Urban foraging and the relational ecologies of belonging

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show the complex ways that urban foraging is underpinned by interconnected and multiple notions of identity, place, mobility, and agency for both humans and more-than-human interlocutors. The focus on relational ecologies of belonging illuminates important challenges for environmental management and public space planning in socioecologically diverse areas. Ultimately, these challenges reflect negotiated visions about how we organize ourselves and live together in cosmopolitan spaces such as cities.     

The ‘natures’ of planning: evolving conceptualizations of nature as expressed in urban planning theory and practice

Over the course of the past century, the idea of nature in the city has become increasingly intricate, evolving from being viewed as a refuge separate from the city to being understood as an essential component of dynamic urban systems. As such, attempts are currently being made to ‘re-nature’ cities to support local and global ecosystems, increase human well-being and address environmental issues such as climate change. While the literature has examined changing assumptions about society–nature relationships in planning, a dearth of knowledge exists relating to the changing conceptualization of nature’s relationship with the ‘city’ and how this has influenced how urban planning with respect to ‘nature’ has evolved in both theory ‘and’ practice. In this paper, we address this lacuna by tracing the history of the entwined relationship between nature and city planning. The conceptual framework developed from this review is subsequently employed as an analytical lens through which to investigate an illustrative case study of planning for nature in Dublin City, Ireland. The paper concludes by reflecting on how exploring the natures of planning provides scope for greater critical attention to what we do as planners when we seek to address the challenge of safeguarding nature through policy.     

Cultural planning in Ontario,Canada: arts policy or more?

Cultural planning is often explained as a strategic approach to urban cultural development; an approach that involves the ‘mapping’ and leveraging of a wide range of ‘cultural resources’ (arts, culture, and heritage). However, it is increasingly being questioned whether cultural planning is anything more than a fairly traditional arts policy with a different name. In particular, it has been observed in Australia that cultural plans usually fail to address more than arts sector concerns. The objective of this paper is to investigate whether this assessment applies to cultural planning practice in Ontario, the province at the forefront of the current ‘municipal cultural planning’ push in Canada. An examination of all cultural plans in Ontario’s mid‐size cities and interviews conducted with municipal staff members overseeing these initiatives shows that whereas several municipalities do follow an arts‐driven policy agenda, this is not the case with most mid‐size cities in the province.     

Wissenschaftsstädte – Zur Bedeutung des Topos der ‘kreativen Stadt’ für die Wissensproduktion

Science Cities: What the Concept of the Creative City Means for Knowledge Production. – The article aims to show that the relationship of science and the city has changed since the 1970s in the context of the knowledgeable society. While cities have principally been regarded as the typical space of science, of new ideas and innovation for centuries, since the 1960s and 1970s universities, research institutes as well as industrial research institutes have relocated to the periphery of cities. There, however, these sites of knowledge have been organized in an ‘urban mode’. That means that the concept of the city as a place of science and innovation has determined the architectural, spatial, and social organization of these sites on the periphery of cities. Certain features of the city have been copied, such as social infrastructures, places of communication, restaurants, cafes etc., while others have been left out – housing, cinema, theatre etc. An ‘urban mode of knowledge production’ in the sense of a very stylized model of the city has become a tool to enhance the production of scientific and technological knowledge. – The article exemplifies this by focusing on a case study, namely of the so‐called ‘Science City’ of the Siemens Company in Munich‐Neuperlach.     

‘It’s good but it’s not enough’: the relational geographies of social policy and youth mentoring interventions

Developing a critical analysis of the relational and situated practices of social policy, this paper draws on an evaluation of an early intervention project in Scotland (UK) where volunteer adult mentors supported young people ‘at risk’ of offending or antisocial behaviour. Contributing to ‘enlivened’ accounts of social practice, we explore how practices of mentoring developed through the co-presence of mentor and young person in the often transitory spaces of care which characterized the ‘diversionary activities’ approach in the project. We expand the notion of the relational in social practice beyond the care-recipient dyad to include wider networks of care (families, programme workers, social institutions). The paper explores how such social interventions might both be ‘good’ for the young people involved, and yet recognize critiques that more individualized models of intervention inevitably have limitations which make them ‘not enough’ to deal with structural inequalities and disadvantages. Acknowledging the impacts of neoliberalism, we argue critical attention to diverse situated relational practices points to the excessive nature of engagement in social policy and provides scope for transformative practice where young people’s geographies can be ‘upscaled’ to connect to the realms of social policy and practice.     

Placing Lefebvre

Geographers have extensively used Lefebvre's concept of space as a social product as a framework guiding urban and political critique. Lefebvre articulates social space through a primarily ontological engagement: he describes a complex and multi‐faceted object that exists in three simultaneous but distinct, co‐producing registers. The famous “triad” has become canonical within Anglophone geography, but the implications of this ontology for knowing or researching the object of “(social) space” often remain implicit. This paper suggests that recent scholarship on place‐making helps to address the latent epistemological challenges of operationalizing Lefebvre's triad. We trace linkages and gaps between Lefebvrian space and contemporary theorizations of relational place. Re‐examining social space through the lens of relational place highlights the potential for links between epistemologically diverse recent research and twenty years of Lefebvre‐inspired critique.     

Wounded cities: Memory-work and a place-based ethics of care

What would it mean to think about cities marked by past structures of violence and exclusion as wounded but also as environments that offer its residents care? My current book in progress, Wounded Cities, focuses on creative practices and politics in Bogotá, Cape Town, Berlin, Minneapolis, and Roanoke, cities in which settlement clearances have produced spaces so steeped in oppression that the geographies of displacement continue to structure urban social relations. Precisely in and through these ‘wounded cities’, residents, artists, educators, and activists reconsider the meanings of the ‘right to the city’ and to theorizing the city more broadly. Drawing upon ethnographic research and theories from postcolonial theory, social psychiatry, social ecology, feminist political theory, and art theory, I introduce my concepts of ‘wounded city’, ‘memory-work’, and a ‘place-based ethics of care’ to retheorize urban politics. Artists and residents in wounded cities encourage political forms of witnessing to respect those who have gone before, attend to past injustices that continue to haunt contemporary cities, and create experimental communities to imagine different urban futures. I argue that a deeper appreciation of the lived, place-based experiences of inhabitants of most cities would enable planners, policy makers, and urban theorists to consider more ethical and sustainable forms of urban change than those that continue to legitimate disciplinary forms of governmentality.     

Different typologies of ‘co-working spaces’ and the contemporary dynamics of local economic development in Rome

ABSTRACT

Co-working spaces of different types are emerging as new economic and social intermediaries in the contemporary process of urban regeneration and urban economic growth. Despite their relevance, literature still fails to explore their role in the surrounding local economy. This paper intends to fill that gap, providing empirical evidence from the city of Rome and suggesting new policy perspectives. First, a taxonomy of the different spaces is provided, assessing their role in the related socio-economic ecosystem. Three main typologies have been identified: CWS1 acting as a ‘social incubator’ with an educational role and closer links to local authorities, CWS2 or ‘start-up incubator’ providing economic and technical support to the entrepreneurs-to-be, CWS3 or ‘real estate incubator’ which are mainly a commercial product. Their locational patterns are then discussed, highlighting the planning implication of their settlement in some in-between urban peripheral areas of Rome. Finally, suggestions for the creation of public/private partnerships or ‘social leases’ are proposed, foreseeing the integration of such spaces in the local offer of amenities. The current research paves the way for further discussion on the renewal of cities’ governance tools, processes of urban regeneration and policies tackling the new urban entrepreneurial class.     

Environmentalism and Chinese urban order: The ecological control line policy in Shenzhen,China

There has been growing research interest in processes of selective ‘ecological gentrification’ and ‘environmental enclosure’ in cities where environmental controls are used to attract and retain more affluent residents and attract higher value economic development. This dimension of urban policy might be increasingly relevant to major Chinese cities, which are facing increasing competitive pressures to reorient modes of growth and development around ecological security and quality of life in social and environmental domains. In that context, we examine the development and implementation of the ‘basic ecological control line’ policy (BECL) in the fast-growing city of Shenzhen. In essence the BECL marks a rezoning of the city to enhance ecology and reverse previous environmental degradation, but in doing so it also does political work in reordering space in line with changing economic and social priorities. The question we ask is how the BECL might be read in the context of ecological gentrification and the wider political context of Chinese urban policy. Through detailed empirical investigation, we trace the political economy of the BECL and draw out the insights it offers on transitional urban economy-ecology relations in China and theories of urban environmentalism more generally.     

Gendering the city: the lived experience of transforming cities,urban cultures and spaces of belonging

Debates centred on ‘planetary urbanisation’ have raised questions over the adequacy of existing theories and epistemologies to explain the quantitative and qualitative transformations of cities. However, this theorization of the urban has met with opposition from post-colonial and feminist researchers amongst others. The comparative, empirical research in this collection, from Bolivia, India and Turkey, highlights that the city remains an important analytical and concrete framework, demarcated by contingency and cultural change through which residents must navigate. In particular we focus on the specificity of women’s lives and their capacity to problematise universalist theory, documenting their interrogation of simplistic binaries such as modern/traditional; their innovative approaches to informal settlement, housing and markets; their production of urban knowledge in order to negotiate the city; and processes and practices of mobility, experimentation, risk taking and aspiration that contest or support a myriad of urban imaginaries. Whilst not rejecting the need for theories that allow comparative perspectives on cities, our conclusions underscore the importance of recognising the multiple logics that generate city space and urban cultures, and the consequent need to parochialise the empirical basis of theories that claim to be global in outreach.     

Transition Urbanism and the Contested Politics of Ethical Place Making

Abstract: This paper explores the contested construction of more relational urban imaginaries within a movement that is simultaneously committed to enhanced systems of care for distant places/others, and intensified regimes of (re)localisation. Transition Culture initiatives explore ‘how to prepare for a carbon constrained, energy lean world’ and stem from a concern for a post peak‐oil global future. While the radical political openness of Transition Culture is in keeping with the vision of a more diverse polity imagined by advocates of relational space (for instance Amin, 2004), we argue that this openness is predicated upon an apolitical pragmatism that masks latent tensions between an environmentally benign localism and an ethics of care at‐a‐distance. If a transitional ethics of space occupies the uncertain ground between a relational and territorial geographical imagination, the Transition Culture movement provides a rich context within which to explore the ethical conundrums that stem from different tactics of place‐making.     

The Redevelopmental State: Governing Surplus Life and Land in the ‘Urban Age’

This article theorizes changing configurations of development governance emerging as states attempt to reconcile two contradictory pressures of global urbanization: dispossessing capitalist accumulation and demands for inclusive welfare. It introduces the ‘redevelopmental state’ as a dynamic spatio‐political framework for understanding how hegemonic rule is tenuously forged amid potentially volatile urban land struggles. Whereas Northern urban redevelopment theories are less attentive to post‐colonial urbanization processes and most developmental state scholarship has not focused on cities, the redevelopmental state offers an alternative conceptualization. It centres on how emerging regimes of territorial rule, development and political participation contour access to land and social benefits in Southern cities. Forged at key conjunctures of social pressure, these redevelopmental state spaces work through and beyond formal policies and institutions, and articulate with nationalist cultural politics of belonging and aspiration that foster consent for redevelopment while also legitimating exclusions, violence and dispossession. A case study of Mumbai illustrates redevelopmental state spaces that suture ethno‐religious nationalism, urbanized accumulation and populist welfare to unevenly distribute life capacities, garnering both cooperation and contestation. The article concludes by suggesting ways this spatially attuned framing can provide insights into the recent rise of ethno‐nationalism and authoritarian populism around the world.     

‘Green cities’ going greener? Local environmental policy-making and place branding in the ‘Greenest City in Europe’

A growing number of cities around the world have taken advantage of their green image of the purpose of place branding. In the research literature, it is suggested that these practices are motivated by place-based competition over financial and social capital, combined with more holistic motives of sustainable urban development. However, although an increasing number of green cities are engaged in place branding, few studies have researched the impact of place branding on environmental policy-making in a city, building up to the question: how is local environmental policy-making affected by green place branding? Addressing this issue, this paper critically investigates how the continuity of local environmental policy-making is affected by place-branding practices. To tackle this task, the paper firstly develops an analytical framework aiming to understand how green cities emerge and become famous based on their policy-making. Secondly, using that framework, this paper present an in-depth case study of a city branding itself as the ‘Greenest City in Europe’. Drawing on the growing body of work on green cities, this paper investigates the ‘understudied’ practice of using policy for the purpose of place branding as well as the impact of place branding ‘on the environment’.     

Becoming‐urban,becoming‐forest: a historical geography of urban forest projects in Australia

In recent times, local governments in Australia's major cities have embraced the idea that the trees in their streets, parks, and private gardens are parts of a collective urban forest that can be managed to address complex policy problems and create more liveable and sustainable cities. In light of this proposition, applied and critical urban forest researchers have typically focused on questions of quantity with regard to some of the factors that influence the density and distribution of urban tree cover. In a few cases, however, researchers have documented qualitative changes to the urban trees and woodlands that ostensibly constitute the urban forest, suggesting that it might be apprehended in a more mutable and dynamic way. Building on these accounts, we turn to Deleuze and Guattari's theory of becoming to read the urban forest in an active and malleable light, developing a historical geography of urban forestry in Australia that discerns three urban forest projects we call the ‘forest in a city’, the ‘city forest’, and a new but not yet realised, ‘city in a forest’. This finding renders the urban forest in more contingent, multiple, and mutable terms, leading us to finish the paper with a consideration of what seeing the urban forest as becoming means for future research. There, we suggest that Deleuze and Guattari's becoming directs us to different kinds of empirical, political, and ethical concerns that haven't received significant interest in the current literature. These include asking how, why, and with what consequences do particular styles of urban forestry emerge at particular space‐times. How is qualitative difference and urban forest multiplicity dealt with in practice, as well as focusing on affect and everyday embodied encounters between people and trees in different urban places.     

Planting Roots,Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

A contentious issue for Pacific Islanders, as well as researchers of the Pacific Islands, is ni-Vanuatu notions of ‘belonging’ to urban centres. Previous research in Vanuatu has shown that despite generations of people born and raised in Port Vila, the nation's capital, the urban centre is not generally perceived as a ‘place’ to which urban migrants can say they are from. For many, exclaiming that one is ‘from’ town is tantamount to admitting one has ‘no place’. This paper, based on fieldwork among a group of urban young men in Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, argues that in contrast to this, Freswota young men are generating a new locative identity. Their urban community rather than their parents' home island places is emerging as their primary location of belonging and the source of their sense of self, personhood and social identification. As such, these young men are the urban autochthones of the country.     

Heritage and resistance: irregularities,temporalities and cumulative impact

Urban social change and large-scale demolitions in the name of urban renewal often give rise to social conflicts. In this study, we investigate how resistances to this change emerge, coalesce and revolve, and how they use heritage to generate cumulative impact. The analyses of urban change and resistance in Gårda, a working-class neighbourhood of Gothenburg, Sweden, showed social conflicts to be instigated by their stigmatisation. Since the 1970s, Gårda has been called ‘out of place’ and marked for demolition. These demolitions were given legitimacy by the ‘housing quality standards’ that emerged in the 1930s as a means to reduce social inequalities. Over time these standards became an ‘intangible heritage’ employed in neoliberal urban policies. In response, five ‘Re-Gårda’ resistance strategies emerged to contest Gårda’s future. Resistance groups uncovered new values for Gårda, curating the vision with the slogan ‘have a coffee in Gårda’, and structuring the narrative ‘upgrade Gårda’. This challenged the dominant discourse ‘demolish’ or ‘conserve’ Gårda, and resulted in a government decision to protect Gårda as a ‘heritage site’. Investigating heritage and resistance in Gårda helped us reveal the potential of resistance in challenging the limits of authorised urban and heritage discourses, and in realising socially equal and just cities.     

二十一世纪西方“比较城市研究”进展与述评

进入21世纪以来,伴随南半球城市快速发展,以及全球尺度的区域和城市间经济、社会、政治联系的加强,全球城市化景观持续重构,展现出多元发展特征,对传统城市理论的解释范式提出了新挑战。在此背景下,西方的比较城市研究开始复兴,尤其关注南半球城市经验,探索城市理论与研究范式的转型与建构,并成为城市研究的热点。为了把握国际城市研究前沿,本文通过详细解读相关文献并结合CiteSpace引文空间分析,全面梳理了21世纪西方比较城市研究的最新进展,评述和解析比较城市研究的概念、发展进程、研究方向和理论成果。希望以此拓展国际视野,为中国城市理论建设提供参考和借鉴。     

The nation and the city: urban festivals and cultural mobilisation

This article attempts to map the relations between nation‐building processes in 19th‐century Europe and city cultures with their urban sociability. Three patterns are surveyed: [1] the modern‐national assimilation of medieval and early‐modern city cultures (sample case: Orléans and the French cult of Joan of Arc); [2] the modular replication across cities of urban festivals as cultural mobilizers (sample case: the spread of Floral Games festivals in Southern France and Northern Spain); [3] the reticulation of city‐based practices into a nationwide and nation‐building network (sample cases: the role of choral societies in German cultural nationalism; and its transnational knock‐on effect in the Baltic Provinces). By choosing the city as our social focus and placing it (or rather, its ideal‐type ‘Urbania’) alongside Gellner's ideal‐types of ‘Megalomania’ and ‘Ruritania’, we can avoid the finalism of studying regionalist and nationalist movements in the analytical framework of the post‐Versailles state system, and we gain a better understanding of the granulated, localized social basis of such movements and the translocally homogenizing role of culture.     

Relational complexity and the imaginative power of strategic spatial planning1

This paper explores the imaginations of place and spatial organization and of governance mobilized in recent experiences of strategic spatial planning for urban regions in Europe. Drawing on examples of such experiences, it examines how far these imaginations reflect a relational understanding of spatial dynamics and of governance processes. Spatial imaginations are assessed in terms of the nature of the spatial consciousness expressed in a strategy, the way the multiple scales of the social relations of a place are conceived, and the extent to which relational complexity is understood and reflected in a strategy. Governance imaginations are assessed in terms of how the relation between government and society is imagined, how the tensions between functional/sectoral and territorial principles of policy organization are addressed, and what assumptions are made about the nature and trajectory of transformative processes in governance dynamics. The paper concludes that signs of a recognition of the “relational complexity” of urban and regional dynamics and of territorially-focused governance processes can be found in these experiences, but a relational understanding is weakly-developed and often displaced by more traditional ways of seeing place/space and governance process. The paper concludes with some comments on the challenge of developing a stronger understanding of “relational complexity” within strategic spatial planning endeavours.     

Ontologies of place,placelessness, and movement: queer quests for identity and their impacts on contemporary geographic thought

The rise of and reactions to identity politics and practice have precipitated renewed debates about ontology in geography. Actor‐network theory (ANT) and ‘non‐representational theory’ have much to offer these discussions. Their de‐centered notions of ‘agency’, topological (rather than Cartesian) spatial imaginations, and what I term ‘humble’ ontologies offer a way out of the seeming paradox presented by various binarisms underlying contemporary social theory and philosophy, such as structure/agency, essentialism/constructionism, subject/object, and theory/practice. The value of these approaches is very apparent when considering a particularly politicized form of identity practice: queer identity quests. They lead to (among other things) ontologies of place, placelessness and movement that are new, fresh, enriching and potentially empowering.