According to Price, Los Angeles offers an ideal place to figure out the challenge of writing about urban nature. The article argues that apart from telling the people about the endless paeans of wonders, there is a need to tell the story of the everyday lives of our neighbourhoods. Price uses her expertise and observation of L.A to come up with some of the best ways to look at urban nature especially for the writers (Price). For her, writers can understand nature better through examination of the way the people manage, use, and experience nature in the urban areas. Meridian Avenue of Shoreline is such urban places where I observed and requires proper analysis of its nature. Through her proposed strategies of seeing nature, the paper will consider the neighbourhood, Meridian Avenue of Shoreline to analyse its urban nature. This paper argues that experiencing nature is an essential way of understanding it.
In Meridian Avenue of Shoreline, there are visible elements that can indicate the existence of nature. There is wilderness to which the people living there strive to support its existence. There are various resources used in the neighbourhood which can help define nature. First, is the resources being used while second is the ecology and landscape that is managed by the people. When visiting Meridian Avenue of Shoreline, one can easily recognize nature is not being protected through the destruction of its resources. However, the landscape and ecology sustained and managed by the people is an evident way to experience nature in the urban centre.
The town is full of many buildings and other infrastructural establishments that can often overshadow the natural trees that surround the buildings. When I came to the town, I observed many buildings from a distance, which could make me forget that there are also natural things existing within the town. Interestingly, the conspicuousness of the gifts of nature such as the small forests has been hampered by the fact that the same trees are what is used to construct the buildings. I observed various street sweepers busy working. I was captivated by the way their giant brushes were spinning around collecting dust. However, a closer look of their bins made me realise a lot of dry leaves which had dropped of some trees.
The surrounding water catchment areas had also been unnaturalised and lacked the natural sense because water from some streams was pumped into different buildings. They were drying out, but there was still an indication of nature in the town. A walk through to the downtown part of Meridian Avenue of Shoreline enabled me to notice different industrial, commercial, and warehouses which said a lot about the town. The industries were producing combusted air into the atmosphere, and not many people around the town were happy about that. Indeed, how the people in the town used their resources could better explain the urban nature of Meridian Avenue of Shoreline.
Outside the business houses in Meridian Avenues of Shoreline, I could spot a couple of vehicles parked along the avenue. The vehicles ranged from ATV’s to some elegant BMW’s. The presence of these motor vehicles was an indication of the importance of transportation to the people regarding making movement easier and faster. However, the vehicles were environmentally as good as they were parked. While doing their work, they were disastrous for the nature of the city. They consume a lot of petroleum which undermines nature from its extraction to its waste products. The vehicles resembled human using nature as a source of supporting their daily lives.
I also visited the Aurora Village which is located right across Meridian Avenues of Shoreline. The village has many stores and restaurants including shops hosting FedEx, Home Depot, and Costco. The shopping centre receives many guests who come to eat, shop and enjoy the recreational facilities. For the centre to be established to that extent, a lot of natural resources must have lost their place to give room to the restaurants and stores. For example, the materials used such as stones, marrum, water, and the equipment used in the constructions. These elements show how much people have taken from nature.
However, the city demonstrated a lot of efforts to salvage the few natural resources remaining. Through the various attempts I observed, Meridian Avenue of Shoreline is a landscape and ecology that the people build in and manage. The Echo Lake Park is managed by both internal and external members of the town is an example of how the people manage nature. The residents have built a small park and playground. They have also cleaned the lake and initiated echo-friendly mannerisms around the area. Therefore, it reflects on how they are dedicated to managing the environment in which they live as well as managing nature to remain at its best. Taking care of the environment as shown by the residents of Meridian Avenue of Shoreline reflects the relationship between humans and nature. In as much as they use it, they also appreciate natural resources by managing it by cleaning and ensuring a friendly environment. Looking back at such initiatives, humans can appreciate nature more and open their minds to experience nature in their surrounding even where they did not expect.
Seeing nature as the resources we use and the ecology we build, live in, and manage, we have to learn to work with nature and manage it to benefit both humans and nature itself. We need to create a balance between how we use nature and how we manage it. Creating such a balance and correcting the existing problems will determine how nature defines us in the future. This is because nature is a premier source of human meaning. After all, we change nature to enables us to live.
Making people understand nature as the resources they use to support their living will enable them to increase their awareness towards issues related to nature. The awareness makes them careful when engaging in activities which can compromise nature. Therefore, they will tend to look for mitigation strategies for them not to destroy nature. For example, instead of emitting unhealthy waste products from industries to the environment to destroy the life of other important organisms, they can recycle to reduce the harm. Therefore, when people experience nature in their surroundings, they are likely to understand and use them appropriately. The way residents of Meridian Avenue of Shoreline use, experience, and manage their nature has enabled me to examine and understand nature. The observations from the use of natural space for industrialization, pollution of the environment and clean-up exercise in the city are ways of experiencing nature to determine how people live and how they should live.
Work Cited
Price, Jenny. "Thirteen ways of seeing nature in LA." The Believer 4.3 (2006).
