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City and Nature, a Missed Opportunity?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Thierry Paquot
Thierry Paquot*
Affiliation:
Institut d’urbanisme de Paris, Paris XII-Val-de-Marne
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Abstract

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When town planning emerged at the end of the 19th century, its proponents did not envisage the city without nature. Some, such as Ebenezer Howard, believed the garden city would become the new face of the urban landscape, bringing together only the positive aspects of both city and country. Others, health experts and rationalists, advocated functional planning, where the ‘green space’ was part of the overall plan. And so nature was not forgotten. But what ‘nature’? A ‘nature’ external to the town-dweller, like an ornament or decoration? Something that enhanced the built environment and not the very condition of our existence as human beings? Behind the planners’ inclusion of ‘nature’ lie very different intentions, from one period to another and one culture to another. The globalized, standardized ‘nature’ that was subsequently part of marketing the city is just an image; whether wild or tamed, it is no longer localized, no longer a partner in our condition as denizens of the earth. Thierry Paquot examines these continuing processes of change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 65 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

Notes

1. Emile Zola (1882), Le Capitaine Burle et autres contes. The edition referred to is 1983, Geneva, Famot, p. 225.

2. H. Conwentz (1913), ‘Les Villes et la Nature’, Ghent, Publication of the First International City Conference, 27 July to 2 August 1913, pp. 1-10.

3. Robert de Souza (1913), Nice capitale d’hiver, Paris-Nancy, Berger-Levrault, 518 pages, many plans and maps and a few photos.

4. Léon Jaussely, ‘Avertissement’, in Raymond Unwin, L’Etude pratique des plans de villes. Introduction à l’art de dessiner les plans d’aménagement et d’extension, Paris, Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, un-dated (undoubtedly 1929). The first English edition was published in 1909: Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs, London, T. Fisher Unwin. Readers are also referred to Jean-Yves Puyo (2001), ‘L’Urbanisme selon Léon Jaussely’, in Vincent Berdoulay and Paul Claval (eds), Aux débuts de l’urbanisme français, Paris, L’Harmattan, pp. 119-32, and Vincent Berdoulay and Olivier Soubeyran (2002), L’Ecologie urbaine et l’urbanisme. Aux fondements des enjeux actuels, Paris, La Découverte.

5. ‘Regards sur la Ligue et ses Cahiers’, Les Cahiers de la Ligue Urbaine et Rurale, 100, 1988, and Cahiers Jean Giraudoux, edited by Cécile Chombard-Gaudin, Paris, Grasset, 22, 1993, which brings together scholarly studies on the author’s town planning writing as well as several of his articles.

6. Le Corbusier (1957), La Charte d’Athènes, Paris, Minuit. For a fairly hagiographic reading of the master, see Le Corbusier et la nature, Paris, Les Rencontres de la Fondation Le Corbusier, 1991, and for a more critical view, ‘La Charte d’Athènes, et après?’, Urbanisme, 330, May/June 2003, and Adolf Max Vogt (2003), Le Corbusier, le bon sauvage. Vers une archéologie de la modernité, infolio, Gollion-CH.

7. Hélène Vacher (1999), ‘La Naissance d’Urbanisme ou “l’art du stratège”‘, Urbanisme, 306, May/June, pp. 27-31.

8. André Véra (1939), ‘Nature et urbanisme’, Urbanisme, 68; (1936), L’Urbanisme ou la vie heureuse, Paris, Corréa; and Jean-Pierre Le Dantec (2002), Le Sauvage et le Régulier. Arts des jardins et paysagisme en France au XXe siècle, Paris, Le Moniteur, pp. 87 et seq and pp. 140 et seq.

9. Hommes Maisons Paysages. Essai sur l’environnement humain, Paris, Plon, 1946. In a ‘postface’ placed oddly at the start of the book, the author explains that ‘during the dark hours of the occupation’ he regularly used to meet friends in a room in the Touring Club de France and together they dreamed about reconstructing and enhancing national ‘beauties’. An engineer and architect - the ship terminal at Le Havre, Beaujon Hospital and the Maine-Montparnasse project are his work - he was also very involved in the life of the profession.

10. C. S. Stein (1973), Towards New Towns for America, Cambridge, MIT Press; Eugene Ladner Birch (1980), ‘Radburn and the American Planning Movement. The Persistence of an Idea’, in Journal of The American Planning Association, 46, 4, pp. 424-39, and Robert Wojtowicz (1996), Lewis Mumford and American Modernism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

11. Jean-Louis Cohen (1978), ‘Gaston Bardet, un humanisme à visage urbain’, AMC, 44, February, pp. 74-84; Jean-Pierre Frey (2001), ‘Gaston Bardet, théoricien de l’urbanisme “culturaliste”’, Urbanisme, 319, July/August, pp. 32-6. Among Gaston Bardet’s prolific works, readers are referred especially to Missions de l’urbanisme, Paris, Éditions ouvrières/Economie et Humanisme, 1949.

12. Isabelle Auricoste (1994), ‘Le Vert dans la cité’, Informations Sociales, 33, pp. 47-53.

13. Ariella Masboungi (ed.) (2002), Penser la ville par le paysage, Paris, Projet urbain/Éditions de La Villette; Augustin Berque (1999), ‘Ville et architecture, années 2000: quelle cosmicité?’, in Chris Younes (ed.), Ville contre-nature. Philosophie et architecture, Paris, La Découverte; Didier Rebois (1999), ‘La Nature dans le projet urbano-architectural’, ibid.; Gilles Clément (1999), ‘Le Jardin pour la maison de l’homme’, ibid.; Chris Younes (2000), ‘Natures et Villes en mouvement’, Urbanisme, dossier ‘Europe: ville et nature’, 314, September/October, pp. 68-74.

14. Thierry Paquot (2003), ‘Que savons-nous de la ville et de l’urbain?’, De la ville et du citadin, Marseille, Parenthèses, pp. 15-32.

15. Whitney North Seymour Jr (ed.) (1969), Small Urban Spaces. The Philosophy, Design, Sociology and Politics of Vest-Pocket Parks and Other Small Urban Open Spaces, New York, New York University Press.

16. Augustin Berque (2000), Écoumène. Introduction à l’étude des milieux humains, Paris, Belin; Augustin Berque with Maurice Sauzet (2004), Le Sens de l’espace au Japon. Vivre, penser, bâtir, Paris, Arguments; and Thierry Paquot (2005), Demeure terrestre. Enquête vagabonde sur ‘l’habiter’, Paris, Éditions de l’Imprimeur.