We live with our backs to the natural environment that surrounds us, and that has given us the ability to evolve and subsist always. Today, it is nothing more than a desert between oases, a sea between islands, a small transitional landscape between our cities. That contemporary arrogance for wanting to manage everything, including indomitable Nature, remains latent, lest a root exceed the limit imposed by its cement roof or a weed grow in a shaved garden.
For many years, Nature grew by our side and was given its due value. A close value that was felt on a daily basis because of the relationship with her, because of the firewood, the shelter, the food and her splendor. The industrial boom and urban developments accompanied by the irruption of technology and globalization have distanced us from Nature, walling us off from it, which fights tirelessly to reconquer the place that belongs to it.
We often forget that we are part of a complex ecosystem and that our lifestyle alters the balance of the territory. Climate change, pollution, heat waves, floods and droughts are the consequence of having altered the balance of ecosystems. And the basis of that balance is Nature. We must learn to coexist with the natural environment, to restore the environmental imbalance. The best way to do it is by favoring the entry of Nature into our fort, allowing it to reconquer our urban spaces. We must adapt to the environment and regenerate our urban environments under the Nature-City binomial as a way to restore environmental balance.
John Iglesias
Environmental Urbanist