From instrumentalization to commoning: A critical review of participation in urban nature-based solutions
▻https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2022.917607
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are becoming a widely recognized approach to urban sustainability. Most of the literature and policy handbooks on the topic emphasize the importance of participation in some form but interpretations and levels of commitment vary. While the mainstream discourse often presents NBS as a set of win-win solutions for urban sustainability, there is a tendency to romanticize both nature and participatory planning processes in the institutional language and practices of NBS. In this paper, we review critical perspectives on the mainstream NBS discourse. Then we bring scholarship concerning the relationship between cities, nature and social change into conversation with scholarship on commoning, to outline an approach for rethinking the democratic and (...)