1.4 SUMMARY

CHAPTER 1.4

SUMMARY

Comparing the two articles, the views discussed in both are pragmatically planning for the future; these utopian gardens cannot exist without a balance of human-nature interactions so essentially, we coexist together in a closed loop society where these gardens house a variety of species of plants and through interaction cycles, humans would nurture the plants in return for healthy crops. Both authors consider socio-ecological attributes and traditions to determine contemporary society problems and processes. Where Naomi M. Jacobs expresses her concerns regarding smaller private garden plots, Lucy Sargisson discusses nature as a separate utopian entity where nature and politics independently intertwine. Within this community, there is also a desire for activities to happen, a space for discussions and conflicts when designing the new, utopian world. Additionally, Jacobs personifies her garden as a living but destroyed human being as a result of our negligence, whereas Sargisson does not accuse the gardeners of

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irresponsibility, but rather focuses on how we can fix our current society through the examples we set in this current world for the future – the utopian world we desire.

Personally, both scholars are biased in their argument as their research mainly inclines towards nature’s way of thinking without thoroughly critiquing the reasons behind the user’s approach to the society we live in. For example, humans may be damaging nature due to the lack of education, space for planting or lack of resources for planning for the future. Therefore, both Naomi M. Jacobs and Lucy Sargisson appropriately advocate for a community of like-minded individuals to come together to address the current dystopian situation and become the stimulus for the fate of the future ecotopian community.

However, if politics were to be included in the utopian future, then scholars Constanza Parra and Casey Walsh suggest in the article Socialities of Nature Beyond Utopia that we should only base the research on “political, economic and socio-cultural models”38 in order to distinguish factors which have triggered an environmental crisis and led us to this crucial turning point. Along with Sargisson and Marshal, Parra and Walsh similarly suggest that we should adopt alternative thinking towards an all green-roof future whilst noting some of the diverse, creative and sustainable environmental values”39 and the positives the roof gardens bring to both human and nature. Both are optimists of a perfect utopia despite believing that the term is unknown and non-existent due to the “obduracy of power and culture”40. To recover this unrecognised culture, we “build selectively on an ample tradition of discuss-

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ing utopia”41 .

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RE-IMAGINING PICCADILLY CIRCUS (ORIGINAL IMAGE BY MILSTEIN, N.D., EDITED BY AUTHOR)