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.
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