March 2014 CER Lunchtime Lecture

Urban Nature: The American City and Degraded Nature

In my first two lectures, I discussed the foundational myths of American Nature: wilderness and pastoral nature. In March, I will examine urban nature and the relationship between nature and cities in the American Mind. We are now predominately a country of urbanites who have only occasional contact with wilderness or pastoral nature. To compensate for this urban depravation, we have incorporated “green space” for nature into our cities –preserves, wildscapes, parks, and gardens - to allow for contact with officially sanctioned approximations of wild and pastoral nature in the urban landscape. The urban nature that lives outside of these green spaces (or “invasively” transgresses them) is a “degraded” type of nature which the writer John Tallmadge describes as “just too mixed up, chaotic, and confused to fit our established notions of beauty and value in nature. … Maybe it’s not really nature at all, not a real ecosystem, just a bunch of weeds and exotics mixed up with human junk.” Join me for the March Lunchtime Lecture, when I will explore the myth of American Urban Nature and assess whether it is really nature at all.

 Mar 19 Wednesday - NOON to 1pm at Austin City Hall, Boards and Commissions Room 1st Floor

• Center for Environmental Research Lunchtime Lecture by Kevin M. Anderson
• Urban Nature: The American City and Degraded Nature

Mar 25 Tuesday – NOON to 1pm at Waller Center, 625 East 10th Street [Between Red River and I-35]
• Center for Environmental Research Lunchtime Lecture by Kevin M. Anderson
• Urban Nature: The American City and Degraded Nature

Mar 26 Wednesday – NOON to 1pm at Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road
• Center for Environmental Research Lunchtime Lecture by Kevin M. Anderson
• Urban Nature: The American City and Degraded Nature

  click here to see more on the CER website