Environmental history and future of a Nordic city

CECT, Spatiality and visualisation of culture/nature relationships: theoretical aspects, 22-24 October 2009, Tallinn

Why city? What is a city?

• A city is the most complex and intensive socio-ecological system on earth

• OK – let’s make it even more complex by asking how has it changed over time

• How to make sense of the urban environment and its historical change?

Environmental history?

• Environmental history explores the interaction between human beings and other species and elements of nature in time– How has nature affected human societies?– How have human beings conceptualised,

utilized and affected nature?

• EH studies focused first on the countryside and nature conservation, not on cities

Background & aim:

Holistic studies of a specific city

Some books on the environmental history of Helsinki

in the 19th and 20th century

All these books including our own have a common problem: fragmentation

Time

Issue

Space

Approach

What is the problem?

• Firstly, edited books are needed in new fields of studies as they provide new information by means of case studies

• Thereby one understands the development of different sectors, yes - but what happened to the city as a whole?

• How the develoment of given sectors was related to the development of the urban society?

• How to solve the problem of fragmentation methodologically?

One possible solution – cross-section approach?

Time

Issue

Space

Moving from vertical to horizontal approach also in historical studies?

So what is a cross-section?

CITY

SOIL

FLORA

&

FAUNA

AIR

WATER

In cross-section approach the interaction of a city with its physical environment

is studied vertically, that is, spatially in a holistic manner

during a limited time period

Different cross-sectionsin terms of time depending of our needs

A cross-section of what?

• Culture signifies how people adopt to a given physical environment

• Human beings (body/mind) need material resources to use their non-material resources – and vice versa

• In conclusion, A) the human culture (non-material, society) is dependent on

• B) material culture (organisms/artefacts) that is dependent on

• C) environmental culture (abstraction of air, water, biomass, minerals; other uses of nature), that is, modification and domestication of nature,i.e., of the planet Earth

One step forward?

• Cross-section approach focuses on environmental culture to describe and explain how and why a city dis/functions

• Now the aim is to focus on four main phases of urban environmental culture in Helsinki

1) preindustrial urban society and the environment

2) industrialising ” ” ” ”

3) industrial ” ” ” ”

4) deindustrialising ” ” ” ”

Four cross-sections to be studied

Four cities in

one place?

PRE-INDUSTRIAL HELSINKI

INDUSTRIALISING HELSINKI

INDUSTRIAL HELSINKI

2000

Helsinki

The future city?

Helsinki 2050?

A class city of the early 1900s?

A city of low consumption of the 1950s?

An organic

city of the 1850s?

A homogenious ecocommunist city machine?

(CCCP)

A semi-environmental socialdemocrat suburban zone?

Green individually orientated

garden cities?

A non-environmental

conservative city of elites?

A neoreligious city that adapts to changes

spiritually?

Helcynborg – a city a of technospecies

that will survive ecocatastrophies?

A conservative unenvironmental business city of

elites?

Backcasting:Dystopias:

Predictions:

Some conclusions

1. We do not recognize anymore the dependence of our culture of the environment – hence we have to explore it!

2. However, we need new methodological tools to make sense of the socio-ecological complexity and intensivity of cities, in particular

3. Environmental culture approach signifies here connecting human (material) culture to its environmental basics

4. Cross-section approach signifies a shift from vertical approach towards horizontal approach in order to connect events to structures also in historical studies

5. So let’s move from a City to a BioDiverCity

Thank you for your attention!

Comparing historical and contemporary phases of development

Environmental Kuznetz curve

Environmental culture

• City as a – political– social– economic– cultural

system in a given period and place

• Household is the basic socio-ecological unit of a city

• Rest, work, leisure• individual needs • Active citizens

• Urban governance of the following non/material resources and/or processes

– Air– Water– Soil– Biodiversity– Energy– Transport– Disaster mitigation

Interactive circles/layers of environmental culture

Relatively natural processes and elements

Environmental culture

Material culture

Human culture

Maybe this mode could beapplied to the study of cities as well?

• Please (do not) try to live over three minutes without breathing (air), three days without drinking (water), three weeks without eating (food) or longer time without shelter (clothes, buildings)