Cultivating Creative Cities; Nonhumans, urban agriculture and ecological belonging

The functional and aesthetic forms of urban environments deemed necessary to support the creative and cultural pursuits of their inhabitants has pushed food production beyond city limits. The resulting disconnection from the food system, fuelled by anthropocentric logic, reduces opportunities for urban dwellers to develop ecological awareness. The creative cities thesis itself also fails to promote innovative ecological thinking. Through a case study of Canberra, we suggest that bringing food back into the city through urban agriculture initiatives—from urban food gardening to farmers’ markets—can promote a more attentive approach to the nuanced and varied assemblages of human/nonhuman relations and assist enliven the more-than-human within creative cities’ thinking. In so doing we contend that urban agriculture can promote more ecologically sensitive living practices in urban environments.