Cities are made by nature, but equally, they shape the ways in which nature flows through the built environment of towns and cities. This is understood through the idea of ‘metabolism’, both as a metaphor and as a practice.
‘These assemblages…are simultaneously real, like nature; narrated, like discourse; and collective, like society’ (Sywngedouw, 2003). This quote will be broken down in sections using rooftop gardens across Toronto as the case study to exemplify the ways in which nature and urban environments interact with one another.
As cities in North America, and increasingly across the world, continue to sprawl, there is a call for creative ways to incorporate the offering of green space for a variety of reasons, whether this be for ecological, aesthetic or leisure benefit, or a combination of these (Thwaites, 2001).
They have numerous ecological benefits, ranging from the reduction of stormwater overflow, urban heat effect, and an increasing interest into how they provide a new habitat for insects, birds and plant species to flourish (Butler, Butler and Orians, 2012). Conversely, they are seen to be of benefit to society, or at least certain sections such as those who reside in apartment blocks and office workers. Green roofs provide such urbanites with psychological benefits associated with care and relaxation, and the underlying value of aesthetics in the construction and design of contemporary building (Loder, 2014).
Breaking down the aforementioned quote by Sywngedouw (2003), garden rooftops in Toronto highlight the materiality of nature within an urban context. ‘Real, like nature’, suggests that rather than simply identifying the metabolic features of nature in urban, such as a park or a flowing river, we need to consider the physical properties and the ways in which they act and therefore how we change our ways in dealing with them. The ways in which garden rooftops promote increased species of animals and plants, as well as the cooling impact that they have. This occurs via shading and reflecting solar radiation, keeping the energy balance (MacIvor et al., 2016).
The second part, ‘narrated, like discourse’ raises debate over what we consider to ‘nature’ and ‘Nature’. David Harvey once referred to NYC as being completely natural (1993), but there is a debate ongoing about what is natural and unnatural in urban environments. As the above suggests, rooftop gardens are essentially natural. They provide a basis for various form of life to exist and flourish, as well as their impacts on cooling. However, the flip side to this is that this is a man-made construction of ‘Nature’. The obvious creation by humans of nature in the form of a green roofs meant that the level of nature was curbed (Loder, 2014). The constructed and planned nature of the gardens thus diminish how natural they are.
An underlying question within the Urban Political Ecology literature revolves around justice and whether the natural environment within urban areas is ‘collective, like society’. In this instance, it appears that the majority of garden rooftops are located on buildings that are office spaces downtown, the main financial area, and also on apartment areas that are primarily occupied my middle to high income workers, as their desires for aesthetically-pleasing and psychologically beneficial are typically higher (Van den Berg et al., 1998).
The growth of urban rooftops in Toronto is only going to increase as the local authorities continue to promote their implementation. This blog post has thus highlighted their benefits, and the ways in which rooftops can be understood through a UPE lens. I have suggested that we need to understand the materiality of natural features, the debate over what is ‘Nature’, and who is benefiting from green roofs in Toronto.
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Reference List
Butler, C., Butler, E., & Orians, C. M. (2012) ‘Native plant enthusiasm reaches new heights: Perceptions, evidence, and the future of green roofs’, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 11 (1), 1–10.
Harvey, D. (1993) “The nature of environment: dialectics of social and environmentalchange”. In R. Miliband and L. Panitch (eds) Real Problems, False Solutions. A specialissue of the Socialist Register . London: The Merlin Press.
Loder, A. (2014) ‘There’s a meadow outside my workplace’: A phenomenological exploration of aesthetics and green roofs in Chicago and Toronto’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 126, 94-106.
Swyngedouw, E. and N. C. Heynen (2003) ‘Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale’, Antipode 35 (5), 898-918.
Thwaites, K. (2001) ‘Experiential landscape place: An exploration of space and experience in neighbourhood landscape architecture’, Landscape Research, 26 (3), 245–255.
Van den Berg, A. E., Vlek, C. A. J., & Coeterier, J. F. (1998) ‘Group differences in the aesthetic evaluation of nature development plans: A multilevel approach’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 18, 141.
Urban Political Ecology 
I liked how you linked your discussion of urban rooftops to the quote found in Sywngedouw and Heynen’s article. Your description of the urban rooftops highlights how such assemblages are so deeply entwined in social, political and environmental networks, and you have provided a great illustration of how cities and nature are so intrinsically connected. Urban rooftops raise numerous ecological questions. Your blog has similarly lead me to question what is nature and who gets to define nature? The rooftops can appear as both natural, and unnatural, which of course raises the questions of what we define as ‘natural’.
Following my reading of the entries within our blog, I have learnt that these spaces are too commonly associated with wealthy areas. Similar examples have been cited in Cape Town and Amsterdam. What are the real intentions behind these projects? Developers are only facilitating the lifestyles of the more affluent populations residing in financial cores.
As you noted, green spaces are an attractive solution which offer environmental and human benefits. These spaces are going to expand and increase over the next decade. Policymakers around the world have begun to include the development of green spaces and urban rooftops into their development plans. Everyone should have access to these spaces and benefits. Therefore, governments and policy experts need to consider the equity behind these greening projects to ensure they are equally distributed.
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