{"id":28065,"date":"2018-04-05T20:09:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T00:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=28065"},"modified":"2018-04-05T20:12:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T00:12:07","slug":"cities-difference-part-ii-shifting-identities-diverse-communities-urban-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2018\/04\/05\/cities-difference-part-ii-shifting-identities-diverse-communities-urban-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Cities of Difference, Part II: Shifting Identities, Diverse Communities and Urban Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was adapted from an article by Julian Agyeman<\/em> [i]<\/a>.

A professional ecologist\u2019s view of \u201cecology\u201d is not necessarily the same as a regular inhabitant of the city. This is especially true in cities full of difference, and the various points of view that result from such difference. What does this mean for urban planning?<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

Cities of difference are places where we are \u201cin the presence of otherness\u201d, as Sennett puts it\u2014namely, our increasingly different, diverse, and culturally heterogeneous urban areas.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0Difference is, in my opinion, a more expansive and useful concept than diversity, which has become virtually synonymous, in the United States at least, with race\/ethnicity, and\/or gender. Sandercock points out that \u201cDifference . . . takes many forms. It acknowledges that population groups, differentiated by criteria of age, gender, class, dis\/ability, ethnicity, sexual preference, culture, and religion, have different claims on the city for a full life and, in particular, on the built environment\u201d.[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

In the first part of this series of difference and nature in cities, we looked specifically at gender. This current part focuses on the complexity and dynamism of difference\u2014how the multitude of realities in which people re\/create identities, meanings, and values produce, perceive, and experience urban nature differently. No one person can be reduced to one single or fixed cultural or other form of identity, and all, as Sandercock says, \u201chave different claims on the city\u201d and a Right to the City, including its nature(s). People in increasingly diverse urban communities construct and understand urban nature in different ways for varying reasons.<\/p>\n

This article uses four vignettes\u2014two from the UK and two from the USA\u2014to show how nature in cities is perceived in different ways.<\/p>\n

Vignette 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the early 1980s, the parks department of the city of Bristol in southwest England was persuaded by the local wildlife trust to develop wildflower mead\u00adows in city parks, which like most parks were domi\u00adnated by hard-wearing, close-mown, multipurpose ryegrass. The parks department obliged, applying an appropriate management regimen and, within a few seasons, had beautiful native wildflower swards re\u00adplete with a rich fauna towering above the ryegrass. The wildlife trust and most of the public liked it, ex\u00adcept for the local Asian and African Caribbean popula\u00adtion, who refused to go near the long grass.<\/p>\n

Why was this? It was because of a residual fear of snakes in long grass. An environmentally and ecologically beneficial management regime had negative effects on the cul\u00adtural diversity of the park. This dilemma is supported by Low, Taplin, and Scheld\u2019s point that: \u201cIn this new century, we are facing a different kind of threat to pub\u00adlic space\u2014not one of disuse, but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and re\u00adduce social and cultural diversity\u201d.[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Wildflower meadow outside the Cathedral on College Green, Bristol, UK. Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk\/my-wild-city\/get-bristol-buzzing\/latest-news<\/span><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are many ways of looking at this issue. One is to say what if a member of the local wildlife trust or the park\u2019s management team was Asian or African Caribbean? Would alarm bells have been raised? Anoth\u00ader way is to say that there is only one venomous snake in the United Kingdom, the Adder (Vipera berus<\/em>), and its venom is rarely life-threatening (but this misses the point that snakes are deeply imbued with mythologi\u00adcal traits). Another way is to say that perhaps there is no \u201canswer\u201d, but that someone should have thought to ask the right questions.<\/p>\n

Vignette 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"
Mediterranean and Islamic Gardens, Chumleigh Gardens, Burgess Park. Source: London Parks and Garden Trust http:\/\/londongardenstrust.org\/photos\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the mid- to late 1980s, I was working as an environmental education adviser, first in a south, then in a north London borough. While some of the schools in these boroughs wanted advice on creating \u201cnature gardens\u201d using native species, which they had been told by ecologists were \u201cbetter\u201d for wildlife, oth\u00aders wanted advice on creating what I called \u201cmulticul\u00adtural\u201d or \u201cworld\u201d gardens in which teachers and par\u00adents were intentional in selecting plant species from the diverse countries of origin of pupils in the school. The London Borough of Southwark developed Chum\u00adleigh Multicultural Garden in Burgess Park and the London Borough of Lewisham produced a guide on plants for a multicultural garden.[v]<\/a><\/p>\n

These gardens were in effect autotopographies: cultural and community inscriptions on the cityscape that offered a statement of presence, of recognition, that both humans and nature(s) in cities are becoming increasingly different, diverse, and cosmopolitan, and are welcome.<\/p>\n

\"\"
English Garden, Chumleigh Gardens, Burgess Park. Source:\u00a0http:\/\/blog.lauranolte.com\/2017\/07\/chumleigh-gardens-burgess-park.html<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vignette 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a challenge to the clarion call from al\u00adternative food movement (AFM) advocates to \u201cbuy and grow local\u201d, Filipino immigrants in San Diego, California, see their food as local food. They cook it at home and eat it in local restaurants.[vi]<\/a>\u00a0This demonstra\u00adtion of \u201ctranslocalism\u201d, which is also in evidence when they cultivate their fruit and vegetable gardens in city neighborhoods, ruptures the dominant, geograph\u00adic notion of \u201clocal food\u201d and highlights the need for greater reflexivity within the AFM. Similarly, Mares and Pe\u00f1a use two predominantly Latino\/a urban community garden projects\u2014the now-defunct South Central Farm (SCF) in Los Angeles and Puget Sound Urban Farmers (now the Seattle Urban Farm Com\u00adpany)\u2014to analyze how food and farming can connect growers to local and extra-local landscapes, creating an \u201cautotopography\u201d that links their life experiences to a deep sense of place.[vii]<\/a>\u00a0In effect, they are writing their cultural stories on the land\u2014or cityscape. This is a type of cultural place-making through the growth and celebration of culturally appropriate foods. Mares and Pe\u00f1a report that one gardener at the SCF, a thirty-year-old Za\u00adpotec woman, described her involvement at the farm in the following way:<\/p>\n

\u201cI planted this garden because it is a little space like home. I grow the same plants that I had back in my gar\u00adden in Oaxaca. We can eat like we ate at home and this makes us feel like ourselves. It allows us to keep a part of who we are after coming to the United States\u201d<\/em>.[viii]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Former South Central Farm, Los Angeles, CA. Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.uncubemagazine.com\/blog\/12844525<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Stack House Apartments, Seattle Urban Farm Company. Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.seattleurbanfarmco.com\/projects\/#\/stack-house-apartments<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vignette 4<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lanfer and Taylor write about Latino\/a immigrants in Boston, Massachusetts, who transform public spaces into familiar landscapes found in their home countries. One group has adopted Herter Park on the Charles River in Boston\u2019s Allston-Brighton neighborhood because it reminds them of the river\u00adbanks and the willow trees they left behind in Gua\u00adtemala. Lanfer and Taylor quote one Guatemalan American as saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the reasons that that place . . . is so popular with us, Latinos, is because of the willows. Willows in Guatemala are very common. They grow beside rivers. People like Herter Park because it looks like home\u201d.[ix]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This construction of nature, typical of immigrant groups, can be characterized as nature as refuge.<\/p>\n

These vignettes are important because they prob\u00adlematize the dominant, often expert-imposed mono\u00adlithic notion of nature, as opposed to a more negoti\u00adated and constructed notion of natures. They illustrate two ends of a continuum containing many different constructions of nature and the related concept of \u201cthe local\u201d.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0if nature is quite literally in the eye of the be\u00adholder, how then is nature critical to a twenty-first-century urban ethic where we live in cities of difference\u2014in effect, intercultural city ecosystems?\u00a0Every culture has a re\u00adlation to nature in general, and urban nature specifi\u00adcally. Some want the solitude it can offer, some want the socialization; some want recreation, some want re\u00adlaxation; some want reflection, some want refuge.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, what is the role of municipal plan\u00adners, parks managers, urban and landscape designers, and others in catering to difference and diversity, to recognition and negotiation, to the intercultural city ecosystem\/new ecology, while still respecting the tra\u00additional ecology? Can they help us think about, design, and manage what I call \u201cculturally inclusive spaces\u201d\u2014spaces of encounter with different people\/natures?[x]<\/a>\u00a0Can such spaces be designed and constructed to have meaning and authenticity to the multiple publics that inhabit intercultural city ecosystems? There is a solid case to be made that the training and recruitment of such professionals should more fully reflect the make\u00adup of our cities of difference. This would help speed the production, quality, and maintenance of culturally inclusive spaces, and, critically, the embedding and ultimately the mainstreaming of culturally inclusive practice within those professions.<\/p>\n

Julian Agyeman<\/strong>
\nMedford<\/p>\n

Adapted by Laura Shillington<\/strong>
\nManagua \u00a0& Montr\u00e9al<\/p>\n

On The Nature of Cities<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

[i]<\/a>\u00a0This article was adapted from J. Agyeman, Entering Cosmopolis: Crossingover, Hybridity, Conciliation and the Intercultural City Ecosystem,\u00a0Minding Nature<\/em>, 7 (2014): 20-26. The original can be found here: https:\/\/www.humansandnature.org\/entering-cosmopolis-crossingover-hybridity-conciliation-and-the-intercultural-city-ecosystem-by-julian-agyeman<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0R. Fincher and J. Jacobs,\u00a0Cities of Difference<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Guilford Press, 1998); R. Sennett,\u00a0The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Knopf, 1990), 123.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a>\u00a0. L. Sandercock, \u201cWhen Strangers Become Neighbors: Managing Cities of Difference,\u201d\u00a0Journal of Planning Theory and Practice<\/em>\u00a01, no. 1 (2000): 13-20.<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a>\u00a0S. Low, D. Taplin, and S. Scheld,\u00a0Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity<\/em>\u00a0(Austin: University of Texas, 2005), 1.<\/p>\n

[v]<\/a>\u00a0See London Borough of Southwark,\u00a0Chumleigh Gardens: The Multicultural Gardens\u00a0<\/em>in Burgess Park<\/em>\u00a0(London: London Borough of Southwark, 1995); and M. Prime,\u00a0Plants for a Multicultural Garden<\/em>\u00a0(London: London Borough of Lewisham, 1993).<\/p>\n

[vi]<\/a>\u00a0J.M. Valiente-Neighbours, \u201cMobility, Embodiment, and Scales: Filipino Immigrant Perspectives on Local Food,\u201d\u00a0Agriculture and Human Values<\/em>\u00a029 (2012): 531-41.<\/p>\n

[vii]<\/a>\u00a0T. Mares and D. Pe\u00f1a, \u201cEnvironmental and Food Justice: Toward Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems,\u201d in\u00a0Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability<\/em>, ed. A. Alkon and J. Agyeman (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2011), 197-219.<\/p>\n

[viii]<\/a>\u00a0Ibid., 209.<\/p>\n

[ix]<\/a>\u00a0A. Lanfer and M. Taylor,\u00a0Immigrant Engagement in Public Open Space: Strategies for New Boston<\/em>\u00a0(Boston, MA: Barr Foundation, 2005), 5.<\/p>\n

[x]<\/a>\u00a0J. Agyeman,\u00a0Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice<\/em>\u00a0(London: Zed Books, 2013).<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Laura Shillington<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Laura Shillington<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Laura Shillington is faculty in the Department of Geoscience and the Social Science Methods Programme at John Abbott College (Montr\u00e9al). She is also a Research Associate at the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre, Concordia University (Montr\u00e9al). <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was adapted from an article by Julian Agyeman [i]. Cities of difference are places where we are \u201cin the presence of otherness\u201d, as Sennett puts it\u2014namely, our increasingly different, diverse, and culturally heterogeneous urban areas.[ii]\u00a0Difference is, in my opinion, a more expansive and useful concept than diversity, which has become virtually synonymous, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":689,"featured_media":28078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,298,299],"tags":[63,43,401,73,49,601,28,34,38,392,84,66,88,65,90,404,29],"coauthors":[924,397],"class_list":["post-28065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-essay-people-and-communitites","category-essay-place-and-design","tag-agriculture","tag-awareness","tag-biodiversity","tag-biophilia","tag-communities","tag-culture","tag-design","tag-experiencing-nature","tag-gardens","tag-justice","tag-livability","tag-parks","tag-planning","tag-policy","tag-sustainability","tag-value","tag-what-is-urban-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/689"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28065"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}