Substrata: the social worlds of urban soil

Keywords: urban soil, wastelands, multispecies urbanism, contamination, regeneration
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 16

Abstract

For a long time, soil maps around the world have shown urban areas as grey space, indicating an understanding of urban soil as ‘nonsoil’ or inert base that presents a mere backdrop to the social life happening upon its surface. Over the past two decades, geo-scientists and planners have increasingly recognized urban grounds as vital ecosystems. Social scientists have traced the development of urban soil science as a sub-disciplinary field in specific urban contexts and have critically addressed the exploitation of city soils as resources for (sustainable) urban development. However, these scholars seem to agree that the long neglect of urban soil in science and politics has left urban dwellers with a lack of ‘soil awareness,’ a decoupling of the social worlds of cities from the voluminous spaces below the surface. Taking the city of Berlin as a starting point, this paper examines how urban soil knowledges in the plural (scientific and everyday) have contributed to various social, cultural, and ecological meanings of urban volumes. Berlin is both an intellectual starting point and experimental field for urban soil science and also a focal point for spatial practices engaging with urban voids. Our paper traces key moments in Berlin’s history of confronting urban soil, from the memories of ‘rubble women’ to contemporary artistic and activist appropriations of contaminated soils to-be regenerated. We argue that, rather than being disconnected from social worlds, urban soils are rich repositories of urban life from which various cultural memories and alternative socio-ecological futures can be gleaned.