Matthew Gandy is a cultural, urban, and environmental geographer with particular interests in landscape, infrastructure and biodiversity. His books include Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City, The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination and, most recently, Natura Urbana: Ecological Constellations in Urban Space. He is Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Kings College at the University of Cambridge.
Julian Raxworthy – You’ve got a bit of a following in landscape architecture. We are in a time where geography has become important, and the discipline is prominent in landscape architecture discourse where people are now “looking at the overlooked.” Why are we interested in these spaces and systems that, previously, we were either trying to disguise or even actively avoid [like urban wastelands with weeds, for example]?
In trying to make sense of urban nature in broad terms, I’ve come to the view that there are four different perspectives. The
