Finding Nature in a Big City

A typical sight outside of my bedroom
window

The view I'm used to

One of the things I've had to adjust to coming to London is the lack of green space that is not gated into a garden, park, or zoo. Back in Michigan, I live in the middle of a pine forest full of birds, squirrels, deer, and wild turkeys. Such a landscape offers hours of entertainment, watching the antics of the animals and simply taking in the beauty of the forest. And Oberlin certainly doesn't lack for green spaces, with even the courtyards by the dorms full of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Last spring semester, I watched a squirrel make a nest outside my window for two whole months and felt like a Disney princess when at least a hundred butterflies flew around me as I walked past King one evening. My entire life has been defined by the nature that I have lived in, so coming to a city where one or two trees at a street corner are dwarfed by hulking buildings and diminished the bustle of urban space has been a bit of a shock. The chickadees and cardinals I watched at home have been replaced by pigeons, and I've only seen one squirrel in the three weeks I've been here. I've seen more of the mouse inside of my flat than any other animals (besides the thousands of pigeons) outside. For that reason, I have found myself actively seeking nature in the city, which has both disappointed and rejuvenated me in different ways.

I recall that on my first night in London, walking bleary-eyed around my flat's immediate neighborhood in the rain, I remarked that there were more trees around the city than I had expected. I had expected a completely urbanized setting, devoid of trees entirely. Once I took in more of the city, however, I realized that while there may be more trees than I expected, even those trees are urbanized in a way. String lights weave in and out of them, pub signs are nailed into them, limbs are trimmed or cut off entirely so as to not interfere with the buildings, and the signs of city life (litter, graffiti, etc.) are written on the tree trunks. Obviously, these trees hardly offer a significant green space when London continues to press up against them.

Even the so-called "natural spaces" in the city bear London's influence. The city farms that provide a minimal break from urban space still bear the "city" in their names and some require payment from their visitors to enjoy the bit of naturalism they provide. Other natural spaces, such as Bloomsbury Square, give way to car parks and concrete playgrounds, leaving the children at play unable to enjoy the feeling of running through the grass. The plant and flower beds in Bloomsbury square also become an sort of exhibit, as each plant is labelled in the physic garden that is written about in detail on the plaque placed in the center of the bed. The pedestrians stay on the walkways, only looking at the plants around them. Such squares hardly offer an emersion into green space.

A monkey, up close and personal, at the
London Zoo

While squares may cultivate and contain a native natural scene for visitors to look on, the London Zoo creates a vision of nature's exoticism in the middle of Regent's Park. Enclosures that try to evoke the animal's native climates, such as the rainforest house and the butterfly enclosure, offer visitors a brief entrance into the warm humidity of such environments as they escape the wet, chilly London landscape. These enclosures allow visitors to get close to the animals, allowing the animals to freely move throughout the space around the visitors. Delighted children can come within feet of colorful birds and unsuspecting guests can be jumped on by the rambunctious monkeys (according to the zoo's website, the monkey's handlers have found an increasing number of items pilfered from visitors by the monkeys). Such enclosures defy the traditional image of a zoo in which people look on at animals from behind the glass, getting them closer to undomesticated animals than they can in their everyday lives in the city.

A zoo hardly offers the same type of natural space that I am used to at home or at Oberlin, but it did offer me some interesting insights into the thinking of the explorers we have been reading about when they collected specimens, both alive and dead, in exotic locations and brought them back to London. When green space is so hard to find in a city, one must create it themselves. And if you are already creating a green space, why not make it something different than has ever been created before? Additionally, when limited green space can be used as a commercial endeavor, why not impress your visitors with plants and animals they would not be able to see anywhere else? When seeing alone is no longer enough, why not let your visitors in the habitats of those new, exotic species? Thus, nature must be brought into the city, at a price, allowing for greater exploration, education, and commercial gain. As Banks's endeavors were influenced by both science and money, the commercialized green spaces in the city continue to be influenced by the same forces.

And I continue to search for nature in the city.