Environment, Agency, and Technology in Urban Life since c.1750

This book explores the historical relationship between 'technonatures' and urban transformations in the Global North. In recent years, various interdisciplinary movements such as Urban Political Ecology, STS and New Materialism have affected urban history and generated new scholarly insights into the formation of cities and urban life based on notions of hybridity, entanglement and metabolism. While scholars have increasingly attempted to grasp the socio-natural and technical complexity of cities, studies dealing with urban transformation within urban history have, however, mostly concentrated on political actors or broader social and economic changes. Seeking to introduce the concept of technonatures to the field of urban environmental history, this book instead takes its empirical and analytical starting point in the technonatural fabric of cities. Focusing on urban rivers, dumps, railways, flood walls and housing, the chapters of the book thus examines how different entanglementsof environment, technology and agency have shaped cities and processes of urbanization in the Global North from the seventeenth century onwards. By foregrounding the transformative role of urban natures, materialities and technologies in shaping the politics of urban life and cities more broadly, the book aspires to probe the potentiality of technonatures as a conceptual and analytical strategy for urban environmental historians.

Explores the role of urban nature, materialities and technology in the Global North, from c.1750present Builds on contributions to urban environmental history from geography, sociology, and critical theory Considers how politics, power, and nature structure urban life

Auteur

Mikkel Thelle is Senior Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark.

Mikkel Høghøj is Postdoctoral Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark.

Texte du rabat

This book explores the historical relationship between technonatures and urban transformations in the Global North. In recent years, various interdisciplinary movements such as Urban Political Ecology, STS and New Materialism have affected urban history and generated new scholarly insights into the formation of cities and urban life based on notions of hybridity, entanglement and metabolism. While scholars have increasingly attempted to grasp the socio-natural and technical complexity of cities, studies dealing with urban transformation within urban history have, however, mostly concentrated on political actors or broader social and economic changes. Seeking to introduce the concept of technonatures to the field of urban environmental history, this book instead takes its empirical and analytical starting point in the technonatural fabric of cities. Focusing on urban rivers, dumps, railways, flood walls and housing, the chapters of the book thus examines how different entanglementsof environment, technology and agency have shaped cities and processes of urbanization in the Global North from the seventeenth century onwards. By foregrounding the transformative role of urban natures, materialities and technologies in shaping the politics of urban life and cities more broadly, the book aspires to probe the potentiality of technonatures as a conceptual and analytical strategy for urban environmental historians.

Contenu
Introduction.- 1) Mikkel Høghøj and Mikkel Thelle: Unravelling Urban Technonatures.- Part I: Themes and concepts.- 2) Chris Otter: Planetary Agglomeration.- 3) Mikkel Thelle: Phronologies of Urban Water: Copenhagen.- 4) Hybrid Cities: Agency, scale and power. A conversation between Matthew Gandy, Dorethee Brantz, Chris Otter and Mikkel Thelle.- Part II: Agency of flow, matter and technology.- 5) Friedrich Hauer, Christina Spitzbart-Glasl, Severin Hohensinner and Verena Winiwarter: A Techno-River in the Making: Three transformations of the Wien River from the Middle Ages until the present.- 6) Sam Grinsell: River Lines and Railway Lines: Colonial military technonatures in the making of Sudan's capital region, 1880s-1920s.- 7) Uwe Lübken: Concrete History: Floodwalls on the Ohio River.- Part III: Governing mobility, waste and urban subjects.- 8) Marjolein Schepers: Closed Gates and Dart Streets: Spaces and infrastructures of transit in the Low Countries, eighteenth-nineteenth century.- 9) Nina Toudal Jessen: At the Intersection of Expertise and Landscaping: How technical advisors created new nature.- 10) Mikkel Høghøj: Good and Bad Nature: Slum clearance and metabolic poverty in mid-twentieth century Copenhagen.