Natura urbana : ecological constellations in urban space / Matthew Gandy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gandy, Matthew, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urban ecology (Sociology).

Human ecology.

Environmentalism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 416 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2022]

Summary:

A study of urban nature that draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought.Postindustrial transitions and changing cultures of nature have produced an unprecedented degree of fascination with urban biodiversity. The other nature that flourishes in marginal urban spaces, at one remove from the controlled contours of metropolitan nature, is not the poor relation of rural flora and fauna. Indeed, these islands of biodiversity underline the porosity of the distinction between urban and rural. In Natura Urbana, Matthew Gandy explores urban nature as a multilayered material and symbolic entity, through the lens of urban ecology and the parallel study of diverse cultures of nature at a global scale.Gandy examines the articulation of alternative, and in some cases counterhegemonic, sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, as well as curious citizens, including voices seldom heard in environmental discourse. The book is driven by Gandy's fascination with spontaneous forms of urban nature ranging from postindustrial wastelands brimming with life to the return of such predators as wolves and leopards on the urban fringe. Gandy develops a critical synthesis between different strands of urban ecology and considers whether "urban political ecology," broadly defined, might be imaginatively extended to take fuller account of both the historiography of the ecological sciences, and recent insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1 Zoöpolis redux

1.1 Decentering the urban subject

1.2 Edgelands

1.3 Animal topographies

1.4 Synanthropic ecologies

1.5 Evolutionary pathways

1.6 Immunological paradigms

1.7 Itineraries

2 Marginalia

2.1 City of weeds

2.2 Flux, mimicry, and nondesign

2.3 The search for an ecological aesthetic

2.4 Spaces of ambivalence

2.5 Reconfigurations

3 Ecologies of difference

3.1 Ideological contortions

3.2 Aliens and others

3.3 Queering the transect

3.4 Black ecologies

4 Forensic ecologies

4.1 Forensic urbanism

4.2 Indices and instruments

4.3 The urban field

4.4 Ground truths

4.5 Ecological voids

5 Temporalities

5.1 Cities in deep time

5.2 Capital, ecology, and urban space

5.3 Urban refugia

5.4 Laboratories of the future

5.5 Analog ecologies

Epilogue

Notes

Filmography

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 8, 2022)

Description based on print version record.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

Other Format:

Print version: Gandy, Matthew. Natura urbana.

ISBN:

0-262-36747-5

0-262-36746-7

OCLC:

1298394555