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In-Depth Information
It is also important to keep in mind that much
contemporary urban theory has been based upon
research carried out on cities in North America,
Western Europe and Australasia. Given that the
most rapid forms of urbanization (particularly
those associated with megacities and mega-
regions) are now occurring in South and South-
east Asia and Africa, it is important to develop
theories that can allow for the particularities of
urban development in these places. Ananya Roy
has drawn particular attention to the importance
of developing new understandings of urban
development that are able to deal with the com-
plexities of urbanization in less economically
developed countries (Roy, 2009). Drawing on
observations of urbanization in the global south,
Roy identifies a series of distinctive processes
that characterize city development there. These
characteristics include: the impacts of the colonial
past, the unprecedented pace of urbanization, the
significant role of urban development in state
formation and consolidation, the role of informal
economic practices, and, perhaps most signifi-
cantly, the
informal production of space
associated
with the rise of shanty towns (Roy 2009: 826). It
is important not to underestimate the significance
of informal patterns of urban development.
According to Davis (2007), slums and
favelas
(i.e.
shanty towns) are not temporary urban accidents.
With some 200,000 slums now in existence
worldwide, Davis argues that they are becoming an
increasingly important blueprint for urban
development. What the work of Roy ultimately
suggests is that the increasingly improvised form
which urban development is taking in the global
south (ranging from the building of shelter to
the provision of services) requires new ways
of interpreting the city (for more on issues of
improvised adaptation see
Chapter 9)
.
concerns. For a significant period of time there was
something of an
environmental blind spot
within
urban theory (see Harvey, 1996; Light, 2001). This
blind spot was in part a product of a division that
emerged between socio-economic studies of cities
as predominately human entities, and environ-
mental studies of those places outside of cities that
constituted nature. The unhelpful divide between
urban research and environmental studies has
been gradually bridged by a series of studies that
have explored the ways in which cities are deeply
implicated in environmental systems at a range of
different scales. It was actually students of David
Harvey such as Neil Smith and Erik Swyngedouw
who conducted much of the early work in this field
(see Smith, 1984; Swyngedouw, 2007). This was
supported by David Harvey's own analysis of the
urbanization of nature in his 1996 volume
Justice,
Nature and the Geography of Difference
. Working
from a Marxist-based reading of the city, and
studying issues related to urban water supply,
forestry, air pollution and food production, this
research has exposed the complex ways in which
cities transform and metabolize nature (for an
overview of this area of enquiry see Heynen et al,
2006). This rapidly expanding area of work is
now referred to as
urban political ecology
. Just as
David Harvey attempted to develop a process-
based reading of the city, which connected urban
development to the flows of capital, urban political
ecologists extend this approach in order to
consider how cities channel the flows of capital
investment, housing construction and the produc-
tion of goods alongside the flow of environmental
resources such as air, water, foodstuffs, minerals
and energy (see Keil, 2005).
ENVIRONMENT
Having explored the history and nature of
urbanization, in this section we move on to explore
the connections that exist between cities and the
environment. This task is split into two sections.
In the
first section
we explore the different ways in
6.3.4 The environmental blind spot
in urban studies
An important aspect of urban theory that has, so
far, not been mentioned pertains to environmental
