Green Towns and Cities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 113

New Urbanism movement in the U.S.A. (Chap. 2), and suggestions about how new
greening policies pioneered in many European cities could be applied to American
cities in order to include ecological principles and ways of living (Beatley 2000 ),
issues that have been consolidated in a recent encyclopaedia of green practice in
American settlements (White and Duram 2012 ). However, Register ( 2006 ) and
other members of what is now known as the Ecocity movement, have gone further,
suggesting that cities need to be radically re-organized on ecological principles so
that they function in harmony with the biosphere and ecosystems. They have pro-
moted the idea that urban settlements should be in balance with nature, rather than
the more typical case of its destroyer. This would lead to towns and cities becoming
unique oases in an otherwise natural environment, rather than the green areas being
isolated oases in the dominant urban sprawl that characterises so many urbanized
regions. More recently, the term Biophilic Cities has been used in a recent topic
by Beatley ( 2011 ) to describe a new emphasis on designing and planning cities,
and the people within them, so as to reconnect with the natural world in their daily
life.Although far from the ideals of the Ecocity or Biophilic City principles, many
towns and cities throughout the world are increasingly focused on what can be
called 'green agendas', not simply literally green in the old sense, but one part of
the increasing trend to what has become known as urban sustainability. To deal with
all these green and sustainability issues in one chapter would make it too long. So
the wider sustainability issues are described in following chapters (Chaps. 5, 6 and
7), leaving this one to deal with the more literal green and natural agendas. The first
section deals with the changing motivations for greening. Since it is important to
stress that the current interest in the greening of cities is not new, the second part
deals with the main historical trends in the creation of open green space in western
cities, followed by sections dealing with more recent innovations: green infra-struc-
ture concepts; the growth of environmental restoration and revitalization; the move
from green conservation to production; the green roofs and walls movements; the
growth of cleanliness or tidy town approaches; and finally with the principles of the
biophilic city movement.

4﻽2 Motives for Greening

The modern drive to create open areas of green space to be used by the public, not
simply the elite, came from nineteenth century municipalities bent on civic improve-
ment. Their main motivation was to provide an antidote to the increasing squalor of
industrial cities; parks were seen as providing refuges from the noise, bustle and dirt
of streets, buildings and factories. Parks advocates were helped by the eighteenth
century Romantic Movement of poets and artists who glorified the experience of
nature and the need to observe and participate in it (Summerson 1962 ). So the new
parks were also seen as providing local substitutes for nature in the city, provid-
ing places for relaxation and contemplation —even aesthetic pleasure. Later, parks
added more functions, because they were increasingly seen as places of general