Urban political ecology in prospect and retrospect

The contemporary theorization of the urban biosphere has reached something of an impasse between the perceived limitations of urban political ecology, the neo-Lefebvrian emphasis on global patterns of urbanization, and the rise of “new materialisms”. Since its emergence in the mid-1990s, urban political ecology has made a series of distinctive contributions to the study of urban environmental issues yet in recent years a series of conceptual tensions and empirical lacunae have become apparent. In this essay I reflect on the legacy of the “first wave” of urban political ecology scholarship and consider a series of contemporary challenges including more complex interpretations of agency, materiality, and subjectivity.