In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism

by Nikolas Heynen, Maria Kaika (Editor), Erik Swyngedouw (Editor)

The social and material production of urban nature has recently emerged as an important area in urban studies, human/environmental interactions and social studies. This has been prompted by the recognition that the material conditions that comprise urban environments are not independent from social, political, and economic processes, or from the cultural construction of what constitutes the 'urban' or the 'natural'. Through both theoretical and empirical analysis, this groundbreaking collection offers an integrated and relational approach to untangling the interconnected processes involved in forming urban landscapes.



The essays in this book attest that the re-entry of the ecological agenda into urban theory is vital both in terms of understanding contemporary urbanization processes, and of engaging in a meaningful environmental politics. They debate the central themes of whose nature is, or becomes, urbanized, and the uneven power relations through which this socio-metabolic transformation takes place.



Including urban case studies, international research and contributions from prominent urban scholars, this volume will enable students, scholars and researchers of geographical, environmental and urban studies to better understand how interrelated, everyday economic, political and cultural processes form and transform urban environments.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2005

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The theoretical essays at the beginning make this book a worthy read if you're interested in urban nature/environments. For the contributors, the nature of cities is not solely the trees in the parks or the river in need of "saving" but also the city's infrastructure (bridges, buildings, drinking water systems, etc) and the commodities that make cities run. Capitalism's trick (aka commodity fetishism) has separated the final product from human labor (ie the transformation of what Marx called "first nature"). Thus urban political ecology, by overcoming the dichotomous "culture" and "nature" ontology, opens up a world of possibilities for studying the ways in which "urbanized nature" (or socio-natural formations) constitutes and gets constituted by power relations of domination and consent, resistance, and broader political economy. This perspective politicizes more deeply the nature of cities and seeks to explain who benefits and who loses through certain socio-natural formations.

Some of the essays are too short, and many are written with an atrocious social-scientific prose where everything causes everything and vice-versa. Also, except one or two essays, the compilation is history-phobic, as if the most important political ecologies started in the 1980s.

[Ce · Rating 4 out of 5]

we keep constructing cities under a false idea of capitalism as the solution to all. Through different case studies we are carried into see how many of the "post-modernist" ideas never worked and still don't work to achieve equity inside cities. If you don't have a clue on Marx...read first the Capital and come back.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

You may need a dictionary at hand while reading this since it suffers from "look at my verbose writing and extensive academic vocabulary" syndrome.