Marriage between Nature and City (by C.A. Doxiadis)

WHAT HAPPENS?
you cannot help a man
unless you understand him and his problems. I hear cries,speeches, promises and declarations about restoring the balance between Man and Wildlife, but I do not see any
action on the scale we need.
love story

between Man and Wildlife, with all sorts of lovers, from real to false, from learned to uninformed, from honest to dishonest, from those who work for the benefit of Man and Nature to those who work for their own profit.
Man has had similar love stories and experiences throughout his history.
As a hunter for hundreds of thousands of years, and as a farmer and small-city dweller for thousands of years, he always managed to turn his love into marriage, establishing a balance between himself and Wildlife.
We will follow the same road, I say, and I go to sleep. Then I have a nightmare because I remember that Man has achieved all this by trial and error. How many hunters have gone hungry because of burned forests, and how many farmers have failed after too-intensive farming?
OUR MAJOR MISTAKES
We live in blocks of flats and where our children grow, and we understand why we are completely separated from Nature and out of balance with it. It looks as though we were born into a world of machines.
The machine, invading space,imposing danger, noise, and polluted air, is my master, and poor Nature is retreating.
Here the author responds as"if we cannot bring Wildlife into our city we can solve our problems by placing a green belt around it, an encircling but separate area outside the city limits, as many experts recommend." I smile, but then I remember chastity belts, and the mothers who try to keep their children as they are at the age of three by dressing them in children's clothes into adolescence.
THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
find the truth about our future." Again I remember medicine and how our doctor predicts our future - by studying our family histories (Did our fathers suffer from cancer or ulcers?) and our own
past and present situation. Today we cover 156,000 square miles of our globe, or 0.26 percent of the total land surface, with all our settlements (from megalopolis to village), and 5,070,000 square miles, or 8.8 percent, with our farming. The rest of the earth is covered by forests, pastures, and a very large part which cannot at present be used for any purpose. We really interfere with about 9 percent of the land, but we directly pollute parts of the remaining 91 percent.
From the Stone Age until today, man has always been
guided by five principles:

The maximization of his potential contacts with nature, with other people, and with the works of Man, such as buildings and networks. He instinctively reaches out.

The minimization of the effort required for his actual and potential contacts. He prefers to conserve his energy.

The optimization of his protective space.

The optimization of the quality of his relationship with his environment. He creates a value system and tries to achieve the best of his alternatives.

The balance among the previous four principles. For these reasons his largest settlements will grow especially in plains and near the water. This is how civilization started and this is the only possibility for it to continue.

FROM LOVE STORY TO MARRIAGE
travel inside the cities where the love affair is very clear. I stop at a courtyard and see, even in such a
small place which can belong to either poor or rich people, that everybody from a child to a very old person can sit happily and enjoy the exchange of kisses and caresses between Nature and city. I move to the front courtyard to communicate with people and then enjoy the street.
"Where are the automobiles?" I ask myself, and I find myself higher up, looking over the neighborhood where the love affair is everywhere - I am told that where formerly the machine was in control, it is now in a special corridor under the houses below the straight wall separating them. I can see how we moved from highways into deepways, just as we changed from water ditches to
underground pipes; from railways to underground metros.
how the love affair develops into a system of Nature infiltrating through avenues, streets and narrow paths, entering every house; when I am even higher up and can see an entire city consisting of small communities infiltrated by Wildlife I can understand why the real love is not shown by belts but
by embraces.
If it was the global city or Ecumenopolis covering our whole planet, but then I see a different Ecumenokepos, in the same way in which the city of
situation from what I expected - not a planet covered with a city but a blue and green planet with a city covering a very small part of it. I am very happy because I realize that the real love story means an Ecumenopolis within a global garden or
Florence in the Renaissance was not the walled city but the green plain surrounded by green hills and mountains in the middle of which was a built-up city.
How we Achieve Ecumenokepos but not Ecumenopolis:

First proposal: We must divide our global land surface into twelve zones, not according to national boundaries or political domains but suiting geographic, human and wildlife requirements.

Zone 1:
Real wildlife (40%). Man should not enter,except authorized scientists. We need its virginity.
• Zone 2:
Wildlife visited (17%). Man enters it, but without machines, and does not stay in it.
• Zone 3:
Wildlife embraced (10%). Man enters it without machines and stays in temporary camps.
• Zone 4:
Wildlife invaded (8%). Man enters it without machines and lives in permanent, well-built camps.
• Zone 5:
Wildlife conquered (7%). Man gets control of it to protect and enjoy it with all his facilities.
• Zone 6:
Natural agriculture (5.5%). Man cultivates in open air and enjoys the landscape.
• Zone 7:
Industrial agriculture (5%).Man cultivates by covering the plantation to control climate and
production.
• Zone 8:
Man's physical life (5%). In open land Man lives as close to Nature as possible and interacts with it in
recreational pursuits.
• Zone 9:
Low-density city (1.3%). What we sometimes call a suburb or small town, with proper gardens.
• Zone 10:
Middle-density city (0.7%). What may be called a normal human built-up area.
• Zone 11:
High-density city (0.3%). What was the traditional city we now admire or the business district.
• Zone 12:
Heavy industry and waste (0.2%). What we want to separate from Man's everyday life.
Second proposal:
The same must happen to all our water resources, though this will be even more difficult to accomplish than the apportionment of land because water, always moving, always in flux, more closely fits Heraclitus's notion of reality - impermanence and constant change - than land. How do you contain parts of a flowing river? We should not forget that water covers 71 percent of our global surface and is 65 to 70 percent of our own body. We need lakes, rivers and parts of the oceans to remain virgin as well as other parts to invade. Thus we must develop twelve zones for water.
Third proposal:
The first two proposals are valid on a global scale, but to be practical in a world where we pretend (not South Africa) that we are all equal, the divisions must be made by nations. If one European nation has already eliminated more than 67 percent of its wildlife, as many have, it cannot insist that Africa should save wildlife without contributing some financial or technological support that might otherwise have gone to preserving its own wildlife. We cannot achieve our goals without justice.
We need a proper distribution of resources and obligations.
Fourth proposal:
To implement our three proposals of good intentions for Nature, Man and Justice, we ask that
10 percent of all military forces be dedicated to the implementation of common goals. Though this may sound highly impractical to many students of human nature and history, we know Man's potential for change and his freedom to choose new values. It is not impossible for him to do this. Consider that the national guards and army reserves of some nations already devote considerable
energy to reforestation projects and creation of community parks. The big and small powers which invade the Mediterranean with their fleets can save it from biological death if they turn ten percent of their fleets into a nature protecting police force. This would prove that those nations believe in the marriage.

Are these the only proposals to achieve our goals? Certainly not, and mankind is moving ahead from
declarations to specific studies.
Remember that Man is the measure of all things.
THE HAPPY END:
If we follow such a practical road, the love story will turn into a marriage that will make our
globe a paradise, the big garden Man has always dreamed of, because more than 94 percent of our globe can be wildlife and plantations even with up to 20 billion people.




1. C. A. Doxiadis, Architecture in Transition (London: Hutchinson; New York: Oxford University Press, 1963)., Ekistics, an Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements (London: Hutchinson; New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). 2. Doxiadis, "The Future of Human Settlements," The Place of Value in A World of Facts, eds. Arne Tiselius and Sam Nilsson, Wiley Interscience Division (New York, London, Sydney: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1970), pp. 307-338. 3. Doxiadis, "Ecumenopolis, the Coming World-City," Cities of Destiny, ed. Arnold Toynbee (London: Thames & Hudson, 1967), pp. 336-358., "Ecumenopolis, tomorrow's city," 1968 Britannica Book of the Year (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 16-38., "Ecumenopolis, world city of tomorrow," Impact of Science on Society, 19:2, April-June 1969, pp. 179-193. 4. UNESCO Program on "Man and the Biosphere" (MAB) (Paris, London: Montpellier, 1971-1972), MAB Report Series Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 5. Elisabeth Mann Borgese, ed., Pacem in Maribus (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972). "Pacem in Maribus" Research Project on Mediterranean Development and Its Relations with the Marine Environment; Project Director, Professor Norton Ginsburg. 6. Under the leadership of President Kenneth Kaunda, the new industrial city of Kafue was created in the proper way. 7. A project of the Detroit Edison Company, Wayne State University and Doxiadis Associates under the chairmanship of Walker L. Cisler, Chairman of the Board, the Detroit Edison Company; directed by C. A. Doxiadis, and published by the Detroit Edison Company, Detroit, Michigan, Doxiadis, Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region, the Developing Urban Detroit Area, Vol. 1, 1966; Vol. 2, 1967; Vol. 3, 1970