Call for Abstracts: AAG 2020
Denver, April 6th-10th, 2020
Organizers:
Marissa Matsler, Cary Institute matslerm@caryinstitute.org
Andrea Gerlak, University of Arizona agerlak@email.arizona.edu
Zbigniew Grabowski, Cary Institute grabowskiz@caryinstitute.org
Multi-faceted Geographies of Green Infrastructure
Planners, engineers, community groups, and non-profits in cities around the world increasingly deploy the concept of green infrastructure. However, green infrastructure’s mutability has implicated it in a number of contradictory social programs and impacts: from reducing crime, addressing environmental injustice, and cost effectively providing infrastructural services such as flood mitigation and stormwater management, to accelerating gentrification and further entrenching injustices of uneven development.
As an emergent concept in urban planning, engineering, ecology, and law, green infrastructure represents an interdisciplinary object claimed by many differing definitions and physical forms. Within this milieu, practitioners and academics alike integrate ‘nature’ into various forms of ‘infrastructure,’ deeply embedding green infrastructure within human geography discussions regarding the human-nature divide (Wachsmuth 2012; Gabriel 2014), vital materiality (Bennett 2010), and urban political ecology generally (Gandy 2002; Monstadt 2009; Escobar 1996; Finewood et al. 2019), as well as in physical and interdisciplinary geography discussions regarding climate change, geomorphology, and hydrology, hazards, and environmental justice (Schifman et al. 2017; O’Donnell et al. 2019; McPhillips and Matsler 2018; Thorne et al. 2018; Berland et al. 2015). We propose this session to explore the various facets of green infrastructure – where they connect and where they are disconnected – to better understand the impact of this concept on urban form and politics. We would also like to highlight researchers grappling with concepts of equity and resilience for humans and non-humans in relation to urban green infrastructure. In line with the expanding the community of geography theme, we would love to hear from urban practitioners grappling with the uneven geographies of risk and value that green infrastructure programs often explicitly seek to address.
This call welcomes both empirical and theoretical papers that examine the multi-faceted geographies of green infrastructure. Case studies and lessons from urban planning and infrastructural practices are of particular interest, and that speak to issues of governance and green infrastructure. We are especially interested in comparative papers or papers that synthesize across a number of case studies.
We are looking to create 1-3 linked sessions that speak to these themes. If there is enough interest, we could submit a proposal for a lightning session of 5-minutes each with a maximum of 10 slides. (These are composed of 10-14 speakers and then allow for roundtable-like discussion where presenters could pitch works in progress.) We are also looking to propose a special issue on these topics for journal submission.
Please email abstracts of 250-ish words to matslerm@caryinstitute.org by October 15, 2019.
We will notify you if your paper will be selected for the Multi-faceted Geographies of Green Infrastructure sessions by November 1, 2019. You must then register and submit your official abstract to AAG prior to the November 20, 2019 deadline (http://annualmeeting.aag.org/).
References
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. A John Hope Franklin Center Book. Durham London: Duke University Press.
Berland, Adam, Kirsten Schwarz, Dustin L Herrmann, and Matthew E Hopton. 2015. “How Environmental Justice Patterns Are Shaped by Place: Terrain and Tree Canopy in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA,” 17.
Escobar, Arturo. 1996. “Construction Nature: Elements for a Post-Structuralist Political Ecology.” Futures 28 (4): 325–43.
Finewood, Michael H., A. Marissa Matsler, and Joshua Zivkovich. 2019. “Green Infrastructure and the Hidden Politics of Urban Stormwater Governance in a Postindustrial City.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, March, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1507813.
Gabriel, Nate. 2014. “Urban Political Ecology: Environmental Imaginary, Governance, and the Non-Human: UPE: Imaginary, Governance, and the Non-Human.” Geography Compass 8 (1): 38–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12110.
Gandy, Matthew. 2002. Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City. Urban and Industrial Environments. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
McPhillips, Lauren E., and A. Marissa Matsler. 2018. “Temporal Evolution of Green Stormwater Infrastructure Strategies in Three US Cities.” Frontiers in Built Environment 4 (May). https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2018.00026.
Monstadt, Jochen. 2009. “Conceptualizing the Political Ecology of Urban Infrastructures: Insights from Technology and Urban Studies.” Environment and Planning A 41 (8): 1924–42. https://doi.org/10.1068/a4145.
O’Donnell, Emily C., Colin R. Thorne, and Jon Alan Yeakley. 2019. “Managing Urban Flood Risk in Blue-Green Cities: The Clean Water for All Initiative.” Journal of Flood Risk Management 12 (1): e12513. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12513.
Schifman, L.A., D.L. Herrmann, W.D. Shuster, A. Ossola, A. Garmestani, and M.E.
Hopton. 2017. “Situating Green Infrastructure in Context: A Framework for Adaptive Socio-Hydrology in Cities.” Water Resources Research, October. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017WR020926.
Thorne, C.R., E.C. Lawson, C. Ozawa, S.L. Hamlin, and L.A. Smith. 2018. “Overcoming Uncertainty and Barriers to Adoption of Blue-Green Infrastructure for Urban Flood Risk Management: Uncertainties and Barriers to Adoption of BGI.” Journal of Flood Risk Management 11 (February): S960–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12218.
Wachsmuth, David. 2012. “Three Ecologies: Urban Metabolism and the Society-Nature Opposition.” The Sociological Quarterly 53 (4): 506-523.