Main Street: Out in "Nature"

I went out to dinner last night at Lighthorse, a restaurant in Jersey City. It is a restaurant that is decorated with photos and paintings of the city. I find these photos enchanting -- it's like an "urban appreciation" course. So great! 

Most of my friends know that I get annoyed when people extoll the virtues of being "out in nature," by which they mean "not in the city." This anti-urban bias contributes to a lot of our problems, including suburbanization and sprawl. But that might not be what annoys me most. I just don't think that the "nature/not nature" dichotomy is true. I reason it this way --

We build our homes in myriad ways, among them, cities -- for ten thousand years people all around the world have been building cities, likely arriving at this form of community life without knowing that others were doing it too. To my way of thinking, cities are the equivalent of beaver dams or bee hives -- they are somehow in our DNA as a way to live. 

There is another, equally important way to think about this -- whatever we mean by "nature" is no longer in its "natural" state, but all touched by the hands of people. The forests of North American, for example, were managed by Native people when Europeans arrived, and this is true of other places as well. That is why Australians are looking to the Aborigines for advice about wildfire. The difference, then, between what we call "nature" and what is "not-nature" is not all that great. 

And then there is the third way to think about this, which is that city-as-not-nature misses the "nature" of the city. And that is what the "urban appreciation" course at Lighthorse offers with its photos of homes and businesses, its historic aerial photos of the port, and its images of play and celebration. As someone who grew up across from an Olmsted Brothers park -- Orange Park in Orange, NJ -- I had a hard time appreciating cities. I was lucky to get expert teaching from Michel Cantal-Dupart. He would literally stand me in a spot and direct my eyes so that I could learn to see. Spending a lot of time in Paris helped, too, I have to add.

Finally, it's important to include the city because it's all one world. We're all cousins, as my colleague Dr. Margaux Simmons teaches us.