Image: Emilie Rážová
On the 21st of May, the first year students of the EKA’s Urban Studies program launched the website Re-valuing nature: A conversation between wastelands and wetlands. The website presents the results of the namesake studio, which explored the dialectics of urbanization and socio-ecological change through the lens of the question, how do we value nature? It focused on wastelands and wetlands as landscape categories that have been culturally significant since the 1970s, the decade when, as urban political ecologist Cindi Katz argues, “nature changed”. How, since then, has the value of nature been construed through the cultural practices of conservation, preservation and restoration? And by whom, for whom, and under what conditions has this valuing of nature occured?
Students: Zahaan Khan, Egemen Mercanlıoğlu, Anna Pederzini, Marina Puškar, Emilie Rážová, Lisa Rohrer, Ahmad Tahir, Deniz Taşkın
Tutors: Kaija-Luisa Kurik, Sean Tyler, Maroš Krivý