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Civilt engagement i bynatur - Samarbejdsbaseret udvikling af offentlige grønne byområder mellem myndigheder, omverden og civilsamfund
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I ph.d.-afhandlingen undersøges det civile engagement, som finder sted inden for rammen af en samarbejdsbaseret udvikling af offentlige grønne byområder. Inden for de senere år er en række nye samarbejder vokset frem mellem kommuner, offentlige grundejere, civile foreninger og andre private og institutionelle omverdensaktører om udviklingen af offentlige grønne byområder. Denne udvikling afspejler en kommunal åbning mod større forpligtende inddragelse af aktører fra civilsamfundet og omverdenen i offentlig bynatur, men også en opblomstring af civile grønne fællesskaber, som ønsker at indgå i en praksisbaseret relation til byens natur. Formålet med undersøgelsen er at opnå en dybere indsigt i, hvilke muligheder og barrierer de nye samarbejdsformer i praksis skaber for at give engagerede borgere og civile foreninger en stemme i udviklingen af offentlige grønne byområder. Undersøgelsen baseres på empiriske casestudier af tre forskelligartede civil-kommunale samarbejder i tre mellemstore byer i Danmark. På det teoretiske niveau undersøges casestudierne med et analytisk perspektiv fra fransk pragmatisk sociologi, nærmere bestemt Laurent Thévenots engagementssociologi, og undersøgelsen bidrager til at fremme og videreudvikle denne teoretiske tilgang, som en værdifuld ressource i analyser af det civile engagement i byens grønne udvikling. Det vises med udgangspunkt heri, at det i særdeleshed er væsentligt at udforske, hvordan forskellige samarbejdsformer formår at rumme civilt engagement i en flerhed af former, og i hvilken grad de formår at etablere vedvarende forbindelser mellem praktisk og hverdagsligt civilt engagement i udvikling af lokal bynatur og den mere offentligt rettede civil-kommunale koordinering heraf.
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Med afsæt i den pragmatiske sociolog Laurent Thévenots begreb om »familiært engagement« præsenterer artiklen tre forskellige metodologiske tilgange til bynatur som konkrete steder for det, vi kalder »fælleshed«. Hvor begrebet om familiært engagement i sig selv kan minde om »stedstilknytning« i f.eks. psykologisk og geografisk litteratur, har teorien som sådan den fordel, at den kobler individuelle engagementer med et relateret begreb om social koordinering i form af »fællesheder«. Dermed giver den mulighed for at udpege det familiære engagements mulige samspil med andre former for engagement i byens grønne steder, navnlig et funktionelt engagement i planer og et offentligt engagement i retfærdiggørelse, indeholdt i den samme analytiske model. Spørgsmålet, som her belyses fra forskellige metodiske vinkler, er altså, hvilke former for relationer der findes mellem familiært engagement og fælleshed i bynaturens steder, og andre former for engagement og fælleshed (funktionelt, offentligt). Metodepluralismen over de tre studier resulterer i en generel pointe om forholdet mellem familiært, funktionelt og offentligt engagement i bynatur, og at man tager højde for de mange forskellige mulige sammensætninger af stedsrelationer og ikke søger at reducere disse til ét simpelt fænomen.
Street-level bureaucrats (SLB) play a crucial role in ensuring better policy implementa- tion and generating trust between the system and citizens, according to the literature. In this article, we argue that Lipsky’s distinction between public managers and SLB needs an update. Today, public managers are increasingly expected to work closely and directly with affected stakeholders in order to solve cross-cutting ‘wicked problems’. Interactive and participative collaborative policy processes require public managers to move from back-office work to front-office work, in effect converting public managers into SLB. The key question raised is, thus: what kind of skills and capabilities do SLB need to engage in today’s more interactive forms of public policy-making? And what are the implications for how universities educate these groups?’ Drawing on a study of 32 urban professionals who work on the frontline in deprived neighbourhoods, we scrutinise the challenges and dilemmas that professionals face in their work with interactive processes. By distinguishing between ‘academic specialists’ and ‘academic generalists’, we are able to pinpoint and differentiate between skills needed for each of these groups in order to secure transparent processes that abide by the rule of law and support well-functioning local communities and, more broadly, the skills needed to secure democracy and econom- ic efficiency.
Long-term civic–municipal collaboration around developing public urban greenspace has been increasing in many European cities in the last decades. This novel tendency in urban spatial development is explored via a case study set in a Danish context. Here the municipal landowner, alongside a civic association, has developed an overgrown public urban greenspace into a thriving recreational area through a dedicated collaboration spanning more than six years. I deploy the concept of commonality from the sociology of engagements, developed by Laurent Thévenot, to unfold an integrated analysis of the multiple situations of social coordination and engagement constituting this collaboration. I argue that the ability to accommodate, compose and connect several differing ways of engaging with urban greenspace, is beneficial in sustaining long-term civic–municipal collaboration and securing the civic anchorage of greenspace planning. I discuss the implications and generalisability of these findings.
This article analyses three key moments in the historical development of urban wastewater infrastructure and points to the important role that professionals, and particularly engineers, play in these transformations in relation to public issues and concerns over wastewater. The article uses historical documents and interview data to illustrate the work of professionals, as well as suggesting more specifically that professionals have the capacity to translate public concerns into material solutions—in this case, infrastructures. By combining and developing Laurent Thévenot’s pragmatic sociology and Andrew Abbott’s sociology of professions to understand the historic role of professionals in urban wastewater planning, the article reveals a growing concern with ‘green’ justifications in this area, and how these justifications both enable and constrain professional work on specific infrastructures.
Alongside kindred civic-driven and place-based urban greening initiatives, studies document an upsurge over the last decade in urban gardening and alternative food initiatives across a range of Euro-American settings. Meanwhile, historical and cultural inquiries into urban design, planning and politics suggest that the place and role of ‘nature’ in the city is now undergoing significant shifts. In this article, we deploy a case study of a civic-driven permaculture garden in Copenhagen in order to suggest a novel analytical grid of the imaginative and material domain of public aesthetic norms shaping current-day tensions over interventions in and valuations of the fabric of multiform green-spaces in the city. Reading across existing literatures, we model this domain along two structuring axes – of ‘orderliness’ versus ‘wildness’ and ‘pastoral nature’ versus city-nature ‘imbrication’ – and illustrate the usefulness of the resulting grid for making sense of internal debates and external criticisms in the Copenhagen permaculture gardening case. By assisting us in explaining how and why this garden struggled to carve out a legitimate space in a city otherwise committed to urban nature, we argue that attention to variable urban-green aesthetic commitments helps recast questions of urban sustainability politics in important ways.
Throughout the past three decades, changing governments in Denmark have been cultivating a more proactive role for civil society organizations by emphasizing the legitimacy of voluntary social work as part of the social service provision in a hard-pressed welfare state. At the same time, political and public actors praise the civic virtues and democratic skills that volunteers obtain when participating in any kind of voluntary organization. This notion of voluntary organizations as “schools for democracy” already lacks empirical grounding. Given the increased instrumentalization of voluntary social work, it becomes even more important to ask what the modes of participation look like among volunteers within the new organizational forms. In this article, we review key trends and changes at the institutional level and present data from a long-term ethnographic study that explores the mode of participation of volunteers within an organizational form that responds to the demands of the current civic landscape. We demonstrate that while the organizational form in question aptly and strategically navigates the competitive, welfare-oriented, institutional environment, the space for civic action among the volunteers is limited.