Contribute a Chapter to a new Book about Urban Nature?

Dear all

The following invitation was forwarded to us a few days ago (Thank you Elizabeth Westaway)

"We invite academics, practitioners and artists to contribute an Expression of Interest for the edited book, ‘Urban Natures’. This collection seeks to bring together insights from diverse disciplines and sectors to explore frames of nature, issues of power, more-than-human methodologies, and theoretical reflections to advance possibilities for creating an ethical and convivial multi-species city. 

Are you interested? And would you like to co-write something? We'd need to submit an EOI by 8th January so we'd have to organise a zoom call in the next two weeks or so to discuss @Hannah Gardiner and I are definitely interested. Book blurb below:

Book blurb: 

The idea of a green, biodiverse and food productive city is one welcomed by many: images of people socialising in community gardens, oranges hanging from trees, and lemons to share in neighbourhood cook-ups, a return of butterflies, birds and bees, and green open spaces where people can picnic and play. Yet, as Robbins (2004: xvi) posits, what ‘is thestruggle hidden behind the quiet vista?’ 

Historically urban greening has taken many forms – many of which are undisciplined, informal, unregulated, hidden and ‘wild’ (Hinchcliffe et al. 2005). While some support patriotic and economic interests such as Britain’s Victory Garden Campaign, others blur ownership and control as people plant what they like, where they like, for whom they like, or alternatively, as urban spaces are ignored by humans to go ‘wild’, allowing nature to return to the fore. So too have green and edible plots represented spaces of resistance, occupied by those seeking alternative socio-economic, spatial and political realities.  

In recent years, there has been mainstream recognition that indeed green cities may be ‘good’. Support for both large-scale and distributed approaches to urban greening, biodiversity, and agriculture projects are underway. These are perceived as a means for instilling greater social cohesion, to reduce social isolation, to adapt to climate change, to improve infrastructure resilience, to provide refuges for species, and to improve human nutrition, benefiting a multispecies city overall. Concepts that accompany these frameworks include ‘nature-based solutions’, ‘natural capital’, and ‘ecosystem services’ while approaches speak of ‘co-creation’ and ‘co-design’. 

In this volume we explore the diversity, abundance, influence and impact of conventional and possible future framings of urban natures. We consider ‘natures’ as a construct that can be imagined in plural ways. We argue for a critical approach to examine urban greening histories, politics, discourses and ecologies. We ask: Is the diversity, agency and rights of nature adequately recognised in the city? What frames hide or hinder nonhumans’ visibility? How are people reconnecting to nature both practically and theoretically? What new methodologies strengthen relationships between people, nature and place? What political decisions occur behind the idyllic scenes of urban greening? How can we disrupt conventional frames towards realising an urban multispecies ethics? What are the unintended consequences of urban greening and who is responsible? ‘Urban Natures’ is inspired by events: Untaming the Urban (Canberra, 2016, 2018), The Nature of Cities Symposium (Paris, 2019), the Global Symposium of (Re)Connecting Urban Natures (Barcelona, 2020), and the POLLEN Biennial Conference (UK, 2020). 

We invite academics, practitioners and artists to contribute a chapter (5000 words) or artistic work (2-500 words) to 1 of the 3 themes below. 

Part 1: Making Visible Diverse Urban Natures 

The abundance of diverse natures often either goes largely unnoticed in the city or is managed, contained, restrained and even vilified through a series of regulatory, conceptual and infrastructural devices (Philo 1995; Philo and Wilbert 2000; Brinkley and Vitiello 2014). There is increasing demand for recognition that ‘untamed’ natures exist, can add value, and have a right to the city. Indeed, concepts of the ‘more-than-human' and the ‘multispecies’ city seek to reimagine cities as ‘more-than-human' places. Cities continue to change with increasing pressures – such as climate change, consumption, and densification – where animal neighbours are active in catalysing new relationships, needs and conflicts (Schilthuizen 2018). This section seeks to recognise the presence of diverse nonhumans that pervade and influence human-centric cities. By ‘making visible’ urban natures, this section exposes the reasons why nature remains ignored, demonised, and misunderstood. 

Part 2: (Re)Connecting Urban Natures 

This section explores the need to (re)connect and (re)centre ‘human-nature’ relations in cities to move beyond assumed or extant binaries maintained by westernised ontologies, thinking, writing and practice. The aim is to trace, know and re-forge more-than-human relations to guide different ways of urban living and governing. The need to (re)connect with ‘nature’ is becoming increasingly important in times of climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing precarity. Sensing, governing, caring, learning, and producing are some of the relations that can be made more visible in cities through their more-than-human connections. Indigenous scholarship and relational theories, such as theories of social practice, assemblage thinking, and actor-network theory, amongst others, offer valuable approaches in which to redress the imposed urban nature-culture divide and with which to rethink urban human-nature relations. Relational perspectives recognise the interconnections between actors (human and non-human) and the specific contexts they not only inhabit but create. A focus on human-nature relations acknowledge the flows, networks, influences and atmospheres made by urban environments. 

Part 3: (Re)Politicising Urban Natures 

This section takes its cue from urban political ecology to explore the politics of urban natures. Desiring to ground theoretical perspectives in the reality of ‘doing’ work, this section appeals to practitioners (but is not limited to) to describe attempts to bring nature back within urban centres. This section recognises that human/nature (re)integrations may catalyse human/nonhuman and human/human conflicts; while some of which may lead to new beginnings, others may not. Recognising a recent push for the implementation of concepts such as ecosystem services and nature-based solutions, this section interrogates where power lies and how relations of power and domination affect outcomes for creating convivial and just multispecies cities. 

To submit an EoI, please send by no later than 8 January 2021<span class="ydpcea5a822yiv6333902352ydpf499139exTextRun ydpcea5a822yiv6333902352ydpf499139exMacChromeBold ydpcea5a822yiv6333902352ydpf499139exSCXW61855038 ydpcea5a822yiv6333902352ydpf499139exBCX0" lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0p