Constructions

Nature

At first glance the concept of nature (and of the natural) seems to suggest something opposed diametrically to the urban: if the former conjures up a vision of untrammelled, primal wildness untouched by human agency, the latter connotes all that is modern, artificial, and socio-technically constructed. As such, the urban would seem to be defined in terms of what the natural is not. But such strict opposition is far too simplistic, not least because it is often difficult to delimit the imaginative and material boundaries between what is understood as natural and what is understood as urban.

As the cultural theorist Raymond Williams (1976; see also 1973) observed, nature is one of the most complicated, contested and dynamic of concepts. Williams' discussion provides a ...