Stålhammar exposes the conflict hidden inside the apparently consensual language of green infrastructure. Interviews with Cape Town practitioners reveal sharply different understandings of biodiversity, conservation, social benefit and urban green-space management. The iconic proposition is that “biodiversity” is not a self-evident planning object; its meaning changes with institutional mandate, ecological context and social valuation. In a global biodiversity hotspot, citizens’ preferences, ecosystem-service approaches and conservation priorities may collide rather than align. Methodologically, qualitative interviews are used to investigate not only values but the operational usefulness of valuation for practitioners. The wider bridge is to epistemology and governance: planning cannot simply aggregate preferences when different actors are working with different ontologies of nature. Green infrastructure becomes a negotiated category whose legitimacy depends on making these competing definitions visible rather than assuming a universal environmental good.
