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"In Natura Urbana, Matthew Gandy explores the articulation of alternative, and in some cases, counterhegemonic sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, and other primarily curiosity-driven encounters, including voices seldom heard in environmental discourse"--

An interdisciplinary account of the environmental history and changing landscape of New York City.In this innovative account of the urbanization of nature in New York City, Matthew Gandy explores how the raw materials of nature have been reworked to produce a "metropolitan nature" distinct from the forms of nature experienced by early settlers. The book traces five broad developments: the expansion and redefinition of public space, the construction of landscaped highways, the creation of a modern water supply system, the radical environmental politics of the barrio in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the contemporary politics of the environmental justice movement. Drawing on political economy, environmental studies, social theory, cultural theory, and architecture, Gandy shows how New York's environmental history is bound up not only with the upstate landscapes that stretch beyond the city's political boundaries but also with more distant places that reflect the nation's colonial and imperial legacies. Using the shifting meaning of nature under urbanization as a framework, he looks at how modern nature has been produced through interrelated transformations ranging from new water technologies to changing fashions in landscape design. Throughout, he considers the economic and ideological forces that underlie phenomena as diverse as the location of parks and the social stigma of dirty neighborhoods.

The affluence of western society has given rise to unprecedented quantities of waste, presenting one of the most intractable environmental problems for contemporary society. This book examines recycling and municipal waste management in three major cities: London, New York and Hamburg. A range of political and economic issues are examined to illustrate how any reduction in the size of the waste stream in order to achieve more equitable and environmentally sustainable patterns of resource use is incompatible with the current emphasis in the use of the market for environmental protection. The cas.

This book focuses on contemporary environmental policy in developed economies. Its main subject is the recycling of re-usable materials within the municipal waste stream in the cities of London and Hamburg, The research behind this volume consisted of a survey of the London Boroughs to examine the organization and extent of recycling activity, complemented by a set of semi-structured interviews with key agents in London and Hamburg at national and local levels. The Hamburg material served as a comparative case study to further the analysis of of developments in the UK. Having demonstrated the importance of the conservation of materials to environmental policy, the basic research theme is the identification of the underlying barriers to raising levels of materials recycling towards technically achievable levels. This is examined in relation to the debate over the relative efficacy of market-based and regulatory policy instruments, and attempts to integrate economic and environmental policy making during the 1980s and early 1990s. Three key aspects are identified: the administrative structure of local government; the costs of urban recycling programmes in comparison with other forms of waste disposal such as landfill and incineration; the political and economic pressures since the 1970s to cut the cost of municipal waste management and simultaneously raise environmental standards, which are leading to a process of de -municipalization in waste management.

AbstractIn the context of the Covid‐19 pandemic this article takes a longer view of the evolving relationship between urbanization and the range of zoonotic diseases that have spread from animals to humans. I suggest that the existing interpretation of epidemiological transitions remains overly Eurocentric and requires a more nuanced conception of global environmental history. Similarly, the conceptualization of urban space within these teleological schemas has relied on a narrow range of examples and has failed to fully engage with networked dimensions to urbanization. At an analytical level I consider the potential for extending the conceptual framework offered by urban political ecology to take greater account of the epidemiological dimensions to contemporary urbanization and its associated pandemic imaginary. I examine how contemporary health threats intersect with complex patterns of environmental change, including the destruction of biodiversity (and trade in live animals), the co‐evolutionary dynamics of viruses and other pathogens, and wider dimensions to the global technosphere, including food production, infrastructure networks, and the shifting topographies of peri‐ or ex‐urban contact zones.

The contemporary theorization of the urban biosphere has reached something of an impasse between the perceived limitations of urban political ecology, the neo-Lefebvrian emphasis on global patterns of urbanization, and the rise of "new materialisms". Since its emergence in the mid-1990s, urban political ecology has made a series of distinctive contributions to the study of urban environmental issues yet in recent years a series of conceptual tensions and empirical lacunae have become apparent. In this essay I reflect on the legacy of the "first wave" of urban political ecology scholarship and consider a series of contemporary challenges including more complex interpretations of agency, materiality, and subjectivity. ; Zwischen den wahrgenommenen Grenzen der Urbanen Politischen Ökologie, der neolefebvrianischen Konzentration auf globale Urbanisierungsmuster und dem Aufschwung "neuer Materialismen" ist die zeitgenössische theoretische Konzeptualisierung der urbanen Biosphäre in eine Art Sackgasse geraten. Seit ihrer Entstehung Mitte der 1990er Jahre hat die Urbane Politische Ökologie eine Reihe profilierter Beiträge zur Erforschung urbaner Umweltfragen geleistet, aber in den letzten Jahren sind einige konzeptionelle Spannungen und empirische Lücken sichtbar geworden. In diesem Essay befasse ich mich mit dem Erbe der "ersten Welle" der Forschung in der Urbanen Politischen Ökologie und untersuche eine Reihe aktueller Herausforderungen, darunter die komplexeren Interpretationen von Handlungsmacht (Agency), Materialität und Subjektivität.

Urban political ecology now finds itself at a crossroads between gradual marginalization or renewed intellectual impetus. Despite some recent critical re-evaluations of the field, there remain a series of conceptual tensions that have only been partially explored. I consider six issues in particular: the uncertain relations between urban political ecology and the biophysical sciences; the emergence of extended conceptions of agency and subjectivity; the redefinition of space, scale, and the urban realm; renewed interest in urban epidemiology; the delineation of urban ecological imaginaries; and finally, the emergence of evidentiary materialism as an alternative posthuman configuration to new materialist ontologies. I conclude that a conceptually enriched urban political ecology could play an enhanced role in critical environmental research. ; European research council

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic this article takes a longer view of the evolving relationship between urbanization and the range of zoonotic diseases that have spread from animals to humans. I suggest that the existing interpretation of epidemiological transitions remains overly Eurocentric and requires a more nuanced conception of global environmental history. Similarly, the conceptualization of urban space within these teleological schemas has relied on a narrow range of examples and has failed to fully engage with networked dimensions to urbanization. At an analytical level I consider the potential for extending the conceptual framework offered by urban political ecology to take greater account of the epidemiological dimensions to contemporary urbanization and its associated pandemic imaginary. I examine how contemporary health threats intersect with complex patterns of environmental change, including the destruction of biodiversity (and trade in live animals), the co-evolutionary dynamics of viruses and other pathogens, and wider dimensions to the global technosphere, including food production, infrastructure networks, and the shifting topographies of peri- or ex-urban contact zones.

The contemporary theorization of the urban biosphere has reached something of an impasse between the perceived limitations of urban political ecology, the neo-Lefebvrian emphasis on global patterns of urbanization, and the rise of "new materialisms". Since its emergence in the mid-1990s, urban political ecology has made a series of distinctive contributions to the study of urban environmental issues yet in recent years a series of conceptual tensions and empirical lacunae have become apparent. In this essay I reflect on the legacy of the "first wave" of urban political ecology scholarship and consider a series of contemporary challenges including more complex interpretations of agency, materiality, and subjectivity.