2020 was a year of acute attention on public green spaces, gardens and nature. From rapidly compiled reports on the value of parks in the time of COVID-19, to scholarly explorations of their historical context, such as Roderick Floud's An Economic History of the English Garden (2020), our understanding of nature in the city has been enhanced by a flurry of publications. Based on the authors’ La ville végétale, published in French in 2017, Greening the City is an exploration of nature in French towns since the seventeenth century. In the age of Revolution and its wake, French aspirations for, and experiences of, nature in the city were understandably different from those of the British. Nevertheless, in addition to fascinating examples specific to France, there is much in this study to enhance our general understanding of urban nature. As the authors assert, ‘the history of the vegetal is primarily a history of transmission and of heritage, one of transformation rather than upheaval’ (p. 3). In this sense, their analysis may also prove significant to the broader field of heritage studies, as well those engaged in environmental and ecological history.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Mathis and Pepy's approach is the theatrical and poetic character of their examples. Subtitles, such as ‘tropical delights’ and ‘the trees of liberty’, chime well with themes already recurrent in the historiography of urban green space. For those familiar with eighteenth-century caricatures of London's theatrical and social elite blending performance and leisure in Vauxhall, Ranelagh and Marylebone Gardens, the comparisons are striking. Yet, more interesting still are the subtle contrasts and the detailed interpretation of horticulture and arboriculture in French cities. While locating parks, gardens, allotments and even window boxes within a wider socio-economic narrative of urban life, this is a study unapologetically orientated around nature and its influence over humanity, rather than vice versa. Organized thematically, together the chapters provide the reader with a revealing chronology of the creation, protection and exploitation of urban nature in modern France.
Providing the foundations for their broader argument, chapter 1 poses the well-rehearsed question, ‘Why bring nature into the town?’ Here, the authors provide a not unfamiliar narrative of parks and gardens as antidotes to the ‘sick city of the industrial age’ (p. 27). In many ways, their account maps easily onto the development of the British and American public parks movement. However, this common chronology is revealing in itself, as historians have long viewed the motivation to create numerous green, accessible urban spaces to be a peculiarity of the Victorian civic elite. This assumption that urban competition, philanthropy and pragmatism combined in the industrial heartlands of northern England in a way that was wholly unknown elsewhere is challenged by evidence of similar processes in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and even Nice. The recurrence of terms such as ‘air’, ‘space’, ‘sport’ and ‘Le cité-jardin’ (Garden City) testifies to the common language and preoccupation of parks’ creators and managers in both France and Britain, and across their respective empires.
Chapter 2, ‘Green fingers: actors in the vegetalisation of towns’, brings the focus onto these key players in the evolution of French urban green space, in terms of individuals, professionals and public authorities. Again, here the reader may find many features shared with Britain and America. The combination of private responsibility, public obligation and a sense of common vision characterizes Mathis and Pepy's account. It is perversely reassuring to hear that the conclusions reached by scholars of British public parks are reflected in Greening the City, where the authors assert that ‘one cannot leave the responsibility for introducing nature to the town and defending it to private individuals alone: they have to be able to rely on the support of professionals and public authorities’ (p. 63).
Particularly effective throughout the book is the authors’ ability to demonstrate continuity between historical ethoses and those that shape contemporary debates, including public education, ecology and entertainment. In this way, chapter 3 addresses the age-old challenges facing urban nature, namely funding, function and maintenance. In so doing, the authors acknowledge, if not resolve, a tension that exists in these locations – that of their dual status as being both ‘of the town’ and an element of ‘disurbanisation’ (p. 120). The ubiquity of this tension, both geographically and historically, suggests that it is perhaps not a weakness of any local strategy or scheme, but rather an inherent feature of the built environment that reflects human ambivalence towards our own presence and ecological impact.
In a change of tone, chapters 4 and 5 provide a fascinating and enjoyable romp through the various ways in which French urban green spaces have been utilized as sites of personal, collective and national expression. From feast day celebrations during the ancien régime, to exhibition sites in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these chapters demonstrate the role of parks as both the stage and an actor in urban life. Chapter 6 develops this notion of nature as an urban protagonist, to explore the ideological duality of nature as simultaneously a civilizing force and a ‘wild’ presence in the city. Chapter 7, ‘The economics of the vegetal’, extends the discussion beyond more conventional notions of nature in the city, to explore vegetal production, sale and consumption in the city. Although perhaps an anomaly in the wider focus of the book, this may well prove the most significant discussion in terms of the contemporary emphasis places on sustainable cities (p. 251), as may the final chapter titled ‘Nature and learning’.
For those well versed in the history of British public parks and urban green space, Greening the City provides welcome new case-studies and insights that, while familiar enough to guarantee their wider relevance, are also novel and often humorous. The illustrations, many of which are in colour, may be small, but they contribute to the overall appeal of this engaging and wide-ranging study.
