Thinking through density: How Miyawaki Urban Forests will save Pakistani cities

Keywords: Urban Forests, Climate Action, Politics of Knowledge
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Amidst the global climate crisis and increasing rates of urbanization, afforestation campaigns are seen as essential for carbon sequestration and combating urban heat island effects (Bonn Challenge). Yet scholars have paid little attention to how intensive greening methods, such as the Japanese Miyawaki method, circulate transnationally and what their impacts are on densely populated and highly urbanizing cities in the global south. In this paper, I explore the spatial and institutional tensions in Pakistan that cast the Miyawaki urban forest as a practice of dense planting amidst an imagined world where trees are saviors. If the production of urban nature is simultaneously a process of “social and bio-physical change” and “new appropriations of nature within the urban landscape” (Gandy 2006, 62), how does the Miyawaki model valorize and index the the role of trees across different politics of expertise and action? Through an analysis of the institutional narratives, stories, and imaginaries that accompany and have installed innumerable counts and varieties of Miyawaki urban forests over Pakistani cities, I show the limitations and potentialities of conceptualizing "density" as a multi-dimensional tool in debates of urban sustainable futures and climate action.