Making space in the city for diverse life worlds and temporalities : An explorative investigation of the affordance and territoriality of urban cemeteries

The urban cemetery is a built green environment that is both a place of death, belonging to the bereaved and their rituals of care and remembrance, and a recreational space, where people rest, walk their dog, jog, reflect in silence, or just pass through. Urban cemeteries and urban parks share some features and uses in that respect, but they also have very different meanings and functions. The restorative quality of cemeteries can be experienced differently depending on if you have a loved one buried there or not (Lai et al., 2020). In relation to death and bereavement, social and cultural encounters can also become heightened (Hallam, Hockey & Howarth, 1999), creating both conflicts and anacceptance of each other’s differences (Swensen & Skår, 2019). The presence of wild and domesticated animals can additionally have positive as well as negative effects on the contemplative and caretaking aspect of urban cemeteries (Petersson et al., 2018). Our general idea is that cemeteries, as places where existential matters are intensified, reflects views on how people, communities, and society at large make space in the city for diverse life worlds and temporalities (Foucault, 1986). We will in this presentation exploratively identify a set of affordances (Gibson, 1979/2015) and territories (Kärrholm & Brighenti, 2020) in the cemetery environment and investigate where they intersect. The aim is to promote existential and ecological sustainability in a rapidly changing urban landscape