Negotiating Green Space with Landed Interests: The Urban Political Ecology of Greenway in the Pearl River Delta,China

Land‐centred urbanisation has precipitated shortage of green space in Chinese cities. However, in the Pearl River Delta, an ambitious greenway system has recently managed to flourish. It is intriguing to ask how this has become possible. Informed by the perspective of urban political ecology, this paper finds that the greenway project in the Pearl River Delta represents a set of politically realistic endeavours to alleviate urban green space shortage by adapting to, rather than challenging, powerful landed interests. Three interlocking dimensions about land—municipal land quota, rural land use claims, and real estate development—have influenced why, where and how greenways have been created. Based on these findings, we argue that research on China's politics of urban sustainability necessarily needs to understand the country's land politics.     

Applying the Strategic‐Relational Approach to Urban Political Ecology: The Water Management Problems of the Baixada Fluminense,Rio de Janeiro,Brazil

Abstract: The complexity of water management requires an explanatory framework that is able to capture the multidimensionality of the relations between nature and society increasingly mediated by the state. The evolution of water problems in the Baixada Fluminense, a wetland area situated to the north of Rio de Janeiro, provides a paradigmatic example of how water management becomes incorporated into the fluid politics between state, nature and society. The local experience is examined by making use of the strategic‐relational approach (after Bob Jessop) expanded to urban political ecology. The concept of “trialectics” is proposed as an ontological representation of the interconnections between the state apparatus, class‐based relations and the socionatural elements of the water cycle. The empirical results show that, in a situation of precarious water supply, regular flooding and severe river degradation, state interventions have tended to favour certain groups and areas, which only intensifies the politicisation of water management.     

Provincializing Urban Political Ecology: Towards a Situated UPE Through African Urbanism

Urban political ecology (UPE) has provided critical insights into the sociomaterial construction of urban environments, their unequal distribution of resources, and contestation over power and resources. Most of this work is rooted in Marxist urban geographical theory, which provides a useful but limited analysis. Such works typically begin with a historical‐materialist theory of power, then examine particular artifacts and infrastructure to provide a critique of society. We argue that there are multiple ways of expanding this framing, including through political ecology or wider currents of Marxism. Here, we demonstrate one possibility: starting from theory and empirics in the South, specifically, African urbanism. We show how African urbanism can inform UPE and the associated research methods, theory and practice to create a more situated UPE. We begin suggesting what a situated UPE might entail: starting with everyday practices, examining diffuse forms of power, and opening the scope for radical incrementalism. © 2013 The Author. Antipode © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd.     

Towards Situated Analyses of Uneven Peri-Urbanisation: An (Urban) Political Ecology Perspective

In this article we develop a novel analytical framework for situated studies of uneven peri-urbanisation that resist further dividing Marxist and Situated (Urban) Political Ecology. We conceptualise uneven peri-urbanisation as a process in which access to the resources mobilised for peri-urban developments, such as water or land, is rendered uneven. In a three-step approach we suggest, first, describing how peri-urbanisation unfolds in the case being studied and distinguish it from other processes, such as suburbanisation. Second, we propose analysing the transformations of nature on which the peri-urbanisation process is based; and third, examining the uneven power relations infusing inequalities into these transformations and consequently into the peri-urbanisation process described. To allow for a situated analysis this approach regards the study of practices as crucial, but they have to be embedded in wider socio-economic, political, and historical processes, since both contribute to transformations of nature and thus shape uneven peri-urbanisation.     

Actor-Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political Ecology

Abstract:  Recent critiques of environmental justice research emphasize its disengagement from theory and its political focus on liberal conceptions of distributional and procedural justice. Marxian urban political ecology has been proposed as an approach that can both contextualize environmental inequalities more productively and provide a basis for a more radical politics of environmental justice. Although this work takes its primary inspiration from historical materialism, it also adapts key concepts from actor-network theory (ANT)—in particular, the agency of nonhumans—while dismissing the rest of ANT as insufficiently critical and explanatory. This paper argues that ANT—specifically, the version articulated by Bruno Latour—provides a basis for an alternative critical approach to environmental justice research and politics. Instead of arguing for a synthesis of ANT and Marxism, I contend that ANT gives us a distinctive conception of the  social  and opens up new questions about the production and justification of environmental inequalities.     

In the Nature of the Non‐City: Expanded Infrastructural Networks and the Political Ecology of Planetary Urbanisation

This paper proposes extending Urban Political Ecology's (UPE) ideas about the urbanisation of nature in order to include the geographical imprints of expanding, global metabolic flows of matter, energy and capital. It does so through the analysis of Huasco, a small agricultural village in northern Chile that has been overburdened with massive energy undertakings aimed at powering the operations of mines that supply raw materials to international markets. Like the sewage and technological networks that feed the life of cities, the paper argues that Huasco—as a metabolic vehicle of planetary urbanisation—has also been hidden from view, and thus the fetishisation of urban infrastructural networks initially theorised by UPE, has been ratcheted‐up to the global level by the mediating powers of neoliberalising capitalism. Just as the socio‐material arrangements that facilitate the smooth functioning of the modern city and household are riddled with glitches and exclusions, the paper suggests that globally up‐scaled infrastructures reveal even larger contradictions that put into jeopardy the very premises upon which the ongoing commodification of nature is grounded.     

The Political Forest in the Era of Green Neoliberalism

Nancy Peluso and Peter Vandergeest first used the term “political forest” to denaturalise forests, refiguring them as political-ecological entities. Across three moments of colonialism, post-colonial independence, and counter-insurgency struggles, they analyse how states in Southeast Asia (re)made forests as a means of territorialising power. More recently, they identify a fourth, contemporary moment characterised by the entry of diverse non-state actors into the making of forests, and a shift in the rationalities and technologies of forest management. We label this fourth moment “green neoliberalism” to identify an era of global environmental governance characterised by market-based solutions to socio-ecological problems, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration priorities, and new moral and scientific claims to forests spanning a variety of sites and scales. The papers in this symposium transport the analytic of the political forest to Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Madagascar, Singapore, and Thailand to examine how green neoliberalism’s discourses and practices have created new sites and expressions of territorialisation, governance, knowledge production, and subject formation. In doing so, they illuminate the multiplicity of actors (re)making political forests at a moment when forests’ virtues as carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots draw massive flows of capital and justify remaking socio-ecological relations across the globe.     

Uneven Urbanisation: Connecting Flows of Water to Flows of Labour and Capital Through Jakarta's Flood Infrastructure

This article analyses processes of uneven urbanisation by looking at flood infrastructure. Combining the conceptual frameworks of uneven development with the political ecology of urbanisation, we use flood infrastructure as a methodological device to trace the processes through which unevenness occurs within, but also far beyond, the city of Jakarta, Indonesia. We do this to show how the development of flood infrastructure in Jakarta is shaped by the logic of capitalism through mutually implicated tendencies of socionatural differentiation and equalisation. These processes render waters, resources and labour as similar across places and times to produce different spaces for different populations, within and beyond city boundaries. This theorisation reveals how the urban inequalities (re)produced by flood infrastructure are intimately linked to inequalities (re)produced through the urbanisation of the non‐city.     

Urban Governance Under Neoliberalism: New Labour and the Restructuring of State‐Space

Abstract: In the UK there has been a proliferation of agencies at differing regulatory scales as part of the rescaling and restructuring of the state by New Labour, following the neoliberal policies of previous Conservative governments. This raises questions concerning the extent to which New Labour's urban state restructuring is embedded within neoliberalism, and the local tensions and contradictions arising from emergent New Labour urban state restructuring. This paper examines these questions through the analysis of key policy features of New Labour, and the in‐depth exploration of two programmes that are reshaping urban governance arrangements, namely Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes. We conclude that New Labour's restructuring is best understood in terms of the extended reproduction (roll‐out) of neoliberalism. While these “new institutional fixes” are only weakly established and exhibit internal contradictions and tensions, these have not led to a broader contestation of neoliberalism.     

“Urban Ecology Under Fire”: Water Supply in Madrid During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

This paper investigates the critical role of workers to enhance the resilience of water supply services in cities at war through analyzing the case of Madrid and the Madrid water company Canales del Lozoya during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). We argue that securing the protection of vital urban flows mediated through infrastructures is a key objective of cities under attack. In doing so we contend that examining how those affected by the interruption of these flows cope with the situation represents a valuable but largely neglected form of water management. We illustrate how quotidian knowledge about the urban geography of water flows may have important repercussions for the war effort itself. In a nutshell, the case of Madrid offers an early account of the critical role of water workers in sustaining “urban ecologies under fire” securing the complex urban metabolism while also contributing to the struggle against invading forces.     

Zopilotes,Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures,Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.     

The Making of a Regulatory Crisis: Restructuring New York City's Water Supply

Much practically orientated environmental research is marked by a polarity between functionalist abstraction and ahistorical normative discourse. This paper seeks to bridge the divide between theoretical and empirical research through a case study of New York City's water supply. Current processes of socio-economic restructuring are leading to negative environmental consequences obscured by a failure to extend analysis beyond limited temporal, spatial or sectoral scales. Insights from regulationist theory show that a combination of fiscal, political and other developments are bringing about a wide-ranging reformulation of existing patterns of environmental regulation and service provision in the city. The power of the state is being radically diminished in relation to the power of capital and a plethora of different interest groups. A relatively simple centralized model of environmental regulation is being transformed into a complex decentralized pattern involving the emergence of new approaches to urban governance. Further research is needed on the contradictions between capitalist accumulation and environmental regulation at different spatial scales in order to link New York's changing role within the global economy to the declining political legitimacy and fiscal capability of the state to play an extensive role in environmental management.     

Participation in Multiple Decision Making Water Governance Forums in Brazil Enhances Actors’ Perceived Level of Influence

The Ecology of Games Framework (EGF) draws attention to the intertwined nature of different forums in a given policy setting and how this affects governance outcomes. In this article, we associate the EGF with the literature on power asymmetries, in order to investigate hypotheses of actors’ perceived level of influence in a forum. Focusing on the Paraíba do Sul river basin committee in Brazil, we specifically explore actors’ participation in multiple forums, time spent participating in the basin committee, and actors’ degree of involvement in the committee as factors that might explain actors’ level of perceived influence in the forum. The findings suggest participation in multiple forums is a key driver of perceived influence and thus highlight a way to challenge traditional power asymmetries. More research, however, is needed to determine to what extent perceived influence is affecting decision‐making processes and governance outcomes in the Paraíba do Sul river basin committee.     

Globalising Economic Governance,Political Projects,and Spatial Imaginaries: Insights from Four Australasian1 Cities

This paper explores how territorial economic governance is discursively constituted in a globalising and neoliberalising world. It acknowledges both the increasingly recognised formative role of spatial imaginaries in economic interventions and the workings of co‐constitutive political projects that link particular imaginaries with political ambitions and policy strategies. Embracing recent calls for comparative ethnographic urban research at the local‐global interface, it explores currently dominant spatial imaginaries across the four Australasian cities of Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. Based on multiple qualitative methods, this study claims that a considerable number of actor's spatial associations and reference points can be related to particular city‐specific governmental projects; Auckland's Super‐City, Sydney's Global and Green City, Melbourne's Liveable City, and Perth's Vibrant City. It is demonstrated how discursive governance techniques such as ‘story‐telling’, benchmarking, and policy transfer have been pivotal in the activation, circulation, and performance of those spatial imaginaries and their transformation into temporarily dominant visions for strategic urban interventions aimed at repositioning urban actors, spaces, and activities. While spatial imaginaries can be related to differently framed global aspirations, the effects of spatial political projects on urban governance and investment trajectories differ significantly across space. Theoretically, the paper stresses the importance of particular conceptions of territorial relations and time‐ and place‐specific institutional mediation in shaping context‐dependent discursive material governance alignments.     

Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale

This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that, given its political importance, requires urgent attention. Notwithstanding the important contributions of other critical perspectives on urban ecology, Marxist urban political ecology provides an integrated and relational approach that helps untangle the interconnected economic, political, social and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes. Because the power-laden socioecological relations that shape the formation of urban environments constantly shift between groups of actors and scales, historical-geographical insights into these ever-changing urban configurations are necessary for the sake of considering the future of radical political-ecological urban strategies. The social production of urban environments is gaining recognition within radical and historical-materialist geography. The political programme, then, of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.     

Governing the Sick City: Urban Governance in the Age of Emerging Infectious Disease

Abstract: Based on a case study of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Toronto, Canada, this article suggests that we may have to rethink our common perception of what urban governance entails. Rather than operating solely in the conceptual proximity of social cohesion and economic competitiveness, urban governance may soon prove to be more centrally concerned with questions of widespread disease, life and death and the construction of new internal boundaries and regulations just at the time that globalization seems to suggest the breakdown of some traditional scalar incisions such as national boundaries in a post‐Westphalian environment. We argue that urban governance must face the new (or reemerging) challenge of dealing with infectious disease in the context of the “new normal” and that global health governance may be better off by taking the possibilities that rest in metropolitan governance more seriously.     

Urban foraging and the relational ecologies of belonging

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show the complex ways that urban foraging is underpinned by interconnected and multiple notions of identity, place, mobility, and agency for both humans and more-than-human interlocutors. The focus on relational ecologies of belonging illuminates important challenges for environmental management and public space planning in socioecologically diverse areas. Ultimately, these challenges reflect negotiated visions about how we organize ourselves and live together in cosmopolitan spaces such as cities.     

Police and Politics in Aesthetics-Based Urban Governance: Redevelopment and Grassroots Struggles in Enninglu,Guangzhou, China

Rancière's theorisation of police, politics, and aesthetics offers an illustrative framework to understand urban (re)developments. While extant works have examined separately the art of governing through aesthetics and the political subjectivities of those having no part in the frame of visibility and intelligibility, this study argues that hegemonic aesthetic regime and bottom-up aesthetic practices can be mutually constitutive and reside in relationships of co-existence and mutual negotiation. Drawing on over a decade's investigation in Enninglu, a neighbourhood district in Guangzhou that underwent several rounds of political struggles related to redevelopment and conservation, we reveal how local residents negotiated aesthetic norms enacted by the state. Particular attention is paid to the interactions between the aesthetic regime imposed by the state and grassroots people reclaiming their own aesthetic sensibilities, culminating in a contingent, inconclusive, and “impure” space of politics. Both political subjectivities and aesthetic norms are redefined ongoingly in this process.     

Flows,Friction and the Sociomaterial Metabolization of Alcohol

Abstract: Political ecologists have considered the sociomateriality of diverse hybrids and the metabolism and circulation of urban flows such as water, food and waste. Adding alcohol to this list enhances our understanding of the geography of alcohol as well as the theory of sociomateriality. Viewing alcohol as a sociomaterial hybrid draws attention to the power‐laden, dynamic processes which shape its flow, rather than considering it as already in place. Additionally, my examination of alcohol calls attention to aspects of sociomateriality which are widely relevant but underexplored in the literature: the role of friction in shaping flows; the need to examine microscale impacts of sociomateriality on the body and community; and the conditional impacts of complex, unpredictable sociomaterial hybrids. I use a case study of alcohol in Cape Town to examine how alcohol flows, encounters friction, flows over boundaries and shapes sociability and harm in complex, indeterminate ways. Studies of alcohol typically focus on either its negative impacts on health and wellbeing or positive impacts on economic development, while policy debates focus on whether and how to control access. In this paper, I move beyond these binaries to provide a more nuanced, grounded articulation of how alcohol flows and what inhibits its flow. I examine the distribution of power and agency, limitations of state regulation, willingness of community members to act outside of and with little fear of the law, and the specificity of alcohol as a highly desirable commodity which easily flows around artificial barriers. These insights help clarify relationships, power and the (in)efficacy of policy efforts, and suggest the need to refocus debates. The paper is unable to provide specific policy recommendations, but instead argues that a better understanding of flows and frictions can move the focus from alcohol control to reducing alcohol‐related harm.     

Roads to Inequality: Infrastructure and Historically Grown Regional Differences in the Markham Valley,Papua New Guinea

Roads are one of the most salient symbols of development and modernity for rural citizens of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Multinational corporations, members of parliament, and villagers frequently point to roads as a key to development. However, while roads routinely improve the incomes of those connected, many of their effects are far less scrutable. Here, we examine the economic and social consequences of two roads, the Wau‐Bulolo Highway and Highlands Highway, for two villages in PNG's Morobe Province, and consider the processes that make their outcomes so different. Tracing the history of the two highways and considering a contrasting pair of case‐studies, we explore how roads simultaneously bolster income and drive interregional economic divergence. We demonstrate how the spatial and historical contexts the Highways run through, coupled with the relationships of patronage and dependence they rely on, produce contingent social outcomes and shape local ambivalence towards the outcomes of roads.