Citysphere: ecosystem lost and found?

Dr Keith Skene
Biosphere Research Institute
 It has been said that…
• "Geddes's great achievement in life has
been the making of a bridge
between Biology and Social Science"
• “Town-planning is not mere place-
planning, nor even work-planning.
If it is to be successful it must be
folk-planning.” Patrick Geddes

• “The organic city where culture is

not usurped by technology”
• Lewis Mumford
 What is the origin of a city?
• Depends on who you ask:

• Paul Bairoch – product of

advent of agriculture

• Jane Jacobs – origin of

agriculture
• Brendan O’Flaherty in City Economics:
• “Cities could persist—as they have for
thousands of years—only if their
advantages offset the disadvantages"
• But whose advantage?
• - the individual?
• - the population?
• - the State?
 Folk and place
• Our place in the world is central to our
understanding of who we are
• So who are we?
IDENTITY
 Identity in time
• Are we moving towards a better and
more perfect identity?
• The noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin
• Or away from our true identity?
• The garden of Eden

Bosch
• Do cities need to return to the Garden
or provide the structure for a Utopian
world?
• Is our true identity best served by the
past or the future?
Progress vvs The Golden Age

Palazzo Pitti in Florence

 “Not in Utopia,—subterranean Fields,—
Or some secreted Island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,—the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!”
William Wordsworth
The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at
Its Commencement

Map of Utopia
by Ambrosius Holbein
 Identity in space
• Function vvs Form:
• Form: the sensual world
• - may facilitate function
• - has greater diversity than function
• - and greater freedom
• Structural identity
 The five portals of reality

SIGHT SOUND TASTE TOUCH SCENT

Our empirical reality

Platonic shadows on a cave wall
 Function
• Single unifying theme across the
Biosphere: life as an energetic function
• Function is a thermodynamic outcome
• A living organism defies entropy,
briefly, as a flying bird defies gravity

• A rationalist reality
• Whatever else we are, we are, primarily,
energy transformers
• And live within an energetic context
So what is the unit of identity?
 Identity in a biological context
• Individuals are composed of communities of cells
• That live and work together for the greater good
• Individuals are embedded
within the greater
ecosystem
• Our identity as a unit, a
community and a part of a
larger whole
• John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

• "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If
a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own
were. Any man's death diminishes me, because
I am involved in mankind; and therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee..." 
 Aldo Leopold

• The natural world as a community to

which we belong
• the actions of humans are embedded
into an ecological network that should
be ignored at our peril
 Actor-Network Theory

Bruno Latour Michel Callon

• Society and Nature are one

• Humans cannot be seen in isolation
from what makes them purposeful
• Humans and non-humans are
intermeshed
• Thanks to Nick Barter, University of St Andrews
 Ecosystem lost
• Ecosystem detachment
 Identity crisis
• Like a fish out of water, the loss of our
relationship with the ecosystem is
significant
• Like a cell without its body, the
individual without its ecosystem is
somehow incomplete
 The city as our ecosystem?
• More than half the world’s population
lives in cities
• Thus the city has replaced the
ecosystem as our context
 A personal perspective
• The city’s true function is to provide a
simulated ecosystem for its inhabitants
• Allowing them to re-integrate with their
greater identity
Escape from the city on a hill

Calcata, Italy
Cities are isolated, non-integrated spaces
possibly stemming from:
- military protection
- industrial efficiency
- and tight work/sleep cycles

…But they are here to stay

CHALLENGE
How can we re-integrate the city and re-
vitalize our greater identity?
1. Structural integration of rural with urban –
green fingers reaching in
Green space connectivity
Bringing nature into culture

e.g. Sheffield
 SHEFFIELD
72 % greenspace

More than a third of the city

located in the Peak District
National Park

150 woodlands and 50 public

parks within Sheffield

Over 44 per cent of Sheffield

residents live within a five minute
walk of a wood and half the city’s
population live within 15 minutes
of the open countryside.
 2. Productive integration
• Embedding people into the city by
integrating their activities with the city
• Replace non-fruiting plants with fruiting
plants
• Roof gardens/ balcony gardens
• Set up community stores on each
street/sector, selling local produce
picked/made and crafted by residents
• Money raised for community activities
 3. Seasonality
• Celebrate seasonality – a key ecosystem
property
• Reflect seasonality in events/food/colours
• Local produce stores will contribute to this
How do these elements relate to
Geddes?
• Geddes: A celebration of folk and place
• Resonance with spatial identity
• Resonance with temporal identity
 Exploration
• Stimulation from spatial heterogeneity
• Stimulation from temporal heterogeneity
 Sub-optimality in city function
• Natural systems are sub-optimal at each
level
• E.g. predator-prey; squirrel-nut stash
• Evidence of importance of other levels in
each level
• Demands of one level requires sub-
optimality at others
• Need for tolerance in design and process
 Summary
• Re-integrating the city with the ecosystem
• Re-integrating us with our ecosystem identity
• The ecological context is an essential part of us
• Significant implications in terms of the great
environmental issues facing us
• By escaping from the isolated city on a hill