A City within a Forest

Jack Kruf | May 2024

This is a strong reminder to us all of how it actually all began. It’s time for reflection. After reading through the many articles on LinkedIn this morning, I sensed a need for change.

Scientists and practitioners of all kinds speak out that we must change. It is the most often used word in all contributions and opinions, must. In short, a kaleidoscope of paradigm shifts is proposed. There is no doubt in many minds that ‘must’ needs to change into ‘will’ or ‘can’. It is all about navigation towards a better world.

For proper public navigation, we need to know where we are and where we are heading as a society. This picture helped me in this mindset: Vancouver, ca. 1920. In the beginning, there was a redwood forest, to be precise. Then came men and built their city in the middle of the forest. They cut the trees and destroyed all forest life. The last remains are there in this picture: some last standing trees. Impressive, actually.

Later, these natural monuments (some more than 3000 years old) also disappeared because of the need for city development and the ‘modern’ urban planning concepts of those days. And now, in 2023, a century later, humanity seems to have rediscovered the environmental ‘fashion look’.

It talks and thinks, as in the Charlie Chapling movie Modern Times, about the topics of today: climate change, CO2 reduction, planting trees to prevent sea level rise, energy transition, resilient city concepts in use for strategy and policy, and the development of cities turning back to green. Urban planners, though, are busy under volatile political skies. So, nothing is sure. I sense pressure from all the social media to come up with new and true solutions for earlier failing urban concepts and huge forest and ecosystem losses.

Back to basics is an optimistic thought. The circle seems to close, but it will not entirely be expected to do so—that is to say, not really, I’m afraid. However, the hundreds of thousands of species will not repopulate the city and turn the system on again towards the intrinsic and worthy ecological spectrum, as Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin and John Muir once described.

Look at this picture of Vancouver and sense where we came from, once the great forest. It looks like the last eagles high in the tree on the left are waiting for their chances. When visiting present Vancouver some years ago, I felt like a guest on an open spot in the wide forest—nothing more.