Networks of Nature
Integrating greenery in urban spaces has been widely discussed as one of the most efficient forms of overcoming critical sustainability issues. More recently, urban green spaces have been seen as potential sources of health and well-being in heavily urbanised cities, and this idea was ratified after the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, despite the boom in greening projects across the globe, the mechanisms of development have a history of only focusing on the provision of urban green infrastructure and disregarding the roles of key agents and their relative contributions across time and their community networks, which empirical research have found to be part of a subtle participatory dimension that considers both human and non-human living agents (e.g., plants, trees, and wildlife) as fundamental in the process of sustaining healthy urban ecosystems.
Consideration of human and non-human networks in the planning and design of urban green spaces might constitute a challenge in cities located in Global South countries. This is due to the fragmented urbanism that emerges with new urban green projects that sometimes lack regulatory planning laws and strategies for urban integration. Nature, in this case, is positioned as the object of interaction and/or mediator used and positioned to evoke human meanings in the local space. From this point of view, plants implemented in urban gardening and urban design are considered beautification instruments to be enjoyed by man, extending the notion of plants as objects with no agency, a common utilitarian view of the natural environment.
Networks of Nature advocates participatory frameworks that acknowledge the agency of both human and non-human agents and proposes to approximate spatial design from a systems thinking perspective that considers ecological principles. All actions are based on ecological values in a mutually constituted and represented web of life.
ECOS Framework
One of the first outcomes of Networks of Nature is the ECOS framework, which takes inspiration from widely known ecology models in ecological psychology, geography and health and wellbeing, community environmental stewardship and participation, plant politics and anthropology. ECOS evolves into four interrelated themes: Entanglements for Equity, Cooperation, organisation, and Spatial-temporal representation in green spaces (ECOS). The levels of interventions and forms of autonomous participation are considered to introduce a paradigm of equitable interactions in urban green projects based on flexible action-design tools intended to promote environmental sustainability, nature preservation, and a sense of health and well-being mediated by meaningful interactions with the natural environment.
