Naturally Feeling Good? Exploring Understandings of ‘Green’ Urban Spaces in the Global South

Abstract

This chapter highlights the need to understand more about people’s own lived experience of nature rather than assume Western notions of ‘green is good’ is true in all contexts – in this instance, in the Global South. The authors highlight that ‘good’ is a subjective notion and depends on understandings of ‘green’. Calling on empirical research in Brazil and Nicaragua, the authors discuss how fear as well as attraction can underpin human relationships with nature which are entangled with understandings of climate change and with experience of natural hazards that bring flooding of communities and homes. Nature may also be perceived as a sign of poverty and when unmanaged as ‘dirty’ and dangerous. Biodiversity then may be associated with a sense of threat, leading people to shun particular places and favour others. Making ‘green’ spaces attractive may include concreting them over or painting them bright colours to appeal to potential users. The chapter raises questions around just how accessible and inclusive urban nature is, highlighting how interpretations of ‘nature’ as safe or restorative are fundamentally dependent on human intervention. The chapter explores how users and decision-makers make trade-offs, taming and constructing places to make them safer and more attractive, challenging notions of ‘natural’ and ‘nature’ in urban green spaces.