Table Of ContentCities and Nature
Nicola Dempsey
Julian Dobson Editors
Naturally Challenged:
Contested Perceptions
and Practices in
Urban Green Spaces
Cities and Nature
Series Editors
Peter Newman, Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin University, Perth,
WA, Australia
Cheryl Desha, School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University,
Nathan, QLD, Australia
Alessandro Sanches-Pereira , Instituto 17, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
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Nicola Dempsey • Julian Dobson
Editors
Naturally Challenged:
Contested Perceptions and
Practices in Urban Green
Spaces
Editors
Nicola Dempsey Julian Dobson
Department of Landscape Architecture Department of Landscape Architecture
University of Sheffield University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK Sheffield, UK
ISSN 2520-8306 ISSN 2520-8314 (electronic)
Cities and Nature
ISBN 978-3-030-44479-2 ISBN 978-3-030-44480-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44480-8
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ND: For Mike Dempsey and for my driven
friend Neil Jaworkski (1976–2019).
JD: For PR and MH, fellow trespassers in
green spaces.
Foreword
Last year, I spent 2 days outside as part of a festival of urban nature, Feeling Good
in a Green City, to celebrate the end of a research project on urban nature and well-
being. Being outside for those 2 days reinforced aspects of difference and diversity
in one tiny part of a single city. The first day was cold and grey and people didn’t
want to linger. On the second day the sun shone, people smiled and were prepared
to stop and find out what was going on. We learned how the history of different
spaces, and different parts of the same space, influenced their use. We discovered
the range of bird and plant life that had made these spaces their home. We saw how
people related to the green spaces around them through music and poetry, through
walking, and through eating and socialising. And we saw how the way the space
was managed, and the facilities provided, changed people’s perceptions of whether
the space was good, bad or indifferent.
The festival was held to mark the conclusion of the NERC-funded IWUN –
Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature – project, which I had been leading for
3 years. What we saw on those 2 days reinforced my academic focus on the impor-
tance of urban nature for our health and wellbeing. So it is with great pleasure that
I am introducing this book. In the IWUN project we have worked with the editors
and some of the contributing authors to this book, as well as colleagues outside
academia. This work made us all question our perceptions of urban nature. It
required us to challenge our own perceptions of what nature is, to challenge what
we think we know about how it is perceived by others, and how those perceptions
change over time. Examining one city – Sheffield – in detail, allowed us to get to get
under the skin of the political context and how that affects the decisions that influ-
ence the landscapes throughout the city. Sheffield is well known for being on the
doorstep of the Peak District national park, but there is real diversity of urban nature
to be found within its urban footprint, shaped by its industrial heritage. River val-
leys, Victorian parks, nature reserves, pocket parks, community gardens and thou-
sands of individual allotment plots all provide habitats for biodiversity while its
citizens walk, garden, jog, play and hang out. The sheer breadth of human and non-
human users and uses in urban nature is staggering – this is just when we look at one
city in one country! When we extend our lens beyond one city, as this book does, the
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viii Foreword
myriad of experiences, perceptions and interpretations in and of urban nature con-
tinues to excite and enthral.
But we also know that urban nature is not where everyone chooses to spend time.
Such choices relate to people’s perceptions and experiences when they encounter
nature, and also depend on people’s own histories which influence how they value
and connect with nature. This book provides a range of fascinating explorations
which demonstrate the importance of both the local context and how the individual
navigates that context.
The origins of this book stem from two sessions at the Royal Geographical
Society (RGS-IBG) Annual conference in 2018 which I was lucky enough to attend.
Sponsored by the Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group, Nicola
and Julian chaired these paired sessions which explored the variation in ‘value’ and
‘worth’ when considering urban nature and health.
I am proud to have helped bring together the contributors of this book through
IWUN activities to provide intellectual insight and shared expertise through differ-
ent empirical studies from a range of urban contexts. I hope that this book will
provide insights and inspiration to its readers to continue the ongoing exploration of
how we can better understand the contested perceptions and practices in urban
green spaces.
Chair in Urban Natural Environments, Health and Wellbeing Anna Jorgensen
Department of Landscape Architecture
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK
Preface
Research has already amply demonstrated multiple benefits of urban green spaces
for health and wellbeing, culture and identity, biodiversity and a sense of place.
Political rhetoric and planning strategies make well-meaning and eloquent state-
ments about the importance of urban green space, but this is seldom followed up by
meaningful action. Combining global and UK perspectives, this book probes the
gap between what we know and what we do, investigating and challenging the log-
ics and decision-making processes at work.
This book aims to reveal how the wellbeing benefits of urban nature are analysed
and valued and why they are interpreted and translated into action or inaction. The
chapters each examine the misalignments between how we think of urban nature,
the evidence we gather, the conclusions we draw from the evidence, and what we
then do in terms of policy and practice.
We show how the neat but suspect theories of change often favoured by policy-
makers rely on a simplistic problem-intervention-solution mindset, which priori-
tises ‘best practice’. However, this does not allow us to learn from evaluating ‘less
good’ practice or what happens when initiatives are not followed through. The book
illustrates why we must examine the discursive contexts in which policy is shaped
and be prepared to learn from the messy and uncomfortable relationships between
evidence, policy and practice.
Sheffield, UK Nicola Dempsey
Julian Dobson
ix
Acknowledgements
This book is a result of two sessions at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG)
annual conference held in Cardiff, 2018, which we chaired. The sessions were spon-
sored by the Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group and explored
how we can understand and amplify the worth of urban nature.
We would like to thank those academics and practitioners who formed the audi-
ence at the conference and who helped spark ideas that contributed to this book,
particularly Anna Jorgensen, Jo Birch, Rosita Samsudin, Puay Yok Tan, Lauriane
Chalmin-Pui, Clive Davies, Christoph Rupprecht and Clair Cooper.
We chaired these sessions as part of our involvement on the NERC-funded
IWUN – Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature – project [NERC grant NE/
N013565/1]. We are grateful for the intellectual debate and challenging of ideas that
IWUN has permitted over the last 3 years and would particularly like to thank Ross
Cameron, Clare Rishbeth, Paul Brindley, Jo Birch, David Sheffield, Kirsten
McEwan, Meghann Mears, Miles Richardson and Kevin Thwaites. Nicola would
also like to thank Karen Lewis, Luke Wilson and Stuart Turner at Sheffield City
Council. Our special thanks go to IWUN project manager Aisling Cooling for keep-
ing us all in order and getting us to Cardiff, making all this possible!
All Figures are produced by the chapter authors unless otherwise stated.
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