Short Abstract

This panel explores multiple, situated urban natures across Africa. It traces plural understandings of nature that can be ecological, socio-cultural, political, design-oriented or everyday, and aims to reveal how these shape what interventions, knowledge, and voices might get to the forefront.

Long Abstract

Nature has become increasingly prominent in urban sustainability and climate adaptation discourses, reflected in growing attention to nature-based solutions, blue-green infrastructure, ecosystem-based approaches. Yet, what is understood as ‘nature’ in the city is neither universal nor self-evident, and globally circulating concepts can mask contextual differences. This makes “grounding urban natures”, as Ernstson and Sörlin (2019) call for, ever more important. How nature and urban environments are understood, valued, and contested shifts depending on the social, political, and historical position of different actors (Myers, 2016). Revealing which understanding of nature is in play, and whose, is therefore not a merely conceptual exercise: it shapes what forms of intervention are considered legitimate, which knowledge systems are drawn upon, and whose voices and values are centred or excluded in a process.

We invite theoretical, conceptual, methodological and empirical contributions examining human–nature relationships and urban nature across diverse African urban contexts. Contributions may engage with nature-based solutions, ecological and landscape planning or design, urban nature governance, community and local knowledge, co-creation, everyday practices, ecological restoration, or other forms of socio-ecological urban transformation. The panel asks how plural values, perspectives and forms of knowledge – including their friction, contestation and dissent – can deepen understandings of urban nature and reveal its plurality. Across the contributions, the panel asks: what understanding(s) of urban nature emerge, whose perspectives produce them, and how do these understandings shape urban transformation? Together, the contributions can contribute to a broader understanding of urban natures as multiple, situated and relational.

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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