The politics of the urban green: Class, morality and attachments to place

Abstract

Local urban greenspaces connect issues close to everyday life, such as recreational value, attachment to place and civic engagements, with broader questions of city planning, economy, climate change and social class. Responding to recent warnings against reductionism in critical studies of cities’ new claims to sustainability, the article mobilizes the recent ‘moral turn’ in the Bourdieusian literature on classed politics to explore these interlacing layers and themes in the politics of the urban green and to relate them to broader sociological questions about morality and politics. Based on a national survey among urban dwellers in Denmark designed specifically for this purpose, the analysis reveals a space of local urban greenspaces issues in two dimensions contrasting, respectively, (a) concerns for nature versus economy and (b) preference for planning versus grassroots modes of governance. Further analysis reveals a homology with social class and with more abstract political attitudes on how to square environmental and economic sustainability. However, the space of issues also displays traits unique to local urban greenspaces, while different positions in the space correlate with different combinations of personal attachment and civic engagement. In mapping the politics of the urban green along these lines, the article suggests new analytical avenues for moral-political sociology more broadly.

A Bourdieusian Framework for Understanding Public Space Heritage Transformations: Riga’s Castle Square

“…Bourdieusian literature inspires to extend analytical attention beyond the "large-scale" issue of housing, poverty, and "big-city" effects to locality of urban greenspaces, personal attachment, and civic engagement (Krarup, 2022). Planners' practice as a subject of investigation shows how the professional structure of urban planners affects the field of urban planning in accordance with social change over time (Edman, 2001).…”

Introducing a Scale for Measuring Attachment to Urban Green

“…Yet urban green has often been treated in generic terms, neglecting structural differences related to the presence or absence of trees that impact their ecological functions and might influence green space effects on human health and well-being [2,4,5]. Thus, differential perceptions of single or groups and rows of trees (vertical green) and lawns, flowerbeds, and extensive shrub or ruderal vegetation (horizontal green) are not well researched, especially regarding the attachment levels of inhabitants of the same urban area [14]. One reason for this rather generic view of green space in particular, and urban green in general, might be the general dearth of green space in densely populated urban areas.…”

“…In the present analysis, we hypothesize variations concerning place attachment between two distinct urban green categories, namely horizontal and vertical green. This might be relevant in densely built environments with little leeway for extending the surface of horizontal green, often forcing policy-makers to decide whether to create new parks, extended parklets or community gardens or to plant single trees or small groups of trees [14]. So, we developed a unidimensional scale in German for exploring possible differences in attachment to structurally distinct types of urban green.…”

Green Development in Indonesia: Socioeconomic Impacts, Environmental Effects, and the Role of Social Entrepreneurship

“…Furthermore, comprehending the advantages of green infrastructure in alleviating urban heat islands can facilitate the development of efficacious approaches to climate regulation and enhance urban quality of life (Angelo, 2021;Rosa & Li, 2023). Urban planners can guarantee that green development is in accordance with the objectives of inclusivity, sustainability, and community involvement by taking into account the aforementioned factors (Krarup, 2022).…”