A city is a manmade settlement that people have chosen to inhabit; at its core, every city is an alteration of nature. Nature has its desired course in a given lot of land just as people have uses and needs to be fulfilled by this same land. In a city, where these forces meet, it is inevitable that nature and humans will battle each other. This exchange can be seen in every part of the city. In particular, I chose to study a piece of Chinatown in Boston. Chinatown is known to be an extremely urban and densely populated area of downtown Boston. It would seem that there is little nature left, but a closer look will reveal some more subtle natural processes.
Figure 1: Map above shows the outline of Chinatown in red and my particular site shaded in pink. (Map of Boston taken on February 17, 2014 from maps.google.com, edited by author.)
My site lies along the eastern border of Chinatown, a vertical piece running north to south following Tyler Street, as shown in Figure 1. This area captures the busier, commercial parts of Chinatown in the north and transitions to residential areas towards the south. In addition, I have included a block outside the area defined as Chinatown with the I-93 highway cutting through my site.
Urban areas are often assumed to be completely synthetic. In my site, there are reasons to argue that, in a sense, humans “poured asphalt” over the existing land to create a city. By this, I mean that there are very few natural elements at the surface of the city. However, as The Granite Garden points out, “…city dwellers have cherished isolated natural features and have sought to incorporate those features into their physical surroundings (Spirn, 4).” My site in Chinatown represents this attempt to bring in little bits of vegetation and light in order to create the façade of nature in the city. However, due to the conditions that have been created to accommodate the high population density, this vegetation is struggling to survive in these conditions.
Pouring the Asphalt and Creating Nature
Looking at my site, there is no question that it is located in the downtown area of a city. The streets are narrow, buildings around 4-5 stories high line both sides of the street, cars are parked along the street, and there are countless pedestrians. There is little direct sunlight, very little winds, the air just feels a bit stuffy, and once in a while, you can catch a whiff of that distinct “city smell.”
Figure 2: In this picture, you can see the where direct sunlight hits very clearly. On the street level, there is little to none direct sunlight. (Source: Author)
This might seem like the norm to most but, upon closer inspection, the north end of my site, the commercial areas, contains no trees on the streets. Looking at Figure 3, there is nothing green on the streets north of the intersection between Kneeland and Tyler. I did, however, find the potted evergreens shown in Figure 4 on certain street corners. It is obvious from the pictures that the trees are not fairing very well and we can see the amount of soil they have to live off. With no maintenance, these trees cannot survive. But with no other vegetation in the area, someone has decided to attempt to bring in some greenery by placing these potted evergreens on street corners. These miniature trees are not big enough to offer the benefits that real vegetation could bring to the table—shade, fresh air, or aesthetic appeal. And yet someone invested in these trees, it seems, for the sake of having something green in the street. This proves Spirn’s idea that nature is something that humans desire in the city, and this is an example of people’s attempts to obtain that.
Figure 3: This map shows the trees visible from the street in my site (trees are marked by stars). The cluster of vegetation in the top right hand corner is not trees, but a cluster of bamboo plants. Note the lack of greenery in the highlighted yellow areas, which are also the most commercial areas. (Map of Boston taken on March 4, 2014 from maps.google.com, edited by author. )
FFigure 4: Potted evergreens on the street corners are the only vegetation on this segment of the street. (Source: Author)
There are a few trees in the Chinatown Gate Park as well as the Mary Soo Hoo Park but that is all (Figure 5). The term “park” usually brings to mind grassy fields and plenty of open space but, as shown in the picture below, the park is mostly concrete and the trees are potted. These trees are smaller and have limited amounts of nutrients available to them.
Figure 5: Back side of Mary Soo Hoo Park. Note the amount of soil available to the trees and the size of these trees. (Source: Author)
In The Granite Garden, Spirn discusses the harsh conditions urban plants are forced to live under—“…an environment hostile to life” full of “…biological, chemical, and physical stresses” (Spirn, 175, 174). However, even in these circumstances, there are plants such as weeds and the “ghetto palm” that survive because what they give up “…in strength, longevity, and elegance, what [they gain] in fast growth and hardiness” and are found all over Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods (Spirn, 183). In my site, though, there was not one of these plants to be found. Walking down the streets in my site, the only plants there were the ones planted by landscape architects—the occasional tree in the sidewalk. This could be because I was visiting the area in winter and seasonal plants have all died, but it was surprising that there were no remnants of these plants either. It is a bit concerning that the microclimate of this site is such that even the hardiest vegetation has not successfully crept into the region.
Figure 6: Both pictures are taken at the intersection of Tyler and Kneeland St. Picture on the left is a north-facing picture of the commercial areas; picture on the right is a south-facing picture entering the more residential areas. Note the lack of vegetation in the left picture and the single tree in the right picture. (Source: Author)
Figure 7: This map shows the trees visible from the street in my site (trees are marked by stars). Note the increased density of trees in the south half. The cluster of vegetation in the top right hand corner is not trees, but a cluster of bamboo plants. (Map of Boston taken on March 4, 2014 from maps.google.com, edited by author. )
Go further down the street, into the more residential areas, and you will spot our first tree (Figure 6). You can see from Figure 7 that there is a lack of trees in the commercial areas. Here, the presence of vegetation is a characteristic of land use. As the land use turns from commercial to residential, there is a greater emphasis placed on the importance of greenery in the living environment.
As a whole, there is very little vegetation in my site. That which exists has been purposefully planted there by a city planner which reflects the values of human beings—nature is something to be desired in cities, especially in living spaces in the city. However, there are some struggles with maintaining that nature in the urban environment.
Nature Battling to Survive
However few signs of life there are on my site, it is still apparent that nature is trying its hardest to survive. These next few examples show the dialogue that is happening between the life in my site and the human processes trying to restrain it.
Picture 1: On the left, the tree is leaning away from the buildings into the open space created by the express way on the other side. Picture 2: In the middle, note the asymmetry of the tree. At first, I was confused as to why the trees did not all just lean to the right. By further inspection, you can see the shadow of the building in the bottom left corner of the page—the tree was growing symmetrically until the building began blocking its sunlight so the branches began to curve upward. Picture 3: On the left, a pine tree has formed a crescent moon shape in order to catch the sun. All the branches on the lower half of the tree have stopped growing because there is not enough sunlight—instead, the tree has invested its growth into the top half where there are more resources.
Figure 8: These are all pictures of trees leaning towards the light because buildings are blocking their direct light source.
Figure 9: The picture above shows the juxtaposition in the growth of a tree in the sunlight and a tree in the shade. The smaller tree is surrounded by tall buildings and hardly ever sees sun but it is nevertheless trying.
Figure 10: This picture shows a balance in the amount of power humans have over nature and vice versa. The tree in the picture has obviously outgrown its pot in the sidewalk. Remnants of a stone edge to the hole are circled in the red and these stones have now been completely surrounded by, and are now a part of, the tree. However, instead of completely overturning the brick, the tree is still constrained by the square hole in the brick sidewalk.
Figure 11: Figure above shows the amount of space between two buildings. This crack in the row of buildings is dark and cold and is home to no vegetation. However, pigeons, sparrows, and other birds have taken advantage of this private space and have made it a home. While walking down the street, I noticed multiple groups of birds entering and leaving this opening.
Nature’s Larger Presence
From the earlier examples, it might seem as if the nature is a feeble character, fighting for its last breath of air. However, that is only in the ways of vegetation and life. On a much greater scale, nature the force affecting people who are then scrambling to accommodate for the changes.
Figure 12: This map is an overlay of my site (circled in red) and a map depicting the progression of landfill in Boston. Original land is shown in dark green. As you can see, although the map might not be completely accurate, some of my site is on landfill while other areas are not. (Source: Mapping Boston, edited by Author)
By using a 1905 map of Boston (not shown) as a tool to layer a solid map of the landfill progression of Boston and a present-day street grid of my site, I created the map shown in Figure 12. This map clearly shows that parts of my site are on landfill while other areas were existing land. While walking down the street, I found that certain sidewalks contained many undulations while other sidewalks where extremely flat (Figure 13). Although the map is not accurate enough to depict exactly where the landfill begins and stops, I predict there to be a correlation between the sloping sidewalks and the landfills. Landfills are much more prone to settling, the sinking in of the ground over time. This causes undulations, cracks, changes in elevation, and other problems to humans on the surface of the ground.
Figure 13: This photo shows the unevenness in the brick sidewalk in this part of the site. On the other side of the street, the sidewalk was completely even. This leads me to hypothesize that the landfill line for this particular strip of land exists somewhere inbetween the two sidewalks.
Further more, there were many areas in my site where there was an increase in elevation in the sloping of the ground. In these examples, it seems as if humans have tried to mask them by paving them or by using them for parking lots instead of erecting a building in an unstable area.
Figure 14: This photo shows a parking lot with a large increase in elevation. There are patches in the pavement, which shows humans trying to undo what landfill settling has created.
Figure 15: The side of this building has settled so much that it is bulging out at the bottom.
Figure 16: Similar to the previous picture, the side of this building has settled and bulged so much that it cracked. There is cement smeared on the side of the wall to patch up these cracks, which is painted in the darker red.
Settling of landfill is coming back in the form of stress in the sidewalks, streets, and buildings. So while nature seemed to be muted in terms of vegetation, it is very much present in the bigger picture. The entire site is affected by landfill and must now compensate to correct for the damage it has caused. Nature will never be completely gone from any place because every structure that humans can make has its base in nature and the natural environment. As Spirn says, new cities need to learn from older cities and the mistakes they have made (Spirn, 4). In this particular area of Boston, we can see that the initial disregard for nature and natural processes in the creation of this area led to later compensation. While newer cities are created, they should learn from the effects Chinatown and Boston has had to adjust for to plan ahead and avoid these later problems that will arise.
Bibliography:
Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. New York: Basic, 1984. Print.
Krieger, Alex, David Cobb, and Amy Turner. Mapping Boston. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Print.