A green city is not produced by vegetation alone but by the regimes of knowledge that determine what vegetation is, where it belongs, which functions matter, how effects are measured and whose interpretation can alter the plan. Contemporary urban greening is therefore less a single environmental programme than an epistemic reorganisation of urban space. The blunt category of “green” is already disintegrating under the pressure of more exact evidence. Hao and colleagues separate vegetation into structural, species and colour diversity and show that these dimensions interact rather than simply accumulate; maximal complexity is not automatically optimal.
URBANISM MEETS ART