Robert Nelson
While reading James R. Miller’s piece, I was able to connect with a work that I read in my previous IDC class (The Peopling of New York) called “The Metropolis and Mental Life” by Georg Simmel. Simmel’s piece mentioned how people who live in cities eventually take on a blasé, indifferent perspective towards their surroundings since urban areas are filled with so many events and stimuli that it would be impossible to keep track of them all at once. Miller appears to add on to this theory by stating how urbanites feel disconnected with nature and often do not feel obligated to correct or at least improve some of the ecological issues that they encounter on a daily basis. As shown in the quote “…most Americans can identify hundreds of corporate logos, but fewer than ten native plant species” (Miller 430), they tend to be more concerned about finished materialistic products as opposed to their natural sources.
I agree with Miller that this has been caused by the fact that scientists, especially conservationists, have been very condemning and pessimistic when talking about ecological problems. From a psychological standpoint, this makes people feel helpless and worrisome, and leads them to believe that there is nothing that they can do to help their environments. If they are talked to from a more positive and enlightening approach as well as actively included in the process of beautifying and reconstructing their cities, they will feel more inclined to do so. In other words, bringing into the spotlight the biodiversity of the cities and encouraging their inhabitants to preserve it will be more successful than highlighting the consequences of continuous human harm to nature.
Despite the fact that there is still a lot of work to be done, I believe that considerable progress has been made to bring city-dwellers closer to nature. In addition to the green rooftops being built to reduce the urban heat island effect, I learned in one of my previous classes that in Harare, Zimbabwe, buildings are being constructed like anthills both in shape and material so that they can be cooled down by themselves without using fans or air conditioners. Such biomimicry can definitely garner the interest of the general public, and ordinary people can change their lives by simply observing how plants and animals have adapted to some of the obstacles that they face and recreating them for themselves. Overall, I thought that Miller’s piece did an excellent job at identifying and proposing solutions to the detachment between people in cities and their environments, and I especially liked how it tied ecology with psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other social sciences.
