Suchergebnisse

Sites of urban agriculture are often contested urban open spaces. In the current dominant ideal of the 'competitive' and 'global' city, little recognition is given to the potential benefits of urban agriculture, beyond beautification, subsistence or therapeutic purposes. In this context, urban agriculture is often viewed as an activity performed by 'gardeners', either contributing to individual well-being or reducing the costs of maintenance of public spaces. A less 'tolerant' perspective perceives such 'gardeners' as squatters inhibiting cities' productivity. By contrast, urban agriculture enthusiasts advocate the recognition of the right to farm in the city as an essential condition for either food security or food sovereignty. This paper argues that urban agriculture can also be interpreted as a means to claim, nurture and propagate alternative views on spatial justice, place and citizenship-making, defying the maldistributional and misrecognition patterns that typically produce and reproduce unequal urban geographies. Drawing from a four-year research collaboration in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) undertaken by the authors at the Development Planning Unit (DPU) with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), People's Dialogue and the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor, the analysis examines the trajectories of female and male farmers working under different and fast-changing land tenure systems across the Accra-Ashaiman corridor. Adopting an environmental justice perspective, the analysis explores the extent to which urban agriculture might constitute a practice through which marginalised groups might actively claim spaces of daily sociability and political articulation within the city. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Within the wider ongoing debate of Participatory Action Research, this paper interrogates the capacity of participatory mapping not just as a means to tap into plural knowledges over and emanating from specific geographies but rather to disrupt exclusionary constructions of space and place and the reproduction of the governing relationships that cause inequality. Focusing on a participatory mapping experience undertaken by the authors in collaboration with local residents in the steep slopes of Bogota's eastern hills – an area threatened by forced evictions in the name of ecological preservation and risk protection arguments - we explore why and under what conditions participatory mapping might have the potential to disrupt conflicting interpretations of place and space held both by local residents and state agencies, which in turn can open the room to rework what types of interventions are actually needed and why. We hypothesise that this depends on the extent to which mapping can abridge the different scales at which the state and marginalised communities make sense of a site historically underpinned by different forms of spatial myopia and territorial stigma. This is in our view not just a consequence of the application of participatory mapping techniques per se, but depends on the way in which mapping is used to expand the political space in which different conceptions of a territory can effectively talk to each other.

1. The Human Development and Capability Approach – The Role of Empowerment and Participation -- 2. The Practice of Participation and the Capability Approach -- 3. Power and Deliberative Participation in Sen's Capability Approach -- 4. Balancing Pessimism of the Intellect and Optimism of the Will: Some Reflections on the Capability Approach, Gender, Empowerment and Education -- 5. Notions of Empowerment and Participation: Contributions from and to the Capability Approach -- 6. Process and Outcomes: participation and empowerment in a multidimensional poverty framework -- 7. Participatory Development: A Sustainable Approach for Reducing Inequality and Fighting Poverty? The Example of Disability Policies in Afghanistan -- 8. Children and Youth Participation in Decision Making and Research Processes -- 9. The Integrated Capabilities Framework: Exploring Multiculturalism and Human Well-Being in Participatory Settings -- 10. Participatory Research Methods and the Capability Approach: Researching the Housing Dimensions of Squatter Upgrading Programmes in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil -- 11. Participatory Monitoring of Development Projects in the South Pacific -- 12. Planning and Managing for Human Development: What Contribution Can the Capability Approach Make? -- 13. Emancipatory Research as Empowerment: An Illustration from a Research Study of Persons with Disabilities in Palestine -- 14. Capability Development and Decentralisation -- 15. Participation, Empowerment and Capabilities: Key Lessons and Future Challenges

Feminist, Southern, and decolonial thinkers have long argued that epistemological questions about how knowledge is produced and whose knowledge is valued and actioned are crucial in addressing inequalities, and a key challenge for planning. This collaborative article interrogates how knowledge is mobilised in urban planning and practice, discussing three experiences which have actively centred often-excluded voices, as a way of disrupting knowledge hierarchies in planning. We term these "emancipatory circuits of knowledge" - processes whereby diverse, situated, and marginalised forms of knowledge are co-produced and mobilised across urban research and planning, to address inequalities. We discuss experiences from the Technological University José Antonio Echeverría (CUJAE), a university in Havana, Cuba, that privileges a fluid and collaborative understanding of universities as social actors; the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, a research institute in the city of Freetown, which curates collective and inclusive spaces for community action planning, to challenge the legacies of colonial-era planning; and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, a regional network across Asia, which facilitates processes of exchange and co-learning which are highly strategic and situated in context, to advance community-led development. Shared across these "emancipatory circuits" are three "sites of impact" through which these partners have generated changes: encouraging inclusive policy and planning outcomes; shifting the planning praxis of authorities, bureaucrats, and researchers; and nurturing collective trajectories through building solidarities. Examining these three sites and their challenges, we query how urban knowledge is produced and translated towards epistemic justice, examining the tensions and the possibilities for building pathways to urban equality.