Former Landhaus Fellow Diego Molina recently published a new book titled Planting a City in the Tropical Andes: Plants and People in Bogotá, 1880 to 1920 with Routledge, partially written during his time at the Rachel Carson Center Landhaus in 2022!
Planting a City in the Tropical Andes outlines Bogotá’s transformation into a floristic island with a rich variety of native, introduced, wild, and cultivated plants. It builds on the contrast between the biodiversity loss that comes naturally with urbanization and the creation of a unique floristic inventory that can only exist in the vicinity of a city. Through a unique botanical perspective on Latin American urban history, this book uncovers how capitalist dynamics in Bogotá transformed plants into providers of clean air and water and how their use in the urban landscape contributed to the cultivation of disciplined citizenry. It serves as a compelling example of how the creative and conflicting forces of the Anthropocene have forged new environments and previously unseen relationships between people and plants. (The text is adapted from Routledge.)
You can find a more detailled description of the book on the website of the publisher. Currently, it is only published in English. But there is an interest in creating a Spanish translation in the future.
During his Landhaus stay, Diego presented on the related topic “Creation of Urban Nature: Colombian Cities as Disciplined Floristic Islands” at a Lunchtime Colloquium. The recording of the colloquium was uploaded to the RCC’s YouTube channel here.
