With
Fabien Girard (Grenoble-Alpes, CRJ), Chair
Marion Ernwein (Mansfield College/School of Geography and the Environment), Author
Thomas Lacroix (CNRS/Maison Française d’Oxford), Discussant
Alex Vasudevan (Christ Church/School of Geography and the Environment), Discussant

“Zero pesticide”, ecological management, urban biodiversity policies: urban green spaces are increasingly coming alive. They are increasingly participatory, too, exemplified by the proliferation of community gardens and other collective experiments with plant-growing in cities.

In this book, Marion Ernwein examines the ways in which neoliberal urbanism shapes these evolutions, their promises and their potential. The book shows the role played by logics of eventification, neomanagerialism, and public-private partnerships in delineating the contours of the living city, and the role that human and nonhuman dwellers can play in shaping it.

The book draws on several years of research with policy-makers, service managers, municipal employees, gardeners and activists in Geneva (Switzerland) to make a compelling case for critically engaging with the political mechanisms through which the natures of the living city are defined.

The author: Marion Ernwein holds a PhD in geography from the University of Geneva (Switzerland). She is a Departmental Lecturer at the School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.

This event will be followed by a drinks reception