Second Nature
For the first time in our history, more than 50% of the world’s population live in cities. As humans evolve to be an urban species, how will we survive in the remnants of wilderness in the future? Will we yearn for the comforting smogs of EMF, noise, light or chemical pollution that the urban environment stimulates us with?
In the UK we still have a curious fetish for maintaining tracts of virgin countryside with planning laws such as the Green Belt, but other nations are already more ambivalent or even antagonistic towards the wilderness. Instead of desiring country retreats, will the city break involve immersion in the urban environment? Is this what our experience of ‘nature’ will be in the future? What would this artificial nature be like? Would the new urban ecology be reminiscent of the remembered wilderness?
In landscape design, ‘second nature’ refers to a nature modified for human comfort, in contrast to ‘first’ (virgin) or third nature, which is nature completely altered for higher aesthetic purpose. The Second Nature urban nostalgia radio offers respite from the sounds of the wilderness, with six comforting live sound feeds including the tills at Tesco, Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, the engine at the rear of the 328 bus, and the Northern Line (Charing Cross Branch).
