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
