In the nature of cities :

In the nature of cities : urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism / edited by Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw. - London ; New York : Routledge, 2006. - xv, 271 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm. - Questioning cities series. .

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreword /​ Neil Smith
1. Urban political ecology : politicizing the production of urban natures /​ Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw
2. Metabolic urbanization : the making of cyborg cities /​ Erik Swyngedouw
3. Metropolitics and metabolics : rolling out environmentalism in Toronto /​ Roger Keil and Julie-Anne Boudreau
4. Urban nature and the ecological imaginary /​ Matthew Gandy
5. Nature's carnival : the ecology of pleasure at Coney Island /​ Eliza Darling
6. The desire to metabolize nature : Edward Loveden Lovden, William Vanderstegen, and the disciplining of the river Thames /​ Stuart Oliver
7. Turfgrass subjects : the political economy of urban monoculture /​ Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp
8. Justice of eating in the city : the political ecology of urban hunger /​ Nik Heynen
9. Metabolisms of obe-city : flows of fat through bodies, cities and sewers /​ Simon Marvin and Will Medd
10. The political ecology of water scarcity : the 1989-1991 Athenian drought /​ Maria Kaika
11. The metabolic processes of capital accumulation in Durban's waterscape /​ Alex Loftus
12. The public/​private conundrum of urban water : a view from South Africa /​ Lalila Smith and Greg Ruiters
13. Inherited fragmentations and narratives of environmental control in entrepreneurial Philadelphia /​ Alec Brownlow
14. Transnational alliances and global politics : new geographies of urban environmental justice struggles /​ David N. Pellow
15. Urban metabolism as target : contemporary war as forced demodernization /​ Stephen Graham.

"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 7F 18urban7F 19 or the 7F 18natural7F 19. 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." -- Publisher's website.

9780415368278 (hbk.)


Urban ecology (Sociology)
Political ecology.

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