Introduction

The use of interdisciplinary methods has been a key approach to better capture and analyse complex relationships and address ‘wicked problems’ in urban environments (Harrison, 2000). Exploring issues and conflicts around the sustainability and ecosystems agendas by deploying multi-partner, arts and humanities-centred interdisciplinary research promises to untangle some of the complexities in the different layers of urban governance and experience. Water is a fundamental necessity for sustainable communities, economies and biodiversity. It also forms an intrinsic, but complex and contested, part of our cultural landscape and heritage. By investigating how local communities relate to and engage with urban water environments using arts and humanities methodologies, this can help to explore and develop notions and practice of community resilience in eco-social and cultural terms.

The research approach in question uses a combination of in situ methods, such as Participatory Action Research (Pain et al, 2012), practice-based art research, cultural geography and cultural mapping, as vehicles for engaging communities and reflecting existing understandings, and for engineering new affective relations and possibilities. Cultural ecosystems mapping in particular draws from Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) and is considered a useful tool for imagining and visualising the sociocultural realities and aspirations of communities and their local landscapes in place and time. This chapter therefore focuses on the application of cultural ecosystems mapping as a participatory, co-produced visualisation and engagement method, based on a case study of the Lee Valley – London's second or ‘hidden river’ stretching 26 miles from the home counties through north and east London to the Thames and with a flood catchment of over 1,000km2. Engaging people with issues around cultural ecosystem services through the interaction with large scale maps of the local area helps to ground the more abstract issues of identity, connectivity, sense of place, emotional attachment and spirituality, as well as overcome the traditional barriers to participation and inclusion at various spatial scales. Cultural mapping in particular helps to articulate the spatial and historical relationships and triggers debate over connectivity, governance, environmental justice and both environmental and social change.

Towards sustainability and culture-led sustainable development

Sustainability is a complex term that has been defined and applied in various ways by different disciplines.