Saying No to (the) Oxygen Capital? Amenity Migration, Counter-territorialization, and Uneven Rural Landscape Change in the Kaz Dağları (Ida Mountains) of Western Turkey

Diverse forms of conservation and development are transforming the material landscapes and related livelihoods of communities in rural places around the world. While many studies focus on changing protected area governance and ecotourism efforts associated with nature protection, other studies focus on residential development in areas experiencing amenity migration. We use a comparative political ecology approach that draws on key insights from the political ecology literature, first, on neoliberal protected area expansion, and, second, on exurbia that highlight the dynamics of competing rural capitalisms and reterritorialization in areas experiencing amenity migration to explore these coupled conservation and development dynamics. Drawing on the case of the Kazdağları (Ida Mountains) along the Bay of Edremit in western Turkey, we examine how changing environmental governance associated with the region\u27s national park created key conditions for the emergence of new real estate dynamics that supported amenity-related development in some villages. Yet our research also uncovers further uneven rural landscape changes and divergent outcomes associated with this reterritorialization process. Our findings suggest the presence of counter-territorialization dynamics, or the efforts of culturally distinctive villages in rural areas to resist these landscape changes. In the Kazdağları, selective strategies of engagement and non-engagement with the real estate market contribute to these divergent outcomes. To protect their cultural identity, villagers commodify particular landscape features, which enable these counter-territorializaton efforts to succeed. These findings hold insights for efforts to understand landscape patterns in rural areas characterized by changing protected area governance, high levels of natural amenity attracting in-migrants, and settlements with distinctive cultural identities

Locating Provisioning Ecosystem Services in Urban Forests: Forageable Woody Species in New York City, USA

Scholarship on the ecosystem services provided by urban forests has focused on regulating and supporting services, with a growing body of research examining provisioning and cultural ecosystem services from farms and gardens in metropolitan areas. Using the case of New York, New York, USA, we propose a method to assess the supply of potential provisioning ecosystem services from species and spaces other than those explicitly designated for food production. We analyze the abundance and spatial distribution of trees and shrubs with known uses for food, medicine, craft, and other purposes across urban greenspace types. To do so, we created a database of all woody species known to occur in New York City, joining a citywide assessment of trees and shrubs with additional data from a metropolitan flora and a guide to native plants in the city. A second database of useful, or forageable, species was created by compiling information from a New York City-focused online foraging application and ten field guides chosen for the likelihood that prospective foragers would find and consult them. The City’s street tree inventory and associated GIS shapefile provided the basis for more detailed analyses of forageable woody species in this land use type. Our results show a substantial supply of potential provisioning ecosystem services from woody species in New York City. Coupled with growing literature on actual foraging in cities worldwide, these findings suggest implications for accountings of ecosystem services from urban forests as well as policy and management initiatives to enhance social-ecological resilience

Ethnobiology in the City: Embracing the Urban Ecological Moment

More than half the world\u27s human population resides in cities (United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Population Division 2015). Unpacking this singular statistic, it becomes clear that people come to live in urban environments via numerous routes. Some have lived in cities all their lives and are descendants of city dwellers. In other cases, cities spread and encircle them (Hurley et al. 2008; Unnikrishnan and Nagendra 2015). Increasingly, rural residents are national and transnational migrants to cities, pushed by armed conflict, natural disasters, and economic need or opportunity (United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Population Division 2013). In the case of the latter two routes, traditional ecological knowledge and practices involving flora and fauna may persist in urban habitats that constitute biocultural refugia (Barthel et al. 2010). This special section lifts up the proposition that such spaces, knowledge, and practices are fertile ground for ethnobiological study

Gathering, Buying, and Growing Sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia sericea): Urbanization and Social Networking in the Sweetgrass Basket-Making Industry of Lowcountry South Carolina

Despite the visibility of natural resource use and access for indigenous and rural peoples elsewhere, less attention is paid to the ways that development patterns interrupt nontimber forest products (NTFPs) and gathering practices by people living in urbanizing landscapes of the United States. Using a case study from Lowcountry South Carolina, we examine how urbanization has altered the political-ecological relationships that characterize gathering practices in greater Mt. Pleasant, a rapidly urbanizing area within the Charleston-North Charleston Metropolitan area. We draw on grounded visualization—an analytical method that integrates qualitative and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data—to examine the ways that residential and commercial development has altered collecting sites and practices associated with sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia sericea [Michx.] P.M. Peterson) and three other plant materials used in basket-making. Our analysis focuses on the ecological changes and shifts in property regimes that result; we detail the strategies basket-makers have developed to maintain access to sweetgrass and other raw materials. This research highlights how land development patterns have disrupted historic gathering practices, namely by changing the distribution of plants, altering the conditions of access to these species, and reconfiguring the social networking that takes place to ensure the survival of this distinctive art form

Resistant Place Identities in Rural Charleston County, South Carolina: Cultural, Environmental, and Racial Politics in the Sewee to Santee Area

The cultural and political implications of landscape change and urban growth in the western U.S. are well-documented. However, comparatively little scholarship has examined the effects of urbanization on sense of place in the southern U.S. We contribute to the literature on competing place meanings with a case study from the rural “Sewee to Santee” region of northern Charleston County, SC. Our research highlights conflicting cultural, environmental, and racial politics and their roles in struggles over place meanings. Using focus groups, interviews with elected officials, and participant observation, we document initial African American resistance and eventual compliance with the prevailing anti-sprawl discourse and associated sense of place promoted by the Charleston County Planning Commission and others. Our research suggests that dynamics driving development in the rural, U.S. South are similar in kind to those in the Third World where natural resource decisions are informed by class, cultural, and racial politics

Uneven Urban Metabolisms: Toward an Integrative (Ex)urban Political Ecology of Sustainability in and Around the City

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, frequently viewing resource extraction and development through the urban metabolism lens. The political ecology of exurbia, or, perhaps, an exurban political ecology (ExPE), examines the symbolic role nature and the rural have played in conservation and development efforts that produce social, economic, and environmental conflicts. While UPE approaches tend to privilege macroscale dynamics, ExPE emphasizes the role of landowners, managers, and other actors in struggles over the production of exurban space, including through decision-making institutions and within the context of broader political economic forces. Three case studies illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, demonstrating the benefits for and giving suggestions on how to integrate their insights into urban sustainability research. Integrated political ecology approaches demonstrate how political-economic processes at a variety of scales produce diverse local sustainability responses

Urban Forest Justice and the Rights to Wild Foods, Medicines, and Materials in the City

Urban forests are multifunctional socio-ecological landscapes, yet some of their social benefits remain poorly understood. This paper draws on ethnographic evidence from Seattle, Washington to demonstrate that urban forests contain nontimber forest products that contribute a variety of wild foods, medicines, and materials for the wellbeing of urban residents. We show that gathering wild plants and fungi in urban forests is a persistent subsistence and livelihood practice that provides sociocultural and material benefits to city residents, and creates opportunities for connecting with nature and enhancing social ties. We suggest that an orientation toward human-nature interactions in cities that conceptualizes the gathering of forest products as a legitimate social benefit may support and expand urban forest justice. Urban forest justice recognizes the rights of local people to have control over their own culturally appropriate wild food and health systems, including access to natural resources and to the decision-making processes affecting them

Finding a Disappearing Nontimber Forest Resource: Using Grounded Visualization to Explore Urbanization Impacts on Sweetgrass Basketmaking in Greater Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina

Despite growing interest in urbanization and its social and ecological impacts on formerly rural areas, empirical research remains limited. Extant studies largely focus either on issues of social exclusion and enclosure or ecological change. This article uses the case of sweetgrass basketmaking in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, to explore the implications of urbanization, including gentrification, for the distribution and accessibility of sweetgrass, an economically important nontimber forest product (NTFP) for historically African American communities, in this rapidly growing area. We explore the usefulness of grounded visualization for research efforts that are examining the existence of fringe ecologies associated with NTFP. Our findings highlight the importance of integrated qualitative and quantitative analyses for revealing the complex social and ecological changes that accompany both urbanization and rural gentrification

Urban Forest Justice and the Rights to Wild Foods, Medicines, and Materials in the City

Urban forests are multifunctional socio-ecological landscapes, yet some of their social benefits remain poorly understood. This paper draws on ethnographic evidence from Seattle, Washington to demonstrate that urban forests contain nontimber forest products that contribute a variety of wild foods, medicines, and materials for the well-being of urban residents. We show that gathering wild plants and fungi in urban forests is a persistent subsistence and livelihood practice that provides sociocultural and material benefits to city residents, and creates opportunities for connecting with nature and enhancing social ties. We suggest that an orientation toward human-nature interactions in cities that conceptualizes the gathering of forest products as a legitimate social benefit may support and expand urban forest justice. Urban forest justice recognizes the rights of local people to have control over their own culturally appropriate wild food and health systems, including access to natural resources and to the decision-making processes affecting them