i grew up in the bronx, (right next to the park that houses the small cottage that EAPoe rented when he lived in the bronx.
about half the park was paved over. the other half trees and straggly grass.
the area, (near Fordham Road and the Grand Councorse), was very urban. Fordham was a stop on Metro north, an express stop on 2 subways, the terminus for several bus lines.
i was also less than a mile (as the crow fly's) from the Bronx botanical gardens. i grew up in on the 5th floor of a 5 floor walk up. i could look out windows, and see a panarama of NY metro area (front windows gave a view of GW bridge to NJ, back windows let me see the East river bridges, (Whitestone & Throgg's Neck)
but i had primal forest too, and water falls, and the bronx zoo, for much of my childhood was total free. i had green houses, and orchids, and rock gardens. city scapes often a wonderful environment. (i spent the first earth day at Br. Botanical gardens helping to do a spring clean up)
my kids grew up in a more suburban area, (still inside NYC) and we assisted researchers from Woods Hole by collecting, they tagged and took blood samples from horse shoe crabs.) we pick wild strawberrys, raspberries and mullberries, in a city parks. we kept a compost pile, and i always could find the egg mass of the prey mantis, and we would watch them emerge.
every environment has riches, there is beauty in trees, but also in bridges and wonder works of engineering. grapho, you are right, even small things, can make a very big difference. the bronx botanical gardens has a scant 40 acres or so of ancient hemlocks, (virgin forest) but it was forest enough.
