Urbanism in the anthropocene: Ecological urbanism or premium ecological enclaves?

Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin

City, 2010, vol. 14, issue 3, 298-313

Abstract: Earth scientists now argue that the current geological era should be re‐named the anthropocene to better reflect the impact of humans in reshaping planetary ecology. Urbanism encompasses the social, economic and political processes most closely linked to the rapid transformation of habitats, destruction of ecologies, over use of materials and resources, and the production of pollutants and carbon emissions that threaten planetary terracide. Consequently, the key concern for 21st‐century global urbanism is to critically understand the wider societal and material implications of strategic responses to the pressures of climate change, resource constraint and their interrelationships with the global economic crisis. Eco‐cities, eco‐towns, eco city‐states, floating cities and the like represent particular, and increasingly pre‐eminent, forms of response. These types of response appear to promote the construction of ecologically secure premium enclaves that by‐pass existing infrastructure and build internalised ecological resource flows that attempt to guarantee strategic protection and further economic reproduction. If this is so this raises difficult issues as to what is left for those outside of these privileged enclaves. The search for more equitable and just forms of response requires understanding what types of alternatives to such bounded and divisible ecological security zones could be developed that contribute towards the building of more inclusive collective planetary security. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to ask: what styles of urbanism do these transformations contribute to the production of, what are the consequences of these emerging styles and what alternatives to them are being constructed?

Date: 2010
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DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2010.482277

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