In the Nature of Cities

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.

ISBN 0415368286   Pages 288 ISBN13 9780415368285 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd   Weight (grammes) 435 Imprint Routledge   Published in London Format Paperback   Series title Questioning Cities Publication date 22 Dec 2005   Height (mm) 234 Library of Congress 2005012463   Width (mm) 156 DEWEY 307.76   Spine width (mm) 16 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		Foreword by Neil Smith
1		Urban political ecology : politicizing the production of urban natures by Nik Heynen and Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw		1
2		Metabolic urbanization : the making of cyborg cities by Erik Swyngedouw		21
3		Metropolitics and metabolics : rolling out environmentalism in Toronto by Roger Keil and Julie-Anne Boudreau		41
4		Urban nature and the ecological imaginary by Matthew Gandy		63
5		Nature's carnival : the ecology of pleasure at Coney Island by Eliza Darling		75
6		The desire to metabolize nature : Edward Loveden Lovden, William Vanderstegen, and the disciplining of the river Thames by Stuart Oliver		93
7		Turfgrass subjects : the political economy of urban monoculture by Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp		110
8		Justice of eating in the city : the political ecology of urban hunger by Nik Heynen		129
9		Metabolisms of obe-city : flows of fat through bodies, cities and sewers by Simon Marvin and Will Medd		143
10		The political ecology of water scarcity : the 1989-1991 Athenian drought by Maria Kaika		157
11		The metabolic processes of capital accumulation in Durban's waterscape by Alex Loftus		173
12		The public/private conundrum of urban water : a view from South Africa by Lalila Smith and Greg Ruiters		191
13		Inherited fragmentations and narratives of environmental control in entrepreneurial Philadelphia by Alec Brownlow		208
14		Transnational alliances and global politics : new geographies of urban environmental justice struggles by David N. Pellow		226
15		Urban metabolism as target : contemporary war as forced demodernization by Stephen Graham		245

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