Send message to Author

Short abstract:

How do European urban development agencies can be bound to soils in their urban projects? The concern seems fairly recent for most of these urban stakeholders and results in the development of new practices of knowledge production and diverging if not conflicting forms of soil valuations.

Long abstract:

Contradictory as it may seem, (European) urban development agencies have long neglected or ignored the presence and qualities of soils, though they are in charge of land use transformations. Soils have historically been taken into account mostly in cases of pollution, but barely integrated in urban project as an entity to take into account and to make count as a matter of concern. Yet, converging recent European environmental regulations and the pressures exerted by climate accelerations have allegedly disturbed one such equilibrium, leading to forms of ecologisation of urban planning practices (Salomon-Cavin and Grandjou, 2022). Drawing from embedded research within seven French public urban development agencies and observations of a brand new institute on soils transitions, this presentation explores this transformation of the attention to soil in urban settings, to see how urban development agencies can be bound to soils. The presentation will focus on both the modes of knowing of soil by urban projects stakeholders and the practical modalities of soil integration in mundane practices of urban projects. Throughout the inquiry, attention to soils has taken various forms, such as recent attempts by local authorities or urban development agencies to develop soil cartographies (like in King et al., 2020) as well as efforts to integrate soils functions in urban projects accounting schemes. They both reveal contested forms of valuation to which soils are subject and which will be unfold during the presentation.