“Reinhabitation” and the Urban Ecology of Gary Snyder

In his ecological writing, Gary Snyder has been committed to exploring urban space as a natural place to reinhabit. By reexamining the value and significance of urban nature, Snyder explores the complex and intimate connection between the urban space where humans participate in social activities and the natural environment that surrounds them. Drawing upon some key insights of urban ecology, this paper examines Snyder’s ecological visions exhibited in his poems and essays, with a particular thematic emphasis on the ecological network and ecological practice. Snyder recognizes that the structure of urban space is an ecological network in motion and emphasizes that the key to urban ecological practice is to recognize the local wild “information and experience” (PW 39). This paper will explore how Snyder reclaims the urban space as an ecological space while discarding the old dichotomy of city and nature, as well as how he finally achieves “reinhabitation” through ecological practices.