From green to brown landscapes – and back again: urban agriculture, ecology, and Hae-jun Lee's Cast Away on the Moon
- My essay looks at contemporary developments in urbanism that re-negotiate the place of nature in our cities. Looking at the example of bottom-up and top-down models of urban agriculture, two alternative approaches to urban systems will be presented which try to re-embed them in the natural-material cycles of life. Firstly, the changes that have occurred in our urban landscapes (and our cultural images of them) since the age of Industrialization will be discussed to uncover the socio-historical dimension of the subject. The second part will analyze the cultural urban ecology invoked in South Korean director Hae-jun Lee’s film Cast Away on the Moon (2009). As I want to show, the film imaginatively deals with these issues and invites a re-consideration of our urban lifestyles before the background of the question what place nature has in our cities and in how far working with the soil can lead to regeneration.
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