2022 Banister Fletcher Fellowship programme led by John Bingham-Hall at the University of London Institute in Paris
In recent years, the mobilisation of ‘nature’ within urban planning and design has taken a shift. The language of green ‘spaces’ - parks, gardens and so on - has been replaced by that of green ‘infrastructures’, as an understanding of the importance of plant life to health, climate adaptation and food security has entered mainstream planning thinking. In the context of these intersecting crises, this project will reveal how changing imaginaries of urban natures stage new forms of publicness, and interrogate the more-than-human political endeavours they entail. Starting from the observation that “the casting of nonhuman life as infrastructure affirms, but also troubles, what constitutes infrastructure” (Barua 2021), this project links infrastructural critique to public sphere theory, design research and studies of urban ecology. It was developed as a Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship at the University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP).
As philosopher Emanuele Coccia (2018) argues, plants are not just ‘in’ space but construct reality itself, via their production of a shared, breathable atmosphere. How do their configurations, then, shape the way we experience ourselves and one another in the urban public realm? As I argue in the article Beyond Green Space, urban ecology itself represents a challenge to the concept of space as a framework for thinking about cities, as it connects global to local and operates via complex networks.
Beyond Green Space: Commons, Wilds And Infrastructures - Humanities, Arts and Society
Paris is an ideal territory to illustrate this shift. Whilst its grand, symmetrical gardens were conceived as a spectacle of the ordering (or indeed domination) of nature by ‘man’, its mayor Anne Hidalgo is now proposing to rip up symbolic public spaces and ‘rewild’ them as urban forests, acting as working infrastructures to fight the effects of excessive heat. This represents a transformation in the design and political mobilisation of urban natures, but also in ideas of the urban public. Tamed rows of topiary were produced as a passive stage for the bourgeois performance of the ‘promenade’, whereas re-wilding could be seen as a counterclaim for the political participation of non-human life on its own terms. Meanwhile, in London, productive ecologies like allotments and rural commons, with marginalised political histories, are seeing mainstream acceptance in new urban design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb3reGKt0rk
In recent years, ideas of nature in urban planning and design have expanded. The language of parks and public spaces is being eclipsed by that of urban commons, green infrastructures, and rewilding. These ecological forms are imagined as responses to environmental challenges – food security, heat reduction, biodiversity and so on. But each has wrapped up within it very different versions of social life, culture, encounter, both human and non-human.
Speakers:
The core of the research was focused around three walks in May and June 2022, taking place in both Paris and London, each (literally) exploring public atmospheres at three different scales. Each walk brought together scholars with artists and activists, equipping participants with both observational tools and frames, drawing on sonic and choreographic walking methods to open up cross-disciplinary conversations about the cultural and political implications of different configurations of urban ecology, and test experimental cartographies of connections between human and non-human cultures.
Follow the links for each walk to find the route map, watch films of research presentations, and the artistic and scholarly contributions.
Green Infrastructures and the Democratic Public
Wild Natures & Queer Counter-Publics
Communal Natures and the Commons
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1Pr5ovwY-sqixdqhx9LLzDmj3BjsmoFZK&usp=sharing
During the first phase of the research I undertook regular walks in Marseille, exploring landscapes and sites embodying the background readings to the research. The routes can be seen on the map on the left. Below are the short texts written in response to these and the reading I was doing at the same time.