Re-placing soil and its mattering in more-than-human cities |
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| Authors: | Sarah A Robertson |
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| Institution: | 1. Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Sarah.robertson2@rmit.edu.au https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5669-4422 |
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| Abstract: | ABSTRACT What role does soil play in sustainable design interventions and can it help to reconfigure human place experiences and human-nature relations in cities? Cities are home to a host of nonhuman actors that are overlooked or under-acknowledged in design and planning practices and in everyday dwelling. Soil is one such under-acknowledged urban inhabitant. In a period where cities and their inhabitants must adapt to the challenges of a changing climate, the paper draws together theory in design, planning and geography and empirical research with designers and residents in Australian cities to re-place soil as mattering in place(making) practices, everyday urban dwelling and urban sustainability transitions. The research contributes to recent work in (post)human geography to discuss ‘soil-planty mattering’, or the active role of soils and their intra-actions with other urban matter in shaping place. Soil-planty mattering is shown to disrupt human place(making), extending cities in material, temporal and spatial ways. In these extensions, the research suggests that soils have particular potential to re-orient human relationships with nonhumans in urban realms. |
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| Keywords: | Soil place more-than-human cities sustainable design |
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5669-4422