Nature and the city: Into the (un)familiar wild

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Nature and the city:

Into the (un)familiar wild

An exploratory study of how young women relate to everyday

urban natures in Stockholm through going along

Karin Thalberg

Department of Human Geography Master Degree, 30 credits Human Geography

International Master in Environmental Social Sciences (120 credits) Spring term 2019

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Abstract

In the light of the spreading awareness of urban natures key role in ensuring a sustainable future for all, growing pressure on urban land, an increasingly diverse urban population and rising inequalities this thesis sets out to explore how young women relate to urban nature in their everyday lives beyond the strong safety narrative and what advantages there are of using a mobile sensory ethnography approach in researching urban natures. Considering a lack of studies on young women and urban natures in general, and a tendency for research on women and urban natures to focus on safety, this thesis inductively explores the topic by adopting an explicitly feminist epistemology through the use of go-along interviews.

The findings show that sensoriality and emotion are central for how young women relate to, operationalised as how they understand, connect to, and experience, urban natures in their everyday lives. The findings furthermore contribute to complement the understanding of what access to nature means. The diversity in how my research participants relate to urban natures in their everyday lives highlights the need to understand access through emplaced local experiences and knowledge. The go-along interview method allows for these perspectives to come forward, and shows promise in empowering the research participants as local experts. The potential for the mediation of these kinds of results with the participatory digital technology of GPS-mapping and photos would therefore be interesting explore further to contribute to the planning of socially inclusive, just and environmentally sustainable cities.

Keywords

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List of tables and figures

Table 1. Overview of go-along interviews...19

Figure 1. Map of Stockholm, overview of where the go-along interviews took place...20

Figure 2. Ramblr interface...22

Figure 3. Map of the go-along with Ella in Norra Djurgården...24

Figure 4. Map of the go-along interview with Tove in Bergshamra...25

Figure 5. Map of the go-along interview with Shirin in Rinkeby...26

Figure 6. Map of the go-along interview with Zahra in Husby......27

Figure 7. Map of the go-along interview with Jessica in Husby...28

Figure 8. Map of the go-along interview with Yasmin in Akalla...29

Figure 9. Map of the go-along interview with Emma in Spånga...30

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1. Introduction

This thesis is written within the research project Green Access, a collaboration between Stockholm University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Through a series of case studies in Stockholm, the Green access project places transdisciplinarity and issues of power in centre to understand the changes in the city’s urban natures from multiple perspectives to better inform decision-making and planning. In this thesis, the user perspective is in focus. The thesis draws additional inspiration from the think tank Global Utmaning’s project #UrbanGirlsMovement and its feminist participatory rationale in urban development (Global Utmaning 2017). It sets out to explore how young women relate to urban natures in their everyday lives beyond the strong safety narrative. In this introductory section I will lay out the key themes that influenced the development of this thesis.

Today nearly four billion people, over half of the world’s population, live in urban areas. By 2050 this number is expected to increase with 2,5 billion, making 66 % of the total world population urban (UNDESA 2018). This trend is evident in Sweden’s capital city Stockholm, which is one of the fastest growing city regions in Europe (RUFS 2018). At the same time, the world’s urban population is contributing to over 75 % carbon dioxide emissions, 75 % of global natural resource consumption and 80 % of overall energy consumption (UNEP 2013), rendering cities’ footprint on our planet up to 500-1000 larger than their actual area (Folke et al. 1997). While the increasing urbanisation thus affects the sustainability of the entire planet (Seto et al. 2011), urban areas are facing immanent threats posed by climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity and land use change (UN Habitat 2016). Simultaneously, not all urban residents contribute to these challenges in the same way, and their vulnerability to these threats are wildly different. Segregation and income-gaps in urban areas are increasing, which among other things is mirrored in differentiated access to urban natures (UN Habitat 2017; Wolch et al. 2014).

The key role that urban natures play in creating healthy, just, environmentally sustainable and resilient urban futures is increasingly stressed by researchers and policy makers. The importance of nature in cities for residents’ quality of life, health and well-being has for a long time been recognised by researchers and in policy circles (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Maas et al. 2006; WHO 2017). More recently, the understanding of urban nature’s significance to counter threats such as loss of biological diversity and climate change is becoming increasingly acknowledged (see for example Elmqvist et al. 2013). Furthermore, the adaptive and transformative capacity of urban green space to promote for example social integration and cultural diversity, civic participation in environmental stewardship, connection-to-nature, and ensure food-production in times of crisis has been explored (see e.g. Andersson et al. 2015; Andersson et al. 2014; Colding et al. 2013; Giusti et al. 2014).

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Women and youth are groups whose interests have been and still are largely neglected in urban development processes. While cities often claim to be for everyone, young women and girls have been found to be underrepresented in urban public spaces and rarely targeted as a group in development projects (White Architects 2017; Global Utmaning 2017). Feminist geographers and urban planners have during the past 40 years highlighted how research, decision-making processes and design have resulted in urban forms that are built by and for men (Hayden 1980; Sandercock and Forsyth 1992; Bondi and Rose 1993). This is now recognised at the highest level within the UN’s global Agenda 2030. Goal 11, that especially targets urban areas, stipulates that women and girls are among the most vulnerable to be “left behind” in the aspiration for providing “universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces” (UN General Assembly 2015). In Stockholm the local government has adopted feminist city planning to ensure that the city indeed is a city for everyone (Stockholm Direkt 2016). There is, however, a tendency to equate women’s and girl’s needs in public spaces with safety and not question the underlying norms and structures of power (Global Utmaning 2019). Global Utmaning’s participatory city planning pilot project #UrbanGirlsMovement in Fittja, Stockholm, however showed that when girls were allowed to be place-experts and themselves re-design their local public spaces, their priorities reflected “vibrant, green spaces with cross-generational features and possibilities to navigate well, walk around and linger” where safety rather was a bonus than a central feature (Global Utmaning 2019: 160-161). The #UrbanGirlsMovement pilot thus showed that liveability in urban spaces is more than safety for girls.

When it comes to research and decision-making on nature in urban public spaces these groups are similarly marginalised. I did not find a single study that focuses specifically on urban natures and the group young women and girls. For women, safety emerges as central theme in this literature as well. Overall the number of studies conducted with a specific focus on women or gender in relation to urban natures are scarce. One exception is quantitative studies on women’s perceptions of safety in urban green spaces and urban parks (see for example the literature overviews of Sreetheran and van den Bosch 2014 and Jansson et al. 2013). In qualitative or mixed methods studies that focus on women and/or gender with a user-perspective on urban natures, but do not specifically have safety as a primary target, perceptions of safety nonetheless emerge as key concerns (see for example Krenichyn 2006; Wright Wendel et al. 2012; Medina 2016). When it comes to women and urban natures, it is thus safe to say that safety is a strong narrative. Dahlberg and Borgström (20017: 177) suggest that there is an inclination in research and policymaking on urban natures that narratives to either compete for attention or exist side-by-side without resulting in a common discussion. By adopting an inductive feminist method in this thesis, I try to move beyond the focus on safety and allow for an open exploration. In the next section I will outline the user-focused literature on urban natures that function as a background for thesis, as well as the research approach that is of central concern for this endeavour.

1.1. Background and research approach

The growing awareness of nature’s key role for sustainable and just urban futures requires us to know more about how people relate to nature in cities. Scholarship on the interconnectedness and mutual dependence of ecological and social systems that discusses how people use, experience, perceive and value urban natures is a growing research field (see for example Andersson et al. 2015; Buchel and Frantzeskaki 2015; Richers et al. 2016; Fischer et al. 2018). So with an ever-more diverse urban population and increasing pressure on urban land, more empirical data is needed to plan for different uses and interests, and acknowledge trade-offs and potential conflicts (Dahlberg and Borgström 2017: 181-182; Richers et al. 2016: 38).

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distance from the home or the neighbourhood (see Wolch et al. 2014 for an overview of the Anglo-American literature), most frequently to urban parks (see for example Kabish and Haase 2014). While there has been no agreement on how to measure, the combined studies have contributed to show that the spatial distribution of urban natures is stratified along the lines of income and ethno-racial characteristics, which adversely affects the health of marginalised groups (Wolch et al. 2014). However, quantitative and mixed methods research has showed that proximity does not always translate into actual use. Factors such as gender, physical abilities, age, education, socio-economic factors, preferences and cultural practices have been shown to influence people’s use patterns within the fields of landscape planning, urban planning and outdoor recreation (Neuvonen et al. 2007; Schipperijn et al. 2010a; Schipperijn et al. 2010b; Wright Wendel et al. 2012; Medina 2016; Kloek et

al. 2013; Peters et al. 2010). Identifying patterns of spatial distribution of urban natures is nonetheless

an important tool in the light of growing socio-economic inequalities and segregation in cities, but proximity does not appear to be a universal cure. These studies tell us little about the experiences that lie behind the patterns.

An important qualitative compliment to this type of research focuses on people’s perceptions, experiences, meanings and values of urban natures. In their seminal study, geographers Burgess et al. (1988) explored people’s experiences of urban natures in London, United Kingdom. Their qualitative mixed methods approach opened up for discussions on personal, sensory and emotional perceptions, experiences and meanings of urban natures, but nonetheless acknowledged power dimensions such as gender and ethno-racial aspects. More recently, Peckham et al. (2013) conducted a similar study in Calgary and Halifax, Canada. Researchers within this strand of scholarship advocate methodological approaches that are grounded in the context of people’s everyday lived experiences, to more fully explore people’s feelings related to their everyday environments. They argue that such findings contribute to making more realistic analysis of urban residents’ needs and values, in the light of increasing pressures on urban land (Burgess et al. 1988: 456). This type of research approach lies at the heart of my thesis and resonates with feminist research practices that are equally important sources of inspiration.

By drawing on feminist research within geography that challenges dominant knowledge production and norms through their research practices, I adopt a feminist epistemology in this thesis. While geography traditionally has been a visual discipline, feminist geographers have challenged the ‘vision from above’ that long has been dominant in a ‘male’ epistemology that privileges ‘objectivity and universalism’ (Dixon and Jones 2006; Law 2005). A feminist epistemology acknowledges that all perspectives come from somewhere, and that our position in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, physical and mental abilities, sexual orientation and age, shape our perception and everyday lived experiences (Rose 1997; Law 2005). From this point of view, the body, the senses and emotions are drawn into the centre of the research endeavour as they challenge ‘objective’ ways of portraying and studying the city (Bondi and Rose 1993; Dixon and Jones 2006).

In terms of research on urban natures, studies that emanate from an epistemological stance that acknowledges the body, its multiple senses and emotions as legitimate sources of knowledge, has studied the embodied experiences of nature (see e.g. Tolia-Kelley 2007 on migrants and national parks in the UK; Philips and Atchinson 2018 on urban trees in Australia). Sense-of-place in relation to urban natures is another closely related field (Byrne et al. 2007; Masterson et al. 2017). These are strands of research are tied to embodied, sensory and emotional ways of knowing the world that are gaining more and more momentum across the social sciences (Pink 2015), and are important in feminist research as they challenge ‘objective’ ways of portraying and studying the city (Bondi and Rose 1993; Dixon and Jones 2006). Another example is the ‘forest ethnography’ approach put forth by Ogden et

al. (2019), where ethnographic methods are used to examine what constitutes forest experiences urban

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My feminist epistemology therefore champions young women’s lived experiences of urban natures in their everyday lives and acknowledges their bodies, senses and emotions as crucial sources of knowing and experiencing physical reality. In this thesis I therefore adopted a mobile sensory ethnographic approach, both theoretically and methodologically, manifest in the choice of participatory go-along interviews in the research participants’ everyday environments, complemented by visual and digital data collection techniques. The contribution of this thesis is thus twofold: it collects empirical data in the context of Stockholm on how young women relate to urban natures in their everyday lives; and explores a participatory ethnographic method that to my knowledge has not been used in this way or context before.

1.2. Research questions

This thesis is an exploratory study that examines the following research questions:

• How do young women relate to urban nature in their everyday lives beyond the strong safety narrative?

• What are the advantages of using a mobile sensory ethnography approach in researching urban natures?

How ‘relate to’ is operationalised for the purpose of this thesis will be explained in Chapter 3.

Research approach and method, under section 3.5. Data analysis.

1.3. An inclusive definition of urban natures

In this thesis, I adopt a broad and inclusive definition of urban natures in accordance with Kaplan’s (1984) nature-at-doorstep. Here, this definition seeks to encompass all types of green spaces, vegetation, green elements and greenery in cities that city dwellers can experience in their everyday urban lives. Correspondingly, when examining previous research, I drew on studies that included a variety of urban natures: urban parks, urban forests, urban woodland, and urban green spaces. This inclusive definition of urban natures align with my feminist epistemology that privileges people’s lived experiences to challenge the dominant way of seeing the city, disembodied, from above (Law 2005). Instead of having a pre-defined conception of what urban natures are or should be, this epistemology allows the research participants’ own categories and meanings of what urban natures are or could be to emerge.

1.4. Thesis structure

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In Chapter 3. Research approach and method, the research framework is summarized as an ontological and epistemological position. Thereafter I explain the practicalities of how the go-along interviews were designed, conducted and analysed with the intent of being as transparent as possible about how the knowledge was produced. I discuss issues of ethics and positionality, sampling and limitations. I conducted go-along interviews with eight young women ranging from 18-29 years. The thesis has Stockholm’s urban natures as its empirical case and is therefore not focusing on any specific area. The focus is rather to explore a novel and inductive approach to how young women relate to urban natures in their everyday environments.

Each research participant is introduced through a short descriptive profile with a map of how we walked during their respective go-along interview in Chapter 4. Going along with young women in

Stockholm’s urban natures. Emanating from a feminist epistemology, the context and background of

the research participants is inextricably connected with how they relate to urban natures and is needed to understand their lived everyday experiences that the discussion in the ensuing chapter will focus on.

The results and discussion in this thesis are combined and divided into two chapters: Chapter 5.

Nature and the city: Into the familiar wild; and Chapter 6. Urban natures: Embodied, reflecting the

two research questions. In Chapter 5 the empirical results of the first research question - how to young women relate to urban natures in their everyday lives beyond the strong safety narrative - are presented and discussed. In Chapter 6 the advantages of a mobile sensory ethnography approach to study this topic is examined.

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2. Research framework

This chapter lays out the theoretical and methodological foundations of the thesis as a guiding research framework. The research framework builds on theoretical and methodological developments that emanate from different social science disciplines united in an epistemology that places the human body, its multiple senses and emotions, in centre to understand other people’s realities. To describe my research framework – a way of seeing, knowing, studying and intervening in the world - I use the umbrella term ‘sensory ethnography’ (Pink 2015). These developments are furthermore central for feminist researchers that challenge objectivist knowledge production by championing people’s lived experiences (Law 2005). Feminist geographers have for example established that sensory and emotional experiences are central for the design of the built environment (Degen and Rose 2012: 3272). In this thesis, a sensory ethnography approach is used to argue that to sensoriality and emotion is equally central for studying how people relate to urban natures. I now turn to introduce the ethnographic methodology generally, and sensory ethnography in particular. Thereafter, the following sections will outline my core concepts of embodied and emplaced everyday experiences, go-along interviews as a mobile approach to sensory ethnography that allows serendipitous discovery, and lastly how this type of mobile sensory ethnography can be mediated through mapping and photos.

2.1. Sensory ethnography

The theoretical and methodological foundation of this thesis primarily builds on Sarah Pink’s conceptualisation of sensory ethnography in Doing Sensory Ethnography (2009; 2015). Pink frames sensory ethnography as a ‘research approach’ rather than a distinct discipline because it is used across disciplines and increasingly in applied research. It furthermore draws on theoretical developments and methods from different social science disciplines, for example anthropology, human geography and sociology. What unites these different disciplines in the approach of sensory ethnography is the epistemological fundament that places sensoriality, i.e. the human body, its multiple senses and emotions, in centre to understand other people’s realities (Pink 2015: 3-4).

My research framework gives precedence to human geography’s take on sensory ethnography, which can be distinguished by its distinctly spatial approach. The methodological framework is furthermore inspired by strands of feminist scholarship that uses a sensory and embodied perspective to challenge the male epistemology and dominance of vision in geography and urban planning (Law 2005; Longhurst 2005). Primarily of interest for this thesis is acknowledgment of everyday life as key to understanding spatial relations, the body and embodied experiences as scales with ontological status in geography and the inclusion of multiple senses and emotion into the understanding of experiences of the physical environment. In this thesis, the western sensorium of smell, sound, touch, vision and taste is adopted.

But before I go on to define the main concepts that underpin this thesis, the core meaning of ethnography as a way of studying the world is important to explain. O’Reilly’s broad and practice-oriented characterisation of the ethnographic methodology best captures the intention of my research approach and explains it in a hands-on way:

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Adopting these guidelines, my sensory ethnography explored young women’s lived experiences of urban natures, acknowledging their multiple senses and emotions. It used the emplaced, in-depth method of go-along interviews, situated in the research participants’ everyday lives. Pink (2015: 4) furthermore notes that ethnographic methods often are “developed and adapted in a context and as appropriate to the needs and possibilities afforded by the specific research project”. In Chapter 3.

Research approach and method, I will therefore describe how go-along interviews were adapted and

used in this thesis. The next sections will go on to outline my concepts and place them in relation to feminist research.

2.2.1. Embodied and emplaced everyday experiences

A sensory ethnographer aims to know other people’s worlds, similar to how they are known by those people (Pink 2015: 25, 54). As stated in the introduction of this chapter, the human body, its multiple senses and emotions are in centre of this endeavour. Emanating from such a stance, human geography scholars such as Tuan (1977; 1993), Rodaway (1994) and Porteaus (1990) used the senses as a prism to revise geography’s key concepts of space, place and experiences of the (built or ‘natural’) environment during the 1990s. In this thesis, experiences of the environment are the most relevant and will therefore be in focus in this section.

The concept of experience is key in sensory research to understand other people’s worlds. It derives from a phenomenological approach that seeks to understand people’s lived, everyday experiences in specific situations (Bloor and Wood 2011). The everyday is equally important for feminist researchers in general. For feminist researchers the everyday is a central scale of analysis, as a site where power structures are produced, reproduced and contested (Sundberg 2017). This informed the focus on young women’s everyday experiences of urban natures in this thesis. But how can we begin to grasp such experiences?

Perception is a first step to uncover how we can approach other people’s experiences through the senses. In early debates on perception, the body and how it senses the physical environment was seen as separate from the rational mind (for an outline of the debate see Pink 2015: 31-32). During the 1990s, under what has been called the ‘sensorial turn’ in social sciences (Howes 2003), the body-mind dichotomy was resolved and the term embodiment had a big impact on across the social science disciplines (Pink 2011). In general terms, embodiment denotes the integration of the body and mind on the level of perception (Csordas 1990). Embodiment thus recognises the body and the senses as sources of knowing the world. For feminist scholars the acknowledgement of embodied experiences as legitimate sources of knowledge was central to challenge the male epistemology that privileged the rational mind (conceptualised as male) over the body (conceptualised as female) in social sciences (Longhurst 2005).

More recently, the role of the physical environment and place in human experiences has been stressed in sensory research. Howes (2005: 7) suggested a move from embodiment to the term of emplacement, which signifies ‘the sensuous interrelationship of body-mind-environment’. Through the term emplacement, the environment is thus seen another indistinguishable part of the human perception. Both feminist and phenomenological researchers emphasise that there does not exist any objective way to know the world (Haraway 1988; Byrne et al. 2007). Experiences are from this perspective constituted by as the constant flow between the physical reality and our senses, emotions and corporeality (Byrne et al. 2007: 30). Mobility in general, and more specifically the act of walking has furthermore been conceptualised as an essential activity by which we experience our environments through our body and senses (see for example Ingold 2000 and 2004), which I will come back to in the next section that outlines go-along interviews as a mobile approach to sensory ethnography.

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class, ethnicity etc. Emplacement is in turn operationalised as how that embodiment is experienced in the encounter with the physical reality. These are the key concepts to appreciate the approach from which this thesis emanates, but in terms of research methodologies this has big implications as knowing is seen as ‘embedded in embodied practices’ which spoken words might not be able to express (Pink 2011: 345). In order to come closer to understanding other people’s sensory experiences of the environment, their meanings and activities, the researcher must use her own embodied and emplaced experiences reflexively.

To do this I follow Pink (2015) who puts forth an emplaced sensory ethnography that privileges participation in the research participants’ everyday practices. She suggests ‘being there’ in a shared physical environment and attending to their daily practices, explanations and subjectivities, and using one’s own emplacement to empathise with theirs. In this encounter, which in this thesis was go-along interviews with research participants in their everyday urban natures, the researcher can begin to understand the emplaced experience of others, through their engagement with at once social, sensorial, emotional and material layers of the environment (Ibid.: 50). By attending to their use of different categorisations and meanings, we can start to better understand their emplacement (Pink 2015: 42).

2.2.2. Mobility and serendipity in sensory ethnography through going along

As noted above, by drawing on sensory ethnographic approaches, we can get a sense of what the physical experience of ‘being there’ in the everyday environment of the research participants can add to the understanding of their experiences. Pink (2007) writes that being in place with someone, walking and being showed around in environments familiar to them, allows us to learn more about their emplacement. Lee and Ingold (2006: 83) especially highlight the sociability of walking together: “through shared walking, we can see and feel what is really a learning process of being together, in adjusting one’s body and one’s speech to the rhythms of others, and of sharing a point of view”. Walking with the research participants thus holds promise of doing research with them and exploring together (Pink 2015: 111), which will be further discussed in section 4.2.3 Ethics and positionality. Furthermore, Lee and Ingold (2006) have suggested that walking interviews are a technique to combine interviews with sensory, emplaced experiences and observation. Different types of walking interviews fall under the broad category of mobile methods with contributions from researchers from a variety of social science disciplines (see Büscher and Urry 2009 for an overview). Mobility adds a distinctly spatial dimension to the sensory ethnographic approach (Pierce and Lawhon 2015). Feminist scholars have furthermore argued that walking in everyday urban environments can be used as a disruptive method to destabilise unified visions of place represented in planning visions (Beebeejaun 2017: 326).

Evans and Jones (2011), discusses different kinds of walking interviews and presents a typology over different types that have been used by researchers. The designs range from Kusenbach’s (2003) ‘natural go-alongs’ in the research participants everyday environment, to Reed’s (2002) ‘guided walks’ where the interviewer is the one familiar with the area and who determines the route of the interview. These different approaches to walking interviews generate very different kinds of data and are thus suitable for different kinds of research aims. The method used in this thesis situates itself close to Kusenbach’s natural go-alongs, as in-depth interviews walking in the participants’ everyday environments. See section 4.2. The go-along interview process for details on how the interviews were performed.

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of home and nostalgia are some of the associations that emerged for Kusenbach’s subjects they moved through the everyday space (Ibid.: 462). Moreover, in a study on how people engage with and learn about the environment in gardens Hitchins and Jones (2004) noticed that conversations were more straightforward and informal when they were immersed together in the garden setting, which produced more interesting data than conducting interviews inside.

Other researchers have similarly argued that go-along and walking interviews and hold potential to generate more spontaneous response. Serendipitous discovery is likely to occur as the research participant continuously is exposed to meaning-evoking stimulus (Pierce and Lawhon 2015; Anderson 2004). This may provoke associations and answers that may have been left untold or not even thought of in a stationary interview (Kočková 2016: 425). These types of meaning-evoking stimuli are often referred to as prompts in the literature on walking methods, and is seen as an inherent characteristic to mobile methods in particular (Brown and Durrheim 2009) and qualitative research in general (Thompson and Reynolds 2018: 2).

Bergeron et al. (2014) refer to this inherent quality as interruptions and a risk of walking methods. Thompson and Reynolds (2018), on the other hand, explore how prompts or disruptions can enrich our understanding of space, spatial practices and experiences. Correspondingly, the situation and environment in go-along interviews concomitantly shape the interaction between the researcher and the participant (Brown and Durrheim 2009). The epistemological value of disruption can be argued to align with feminist research that seeks to challenge objectivists by highlighting the complexity of reality.

While the benefits described above relies on the mentioned researchers’ personal experiences, Evans and Jones (2011) confirmed these results in a comparative study on the effectiveness of walking methods for understanding people’s experiences the environment. Their results showed a measurable difference between stationary and mobile interviews in terms of “rich place narratives both in terms of quality and spatial specificity to the study area” (Ibid.: 849). I now turn to explain how these types of rich narratives can be mediated through mapping and photos.

2.2.3. Mapping and mediation of mobile sensory ethnography

Even though a key purpose of the go-along interviews is to examine the research participant’s relationships with the environment, spatial location has often been dealt with rather crudely (Jones et

al. 2008). There does however exist some examples of how GPS-technology has been used to spatially

locate the interview discussions, adding another layer to the data analysis by revealing place-bound meanings and values of the physical environment (Jones et al. 2008; Evans and Jones 2011; Bergeron

et al. 2014; Bell et al. 2015). Bell et al. (2015) highlight the potential of GPS-technology and go-along

interviews to explore and mediate everyday, routine encounters with the environment. Others have argued that the type of data this produces is of great value for planners and policymakers in planning for inclusive cities (Evans and Jones 2011), which corresponds to the objectives of the Green Access project and #UrbanGirlsMovement.

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Pink (2015) correspondingly makes a case for the potential of sensory ethnography to have impact on how we know and intervene in the world by a focus on people’s sensory experiences, and specifically how those experiences can be mediated to evoke empathy among an outside audience. First, by participating in the emplaced practices of the research participants, they can ‘use their bodies and senses to touch, show, tell and verbalise what is important them’ (Pink 2015: 130). Second, by using multiple sources of data and seeking to represent those practices in other medium than text, the mediation of the research can create a sense of intimacy, of ‘being there’ and communicate experiential understanding that text struggles to do (Ibid.: 134, 165).

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3. Research approach and method

In this chapter I start by outlining the overarching research approach and acknowledge my ontological and epistemological position, which to a large extent summarises the previous chapter. I thereafter go on to explain how the go-along interviews were designed and performed. Issues of ethics and positionality, sampling and limitations are furthermore considered. Lastly, I present the process of data analysis.

3.1. Research approach

As this thesis was interested in understanding how people experience the physical reality, in this case urban nature, my research approach reflects an ontological position that acknowledges that the physical reality exists externally from human perception, but that it only is through human perception that we can make sense of it and relate to it. In this sense it is an in-between stance between positivism and interpretivism that analytically places more focus on the notion of interpretation (see for example Bryman 2012 on critical realism and Mason 2002 on subtle realism).

In terms of epistemology, this thesis recognises that the human body, the senses and emotions are central to understand human perception and how we interpret reality in our everyday lives (Pink 2015). This corresponds to a feminist epistemology that moreover rejects the possibility of objective knowledge production and acknowledges that all perspectives come from somewhere, are partial and situated (Elmhirst 2015; Haraway 1988). In this way our position in terms of e.g. gender, ethnicity, religion, physical and mental abilities, sexual orientation or age, shapes our multi-sensory perception and emplaced everyday experiences (Rose 1997; Law 2005).

These emplaced everyday experiences are not easily observable from a distance and may not be readily expressed with words, therefore a feminist epistemology encourages ethnographic methods (Pink 2015; Law 2005). The data in this thesis was derived through a mobile sensory ethnography approach by going along and conversing with the research participant’s in their everyday urban natures while simultaneously tracking the walk with GPS and taking photos. The research participants’ emplaced everyday experiences and their interpretations, meanings and understandings of urban natures serve as primary data, that I as a researcher in turn interpret while reflecting on my position and influence in the knowledge production to my best ability (Mason 2002: 19, 56). The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to that cause.

3.2. The go-along process

Long term, first-hand engagement with the research participants and the research context has traditionally been considered a key feature of ethnography. In this thesis, however, I have adopted go-along interviews (see Kusenbach 2003) as a method for short-term ethnography (as discussed by Pink 2013 and Knoblauch 2005). Here, a rich set of data attempts to make up for the short time of engagement (Knoblauch 2005: 16).

3.2.1. Planning and performing the interviews

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participants were however aware of the research topic and method from the onset and had agreed to participate as it interested them. Instructions for the go-along interview were furthermore handed out one day ahead of the interaction to the participants to clarify the objective of the go-along interview and the research participants’ role. The instructions were formulated in a very general to avoid leading the research participants (see Appendix).

During the go-along interviews a semi-structured interview guide was used. The interview guide contained a set of specific but flexible and open-ended questions (see Appendix). The design of the go-alongs allowed research participants to comment on anything along the route and I would follow up, adding an unstructured element to them. I carried a small printed version of the interview guide during the go-along interviews. Kusenbach (2003) suggests that using unstructured or semi-structured interview questions during go-along interviews increase the authenticity of the representation of their experiences and interpretations. While some researchers utilising unstructured interviews would argue that even a very limited interview guide skews the views mediated by the research participant, the semi-structured interview format allowing for unstructured elements was chosen for focus on the main topic (Bryman 2012; Brinkman 2013), and as it welcomes the disruptive features inherent to mobility (Thompson and Reynolds 2018: 2).

The mobile app Ramblr was used to collect data with my smartphone during the go-along interviews. It tracked the walking route with GPS and included the possibility to take geo-located photos. To record the entirety of the conversations, the standard audio recorder on my smartphone was used for convenience as it limited the need for an additional device.

I tried the app, the audio recording and the interview guide in a pilot before undertaking the first interview. While the rationale behind taking photos was to illustrate the participant’s perceptions and experiences visually (Bergeron et al. 2013; Pink 2007), the pilot made me realise that taking photos could be difficult and potentially disturb the flow of the conversation if the research participant does not take initiatives to make stops or clearly talks about certain places. In the interviews I therefore introduced the photo element with the research participants somewhere at the start of the interview so that taking photos would come more naturally. Additionally, I tried to communicate whenever I took a photo so that I more easily could place the photos when transcribing the interviews. The ease of taking photos and how naturally they emerged, however, varied a lot with different research participants resulting in diverging numbers of photos taken during the interviews.

3.2.2. Ethics and positionality

Relevant ethical considerations stipulated by the Swedish Research Council (see Vetenskapsrådet 2017) were considered for this thesis. After establishing contact, all research participants received a prior informed consent-form stating the aim of the study, information about the wider research project that it is part of, what was required from the research participants, information about their rights including confidentiality, voluntariness and withdrawal, how data would be recorded and how the results would be used, with contact details to me and my thesis supervisors. Only after verbal assurance that the participants had read the information and agreed to its contents, time and place for the interviews were set up. No further measures were deemed to be necessary as all the research participants were above 18 and the research topic was not deemed to be of a sensitive nature. No incentives to participate were given to the research participants.

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woman in a similar age to the research participants as a contributing factor to this, similarly to Valentine (2005: 113).

Despite the steps taken to ensure an inclusive and collaborative research encounter, this research can only be argued to be collaborative to a certain extent. While the participants decided the routes and certain topics emerged in place, the subject, method and interview-guide were chosen and designed beforehand by me. From the onset there was thus an underlying assumption that the topic was of interest to the envisaged research participants. Here it is worth to note that the sample (age-wise and geographically) had to be expanded due to difficulties to get access to the originally envisaged sample. My own position, interest in and relation to urban natures must also be mentioned in relation to this. I come from a middle-class background in a southern Stockholm suburb and grew up with a natural reserve starting a couple of hundred metres from my house with a very ‘outdoorsy’ and nature-loving family.

Furthermore, as the research participants’ everyday surroundings were highlighted through the method it was important to remain humble about not knowing the areas well. In some of their interviews in particular I felt that my position as an outsider shaped the interaction (see England 1994). In one interview I did know the area well and therefore had to be reflexive about my own relation to the area in relation to that of my research participant.

3.3. Sampling

Initially I had envisaged going along with young women between the ages of 16-25 in the Järva area. This would have been in accordance with the target group for #UrbanGirlsMovement. Järva additionally the area in Stockholm where the Green Access project is focused. Contact with gatekeepers was deemed instrumental to reach individuals who fit this sample (Valentine 2005: 116-117). I made contact with one school and several local and regional organisations and groups for youth, for girls especially or with an environmental or nature focus. While some of the gatekeepers responded positively to my request and tried to help, others did not have time and some did not reply at all. In the end, only one research participant was recruited through an organisation.

The other research participants were recruited through convenience sampling by posting in separatist groups for women or university associations and programs on Facebook. Due to difficulties to find younger research participants I chose to include women who were a few years older that expressed an interest to be part of the study. The research participants age span from 18-29. In a similar vein I included persons who lived outside Järva but who contacted me and said that they were interested in participating. I additionally tried snowballing, i.e. asking respondents with help to recruit other respondents (Valentine 2005: 117-118), without luck.

Finding research participants was thus a challenging element. While the participants were fewer than first envisaged and the sample criteria had to be extended to find the final eight participants, the interviews generated sufficient data to explore the topic and make suggestions for further research. Non-probability sampling does, however, not generate generalizable findings but has been argued to be useful for exploratory qualitative studies such as this (Bryman 2012: 201-202).

It should be noted that most of the research participants appeared to have an environmental interest and/or was politically active in the local area to some extent. Instead of dismissing this characteristic of the sample merely as a limitation, the research participants’ individual purposes to participate are instead overtly included in the discussion of the method’s usefulness to study the topic (see Chapter

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Research participant number and pseudonym

Age Area Date and

time Inter-view length No. of photos taken

Weather Notable go-along

interview context RP1: Ella 24 Norra Djurgården 20190328 15:15

53 min. 10 Sunny and windy, 13°C

Area familiar to the interviewer. Interview conducted in English. RP2: Tove 25 Bergshamra 20190402 14:00 66 min. 7 Sunny and windy, 9°C Occasional distracting wind. RP3: Shirin 24 Rinkeby 20190408 18:00 44 min. 8 Cloudy, windy, 1°C Interviewer was freezing. RP4: Zahra 21 Husby 20190410 11:00 47 min. 17 Cloudy, windy, slight snow fall, 0°C We were both freezing. Distracting wind. RP5: Jessica 27 Husby 20190415 11:00 61 min. 14 Sunny, 8°C

Easter break, more people out than in other interviews. RP6: Yasmin 29 Akalla 20190416

14:00

31 min. 7 Sunny, 10°C

Easter break, more people out than in other interviews.

RP7: Emma 18 Spånga 20190423

9:30

61 min. 10 Sunny, 15°C

Planes loudly passed by above us with 10-minute intervals.

RP8: Anna 24 Akalla 20190424

16:00

51 min. 12 Sunny, windy, 18°C

Distracting wind.

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Figure 1. Map of Stockholm, overview of where the go-along interviews took place

3.4. Limitations

As mentioned above, the sample’s environmental interests or political activism can be seen as one limitation of this thesis. Furthermore, in research on urban natures the perspectives of rare or non-users are especially valuable (Dahlberg and Borgström 2017: 181; Ogden et al. 2019: 59-60). In my study the majority of the research participants used urban natures often or occasionally, which can be seen is a limitation in this regard. But as discussed in the section above, the sample was deemed as sufficient to explore the topic and the method, which is the aim of this thesis.

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Moreover, the weather and season influenced the interviews. In some interviews cold temperatures made the go-along experience less enjoyable, and perhaps shorter. In most of the interviews the wind sporadically made small segments of the audio recording inaudible. In one interview airplanes going by with 10-minute intervals had the same effect. Transcribing the interviews quickly after the go-alongs to some extent compensated this for, but in some cases the disruption led to pauses in the conversation.

The go-along method as I performed it required me to start the GPS-recording, take photos, occasionally look at the interview guide and hold up the phone to record the sound. This is something that other researchers have acknowledged as a challenge with the method (see for example Bergeron et

al. 2014 and Jones et al. 2008). Sometimes the Ramblr app shut down unexpectedly or I wanted to

take a photo in the midst of a conversation, which sometimes scattered my focus. With practice it became easier. The data gathered is however believed to make up for these shortcomings.

3.5. Data analysis

Three types of data were collected in this thesis: maps with GPS points tracing the go-alongs; photos; notes on my own emplaced experiences and reflections from each go-along interview; and verbatim transcripts of the conversations that took place during the walks. One go-along interview was conducted in English and the remainder in Swedish. I translated the interviews in Swedish to English during the analysis process.

The process of analysis in long-term ethnographic research is usually conceived as iterative-inductive, where the analysis and data-collection are interlinked and occur concomitantly. The researcher analyses data throughout the research process, and the new insights and data collected might lead the research in a new direction (O’Rielly 2012: 180-184). In the short-term ethnographic method that was adopted in this thesis these features could be accommodated in two ways. Firstly, the design of the go-along interviews had some iterative-inductive features. While the interview guide did not change throughout the process, my thinking did. The first step of the data analysis was thus conducted by transcribing an interview straight after it took place, by writing my own reflections and by looking at the photos and maps. Through that I subconsciously and consciously started sorting out themes, which undoubtedly shaped each subsequent interview. The semi-structured and open-ended interview format allowed the encounter to emerge in the interplay between me – the researcher (and my experiences from previous encounters), the research participant and the environment we were moving through. Secondly, in the sorting and coding process that took place once all interviews were completed the themes changed and were re-sorted over time (O’Reilly 2012: 187-189) as I concomitantly engaged with different sources of data, theoretical, methodological and empirical literature, and discussed with my supervisors. Through the data analysis process ‘relate to’ was finally thematised into three categories, specifically as how the research participants: understand; connect to; and experience urban nature. The discussion in Chapter 5. Nature and the city: Into the familiar wild is structured around these three themes where they moreover will be explained.

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Figure 2. Using the Ramblr interface (Ramblr, 2019) as a part of an embodied ‘hands-on’ process of

data analysis (see Thanem and Knights 2019: 116).

Excerpts from the go-along interview scripts will be used in the second discussion chapter Chapter 6.

urban natures: Embodied, where I discuss the second research question, namely, the advantages of

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4. Going along in with young

women Stockholm’s urban nature

In the previous two chapters I introduced the research framework and research approach theoretically and methodologically. I explained how this particular way of knowing the world translates into the practical use of go-along interviews in this thesis. As noted previously, the daily lives and practices of the research participants are central to the sensory ethnographic and feminist research and can never be extrapolated from their context. Ethnographic research aims to respect the irreducibility of the human experience (O’Reilly 2005: 3), therefore the context of each research participant is crucial to be able to understand how they relate to urban natures in their everyday lives. This chapter will consequently present each research participant, which will provide relevant context for the ensuing discussion (O’Reilly 2005: 123-124).

This chapter furthermore reflects the central tenant of feminist research, that there is no way to objectively know the world and that all perspectives are partial and situated in different ways (Elmhirst 2015; Haraway 1988). In this thesis that emanates from a feminist epistemology following a sensory ethnographic research approach, I aim to know my research participants worlds closely to how they are known by them (Pink 2015). Here knowing is seen as ‘embedded’ in the embodied practice of walking, which in turn is viewed as an essential activity through which we experience the physical environment through our body and senses (see Ingold 2000 and 2004). The walking practices of my research participants that I learned about through walking with them in their everyday environments are thus key for the study.

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4.1. Ella in Norra Djurgården

Figure 3. Map of the go-along interview with Ella in Norra Djurgården

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4.2. Tove in Bergshamra

Figure 4. Map of the go-along interview with Tove in Bergshamra

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4.3. Shirin in Rinkeby

Figure 5. Map of the go-along interview with Shirin in Rinkeby

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4.4. Zahra in Husby

Figure 6. Map of the go-along interview with Zahra in Husby

Zahra was born in Husby and still lives there with her family. When she was younger, she spent a lot of time in the area. These days, she told me that she has a busy schedule of work and studies and therefore mostly moves around her housing block and to the subway - between work, school and home. She described herself as a nature-loving person and spoke of horseback riding during her childhood as a contributing factor to this. She described herself as lucky compared to other kids that she grew up with who mostly played in their yards close to the housing complexes. Her walking practices in nature are related to feelings of relaxation. In the summertime Zahra goes out more, primarily to other green spaces in the city to hang out with friends. She does not go out in her own area anymore. While she appreciates the greenery close to where she lives, she told me that she

takes it for granted since she’s so used to it.

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4.5. Jessica in Husby

Figure 7. Map of the go-along interview with Jessica in Husby

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4.6. Yasmin in Akalla

Figure 8. Map of the go-along interview with Yasmin in Akalla

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4.7. Emma in Spånga

Figure 9. Map of the go-along interview with Emma in Spånga

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4.8. Anna in Akalla

Figure 10. Map of the go-along interview with Anna in Akalla

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5. Nature and the city: Into the

(un)familiar wild

In the light of the growing awareness of urban nature’s role in creating healthy, just, environmentally sustainable and resilient urban futures, I adopted a sensory ethnographic research approach from an explicitly feminist epistemology to explore how young women relate to urban nature. This research approach places power in centre to question dominant ways of portraying and studying the city, and argues that the body, the senses and emotions are key to make sense of and empathise with how people understand, connect to and experience urban nature. With inspiration from the participatory rationale in #UrbanGirlsMovement I put young women’s lived experiences in focus by using go-along interviews in my research participants’ everyday environments to let their voices, that often have been marginalised in the planning of our cities, be heard.

In the beginning of this thesis I described how its contribution would be twofold: to collect data in the geographical context of Stockholm on how young women relate to urban nature; and explore the usefulness of the go-along interview in this endeavour. For clarity, the empirical results and the discussion of them, and the methods-related findings and discussion are consequently divided into two separate chapters. In this chapter the first research question is explored. Here I present the results and discussion on how young women relate to urban natures in their everyday lives beyond the strong safety narrative. Through the process of analysis ‘relate to’ was operationalised into three main themes as how the young women in this study understand, connect to and experience urban nature. This chapter is arranged into three sub-sections accordingly.

In the first section 5.1. Understanding urban natures, I explore the research participants’ embodied understandings and definitions of urban natures and the emotive and sensory ways they use to describe it.

Under the heading 5.2. Connecting to urban natures section I outline how the research participants connect to urban natures through how they use them in their everyday lives, what meanings and values they attribute to and derive from them, what barriers they experience for using, experiencing and enjoying nature, and how their childhood and previous experiences appear to influence this.

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5.1. Understanding urban nature

As mentioned above, in this first part of the discussion I explore how my research participants understand and describe their everyday urban natures with their senses and emotions, the distinctions they make between nature-city, and what exists in-between. Lastly, I touch upon the common understanding that emerged through the go-along interviews, namely the understanding that urban natures are under threat.

5.1.1. Understanding urban nature with senses and emotions

On a sunny day in the end of March Ella and I are standing by a lake. She tells me how she likes to go to places with water when she is out on a leisure walk as it gives her a sense of calm. With words like tranquil, peaceful and serene, she describes the scene in the picture below. It makes her feel “good, peaceful and happier”. She appreciates the feeling of sun and wind on her face, and tells me that the lake has a particular smell to her and how that smell is different than that of a forest. By just looking at the picture now and recalling our conversation, I can revive the experience in my mind and body. The feeling of the lively cool wind fused with the warm sunbeams against my skin and the familiar smell of the water on that first day of spring. This was the first interview that I conducted, and already here the influence of our senses and emotions in the encounter with nature became so tangible to me.

Picture 4 from go-along interview with Ella (see figure 3 on page 24)

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Picture 14 from go-along interview with Jessica (see figure 7 on page 28)

“I live over there so I usually take this short cut. It is just this short distance, but you get a teeny tiny bit of forest feeling. So I prefer to take this road than to go like that [through the walking tunnel to the left-hand side of where we were standing].”

Jessica in Husby

Jessica takes the small short cut through the trees that we see on the picture above as it gives her a certain feeling. If you, like Jessica, really enjoy being outdoors, preferably with as many trees as possible, you can probably relate to what she calls ‘forest feeling’. For her, being immersed in a forest setting is a very positive experience.

Similarly, in the seminal study conducted by geographers Burgess et al. (1988) in London (the UK), the authors argued that feelings are a key component to understand people’s experiences of open spaces, where for example urban nature exist. Through in-depth group discussions and open-ended comments about pictures of different types of environments they found that sensory contact with the natural world in the city was vital for the people who participated in their study (Burgess et al. 1988: 456). The importance of personal, emotional and sensory experiences for people in urban nature was some of their key findings (Ibid.). Similarly, in Krenichyn’s New York (the US) study within the field of environmental psychology and health that intended to explore the ways that women who regularly use the park connect with their immediate surroundings, and the effect of that connection has for women’s physical activity, sensory and emotional experiences of contact with nature was often described by the women (Krenichyn 2006: 634-635). Senses and emotions thus appear to be crucial for how people understand urban nature.

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In my thesis, the dimension of touch and tactility in the encounter with nature emerged in several of the go-along interviews but was especially prominent in the go-along interview with Ella. She told me that she usually focuses on small details in trees when she is out in nature. She especially likes birches, and their bark. During the go-along interview, we saw some birches and went up to interact with them in the way she usually does.

Picture 7 from go-along interview the with Ella (see figure 3 on page 24)

“I think they look a bit like something bloated out of their skin. You know on this part where its like broken up and then something came out of it. I think it’s always nice to see those paper-like structures on the trees. And see how different they all look. They’re all maybe the same species, or the same type, but they are all different. I think I mostly just touch them and think this is interesting. [...] I think it’s just a curious thing. [...] And putting my mind onto something else, sensing it with my fingers.”

Ella in Norra Djurgården

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5.1.2. Defining urban nature: Distinctions and continuums

Instead of using predefined categories, sensory ethnographic research seeks to understand the subjective sensory categories that people themselves use (Pink 2015: 65). In this thesis I was interested to explore my research participants’ emplaced definitions of urban natures. Early on in each go-along interview I therefore asked what my research participants thought of when I said the word ‘nature’. In the next chapter, Chapter 6. Urban natures: Embodied I will get deeper into a methods-related discussion pertaining to this. Here I will limit myself to discussing the empirical findings.

The word nature for most of the research participants made them think of the forest and an environment that was ‘natural’, ‘wild’ and not planned or designed for humans. Several furthermore mentioned the occurrence of wild animals. As they described their everyday environment that we were moving through they often placed their descriptions in relation to their more abstract definitions of nature. A sort of explaining through comparison. In this comparative mode, a majority made a distinction between nature and green space. Planned, orderly and open green landscapes in proximity to housing areas were generally defined as green spaces whereas more wild, dense and natural vegetation was defined as forest or nature. It was however not only vegetation that the research participants mentioned. Water in the shape of dams, lakes and rivers for example belonged within these categorisations. The comparisons were often done through inviting emotions and senses. Jessica’s use of the term ‘forest-feeling’ and Emma’s description of natural sounds that she relates to nature in the previous section were two examples of this.

When my research participants tried to convey how they understood the urban natures in their local area, a distinction between city and nature often emerged. Anna very clearly told me how she perceived different environments that we passed by. In the examples below we can get a sense of how she perceives that the different environments invite different types of activities and meanings for her, which the next sub-section 5.2. Connecting to urban natures will discuss.

Picture 4 from the go-along interview with Anna (see figure 10 on page 31)

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away I still feel that it is city and then I want to be on the road and not go out in the middle of the field. [...] It [the forest] feels bigger and more fun [laughs]. No but here I am enticed to go into the forest, to follow the natural path. It feels more like an adventure when I don't know what is there behind it."

Picture 10 from the go-along interview with Anna (see figure 10 on page 31)

"Here we're back in a city environment. [...] Because I see houses, because I see cars parked. Because I kind of... there's a paved road going through it. It's just that. I feel that this is a garden for the houses over here. There are some trees and there is some grass but I feel like it still belongs to someone. [...] This feels like a big garden to me, rather than nature.”

Anna in Akalla

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Pictures 4 and 6 from the go-along interview with Emma (see figure 9 on page 30) “Even though it is like this when you walk that you can see houses and you can hear cars anyway, but it is still like this, you are still in it [...] The first thing that comes to my mind is that I wish there was more of it, but that in the area or the city I’m living maybe it’s still a lot. It may be enough. [...] It’s hard to describe. [...] There are some different trees, [...] at least here it feels untouched by humanity. Perhaps not completely, there are some natural paths. If you go a bit further that way there is an electric power plant or something like that, that makes me sad [...] If you think about the circumstances or preconditions around this little patch of forest maybe it objectively is not that little. [...] You can still think there should be more of it.”

Nature and the city: Into the (un)familiar wild