Urban Evidentiary Ecologies

As part of the "Urban Evidentiary Ecologies" project, a series of collective experiments were carried out in June 2024 to explore ways of understanding the soil in four hybrid urban spaces in São Paulo, including urban gardens, wasteland and roadside areas. Meetings were organised at these locations, during which participants were invited to sit in a circle and share their Solografias [Soil biographies]: their experiences of the soil and personal memories linked to urban soil. These conversations were followed by soil analysis sessions. By combining participants’ stories with soil assessment practices, the project critically examined the concept of soil literacy.

The experiments revealed that knowledge of urban soil is largely rooted in individual experiences and biographies. Some participants were already literate in soil matters, as their knowledge was grounded in history and experience, sometimes stemming from ancestral practices. The discussions and joint soil analyses aimed to co-create soil literacy as a pluralistic approach to the ground, addressing not only its biophysical aspects but also its cultural, social and historical dimensions. This offered a way to reconsider knowledge of soil outside Western paradigms, emphasising local perspectives and experiences within the urban context of São Paulo and, more broadly, Brazil.

The workshops were led by Elena Ferrari and have been part of a seminar series on “Urban Evidentiary Ecologies” that has been carried out between March and June 2024 by Laura Kemmer (Cátedra Martius Germany-Brasil), Fraya Frehse and colleagues at University of São Paulo as part of a practical-empirical implementation project on floodplain ecologies and urban health, promoted by the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS) at Technische Universität Berlin and funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).