Book Review: Poling on Lachmund, Greening Berlin
Jens Lachmund. Greening Berlin: The
Co-Production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2012. Illustrations. 336 pp. $42.00 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-262-01859-3; $28.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-262-31241-7.
Reviewed by Kristin Poling (University of
Rochester)
Published on H-German (October, 2014)
Commissioned by Chad Ross
Published on H-German (October, 2014)
Commissioned by Chad Ross
How Ecologists Found Nature in the City
Jens Lachmund's study of urban nature in twentieth-century
Berlin begins with a discussion of the opening of the Südgelände
Nature Park in March 2000. Located on the site of an abandoned rail yard,
the Südgelände does not look like a traditional city park. It is densely
overgrown and crisscrossed by walkways constructed of rusty metal—evoking the
site's industrial past—that keep visitors from disturbing the vegetation. For
most of the long history of urban green space planning, the plants that
flourish here as a result of the site's long dereliction would have been
considered weeds, more an eyesore than a worthy target of protection. In Greening
Berlin, Lachmund sets out to explain how and why the Südgelände Park came
to exist as it did. How did an overgrown rail yard become a celebrated
natural landscape?