Soil in the City The Socio-Environmental Substrate

In cities, large swathes of soil are situated within public space landscaping and “green zones,” places more regulated than the soils of conventional farmland and mainstream agriculture. With more than 50% of the world's population living in urban areas and 75% in the European Union,¹ urban soils are a logical starting point to initiate a change in perception of humanity's role in the natural world at large. New systems of valuing are necessary to rethink urban soils, their cultivation, and protection. This chapter explores a new paradigm for thinking about urban soil. Inherent in its argumentation is the notion that art and artistic research has the potential to offer radical realism and contingency ² and is as such complimentary to scientific research.³ Both scientific and artistic research are positioned in relation to one another in putting forward a new paradigm in which soil is considered an actor in its own right and which is engaged with human society in a reciprocal manner.