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"Planetary Mine rethinks the politics and territoriality of resource extraction, especially as the mining industry becomes reorganized in the form of logistical networks, and East Asian economies emerge as the new pivot of the capitalist world-system. Through an exploration of the ways in which mines in the Atacama Desert of Chile-the driest in the world-have become intermingled with an expanding constellation of megacities, ports, banks, and factories across East Asia, the book rethinks uneven geographical development in the era of supply chain capitalism. Arguing that extraction entails much more than the mere spatiality of mine shafts and pits, Planetary Mine points towards the expanding webs of infrastructure, of labor, of finance, and of struggle, that drive resource-based industries in the twenty-first century."

Through an investigation of port cities in northern Chile, this article assesses the territorial and sociopolitical ramifications of the logistics turn in the extractive industries. The systematic adoption of organizational imperatives towards flow, connectivity, and speed in mining operations, has spearheaded a modality of logistical urbanization in which the governance of mineral flows assumes increasing salience vis-à-vis sites of extraction narrowly considered. This evolving modality of territorial organization has underpinned the rise of a transpacific logistical corridor that weaves together multiple mineral deposits in the Chilean Andes with a wide array of port and manufacturing cities in East Asia. Through a materialist reading of the capitalist state, the paper suggests that the metabolic flows that animate this complex socioecological system are mediated by distinct, yet overlapping tendencies towards the internationalization and the concentration of the political authority of the late liberal state. ; A partir del caso de las ciudades portuarias del norte de Chile, este artículo analiza las implicaciones territoriales y sociopolíticas del giro logístico en las industrias extractivas. La adopción de imperativos de flujo, velocidad y conectividad por parte de la gran minería, ha dado origen a una modalidad de organización urbano-territorial donde la gobernanza del movimiento de los minerales asume un rol cada vez más relevante frente a los espacios de extracción individualmente considerados. Este proceso de urbanización logística ha hecho posible el desarrollo de un corredor transpacífico de infraestructuras que une múltiples depósitos minerales en las zonas cordilleranas de Chile con ciudades manufactureras y portuarias en el este asiático. A través de una lectura materialista del Estado, se afirma que los flujos metabólicos de este complejo sistema socioecológico son mediados por tendencias simultáneas y contrapuestas hacia la internacionalización y la concentración de la autoridad política del ...

AbstractThrough an exploration of the political economy of the current commodity boom in Latin America, and on the basis of recent appropriations of Henri Lefebvre's notion of planetary urbanization, this article proposes viewing spaces of resource extraction resulting from an escalating international demand for raw materials as particular morphological expressions of market‐driven processes of urbanization. Furthermore, the article draws on Lefebvre to argue that such burgeoning spaces of urbanization are the result of a contradictory tension between spatial homogenization—in the form of multiscalar governance frameworks and infrastructural programs—and territorial fragmentation—in the form of fixed capital allocations and state‐led spatial segregation. When considered jointly, these contradictory movements allow us to grasp fully the extent of the problematic explosion of spaces that, according to Lefebvre, characterizes capitalist urbanization. The article concludes by reflecting on the emancipatory promise that underlies the planetary extension of the urban form because, with the projection of material infrastructures required for resource extraction—especially information technologies—across the rural realm, local communities have been able to shed their isolated state and emerge as fully fledged political actors.

Since its emergence in the 1990s, the field of Urban Political Ecology (UPE) has focused on unsettling traditional understandings of the 'city' as entirely distinct from nature, showing instead how cities are metabolically linked with ecological processes and the flow of resources. More recently, a new generation of scholars has turned the focus towards the climate emergency. Turning up the heat seeks to turn UPE's critical energies towards a politically engaged debate over the role of extensive urbanisation in addressing socio-environmental equality in the context of climate change.The collection brings together theoretical discussions and rigorous empirical analysis by key scholars spanning three generations, engaging UPE in current debates about urbanisation and climate change. Engaging with cutting edge approaches including feminist political ecology, circular economies, and the Anthropocene, case studies in the book range from Singapore and Amsterdam to Nairobi and Vancouver. Contributors make the case for a UPE better informed by situated knowledges: an embodied UPE that pays equal attention to the role of postcolonial processes and more-than-human ontologies of capital accumulation within the context of the climate emergency. Acknowledging UPE's rich intellectual history and aiming to enrich rather than split the field, Turning up the heat reveals how UPE is ideally positioned to address contemporary environmental issues in theory and practice