Grace in the street: arboreal atmospheres and the co-mediation of care

Abstract

ABSTRACT Australian governments are increasingly enrolling ecological restoration and urban afforestation to address climate change and support the transition towards sustainability. While policymakers warm to these ‘nature-based solutions’, their successful implementation will depend on the public’s capacity to care for trees and spaces of (urban) nature. This underscores the importance of understanding what drives people to voluntarily care for trees and (urban) natures on public and private land. In conversation with existing research on urban forestry and environmental volunteerism, this paper tests the proposition that attention to atmospheres could enrich our knowledge of the forces that mediate care and volunteer motivation. Its novel empirical contribution is a description of the aesthetic, affective and semiotic contours of two arboreal atmospheres called grace and vibrancy. The paper concludes by reflecting on the connection between these atmospheres and participants’ capacity to care for the urban forest. It argues atmosphere could be a richly generative concept and offers some provisional conclusions about the empirical, methodological and theoretical value it can bring to geographical-led studies of urban forestry and environmental volunteerism.