In Mexico, there are a number of doubly-named cities, like Colima, Colima, and Mexico City Mexico–just like New York, New York, and Texas City, Texas. There is a park in Colima, Colima that is full of mango trees because mangoes will grow just about anywhere below the desert in Mexico. On the way to the park, there are mango trees and papaya plants, sometimes with the papayas chopped off based on people not wanting to maintain it. Lima trees are almost everywhere in Central Mexico, and because of rainy season and the climate, almost nobody has to maintain them. When I think about how inspired I used to be about the idea of “food forests,” I realized that there would be more of them if the empire had stopped trying to control nature and adapted to it instead.
Most urban planning is not about engaging with nature, but about trying to control it in a way that inspires conformity. For example, cities have existed in empires throughout history, but in the past, there was an expectation that there would be enough proximity to nature and cultivation that everyone would survive. Greed is often what kills natural spaces both in and around cities, and continues to be the reason why there is still excessive construction instead of a demand to fill all the empty housing. Now, air quality is compromised and people have less opportunities to relax based on how far they have to travel for a shaded, comfortable park with benches. To add insult to injury, there are also several parks that have no shaded benches so that nobody can even enjoy the parks that exist.
Crazily enough, there used to be food trees all over the place because there are so many foods that are native to multiple spaces. As the relationship between humanity and nature soured in the United States, so did people’s respect for maintaining all of the food that used to consistently grow in an area. I used to think that cherry trees made beautiful wood because my father used to be an amateur woodworker. As an adult, I am slighted disgusted that anyone would build with trees that could produce food when world hunger exists, and there is a rising unhoused population. There are fields that used to grow wild berries that people could consistently pick in parks, but thanks to the “need” for lawns and conformity, most of those growths are gone forever, along with the rain.
Food forests are not about “transforming spaces” because there are many places where food being everywhere is normal, and Mexico is far from distinct. However, acknowledging that would also reveal that the empire destroyed its own food supplies so that everything could “look pretty,” which is masochistic. Being accustomed to the natural availability of food is a right that everyone should have, regardless of living in rural or urban communities. To combat imperial dominance, it makes more since to stop chopping and clearing, and start planting. After all, it makes no difference if we build ourselves into oblivion if there is nothing left to eat.
Chasing A Dying Empire 