Nature Vs. Structure

I do not claim any expertise in the realm of the scientific, the architectural, or the industrial. I am simply, as I suspect many of you reading these words are, someone who enjoys living on planet earth.

I had the immense privilege of growing up in rural Canada. Canada is known for being very sparsely populated, having only around 42 million citizens spread out across the second-largest stretch of land within the confines of a border. For context, all but 2% of Europe's land mass could fit within Canada. But Europe has about 18x the population -- around 743 million people. To put it another way: Europe's population density is about 74 people per square kilometre, while Canada's population density is around 4 people per square kilometre.

I'm sorry if I'm boring you with statistics. What I'm trying to get across is: Canada is largely wilderness. Canada has long enjoyed the luxury of not needing to worry about fresh water, arable land, or deforestation (for now). Growing up in this realm of abundant natural resources, I admit that I've taken much for granted. It was only as I reached adulthood that I began to comprehend how precarious the state of our planet truly is.

This realization was mirrored in the contrast between my hometown and the cities I came to visit. The cities were frigid concrete in the winter and sizzling cement in the summer. The cities were populated by bland slabs of grey and biege, occasionally breaking out in stroads of box stores and parking lots, and cookie-cutter residences huddled together for comfort. The only merit these cities could boast of were found in Old Toronto, Old Montreal, Old Ottawa -- bastions of thoughtful architecture. Beautiful to behold, speckled with greenery of various shapes and sizes, refusing to fully obstruct your views of distant natural wonder, and tailored for pedestrians rather than the confounded automobile. There were no skyscrapers blocking the warmth of the sun on a cold winter's day. Yet, there were trees sharing glorious shade and grassy grounds regulating the temperature on the most sweltering of summer days. These glimmers of a bygone era are the only parts of a city that I can tolerate for more than a day at a time.

Back in my hometown, you could walk 10 minutes down the main street and be in an open field. You could halve that by taking one of the side streets. Beyond the open fields kept for grazing cattle or yearly rotations of corn, hay, or soy, there they were:

Trees.

Hills with trees.

Never mind the rivers and lakes you'd spot if you hiked up one of these hills.

It was this world that I grew up in. A world where architecture did not overrun or replace nature. A world that allowed nature to breathe, to bask in existence -- if only because there were not enough people or corporate interest to limit it. Regardless of the reasons, though, I revelled in such sights and such sounds as could be found in forests and by lakes and rivers. I revelled in such peace, and such freedom. On my darkest days, I was only a short walk away from a steady reminder that there was still beauty in this old world.

I do not fault anyone who enjoys the ambiance of a city. But I think any one of us would be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't enjoy the presence of the natural world.

And so, questions over this contrast began to circle in my mind: why have we cut out the natural world from our cities? What benefits are we enjoying by doing so? What consequences have we brought upon ourselves and our planet?

As for benefits, the only ones I've been able to discern exist in the form of dollars, pounds, euros, pesos, yen, and innumerable other little pieces of paper or metal or 1's and 0's. We cut up rock, mix it with water, and pour it over anything and everything, with little detail in design, and then we don't have to worry much about maintenance for the next 50 years or so (at which point it will either be abandoned or bulldozed for a new concrete box of a building). This short-term gain has proven too tempting for many to resist.

And what of the more unsavoury consequences we are only now reckoning with?

We are suffering the loss of a most beautiful and unique planet we have had the privilege of calling home for the last several millennia.

Not only is nature, in its many forms around the globe, objectively beautiful, but it is also functional in our comfort. As I briefly mentioned, different aspects of nature can regulate temperature in either extreme, hot or cold. Nature is also calming to look at or be immersed in; it sooths our souls and keeps us grounded in the elegant simplicity of our existences. It both humbles and inspires us.

Nature is, of course, also functional to humanity's survival. All we need to live can be found in its bounty. But its functions are not demanding or imbalanced. They are endlessly renewable. I'm not just talking about the water cycle or the nitrogen cycle; nature does not need to spew toxins into the air we breathe or the water we drink in order to produce more raw building materials like wood. For our part, all we need worry about is regulating the rate at which we procure these raw materials (it must be level with the earth's rate of replacement).

But we do not regulate. Nor do we care.

We find ever-expanding suburbs, skyscrapers, and more recently AI data centres to be gluttonous and wasteful in not only their construction, but in their operation. They cannot sustain themselves; in their conception and actualization, sustainability is barely an afterthought.

We happily sacrifice our air and water to the gods of commerce -- and for what?

We are left with structures that demand a constant, artificial means of temperature regulation, that offer no aesthetic pleasure, and that raze the earth around them with asphalt to ensure nature suffers a slow, painful recovery -- if it is allowed to recover at all.

In such a world as this, especially in the densely populated portions of our planet, it is little wonder we struggle to find purpose and beauty. We remove all such reminders found in the natural world and replace them with monuments to the penny-pinching ultra-wealthy, to apathetic autocrats, and to the shareholder-obsessed C-suite of Fortune 500 companies. Or, we leave what was once new to rot in the slums, completely calloused to the well-being of those who have nowhere else to go. Even there, nature is rarely allowed to heal.

We need to bring ourselves and everything we do back into harmony with the natural world. We need to respect each other and the ground we walk upon. We need to stop trying to bend the world to our whims. Only then can we ensure our future prosperity. Only then can we live in peace.