Grounding urban natures : : histories and futures of urban ecologies / / edited by Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sörlin.

• Superior document: Urban and Industrial Environments
• TeilnehmendeR: Ernstson, Henrik, 1972-; Sörlin, Sverker,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge : : MIT Press,, 2019.
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Urban and industrial environments.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (441 pages).

Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the Global North. Grounding Urban Natures makes the case for the importance of place and time in understanding urban environments. Rather than imposing a unified framework on the ecology of cities, the contributors use a variety of approaches across a range of of locales and timespans to examine how urban natures are part of—and are shaped by—cities and urbanization. Grounding Urban Natures offers case studies from cities on five continents that demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The contributors consider the diversity of urban natures, analyzing urban ecologies that range from the coastal delta of New Orleans to real estate practices of the urban poor in Lagos. They examine the effect of popular movements on the meanings of urban nature in cities including San Francisco, Delhi, and Berlin. Finally, they explore abstract urban planning models and their global mobility, examining real-world applications in such cities as Cape Town, Baltimore, and the Chinese “eco-city” Yixing. Contributors Martín Ávila, Amita Baviskar, Jia-Ching Chen, Henrik Ernstson, James Evans, Lisa M. Hoffman, Jens Lachmund, Joshua Lewis, Lindsay Sawyer, Sverker Sörlin, Anne Whiston Spirn, Lance van Sittert, Richard A. Walker

Table of Contents

Toward comparative environmental urbanism : the discovery of urban natures in a "world of cities" / Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sorlin -- The disappearing river : infrastructural desire in New Orleans / Joshua Lewis -- Natures remade and imagined : "world city" beautifying and real-estate reclaiming in Lagos / Lindsay Sawyer -- Landscape literacy and design for ecological democracy : the nature of Mill Creek, Philadelphia / Anne Whiston Spirn -- Realms of exposure : design and the making of more-than-human ecologies in Cordoba, Argentina / Martín Ávila and Henrik Ernstson -- Nature's popular metropolis : the greening ofthe San Francisco Bay Area / Richard A. Walker -- Invasion and citizen mobilization : urban natures in Dalian, China / Lisa M. Hoffman -- Urban nature and its publics : shades of green in the remaking of Delhi / Amita Baviskar -- Regimes of urban nature : organic urbanism, biotope protection, and civic gardening in Berlin / Jens Lachmund -- Elbows over the fence : Rondevlei and the invention of community-based conservation in apartheid Cape Town / Lance van Sittert -- Ecology in the urban century : power, place and the abstraction of nature in Baltimore / James Evans -- Re-figuring the rural : eco-urbanization in Yixing City, China / Jia-Ching Chen -- Grounding and worlding urban natures : configuring an urban ecology knowledge project / Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sörlin.