The challenges of ecological urbanism: Relations of nature and culture in a London park

Yaratgan, Dilara 2026. The challenges of ecological urbanism: Relations of nature and culture in a London park. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis considers the challenges and possibilities of ecological urbanism with a focus on biodiversity in urban contexts. It focuses on the translation of targets to promote biodiversity and ‘nature’ through the policy context, planning, design, everyday governance, maintenance and use of an urban park in London, which has been the focus of regeneration over the past 15 years. The research speaks to international debates and concerns surrounding biodiversity loss as a planetary crisis, and the search for strategies that can embed biodiversity in planning and design and strengthen ecological networks (Convention on Biological Diversity, (1992); The Mayor’s Biodiversity Strategy (2002)). Using Burgess Park in South London as the main case study, this research involves tracing the park’s post-war formation through piecemeal land assembly and following its redevelopment since 2010 through the landscape architecture practice LDA Design’s master planning in response to biodiversity agendas and then exploring its management and everyday maintenance post-occupancy. Methodologically, the research combines archival analysis with ethnographic fieldwork, the latter including participant observation with community groups involved in maintenance work, visual documentation, and in depth interviews with designers, council officers, and volunteers. The research brings ecological urbanism (Mostafavi and Doherty 2010; Spirn 2014) into dialogue with urban political ecology (Heynen et al. 2006), nature-culture scholarship (Latour 1993; Haraway 2016), and feminist ethics of care (Tronto 1993; Puig de la Bellacasa 2015). It unpacks the park as a nature-culture assemblage that is continually co produced across infrastructures, municipal capacity, maintenance standards, seasonal rhythms, and more-than-human worlds and life forms (soil, water, plants, insects, and birds), and is, in the process, impacted by unequal distributions of authority, expertise, and everyday labour. Through the research, I evaluate the effectiveness of ecological urbanism as constituted by diverse actors and recognise maintenance as a form of care. The research contributes to how cities can be maintained ethically as well as ecologically -not only through urban park design or specific agendas such as ‘promoting biodiversity’, but also through relations of interdependency, shared responsibilities and sustained relationships. It reveals that urban landscapes are fragile socio-ecological entanglements in which multiple actors, competing agendas, knowledge exchange, and negotiations are interwoven i to create a politics of care, yet remain vulnerable to neoliberal co-option. The thesis argues that ecological urbanism’s promise depends less on design ideas than on establishing a strong design basis for care, recognising that this entails funding, skills, time, and accountable decision-making to support multispecies life over time.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Architecture
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 September 2026
Last Modified:	03 Sep 2026 16:06
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189368

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