Seeing the trees for the (urban) forest: more-than-human geographies and urban greening

ABSTRACT

Urban spaces have long been places to think through human relationships with nature. The recent shift in thinking from urban green space as outcome to urban greening as a process provides an opportunity to consider more explicitly how we engage with more-than-human worlds in urban spaces, in more differentiated ways, and for what ends. In this paper we contribute to growing interest in improved urban sustainability and well-being by bringing human geography perspectives on more-than-human worlds into conversation with the literature on urban greening. Drawing on key examples oriented around urban trees, we consider two main themes: sensibilities and belonging. We argue for an understanding of urban places as collective achievements that not only involve knowing and living with diverse humans and non-humans but also involve the re/making of sensibilities and belongings. Through this paper, we aim to open dialogue about how more-than-human geographies might help us to differently understand urban trees, contemporary urban greening, and people–plant relations.     

Urban greening,property and more-than-human commoning

ABSTRACT

Urban greening is about bringing vegetation into cities in ways that produce flourishing urban ecologies whilst also making cities more liveable for human inhabitants. We focus here on greening that is done through the maintenance or establishment of gardens, parks, urban forests and informal spaces. We argue that in contexts with established property law systems, such as Australia, making urban ecologies through greening is shaped heavily by relations of property tied to land. This includes constraining the extent to which urban greening can contribute to socio-ecologically just cities. We suggest that progressing greening that is more attentive to the geographies and temporalities of more-than-human life requires us to trouble the hold of property over greening. To do this we explore the possibilities opened up by the lens of urban commons/commoning. We engage with the emerging concept of more-than-human commoning as a way of attuning urban greening to nonhuman agency and affordances. We also grapple with the risk of obscuring or concealing difference between humans in the way commoning makes room for more-than-humans, especially in the context of settler-colonialism. We conclude by calling for a more overt politics of urban greening that encompasses diverse human and more-than-human experiences of the city.     

Ambivalence in the Woods: Baltimore Resident Perceptions of Local Forest Patches

Abstract

Wild urban forests may elicit positive and negative emotions, both at a community level and within an individual. This paper examines resident perceptions and use of local forest patches in Baltimore, Maryland across four case study neighborhoods selected for differences in homeownership and forest patch management. Semi-structured interview data reveal residents’ strongly ambivalent attitudes toward urban wilderness across all study sites with only nuanced differences in perceptions based on homeownership and management regime. Baltimore residents living adjacent to forest patches were found to experience some of the restorative benefits associated with immersion in wild nature, even when they do not actually enter the woods. Positive experiences were balanced by negative emotions resulting from the perception that urban wilderness is chaotic and unpredictable. These ambivalent feelings may influence the benefits derived from these urban green spaces, as well as local residents’ desires for their future structure and function as social-ecological spaces.     

Towards good governance of urban greening: insights from four initiatives in Melbourne,Australia

ABSTRACT

Urban greening can enhance sustainability and liveability, through conserving biodiversity, mitigating urban heat and enhancing people’s health and wellbeing. However, urban greening is complex, as it occurs in unique ecological settings, with social, cultural and economic factors shaping the forms it takes. This raises questions about the governance of urban greening, including what counts as ‘good governance’. In this paper, we first outline principles of good governance drawn from the natural resource management context. We then present four urban greening initiatives from Melbourne Australia representing different scales, land tenures and organising structures. Following this, we analyse how governance of the four initiatives addresses good governance principles. Our analysis shows that there are diverse ways in which urban greening can be practiced and governed. The importance of more ‘informal’ initiatives should not be discounted relative to formalised initiatives, as a spectrum of approaches can be seen as strength. Further, in determining what constitutes good governance, the standards against which initiatives are assessed should be tailored to their specific circumstances, and consider impacts to the environment itself. These findings point to good urban greening governance being both situated and principled.     

Urban re-generations: afterword to special issue on the politics of urban greening in Australian cities

ABSTRACT

‘Urban re-generations' is written as an afterword to the special issue of Australian Geographer on ‘The Politics of Urban Greening in Australian Cities'. The collection prompts a deep questioning of reparative and regenerative work associated with greening, green spaces and green infrastructures. The climate-driven 2019-2020 bushfire crisis and COVID-19 have amplified the visibility of the more-than-human connectivity of our cities and the deep underlying structures of social and environmental inequity underpinning a variety of urban green spaces and agendas. Inspired by the articles in this special issue, the afterword explores how we might call back the grammars and practices of regeneration from their service to the neo-liberal, settler-colonial city and instead nurture reparative de-colonial practices that aid in the collaborative work of re-composing, becoming into better relation with, and working in modes of situated historical and cultural difference, with green and just cities.     

The green governmentality in an Indonesian metropolis

The current interest in the ‘clean and green’ that has become part of urban governmentality in Indonesia's metropolis is illustrative of the practice of becoming a citizen of Jakarta today. The ongoing demand to reclaim and produce green space, however, entails the displacement of those who are considered to be blocking the success of urban green initiatives. This paper points to ways in which contemporary forms of power are built on the premise that a green environment requires individuals to reconfigure themselves to gain social legitimacy. It shows how the greening of Jakarta can be understood as part of the evolving technology of governance associated with postauthoritarian Indonesia.     

The politics of urban greening: an introduction

ABSTRACT

Global enthusiasm for nature in cities is at high point. Australia is no exception, where there is a great deal of policy momentum and research interest in urban greening. The challenges presented by increasing urban heat associated with climate change, greater awareness of the potential social, physical and psychological benefits of exposure to ecologies for people, and recognition of cities as vital habitats for more-than-humans are central tenants of urban greening enthusiasm. Yet, there is a need for a more critical lens on urban greening in Australia. One that interrogates the purported normative, apolitical and instrumental benefits of greening, to position greening within a trajectory of the power relations, settler-colonialism, socio-ecological processes and capital flows that constitute the urban. This editorial introducing the special issue on urban greening politics explores how different conceptions of urban natures – green space, urban forestry and green infrastructure – have been put to work, before outlining the potential of ‘urban greening’ as the terminology for a more politically sensitive and process-orientated framing. The editorial concludes with a summary of the contributions to the special issue.     

The Reinvention of Public Green Space

Much attention has been paid to preserving land at the urban fringe, and to the negative effects of sprawl and its costs. There is increasing recognition that enhancing green, public open spaces in cities provides a strategy to make those cities more sustainable, more livable, and more equitable. This involves a new approach to public spaces that integrates infrastructure needs, takes equity into account, and reexamines the range of uses public spaces offer. We consider the potential for urban greening through a case study in the dense inner core of Los Angeles that probed local resident attitudes and values toward a more inclusive strategy, and that measured the potential value of nature's services in the urban fabric using a GIS program.     

杭州城市休闲绿地可达性分析

基于GIS空间分析技术, 运用最小距离法和基于路网的行进成本分析法, 对不同尺度的杭州城市休闲绿地空间可达性进行定量测度。研究结果表明:① 杭州城市休闲绿地的平均可达时间为3.8 min, 92.11%的居民可在10 min 内到达一处休闲绿地;可达性最差(可达时间30~50 min)的居民区分布在主城区的边缘地带。② 风景区类休闲绿地的可达时间为20.33 min, 可达性最好的是西湖风景区绿地和西溪湿地风景区绿地。③ 各乡镇街道到风景区绿地的可达性呈现出以西湖为中心的不严格的圈层结构, 距离西湖风景区越远, 可达性越差。最后探讨了杭州城市休闲绿地可达性的差异, 以期为城市休闲绿地研究提供新思路, 为杭州城市休闲绿地的空间格局优化提供科学参考。     

广州河涌的自然社会构建与城市记忆

基于网络文本、访谈和照片评定等数据,本文采用NVivo分析方法对广州河涌案例展开分析,讨论了城市自然的社会建构与城市记忆之间的互动机制。研究发现,城市自然资源的功能随着社会经济条件变化而变化,并通过人的实践与社会系统彼此渗透、共同演化。具体来讲,以广州河涌为例,本文指出河涌的社会建构很大程度上反映了城市职能和物质形态的演变,反映了物质的利用方式及其与城市文化之间的关系;此外,城市居民与河涌的互动是文化生产的一种方式,在这个过程中,河涌是地方文化的物质承载者,也是维系地方感的重要物质载体;最后,河涌是城市居民产生记忆及其身体实践的重要物质场域,通过此类物理的沉淀,城市记忆才得以传承和保存下去。研究立足于物质地理学视角,强调了自然资源的社会建构过程,重新审视了人类与自然资源的互动关系及过程,进而反思城市发展与自然之间的处理方式,从实证角度回应了文化地理学从“唯物主义”到“文化表征”再回到“重返物质主义”这个轮回对“物质”和“文化”这两个核心概念的审视。从现实意义来讲,本文讨论了城市居民与城市自然之间的互动,为营造健康城市以及为城市再生产的发展思路提供了一定的参考价值。     

Green infrastructure,green space,and sustainable urbanism: geography’s important role

ABSTRACT

This paper is a broad review of green infrastructure theory and practice relative to urban sustainability and the space for geographers in these discussions. We use examples from various urban sustainability plans to highlight ways in which green infrastructure is being conceptualized and implemented. We explore how geography contributes research on green infrastructure as well as the emerging practices as seen within sustainability plans. We identify four areas in which geographers can influence both green infrastructure theory and practice: 1) scale; 2) mapping distribution; 3) sensitivity to place and locale; and 4) equity and access. We conclude that in these areas geographers have tremendous opportunity contribute more deliberately to sustainable urbanism.     

应对气候变化的城市规划实施效应评估研究

伴随气候变化与快速城市化,超大城市与城市群高温、暴雨、雾霾极端灾害事件频繁,生态环境问题愈加突出。应对气候变化的城市规划是缓解与适应极端事件的重要手段,它通过优化土地利用、空间结构、道路交通和生态绿化,减缓气候变化与极端事件影响。论文总结了城市规划实施对气候与环境的影响机制,及其实施效应的评估方法,由此将应对气候变化的城市规划问题归结为极端事件指标、经济可行性、区域适用性等多被控变量、多目标、多约束最优化问题的求解。为此亟需基于气候环境与社会经济的协同作用,开展超大城市和城市群的气候变化影响和适应研究,改进应对气候变化城市规划实施效应的评估手段,构建包含城市规划实施效应的区域气候模式系统和多尺度综合评估体系,以实现气候环境最优及社会经济代价最小的绿色智慧韧性发展策略。     

Visionary Politics: Technologies of Government in the Capital of Innovation

ABSTRACT

Taking up experiments in “civic innovation” as windows into the making of new urban worlds, I attempt in this essay to map out the parameters of a novel framework for municipal rule and account for the conditions underlying its ascendance in San Francisco, CA. I explore how productions of urban space and nature today serve as the means and objects of an emerging mode of government premised on yoking all forms of urban activity to the dictates of innovation. When proponents of civic innovation pursue particular forms of intervention in the built environment to constitute urban subjects as human capital, they imbibe, reproduce, and enact normative notions about the nature of the city as a problem to manage. Though the project of civic innovation is neither complete nor inevitable, the political vision animating it entails the subsumption of urban life as such within a rubric of decision making modeled on the market.     

Imagining the Dirty Green City

ABSTRACT

The green city is being elevated to the status of a self-evident good in the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A large literature documents the linked environmental, economic and well-being benefits associated with vegetating urban systems to maximise the ecosystem function. Contemporary urban greening seeks to challenge attempts to expel nature from the city in a quest for order and control. However, by imagining nature as a new mode of urban purification, much effort in the name of the green city inverts and reproduces dualistic understandings of natural and built space. In response, we disrupt the normative dialectics of purity and dirt that sustain this dualism to expose the untidy but fertile ground of the green city. We draw together Ash Amin’s four registers of the Good City – relatedness, rights, repair and re-enchantment – with the artworks of the Australian visual ecologist Aviva Reed. Our work seeks to enrich the practice of more-than-human urbanism through ‘dirt thinking’ by imagining the transformative possibilities in, of and for the dirty green city.     

Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

ABSTRACT

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, frequently viewing resource extraction and development through the urban metabolism lens. The political ecology of exurbia, or, perhaps, an exurban political ecology (ExPE), examines the symbolic role nature and the rural have played in conservation and development efforts that produce social, economic, and environmental conflicts. While UPE approaches tend to privilege macroscale dynamics, ExPE emphasizes the role of landowners, managers, and other actors in struggles over the production of exurban space, including through decision-making institutions and within the context of broader political economic forces. Three case studies illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, demonstrating the benefits for and giving suggestions on how to integrate their insights into urban sustainability research. Integrated political ecology approaches demonstrate how political-economic processes at a variety of scales produce diverse local sustainability responses.     

Political Ecologies of Gentrification

This article explores the possibilities for a political ecology of gentrification. Gentrification research, while firmly rooted in materialist social science, has not yet broadened its interests to consider ecological aspects of, or the role in gentrification of, discourses, social movements, and state policies of the environment. Understanding the political ecologies of gentrification involves recognizing the ways in which material relations and uneven resource consumption, concepts of nature, and the politics of urban environmental management affect gentrification processes. By synthesizing diverse literatures in urban studies, political ecology, urban environmental governance, consumption studies, and gentrification, this study argues that Vancouver, British Columbia represents a well-developed urban crucible for the new political ecologies of gentrification in North America. New developments in Vancouver increasingly contribute to gentrification using languages of sustainability and green consumption in a process of ecological gentrification.     

Town dwellers in their networks: urban-rural mobility and household strategies in Cameroon

Abstract

Urban-rural interactions are important features of spatial dynamics in Africa that have been affected by recent economic, social and cultural transformations. The attention of academics and policy-makers has concentrated on the impact of such mobility on rural actors and economies. Our objective is to consider the point of view of urban households and to analyse how they manage to develop and use their “rural connections”. The paper is based on in-depth qualitative fieldwork conducted in Cameroon, in Douala and Bafoussam. It presents an analysis of the configurations of urban resident mobility to rural regions. By mapping mobility we show the role of linkages with rural areas in urban household strategies. We also illustrate how a major city and a fast-growing secondary one differ in their connections with rural areas. The paper addresses what is one of the recurrent questions in the literature: will urban-rural linkages change in the long-term as the trend towards urbanization intensifies. Urban-rural mobility remains crucial, contributes to creating complex and dynamic networks. Collective connections are reaffirming the importance of the village and the region of origin. Mobility is a key element for many urban households in developing their urban position and strategies.     

全球化背景下基于宗教地理的西方城市空间研究进展

全球化语境主导的城市研究中,多样和异质的宗教既是文化流动的重要构成,也是表征移民身份和理解其日常行为实践的重要维度。论文回顾了近30 a来宗教地理视角下对于西方城市空间研究的主要成果,从宗教空间和宗教信仰群体的行为实践2个方面梳理宗教嵌入城市空间的主要方式、过程及其对城市空间的影响,总结出了以下4个方面的主要研究内容：① 多种宗教场所在城市中不断涌现,其空间特征发生多样化变迁;② 功能多样的宗教公共服务设施在公共空间中的作用日趋重要;③ 宗教信仰群体的居住社区显现出明显的空间特征;④宗教信仰群体通过具体的行为表征身份和认同。此外,多元文化共存的语境下的宗教更被视为引发空间争议的新来源,成为分析城市社会关系的重要依据。学者们认为在多元文化主义的西方社会,异质宗教的本地嵌入过程使原本“隐匿的”宗教场所逐渐浮现成为城市中“可见的”空间。这种异质宗教在城市中的视觉表征不仅改变了原有的城市空间秩序,也对社会关系提出新的挑战,成为了引发广泛争议的新来源。然而, 国内人文地理学研究目前对上述话题鲜有涉及,期望本文所提供的西方研究进展对社会文化视角下理解中国城市全球化进程及其中的多元文化治理有所启示。     

The politics of greening unceded lands in the settler city

ABSTRACT

Urban greening is a buzz term in urban policy and research settings in Australia and elsewhere. In a context of settler colonial urbanism, like Australia, a first fact becomes clear: urban greening is always being practiced on unceded Indigenous lands. Recognising this requires some honest reckoning with how this latest urban policy response perpetuates dispossessory settler-colonial structures. In this paper, we listen to the place-based ontologies of the peoples and lands from where we write to inform understanding the city as an always already Indigenous place – a sovereign Aboriginal City. In so doing, the paper tries to practice a way of creating more truthful and response-able urban knowledge practices. We analyse three distinct areas of scholarly research that are present in the contemporary literature: urban greening and green infrastructure; urban political ecology; and more-than-human cities. When placed in relationship of learning with the sovereign Aboriginal City, our analysis finds that these scholarly domains of urban greening work to re-organise colonial power relations. The paper considers what work the practice and scholarship of ‘urban greening’ might need to do in order to become response-able and learn to learn with Indigenous sovereignties and ontologies.     

Patterns and dynamics of urban forests in relation to land use and development history in Guangzhou City, China

Trees in cities display a varied pattern that is often moulded by a city's physical fabric and its evolution through time. The town plan expressed in spatial dimension as land use, and in temporal sense as development history, furnishes a framework to evaluate the intricate association between city and trees. Guangzhou city, the premier metropolis of south China, has been established for 2800 years, and has a long history of urban greening and heterogeneous land use. Five urban districts, which represent old, middle-aged and young stages of development and cover the bulk of the city's built-up zones, form the study area. Interpretation of aerial photographs is used as a basis to classify the urban forest into three types, and to design a sampling scheme for studying trees in urban parks, institutional grounds and roadsides. District history has bequeathed a plethora of configurations in terms of buildings, roads and land uses, accompanied by plantable spaces of dissimilar dimensions, geometry and quality. The districts display diverse tree attributes such as frequency, density and species diversity. Young districts, with lower density, more institutional uses and wider roads, present more opportunities for greening. Recent shifts in landscape fashion have introduced a significantly different treescape. A few exceptionally large parks and institutional sites play a pivotal role in the city's tree assets. Parks, roadsides and institutional forests have different tree-stocking rates and species assemblages. Implications for future planting and management of urban trees in different situations, and for the greening of other cities in China, and other developing countries, are explored.