Welcome back to the penultimate blog of this series! Last time I explored Camley Street Natural Park (CSNP), tying together its infrastructure, representation and historical and geographical entanglement with the city landscape. However, analysing this urban green space independently overlooks the significance of considering different conclusions and outlooks.
This blog seeks to incorporate my peer’s ethnographic observations, to refine our comprehension of urban political ecology (UPE) and urban green spaces as socio-natural products.
For the most part we collectively observed similar things. We noted the sound pollution in the background, it’s enclosed design and how the majority of visitors inhabited the more ‘developed’ spaces i.e., the café, learning hub and seating area. Clearly, the natural and the social were emphasised, but seemingly as separate entities.
Whilst my peers individually explored different areas within this understanding, a shared focus on CNSP’s social engagement, effect and access to the park was most predominant. Whilst others, taking a similar approach to me, examined the structural elements of the natural reserve, underlining socio-economic inequalities and confronting manifestations of capitalism.
Recap!
To recap, UPE explores the intricate interplay between the urban development, ecological dynamics and political processes (Swyngedouw, 1996). Adopting this mindset exposes its complexity and multifaceted nature, which has led us to contradictory and different understandings about the socio-nature of this place. One peer interpreted the urbanised park as a perfect example of socio-nature, proving it challenging to separate nature and the city visually, audibly and commercially. Looking up, it’s difficult to miss the high-rise apartments hugging the nature reserve. Even if you were to close your eyes, you could hear construction nearby. Therefore, it is impossible for the park not to be threaded into the city ecosystem.
Another colleague argued differently. Collective findings revealed how the city and ‘social’ overpowers the natural. They pointed out the fences, iron gates, comfort amenities, the general infrastructure of the place conflicts one another. This demonstrates a wider metabolic process where the park had reproduced itself to engage with the non-human world through its organisation.
One peer recognised the overgrown vegetation and lack of wildlife in this supposedly biodiverse oasis. Highlighting how nature seems to be subjugated by the urban. Here, its unsurprising that lot of my peers focused on the social aspects of the space, investigating the effects of the park on visitors and how the park is accessed. Findings were very limited in relation to the actual park, with less attention to how nature has integrated itself with its developed surroundings. Some may argue it seems out of place.
UPE should unveil and dismantle any existing power relations and tensions, if they are working in a way that produces unequal urban green spaces (Heynen, 2013). CSNP if situated in this context, could raise debates over its equal accessibility, which one of my peers had investigated. The park operates in a way that it is free entry to everyone. Yet it is only open for limited hours, difficult for students and those working during the day. Furthermore, parking nearby is not free, making accessibility more catered for wealthier individuals. To an extent, the park has its own power dynamics, where the green space affects the people and vice versa.
What does this reveal about cities more broadly?
Drawing these ideas and outlooks together, we recognise how urban green spaces operate as networks of social and natural processes and exchanges. Notably, it is challenging to equally integrate nature into the city, without one aspect dominating over the other. This is something we should continue to change and improve in order to establish a more sustainable and resilient city.
Whilst CNSP is unique to other London green spaces, it illustrates the need for nature to be more effectively assimilated into the city. Both processes are essential to each other’s development, yet power resides within the ‘social’. Cities are undeniably socio-natural processes, with nature needing to be more physically present in our day to day lives for us to realise that.
References:
Heynen, N. (2013) Urban Political ecology I: The urban century. Progress in Human Geography. Sage Journals. 38:4
Swyngedouw, E. (1996) “Urban political ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale”. Antipode. 28(2), pp.134-158
City in Nature 
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