Neighbourhood Ecologies

‘Neighbourhood Ecologies looks at Sydney neighbourhoods in a new light. It offers innovative ways to research cities and also contribute to their design.’
—Chris Gibson, The University of Sydney, Australia

‘This book is a beautiful and engaging exploration of urban ecologies and their precious communities, highlighting the very important work we all do when we take the time to just be with Country. ’
—Dr Shannon Foster, D'harawal Knowledge Keeper & ORALRA Registered Traditional Custodian/Owner, Australia

This book foregrounds socioecological stewardship in urban spaces. It demonstrates how activities like gardening and participating in events that spark ecological learning foster a sense of place, social connections, and lively neighbourhoods. Offering case studies from Sydney, Australia, it presents an innovative, interdisciplinary, place-based design research methodology. This approach combines ethnography to examine people-place-environment relationships with design’s potential for creating change through artefacts and initiatives like maps, curated walks, and workshops. The book contributes to methodological debates by showcasing how visual communication and socially engaged practices strengthen ethnographic understandings of society, culture, and the environment. The authors show that these practices connect everyday environmental actions to broader contexts, such as making cities liveable during climate change, aligning with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. Neighbourhood Ecologies offers key insights for scholars and students of urban sociology, human geography, anthropology, design studies, and social movement studies interested in how critical environmental issues become grounded in local contexts.

Ilaria Vanni, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, is an interdisciplinary researcher across social sciences and design, focusing on design and material culture in social and environmental matters affecting urban space. Her projects include the ARC-funded Surfacing Urban Wetlands and Mapping Edges, a transdisciplinary studio co-founded with Alexandra Crosby.

Alexandra Crosby, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, is an internationally recognised scholar and visual communicator. Her research focuses on more-than-human design and recombinant ecologies in urban spaces, supporting urban resilience to climate change. Key projects include Surfacing Urban Wetlands and the Mapping Edges studio with Ilaria Vanni.