Cities often appear to evolve organically, like living organisms, sprawling across hillsides or coastlines wherever space or need arises. The reality of how urban landscapes are defined is far more complex, built in layers constantly reshaped over time by decisions that are never neutral. Beneath the visible city lie hidden histories: erased neighbourhoods, dispossessed peoples, and traces of resistance. These are the forgotten layers of planning, where memory and struggle persist despite efforts to overwrite them. To read a city critically is to peel back these layers and expose the ideologies embedded in its streets, walls, and skylines.

The foundations of many cities lie in the spatial logics of imposed grids and infrastructures that reflect the imperial imagination of turning territory into a governable landscape. Remapping land to reflect ideologies is a foundational tool of colonial urbanism where systematically towns were built over or adjacent to indigenous settlements using the same template. An example of their legacy is seen through the striking similarity in structures between the cities of Lima, Mexico City, Manila and Buenos Aires. Years prior, I contemplated the imposing of a template over an unseen landscape while walking up the incline of the world’s steepest residential street in Dunedin, New Zealand. Its extreme gradient being a direct result of colonial-era town planning, in this case designed to mirror Edinburgh in Scotland, by applying a rigid grid pattern to a hilly landscape without any regard for the actual terrain.

Town planning and mapping are not neutral activities. They have been used and continue to be used as instruments of erasure, replacement and control over land, populations and infrastructure.

Israeli architect Eyal Weizman suggests that the built environment is “politics in spatial form”; he refers to the context of Israel’s colonial occupation, where mapping, roads and settlements serve as instruments of power. Built environments can become a material expression of ideologies through the inclusion of architecture and infrastructure that is positioned as superior. The social and racial segregation and reordering of everyday life are embedded in the names of streets, the placement of town squares, the neighbourhoods of minority groups and the inclusion or absence of public urban spaces.

Green spaces, often framed as public goods, are also entangled in these dynamics, as public spaces are not neutral nor universally accessible. Idealising parks and squares as open democratic spaces overlooks the reality of public space not as a given but as something that is fought for. Urban greening initiatives are seen as symbols of progress and modernity, while their development can unintentionally contribute to social displacement and reinforce the very inequalities they claim to alleviate. Green gentrification highlights the complex social trade-offs embedded in urban sustainability efforts, where the development of parks and green spaces increases property values and pushes out long-time residents.

As I cross over the motorway that borders the neighbourhood I live in, I imagine this space as the proposed park the city council has been debating. Driven by speculation, property prices have soared beyond reach, and I fear that neither I nor many fellow renters will remain to witness eight traffic lanes transform into an urban space replete with stillness and calm. 

The commodification of nature in urban green spaces manifests in the privatisation, deregulation, and reshaping of them through neoliberal policies into spaces that prioritise profit over public good. The privatisation of parks and green spaces where companies manage these areas leads to the creation of exclusive spaces, commercialisation through festivals, events and restaurants, ultimately making them less accessible for the general public. Green spaces therefore become consumerised, shifting their original purpose from community spaces to branded environments that serve corporate goals.

I find myself re-evaluating one of my favorite green spaces, a lush vertical wall teeming with herbs, brassicas, and ferns, stretching four stories high. Though striking and seemingly public, it’s operated by the cultural arm of a financial institution. Despite its beauty, it is also an example of vertical greenwashing.

Green design operates not only as a spatial practice, but as a cultural and political one, shaping who belongs in the city and who is left to its margins.

Urban greenery may soothe the eye, but it can also obscure histories of displacement and extraction. A park filled with non-native tree species has a legacy of mirroring an empire, instead of foliage reflecting local cultural perspectives and contexts. 

While dominant narratives of public urban spaces are being challenged through collective efforts to reclaim space, protests, and the renaming of streets, statues, and parks, these actions also highlight the colonial amnesia embedded in our urban environments. Bringing place-based emotions and heritage into the conversation reminds us of the many layers woven into the fabric of our built environments.

Words by Anna Borrie