by
Paul
Benhaimenough to support large urban populations. As the discoveries of
the industrial revolution changed the face of manufacture from
small craft-based production to mass-production, how we lived,
worked and sustained ourselves had to change. Employment, or
at least the dream of 'easy' work, drew and still draws thousands
to the cities. Out of this evolution came the development of large-
scale systems such as industrial manufacturing, monoculture
chemical-based food production, and off-the-shelf pharmaceutical
medicines. These produced excesses which profited the few and
created large urban concentrations of people, seeking work away
from the land.
As cities and their suburbs have sprawled out, countryside
and wilderness areas have shrunk and our gardens have
increasingly reflected a cultural artificiality. They have become
collecting grounds for more and more hybridised and exotic plants
which depend, like monoculture food production, on imports of
chemicals, fossil fuels dependent on machinery and dwindling
natural resources. Our attempts to hold dominion over nature are
often fought most passionately on the immaculate, suburban lawn.
We live in a world where the many challenges are often
the stuff of conflict rather than of harmony. The majority of people
now live in urban environments yet yearn for wide open spaces
and the quiet solitude of the wilderness. But instead of belonging
to the land, the land now 'belongs' to a few. Many people are
disempowered by this monopoly of ownership and separated from
the land and nature. At the same time, there are thousands of
hectares of derelict urban land lying neglected (owned, of course,
but fenced in and unused). In Britain alone, there are around
10,000 derelict sites totalling 40,000 hectares.