Towards an Ecological Urbanism: how can ideas of nature-culture affect the making of an urban landscape?

Given the effects of human activity on the environment, there is a global problem with the loss of biodiversity. Nevertheless, there has been a considerable amount of discussion in recent times on the potential of cities, long associated with the exclusion of ‘nature’, to promote biodiversity. In recent years, the rise of ecological urbanism has been associated with attempts to reconfigure relationships between nature and the urban, and between nature and culture, with a key theme, the promotion of biodiversity through urban spaces such as parks (Mostafavi and Doherty, 2010; Steiner 2011; Spirn, 2012; Hagan, 2014). This has been spurred by the threat of extinctions related to climate change and growing recognition of the health and well-being benefits of nature in the city.

There has also been a notable turn in landscape design involving the rethinking not just of park design in the urban context but also of park maintenance and use to promote biodiversity. This study focuses on the potential of ecological urban/landscape design to support the diverse inhabitants - human and nonhuman - of cities but also to explore the challenges of ecological urbanism, focussing on a particular urban park in South London. It also examines the political, aesthetic and material dimensions of the process of using and maintaining the park. As a case study, Burgess Park is one of London’s largest parks, stretching from Camberwell and Walworth in the west to Peckham and Old Kent Road in the east.

The concept of the park was introduced with the 1943 Abercrombie plan for open spaces in London after hundreds of dwellings and factories were demolished by WWII bombs. However, in 2009, LDA Design was commissioned to undertake the major renovation project of the park. Thus, the development of Burgess Park has been regenerated in the past decade with the goal of providing habitats and promoting biodiversity. This research involves an element of historical research to understand the transformation of the park from the mid-twentieth century to the present, setting current ideas of nature, wildlife, biodiversity, and ‘park’ in a historical context. Nevertheless, much of the focus of the research is on investigating the challenges and agreements in the management and maintenance practices in the recent redevelopment of Burgess Park (since 2010) through the written and visual materials; in-depth interviews with people involved in making the park - designers, community groups and subgroups, the local authority, and local citizens; and observation of everyday life and practices in the park.

This research aims to reveal the intentions in the design of a park associated with the creation of nature in the city, the challenges that can arise in endeavouring to promote biodiversity and preserve wildlife, and the daily life of human/nonhuman things as inhabitants of the park. Through the research, I am directly focussing on the care of resources at risk through the design, provision, and sustainment of the parkland landscape - water, soil, and air regarding what are the challenges and agreements on the ground. Therefore, I identify the maintenance of the park and promotion of biodiversity as a complex kind of care involving multiple practices and relations between diverse actors. This research argues that parks are the entanglements of multiple actors, competing agendas, complexities and negotiations intertwined with politics and economy. In this context, focusing on the practical and ethical dimensions of socioecological relationships provides an opportunity to explore the challenges, as the needs of nature can conflict with the values that users, community groups, real estate, and planners associate with parks. It also probes further into thinking about the potential of management and cares in the design of future