Abstract
This paper addresses three interventions into urban green spaces—a wetland in Cape Town, a post-industrial site in New York, and a park outside London. Through their different contexts, they help to grasp a wider phenomenon: the protection of urban nature through the development of protective narratives. We analyze these interventions as examples of “value articulation”, which we view as a relational and sociomaterial practice that requires the enrolment of people, plants, and things that together perform, spread, and deploy stories about why given places need protection. For each case study, we also highlight the moments when narrative practices move beyond mere protection and start to change the very context in which they were developed. We refer to these as projective narratives, emphasizing how novel values and uses are projected onto these spaces, opening them up for reworking. Our analyses of these successful attempts to protect land demonstrate how values emerge as part of inclusive, yet specific, narratives that mobilize and broaden support and constituencies. By constructing spatial linkages, such narratives embed places in wider geographical ‘wholes’ and we observe how the physical landscape itself becomes an active narrative element. In contrast to rationalist and external frameworks for analyzing values in relation to urban natures (e.g., ecosystem services), our ‘bottom-up’ mode situates urban nature in specific contexts, helping us to profoundly rethink planning and practice in order to (i) challenge expert categories and city/nature dichotomies; (ii) provide vernacular ways of knowing/understanding; and (iii) rethink the role of urban designers.
Highlights
Urban green space planning and nature conservation has in Western societies been dominated by expert-driven approaches
Kaika, & Swyngedouw, 2006); natural resource management and urban ecology (e.g., Niemelä et al, 2011; Pickett et al, 2008); and planning and urban design (e.g., Mostafavi & Doherty, 2010; Reed & Lister, 2014; Waldheim, 2006). Even across such different ideological departure points as systems ecology and critical geography there is a general agreement that urban nature is partcultural and part-biophysical; the former field emphasizing cities as ecosystems or “social-ecological systems” (e.g. Barthel et al, 2013; Elmqvist et al, 2004; Erixon, Borgström, & Andersson, 2014; Pickett et al, 2008); the latter speaking of “socionatures” and “cyborgs” to emphasize the impurity of nature produced by capitalist accumulation processes (Gandy, 2005; Swyngedouw, 1996; both drawing on Haraway, 1991)
We will pull out crosscutting themes and contribute towards wider understanding by focusing on how narrative practices provide an alternative language to challenge society/nature and city/nature dichotomies; how protective narratives shift to projective narratives; and the role of urban design professions
Summary
Urban green space planning and nature conservation has in Western societies been dominated by expert-driven approaches Heynen, Kaika, & Swyngedouw, 2006); natural resource management and urban ecology (e.g., Niemelä et al, 2011; Pickett et al, 2008); and planning and urban design (e.g., Mostafavi & Doherty, 2010; Reed & Lister, 2014; Waldheim, 2006). Even across such different ideological departure points as systems ecology and critical geography there is a general agreement that urban nature is partcultural and part-biophysical; the former field emphasizing cities as ecosystems or “social-ecological systems” Even across such different ideological departure points as systems ecology and critical geography there is a general agreement that urban nature is partcultural and part-biophysical; the former field emphasizing cities as ecosystems or “social-ecological systems” (e.g. Barthel et al, 2013; Elmqvist et al, 2004; Erixon, Borgström, & Andersson, 2014; Pickett et al, 2008); the latter speaking of “socionatures” and “cyborgs” to emphasize the impurity of nature produced by capitalist accumulation processes (Gandy, 2005; Swyngedouw, 1996; both drawing on Haraway, 1991)
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