Urban political ecology in prospect and retrospect

Abstract

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.