Construction of Nature in New York City
Speaker Information
Lindsay K. Campbell is a research social scientist with the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, based at the New York City Urban Field Station (www.nrs.fs.fed.us/nyc). Her current research explores the dynamics of urban environmental governance, natural resource stewardship, and sustainability policymaking. Dr. Campbell holds a BA in Public Policy from Princeton University, a Masters in City Planning from MIT, and a PhD in Geography from Rutgers University. She is the author of City of Forests City of Farms, Sustainability Planning for New York City's Nature, published by Cornell University Press.
Construction of Nature in New York City
City of Forests, City of Farms explores how and why nature is constructed in New York City using the case of PlaNYC2030—the municipal, long-term sustainability plan launched in 2007. From this entry point, it explores sustainability planning as a process that unfolds through the strategic interplay of actors, the deployment of different narrative frames, and the manipulation of the physical environment—including other living, non-human entities. In contrasting the top-down, centralized investment in the urban forest with the decentralized social movement around urban agriculture, the book traces two very different processes underpinning what sort of nature is produced in the city. PlaNYC launched the MillionTreesNYC campaign, investing over $400 million in city funds and leveraging a public-private partnership to plant one million trees citywide. Meanwhile, despite NYC having a long tradition of community gardening since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the plan contained no mention of community gardens or urban farms. Yet public interest in urban agriculture and local food systems has burgeoned, and civic groups and elected officials subsequently crafted a series of visions and plans for local food systems that informed the 2011 update to PlaNYC. Understanding how and why the sustainability agenda is set provides lessons to scholars, policymakers, and activists alike as they engage in the greening of cities.