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Territories of Encounter: Informal Urban Green Space in Shrinking Japanese Cities — a Birthplace for Convivial Imaginaries?

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Christoph D D Rupprecht at Ehime University
Christoph D D Rupprecht
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Artists like Tokyo Genso have painted a future of Japan’s urban areas devoid of humans, overgrown and taken back by nature. Such demographic changes are projected for most of East Asia, and they will profoundly change both human and non-human lifeworlds. How to avoid increasing human-nonhuman conflict and embrace shared space, convivial cities? A look at spaces where human control over other species is weakened or absent to may help. Here I examine how human-nonhuman relations are negotiated in spontaneously vegetated informal green spaces (e.g. vacant lots, street and railway verges, brownfields and gaps in the urban fabric). Drawing upon several studies in Japan compared with data from Australia, I argue that these spaces can act as territories of human-nonhuman encounter. I then attempt to trace how these encounters complicate residents’ perceptions of non-human entanglements, forming potential pathways towards radical, more-than-human imaginaries (sensu Castoriadis). Linking these processes to narratives of human control, nativeness, and belonging which feature prominently in political debates about immigration in both countries, I argue that ‘decolonizing the imaginary’ (Latouche) may be key to peaceful coexistence not just with non-humans, but also fellow humans.
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Territories of Encounter:
Informal Urban Green Space in Shrinking Japanese Cities
— a Birthplace for Convivial Imaginaries?
East Asian Anthropological Association Annual Meeting!
October 2017, Hong Kong
Christoph Rupprecht
FEAST Project
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature
Tokyo Genso art of overgrown Tokyo and Tokyo Jungle game
artwork removed for copyright reasons, find it here:
https://tokyogenso.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://tokyojungle.wikia.com/wiki/File:Tokyoj2.jpg
Depopulation in Japan and wider Asia is usually seen as a
source of problems and conflict, including in artists
imaginations of what the future might look like (see below).
Informal urban green spaces
Street verge Gap
Railway Brownfield Waterside
Lots
Structural Microsite Powerline
IGS in Sapporo (Japan) & Brisbane (Australia)
Lot
42%
Gap
19%
Street
verge
16%
Brownfield
10%
Waterside
10%
Lot
8%
Street verge
80%
Brownfield
5%
Railway
5%
Better Both Worse Neutral
Sapporo
Brisbane
Does IGS make daily life
better or worse? (appreciation)
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
% of respondents
Recreational IGS use
Now, as adults In my childhood
Sapporo
Brisbane
•~5% of city area
•14% of total urban green space
2012 mail-back survey, n=163/121 (Sapporo/Brisbane)
What animals would you like to have in your
neighborhood? Sapporo
Rats
Snakes
Deer
Feral dogs
Raccoons
Brown bears
Monkeys
Squirrels
Sparrows
Small birds
Wild birds
Rabbits
Butterflies
Cuckoos
Ducks
Hokkaido squirrels
Horses
Owls
Bears Crows
Foxes
Birds
Cats
Feral cats
Pigeons
Dogs
Ezo red foxes
Tanukis
Insects
Wolves
5
10
20
40
80
-70 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 010 20 30 40 50
Number of times mentioned by respondents
Respondents' preference score for animals
Unwanted
Want e d
Contested
Linear (Unwanted)
Linear (Wanted)
Where do you think animals should be able to live?
42%
87%
72%
89%
67%
97%
4%
29%
14%
38%
23%
89%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
City centre City parks Private
gardens
Informal
urban
greenspace
Agricultural
areas
Forests or
bushland
Percent of respondents
Sapporo
IGS as territories of encounter?
•Neither formally recognized nor managed by
governing institutions or owner
•“Urban wild-scapes, loose spaces, unclaimed
territories” = freedom from purpose
•Rules of human-nonhuman encounter are not
pre-negotiated: reconfiguration possible
•‘Provisional arrangement’ leaves room,
‘disciplining neither people in their actions
nor nature in its development’. (Nohl 1990)
“We live in a very organised
world – it’s good when nature
takes over and reminds us that
we only have temporary use of
the space. In the urban
environment, man usually wins
the battle against nature, so it is
nice to see nature fighting
back where it can.”
– Female, 62, Brisbane
“A neutral zone that belongs to nobody is
necessary: left-over room, margins,
interstices, space. A life like in the city,
where man-made objects are
surrounded by nothing but artificial
greenspace, is suffocating.”
–Male, 45, Sapporo
“Unlike maintained greenspace, it has
something you can grasp with all five
senses, and I don’t want it to disappear.”
–Female, 35, Sapporo
What’s happening here?
•Castoriadis (1997)!
Imaginary: capacity to see in a thing what it is not!
Social imaginary: what a society has imagined
•“The aesthetic joy the observer experiences when looking
[at IGS] can be explained by the fact that he has discovered !
an actually possible image of a !
more conciliatory world” !
(Nohl 1990)
•We are witnessing the imaginary !
being decolonized… by whom?!
(Latouche 2014)
Decolonizers of the imaginary
social!
imaginary
Non-humans
More-than-human !
geographies & planning
River as entity !
with human rights
Convivial cities
multi-species perspectives
Past
generations
Spiritual beings
& concepts
Future
generations
Future design
Future generations ombudsmen
Haudenosaunee ‘unborn of the future Nation’
Intergenerational justice Youth suffrage
Traditional ecological !
knowledge & practices
Maori kaitiaki (guardians) & !
kaitiakitanga (practice)
Narratives of natural disasters
Shinto kami: place-based deities
w/ agency & interests
Abrahamic religions’ depictions of!
heaven/paradise as garden
Loma ‘ancestral habitus’
11 / 12
Science fiction
Buddhist interdependence of life,!
awareness of suffering, empathy
Animal rights
Narratives of control, !
nativeness and belonging
•“…non-native, feral, alien, wild, no affection for
their owners, do not belong, should live
somewhere else (away from me)”
•Concepts of control, nativeness and belonging
transcend human-nonhuman boundaries
•Ecological nativeness linked to xenophobia !
(Gröning & Wolschke-Bulmahn 2003, Warren 2007)
Shrinking cities as birthplaces of convivial imaginaries? !
From IGS to multi-cultural gardens
• Representative survey in 4 largest
Japanese shrinking cities: residents
preferred green space and community
gardens over bigger houses and
apartments.
• “Actually possible images of a more
conciliatory world”: places of
decolonization of the imaginary?
• Examples: !
Muse garden: Intercultural garden of
Tsukuba University (Japan)!
New Indigenous Community Garden
Armidale (Australia)
feastproject.org
Thank you!
Twitter: @focx
@feast_project
Web:
References
Castoriadis, C., 1997. The imaginary institution of society. Mit Press.
Gröning, G., Wolschke-Bulmahn, J., 2003. The Native Plant Enthusiasm: ecological panacea or xenophobia?
Landscape Research 28, 75. doi:10.1080/01426390306536
Latouche, S. 2014. Imaginary, decolonization of. In: D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., Kallis, G., Degrowth: A Vocabulary for
a New Era. Routledge.
Muse Garden: Intercultural garden in University of Tsukuba: https://www.facebook.com/MusegardenTsukuba/
New Indigenous Community Garden - Armidale: https://www.facebook.com/armidalecommunitygarden/
Nohl, W., 1990. Gedankenskizze einer Naturästhetik der Stadt. Landschaft und Stadt 22, 57–67.!
Rupprecht, C.D.D., Byrne, J.A., 2014. Informal urban green-space: comparison of quantity and characteristics in
Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan. PloS ONE 9, e99784. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0099784
Rupprecht, C.D.D., Byrne, J.A., Ueda, H., Lo, A.Y.H., 2015. ‘It’s real, not fake like a park’: Residents’ perception
and use of informal urban green-space in Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan. Landscape and Urban Planning
143, 205–218. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2015.07.003
Rupprecht, C. D. D. (forthcoming) Ready for more-than-human? Urban residents’ willingness to coexist with animals
and plants? Preprint available at: http://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hbcmz/
Warren, C.R., 2007. Perspectives on the `alien’ versus `native’ species debate: a critique of concepts, language and
practice. Progress in Human Geography 31, 427–446. doi:10.1177/0309132507079499
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Ready for more-Than-human? Measuring urban residents' willingness to coexist with animals
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In the context of rapid urbanisation, geographers are calling for embracing non-humans as urban co-inhabitants. But if animals and plants are seen as 'out of place', sharing urban space can lead to wildlife conflicts. We therefore need to better understand residents' willingness to coexist if we are to work towards more-than-human cities. This study quantitatively compared residents' preferences toward sharing their neighbourhood, as well as perceptions of belonging across urban green space in two geographically and culturally distinct cities: Brisbane, Australia, and Sapporo, Japan. Results suggest that geographical and cultural context alongside educational attainment and age influenced respondents' willingness to coexist, but not sex and income. Mapping respondents' preferences for animals in their neighbourhood revealed four groups of animals along two axes-global-local and wanted-unwanted. These arose from the way animals contested the human notions of control over urban space. As spaces where animals belong in cities, most respondents chose informal green space (e.g. vacant lots, brownfields) after forests and bushland. Drawing upon recent theoretical and empirical research on liminal urban spaces, I argue that such informal green space can offer 'provisional arrangements' which allow for conciliatory engagements with non-humans. I thus propose informal green spaces as territories of encounter-a possible path towards more-than-human cities. Finally, I discuss some implications for planning and management of interspecies interactions.
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DEGROWTH: A Vocabulary for a New Era (E-BOOK)
Book
Full-text available
  • Jan 2015
Degrowth is a rejection of the illusion of growth and a call to repoliticize the public debate colonized by the idiom of economism. It is a project advocating the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability. This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywords useful for intervening in current political debates and for bringing about concrete degrowth-inspired proposals at different levels [en] local, national and global. The result is the most comprehensive coverage of the topic of degrowth in English and serves as the definitive international reference.
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'It's real, not fake like a park': Residents' perception and use of informal urban green-space in Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2015
  • LANDSCAPE URBAN PLAN
Urban parks and gardens may be failing to meet the diverse "nature needs" of a growing global urban population. Informal urban greenspace (IGS) such as vacant lots, street or railway verges and riverbanks may provide space for unstructured recreation and nature contact. Yet we know little about residents' relationship with IGS outside of Europe and North America, what factors influence IGS use and evaluation, or what role geographic and cultural context play.Our paper combines qualitative and quantitative methods to examine how residents in Brisbane, Australia (n=123) and Sapporo, Japan (n=163) perceive, evaluate and use IGS. Using statistical methods (e.g. correlation analysis) we analyzed what factors influence how respondents interact with IGS, including the amount of formal greenspace within 500m of survey locations using a GIS buffer analysis. Results were tested for differences and similarities between the cities.We found that respondents knew of IGS in their neighborhood (>80%), appreciated and used it (>30%), but more respondents in Brisbane used and appreciated IGS. The influence of demographic factors and local formal
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Informal Urban Green-Space: Comparison of Quantity and Characteristics in Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan
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Full-text available
Informal urban green-space (IGS) such as vacant lots, brownfields and street or railway verges is receiving growing attention from urban scholars. Research has shown IGS can provide recreational space for residents and habitat for flora and fauna, yet we know little about the quantity, spatial distribution, vegetation structure or accessibility of IGS. We also lack a commonly accepted definition of IGS and a method that can be used for its rapid quantitative assessment. This paper advances a definition and typology of IGS that has potential for global application. Based on this definition, IGS land use percentage in central Brisbane, Australia and Sapporo, Japan was systematically surveyed in a 10×10 km grid containing 121 sampling sites of 2,500 m2 per city, drawing on data recorded in the field and aerial photography. Spatial distribution, vegetation structure and accessibility of IGS were also analyzed. We found approximately 6.3% of the surveyed urban area in Brisbane and 4.8% in Sapporo consisted of IGS, a non-significant difference. The street verge IGS type (80.4% of all IGS) dominated in Brisbane, while lots (42.2%) and gaps (19.2%) were the two largest IGS types in Sapporo. IGS was widely distributed throughout both survey areas. Vegetation structure showed higher tree cover in Brisbane, but higher herb cover in Sapporo. In both cities over 80% of IGS was accessible or partly accessible. The amount of IGS we found suggests it could play a more important role than previously assumed for residents' recreation and nature experience as well as for fauna and flora, because it substantially increased the amount of potentially available greenspace in addition to parks and conservation greenspace. We argue that IGS has potential for recreation and conservation, but poses some challenges to urban planning. To address these challenges, we propose some directions for future research.
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Perspectives on the 'alien' versus 'native' species debate: A critique of concepts, language and practice
Article
  • Aug 2007
The classification of species as either `native' or `alien' is one of the organizing principles of conservation, but the validity of this dualism has increasingly been questioned, sparking debates which raise quintessentially geographical questions about place, space, nature and humanity-nature interactions. This discussion reviews the key criticisms of the native/alien construct, including its spatiotemporally arbitrary character, its disturbingly xenophobic associations, the logical problems of attributing native or alien status to our own species, and the ethical disjunction between the promotion of a multicultural human society and the persecution of `foreign' species. Given that the native/alien polarity is a subset of the discredited nature/culture duality, its conceptual foundations seem irredeemably fractured. An alternative framework based on a `damage criterion' rather than putative biogeographical origins is advocated.
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The Native Plant Enthusiasm: Ecological panacea or xenophobia?
Article
  • Jan 2003
The enthusiasm for the use of so-called native plants and the rejection of so-called exotic plants in 20th-century garden and landscape design is explored. The underlying ideas and ideology are discussed using examples in Germany, particularly from the time of National Socialism, and the United States.
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Intercultural garden in University of Tsukuba: https://www.facebook.com/MusegardenTsukuba
  • Muse Garden
Muse Garden: Intercultural garden in University of Tsukuba: https://www.facebook.com/MusegardenTsukuba/ New Indigenous Community Garden-Armidale: https://www.facebook.com/armidalecommunitygarden/
Gedankenskizze einer Naturästhetik der Stadt
  • Jan 1990
  • 57-67
Muse Garden: Intercultural garden in University of Tsukuba: https://www.facebook.com/MusegardenTsukuba/ New Indigenous Community Garden -Armidale: https://www.facebook.com/armidalecommunitygarden/ Nohl, W., 1990. Gedankenskizze einer Naturästhetik der Stadt. Landschaft und Stadt 22, 57-67.