maybe this mode could beapplied to the study of cities as well?
• Please (do not) try to live over three minutes without breathing (air), three days without drinking (water), three weeks without eating (food) or longer time without shelter (clothes, buildings)