Greening Berlin The Co-Production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature

by Lachmund, Jens

• ISBN13: 9780262018593
• ISBN10: 0262018594
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-01-04
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Although nature conservation has traditionally focused on the countryside, issues ofbiodiversity protection also appear on the political agendas of many cities. One of the emblematicexamples of this now worldwide trend has been the German city of Berlin, where, since the 1970s,urban planning has been complemented by a systematic policy of "biotope protection" -- atfirst only in the walled city island of West Berlin, but subsequently across the whole of thereunified capital. In Greening Berlin, Jens Lachmund uses the example of Berlinto examine the scientific and political dynamics that produced this change. After describing atradition of urban greening in Berlin that began in the late nineteenth century, Lachmund detailsthe practices of urban ecology and nature preservation that emerged in West Berlin after World WarII and have continued in post-unification Berlin. He tells how ecologists and naturalists created anecological understanding of urban space on which later nature-conservation policy was based.Lachmund argues that scientific change in ecology and the new politics of nature mutually shaped or"co-produced" each other under locally specific conditions in Berlin. He shows how thepractices of ecologists coalesced with administrative practices to form an institutionally embeddedand politically consequential "nature regime." Lachmund's study shedslight not only on the changing place of nature in the modern city but also on the political use ofscience in environmental conflicts, showing the mutual formation of science, politics, and nature inan urban context.

Author Biography

Jens Lachmund is Lecturer in Science and Technology Studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.