"Cultivating a Garden at NYU Shanghai" - May 4, NYU Florence (Limonaia)

This talk will detail efforts to craft an urban garden on the 7th floor rooftop of NYU Shanghai’s new campus in the Qiantan district of Pudong. It describes these endeavors in conjunction with a collaborative interdisciplinary research project called Cultivated City. Cultivated City draws inspiration from the traditional garden culture of the Jiangnan region of Southern China, which embodies an ethic that views nature (including human nature) as improved or enhanced by cultivation. The ultimate aim is to explore the global electric city as a new but natural urban environment, which includes vegetative, animal and artificial life, asking how the emerging sentient city – modelled as garden – might cultivate itself.

Anna Greenspan is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Global Media, NYU Shanghai; Global Network Assistant Professor, NYU. Her research focuses on urban futures and emerging media. Anna’s latest book China and the Wireless Undertow: Media as Wave Philosophy, will be published with the Technicities Series at University of Edinburgh Press in the fall of 2023. Anna maintains a personal website at www.annagreenspan.com