Ecocinema and the City IV

The last section of Ecocinema and the City, “The Sustainable City,” illustrates green possibilities in urban settings. According to political scientist Heather Campbell and her colleagues “sustainability has become a three-pillars concept that includes the three interacting, interconnected, and overlapping prime systems: the biosphere or ecological system; the economy, the market or the economic system; and human society, the human social systems” (1).  Films in this section demonstrate viable ways to make the biosphere, economy, and human society sustainable.  “The Sustainable City,” highlights multiple ways cities become “greener.”  

Chapter 8, “Urban Farming on Film: Moving Toward Environmental Justice in the City” analyzes urban farming documentaries highlighting sustainability and illustrating some of the economic, social, and environmental challenges surrounding urban farming. Despite the difficulties they face, however, each of these films suggests the outcome is worth the battle. Urban farms grow strong communities, improve access to healthy food, benefit the local economy, and encourage interdependent relationships with the natural world. Although they point out a variety of challenges, films such as Voices of Transition (2012), New Farms, Big Success: With Three Rock Star Farmers (2015), and U.S. focused documentaries The Garden (2008), Urban Fruit (2013), Growing Cities (2013), and The Edible City: Grow the Revolution (2014) illustrate how well urban farming facilitates economic, social, and environmental sustainability. 

Chapter 9, “Lives Worth Living and the Sustainable City: Will the ‘Walls of Exclusion Finally Come Tumbling Down’?” explores the sustainable city and broaches accommodations and urban planning. Most films addressing people with disabilities highlight an individual (usually played by an able bodied actor) who overcomes adversity to become a productive member of society. What these films do not address, however, are the architectural barriers that promote exclusion both of human and nonhuman nature. Documentaries such as Lives Worth Living (2011) move beyond the individual to reveal the importance of cross-ability coalitions to transform the city from an inhospitable setting for people with disabilities to a well planned sustainable home. 

Our conclusion, “The ‘Absent City’ of the Future” provides insights into the future of cities in both developed and developing countries. At the center of the chapter is a reading of Mainland China’s Under the Dome (2015), a documentary that takes an approach similar to An Inconvenient Truth (2006) to demonstrate the causes of (and solutions to) urban air pollution that relies on a distribution process that augments its environmental message. Yet this optimistic, nostalgia-driven argument contrasts with those found in most fictional films exploring the city of the future. The chapters in Ecocinema and the City begins to explore such contradictory visions of urban nature on film.