DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES OF THE CITY

The desire for order and the role of urban nature

Ben Higham

Abstract

DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES OF THE CITYThe desire for order and the role of urban nature

Ben Higham January 2013

This dissertation proposes a holistic method for investigating the city as a dynamic system at both macro and micro levels. Using the laws of thermodynamics, the concept of dissipative structures and the role of entropy an understanding of the repercussions of any given process within a city system can be gained. Applying these theories to the relationship between the city and nature is the basis upon which to challenge the preconception that urban nature is a characterisation of disorder and is therefore not desirable within the built environment.

The builders of medieval settlements harnessed nature’s bene!ts and lived within its means. This link has been lost and the contemporary city seeks to exclude and control nature in order to satisfy occupants’ desires. This dominance over nature necessitates the built environment to instil order over a system. The result is a pedigreed landscape where nature is:

nature is unruly and undesired. Without the in"uence of human desires and perceptions the input needed to sustain the built environment’s control over a system ceases and urban nature establishes and produces its own system. This is no less ordered than before, just a di#erent type of order. The scale of "ora in peripheral spaces varies from plants sprouting in pavement gaps through to multiple stages of ecological succession within abandoned spaces. There are a few studies which show that urban nature has this potential and its establishment is a full or partial desired outcome. These spaces produce built environments that start to reconnect the lost link between nature and the city.

The ability of the city to maintain dominance over nature is questionable. The resilience and spontaneity of nature means that given the opportunity it will establish itself and breakdown the built environment. By challenging the perceptions of nature within the built environment, designers can begin to design with nature resulting in environments that have a minimal impact on the systems that sustain them.

Acknowlegements

I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to my tutor Lindsay Bremner. Her knowledge, guidance and patience, have been key to the development of the topic and my ability to convey it in this piece.

I would also like to thank Matthew Gandy. Firstly his lecture Marginalia – Cultural

identi!ed a number of important sources. Then additionally, his subsequent email reply that contained additional, relevant, sources.

Finally, I would like to thank my parents, brother and Tania, for their support throughout the whole process.

Contents

Introduction 1

01. Dissipative Structures and the City 3

02. Understanding Entropy 7

05. Urban Nature by Design 35

Conclusion 53

Bibliography 57

List of Figures 65

1

Introduction

Through the use of the well-respected thermodynamic theory of dissipative structures this dissertation seeks to de!ne the city and understand it’s relationships. Developed by Ilya

application to the built environment1, Allen wrote papers speci!cally about the theory’s application to cities2

the city3. In all cases the content was written for the peers of their respective disciplines, chemistry and physics, with science as the underlying principle. This dissertation will use the dissipative structures theory but with an architectural focus. By viewing the city at the macro level, as one giant system, and secondly by breaking down the city into numerous smaller interconnected systems at the micro level, I will demonstrate how the "ows of energy and matter are required and used by various dynamic systems within the city to generate order.

Once this premise has been explored the dissertation will move on to applying that knowledge to the relationship between the city and nature. Looking at how both elements vie for control of a system, some more successfully than others, and how the desire to instil order a#ects the system itself and its connections. This topic extends further than

have a large bearing on the results and outcomes of the tussle for control. What many may perceive as a chaotic environment can instead be the result of the complete opposite - changing in"uences and priorities within the system/s.

The intent of this dissertation is not to !nd a striking new revelation or conclusion about the way the city is viewed. Instead I will use the theory of dissipative structures, which is not widely known or used in the !elds of architecture and urban planning, and apply it to the following three discussions:

-concept that is not widely used at present.

- Questioning the perception of order within the city. Whether its realistic or

1 Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1971-1980, ed Tore Franängsmyr and Sture Foresén (

2 Self-organization and Dissipative Structures: Applications in the Physical and Social Sciences

3 City out of chaos: urban self-organization and sustainability

2

piece of sky. - Challenging the perception of urban nature within that ordered city, and in

doing so, highlighting its importance to the citywide system.

Chapters 1 and 2 outline the theory of dissipative structures and their application to the city. To fully understand the theory the topic of thermodynamics is explained and developed until the point of dissipative structure becomes evident.

Chapter 3 will highlight the current attitudes and desires to quell the in"uence of nature within the city by exploring the historical relationship between nature and the city and by illustrating the lengths that contemporary society goes to tame it.

Chapter 4 discusses the situations and possibilities for urban nature to establish itself within the built environment. These instances are limited and in general require either a lapse in the built environment’s structure or the abandonment of a space.

Finally, chapter 5 explores instances where urban nature is a desired outcome, through case studies. These occurrences happen either by design or because the bene!ts of urban nature have been realised and harnessed.

3

01. Dissipative Structures and the City

structures4. Disciplines such as economics, the social sciences, and the built environment looked to use the theory to reconcile and understand complexity and organisation within dynamic structures. Schieve and Allen’s book Self-Organisation and Dissipative Structures is a prime example of this.5

the book compiles 23 papers from various authors all applying dissipative structures to their own varying !elds of study. However, for the continuation of this dissertation it is the application to the built environment that will be considered.

In the literal sense that every action within the city will process energy, investigating the thermodynamic properties of such instances, applying numerous equations, calculations and additional theories, until a body of quantitative results is produced. However, more relevant is the use of the theory when applying it to the city as a system. At the macro-level one can see the city as one large open-system, far from equilibrium, yet attempting to evolve and self-organise. Then at the micro-level one can see vast numbers of smaller open systems that interact and come together to form the larger city system6.

Whether looking at the macro or micro level, the systems that make up a city or a city-system requiring "ows of energy and matter from external sources in order to create order, maintain order and self-organise.7 Energy can take the form of electricity to power lights and computers or gas to power boilers, etc. Matter can take the form of raw materials, to construct new buildings or maintain existing ones. These resources have

4 City out of chaos, p 7.

5 Self-organization and dissipative structures: applications in the physical and social sciences

6 The Sustainable City IV: Urban Regeneration and Sustainabilitypp 263-273.

7 City out of chaos, p 21.

4

Figure 1.1 - An energy diagram showing !ows through a system.Adapted from: Marchettini, Pulselli and Tiezzi, “Entropy and the city.”

Agriculture

Livestocks

Forests

Rain

Wind

Sun Tourism

Government

Market

Goods &

ServicesFuelsMinerals

Wastes

GRPMineralsSoilWater

People &

Cities

Industry &

Manufacturing

Hydroelectric

production

Earth

cycleRivers

5

inherently low levels of entropy when entering the systems.

A city will in time process these resources, metabolising them into the city-system. The desired primary result of this processing will be the creation of new source of organisation or the maintenance of an existing one. Inevitably during that processing entropy will always a by-product.

Figure 1.1 is a diagram of an energy system showing the "ows of that process. The dotted line denotes the edge of the system, in this case the system includes a city as well as surrounding industries. The circles around the edge denote the inputs that "ow into and through the system, in this case they include services as well primary sources energy and matter. The rectangles (both curved ends and regular) are the elements and industies that process and manufacture the inputs. There useful outputs end up plugging into the

so wastes, are being produced that eventually exiting the system.

In the vast majority of cases a city-system is unable to deal with this build up of entropy and, left to build up, will an increasing disorder to the system. So the city will expel that high-entropy energy, passing it on to another open-system. Waste is a prime example, no longer of any use to the system after its primary use. It is collected and elements that still have some levels of useable energy are recycled. The remaining high-entropy matter is either incinerated, and the gases leave the city-system, or the matter is transported to another system to be buried.

The signi!cance given to city-systems means they have a profound impact on the other

other built environment systems that fall within its sphere of in"uence.10 The low-entropy inputs that sustain the city-system have to come from another open system because the city-system cannot generate su$cient quantities, if any. Wherever those sources come from another system is losing a proportion of its own resources. For example, timber enters the city-system as a source of matter, in order to aid in the creation or maintenance of a building. That timber a short time ago was a tree standing tall within another system, that energy and matter is then completely lost to that system. In some cases that same system will end up receiving the high-entropy waste energy and matter output from the city.

Can the countryside-system survive without a city-system? The city could not survive without the resources the countryside has to o#er. There is a reliance on the countryside from the city in order for it to survive, making any concept of an autonomous city in the future impossible. The city depends on the countryside, yet this dependency is not reciprocated by the countryside11.

City out of chaos, p 22.

10 Understanding Urban EcosystemsVerlag, 2003), p 125.

11 The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of NatureCity out of chaos: urban self-organization and

sustainability

6

At the macro level the city can be treated as one large open system. The reality is that the city as an entity is more complex and complicated than one simple system suggests. Analysing the city at a micro scale it becomes apparent that the there are a vast number of smaller open-systems that exist and operate within the macro banner of the city. They still abide by all of the rules as a dissipative structure. They strive to be far from equilibrium, require "ows of energy in and need to expel waste products. There

city-system’s continued survival whereas others exist as part of the city-system. When all of these micro-systems are combined together they form one highly dynamic system.

The remainder of this dissertation will continue to look at how the theory of dissipative structures is applied to various city-systems but focusing on the micro-systems that make up the city. Looking primarily at the increasing role of entropy within a system and as

necessity of that investigation, the intrinsic relationship between these inter-connected micro-systems and their position within the macro city-system, will be explored. When the sources of low-entropic inputs one comes to associate with a given system, are removed or signi!cantly reduced, a new kind of order begins to take control. This is an order di#erent to the one most people come to expect for an urban context.

If the low-entropic inputs into a theoretical system built around any building within an urban context, say electricity and/or raw materials in this case, are removed or signi!cantly reduced there will be a gradual rise in the entropy of that system. That building was created knowing that certain conditions had to be upheld for the order of that building to be maintained. Without the ability to power the building or the ability to carry out maintenance, the entropy of the system will increase and the ability to sustain the perceived order will begin to break down.

of the system was initially so dominant that other forms of order were unable to establish themselves. Now that dominance is signi!cantly reduced, new sources of order will

as high yielding or as dominant as before, but given the opportunity, they will shape and develop that micro-system in a di#erent direction.

7

02. Understanding Entropy

To fully understand such a complex and multifaceted theory such as dissipative structures, and hope to apply its fundamental principles to such an equally complex system as the city, we must !rst understand the origins and context of the term and

entropy within a system.

Firstly, I must correct a common misconception regarding the de!nition of entropy.

energy present within a system. An increase in entropy may lead to disorder but they are not synonyms.

The origin of the term entropy comes from within the !elds of classical physics and

following anecdote to summarise the three laws of thermodynamics12: - - -

To expand on Snow’s summary: - The 1st Law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, thus the total

energy of the universe is a constant. Instead it can only be transferred from one state to another.13

- The 2nd law states that the entropy of a closed system will either remain constant or will increase over time.14

12

13 ,” Ecological Complexity 3, no. 4 (2006): p 357.

14

Figure 2.3 - Diagram of an open system.

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Figure 2.1 – Diagram of an isolated system.

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Energy Matter

‘Process’

Usable

Energy

Wastes

Energy

Matter

Energy

Matter

Figure 2.2 - Diagram of a closed system.

-15

Introduced as part of the second law, entropy is the term that the rest of this chapter

word entropy itself is from the Greek ѬѩѨ�Ѡ (transformation) and ўѦѬѩѨ�Ѡ (evolution).16 When introducing the word, Clausius stated that the similarity of the word entropy to energy was a deliberate one. Remarking that the two states were so similar in physical signi!cance, such similar words were appropriate.17 In its most basic de!nition, entropy is the measurement of the amount of disorder within a system. As energy is converted from

always be lost. That lost energy is coined entropy. When used as part of thermodynamics it is a quantitative measure, where equations can be used to de!ne and work out its exact value.

A common analogy to explain the concept is the changing state of an ice cube. In its

molecules become less ordered and structured. Entropy has increased. The !nal stage is

it will a#ect its surroundings. Continuing with the ice cube analogy: as a direct result of

reducing the entropy of that surrounding gas.

It is impossible for an isolated system (!g. 2.1) - a system where no energy or mass can be exchanged with its surroundings - to become more orderly (entropy to decrease). However, isolated systems cannot exist in nature, with the only possible exception being the universe as a whole. Therefore, use of isolated systems is generally kept to hypothetical scenarios. Closed systems (!g. 2.2) - a system where just energy can be exchanged with its surroundings - and open systems (!g. 2.3) - a system where energy and matter can be exchanged with its surroundings20 - may become more ordered through a transfer

equilibrium, a state characterised by the maximum value of entropy, that is, of disorder. Devoid of di#erences and unable to exchange, equilibrium is reached when all the energy

21

15

16

17 Energy and the Unexpected

An Introduction to Thermodynamics – Systems

Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21

10

Physics thought it could ignore the fact that what was consumed by steam engines disappeared forever. No thermal machine will ever give back the coal is devoured.22

Classical physics relegates the role of time to an abstract entity, concentrating on processes that were reversible. This epistemological concept needed to be challenged in order to address the disparity between scienti!c theories and observations of nature.

Science is a dialogue with nature. Over the past this dialogue has taken many forms. We feel that we are at the end of the period which started with Galileo, Copernicus and Newton and culminated with the discovery of quantum mechanics and relativity. This is a glorious period but in spite of all its marvellous achievements, it led to an oversimpli"ed picture of nature, a picture which neglected essential aspects. Classical science emphasized stability, order and equilibrium, Today we discover instabilities and !uctuations everywhere. Our view of nature is changing dramatically. On all levels of nature we see the emergence of ‘narrative elements’…In nature (also) we have the cosmological history which includes the history of matter, the history of life, of humans and so on till we come to our individual history associated with our consciousness. As all levels we observe events associated with the emergence of novelty that we may associate with the creative power of nature23

parts of classical physics so hard to perceive and impossible to apply to the real world without profound problems, because reality shows us that the nature is inherently complex, interweaved and far from equilibrium. Living systems will strive to stay far from equilibrium, they depend on a constant exchange with their surrounding environment, in

de!nes order should be achieved - living systems show signs of order, self-organisation, and in some cases evolution.

This classical de!nition of entropy and order puts it directly at odds with observation,

Biological systems seem to contradict the second principle of thermodynamics. They develop in the opposite direction, towards lower entropy and away from equilibrium24

[E]ntropy changes lead to a progressive disorganization of the physical world [...] while evolutionary changes are generally recognized as producing progressively higher organization in the organic world.25

22 La Nouvelle Alliance: Métamorphose de la ScienceCity out of Chaos: Urban Self-organization and

Sustainability

23 From a Space to a Time Culture, foreword in The End of Time (Southampton, City out of chaos: urban self-organization

and sustainability

24 City out of chaos, p 12.

25 The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

11

order held true, but once exposed to the real live world of living systems they fell apart.

Obviously in a town, in a living system, we have a quite di#erent type of functional order. To obtain a thermodynamic theory for this type of structure we have to show that non-equilibrium may be a source of order.26

Observation shows that complex biological systems have an ability to maintain low levels of entropy, when the second law states that in fact they should tend towards maximum entropy over time. Systems that are open to both energy and matter and at the same time able to expel energy and matter. The importance of dissipative structures is their ability to self-organise in far-from-equilibrium situations.

The system relies on absorbing and consuming matter and high quality energy (low entropy), from the external source. In doing so, fuelling the systems ability to evolve and maintain itself to a higher degree of complexity and order, whilst crucially being able to release high entropy energy from the system as waste products. The source energy is of

that entropy is retained then eventually equilibrium will be reached and thermal death of the system. Instead the system can release that entropy to surrounding systems. The 2nd law is adhered to within the system, but provides a constraint to the system, because the entropy is never destroyed, just transferred to another open system. It is the entropy of the overall system that still tends towards the maximum.

26

13

03. The ‘Pedigreed’ Landscape

We sow corn, we plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we dam the rivers and direct them where we want. In short, by means of our hands we try to create as it were a second nature within the natural world.27

More then 2000 years ago the Roman philosopher Cicero noted and discussed the

Nature’. Second nature is the physical intervention humans make into the natural world in order to make it more hospitable to their needs. Although Cicero made no direct

we can deduce that it was the wild, untamed nature, untouched by humans.

As a strand of investigation in Cities and Natural Processes: a Basis for Sustainability, Michael Hough explores the role of nature in settlements through history. The planners and builders of medieval settlements had a very di#erent relationship with nature than

instead they sought to live within nature’s means and only exploit them where possible.

near a key source of water, or built in a valley in order to meet the water needs of the population or for the growing of crops.30 During his description, Hough refers to Lewis Mumford who pointed out that settlements simply could not grow beyond there own means, with regard to water supply and food sources.31 The post-industrial cities relied on food produced in the surrounding area to sustain the population, Hough cites the market

32 It was only once infrastructure had developed signi!cantly enough to allow for transportation of goods and services over far greater distances, did this connection between the city and nature begin to break down, an evolution that occurred as part of and because of the Industrial Revolution.33

27 Cicero, De natura deorum, quoted in Greater Perfections: The Practice Of Garden Theory (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), p 33.

Greater Perfections: The Practice Of Garden Theory (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), pp 33-75.

Michael Hough, Cities and natural process: a basis for sustainability

30 Ibid.

31 Lewis Mumford, The City in History,Michael Hough, Cities and natural process: a basis for sustainability

32 Hough, Cities and natural process

33 Ibid.

14

As previously stated, the highlighted doctrine of pre-industrial settlements was one of working with nature. Layout and form (both of whole areas and the actual buildings) were driven by the variation of nature in the given context.34 Elements such as climate, topography, agriculture, soil type, material availability and water availability, all drove the design of the built environment. Solar power was the principle source of power, not in terms of producing electricity, but having to design so as to maximise the availability of sunlight and the stored energy in organic materials.35 The open spaces produced in these settlements were more for function rather than an aesthetic and the built environment re"ected that too. The open spaces provided land for the cultivation of arable crops or pastoral needs, with buildings clustered around them to provide protection from the elements. The amount of open space per head of population was at its greatest in medieval cities than any city form since.36

By working with nature, these early settlements, when viewed as systems, needed very few inputs to establish and sustain an order. The energy and matter inputs that were needed came principally from the sun and organic matter, requiring little processing before use. The order imposed was not one of complete dominance, hence the continued inputs needed for maintenance were limited. The entropy created within the system was

by another system.

History also shows us that as entities cities are not very resilient. Their vulnerability to all manner of geographical, social and political disasters, results in varying degrees of destruction and/or upheaval.37 However, their rehabilitation is always rapid. Additionally ,cities are able to quickly evolve and grow to re"ect new directions and sources of wealth. An obvious example of this is the evolution, post-industrial revelation to modern day, from cities based on primary and secondary industry, to a tertiary-based city. In essence, the city can be deemed a highly adaptive yet inherently fragile. One can compare these properties to nature, which is highly resilient yet slow to evolve, and !nd two systems that when, located together, will constantly strive to counter each other.

Hough also makes this same point, stating that the "owers have been evolving by selective pressures for 200 million years and trees for 100 million years, and yet cities only

which natural plant communities have generally not had time to adapt.’

[The contemporary city has] a tendency to loosen the bonds that connect its inhabitants with nature and to transform, eliminate, or replace its earth-bound aspects, covering the natural site with an arti"cial environment that enhance the dominance of man and encourages an illusion of complete independence from nature.39

34 Hough, Cities and natural process

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 The resilient city: how modern cities recover from disaster

Hough, Cities and natural process

Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth

Politics of urban runo#: nature, technology, and the sustainable city (Cambridge, USA

15

concrete, tarmac and glass, a 24-hour metropolis emitting a constant glow from luminated streets and buildings. The modern city is connected to its rivals by arteries of roads, railway tracks and runways, ferrying the people and goods that it requires and sells.

It would be unfair to generalise about the entire building stock of every city in the same manner. However, contemporary attitudes in design and the residents/users expectations have led to cities that are in stark contrast to the cities of history. Today we !nd cities made up of various scales and forms of hermetically sealed boxes, able to be transposed into any context and survive given enough energy and matter are supplied. This has lead to cities that can be seen as wholly inappropriate to their context and so have become even greater drains on global energy and resources.

[T]he idealized modern city is human created, rational, permanent, and ultimately devoid of unruly nature40

The need for humans to control every aspect of their environment is a one that has

human desire to live in an ordered environment. This perception leads to a campaign of unprecedented scale to expel the will of nature from the city, instead manipulating it to the wills and needs of the city and its inhabitants. The task of expelling nature completely

impart the will of humans onto nature in order to tame it and force it to conform to their rules.

Hough describes two di#ering landscapes present within the cityscape. Firstly the omnipresent layers of: streets, o$ce towers, residential areas, civic spaces, parks, and gardens,

is independent of place in the city.41 He adds that the survival of this typology is dependent 42 This references directly back

to the necessity of the inputs into the system of a dissipative structure. This pedigreed landscape has little connection left with the dynamic processes of the natural world but is

43

The second landscape, which sits side-by-side with the !rst within the city, is the landscape of railway embankments, public utilities, abandoned/derelict land and buildings,

44 These are the peripheral spaces, relegated to the edge conditions and forgotten spaces of the city and seen by society to be in need of urban renewal. These spaces however are no less functional

40 Politics of urban runo#: nature, technology, and the sustainable city (Cambridge, USA

41 Hough, Cities and natural process, p 6.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

16

then the created spaces of the city, their function simply di#erent to the subjective desire of society.

The too frequent landscape improvement, intended to ‘rehabilitate’ a neglected area of the city, replaces the natural diversity of regenerating nature with the uniform and technology-dependent landscape of established design tradition45

The role of nature on and in the contemporary city can be divided in four categories that I have called displays of submission, orchestrated moments, commodi!cation and peripheral spaces.

Displays of submission are the cases where nature cannot be expelled from the built environment, so instead are manipulated to the terms of society. If left unchecked these instances of nature would invariably work against the built environment, becoming at odds with society’s desires and so require taming. That ability to tame and manipulate nature relies heavily on expensive and complex hard engineering and/or vast networks of infrastructure solutions. Typical examples include the embanking of rivers, to

rainwater, into de!ned routes away from possible human interactions and into the water

hermetically sealing of buildings, so as to produce precisely controlled environments regardless of external conditions.

The orchestrated moments are the intensely manicured parks, "owerbeds, lawns, and hanging baskets, which become part of the leisure activities of society. There is a desire from society for nature within the built environment for leisure and recreational purposes. However, instead of interactions with nature, society ends up with a purely staged and managed environment. Environments that require constant stewardship and maintenance from humans and technology to ensure the original design intent remains and, in many cases, environments are created that would not survive without this aid. Any chance of ecological succession is supressed by the role of the gardener to remove any "ora deemed

foreign to that environment.

Commodi!cation is the ability for society to select certain elements from nature and transform them into a product for consumption. Collected or imported, processed and transported, ready for consumption at the need of the recipient. Water is the most

principle behind the commodi!cation of a natural element is the ability for it to produce revenue for the owner. The resulting development in infrastructure and services is directly linked to meeting demand and increasing revenues.

These are the spaces that have been abandoned by society for varying reasons. Free from constraints and desires that society has for the built environment, they are the spaces where natural succession of "ora can take place and nature can begin to develop its own

45 Hough, Cities and natural process

17

characteristics of all of those examples are the complete absence or the incredibly limited presence of humans.

The displays of submission, orchestrated moments and commodi!cation, that make-

majority of inputs in the contemporary city require large amounts of processing to transform them into forms compatible with contemporary uses and in many cases are no longer organic in origin. That processing - generally taking place in systems outside of the

be continuous, so as not to allow nature to exert its in"uence. All the time entropy is being produced within city-systems, much being inorganic matter, little can be reused by the system and so requires removal from the city-system.

-

Modernity’ in her book City of Flows. The name stems from the involvement of the

from. The outlining premise of the theory being that only through excluding nature and rejecting divine order, could a world be created that satis!es mans needs and achieves social equality.46

with the principle47. Her theory breaks this down into three stages which are discussed in

the following paragraphs.

environments and untamed nature is made. It was generally bought to the forefront of social debate by outbreaks of diseases, such as cholera, and the unsanitary condition of the urban environment. The result of this realisation was a consensus from associated government departments that a solution needed to be found and executed.

century through to the mid 20th century, this timeframe saw the solutions found, designed, engineered and executed. In doing so, humans asserted their dominance over nature through the implementation of large-scale, complex infrastructure projects. That served the dual purpose of satisfying the desires and demands of the city for control over nature and additionally the supply of natural resources for consumption.

46 City of !ows: modernity, nature, and the city

47 City of !ows, p 5.

Ibid., p 3.

Ibid.

instead those interventions may actually be having an adverse a#ect upon it.50 Through the recognition of the scarcity of resources, and the results of nature breaching the infrastructure projects built to con!ne it and in doing so, again, impacting upon the built environment.

relationship between nature and the city. Only by total control could nature be turned (commodi!cation) or become an element society were happy to

accept into their built environment (displays of submission).

“[...] nature and the city are not separate...but hybrids, neither purely human-made nor purely natural.51

In his book Politics of urban runo#: nature, technology, and the sustainable city,

completely elements. When in truth the two are intertwined to form a hybrid, neither purely human nor man-made.52 However, I would add that this hybrid is one that the city

yet receives little to no bene!t from being placed in this hybrid.

53. Especially the second and also the third stage were wholly dependent upon the rapid evolution of the engineering profession and the technologies that they developed.

Orchestrated moments are the spaces that recreate a connection with nature, which has been lost within the built environment. These spaces become intrinsic to society

built environment and experience "ora. Examples of these spaces range from the small

part completely orchestrated, nature is controlled and maintained into a perceived desired form and aesthetic. The elements that make up the spaces are of course natural but the environments they create very rarely are. If planted and left to "ourish those parks listed before would be very di#erent places. Instead they are moulded and maintained, at great

the evidence can be seen by the vast array of machinery and chemical products used and needed to maintain the landscape to a manner that was a close to the originally conceived design as possible.54 In his book The Uno$cial Countryside, Richard Mabey describes the

55

50 City of !ows, p 3.

51 Ibid., p 7.

52 Politics of urban runo#: nature, technology, and the sustainable city (Cambridge, USA

53 Ibid.

54 Hough, Cities and natural process, p 6.

55 Richard Mabey, The uno$cial countryside, 2d ed.

where the explanation a#orded to the other three categories in this section will be detailed, hence its omission from this chapter.

By creating systems based on the built environment, the focus and the generator for order within that system becomes those built elements. Over time the order of that system manifests itself in the continued upkeep of the built elements, in their originally conceived forms. In doing this, dominance is asserted over everything else that falls in or enters the system that does not conform to the conceived design.

If a generic plot of land is used within an equally generic city as an example (this could be a brown or green!eld site), the site would already be part of an existing system, or systems, and an order would be exerted over the contents of the site. By constructing a

change in order for that site and system are vast, in terms of matter and energy. The matter in this case takes the form of raw materials, from the concrete for the foundations to the glass of the curtain walling. Combined with varying sources of energy such as electricity to power the tools, and fuel to power the generators. They all enter the system

The culmination of these initial inputs allows the new order to be established. For this order and dominance to continue there has to be a constant and continued "ow of inputs into the system. Without them, the maintenance of the building would not be kept up meaning the dominant order would begin to fade, entropy of the system would increase, and sources of rival orders will be able to establish themselves. Up to this point the ability for urban nature to co-exist within the system is almost impossible, the dominance of the building would not allow it. Now with the dominance waning, nature has the ability to establish.

emissions.56 Although not speci!c to just the city, those !gures illustrate the heavy reliance of the built environment on these continued inputs to sustain its current state

There are always exceptions to the rule and in the case of urban nature this is true. Chapter 5 will explore case studies of where urban nature is allowed to co-exist or is a desired part of the city-system. However, those examples are few and far between. The situations, attitudes and desires discussed in this chapter make up the majority of the contemporary city.

56 Executive Summary to Promoting energy e$ciency investments: Case studies in the residential sector, IEA

21

04. The Peripheral Landscape

titled The Uno$cial Countryside. His book served as a journal, collecting his observations of the "ora and fauna he encountered in these peripheral spaces whilst on his urban rambles. By his own admission he is not a biologist but he recounts in great detail the species he comes across, the context he !nds them in and their impact on that context. Although

The following quote comes from his prologue and summarises the relationship between the urban environment and nature:

Every patch where the concrete has not actually sealed up the earth is potential home for some living thing57

ability for urban nature to spontaneously establish itself there.

As discussed in the previous chapter, due to the current concepts and attitudes applied to built environment, there is little opportunity for urban nature "ourish. There are principally three situations when and where urban nature can establish: when the human

nature to be established.

When the human in"uence on a system is reduced, the perceived order will begin to

place. Where once the built environment dominated a system, and in doing so excluded urban nature, with a reduction in human in"uence the low-entropic inputs have been signi!cantly reduced or completely removed. The processes that exerted and maintained the built environment’s order begin to become less dominant and e$cient, resulting in a breakdown of the established order. Those processes may have included: maintenance of surface coverings, removal of waste products, upkeep of a building envelope, maintenance of desired "ora. Without those processes taking place the built environment itself will

57 Mabey, The uno$cial countryside, p 20.

22

Figure 4.2 - Flora growing from the mortar joint of a wall.January 2013. Photograph by the author.

Figure 4.1 - Flora growing at the base of a signpost. December 2012. Photograph by the author.

23

instantaneous transformation, the processes of "ora cultivating a space takes a much greater period of time than that of the built environment. The !rst plants to establish themselves

newly disrupted land. Their life cycle is relatively short so the organic matter produced, once dead, will improve the soil conditions for next plant. That process will continue until the conditions are adequate enough to allow the next stage of ecological succession to take place. That next stage is the establishing of ground coverings, these are the grasses and small shrubs, again overtime the lifecycle of the "ora leads to further soil enrichment, eventually allowing the !nal stage of succession to take place, the establishment of large shrubs, bushes and trees. The whole process can and will take place without human in"uence, relying solely upon the energy of the sun,and matter in the form of rain and other organic matter. However the establishment of urban nature as a new source of order in a system is a lengthy one. Even after urban nature establishes itself as the system’s dominant order it will continue to develop through the ecological succession described.

The extent and scale that urban nature can manifest itself varies dramatically. Figures 4.1 and 4.2 show examples of urban nature in small, isolated forms. Figure 4.1 shows two species of "ora growing from the base of a signpost, located on the edge of a busy pavement. Where the circular post meets the rectangular paving the resulting gaps in each

Figure 4.2 shows a piece of "ora utilising a break in the mortar joints of a car park wall in order to establish itself, its elevated location means it away from the human in"uence of the car park below. Both instances show small breakdowns in the fabric of the built environment that may seem inconsequential but are all that is needed for urban nature to form. The two examples were found within 500 metres of each other in central London (SE11) but countless other examples can be found throughout the built environment.

Stalled building projects and vacant plots are other speci!c examples of where changes in order result in establishment of urban nature, yet on a greater scale than the previous examples. With the current economic climate these spaces have become more common

a new building, halts, normally due to !nancial reasons, the workers leave the site and it is left idle. The un!nished process of altering site o#ers the same opportunities as an

. The establishment and succession of ecology described previously will occur. In addition, the fact that building sites are normally surrounded by hoarding for health and safety purposes means that the in"uence of humans is diminished even further by a physical barrier.

Figure 4.3 and 4.5 show two sites within 1.5km of each other in central London (SE11) that illustrate these greater scales of urban nature beginning to establish a new

the vacant building, seen in the background. All three stages of ecological succession can

Gilles Clément, UCSD By Design. UCTV (University of California Television), The University

24

Figure 4.4 - Vacant Plot, London: enclosure and ecological succession.December 2012. Photograph by the author.

Figure 4.3 - Vacant Plot, London: all 3 stages of ecological succession.December 2012. Photograph by the author.

25

Figure 4.6 - Abandoned Building Site, London: viewing over the wall.December 2012. Photograph by the author.

Figure 4.5 - Abandoned Building Site, London.December 2012. Photograph by the author.

26

is the current state of a pair of partially completed residential buildings in Camberwell. Granted planning permission in 2005 for the demolition of two existing buildings and the construction of two new apartment buildings. Subsequently the sub and super structure had been constructed but for undisclosed reasons construction has ceased and the site sealed. According to a local newspaper the site has abandoned for several years.60 Figure 4.6 gives a view over the perimeter wall into the site, the open spaces between the buildings are !lled with a dense covering of "ora. As systems, both of these examples are more developed then the initial two, in both cases multiple stages of ecological succession have occurred and urban nature has been able to establish itself. The built environment was once dominant within each system but that dominance is now waning due to the lack of high entropic inputs needed to sustain it. The order derived from urban nature continues to grow and an ecosystem develops. If the conditions were to stay the same that natural order would continue to grow and "ora would establish across greater areas of the sites. Once again, these examples are not isolated instances, I chose to seek out examples

just a coincidence that all four examples were so close to one another. The same exercise could be repeated across large parts of cities across the western world.

situation common to almost all cities but in relatively small numbers - not enough to cause signi!cant problems. However, since the middle of the twentieth century there has

predicted to increase.61 The map in !gure 4.7 illustrates the number of shrinking cities

shrinking e#ect can lead to the abandonment and vacancy of the built environment on a much larger scale with detrimental e#ects.

the current !gure of 550,000. There are varying reasons for this sudden exodus that span the socio, economic and political realms. A result of this contraction in population is that

by the municipal government of Lisbon found there to be 4,735 buildings in central 62, out of total building stock

63 There are varying scales of dereliction: from buildings with leaking roofs or windows smashed by vandals, to buildings missing their entire roofs, through to buildings that have completely collapsed, due to prolonged neglect.

The abandonment of these buildings means that human in"uence has been signi!cantly

Southwark News

60 Ibid.

61 Atlas of shrinking cities (Ost!ldern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje

62

63 Presseurop.eu

27

Figure 4.7 - World Map of Shrinking Cities: 1950-2000.Source: O$ce Oswalt, Tim Rieniets.

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Figure 4.8 - Abandoned Building 01, Lisbon: urban nature behind the blocked up doorOctober 2012. Photograph by the author.

Figure 4.9 - Abandoned Building 02, Lisbon: urban nature dominating the external spaces.October 2012. Photograph by the author.

reduced or even removed. In many cases the abandoned buildings are completely sealed, to ensure squatters cannot access them, meaning the doors and windows are completely

facades blocked up, however a small hole has been made or left allowing a glimpse of the pioneers and ground coverings starting to establish inside. As described earlier in the chapter, with the reduced human in"uence, "ora and fauna can establish on exposed

buildings provide a much more di$cult environment for which the "ora, an aspect of urban nature, to establish itself. It requires other elements of nature such as rainwater, wind and fauna to gradually breakdown the buildings external envelope over time, a situation that has manifested itself in Lisbon. The buildings were initially designed to resist those elements but without the low-entropic inputs that accompany human habitation, the fabric will begin to deteriorate. Once su$ciently deteriorated the system becomes conducive to the establishment of urban nature within the building. That deterioration of the built fabric will continue as urban natures order over the system increases. Figure 4.11 shows a buildings with its’ roof completely missing leaving only the façade and internal masonry walls, the sky is visible through the second storey apertures. The fabric has been su$ciently broken down and urban nature has become the dominant order in this system, the level of ecological succession is such that the tree can be seen growing out of a !rst storey window and can be seen through the top windows. The gra$ti on the façade of

aqui

As individual entities, Lisbon’s abandoned buildings create systems similar to the two London examples discussed earlier in this chapter. However, when you examine the impact of all of the abandoned buildings together have on the city as a macro system, further reaching consequences become apparent. This dissertation deals with the physical manifestation of the changing orders of systems as urban nature but in Lisbon’s case there are resultant a#ects on the socio and economic situations of the city. The visual a#ect of abandoned buildings means some areas of the city have become undesirable places to

Lisbon and for certain demographics are kept low.64 This means the landlords do not receive enough rental income to provide the low-entropic inputs needed to maintain the buildings, therfore reinforcing the undesirable aesthetic. In comparison the prices for the newly built accommodation means only the rich can a#ord them – the average

found in the suburbs.65 The undesirable aesthetic coupled with cheaper suburban living

in turn the government receive fewer taxes, so spending on facilities and infrastructure

could a#ord to live there are less inclined to.

64 France24

65 Ibid.

30

Figure 4.10 - Abandoned Building 03, Lisbon: urban nature dominating the external spaces.October 2012. Photograph by the author.

31

Figure 4.11 - Abandoned Building, Lisbon: tree growing behind the facade.October 2012. Photograph by the author.

32

chapter, will result in a change in order towards urban nature as well. In these situations

Without the horticultural technology and high-energy inputs to sustain the order of the

becomes the dominant source of order. This process will occur more quickly than the previous examples of built environment, due to the organic matter already being in place and the early stages of succession not needing to take place.

Spaces that are, or become, inaccessible to humans, allow urban nature to "ourish. This restriction in access may be due to design decisions that inadvertently rendered the space inaccessible or the cost of accessing them too great. Either way the result means the

system.

In his book, Mabey observes two examples of urban nature bene!ting from the entropy of processes that produce the order for a system. The signi!cance of this situation is that the energy may be deemed as entropy by the system that produced it, but that

nature. The !rst example is the abandoned gravel pits around the northeast of London.66 The water table of the area meant the then redundant pits gradually transformed into lakes. In most cases, of these pits, obligations to turn the exhausted pits into reserves were written into the contracts. The order of the site came from the machinery and

altered irreversibly the new water-based ecosystem has provided a new order to the site. The second example Mabey talks about is the ecosystem created by sewerage treatment plants.67 Human waste is a low-entropic source of entropy, no longer useable to the city. As the theory of dissipative structures states that entropy can be expelled from the system

and imparted upon another system to deal with. The fact that waste expelled from the

at the sewerage treatment plants result in a mass of organic matter perfect for ecological succession.

The perception that urban nature is unruly and requires controlling by the built en-vironment was the topic in chapter three. Expanding on that perception, it leads to few people attributing any aesthetic value to urban nature, by doing so relegating it to the peripheral spaces.

When discussing the aesthetic value of certain landscapes in art - in his article The Aesthetics of Unscenic Natur we expect to be entertained by the grand, amusing, and spectacular parts of nature so !nd anything unspec-tacular boring in comparison. Saito cites a number of other authors when making this

66 Mabey, The uno$cial countryside, p 52.

67 Ibid., p 140.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56, no. 2

33

70. That relationship between aesthetic value and the perception of the unscenic can be applied to urban nature. Not only is urban nature deemed unruly, but is also seen as unscenic. Within the built environment the scenic landscape can be de!ned by the orchestrated moments, when compared to the unscenic, peripheral landscape, the impression is one of

In his 2011 lecture to the UCSD (University California, San Diego), the French gar-dener Gilles Clément, when talking about his own garden, describes a situation where he found a group of plants growing in the middle of a path. He remarks:

If the plants are on the paths is [sic] it a weed? Does it change? It was a good plant in another place and it is [sic] bad here? No, it is not possible.71

Clément’s comment on when a plant becomes a weed is a poignant one. In the discipline of ecology there is no clear botanical de!nition of a weed.72 So as Clément alludes to, it becomes a matter of context.

When discussing how humans de!ne dirt through classifying matter and its presumed

73 A quote and concept David Gissen uses in his book Subnature: architecture’s other environments Douglas by suggesting:

[W]eeds are plants out of place74

Then expanding to provide the following de!nition:

[W]eeds are those plants that get in the way of the programs, agendas, or desires that we project into spatial constructs.75

context. It comes down to an individual’s, and in some cases society’s, perception of what should be seen within any given context. If a piece of "ora is not part of that perception then it will become categorised as a weed and prime for eviction. Gissen uses a brief history of the dandelion in the US, to demonstrate this point. Great expense and e#ort is taken in the modern day US in removing dandelions from the lawns of suburbia, yet in the nineteenth century farmers had problems trying to grow them to be part of their diet, as greens.76

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round RiverThe Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism

70 Ibid.

71 Clément, UCSD By Design, 11m35s.

72 Subnature: architecture’s other environments

73 Mary Douglas, Purity and danger: an analysis of concept of pollution and taboo (London: Routledge, 2004), p 44.

74

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

3477, but those three adjectives are

reasoning. To many the crumpling remains of an abandoned building, over grown with varying types of "ora and species of fauna, may be deemed: unwanted, useless and invasive.

source of great bio-diversity. This impression that urban nature is not scenic and is comprised of weeds, has little

bearing on the dynamic system it is part of. It is still the same urban nature, described earlier in this chapter, so is a result of natural succession and requires only naturally occurring inputs. The scenic landscape of the built environment in comparison requires low-entropic inputs to sustain the orchestrated moments that de!ne it as scenic.

77

35

05. Urban Nature by Design

The previous chapter discussed how urban nature can, and does, develop through the changing orders of a given site or context in two situations: when the human in"uence

process produces a suitable environment. The majority of instances of urban nature with the city environment occur in this manner.

There was, however, one additional situation stated but not discussed: when there is a desire for urban nature to be established. There are individuals within various disciplines of art and design, who actively seek to encourage urban nature as a desired outcome or simply as a state that should be preserved or taken advantage of. The rest of this chapter will explore a selection of these projects, theories and rationale behind them.

Gilles Clément

to by others as - to be a landscape architect, landscape designer, agronomic engineer, botanist, entomologist and writer. Clément has developed two theories over time and applies them to his work. The !rst is the idea of the jardin en movement

, of the tiers passage He refers to the traditional de!nition of a garden

He states that the

his work. For the classical garden it was the strong perspective, for the romantic garden the dramatic landscape. For Clément, ecology gives us the information of life and so the

In an ecosystem that lies outside human in!uence, the energies exchanged are exclusively among plants, animals, climate and soil. Everything, absolutely everything, interacts […] many forms of human intervention have the capacity to create trauma in the ecosystem.82

Clément, UCSD By Design, 5m20s.

environ(ne)ment :approaches for tomorrow

Clément, UCSD By Design, 5m45s.

Ibid.

36

Figure 5.2 - Gilles Clément’s Garden, Vassivère-en-Limousin.Source: Rocca, Planetary gardens.

Figure 5.1 - Gilles Clément’s Garden, Vassivère-en-Limousin.Source: Rocca, Planetary gardens.

37

the energies found within a place, working with nature rather than against it. The garden

make the decisions as the "ora develop. The instructions to create a garden based on this concept starts in September with the sowing of a mixture of di#erent seeds, in a ranging sweeping motion. It is then left until spring, allowing the plants to establish themselves. Trimmings can then be made to produce paths and islands of "ora. No chemicals, are

garden by the wind and fauna. As a system, this concept of gardening allows nature to establish its order over time. The inputs needed are minimal, mostly coming from the sun, due to the organic nature of the waste material it is reused by the system. Some low-entropic inputs, and associated outputs, are required by the gardener to carry out his maintenance but the fact they are working with nature, not against, keeps there level very low.

Limousin, central France, !gures 5.1 and 5.2 show the garden in a well established state.

manufacturing plant. An area approximately 12,000m2 in the northern corner of the park was given over to his concept (!g.5.3 and 5.4). Clément later used the concept as the basis for entire parks, which he called jardin planétaire One such

2

the park opened in 2000 (!g. 5.5 and 5.6). Clément explains that every year the garden is di#erent and every year the gardener works with the situations presented to him. No

"ora rely on rainwater, and no chemicals are used.Both examples are set within the built environment of their respective cities and

although are not pure examples of urban nature at work, Clément’s work shows how a methodology of minimal interference can create a desirable environment. The energy and matter needed to establish such garden based systems are for the most part provided by nature. The initial seeds are matter, along with any rain: the principle energy source is the sun. The processes, for the most part, are undertaken by nature and a natural order is established. Granted the gardener impacts on the order, with selective interventions, but they are always working with nature not imparting a new order and dominance. These

remain mostly from nature, with a small amount of inorganic material to maintain the gardener’s tools. The waste produced is a bare minimum, as most wastes are rich in organic

Alessandro Rocca, Planetary gardens: the landscape architecture of Gilles Clément (Basel: Birkhäuser,

Ibid., p 15.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

Rocca, Planetary gardens, p 160.

Clément, UCSD By Design, 16m50s.

Figure 5.4 - Part of the ‘Garden In Movement’ within Parc André-Citroën.Source: Rocca, Planetary gardens.

Figure 5.3 – A plan showing the location of the “Garden In Movement”within Parc André-Citroën.Adapted from: Rocca, Planetary gardens.

Figure 5.5 - Aerial view of the Jardin de l’École Normale Supérieure.Source: Clément, UCSD By Design.

Figure 5.6 - Part of the Jardin de l’École Normale Supérieure.Source: Clément, UCSD By Design.

40

Figure 5.8 - ‘Le Champ’ (The Field).Source: Rocca, Planetary gardens.

Figure 5.7 – Piece of urban “Third Landscape” Clément describes.Source: Clément, UCSD By Design.

41

energy so remain within the system as new energy inputs. Although not examples of a

with nature’, not against it as the majority of existing city parks do.

landscape abandoned by man, spaces that express neither power nor the submission of power, where biodiversity can assemble.

all, by humans. In 2003 Clément released the Manifeste du Tiers-paysage

These landscapes can be observed in both the built environment and the countryside, anywhere untouched by humans, although Clément remarks:

[I]t is in the city realm of contemporary development par excellence - that it is more likely to appear, because it is intrinsically related to the evolution of urban space itself. The status of the fragment or leftover created by demolition and destined for rebuilding or redevelopment is, in e#ect, temporary.91

During his 2011 lecture at the University of California, Clément shows a picture of a piece of land inaccessible to humans due to a large wall and motorway. (!g. 5.7) He

All in sight of humans, yet isolated from their in"uence.

There are essentially three types of third landscape spaces: the délaissé or abandoned place, formerly exploited as agricultural, industrial, urban or touristic space - délaissé being synonymous with the notion of friche, untended or fallow; the réserves, a place never exploited, whether by chance, or because physical inaccessibility makes it too costly to develop; and the ensembles primaires, land or space set aside and protected by administrative decree.93

establishes, reacts and evolves in exactly the same manner. The di#erence comes when you compare perceptions of theses spaces. As discussed in chapter 4, the majority perceive

ecosystem, as well having a positive aesthetical value.

Gilles Clément, Manifeste du Tiers Paysage

Ibid.

Clément, UCSD By Design, 27m10s.

42

Figure 5.10 - Close up of Derborence Island.Source: Gilles Clément.

Figure 5.9 - Derborence Island, within Parc Henri Matisse, Lille.Source: Gilles Clément.

43

interventions were to mow the !eld once a year, in the second week of September, to increase biodiversity and to construct a small observation platform. Apart from that, the !eld was left fallow to allow nature to develop and evolve the site. To date, Clément’s only

raised 7 metres above the ground, covered by debris left over from the development the thrain station the park is part of. The name Derborence makes reference to the Swiss forest, thought to be one of the few remaining primary forests in the world, relatively untouched by humans due to its inaccessibility (!g. 5.10). Clément’s island is only accessible by a tall ladder and is visited once a year so that observations can be made on the biodiversity present. The plateau was originally planted with a modest collection of

After the growth of the initial "ora, the cultivation by other species of "ora and fauna was left completely to nature. The raised plateau becomes a system evolved and dominated by nature.

public domain. As discussed previously, the perception of urban nature is not positive one, making Clément’s gesture bold. The initial reaction of local residents and park users to the island was not favourable.fully develop the plateau had to be raised away from human in"uence. Unable to interact with the urban nature, only observe it, could be seen as counterintuitive if Clément

humans.

landscape. Devoid of human in"uence, the initial and then continued inputs to the system are purely organic. Nature de!nes and re-de!nes the order of the system. However the concept of a designed and desired Third Landscape alters the premise of the system, from a purely spontaneous landscape. The observed Third Landscapes in the built environment happen as a consequence of a number of factors: location, accessibility, land values, and so there locations in the city are for the most part spontaneous. With Derborence Island Clément has had to create those factors that lead to, and sustain, isolation in a location that may very well not have happened spontaneously. So, added to the inputs for an observed

the inputs needed are negligible. With the isolated plateau created and the initial "ora

Matthew Gandy, New Geographies ,

The Invention of the Western Garden: The History of an Idea, trans. David Stanton (Glasgow: Waverly Books, 2010), p 252.

Gandy, Entropy by design, p 3.

Ibid., p 11.

44

Figure 5.11 – The Rangierbahnhof bei Tempelhof in 1935.Source: www.storyal.de

Figure 5.12 - Urban nature enveloping the abandoned tracks.September 2011. Source: www.!ickr.com

45

space. Due to the isolation achieved, the urban nature is unopposed in providing order to the system. As with all of the other peripheral spaces, that order will grow more dominate.

Natur-Park Südgelände, Berlin, Germany

Located in the inner city district of Schöneberg-Tempelhof in the south of Berlin,

opened to the public in 2000.

rail yard. The site principally consisted of a large number of railway tracks used as sidings to store trains and a number of sheds for storage and maintenance of the trains (!g. 5.11). Following the division of Berlin after the Second World War, the administrative rights to all of Berlin’s railway yards had been given to the Reichsbahn situated in East

Südgelände was no longer needed and abandoned. Whilst many of the war torn and abandoned sites of West Berlin were being re-developed, the fact that the Reichsbahn owned Südgelände, and many other railway sites, meant it remained undeveloped.100 The isolation of the site resulted in four decades of dereliction and abandonment, meaning that the order governing the site changed dramatically.101

into a mixture of dry grasslands, tall herbs, shrub vegetation and individual woodlands spread across the whole site. The dry grasslands especially provided a rich bio-diversity for the city as a whole, as the habitat it created was rare to !nd in the rest of the city.102

103 Up until that moment in time Südgelände had

the usage of the site as a train depot, had been removed and the "ora and fauna were able to establish. The fact not all of the site’s surfaces were covered by the built environment and the isolation of the site itself, meant ecological succession could take place at speed.

abandonment and the !rst survey of its "ora.

for a new freight terminal but was met with strong opposition from local people. This culminated in the formation of local NGO in an attempt to protect the site.104 It was eventually decided by planning o$cials that 16.1 hectares (161,000m2) of the railway

measure, o#setting the land lost by new railway construction in central Berlin by retaining

in an Abandoned Railyard in Berlin Wild Urban Woodlands: New Perspective for Urban Forestry, ed Ingo

Ibid.

100 Ibid

101 Ibid

102 Ibid

103 Ibid

104 Ibid

46

Figure 5.14 - Path elevated above ground.Source: www.gruen-berlin.de

Figure 5.13 - Path construction between the abandoned tracks.Source: folkestonejack."les.wordpress.com

47

Südgelände as a public space.105 were commissioned to design the park.106 Figures 15.15, 15.16, 15.17 show aerial images

urban nature has taken control.

107 the whole environment and ecosystems had developed without the in"uence of humans, the main concept of a nature park was to allow humans to interact with the nature, so how could they sustain the fragile urban nature and allowing people to access it?

The solution to sustaining the urban nature came with the use of two di#erent typologies of path. The non-functioning railway tracks formed the basis for a linear progression through the entire park. The areas of the park where humans could venture o# the path and interact with the urban nature were accessed by paths constructed between the actual rails, by !lling them with dirt, such as in !gure 5.13. Where the areas of urban nature were more delicate and needed preserving, a steel walkway was used, as !gure 5.14 shows, raised 50cm above the ground, sometimes with hand rails, sometimes without.110 This allows observation of the urban nature but stops humans venturing o# the designated routes and possibly harming the urban nature.

The perceived problem of the ecological succession producing more woodland areas would continue to reduce the variety of di#ering environments. This was seen as one of the positive characteristics of the site. The solution came in the form of introducing a process of maintenance to the urban nature.111 By removing "ora that, if left unchecked, would allow development of the next stage of succession each area was allowed to ecologically remain the same and so in keeping with the original design of the park.

The choice to improve access to the Südgelände site and develop it in to a public space had a substantial impact on it as a system. The !rst distinction to make is that the site is no longer abandoned or a peripheral space. The human desire and presence in the new park transforms it into an orchestrated moment. However, this is not a typical example of an orchestrated moment, as described in chapter 3, urban nature is still the main focus of the system although some elements have become pedigreed by maintenance. If the ecological succession of the system was allowed to continue, unhindered, the whole site would develop into woodland. Instead a notion that conceived a design aesthetic for the urban nature was instilled and required the ecological succession to be halted and in places rewound. As with all orchestrated moments this conceived design means that additional low-entropic inputs need to added to the system so that the maintenance necessary to achieve the conceived aesthetic could be carried out. The introduction of the paths meant a patchwork of built environment and urban nature, however the creation of those paths

105 Ibid.

106 Ibid.

107 Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid

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Figure 5.19 - Re-painted steam locomotive viewed through the trees.September 2011. Source: www.!ickr.com

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results in the urban nature that was on that location being supressed. The conceived aesthetic also results in a change of order within the system. Before its designation as a public park, urban nature was the dominant source of order, with the maintenance and new built elements the source of order shifts back towards the built environment.

What Südgelände manages to achieve – where Clément’s Derborence Island failed - is to challenge the perception of urban nature as an undesirable element. Although an orchestrated moment, the visitors are able to interact with the urban nature and stand in close proximity. That interaction is key to the understanding that urban nature can be desirable.

As a system, the inputs that maintained the railway yard were the dominant source of order. The inputs ceased, and over the four decades of abandonment, nature became the source of order. Within the nature based order there were, and are, elements of "ora vying

showed the woodland "ora had the ability. Once designated a natural park Südgelände

urban nature. Instead, the urban nature formed the basis of the park but had to be crafted and sculpted by the gardeners. In this case in a manner that limits the ability of urban nature to develop. Instead the interaction is now with altered form, or restricted, urban nature

built environment. It was a site ripe for urban renewal and potentially quite pro!table but the desire by local people to retain a natural space for what it was became the stumbling block for any future further development.

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Conclusion

This dissertation sought to highlight and discuss the city as a dissipative structurethis in turn lead to the dicussion of the role of nature, and in particular urban nature, within the city. By thinking about this from a scienti!c standpoint has shown how a highly regarded scienti!c theory on how dynamic systems behave, can be used to gain a greater understanding of the city, using new rational to understand the role of urban nature with the city’s landscapes.

the classical thermodynamic laws, principally by the ability to inherent low-entropic input from external systems and to expel entropy from the system, allowing the system to stay far from equilibrium yet remaining ordered. When applied to the city at both the macro and micro scale, the theory provides a logical and grounded way in which to analyse the

for the system to receive inputs of energy and matter, to power a process that produces order, then the ability to expel the waste products. The need for inputs and outputs for a system to survive demonstrates the reliance between systems.

The contemporary city views nature as untamed and unruly, striving to control it and impart a human order upon it. This attitude means that systems require large inputs of energy and matter to !rstly initiate this order upon nature. They then require continued and constant "ows in order to maintain the level of order conceived in its design. This results in the presence of nature within the built environment becoming a hybrid of nature and human engineering. The instances of human interaction with nature become displays of submission, orchestrated moments, or the result of commodi!cation. The true instances of nature within the built environment are relegated to the peripheral spaces of the city and the human desire.

The perception that urban nature is disordered and unruly should be confronted. In fact, natural systems are just as ordered as the built environment, if not more so. The domination of the built environment of these systems a#ords little opportunity for urban nature to establish itself alongside the buildings and pedigreed landscapes on the city, instead relying upon lapses in the order to establish itself. If the energy and matter inputs are not sustained then the ability of a system to maintain its order will reduce, in turn the built elements will begin to degrade producing opportunities for urban nature to establish. Once established urban nature will start to dictate the order of the system, only requiring energy and matter to enter the system by natural means to sustain and develop its order. So unlike systems based on the built environment no sources of energy and

54

matter need to be extracted from another system and imported into this one, and the high e$ciency of urban nature’s processes mean little entropy is produced. With all of the previous said, the attitude of the majority of urban dwellers remains that instances of urban nature are unruly and in need of development.

The instances of where urban nature is a desired outcome are few and far between but

using urban nature and practices of ecological succession can produce a landscape just

nature within sight but out of reach of humans, in order to preserve the biodiversity and in doing so, possibly create a work of art rather than a valuable piece of the built

area of urban nature, inserting minimal interventions to create a space accessible to humans whilst retaining integrity of urban nature

The purpose of this dissertation has never been to advocate sustainability. However, after applying dissipative structure theory to the city, one can see the manner in which the contemporary city is conceived brings in to question the sustainability of city as an entity. By comparing Hough’s history of past settlements to the contemporary city, as in chapter 3, one sees the link between our built environment and nature has been lost. Instead, those links are replaced with reliance upon low-entropic sources of energy and matter, which has been produced outside of the city-system, which it coupled with the need for the city-system to expel it’s high-entropic wastes onto another system. Any theory or notion of the city being an autonomous entity is far fetched. Instead it becomes entirely reliant on the antithesis of the city, the countryside, to produce it’s energy and deal with

reliance on the countryside. The need to control nature only increases the requirement for inputs of energy and matter that come from systems outside the city, to construct: the displays of submission, the orchestrated moments, and the means to commoditise. Nature is very resilient, where as the city is less so, resulting in the battle for control and order, and consumption of high levels of resources necessary to preserve the conceived notion of a tamed nature. If humans ceased to exist on earth over ecological succession would erase the built environment.

Few designers design for change or account for change - that is one reason why cities are not very resilient. Great e#orts and expense are required to retain the built environment in the state it was originally conceived. By understanding the systems that exist within the city and the relationships between them. The designer can gain a greater understanding of how the built environment can interplay with the inevitable introduction of nature, while minimising the reliance on low-entropic inputs. By designing with nature instead of against it, the ability to produce cities and architecture that has a minimal impact on the systems that sustain them will evolve and emerge.

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57

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1 An energy diagram showing !ows through a system. Adapted from diagram

Figure 2.1 Diagram of an isolated system. Drawn by the author.Figure 2.2 Diagram of a closed system. Drawn by the author.Figure 2.3 Diagram of an open system. Drawn by the author.

Figure 4.1 Flora growing at the base of a signpost. author.

Figure 4.2 Flora growing from the mortar joint of a wall author.

Figure 4.3 Vacant Plot, London: all 3 stages of ecological succession. December 2012.

Figure 4.4 Vacant Plot, London: enclosure and ecological succession. December 2012.

Figure 4.5 Abandoned Building Site, LondonFigure 4.6 Abandoned Building Site, London: viewing over the wall. December 2012.

Figure 4.7 World Map of Shrinking Cities: 1950-2000. Obtained from: O$ce Oswalt,

2013).Abandoned Building 01, Lisbon: urban nature behind the blocked up door. October

Abandoned Building 02, Lisbon: urban nature dominating the external spaces.

Figure 4.10 Abandoned Building 03, Lisbon: urban nature dominating the external spaces.

Figure 4.11 Abandoned Building, Lisbon: tree growing behind the facade. October 2012.

Figure 5.1 Gilles Clément’s Garden, Vassivère-en-Limousin. Obtained from: Rocca, Planetary gardens, p 212.

Figure 5.2 Gilles Clément’s Garden, Vassivère-en-Limousin. Obtained from: Rocca, Planetary gardens, p 214.

Figure 5.3 A plan showing the location of the “Garden In Movement” within Parc André- Citroën

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Figure 5.4 Part of the “Garden In Movement” within Parc André-Citroën. Obtained from: Rocca, Planetary gardens, p 175.

Figure 5.5 Aerial view of the ‘Jardin de l’École Normale Supérieure’. Obtained from: Clément, UCSD By Design, 17m11s.

Figure 5.6 Part of the Jardin de l’École Normale Supérieure. Obtained from: Clément, UCSD By Design

Figure 5.7 Piece of urban “Third Landscape” Clément describes. Obtained from: Clément, UCSD By Design, 27m14s.

‘Le Champ’ (The Field), Vassivère-en-Limousin. Obtained from: Rocca, Planetary gardens, p 220.

Derborence Island, within Parc Henri Matisse, Lille. Obtained from:

December 2012).Figure 5.10 Close up of Derborence Island.

Figure 5.11 The Rangierbahnhof bei Tempelhof in 1935

Figure 5.12 Urban nature enveloping the abandoned tracks. September 2011. Obtained from:

Figure 5.13 Path construction between the abandoned tracks

December 2012).Figure 5.14 Path elevated above ground

Figure 5.15 Aerial View of Südgelände National Park from 1943. Adapted from: Google Earth.

Figure 5.16 Aerial View of Südgelände National Park from 1953. Adapted from: Google Earth.

Figure 5.17 Aerial View of Südgelände National Park from 2012. Adapted from: Google Earth.

Overview of the park

Re-painted steam locomotive viewed through the trees.