Re-animating urban soils. A participatory research project on the sociotechnical issues of (de)contaminating urban gardens – REASOLS

Over the course of 18 months, this participatory research project, involving a non-profit organizations and two STS scholars (one permanent, one postdoc), will study how non-profit organizations, local authorities and experts involved in ‘re-animating’ urban soils deal with soil (de)contamination issues. The project focuses on the town of Aubervilliers, a suburb in the Greater Paris area where deep socio-economic vulnerabilities intersect with wide-scale soil contamination inherited from past industrial activities. From local authorities to citizen groups, everybody agrees that Aubervilliers – one of the most densely built areas in France – needs more parks, community gardens and open-air areas. However, projects of reclaiming urban ground often stumble on contamination, and many questions and controversies arise on how the problem should be dealt with. These debates shed light on the socio-technical aspects of mainstream decontamination methods, and generate an experimental stance towards alternative approaches to decontamination. Taking a participatory-research approach, this exploratory project will map the non-profit, institutional and industrial actors locally concerned with these questions, and document the different ways in which these frame the habitability of post-industrial territories. The project will also bring together a broader ‘hybrid’ collective (larger than the current project leaders) involving different categories of actors (social science researchers, NPOs, soil science researchers, decontamination experts) in order to prepare a multi-year participatory research proposal to a funding body such as ANR or Ademe.