
2/2 NYC here, or Tokyo, or any other enormous metropolis) isn't "living with nature", it's essentially sterilizing an ecosystem of sustainability for most other kinds of life, and making it exclusively by humans, for humans. Technically we're "part of nature", yes, but aspects of our existence, like the structures we build, the social organizations we form, and our superior intelligence, also put us above an beyond anything else "natural" on this planet.
^ was going to say this. i work in the amazon and its not untouched and hasn’t been for a long time. large parts of it are cultivated and managed. people are a part of the environment, that can be a good thing, and development doesn’t have to be a matter of paving over the landscape but can be more mutualistic
Thank you! We have to stop pitting nature as mutually exclusive from humans. We are animals, this is all nature, and putting the "wild" on some purity pedestal ignores the fact that we are active participants and stewards and not some separate inherently evil and destructive force upon it.
This is true to an extent, and you could make the argument that we lived more "mutually" with nature when we were in tribes, and then more formed isolated societies within nature until a few centuries ago. However, going off the direction that OP is talking about: paving over miles and miles of pristine wilderness with concrete, massive hundred-story edifices intended solely for limited human usage, and essentially sterilizing that landscape's purpose as a natural habitat (talking about 1/2