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The Transgressive Urban Forest: An Ecological Aesthetic for the Anthropocene

  • University of Iowa

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

City dwellers experience urban nature as controlled, romanticized, healthy, and disconnected from the global ecological crisis. The landscape aesthetics of ecological urbanism convey the message that cities can be integrated into natural ecosystems. We challenge this notion and propose alternative aesthetic principles of ecological provocation: a transgressive urban forestry model in which trees disrupt streetscapes to express the ecological struggles of the Anthropocene and humans experience the wildness, power, and fragility of nature. This new urban landscape aesthetic, inspired by architectural innovations, centers on concepts of unkempt wildness, liberated insurgent trees, furcated forest shards, and exposed decomposition.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)405-412
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of the American Planning Association
Volume88
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Keywords

  • aesthetics
  • cities
  • forestry
  • nature
  • trees

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