Rethinking the Urban Landscape

Abstract An enduring intellectual and perceptual rift divides the city from the natural world both in scholarship and in the public imagination. In the past three decades, humanities scholars working with social and natural scientists have begun to challenge assumptions about the relations between cities and nature by investigating the complex interactions of cultural and natural systems, exploring how they are inextricably woven together into what is being called the urban landscape. The shift that we are now witnessing in the framing of humanities scholarship on cities and nature offers a vital opportunity for us to develop a broader and more inclusive approach to teaching and conducting research in architectural history as well as urban and environmental studies. The roundtable Rethinking the Urban Landscape, featuring contributions by James Michael Buckley, Theresa A. Cunningham, Liyang Ding, Matthew Gandy, Labib Hossain, Sara Jacobs, Mingqian Liu, Robert Z. Melnick, Laila Seewang, Maria C. Taylor, Helena Vilela Santos, and Alexander Wood, seeks to promote a more complex understanding of how scholars conceptualize cities and nature while expanding opportunities for collaborative thinking across the humanities and sciences.