Dialogue II - Arboreal Frameworks of Care
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.20.1.8879Abstract
This review article pairs two texts that examine trees as socio-ecological mediators shaping spatial relations across the rural-to-urban continuum. Through the Avia tree (Newbouldia laevis), Courage Kpodo’s Stewarding Land: Some Architectural Directions, expands understandings of land stewardship in southern Ghana as relational, foregrounding how customary ritual, spiritual authority and arboreal temporalities complicate colonial legal frameworks. By positioning trees as living mediators between humans, ancestors, and land, the article challenges anthropocentric notions of ownership. In Caring Forest Urbanisms: Human-Tree Relationships of Tenure, Memory and Livelihood in Nairobi, Kathryn Chesebrough draws on fieldwork in Nairobi’s informal settlements to examine youth-led tree care as an ongoing re-assembly of spatial, social and political practice through which tenure, memory, and livelihood are asserted in flood-prone and contested riparian zones. It describes the agency and situated expertise through which young residents collaborate with trees as agents of care and claim-making, enabling provisional commons, restoring degraded landscapes, and generating alternative urban futures through sustained labour and relational expertise. Together, the texts argue that trees function not merely as ecological infrastructure but as active participants in social worlds – holding memories, redistributing power and reorganising time. By foregrounding care as an infrastructural and temporal practice, the review article advances a relational framework for architecture, landscape and urbanism within complex, multi-scalar webs of socio-arboreal relations.
References
Amanor, Kojo Sebastian. “Family Values, Land Sales and Agricultural Commodification in South-Eastern Ghana.” Africa 80, no. 1 (2010): 104–25. doi:10.3366/E0001972009001284.
Bize, Amiel. “On Fallen Wood.” Etnofoor 34, no. 2 (2022): 33–48.
Chesebrough, Kate. “Landscape Architect Undertaking Urban Forestry Research Fellowship in Nairobi.” WordPress blog, 2023.
Chesebrough, Kate. “Caring for Urban Forests in Nairobi’s Informal Settlements.” Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, February 9, 2024.
Corwin, Julia E., and Vinay Gidwani. “Repair Work as Care: On Maintaining the Planet in the Capitalocene.” Antipode 57, no. 5 (2025): 1685–1704. doi:10.1111/anti.12791.
Dassekpo, Innocent Sègla, Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, Brice Tenté, Christophe S. Houssou, and Adam Ahanchédé. “Valuation of Newbouldia laevis and Its Endogenous Conservation in Benin (West Africa).” Journal of Herbal Medicine 23 (2020): 100388. doi:10.1016/j.hermed.2020.100388.
De Meulder, Bruno, and Kelly Shannon. “Framing Forest Urbanisms: A Twenty-First Century Agenda.” In Forest Urbanisms: New Non-Human and Human Ecologies for the 21st Century, edited by Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon, 15–74. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2024.
Deming, M. Elen, and Simon Swaffield. Landscape Architectural Research: Inquiry, Strategy, Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
Denis, Jérôme, and David Pontille. “Cultivating Attention to Fragility: The Sensible Encounters of Maintenance.” In Ecological Reparation: Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict, edited by Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, and Maddalena Tacchetti, 344–61. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2023.
Dewees, Peter A. Social and Economic Incentives for Smallholder Tree Growing: A Case Study from Murang’a District, Kenya. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1993.
Dharani, Najma. Field Guide to Common Trees & Shrubs of East Africa. 3rd ed. Cape Town: Struik Nature, 2019.
Diep, Loan, Joe Mulligan, Maurice A. Oloo, Lisa Guthmann, Miquel Raido, and Tim Ndezi. “Co-Building Trust in Urban Nature: Learning from Participatory Design and Construction of Nature-Based Solutions in Informal Settlements in East Africa.” Frontiers in Sustainable Cities 4 (2022): 927723. doi:10.3389/frsc.2022.927723.
Furukawa, Takuya, Samuel K. Kiboi, Patrick B. Chalo Mutiso, and Kazue Fujiwara. “Multiple Use Patterns of Medicinal Trees in an Urban Forest in Nairobi, Kenya.” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 18 (2016): 34–40. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2016.05.003.
Gerow, Alice, Vivian Kathambi, Dexter H. Locke, Mark Ashton, and Craig Brodersen. “Street Tree Communities Reflect Socioeconomic Inequalities and Legacy Effects of Colonial Planning in Nairobi, Kenya.” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 101 (2024): 128530. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2024.128530.
Green, Lesley. “Unmaking Soil Mastery: Postscript.” Environmental Humanities 12, no. 1 (2020): 285–87.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
Hoffman Brandt, Denise. “On Trees and Beasts, or How Ideas of Nature Shape Our Spaces.” Landezine, July 2, 2024.
Jacobs, Sara. “From Novel to Relational: An Approach to Care for Relational Landscapes.” Journal of Landscape Architecture 14, no. 3 (2019): 24–33. doi:10.1080/18626033.2019.1705571.
Knudsen, Michael Helt, and Jytte Agergaard. “Ghana’s Cocoa Frontier in Transition: The Role of Migration and Livelihood Diversification.” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 97, no. 4 (2015): 325–42. doi:10.1111/geob.12084.
Kounkuey Design Initiative. “Rivers, Rights, and Riparian Myths: Nairobi’s History Matters.” May 7, 2025.
Macy, Joanna, and Chris Johnstone. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power. 1st rev. ed. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2022.
Maganjo, Makena. “Nairobi’s Disastrous Flood Response.” The Elephant, August 14, 2024.
McGowan, Jamie. “Conventional Signs, Imperial Designs: Mapping the Gold Coast, 1874–1957.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013.
McMichael, Stanley L. Long and Short Term Leaseholds: Including Ninety-Nine Year Leases. 3rd rev. and enl. ed. Cleveland, OH: S. McMichael, 1925.
Moor, Robert. “Dendrochronology.” Emergence Magazine, 2024.
Muungano wa Wanavijiji. “Muungano wa Wanavijiji.” Accessed 2024.
Musambi, Evelyne. “Anguish as Kenya’s Government Demolishes Houses in Flood-Prone Areas and Offers $75 in Aid.” Associated Press, May 7, 2024.
National Treasury and Economic Planning, Kenya. “National Tree Planting Initiative Launch.” May 8, 2024.
Nijhuis, Steffen, and Jeroen de Vries. “Design as Research in Landscape Architecture.” Landscape Journal 38, nos. 1–2 (2019): 87–103. doi:10.3368/lj.38.1-2.87.
Nying’uro, Patricia, Joyce Kimutai, Kenneth Mwangi, and Winnie Khaemba. Climate Change Impacts in Kenya: What Climate Change Means for a Country and Its People. Kenya Meteorological Department, 2024.
Ogunleye, Mercy Bolade, Kehinde Sesan Aina, and Adeniyi I. Michael. “Assessment on Anatomical and Physico-Mechanical Properties of Grown Newbouldia laevis (P. Beauv.) and Aningeria robusta (Aubrev. and Pellegr.) in Nigeria for Utilization Potentials.” Russian Journal of Agricultural and Socio-Economic Sciences 122, no. 2 (2022): 118–27.
Ono, Haruka, and Tetsuo Kidokoro. “Understanding the Development Patterns of Informal Settlements in Nairobi.” Japan Architectural Review 3, no. 3 (2020): 384–93. doi:10.1002/2475-8876.12161.
Pashayan, Angela R. “Informal Settlements and Climate Change in the ‘Last Mile of Urbanization.’” In Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent in 2024, edited by Aloysius Uche Ordu, 57–59. Washington, DC: Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings, 2024.
Petrescu, Doina, and Constantin Petcou. “Commons-Based Mending Ecologies.” In Ecological Reparation: Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict, edited by Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, and Maddalena Tacchetti, 275–88. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2023.
Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. “Making Time for Soil: Technoscientific Futurity and the Pace of Care.” Social Studies of Science 45, no. 5 (2015): 691–716. doi:10.1177/0306312715599851.
Quiroga-Martínez, Rayén, Ellie Perkins, Edith Kuiper, Terisa E. Turner, Leigh S. Brownhill, Mary Mellor, Zdravka Todorova, Maren A. Jochimsen, and Martha McMahon. “Explorations: Feminist Ecological Economics.” Feminist Economics 11, no. 3 (2005): 107–50. doi:10.1080/13545700500301494.
Rahbaran, Shadi, and Manuel Herz. Nairobi, Kenya: Migration Shaping the City. Edited by ETH Studio Basel, Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2014.
Schlanger, Zoë. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. New York: Harper, 2024.
Schramm, Sophie, and Amiel Bize. “Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins.” Planning Theory 22, no. 3 (2023): 316–37. doi:10.1177/14730952221137706.
Slum Dwellers International–Kenya. “Slum Dwellers International–Kenya.” Accessed 2024.
Slum Dwellers International–Kenya and Muungano wa Wanavijiji. Nairobi Eastern Region Voices for Climate Action Groups Profiling Report. Nairobi: Slum Dwellers International–Kenya, 2022.
Thieme, Tatiana Adeline. “The Hustle Economy: Informality, Uncertainty and the Geographies of Getting By.” Progress in Human Geography 42, no. 4 (2018): 529–48. doi:10.1177/0309132517690039.
Thorn, Jessica, Thomas F. Thornton, and Ariella Helfgott. “Autonomous Adaptation to Global Environmental Change in Peri-Urban Settlements: Evidence of a Growing Culture of Innovation and Revitalisation in Mathare Valley Slums, Nairobi.” Global Environmental Change 31 (2015): 121–31.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, and Heather Anne Swanson, eds. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Tundo, Alberto. “The Metaphysics of Plants: In Conversation with Emanuele Coccia.” MAIZE, February 13, 2020.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme. Nairobi City County: Public Space Inventory and Assessment. Nairobi: UN-Habitat, 2020.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme. “Restoration of the Nairobi River System to Kick Start Citywide Regeneration.” July 14, 2021.
Waldheim, Charles. Landscape as Urbanism: A General Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Watson, Cathy. “Seminar on Nairobi’s Urban Forest Heralds New Area of Work for CIFOR-ICRAF.” CIFOR-ICRAF, August 15, 2023.
Watson, Catharine. “From Hardscapes to Welcome Greenscapes: Grass and Diverse Trees Transform a Highway in Nairobi, Inspiring Replication.” SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, October 23, 2024.
Welz, Adam. “Are Huge Tree Planting Projects More Hype than Solution?” Yale Environment 360, April 8, 2021.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Kathryn Chesebrough, Courage Kpodo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
