Although I am not particularly a fan of science fiction movies, I am fascinated by stories that take place in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic future in which Humanity – or its remnants – is forced to abandon large cities and how, in a few years, nature takes over them. I like to see how vegetation inexorably devours the great skyscrapers, let's say in Manhattan, covering them with climbing plants. How life finds its way and from any insignificant crack a plant sprouts that, later, becomes a formidable tree that sinks its roots into the ground and makes the pavement of the old grand avenues, now deserted, burst. Suddenly, a deer runs across Rockefeller Center plaza, now a meadow of fresh grass. Perhaps it is fleeing from a large pack of hungry wolves that has its den in Wall Street...
To find examples of large cities that end up swallowed by nature, it is not necessary to resort to fiction. One only has to remember how the jungle erased all trace of the great Mayan metropolises of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. Also the majestic temples of Angkor, rediscovered centuries later and converted into a symbol of Cambodia. One doesn't even have to go back that far in time: On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl power plant suffered the worst nuclear accident in history and more than 100,000 people living near the plant, especially in the city of Pripyat, had to be evacuated in a hurry. No one imagined that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, known as the "dead zone," paradoxically, would become, years later and despite the radiation, a kind of animal sanctuary: thousands of deer, bears, European bison, a large number of amphibians and other species roam freely in this large space. Or, at least, they did until weeks ago the Russians entered Ukraine with fire and sword.
I have evoked these real or fictional cities devoured by nature and turned into habitats for all kinds of animals just as a series of news items about urban flora and fauna coincide in the media. To begin with, the umpteenth evidence that Barcelona is becoming a large dovecote with more than 100,000 birds. A space they share with thousands of Argentine parakeets and, more recently, also with Eurasian collared doves. The urban incursions of wild boars, often as far as the Diagonal itself, are also increasingly frequent. There are colonies of abandoned cats and, of course, legions of rats that, from time to time, leave the sewers to the disgust of the citizens. They are, all of them, undesirable neighbors because, let's admit it, we don't like having to share the city with animals that dirty, bother, or, directly, disgust us. Excluding our beloved pets and the poor creatures that we incomprehensibly keep locked up in the zoo, we take for granted that cities are not appropriate for any other living being than ourselves, humans.
They are, all of them, undesirable neighbors because, let's admit it, we don't like having to share the city with animals that dirty, bother, or, directly, disgust usHowever, Barcelona is a city in transition. It is moving away at full speed from a model based on asphalt and concrete to become a greener city.More naturalized, pay attention to this concept. A city that will not only progressively have more green spaces (squares, parks, superblocks, urban gardens, vertical gardens...) but these will premeditatedly have an appearance more similar to a forest or a wild meadow than to the gardens of Versailles or golf courses. It is evident that neither Marie Antoinette nor her Petit Trianon are a reference for Ada Colau. So far so good. However, the progressive naturalization of the city I suspect will also entail a greater presence of fauna in the city and I am not at all clear that everyone will applaud it with their ears. What role should animals have in the city? Has anyone thought about it? What if, as Barcelona loses asphalt, it turns into a jungle? Bears scare me, you know?