View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE

provided by Apollo

City analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action

ISSN: 1360-4813 (Print) 1470-3629 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccit20

Cities in deep time

Matthew Gandy

To cite this article: Matthew Gandy (2018) Cities in deep time, City, 22:1, 96-105, DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2018.1434289 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2018.1434289

© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Published online: 15 Mar 2018.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 596

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ccit20 CITY, 2018 VOL. 22, NO. 1, 96–105, https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2018.1434289 Cities in deep time Bio-diversity, metabolic rift, and the urban question

Matthew Gandy

How should we interpret the relationship between urbanization and the loss of bio-diver- sity? The discourse of bio-diversity serves as a critical lens through which the accelerating momentum of ‘metabolic rift’ can be explored in relation to contemporary mass extinction. But what is the precise role of cities within what has been referred to as the ‘sixth extinction’ facing the history of the earth? Are cities to be subsumed within a broader environmentalist critique of modernity or can they serve as the focal point for alternative cultural, political, and scientific interventions? This article suggests that the distinction between cities and broader processes of urbanization remains significant for a more critically engaged reading of the politics of the biosphere. Indeed, an overemphasis on ‘methodological global- ism’ risks obscuring the differences that matter in the articulation of alternative modernities. In particular, we consider how the relationship between cities and ‘deep time’ can be con- ceptualized as a focal point for the interpretation of global environmental change.

Key words: bio-diversity, urban ecology, metabolic rift, the Anthropocene, deep time

1. Cities in the anthropocene middle decades of the twentieth century, has focused attention on a radical and poten- merging interest in the identification tially irreversible discontinuity in the socio- of a new geological epoch encom- ecological relations that have underpinned Epasses an array of critical perspectives, global modernity. putative chronologies, and alternative ter- A focus on the Anthropocene transcends minologies. The recent coalescence around the restricted political and temporal terrain the term Anthropocene, a neologism that of the ‘sustainable development’ agenda that first passed almost unnoticed in the 1980s, emerged in the 1980s by emphasizing patt- signals a profound sense that a fundamentally erns of environmental change over a much different epoch is now superseding the Holo- longer time period. The case for a new geo- cene that began some 11,700 years ago. logical periodization draws on two inter- Although the Holocene encompassed the related sets of arguments: first, the origins of agriculture and the rise of the first accelerating momentum in human induced cities, a series of more recent developments, sources of environmental change; and including the emergence of capitalism second, a neo-catastrophist interpretation of during the ‘long sixteenth century’, and the the earth’s history that emphasizes not just dramatic spike in resource use since the the scale of previous geo-environmental

# 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. GANDY: CITIES IN DEEP TIME 97 transitions but also their rapidity. The inter- utilization, and the gradual emergence of related threats to the biosphere from bio- the ‘technosphere’ comprising ‘the sum total diversity loss, climate change, and accumulat- of all the earth’s physical infrastructure’ (see ing environmental ‘sinks’ connect with ‘deep Otter 2017, 146). Under this conceptual- time’ as a frame of reference that moves ization, which bears similarities with the ‘pla- beyond the conventional scope of historical netary urbanization’ thesis, cities are simply a analysis to engage with forms of radical historically and geographically specific mani- discontinuity. festation of a broader set of processes and A key contention of the Anthropocene is interdependencies (see Brenner 2014). that we are now entering a sixth mass extinc- Several different starting points have been tion event in which human survival is ren- suggested for the Anthropocene including dered uncertain (see, for example, Ceballos, the megafauna extinctions, the emergence Ehrlich, and Dirzo 2017; Kolbert 2014; of agriculture, the discovery of the New Lovejoy 2012). Under previous mass extinc- World, the proto capitalist realm of seven- tions, of which five have now been recog- teenth-century Holland, the switch from nized, over 90 per cent of all life forms were water to steam power in late eighteenth wiped out. During the third mass extinction century England, the ‘mercurial signature’ of the mid-Permian period, for instance, within the global food chain, radioactive some 260 million years ago, warming temp- traces left by the detonation of the first eratures released vast quantities of hydrogen nuclear weapons, and more recently, the sulphide from dead bacteria, turning the extraction of rare earths under the transition oceans purple, and releasing poisonous to digital capitalism. Cities hold a growing bubbles of gas into ‘a pale green sky’ presence within this panoply of historical (Zimmer cited in Kolbert 2014, 104). These developments as centres for trade, consump- imaginary accounts of past environmental tion, and the coordination of wider pro- dystopias located in deep time serve to cesses of state formation. Indeed, the emphasize the ephemeral and fragile nature growth of cities has even been referred to of the ecological relations that have under- as a potential ‘golden spike’ within the pinned the possibilities for life let alone the future stratigraphic record marked by a dis- intricate forms of socio-ecological interde- tinctive me´lange of burrowings and material pendence that have allowed human capacities traces (see Davies 2015). to flourish under modernity. The more incisive literature on the Anthro- Our understanding of environmental tran- pocene has sought to link causality with sitions in the modern era needs to be tem- periodicity. The first use of steam power in pered by evidence of past waves of human 1784, for example, serves as a convenient modification of the biosphere. Even the ear- marker within a broad history of increasing liest hunter-gatherer cultures emerging in human impact on the biosphere. The switch the Pleistocene epoch, over two hundred from water to steam power increased the thousand years ago, had an extensive environ- mobility of capital and enabled the transfer mental impact through the use of fire to of production from predominantly rural modify natural environments, along with areas to fast growing industrial towns such the hunting of megafauna in which perhaps as Birmingham and Manchester (see Kunkel two-thirds of large mammal species were 2017; Malm 2016). Furthermore, the creation lost (see, for example, Broswimmer 2014). of large pools of (surplus) labor tilted the Subsequent episodes of environmental trans- balance of power in favor of capital and formation during the Holocene have involved freed production from the constraints of a steady expansion of the ‘human niche’ into nature, location, and potential labor existing ecosystems, marked by the rise of shortages. The concomitant reliance on agriculture, new patterns of resource fossil fuels also dramatically expanded the 98 CITY VOL. 22, NO.1 potential scope, scale, and mobility of indust- political context (for a classic exposition of rial production adding further impetus to this argument see Tafuri 1987). In this sense capitalist urbanization. the urban becomes a space of multiple possi- It would be misleading, however, to argue bilities driven not just by the logic of capital that capitalism and urbanization are fully but emerging from a series of socio- synonymous even though the built environ- ecological, technological, and ideological ment, and the secondary circuit of capital, entanglements. What forms of agency, has played a key role within the expansionary materiality, or imagination can co-exist or dynamics of global capital. As Ernest Mandel even flourish in spite of the functionalist has pointed out, following Lefebvre, the pro- imperative of capitalist urbanization? What blematic dimensions to urbanization are an kinds of alternative socio-ecological or tech- outcome of the structural and political nological pathways might serve as intima- characteristics of capital rather than inherent tions of a different future? features of the modern city: From a somewhat different perspective these ambivalent dimensions to urbanization ‘The blatant deformation of urban have also been considered within the bur- development since the industrial revolution, geoning Anthropocene literature. ‘Cities has been the unequivocal product of social have been centers of ingenuity, creativity, conditions: private ownership of land; real- and wealth since their origins more than estate speculation; systematic subordination of town planning to the development of five thousand years ago,’ write J.R. McNeill ‘growth sectors’ of private industry; general and Peter Engelke (2014, 106), and ‘if well underdevelopment of socialized services’ designed, they can require fewer resources (Mandel 1978 [1972], 504). per capita than rural areas’. Furthermore, as McNeill and Engelke point out, the greater For Mandel, the substitution of a capitalist gender equality fostered by urbanization logic with an ideological attachment to ‘tech- leads to higher levels of education and nical rationality’ fails to address the destruc- lower levels of fertility so that the social, tive and alienating dimensions to the environmental, and the demographic are urbanization: inextricably entwined. In these types of assessments we are clearly moving away ‘These societal conditions, far from being from the pervasive anti-urban sentiments suspended or neutralized by any technical that inhere in neo-Malthusian perspectives logic, in their turn determined technological or anti-modern variants of ecocentrism yet development—for example, the the emphasis on socio-technical modes of backwardness of industrial methods in the construction industry—and aberrant innovation takes the fundamental parameters development (high-rise blocks, dormitory of the capitalist city as a given (in an echo of cities, and so on)’ (Mandel 1978 [1972], 504). the Chicago School analysis of urban land use in the early twentieth century). What is Urban form is thus a reflection of the political lacking in McNeill and Engelke’s account, dynamics of urban space rather than an innate however, is a sense of the historicity of the dimension to modernity. Mandel’s obser- Anthropocene debate itself in terms of vations can be read as an indictment of a its conceptual antecedents, emerging incon- particular kind of twentieth-century techno- gruities, and contemporary cultural cratic modernity that reflects the structural resonance. parameters of political contestation in the For the literary critic Jeremy Davies, in his urban arena. Rather than the biomorphic or incisive historiography of the Anthropocene, generic city of avant-garde architectural a richer reading of environmental change over theory we must contend with ‘actually exist- the long term must encompass a history of ing cities’ in their precise historical and what it means to be human, of the rights GANDY: CITIES IN DEEP TIME 99 and protections that have developed for indi- desalination plants to enable the development viduals and communities, and of the distinct- of vast littoral agglomerations or the rapid ive forms of social inequality that are development of bio-technologies to enable embedded within specific socio-ecological greater control over food production. These relations associated with fossil fuel extract- variants of the Anthropocene imaginary ion, the expansion of industrialized agricul- mark a radical elaboration of existing dis- ture, and the destruction of vulnerable courses within the sustainability literature biotopes. A key concern for environmental where capitalist innovation takes precedence justice under the Anthropocene will be coun- over structural forms of social and political tering the ‘simplifying tendencies of the change. In contrast, the term Capitalocene, Holocene’s final phase’ (Davies 2015, 6). as deployed by Jason Moore, emphasizes These tensions between simplicity and com- the inherent ecological characteristics of plexity operate on a number of cultural and capitalist urbanization and the articulation material levels including the protection of between cities, the transformation of nature, both social and ecological forms of differ- and the emergence of an integrated global ence: an emerging characteristic of the economy. Moore’s periodization is centred Anthropocene is the steady replacement of on the impact of capital rather than a more an array of intricate and inter-dependent vaguely framed emphasis on the human socio-ecological systems with a series of ‘vul- impact (and by extension a Eurocentric con- nerable saturated monocultures’ (Davies ception of the human subject) (see Moore 2015, 6). 2015). Yet an over extension of the temporal Urban complexity can serve as a critical horizon for critical analysis can risk blurring leitmotif for disentangling different strands the precise mechanisms that underlie histori- of environmental discourse. The diverse cul- cal change to produce a highly generalized tures of nature encountered in cities focus on the human species (see Conrad problematize the meaning of ‘ecological 2016). In contrast to the limitations of ‘big authenticity’ and attempts at landscape res- history’, however, Moore’s critique of the toration: the rediscovery of urban rivers, for Anthropocene rests on the emergence of example, or the creation of ‘natural flood- capital as a sufficiently precise periodization plains’ raises questions about the temporal under which an alternative theorization of specificity of socio-ecological relations. Simi- global environmental change can be persua- larly, the emerging interest in ‘cosmopolitan sively articulated in the face of the geo- ecologies’ emphasizes the global inter- sciences. connectedness of urban space which further underscores the innate hybridity of the human environment. In this sense, critical 2. The urbanization of bio-diversity variants of urban ecological discourse hold wider implications for the interpretation of Cities and bio-diversity are conventionally nature per se. conceived to lie in antithetical relationship The Anthropocene literature is marked by to one another. Indeed, ‘the city’ is widely a tension between an undifferentiated ‘we’, portrayed as a powerful agent in environ- typical of more positivistic, technocratic, or mental destruction through its concentrated neo-Malthusian accounts, and alternative demands for energy and resources. Yet we readings of ‘deep time’ that are more alert should be cautious in ascribing some form to the development of different forms of of urban agency to the ecological contradic- human society (see Davies 2015; Demos tions of capital (see Otter 2017). Manichean 2017). The geo- or bio-engineering responses perspectives on the modern city can be con- to the Anthropocene favour large-scale tech- trasted with the emergence of more nuanced nological fixes such as nuclear-powered conceptualizations of the socio-ecological 100 CITY VOL. 22, NO.1 relations that underpin the production of become a focal point for environmental urban space. Furthermore, the specific eco- politics: logical characteristics of cities, including cul- tural and scientific interest in the distinctive ‘It structures images of simultaneous characteristics of urban biotopes, have tenuousness, rarity, and value. To speak of an opened up different angles of critical endangered species is to speak of a form of life interpretation. But how should we concept- that threatens to become extinct in the near future; it is to raise the stakes in a controversy ualize the relationship between biodiversity so that certain actions carry the consequences and urbanization? Can the socio-ecological of destroying the possibility of life’s continued complexity of cities influence global environ- existence. Species can be endangered, as can mental discourse? ecosystems’ (Choy 2011, 26). The term ‘bio-diversity’ first emerged in the mid-1980s as both a scientific concept The question of value rests on various indices and also a symbolic focus for environmental of uniqueness that are in turn related to the politics. The idea is rooted within the biologi- development of taxonomic knowledge: cal sciences, and in particular conservation specific species may take on symbolic signifi- biology, but also connects with wider cance whilst other less showy organisms may domains of policy making, especially in the have a much more complex or ill-defined wake of the Rio summit of 1992. At its incep- relationship with public culture. The vulner- tion the term bio-diversity served as ‘a ability of a particular species is partly zealous defense of a particular social con- context specific—many species of plants and struction of nature that recognizes, analyses, animals are much rarer towards the edge of and rues this furious destruction of life on their range—and is also related to different Earth’ (Takacs 1996, 2). Over time, definitions of irreplaceability since sub- however, the emphasis of bio-diversity has species can also disappear and some life extended from the protection of vulnerable forms can be artificially sustained in artificial biotopes at a global scale to a diversity of environments such as zoos or laboratories. ordinary environments such as parks, Furthermore, the recognition of a ‘species gardens, or interstitial urban spaces. The complex’ can complicate the precise focus of idea of bio-diversity involves a distinction conservation efforts, along with the impli- between those organisms, fragments of cations of DNA barcoding for taxonomic nature, or specific biotopes that should be science (a field that is under acute fiscal prioritized: bio-diversity comprises an insti- pressure within the neo-liberal academy and tutionally framed set of judgments about underfunded museum system) (see Waterton, the relative worth of different components Ellis, and Wynne 2013). It is of particular of nature. There is an implicit hierarchy of interest to conservation biology if a species species or ecosystems that are considered (or sub-species) is endemic to a specific worthy of protection yet at the same time locality, which generally indicates ecosys- the concept encompasses the functional tems with greater degrees of geographical iso- integrity of the biosphere as a whole. lation such as islands or mountains. Forms of The concept of bio-diversity encompasses geographic isolation can also enable specia- degrees of vulnerability as well as irreversible tion to occur within urban space (in under- losses caused by the extinction of individual ground infrastructure systems, for example) species. The rhetorical salience engendered along with epigenetic or behavioral adap- by ‘ecologies of endangerment’, to use the tations to urban environments (as evidenced anthropologist Tim Choy’s expression, has by the effects of noise, pollution, or artificial many possible manifestations in the urban light) (see Gandy 2017). arena. Choy’s study of Hong Kong examines It is within this context of cultural and how the question of ‘endangerment’ has scientific uncertainty that we must contend GANDY: CITIES IN DEEP TIME 101 with the specific characteristics of urban bio- exemplified by pets, and the more abstract diversity and the limits to scientific knowl- concept of a population, that may be sub- edge. Studies of urban flora show that cities sumed within a bio-political framework of have high levels of bio-diversity—often enumeration and control (see Srinivasan higher than their monocultural hinter- 2013). Animals also form part of the ‘mechan- lands—comprising greater numbers of both ized zootechnosphere’ (Otter 2017, 152) as a native and non-native species (see, for key dimension to the dietary expansion of example, Zerbe et al. 2003). Yet these high the human ecological niche. levels of urban bio-diversity have been criti- The development of more systematic cized on the grounds of their ostensible eco- engagements with urban bio-diversity has logical ‘inauthenticity’—in terms of novel emerged especially since the 1980s in biotopes or species assemblages—or their response to more nuanced understandings relative lack of endemicity (i.e. the pro- of socio-ecological complexity, the shifting portion of species that have a highly boundaries of what constitutes ‘the natural’ restricted geographical range). The conven- in the context of cultural landscapes, and tional demarcation used in botanical studies the reorientation of conservation efforts between native and non-native species is towards expanded conceptions of ecological based on the year 1500—a date that broadly vulnerability and scientific interest. Yet the corresponds with the ‘discovery’ of the emergence of ‘biotope mapping regimes’, New World—but this distinction becomes for instance, and other attempts to integrate especially problematic in an urban context biodiversity into land use planning since the that comprises a socio-ecological palimpsest 1980s, now lie in tension with the intensifying derived from successive traces of global speculative dynamics of urban space (see, for history. example, Lachmund 2013). Cities can also serve as laboratories for the It is striking that most of the significant study of future ecological scenarios: urban theoretical work in relation to the Anthropo- biotopes have been recast as experimental cene has only engaged indirectly with the zones to produce new constellations of eco- urban arena. There are parallels here with logical knowledge as evidenced in Berlin, the first wave of political ecology literature Montre´al, and other cities. Even individual in the 1980s that focused predominantly on gardens or marginal spaces such as pavements a rural or global South context. The Anthro- can play a role in this scientific transform- pocene debate has an uncertain articulation ation of urban space into a kind of multi- with urbanization beyond the identification sited public research station. The increasingly of specific empirical parameters or material urbanized landscapes of the Anthropocene traces. now form a distinctive component of new An initial inventory of the direct environ- approaches to nature conservation including mental effects of cities might include urban forms of ‘re-wilding’ (see, for phenomena such as concentrated levels of example, Lorimer and Driessen 2014). vehicle emissions, light pollution, or waste The urban arena illustrates the ambiguity generation. The growth of cities has fre- and malleability of ecological discourse, quently been implicated in the wider spanning concerns with unwanted nature dynamics of environmental destruction, such as pests, weeds, or disease vectors, as either directly through habitat loss (both on well as interest in the intrinsic value of spon- the urban fringe and also within metropolitan taneous ecological assemblages explored by regions), or indirectly through the pro- artists, scientists, and vernacular cultures of duction of food, energy, and other commod- nature (see Biehler 2013). In the case of ities. Yet it is the extractive realm of ‘cheap urban mammals, for instance, we find a nature’, to use Moore’s term, and its associ- tension between the cherished individual, ated environmental sinks, including the 102 CITY VOL. 22, NO.1 atmosphere and oceans, that is pivotal to eco- stable self-sustaining biosphere and the logical destruction rather than the develop- lurch towards irreversible environmental ment of cities per se. destruction is captured in Marx’s engagement If we consider cities as hybrid technologi- with the contemporary work of the chemist cal entities we find that infrastructure Justus von Liebig, who explored damage to systems produce distinctive environmental the soil cycle under the rise of modern agri- effects such as the linear ecologies of trans- culture. Marx notes how ‘progress’ in the port networks or interstitial spaces associated field of capitalist agriculture ‘is a progress in with ‘odd lots’ and other marginal zones that the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but are only intermittently or tangentially incor- of robbing the soil’ in an early appreciation porated into urban land markets. Other dis- of the ecological contradictions of capitalist tinctive facets to urban bio-diversity include abstraction.1 The term ‘rift’ is significant in the varied substrates, diverse micro-climato- this context because it emphasizes the logical and hydrological gradations, and longer-term dimensions to metabolic trans- various forms of ‘ecological mimicry’ formation rather than a more historically enabled by inaccessible ledges, rooftops, or diffuse emphasis on perpetual re-combin- other sites. Urban ecological assemblages ations: there is a clear directionality to the provide a significant redoubt for many metabolic process engendered by the expand- species in the face of wider processes of ing scope of global capital. The stratigraphic habitat fragmentation: a key argument emer- metaphor can be used in a double sense here ging within conservation biology is that to evoke both the fragility of the pedosphere reduced and splintered populations may and also the layers of human history carved presage more catastrophic processes of into the surface of the earth. decline and extinction in the future (see Marx’s reading of Liebig has been elabo- Cabello et al. 2017). If we look beyond the rated by Georg Luka´cs and Istva´n Me´sza´ros, steady stream of individual species extinctions along with more recent insights from John there are wider indicators for overall decline Bellamy Foster and Jason Moore, to provide including insects needed for the pollination a contemporary analytical tool for under- of plants (see Hallmann et al. 2017). The argu- standing destructive relations between ment I wish to develop here is that cities can society and nature. Moore, for example, play a dual role in the protection of bio-diver- emphasizes how the expanding ‘frontiers of sity: first, through the provision of a kind of appropriation’ that have shaped the ‘world- ecological sanctuary for flora and fauna; and ecology of capital’ are based on a fundamen- second, by enabling the exploration of differ- tal tension between a finite nature and a capi- ent socio-ecological interactions that might talist imperative that is ‘premised on the ultimately be ‘scaled up’ towards new forms infinite’ (Moore 2015, 10, 87). A modified of global environmental politics. conception of metabolism, as developed under aegis of urban political ecology, emphasizes the interweaving between the cir- 3. Metabolic rift and the circulatory culation of capital and the production of the dynamics of urban space built environment. Neo-Marxian readings of urban metabolism have extended the analyti- The swerve away from more abstract, con- cal frame from the original emphasis on soil structivist, or idealist modes of theorization to a series of intersections between capital has rekindled interest in the phenomenon of and nature encompassing infrastructure, ‘metabolic rift’, as originally elaborated by technological networks, and other functional Marx, along with wider reflections on the components of urban space (see Swygedouw metabolic dimensions to urban space. The 2006). The concept of metabolism shows idea of a radical break between a relatively how human labor transforms the raw GANDY: CITIES IN DEEP TIME 103 materials of nature into the built environment 4. Conclusions ranging from the specific infrastructure pro- jects of the classic ‘spatial fix’ to the more The blurring of nature-culture dualisms that generalized metabolic dynamics of a ‘socio- developed in the wake of the post-structural- ecological fix’ (Ekers and Prudham 2017). ist debates of the 1980s does not provide a This double dynamic between capital and straightforward entry point into the cultural space involves maintenance activities, depre- ambiguities or material interstices of urban ciation of fixed assets, and a variety of cyclical nature. More recent theoretical contributions interactions so that the built environment is engaged with the post-colonial and post- in a constant state of entropy and flux. human dimensions to urban space highlight An expanded reading of urban metabolism the epistemological limits to existing con- holds parallels with recent developments in ceptions of bio-diversity and the uncertain critical theory that draw on a synthesis articulation between different conceptions between neo-Lefebvrian analysis of urban of agency, materiality, and subjectivity. A space and the expanded field of neo-Marxian focus on ‘deep time’ clearly places cities cultural analysis a` la Fredric Jameson (see, outside the conventional frame of historical for example, Ngai 2012). A renewed emphasis analysis. But a temporal horizon derived on the temporal and material parameters of from a geological perspective also highlights metabolic rift also connects with an earlier the historical specificity of capitalist urbaniz- phase of political economy before the rise of ation even if many proponents of the Anthro- marginalist economics, the Kuznets cycle, pocene do not recognize the epistemological and the ‘disembedding of the economy from implications of this observation for contem- natural constraints’ (Bonneuil and Fressoz porary scientific discourse. 2016, 211). Emerging patterns of environ- How can we characterize the place of cities mental destruction under ‘digital capitalism’ within the putative emergence of the Anthrop- involve new kinds of material articulations ocene? It is useful to make a distinction between space, capital, and society. The idea between the city, as a particular kind of of the ‘stack’, for instance, as elaborated by social and political arena, and urbanization, Benjamin H. Bratton, denotes a complex as a broader set of socio-ecological and interplay between new digital infrastructures socio-technical entanglements. The re-articul- and multiple landscapes of resource extrac- ation of the metropolitan versus non-metro- tion. Bratton’s use of the term ‘third nature’ politan political divide reinforces the does not denote a process of de-materializa- significance of the urban arena as an exper- tion but a new set of relationships emerging imental field within which new conceptual- under the technological aegis of late capital. izations of nature, bio-diversity, and the The ‘earth layer’ is simply the starting point human subject are taking shape. Cities can for a ‘planetary-scale computation’ that ‘dis- offer an alternative to dystopian stasis: we embowels geological resources’ (Bratton need an augmented conception of what the 2015, 75–76). Similarly, media theorist Jussi city is, what it can be, and how it relates to Parikka’s exploration of the ‘anthrobscene’ the wider political dynamics of the capitalist emphasizes ‘the unsustainable, politically technosphere. An overemphasis on various dubious, and ethically suspicious practices forms of ‘methodological globalism’ elides that maintain technological culture and its cor- the cultural and political distinctions porate networks’ (Parikka 2014, 6). For between cities and urbanization and effec- Parikka, these concerns fold into a reading of tively overlooks the heterogeneous socio-eco- ‘deep time’ that encapsulates not only the geo- logical textures of urban space. logical realm, and its associated non-human New socio-ecological articulations processes, but also the contemporary global between nature and urban space pose ques- ecological crisis. tions about the ethical standing of non- 104 CITY VOL. 22, NO.1 human life forms and the wider significance potential engagement between a ‘natural con- of the liveable city as an other-than-human tract’ and existing articulations of environ- terrain. Recent patterns of political turbu- mental justice. Strands of authoritarian or lence have necessitated a partial reprise in even militarized bio-diversity practice the historical role of cities as sanctuaries for remain antithetical to progressive political human and non-human nature alike. ideals and connect with the development of Growing threats to bio-diversity at a global environmental enclaves and other spaces of scale have prompted calls to extend legal ecological exception. In this sense we can rights to nature as an elaboration of existing anticipate that the urban arena will remain a humanist doctrines. Yet there is a tension focus of contestation over the possible mean- here between the extension of formal rights ings of nature and future socio-ecological based on an elaboration of existing models pathways into the unknown. of citizenship and the articulation of the post-human subject (see, for example, Brai- dotti 2013). An increasing number of philoso- Acknowledgements phical interventions have sought to delineate how non-human nature might be conferred I would like to thank Hyun Bang Shin and Louis Moreno for their comments on an earlier version of this article. constitutional rights. Michel Serres, for The research forms part of my on-going project Rethink- instance, has sought to elaborate on the possi- ing Urban Nature funded by the European Research bility of a ‘natural contract’ that reframes the Council. political scope of the Enlightenment:

‘That means we must add to the exclusively Disclosure statement social contract a natural contract of symbiosis and reciprocity in which our relationship to No potential conflict of interest was reported by the things would set aside mastery and possession author. in favor of admiring attention, reciprocity, contemplation, and respect; where knowledge would no longer imply property, nor action Note mastery, nor would property and mastery imply their excremental results and origins’ 1 See Marx 1974 [1887], 474–75. Although Marx’s (Serres [1990] 1995, 38). observations are primarily directed at the effects of capitalist agriculture on soil, his early recognition of Whilst thus far viewed through the prism of irreversible forms of ecological destruction has an idealized nature threatened by the ‘new served as a critical point of departure for a range of subsequent studies including contemporary critiques extractivism’ in the Andes and elsewhere of the burgeoning Anthropocene literature. (see Fitz-Henry 2012; Latta 2014) the idea of a ‘natural contract’ also has implications for a re-conceptualization of urban nature References that extends beyond the utilitarian logic of ‘ecosystem services’. If the future of the bio- Biehler, D. D. 2013. Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, sphere is to be deliberated over in an increas- Cockroaches, and Rats. Seattle: University of ingly urban context the question of what is Washington Press. Bonneuil, C., and J.-B. Fressoz. 2016. The Shock of the worth protecting, on what grounds, and Anthropocene. London: Verso. over what scale of metabolic interactions Braidotti, R. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity. will be an inescapable dimension to public Bratton, B. H. 2015. The Stack: On Software and Sover- culture. Yet we should be cautious in terms eignty. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. of any geographical delineation for the emer- Brenner, N., ed. 2014. Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Theory of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: jovis. gence of distinctive forms of urban environ- Broswimmer, F. 2014. Ecocide: A Short History of the Mass mental consciousness and the extent of Extinction of Species. London: Pluto Press. GANDY: CITIES IN DEEP TIME 105

Ceballos, G., P. R. Ehrlich, and R. Dirzo. 2017. “Biological Mandel, E. 1978 [1972]. Late Capitalism. Translated by Annihilation Via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Joris De Bres. London: Verso. Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Marx, M. 1974 [1887]. Capital, Volume One. London: Declines.” PNAS. Published online July 10, 2017. Lawrence & Wishart. E6089-E6096. McNeil, J. R. and P. Engelke. 2014. The Great Accelera- Choy, T. 2011. Ecologies of Comparison: an Ethnography tion: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene of Endangerment in Hong Kong. Durham, NC: Duke Since 1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University University Press. Press. Conrad, S. 2016. What is Global History? Princeton, NJ: Moore, J. W. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology Princeton University Press. and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Davies, J. 2015. The Birth of the Anthropocene. Berkeley, Ngai, S. 2012. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, CA: University of California Press. Interesting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Demos, T. J. 2017. Against the Anthropocene: Visual Press. Culture and Environment Today. Berlin: Sternberg. Otter, C. 2017. “The Technosphere: A New Concept for Ekers, M., and S. Prudham. 2017. “The Metabolism of Urban Studies.” Urban History 44 (1): 145–154. Socioecological Fixes: Capital Switching, Spatial Parikka, J. 2014. The Anthrobscene. Minneapolis: Min- Fixes, and the Production of Nature.” Annals of the nesota University Press. American Association of Geographers 107 (6): Serres, M. [1990] 1995. The Natural Contract. Translated 1370–1388. by E. MacArther and M. Paulson. Ann Arbor: Uni- Fitz-Henry, E. 2012. “The Natural Contract: From Le´vi- versity of Michigan Press. Strauss to the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court.” Srinivasan, K. 2013. “The Biopolitics of Animal Being and Oceania 82: 264–277. Welfare: Dog Control and Care in the UK and India.” Gandy, M. 2017. “Negative Luminescence.” Annals of the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38 Association of American Geographers 107 (5): (1): 106–119. 1090–1107. Swygedouw, E. 2006. “Metabolic Urbanization: the Hallmann, C. A., M. Sorg, E. Jongejans, H. Siepel, N. Making of Cyborg Cities.” In In the Nature of Cities: Hofland, H. Schwan, et al. 2017. “More Than 75 Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Percent Decline Over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Metabolism, edited by N. Heynen, M. Kaika, and Biomass in Protected Areas.” PLoS ONE 12 (10): E. Swyngedouw, 21–40. London and New York: e0185809. Routledge. Kolbert, E. 2014. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural His- Tafuri, M. 1987 [1980]. The Sphere and the Labyrinth: tory. New York: Henry Holt. Avant-Gardes and Architecture From Piranesi to the Kunkel, B. 2017. “The Capitalocene.” London Review of 1970s. Translated by P. d’Acierno and R. Connolly. Books, March 2. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lachmund, J. 2013. Greening Berlin: The Co-Production of Takacs, D. 1996. The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature. Cambridge, Paradise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. MA: The MIT Press. Waterton, C., R. Ellis, and B. Wynne. 2013. Barcoding Latta, A. 2014. “Matter, Politics and the Sacred: Insurgent Nature: Shifting Cultures of Taxonomy in an age of Ecologies of Citizenship.” Cultural Geographies 21 Biodiversity Loss. London: Routledge. (3): 323–341. Zerbe, S., U. Maurer, S. Schmitz, and H. Sukopp. 2003. Lorimer, J., and C. Driessen. 2014. “Wild Experiments at “Biodiversity in Berlin and its Potential for Nature the Oostvaardersplassen: Rethinking Environmental- Conservation.” Landscape and Urban Planning 62: ism in the Anthropocene.” Transactions of the Institute 139–148. of British Geographers 39 (2): 169–181. Lovejoy, T. 2012 . “A Tsunami of Extinction.” Scientific American December: 33–24. Matthew Gandy is Professor of Geography at Malm, A. 2016. Fossil Capital: the Rise of Steam Power the University of Cambridge. Email: mg107@ and the Roots of Global Warming. London: Verso. cam.ac.uk