scholarly journals Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-111
Author(s):  
Innisfree McKinnon ◽  
Patrick T Hurley ◽  
Colleen C Myles ◽  
Megan Maccaroni ◽  
Trina Filan
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
The City

Urban political ecology III

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nik Heynen
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Geography ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Feminist Political Ecology ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The City ◽  
Queer Ecology

Given the ongoing importance of nature in the city, better grappling with the gendering and queering of urban political ecology offers important insights that collectively provides important political possibilities. The cross-currents of feminist political ecology, queer ecology, queer urbanism and more general contributions to feminist urban geography create critical opportunities to expand UPE’s horizons toward more egalitarian and praxis-centered prospects. These intellectual threads in conversation with the broader Marxist roots of UPE, and other second-generation variants, including what I have previously called abolition ecology, combine to at once show the ongoing promises of heterodox UPE and at the same time contribute more broadly beyond the realm of UPE.

Producing an urban hazardscape beyond the city

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (9) ◽  
pp. 1968-1985 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Saguin
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Flood Control ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Metro Manila ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Urban Risk ◽  
The City ◽  
Laguna Lake

Urban socioecological risk, like other urban metabolic processes, embodies relations between the city and the non-city. In this paper, I trace the production of urban risk within and beyond the city through the lens of the hazardscape using the case of Metro Manila and Laguna Lake in the Philippines. Building on recent interventions in urban political ecology that seek to map the terrains of extending urban frontiers, I examine the processes that construct city and non-city spaces in urbanization through flood control. I synthesize narratives of the material-discursive production of risk mediated by infrastructure with histories of landscape and livelihood change in an urban socioecological frontier to make two related arguments. First, discursive constructions of city and non-city and the material flows that connect them shape the production of urban ecological risk, with material consequences for non-city vulnerabilities. Second, infrastructure plays an important mediating role in the production of hazardscapes. The intersection of flows of water, discursive urban imaginaries in state plans, and livelihoods in Metro Manila and Laguna Lake exemplifies metabolic relations that reveal the spatio-temporal connections of cities with landscapes that make their functioning possible.

Urbanizing Islands: A Critical History of Singapore's Offshore Islands

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110510
Author(s):  
Creighton Connolly ◽  
Hamzah Muzaini
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
Environmental Inequalities ◽  
Over Time

While Singapore is often considered an island city in the singular sense, the city-state actually consists of many islands, with the Singapore mainland being by far the largest. While most of these islands traditionally had thriving indigenous communities, all have since been displaced over time as the islands were developed to service Singapore's economic and metabolic needs as a rapidly urbanizing and developing nation. Some of the islands have also undergone considerable transformation (through reclamation) which has had significant impacts on the ecologies of the offshore islands. This simultaneously allowed for the ‘ruralization’ of mainland Singapore to provide more green space for nature conservation, recreation and leisure. This paper will provide a brief history of these transformations, drawing on specific examples which serve to illustrate how Singapore's offshore islands have been redeveloped over time to service the nation-state and in response to the changing needs of the urban core. In doing so, the paper examines how spaces on the urban periphery are deeply bound up with processes of ‘urbanization’, given their important role in processes of urban metabolism. In this way, the paper contributes to recent work in urban political ecology which has sought to trace processes of urbanization beyond the city and render visible the socio-environmental inequalities produced therein.

An urban political ecology for a world of cities

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (11) ◽  
pp. 2357-2370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Keil
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
The City ◽  
Theoretical Project

The critical considerations in this commentary have been stimulated by the articles joined together in this inspiring collection. Specifically, this commentary reflects on how one might imagine an urban political ecology for the age of planetary urbanisation. While the editors of and contributors to this special issue have done an admirable job of providing intellectual coherence to this project, there remains work to do, especially on the conceptual and theoretical front. The conveners of this symposium lay out an ambitious agenda for the papers in this issue and ultimately for the field: They ask: ‘why does everyone think cities can save the planet?’. It is part real inquiry, part rhetorical question. These questions also provide the entry point into a coherent and serious theoretical project that lies at the bottom of the assembled papers here and is elegantly laid out by the special issue editors in their introduction. This commentary takes up the challenges posed by the theoretical and empirical projects discussed in this issue and discusses them in light of past advances in thinking across the city–nature divide, technological politics and the changing spaces and times of current urbanisation.

Race and the construction of city and nature

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (9) ◽  
pp. 1948-1967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Loughran
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Critical Urban Theory ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City

Recent scholarship in critical urban theory, urban political ecology, and related fields has emphasized the “hybridity” of urban–environmental systems. This argument is contrasted with the socially constructed “binary” relationship between “city” and “nature” that dominated historical understandings of urban–environmental connections. Despite wide agreement on these issues, the trajectories that precipitated this shift in city–nature boundaries have been understudied. Many explanations position accelerating urbanization or changes in global political economy as driving the decline of the city–nature binary. This paper proposes that this transformation is also a product of the changing cultural and spatial dynamics of “race” between the 19th-century and the present. Drawing on research on urban parks in Chicago, I consider the production of park space at four important historical moments: (1) the mid-to-late 19th-century, when large picturesque parks were built; (2) the early 20th-century, when reform-oriented “small parks” were constructed; (3) the post-World War II period, which was marked by the development of recreation facilities; and (4) the contemporary period, where linear parks like Chicago’s 606 (which I term “imbricated spaces”) bring together built and natural environments in new ways. Through this analysis, I argue that the social construction of “city” and “nature,” as spatialized through urban park development, was co-produced with racialized spaces and symbols and contributed to the creation of metropolitan racial boundaries. Further, I argue that historical shifts in these racialized spaces and symbols have been implicated in the weakening of the city–nature binary and the rise of the hybrid city–nature relationship.

scholarly journals Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Innisfree McKinnon ◽  
Patrick T Hurley ◽  
Colleen C Myles ◽  
Megan Maccaroni ◽  
Trina Filan
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
The City

scholarly journals Hydrosocial hinterlands: An urban political ecology of Southern California’s hydrosocial territory

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862090938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alida Cantor
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Urban Geography ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
Rural Places ◽  
The City ◽  
Empirical Case Studies

Urban political ecology has conceptualized the city as a process of urbanization rather than a bounded site. Yet, in practice, the majority of urban political ecology literature has focused on sites within city limits. This tension in urban political ecology evokes broader conversations in urban geography around city-as-place versus urbanization-as-process. In this paper, I bring an urban political ecology analysis to examine co-constitutive urbanization and ruralization processes, focusing on sites beyond city boundaries in three empirical case studies located within the broader hydrosocial territory of urban Southern California. By focusing on the rural components of hydrosocial territories, I show that each of the three case studies has been shaped in very different ways based on its enrollment within urban Southern California’s hydrosocial territory; in turn, the rural has also shaped the cities through flows of politics and resources. The paper demonstrates how urban political ecology can be usefully applied to understand rural places, illustrating how processes of urbanization can be involved in the production of distinctly rural—and distinctly different—landscapes. The cases demonstrate the utility of urban political ecology as an analytical framework that can examine co-constitutive urbanization/ruralization processes and impacts while maintaining enough groundedness to highlight place-based differences.

scholarly journals Exploring the urban hydrosocial cycle in tourist environments

2014 ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Ridolfi
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Environmental Sciences ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
Water Flows ◽  
Fundamental Part ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
The City

This contribution attempts to examine first how different theoretical and methodological perspectives from Geography and environmental sciences explore water flows and their physical and social dimensions in the city, as well as their changes in response to the emerging urban complexities and challenges. Using in particular the framework provided by Urban Political Ecology, I look at how the physical and social dimensions of water flows unfold and influence the urbanization process and, in turn, are influenced by urbanization. In the second part, attention is paid to urban coastal areas of the Mediterranean as candidate laboratories of analysis under urban political ecology since they are subject to rapid processes of social environmental change in which water plays a fundamental part. Case studies included to examine physical and social dimensions of water flows include heritage towns (Venice) and mass tourism resorts (Benidorm).

scholarly journals Re-Naturing the City: Linking Urban Political Ecology and Cultural Ecosystem Services

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1786
Author(s):  
Antonella Pietta ◽  
Marco Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Environmental Planning ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽  
Degraded Land ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
The City

In the last few decades European industrial cities have experienced major transformations which have implied the need to rethink the role of nature. Re-naturing the city, reconnecting urban planning and nature and enhancing sustainability, means taking into account ecosystems and biodiversity through a social approach to nature which reconsiders nature as a social product and re-examines city–nature relationships, the way Urban Political Ecology (UPE) suggests. This paper focuses on the Brescia Quarry Park, a suburban space that until just a few years ago was characterized by mining activities. This area has now been transformed into a re-naturalized area and is projected to become one of Europe’s largest re-naturalized protected urban areas. These transformations are signs of a profound change in the urban metabolism. In fact, the community has struggled for many years for the recognition of the value of the area in ecological and cultural terms. Therefore, an approach was adopted based on Urban Political Ecology, which is useful to study how the socio–natural relationships change and how an exploited and degraded land can become a relevant natural area from the local community’s point of view. This approach also allowed us to study conflicts due to unequal power relations and strategies developed by the community to reduce these conflicts. Particular interest was given to the participatory processes which have driven these transformations and to the role played by the different actors involved through top-down and bottom-up approaches. So, we decided to combine UPE and participatory action research—PAR and create a participatory map of the Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) in the Park. Attention was given to understanding the practices of the stakeholders and benefits for the community. This involvement allowed us to represent the complexity of the re-naturalized urban landscape which was analyzed through the changes in natural, urban and rural features that emerged. During the process, the interaction between citizens and experts was fundamental in co-producing an analysis of the placemaking of urban landscapes and in revealing the socio–ecological interactions of the stakeholders with these places. The results of the mapping process represent a first step towards promoting sustainable environmental planning and management based on the involvement and empowerment of the local population.

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