Sub-Saharan Africa´s urbanization is unique: while it is happening at a very fast pace, patterns and processes on the African continent are distinguished from those elsewhere (Watson 2009; Simone 2014) challenging prevailing urban theories and urban planning models (Ammann and Förster 2018; Parnell and Oldfield 2014). One of these clashes is the understanding of nature and the city: Western Planning models have been shaped by modernity, scripting natural processes as “The Other” and a clear boundary between the lived and the natural space (Kaika 2004). Whereas traditional African conceptions do not make a division between nature and society (Myers 2016).
Space has been described as a social practice (Lefevbre 1991), as immaterial flows interlinking with places of experience and activity (Castells 2004), as a system of exchange (Brenner and Schmid 2014) and a socio-natural metabolism (Swyngedouw 1996). The concept of Human-Nature Relationships (HNR) has been used in research on place attachment, environmental behaviour and experiences of different landscapes, among others, by a plurality of disciplinary perspectives (Ives et al. 2017). At the same time, research on HNR has been a) limited to western countries and b) when used to understand place, researchers typically used quantitative approaches to study emotional connections to specific natural spaces (Ives et al. 2017) rather than to understand the spatiality of HNR as such. Against this research gap it will be key to investigate on the spatial dimension of human-nature relationships.
Ethiopia, as one of the least urbanized countries in sub-Sahara Africa and with about 80 per cent of the population working in the agricultural sector (UN-Habitat 2008; 2014) can offer such a setting. The chosen case of Ziway / Batu has a rich natural setting and is one of the small and medium sized towns where most of the urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa is happening (Agergaard et al. 2019). Therefore, the research will depict attitudes and practices (I) that characterize HNR in Ziway/Batu, identify related places and spaces (II) to understand their specific characteristics and reveal the ties and relations formed by human-nature relationships and represent them as a space-related network (III). By grounding urban natures in space and time it shall contribute to contextualizing urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa. Revealing the relational space that emerges from human-nature relationships can give in-sights into African urbanism relating to nature, inform urban planning practice and add particularly to development narratives and understandings of the African city.
