The Green City

Green City. Lyon_France. Photo U. Gehmann

Besides recent ecological needs evoked by the devastations caused by the universal application of a value-chained logic, the desire for a “green” city is a mythological one, in the end. Recurring to a Christian heritage of a paradise lost, it is the desire to reunite nature and culture again, to align both the principal reigns of this world — natura, and cultura — in harmony, overcoming the deep hiatus between nature and culture that opened since the onset of an urban-based, civilized life.

Following this basically Christian image, if the course of history is a linear path of unfolding in time, from a primordial paradise lost towards a second paradise to be achieved, and if civilization, unfolding along this path, is essentially progress, i.e. the accumulation of technological, scientific, and material achievements — where remains nature? It is not only about the outer nature making up the biological realm in its totality, the world of plants, animals, physical phenomena; it also is about the inner nature, the essence of the human being. That being does belong to both reigns, the one of nature, and of culture. Since inner nature of that human being, its basic conditio humana is to have culture — opposed to all other creatures of this world, not staying confined to the natural realm solely.