The Nature of a Growing Metropolis

Abstract

The city of Bengaluru in Southern India, like many other large South Asian cities, has undergone expansion at an exponential rate in the past few decades leading to rapid transformation of its urban landscape. This has also involved a drastic change in the forms of nature in the city, and a change in the attitude and relationship of people in the city towards nature. Having major ecological footprints, densely populated and booming cities such as Bengaluru need to be better studied when investigating the global environmental crisis. This paper is a historical analysis of the change in the material and functional role of nature in the city through an in-depth literature review. An ideological framework of nature in the city is first established. The paper then discusses nature in the urban landscape as a manifestation of these different ideologies, from the city’s formation around the 16th century CE to the colonial period, followed by the period of rapid urbanization after independence.
In Bengaluru today, several ideologies of nature that are multifaceted and often self-contradictory coexist in the same space. Remnants of the Garden city aesthetics from the colonial period intermesh with native elements of nature regarded as sacred in temples, as a source of livelihood in peripheral areas, and as spaces for recreation by the bourgeoisie. Therefore, tackling these issues must go beyond multidisciplinary action and include an approach that involves participation of multiple actors across social groups.