Despite strong exploitation pressure, a diverse urban movement of civil society organizations in Stockholm has managed to provide narratives able to explain and legitimize the need to protect urban green areas. Through ‘protective stories´ that interlaces cultural history and conservation biology, activists have managed to link areas previously considered disconnected and justifying the need for a better, overall protection of the areas. This is one key finding from a recent study conducted by centre researchers Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sörlin. Their study, entitled Weaving protective stories: connective practices to articulate holistic values in the Stockholm National Urban Park, was recently published in the journal Environment and Planning A. Resisting exploitation pressure The National Urban Park in Stockholm is a large and central green area associated with Sweden´s royal past and acquired in 1995 legal protection through a new law adapted to urban green areas. - We see how the involvement of civil society in protecting nature and culture is on the rise. The Ecopark Movement in Stockholm for instance, which emerged as a network of civil-society organizations aiming for protecting the park areas, has successfully managed to do so since the early 1990s and has since played a critical role in securing the integrity of the green area despite commercial exploitation pressure, says Henrik Ernstson. The movement has on one hand managed to create and sustain a network of various different organizations, ranging from local user groups to politically active organizations. On the other hand they also provided narratives and conceptual tools that explain and legitimize the need for long-term protection. Artists, authors and scientists
Crucial for generating and keeping alive such narratives have been artists, authors and scientists and their artefacts like paintings, maps, buildings and scientific reports. While some artists are from the historical past, others have worked alongside the movement in producing artefacts towards articulating certain values.
When re-printed in media, displayed at an exhibition, or published in a book, these artefacts — old or newly produced — also become agents in “telling the story" so as to put pressure on authorities and to change public opinon.
- Such networks of activists, artefacts and social arenas do not possess any formal power, but they can nonetheless achieve a lot, both as a community of practice wielding power and knowledge but also through mobilizing yet more actors and artefacts to make the network grow. The protective story is kept alive at many places continously and simultaneously, says Ernstson.
A classic example is how the Grand Canyon rose from insignificance to one of the natural marvels of the world through a range of 19th and early 20th century articulations and representations by geologists, painters, authors and photographers. Together with preservationists the area gained its acclaimed status, symbolized through the visit of President Theodore Roosevelt and his wife who visited the ‘sight´ that the site had then become.
Citizen-based initiatives on the increase
The National Urban Park is known as a prestigious area in Stockholm, mainly because large parts of the present park became royal in the 16th century. Today it has an extensive legacy of cultural-historical artefacts such as castles, planned English parks and sculptures. However, this has been parallelled by more recent scientific documentations of biodiversity and the movement of species in the landscape.
Activists could lend and blend artefacts and concepts from both conservation biology and cultural history to produce the story of an extraordinary place worthy of protection.
- This trick, so to speak, of combining different sets of values creates flexibility so that the protective story can be used in different social arenas to gain support from different types of audiences. This flexibility also helps explain the movement´s success in that opponents have had difficulties in brushing them off as just another Nimby group (‘not in my backyard´) or an elite project, says Ernstson.
The National Urban Park study has shown the importance of dense social networks to establish and maintain an active democracy and that flexible, citizen-based, interactive, and permeable forms of conservation are on the increase.
- My study has focused on one case. When generalizing there is an important political geography to take into consideration as other local networks have less access to artefacts and social arenas to articulate values. Not all green areas of Stockholm have had a monarch investing in its beauty and it could be that other green areas are sacrificed on the ´altar´ of the National Urban Park, Ernstson states.
Stockholm environmental capital of Europe
Stockholm was recently elected by EU as the environmental capital of Europe, partly due to its many green areas lying close to where people live.
- Although this legacy is probably more due to centralized modernistic planning, my guess is that the future pattern of these green areas will depend more on an active civil society and the ability and hope in forming city-wide movements to negotiate development patterns towards equity and sustainability, Ernstson concludes.
Source: Ernstson, H., Sörlin, S., 2009. Weaving protective stories: connective practices to articulate holistic values in the Stockholm National Urban Park. In Environment and Planning A, advance online publication.
