Historiography, the Anthropocene, and Ngrams: A Digital Analysis

Over the course of History 723, we have investigated the inception and parameters of the Anthropocene and the scholarly discourse surrounding this new (and rather controversial) geological epoch. I entered the course with some hesitation, mainly due to the fact that I do not have a background in environmental history. However, as our discussions continued, I began to feel more comfortable discussing this unprecedented era of human ecological impact. Nevertheless, I am left with a lot more questions than answers.

History 723 began with rather lofty intentions. Between the three of us graduate students and Dr. Michael Egan, we hoped to not only explore the Anthropocene in its relation to history, but also to construct a digital project that represented, challenged, or problematized the Anthropocene in some way, shape, or form. Due to our rather limited digital skill set and minimal timeline, our collaborative project took the form of this very blog and associated podcast series. In the end, we collectively discussed a variety of themes, topics, and theories developed by a variety of scholars from varying fields. Yet, this small bibliographic sample only skims the surface of the ongoing conversation concerning the Anthropocene. How have historians as a whole discussed the new epoch? What can we discern from the historiography of the Anthropocene?

Historiographical analyses are never a simple task, especially in our current state in which new scholarly content appears in a variety of media and at a phenomenal pace and scale. Many historians and scholars alike have found solace in the Google Ngram Viewer, a facet of Google Books. The Ngram Viewer allows users to input any term(s) and discover the usage of said term (or phrase) in published texts throughout history. For example, an Ngram evaluation for the term “Anthropocene” sees the following result:

Google Ngram analysis for the term “anthropocene”, 1800 – 2008.

Unsurprisingly, since the term Anthropocene (in its modern sense) was not popularized until 2000 by Paul Crutzen, this initial visualization has quite a bit of ’empty’ graphic space. By altering the timescale, it is clear that literary discussions surrounding the Anthropocene are gaining prominence at a rapid rate:

Google Ngram analysis for the term “anthropocene”, 1980 – 2008.

While the Google Ngram Viewer is a useful tool for visualizing word usage across time, it is not particularly useful for discerning historiographical trends. The above diagrams visualize the term Anthropocene across the entire Google Books library, including many texts outside of the historical discipline. Can we possibly find the historian’s voice within this data set? More specifically, can we highlight the voices of environmental historians and their relationship with the Anthropocene?

Digital history research methods can assist in answering the questions found above. The following demonstration uses Mathematica, a sophisticated programming language, to build a personalized Ngram Viewer that focuses directly on historical texts rather than the entire collection housed at Google Books. The development of this tool began at Western University for Dr. Rob MacDougall‘s graduate American Historiography course. Rob and I worked together to build an Ngram viewer that analyzed all the book reviews published through the Mississippi Valley Historical Review and the Journal of American History. This project would not have been successful without the guidance and expertise provided by Dr. Bill Turkel.

This DIY Ngram Viewer makes use of the datasets provided through JSTOR: Data For Research. Due to copyright laws, it is difficult to access the entire collection of texts associated with an academic journal. However, JSTOR DFR permits users to batch download metadata connected to a wide variety of scholarly publications. Therefore, with very little effort, one can access the collective word counts, bigrams, trigrams, and keywords for a particular article, journal issue, or even across a particular timespan. While open accessibility, copyright, and restrictive pricing continue to be contentious issues across academia, JSTOR DFR encourages big data analysis in a completely cost-free manner.

In Rob’s American Historiography course, we chose to use the MVHR and AHR in order to track historiographical trends in American history due to the notability, popularity, and prestige associated with these publications. In the case of History 723, I chose to analyze Environmental History, a leading journal that discusses human interactions with nature. Environmental History began publication in 1996 and continues to produce quarterly issues, thereby coinciding with the similar chronology of discussions surrounding the Anthropocene. Of course, this same demonstration can be replicated with any other journal housed at JSTOR DFR.

The following post walks through the coding process to develop a personal Ngram viewer as well as a discussion of preliminary findings concerning the historiography of the Anthropocene.

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Downloading Metadata from JSTOR: Data for Research

Start by creating a free account with JSTOR DFR. Select any quantifier (journal, keyword, date range, etc.) you wish to analyze by setting your search parameters. Once you are happy with the selected dataset, click Dataset Requests in the upper right hand corner and and select, Submit new request. 

On the following screen, select the metadata you wish to download from the list of data types. JSTOR DFR exports either .xml and .csv files. To follow this tutorial, select .csv as the file format.

Assign a Job Title to the download request and select the amount of articles to analyze. JSTOR DFR allows a maximum of 1000 articles to be analyzed in a single download set. In the case of Environmental History, JSTOR DFR has 2045 articles on file. The entire article collection cannot be accessed in a single download. However, for the purposes of building a DIY Ngram viewer, download files in one-year spans in order to establish a consistent chronological increment for the final graph.

NOTE: There is a small glitch in the JSTOR DFR interface that does not allow for a single year to be selected from the “Year of Publication” sidebar tool. To solve this problem, simply adjust the desired time range within the URL in the navigation bar. Reload the page and continue with the download request.

Selecting download options (data type, output format, date ranges etc.) for a JSTOR DFR download. 

The download process is not immediate and will take anywhere from minutes to hours depending on the workload of the JSTOR DFR servers. To access the download request, select Data Requests and List prior requests. On this page, every requested download is listed. Find the appropriate dataset and under the full dataset column, select Download (1000 docs). This action will download a .zip file to your hard drive. Unzip the file to access the documents. You have successfully downloaded your first data set! In the case of Environmental History, I downloaded a unique dataset for each year from 1996-2013.

Importing Data into Mathematica and Generating A DIY Ngram Viewer

For the following instructions, I will simply post the code used to import the .csv files into Mathematica, organize the data, and input said data into an Ngram viewer. If you are new to Mathematica many of these functions may seem foreign. Should you require any assistance be sure to take advantage of a number of fantastic online resources. Experienced Mathematica users are always happy to assist newcomers on Mathematica Stack Exchange. Furthermore, Bill Turkel’s Digital Research Methods with Mathematica (2015) is a great online resource for mastering digital history techniques in this unique and powerful programming language.

The functions pictured below perform the following tasks:

importJSTOR[file_] : Imports the selected file path into Mathematica.

ehStopwords : Refers to a collected list of stopwords.

ehNonStopwordQ[w_] : Refers to all words within a dataset, except those found in the ehStopwords list.

jstorWordFrequency[import_] : Removes header from .csv data, flattens nested lists, and removes stopwords. This function, when evaluated, results in a list of words with their associated word frequency tally for the selected dataset.

Initial functions required to import and sort .csv files in Mathematica.

Using the above functions, import each dataset (i.e., one-year) under a new function, and evaluate each imported dataset through jstorWordFrequency. In the case of Environmental History, I evaluated each dataset from 1996-2013 as a unique function.

Import each dataset by year an evaluate each year’s word frequency.

At this stage, we have imported all the necessary data into Mathematica and formatted said data to create a suitable Ngram viewer. The next step is to build viewer itself with the code found below.

Our code has successfully analyzed the word frequencies for each year of Environmental History and displayed the results in a simple line graph. In the above example, the graph displays values for the terms “earth”, “air”, and “water”. However, you can enter any term, much in the same manner as Google Ngram Viewer. No matter the chosen term(s), this DIY Ngram Viewer will analyze the data of all 2045 articles published by Environmental History from 1996 to 2013.

Analyzing Environmental History Using A DIY Ngram Viewer

The initial example comparing earth, air, and water suggests that articles within Environmental History tend to discuss water more than earth and air. However, the use of “earth” and “air” occurs at a much steadier pace than “water” which experiences high peaks and sudden declines.

How frequently do authors for Environmental History discuss the Anthropocene?

The Anthropocene does not appear to be a hot topic for Environmental History, or at least not a very popular one, with only a short burst of interest for a few years. However, the term Anthropocene itself is rather limited. How about discussions of the “anthropocentric”?

The “anthropocentric” is a much more popular term which is to be expected. The Anthropocene refers to a newly introduced geological epoch that rests on human influences on ecological processes. The “anthropocentric” on the other hand, simply refers to humans as a central force of more importance than any other life form or element. Therefore, although the Anthropocene may not be a direct point of discussion in Environmental History, themes surrounding the Anthropocene are certainly discussed.

How does the Anthropocene compare to other geological periods?

In this case, the use of “Pleistocene” and “Holocene” differs so vastly from “Anthropocene” that the data cannot fit within the same visual range. This might also reflect the current attitude of scholars and environmental historians. The Anthropocene is a highly contested designation that has yet to fully permeate scholarship and see extensive use.

However, our Ngram explorations are not limited to these geological epochs. If we are particularly interested in the “anthropocentric”, how might the Ngram viewer be useful to demonstrate the concept of human centrality? In this case, we might be interested in exploring the usage of terms such as “human”, “plant” and “animal”.

Once again, the word usage trends amongst environmental historians seem to support an anthropocentric leaning.

However, it is important to pause here to discuss the utility of Ngram viewers and shortcomings associated with this type of digital tool. In this DIY Ngram viewer, there are a number of limitations.

First, I am fully relying on the data provided by JSTOR DFR which is not always perfect. The OCR performed on JSTOR articles varies in accuracy and often delivers subpar results. Therefore, the data displayed in the Ngram viewer itself is not inherently accurate.

Second, I have only evaluated for Enivornmental History and am thereby limited to the data associated with this particular journal. In order to develop a more extensive and thorough visualization of scholarly discourse, one would need to download and organize a much larger and diverse dataset.

Third, this DIY Ngram viewer can only search single terms and does not recognize Boolean phrasing. Therefore, plurals or other variations of words are recognized as separate entities. As a result, conclusive deductions such as “historians discuss humans more than plants and animals“ are highly problematic since the data these flimsy statements refer to is inherently skewed.

With these limitations in mind, what are Ngram viewers good for?

I find Ngram viewers to be an important tool for preliminary historiographical research. By engaging with word frequencies across a dataset and associated timeline, you are able to explore how historians use terms in comparison to others. Ngram viewers also stimulate further questions based on anomalies or interesting visualizations. For example, why might Environmental History have explored the Anthropocene between 2006 – 2011 more than any other date range? Did something significant in relation to the Anthropocene and related scholarship occur during these years?

Personally, I used this very Ngram viewer to develop an idea for our final History 723 paper. I noticed that “air”–in relation to “water” and “earth”–was generally not a popular topic of discussion amongst environmental historians. Of course, I could not be sure of this assertion based on this initial Ngram evaluation, but the visualization itself encouraged me to think about a research question that I otherwise might not have found.

In this way, Ngram viewers and similar digital research tools are not a replacement for traditional history methods. In fact, one can derive very little accurate or conclusive information from Ngram evaluations (especially in a DIY model). However, Ngram viewers are incredibly useful tools for brainstorming and initial explorations of any given topic. These tools display trends across vast quantities of literature, which could not be accomplished by traditional means.

If the Anthropocene itself encourages individuals to embrace new ways of thinking in order to understand (and possibly mitigate) human impacts on ecological systems, Ngram viewers and similar digital tools might be a good place for historians to start.

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Mitchell Horkoff 

Why Big Data Needs History

So we’ve devoted this blog to exploring how the digital humanities can enrich our historical inquiry into the Anthropocene. Let’s have a look at the reverse: I’d like to suggest that big data needs history just as much as history needs big data.

There are two reasons for this. First, without narrative and structure, the work of scientists remains far less comprehensible among the general public. Second, history brings agency back to big data, and serves to challenge determinism.

The Analytical and Experiential Processing Systems

I take it as an assumption that doing environmental history is important not only as an intellectual exercise. I think that the past has the potential to inform the present in ways that other humanities and social sciences cannot, and thus I believe the historian has the ethical duty to try to make sense of it. By this same token, I think that if we are to best deal with the ecological woes of the present, we need to communicate the lessons of history to as many people and decision-makers as possible. This means presenting empirically testable, experientially commensurable, and faithful narratives of injustice in the past and present (i.e., the very recent past).

At the same time as the social sciences and natural sciences have moved toward bigger questions (after all, an atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, proposed the Anthropocene thesis), and larger data sets, spanning centuries, historians have retreated to limiting the periodization of their studies and telling micro-histories that may deal with the story of only one individual. There are signs, too, of a return to the longue durée as some historians recognize the need to examine larger trends and accrue more information of all sorts. Both these kinds of history writing compliment big data, when put in conversation.

I do not believe that global thought can directly inform local action. This is why historians need to decode big data. They have the potential to repeople and restory the data sets to which we so often appeal. Historians need to challenge and contest our conventional narratives of determined doom and assumed ideologies of the present which can constitute a distorted lens for viewing the past.

In 2009, the Centre for Research on Environmental Decisions has put forward a report called “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication.” In it, they distinguish between to types of information processing systems in the brain (Figure 1). I think that the left column could easily be labelled “Big Data Representation” and the right could be switched to “Historical Perspective” without changing the rest of the chart much at all.

Figure 1: A comparison of the Analytical and Experiential Processing Systems, which I suggest are represented by big Data Representations and Historical Perspectives, respectively (Retrieved from http://guide.cred.columbia.edu/guide/sec3.html)

History brings agency to the table. And if my claims about the above chart hold water, it is the key to promoting behaviour change in the Anthropocene. Doesn’t this mean the historian has some duty or responsibility to deal with these problems? I think they undoubtedly do. More data isn’t the answer. No matter how you frame it graphically, the Keeling Curve, for example will never provoke the same emotions as an image of an Indian farmer whose field has dried out. Even further, the context and story of farmer suicides in India, if they can be linked by the skilled historian to climate change and other human decisions should not be seen as a fallacious appeal to human emotion. The truths unlocked by History, and the rage or fear they produce, constitute an organic response to the injustices that have permeated the human condition through history. These injustices can be experienced by the reader or viewer in ways that do not emerge from big data alone. The historian need only put them in conversation with big data to make obvious the need for change and restoration of ecology and society.

Your Science has to Tell Stories

This was a maxim that stuck with me from a talk last year by Dr. Rich Mooi, who studies echinoderms at the California Academy of Sciences. It represents a means of science communication. Indeed, scientists are recognizing the need for history and narrative as well. This is how we remember, make connections, and derive meaning. This is not to say that we need to be writing short stories instead of conducting and reporting on experiments, but rather, it is to say that we need, now more than ever, to recognize the audience whom we are addressing and the continuity and meaning that a given data set represents.

Mooi also told me that every story has to end in ‘sustainability.’ Climate change, species loss, and water contamination are problems with which the public are increasingly concerned and we need people to make sense of big data in a straightforward way, using down-to-earth language. Big changes through time require some structure for making sense of them, but one that is not too totalizing or teleological.

I was in a used bookstore this week and came across Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle in the ecology section, which is the book in which he laid out his four laws of ecology (Figure 2). 1) Everything Is Connected To Everything Else (33), 2) Everything Must Go Somewhere (39), 3) Nature Knows Best (41), and 4) There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (45). These are truths that show up again and again in environmental histories, which can thus be empirically demonstrated, and ones from which you can certainly build an argument. There real utility is in their memorability and simplicity. We need to start with such truths regarding change through time that can simplify complexity without forcing a simplified world. We also need public intellectuals and charismatic persons to take up this torch and share the product of hours of contemplation and observation with others. These are the kind of ideas about science that can enter the common sense of the historian or any other person when seeking to decode big data. Scientists, in turn, benefit from the check on determinism and explanatory power demonstrated by historical accounts.

Figure 2: Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle. A book I look forward to reading. Incidentally, my copy is about as beat-up as this one, so I can tell it was well loved by its past owner(s).

Thus, big environmental data needs not only historians, but population or behavioural ecologists, and evolutionary biologists as well. I think that each individual’s adherence to a single discipline is a tired idea when dealing with the issues we currently face. This atomization and reductionism has allowed much discovery, but someone needs to put the pieces back together. This is just another facet of liberalism which I think will be transcended. Why not start with long-term history and ecology. Regardless of the time period, and perhaps running contrary to poststructuralist thought, there will always be first principles from which we can construct an argument about the past. Not only can we construct sound arguments to influence behaviour, but if they are approached and articulated with enough tact and finesse, anyone capable of reason will be able to grasp these concepts.

Social Ecology

I am currently reading Peter Wolleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, which is a fascinating explanation of the social behaviour of trees (Figure 3). We knew about bees (see, for example Rowan Jacobson’s Fruitless Fall), in which the hive organism is greater than any of the individual bees. Ants operate this way as well. But trees? Really?

Figure 3: Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees. A book I am currently enjoying.

But really, why not trees? Doesn’t it make logical sense for the parts of a forest to work together to ensure the success of the whole? Wolleben provides a fascinating argument with ample evidence to support this claim. For example, he recalls a stump that he found that had been felled at least four to five hundred years earlier, which, having no leaves, could no longer photosynthesize, which was being kept alive by sugars fed to it by nearby trees (2). A further consideration is that these trees are not weighing costs and benefits before choosing to aid the whole, this is just how they operate. And while Wolleben uses anthropomorphic language to describe these relationships, in order to better communicate with his reader, this does not constitute the same type of agency that humans have. It kind-of shatters the appeals to biology that suggest all species compete for survival, as if lions are maliciously hunting down and destroying gazelles.

I’ve got another big surprise. Humans are a social species, too.

In our sixth podcast, we discuss an article from Natasha Myers in which the author proposes the Planthropocene. The environmental historian can also look at how specific human-plant relationships are mutually beneficial (for example, in the garden), instead of applying allegedly universal laws of antagonism and competition to measures of the nature-culture divide through history. Again, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

As with any romanticization of Nature, we risk the cultivation of misanthropy. Why can’t we be more like trees? Their self-interest and level of social interaction bear no moral weight. Historian and ecologist Murray Bookchin saw the human being as a product of natural evolution, but a self-aware form or a “second” Nature. He challenged ecoprimitivists who saw the natural world as fundamentally despoiled by the human species ever since the advent of fire and agricutlure, for example. He also was disenchanted with ecomysticists or deep ecologists who described almost irrational connections to nature, which really blurred the problems at hand. To Bookchin the problem was capitalism, or means of exchange, and our exploitation of the natural world, which derived ultimately from ideas of dominating other humans. He called the basis of his philosophy Social Ecology and claimed that the goal of an ecological movement is re-empowerment, which could occur at the city level, where people could grasp their situation, and manage their local environment cooperatively. It is Bookchin’s knowledge of history, such as the way he cites the democracy of the Athenian polis which serves to give context and a decentralized and localized understanding of big-data claims. In turn, this history challenged determinisms. Human decisions alone set up the ecological crisis, and human decisions are the key to undoing it, with ever-increasing levels of freedom, cooperation, and consociation.

Big Data in the Anthropocene

History challenges the kind of determinism that would attribute our current ecological crisis to biological facts. Historians need to complicate the ways in which academics explain change through time and disturb the tendency to search for some origin and explanation rooted in deep time or in the mechanical workings of the universe. Of course ancient origins are attractive as causal explanations, but they seldom capture the number of changes and human decisions that occurred in the interim.

Big data explanations are appealing because they tacitly acknowledge that everything is connected to everything else. However, they absolve any present day or historical agent of responsibility. To deal with this information we need the social dimension of human, non-human animal, plant, fungi . While humans hold the only decision-making process to which morality, and thus responsibility has been applied, the environmental historian reminds us, at least that these non-human agents play a role. Their existence ensures our own, no matter how unclear and complex these connections might be.

To me, environmental history means explicitly acknowledging that everything is connected to everything else. It means telling the stories of the limited human ability to improve upon Nature, and adopting an ecological or even planetary perspective to step back and look at where energy comes from (the Sun), or what rational behaviour really means, when appealing to biology. It can even mean using the emotional response (to characters that you care about for whatever virtues they possess) from a story that resonates with diverse people to get them to imagine and acknowledge the real repercussions of reducing, reusing, and recycling — or at least using it to complicate taken-for-granted processes.

Historians (both human and natural) must work together to engage with, decode, and bring meaning to big data. In the Anthropocene, there is a lot at stake.

In this digital age and geological epoch, we need History more than ever.

Duncan Chambers

Jurassic Park, Botanical Tourism, and the End of the World.

“We’ve made living biological attractions so astounding that they’ll capture the imagination of the entire planet.”

That was what John Hammond said when he first introduced Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler to Jurassic Park. “We spared no expense!” he said as he gave the paleontologist and paleobotanist a tour of the park’s research lab.

If you’re unfamiliar with the film Jurassic Park, the story surrounds John Hammond’s theme park – of the same name – populated by various species of dinosaur. Hammond’s bioengineering company, InGen, extracted dinosaur DNA from mosquitos and through the miracle of science managed to clone dinosaurs.

Some of the dinosaurs eventually managed to escape – which should come as a surprise to approximately nobody – and shenanigans ensued.

While Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler, the protagonists of the film, were initially astounded by the bioengineering feat, mathematician and chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm warned the group about the possible implications of such bioengineering.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

And this quote stuck with me. If you substitute dinosaurs for simulated botanical gardens or ‘sustainable’ green spaces, Dr. Malcolm’s remark rings true in the age of the Anthropocene.

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In this short blog post, I want to talk about the role of ‘green spaces’ in the age of the Anthropocene, but I also want to discuss the moral aspect of creating these green spaces.

What the heck is a green space?

This is a hard question to answer, mainly because there is no one type of green space. A quick google search will tell you that a green space is essentially an area with grass, trees, or some sort of vegetation. This space is intentionally set aside for recreational or aesthetic purposes in an otherwise urban environment. I think this is a fair definition, but I also think that it’s a bit more complicated than that. Green spaces are not always limited to recreation or aesthetics – green spaces can also be functional.

Let’s compare two green spaces: Japan’s Fukuoka International Hall and Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay.

Fukuoka International Hall, Japan

The building itself functions as an international convention hall of sorts. The interior of the building includes a large atrium, a music hall, an international conference hall, and several general convention halls. The most well-known feature of the building, however, is its roof.

The roof has fifteen terraces, each one-story in height. Each terrace contains a large variety of gardens, some created for meditation or relaxation, and some for simply escaping the congestion of the city. When the building was first constructed, the terraces contained seventy-six species of flora, totaling thirty-seven-thousand plants. Since its construction, local birds and other fauna who have taken up residence on the terraces, have introduced more than one-hundred-and-twenty species of local flora, totaling approximately fifty-thousand plants in the gardens.

But why choose terraces? The architects of the Fukuoka International Hall wanted the building to provide an escape from the surrounding urban financial district, but they also wanted the building to reflect the natural landscape of Fukuoka. The staircase-shaped roof – covered in local flora – mimics the surrounding vegetation-covered mountains of the region. While the roof of the Fukuoka International Hall is a green space for recreation and aesthetics, it is also functional.

Green roofs, like that of Fukuoka International Hall, do a lot of good for the environment – so much so that I’ve compiled a handy list.

• The layers of soil, grass, and vegetation insulate the building – like a winter toque – which reduces the amount of energy needed to heat or cool the building.
• The layers of soil retain a lot of rainwater, which reduces the amount of runoff, which can be especially icky in heavily populated cities.
• These spaces, depending on how high off the ground they are, can attract a wide variety of wildlife. The vegetation in these spaces can provide food and shelter for the urban fauna.
• Plants love CO₂. Choosing the right combination of vegetation can help reduce air pollution, which is especially important for heavily populated cities.
• These green pockets can also help reduce the heat island effect. Concrete and asphalt, reflective buildings, and low-hanging smog all contribute to heating up cities. Green spaces absorb some of that heat and help cool down the city.
• Some green roofs, like those mostly populated by shrubs, are low maintenance. The sunlight and rainwater do most of the work.

Green roofs do not always have to be multi-million dollar projects like that of the Fukuoka International Hall, and they can be much more accessible too. Green roofs are cool (pun intended) and they do a lot for the environment. But what about other green spaces?

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Gardens by the Bay, Singapore.

Located on the south shore of Singapore, Gardens by the Bay is the largest climate-controlled conservatory in the world, and as Natasha Myers notes, is a billion-dollar infrastructure for botanical tourism.

When I said Gardens by the Bay is the largest climate-controlled conservatory in the world – I meant it. The enclosure is approximately two point two football fields in length and seventy-five Olympic swimming pools in volume. And there are two of them.

Each enclosure is a different theme. One, called the Flower Dome, simulates the Mediterranean and houses flora from the region. Another, called the Cloud Forest, simulates tropical highlands and mountainous regions. The latter enclosure is home to the largest indoor waterfall in the world.

These gardens are massive and absolutely gorgeous. They fulfill the recreational and aesthetic requirements of a green space, but are they functional?

The short answer is no. The long answer is f*** no.

As mentioned earlier, green roofs are great because while they fulfill recreational and aesthetic needs, they are also functional because they do good things for the environment. Gardens by the Bay house thousands of species of flora that are not native to Singapore. The gardens require climate-controlled enclosures because without them the plants would not survive Singapore’s climate. In their natural environment, the flora housed in Gardens by the Bay would certainly reduce CO₂, absorb rainwater, and all those good things, but the necessity of the enclosures removes any possible benefit that the gardens could possibly have on the environment (not to mention the amount of energy and maintenance green spaces like Gardens by the Bay require).

Okay, green roofs good…giant bioengineered botanical tourist attractions bad?

Yes, but its more complicated than that. For me, green roofs (or any green space for that matter) are a fantastic addition to any urban space so long as they are accessible and function outside of recreation and aesthetics. I think that the biggest problem with Gardens by the Bay is that the creators of the space were too distracted by their ability to create Gardens by the Bay that they did not stop to think about whether they should create the gardens.

But, like always, its more complicated than that.

I would argue that green spaces of all kinds, but specifically Gardens by the Bay, elucidates the anxieties surrounding the Anthropocene. The human species seems to have this obsession with controlling and manipulating the environment, beginning with the agricultural revolution during the dawn of the Holocene to the simulation of the Mediterranean and tropical highlands during the height of the Anthropocene.

I couldn’t help but think of Jurassic Park. John Hammond had a longing for the lost world he never knew, but he had the technology to simulate life with dinosaurs. His bioengineers cloned dinosaurs and plant life from the Mesozoic era and put them on display in a theme park that they “can charge anything they want – two-thousand a day, ten-thousand a day…and people will pay it!”

But as the characters in the film learned, their scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could it, that they did not stop to think about if they should do it.

At the end of the film, Dr. Grant turns to John Hammond and says, “After careful consideration, I have decided not to endorse your park,” to which Hammond replies, “So have I.”

And perhaps the creators of Gardens by the Bay need to have a similar conversation.

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 Sources:

Benefits of Green Roofs

Fukuoka International Hall’s green roof.

How to Install a Green Roof/How do Green Roofs Work.

Natasha Myers’ article & talk “From Edenic Apocalypse to Gardens Against Eden: Plants and People in and after the Anthropocene.” A recording of her talk can be found here.

Vaidehi Shah’s Eco Business article “Putting Nature at the Heart of Green Spaces.”

Podcast #6: The Role of Gardens in the Anthropocene (Series Wrap-Up!)

Hi everyone–Mitchell again! Sadly, we have reached the end of our podcast series. In this episode, we discuss the role of gardens and plants in regards to understanding the Anthropocene and human relationships with the natural world.

The primary inspiration for this episode is the innovative work of Natasha Myers at York University. In particular, our discussion draws on Myers’ forthcoming article, “From Edenic Apocalypse to Gardens Against Eden: Plants and People in and After the Anthropocene.” Myers compares and contrasts Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay and the public art projects of Lois Weinberger to demonstrate the complex interactions that exist between humans and surrounding flora. Myers argues that gardens are the perfect attribute to renegotiate these relationships in order to fully acknowledge plant sentience and disrupt anthropocentric notions of human superiority and resiliency.

We also conclude this episode with a brief reflection on the podcast itself and on History 723. This course was a rather unique and unconventional project in comparison to more traditional graduate courses. We all agreed that the course taught us the importance of collaborative scholarship and the need to incorporate digital methodologies into our own research.

Thank you to everyone who has supported our work. We hope you enjoyed this podcast series and encourage everyone to take part in their own discussions concerning the Anthropocene.

Cheers.

Podcast #5 – Is Civilization Nature?

In this week’s podcast, Alex, Duncan, and Mitchell discuss a topic inspired by a question posed by Adam Frank in his NPR article “Is Civilization Natural?”

Frank claims that city and nature are the Yin and Yang of human experience, with a host of assumptions, ethics, and values pinned to either side.  On one hand, the city was civilization, and the world outside of its gates consisted of chaos and danger. But on the other hand, the city was the nexus of corruption, while the natural environment was an unspoiled Eden. While this distinction worked some 8000 years ago during the dawn of cities, I’m wondering if this binary of civilization and natural environment works in the age of the Anthropocene.

It is projected that by 2050, more than 80 percent of all human beings will be living in urban areas. But the resource needs of these urban areas, and the feedback that those needs generate strongly affect the planet, so much so that I would argue that the distinction between the natural environment and the built environment are less meaningful than they used to be.

I ask Duncan and Mitchell if they think, in the age of the Anthropocene, that the civilization and natural environment binary that society has created is still valid.

Our full discussion can be found here:

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Articles Discussed:

Adam Frank’s NPR article “Is Civilization Natural?”

Vaidehi Shah’s Eco Business article “Putting Nature at the Heart of Sustainable Cities.”

Natasha Myers’ article & talk “From Edenic Apocalypse to Gardens Against Eden: Plants and People in and after the Anthropocene.” A recording of her talk can be found here.