Better city by design

Sometimes in the late afternoon, just as the sun sinks behind the brownstones, Low Library is transported to the African savannah. Languishing in the last radiance of the day, the monolith becomes a proud lion that observes its domain. Freckled with noise, the majestic beast sits and enjoys the view silently. Dry tufts of grass blossom at the foot of the steps. Arid wind whipping across the stone face does nothing to detract from the electric blue of the open sky. Sometimes, in just the right light, the urban jungle can transform itself into something more natural.

These moments of imagined ecosystems, however, cast a pitying light on the vestigial traces of our own land’s wilderness: The flowering pear trees lining Broadway and our beloved verdant lawns are more genteel decoration than hints of New York’s unaltered landscape. We cognitively recognize that, before the asphalt and ironwork, this was once forested area. But have you ever really stopped to imagine what would spring up in our absence? Can you imagine a New York without New York?

A clue to our environmental past is what remains when you leave the skyline behind. Driving up the West Side Highway toward Yonkers, the overhang of Fort Tryon Park peering out at the Hudson River suggests a rugged ideal that plays well as the backdrop to historical fantasies. Even this manicured nature, however, is the product of early-19th-century design principles of man-made bucolic scenery and winding pathways. Designed with the philosophy of Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who created Central Park and Prospect Park, the natural terrain of the area was transformed from trees and craggy rocks into a perfected landscape reminiscent of what had been before, but subjugated to an overall design. With big brothers Central and Prospect parks, too, wilderness is controlled and cultivated to create a respite from concrete that never quite escapes the grid that Manhattan is locked into. This was ultimately Olmsted’s goal: to design an antidote to urban stress with calm, undemanding landscapes while still acknowledging the city.

The reality is that the parks are as artificially constructed as neighborhood blocks. Structured to account for traffic flow and psychological effect, City Parks’ landscape design overlaps with many of the same principles as civic engineering. Olmsted’s vision of a slice of natural restoration in the middle of the city is just as man-made. But Olmsted recognized that an urban oasis would have to be formed rather than left to the elements, particularly because he saw the parks as an opportunity to influence social change. Carefully creating picturesque “pleasure grounds” to which to escape from urban life, he sought to provide a space for economic classes to mingle and interact. Parks were to be an exercise in fraternity—a peaceable kingdom of all the city’s inhabitants. In this way, although distinguished from truly unaltered environments, their design achieves significant beneficial goals. New York City parks, therefore, act as a kind of middle ground between respecting and conserving nature and embracing urban planning. Their purpose is to create a rural experience while remaining within a metropolis. The code of their environmental design is to make an impact on the land, but not too great an impact.

This seems to typify the relationship that the Big Apple has with nature—we cannot ignore that every brick, building, and lamppost has contributed to the battle of man against the elements, but we recognize that we cannot obliterate the environment either. In a further symbiotic twist, however, it seems that nature may be beginning to rely on us, as well. There are, in fact, environmental benefits to sustaining a responsible urban center like New York: The carbon footprint of a New Yorker is about 30 percent smaller than that of someone who lives in an average American suburban home. With increased public transportation, regulated water usage, and large, efficient apartment complexes, urban centers mean less individual environmental demand. Eco-friendly developments like green roofs, vertical agriculture, and pedestrian areas are already widely being embraced as the new direction for cities. The future of “sustainability” seems certain to demand the creation and expansion of more urban centers, more ingenuity, and overall, more environmental design.

For, while it is simply illogical to imagine that human beings can continue to experience population growth and keep natural areas completely untouched, what we should hope for is the integration of better urban design in cities in order to make these developing areas as low-impact as possible. If Central Park can stand as an example of engineering ingenuity, then let a centralized pillar of urban development be a similar emphasis on the incorporation of nature. After all, if we can green it here, we’ll green it anywhere—it’s up to you, New York!

Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in religion with a concentration in human rights. She is a Columbia EcoRep. A Tree Grows in Morningside runs alternate Fridays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com