In this short chapter I will introduce the perspective on the relationship between city and nature of three eminent thinkers in the field of environmental ethics: Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Arne Næss. From the presentation of some relevant elements of these three thinkers, some common lines between them will be illustrated, as well as general consequences with reference to the relationship between city and nature in philosophical environmentalism. These approaches will be illustrated on the basis of the places that the same three thinkers identified as essential and relevant to describe their ways of life, namely: the forest (Thoreau), the farm (Leopold) and the mountain (Næss). In conclusion, I argue that these three paradigms offer a poor conception of nature as something radically separate from human intervention and life.
