Infrastructuring ecological sustainability through multi-scalar speculations

This paper responds to the challenges faced by grassroots sustain- ability communities in addressing ecological issues, through local action. Now more than ever, designers must fully engage with the messy side of these collaborative practices as we strive to support and sustain socio-political actions to foster more sustainable ecolog- ical futures connected to wider landscapes of socio-political change. We report on a community food growing project, as an example of sustainability research within Participatory Design demonstrating the complexity of such engagements when working through rela- tionships across local and global concerns. We focus on infrastruc- turing place-based actions of the community, connecting these to the broader socio-political and economic landscapes. We contribute a multi-scalar perspective to speculative participatory workshops to connect everyday ecological food practices and imagined futures to socio-political realities across micro, meso, and macro scales. The workshops surfaced how socio-material complexities shape imagi- nations for sustainability and relational civic agency for situated change.