Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City

A lush history of the love/hate relationship between nature and the city, and an inspiring argument that the natural world may prove to be the city's savior In this verdant follow-up to Metropolis, his seven-thousand-year history of people's relationship to the city, Ben Wilson explores our long-held desire to control and contain nature within our cities, from the earliest efforts in our first cities to wall nature out, to the Roman ideal of nature in the city, to our most magnificent and beloved but quite artificial city parks. Today, cities are the fastest-growing type of habitat on Earth, a seeming disaster for the planet as they gobble up the deltas, rainforests, woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands where we like to site our cities. In Urban Jungle, Wilson looks to the history of nature and the city for clues to how cities--and the planet--can survive. He takes us around the world to cities where efforts to shift the balance between city and nature are already under way. When you think of the city of the future, think less of concrete seawalls and hydraulic gates, think more of cascading foliage, urban farms, dense groves of forest, and banyan trees coiled around office buildings. In Urban Jungle, Wilson makes us see climate change as only the latest chapter in the dramatic human story of nature and the city.