Thinking with Urban Natures

Abstract

Abstract Since the Enlightenment, cities have been considered as exemplary spaces of human achievement. Technological developments and the constant reorganisation of materials and infrastructures have contributed to a widely shared conception of nature as something outside of urban areas. Our age, framed by the Anthropocene and the sixth wave of extinction, has shattered such vision. Novel reflections across the natural sciences, the arts and the humanities have chosen to focus on relational entanglements instead of separating the city from the environment. In this short collection, we offer a series of reflections about multiple urban natures that often remain unknown or concealed. Each of us does so from a unique disciplinary perspective, ranging from anthropology to history and geography over urban ecology, urban studies and landscape architecture. We hope to point towards a multidisciplinary articulation of urban nature as in itself diverse, complex and de-centred.