- Title
- Urban street names: An opportunity to examine biocultural relationships?
- Creator
- Shackleton, Charlie M
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date Issued
- 2018
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182285
- Identifier
- vital:43817
- Identifier
- xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200891"
- Description
- With increasing urbanisation there is concern regarding loss of experience and knowledge of biodiversity amongst urban populations. Yet biodiversity representations are retained in many art and functional forms, including names of places, buildings, institutions and streets. These manifestations offer a window to examine the relationship between humans and their experienced or imagined environment using a biocultural lens. I quantified the current prevalence of urban streets named after animals or plant species, the diversity of species represented, whether they are native or non-native, whether representative of the biome in which the town was situated and the change in prevalence through time. The street names of 48 towns in a one degree wide south-north belt across seven of South African’s biomes were captured and analysed. Of the 4,359 street names, 11.1% were named after plants (218 species) and 5.3% after animals (131 species), although some towns had none and others more than 40%. Approximately half of the plants were native to South Africa, whereas over 80% of the animals were. There was no correspondence between the species composition reflected in street names and the biome in which towns were located. The proportion of streets named after plants or animals has generally increased over the last two hundred years. These results provide insights into the bioculturally defined plants and animals that are valued by past and present urban communities, showing that they are generally from a wider array than can be found or experienced in the local setting.
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (13 pages)
- Format
- Publisher
- PLOSOne
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Plos One
- Relation
- Shackleton, C.M., 2018. Urban street names: An opportunity to examine biocultural relationships?. Plos one, 13(7), p.e0200891
- Relation
- Plos One volume 13 number 7 p. e0200891 2018 1932-6203
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the PLOSOne Terms of Use Statement ( https://www.plos.org/terms-of-use)
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
RU DST/NRF SARChI for Interdisciplinary Science in Land and Natural Resource Use for Sustainable Livelihoods
Shackleton, Charles Michael (Distinguished Prof)
RU Department of Environmental Science
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Urban street names An opportunity to examine biocultural relationships.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |