Urban Jungle: Nature and the City from the Stone Age to the Climate Emergency by Ben Wilson upends the assumption that cities and nature are opposites, arguing through history and contemporary fieldwork that urban ecology — far from being marginal — may be central to the city's survival in a climate-changed world.
About This Book
Our cities appear to represent the decisive separation of human life from the natural world. Ben Wilson — author of Metropolis, his seven-thousand-year history of cities — argues that this is a modern illusion. From the market farmers of medieval Paris to the Aztec floating gardens of Tenochtitlan to the vast allotment networks that fed European cities through two world wars, humans and urban nature have always been entangled. Moving across Los Angeles, Delhi, Singapore, Amsterdam, and Brisbane, Wilson finds that cities are already far wilder than we imagine, and that the most forward-thinking urban strategies — rewilding rivers, restoring grasslands, designing for biodiversity — are not romantic gestures but practical responses to the climate emergency. On today's urbanised planet, natural forces look set to determine the future of cities, and Wilson finds architects, ecologists, and city-makers beginning to respond.
Key Features
- Case studies spanning Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Singapore, Delhi, Brisbane, and New York
- Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation and the Environment
What You'll Discover
- How pre-modern cities maintained essential bonds with nature that industrialisation severed
- Why urban areas are now the fastest-growing habitat on Earth — and what that means for biodiversity
- How cities from Singapore to Los Angeles are actively rewilding as a response to climate crisis
- The role of non-native species in filling ecological niches vacated by urban development
About the Author
Ben Wilson is the author of six critically acclaimed works of history, including What Price Liberty? (Somerset Maugham Award winner), Empire of the Deep (Sunday Times bestseller), and Metropolis. He has worked extensively in television and radio and writes for The Times, Daily Telegraph, and Prospect. He lives in Suffolk.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 304
- Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.9 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781529925005
- Publisher: Vintage Publishing
- Publication Date: 2024
Perfect For: Urban designers, landscape architects, ecologists, urban planners, historians of the city, and anyone engaged with the relationship between the built environment and the natural world