This has not gone unrecognized by workers in fields concerned with the built environment, such as urban planning, landscape architecture, and the like. Indeed, prominent movements in these fields have been organized around the aim of making cities more ‘natural’. These movements, often referred to with the term “ecological design”, have a number of aims, including instantiating, in the built environment, processes found in nature and increasing our awareness of urban impact upon surrounding ecosystems.145 In these efforts, the focus is generally upon producing cities that are more sustainable, via consuming less energy, producing less pollution, and working in greater harmony with surrounding ecological systems.
From the aesthetic point of view, however, such approaches to making cities ‘natural’ contain a fundamental limitation, which is that the processes that are implemented are generally the product of design. For even an ecologically designed city is still a designed city, and as we have seen, part of what is distinctive about the natural environment is that a large part of its functional order is non-historical in nature.146 This causal role functionality is produced by various forces that drive pre-existing elements to function as something or other, regardless of how they came to be as they currently are. This is not to say that ecological design is undesirable, or incompatible with a more ‘natural’ built environment: on the contrary. The point, rather, is that this approach to ecological design on its own will not deliver built environments that are aesthetically contiguous with natural environments in the sense that I have outlined. What is required then? Somewhat paradoxically perhaps, what is needed is a moderation of the role of design, so as to allow causal role functionality to emerge, as well as, perhaps, greater attention to an already existing functional order.
This approach to planning is not noveclass="underline" it has been argued for by, amongst others, Jane Jacobs, who urged that “the city is not put together like a mammal or a steel frame building”, and should not be regarded as a completely designed entity (1961, 376). Rather, Jacobs emphasized the “complex systems of functional order” that arise out of the interaction of the various parts of the built environment. One of her examples of this order is the manner in which the apparently random flow of pedestrians serves, without any intention or design, to monitor and maintain peace and safety on residential streets (1961, 29-54). Jacobs argues that attending to this sort of functional order is key to understanding the ways in which cities actually work. Of primary interest here, however, is that this functional order involves the same sort of causal role functionality that we find in the natural environment, when, for instance, flooding serves to cue fish spawning and rejuvenate the soil of local floodplains.147 The approach of Jacobs and others indicate that the toleration of causal role functionality, and the moderation of the role of intentional design that it involves, is not only possible, but also a highly desirable goal for urban planning. Furthermore, it is one that can translate into our aesthetic experience of the urban environment. Jacobs makes this explicit, comparing our experience of the city’s “complex functional order” to more typical aesthetic experiences:
Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvellous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city . we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. (Jacobs, 1961, 50)
I want to emphasize that my proposal for creating built environments that possess an important aesthetic unity with the natural environment is not simply to ‘let nature take its course’ and wait for the city magically to become aesthetically pleasing. A built environment with no design element is liable to be an aesthetic, not to mention practical, mess and would not mirror the distinctive aesthetic appeal that we cherish in our wilderness. Rather, the aim is to produce a built environment that mirrors the natural in its mixture of historical and causal role functionality. The challenge, though, is not only to find the right amount of design, but also to relate it in the proper way to the non-designed functionality at play in the built environment. Here we may look to nature, since in nature selected and causal-role functionality stand in a mutually informing relationship. It is precisely because a trait functions as an F, despite having been produced by random mutation, and F happens to be a fitness-enhancing characteristic in the organism’s environment, that the trait is selected and ultimately given the function of performing F. Likewise, the development of a trait with the selected function of doing F often results in something that also performs other ‘unintended’ functions. In this counterbalancing process of exchange and mutual influence, perhaps there are lessons for bringing the perceptual order of our working and living spaces closer to that of nature.
I would like to conclude by considering three objections to my claim that the aesthetics of cities and natural environments should not be thought of as diametrically opposed, but rather as bearing an important similarity.
The first objection is that it is simply implausible to hold that nature and city are aesthetically alike. This thought could be reinforced by noting that, any functional analogy between the natural and the urban notwithstanding, these environments remain quite different at the level of perceptual appearance, of form, color, and so on. Since these differences will translate into prominent differences in the aesthetic qualities possessed by natural and urban environments, one might argue, they ought to be considered distinct types of aesthetic object.
It is true, of course, that nature and the built-environment differ in many of their aesthetic features. My claim is only that they also share something aesthetically, at least to the informed eye. Furthermore, this shared aspect can be a prominent and indeed central element in our aesthetic response to both kinds of environment. The prominence of this aspect is revealed, for instance, in Dawkins’ description of how his appreciation of the functional order manifest in the appearance of bats overwhelmed and displaced his earlier aesthetic responses. The “marvelous order” that Jacobs also recognized in certain cityscapes does not seem to be a minor or restricted aesthetic quality, but rather a pervasive and prominent feature of that environment. Whether we decide to call the natural and built environment the same sort of aesthetic object or not, the salient issue is our recognition of this important shared dimension.
One might also object to my position, however, from the opposite point of view. That is, rather than arguing that there is too little aesthetic similarity between the natural and urban, one might claim that, on my view, there is too much. More specifically, one might articulate the environmental concern that people will be more inclined to replace wilderness with urban development if they see the two as aesthetically similar. The significance of this concern depends on the causes of the sort of urban development that destroys natural areas. There are two possibilities: either it is perpetuated because of aesthetic dissatisfaction with the urban environment, which generates desire for life outside the ‘ugly’ city, or it is generated by something else. Earlier on, I mentioned the first possibility and suggested that it is at least a plausible one. If it is true, however, then the objection is clearly misguided, since pointing out that the aesthetic character of the urban environment resembles that of nature would, if anything, ameliorate aesthetic dissatisfaction with the urban environment, and so undermine the destruction of natural areas.
145
On ecological design, see Van der Ryn and Cowan (1996) and Todd and Todd (1994). For discussion of ecological design from a philosophical perspective, see King (2000) and Saito (2002).
146
In their discussion of ecological design, Van der Ryn and Cowan write that “until our everyday activities preserve ecological integrity
147
Jacobs also emphasizes that finding order in the built environment “takes understanding”, and that this order is a