Towards a metabolic shift? : the political ecology of urban development

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12283258 Wordcount: 21876

Supervised by: Freyberg-Inan, Annette Master’s Thesis Political Science Second reader: Jaffe, Rivke Specialisation Political Economy

Towards a Metabolic Shift?

The Political Ecology of Urban Development

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Abstract

This thesis examines the role of the urban environment in fostering ecological degradation. Concurrently, it also envisions environmentally-attuned cities and the broader social framework from which they can arise. To do so, the thesis draws, in a first place, on the Marxist and eco-socialist literature to provide a dialectical analysis of the necessary urban form of capitalism while positing such a necessity as strongly anti-ecological. In a second place, this thesis presents an anarchist rationale, based on direct democracy, decentralisation and the absence of hierarchies, to (theoretically) construct a future ecological society. Ultimately, it will be argued that politically and economically institutionalising these ecological principles will lead to the rise of the ‘permaculture city’, a type of urban environment that is intrinsically anarchistic and ecological. This type of urban development has the potential to mitigate the metabolic rift that was spurred some two centuries ago as it emphasises waste reduction, a certain autonomy in food and energy production and the return of nutrients to agricultural land. Finally, the case of urban ecovillages will be presented to show that initiatives in this direction are already being taken although they face constraints, stemming from the wider dominant order, that often impede their progress.

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List of Figures

Figure 1: A squat near Park Güell, Barcelona ... 18

Figure 2: Graffiti in Park Güell – Barcelona ... 19

Figure 3: Changes in the Spatial Relationships of Plants, Animals and Humans ... 24

Figure 4: Bioregionalism in North America. ... 33

Figure 5: The economy embedded in the institutions of human society and in the biosphere . 37 Figure 6: Permaculture Principles ... 48

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1 Last month, yet another frightening environmental report was released by a United Nations agency. In it, we learn that the ongoing biodiversity loss is posing a serious threat to the health of ecosystems on which humanity ultimately depends. The report also underlines a host of related issues such as the perpetual increase in CO2 emissions, intensified plastic pollution,

land degradation and the growth of urban areas (UN, 2019). Indeed, since the 1950s, the global urban population has increased more than fivefold, going from 751 million to 4.2 billion in 2018 (UN, 2018). The growth in urban area is a worrying trend because, as of 2016, “the world’s cities occupied just 3% of the Earth’s land, but accounted for 60-80% of energy consumption and 75% of carbon emissions” (Hughes, 2018: 70). These facts seem to hint at a correlation between the spatial repartition of humans and the scale and depth of environmental degradation. The report concludes that without a “fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values”, humanity could eventually lose its biological “safety net” (UN, 2019).

Accordingly, the aim of this thesis will be to underline the links between the ongoing spatial organisation of human societies and the wide-ranging environmental crisis that is unfolding before our very eyes. Taking up the call of the UN to rethink our organisation, a new form of urban development must be uncovered if we are to make our cities – and, more broadly, our societies – truly ecological. This is particularly important as, following present urbanisation trends, it is estimated that almost 70% of the global population will be living in urban areas by 2050 (UN, 2018). It has therefore become an urgent matter that we precisely identify what is so ecologically threatening about the way we design our cities so that we can diverge from our current practices. Yet, the issue is not solely about where and how we build our settlements; a closer look at history shows us that the spatial organisation of human societies is inevitably ingrained in the wider political, economic and cultural relations that have characterised different societies or civilisations. Particularly, capitalism, the dominant socio-economic order of our

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2 times, seems to have underpinned both the unprecedented urbanisation and global environmental crisis.

Two of the core concepts that will be articulated throughout this thesis are cities and ecology. These terms require further definition especially as they can be ill-understood or interpreted in the pursuit of disparate agenda and academic fields. To begin with, for the purpose of this thesis, cities will be defined according to their political and economic realisations and historicity. Cities arose from a need to “absorb the surplus products” that our economic system “perpetually produces” (Harvey, 2012: 5). This is so because the history of mankind has been marked by innovations in ‘productivity improving technologies’ (first and foremost in the field of agriculture and later in manufacturing) that simply have allowed us to produce more and more things at lower costs. This phenomenon also triggered the formation of political institutions that attempted to regulate life in and around urban centres. Their ever-deepening social organisation in turn enabled cities to increase in geographic and economic size, effectively spurring a positive feedback loop. The analysis carried out throughout the thesis is inherently more qualitative than quantitative. Such an approach enables the conceptualisation of the “political city” as “an arena for the re-emergence of concepts of political self-regulation and citizenship […] and for the rise of a new civic culture”. This view is in stark contrast with the orthodox ‘bigger is better’ methodologies that have inspired massive urbanisation, the “ever-encroaching and ever-growing phenomenon” that causes “generally sprawling and formless urban agglomerations as sources of anomie, self-interest, and a host of environmental problems” (Bookchin, 1992: xvi; xiii). To curtail urbanisation and accumulation trends, this conceptual shift is particularly important. It enables us to see city dwellers as holders of a collective right “to decide what kind of urbanism is to be produced where and how”, rather than as mere consumers, producers or workers (Harvey, 2012: 167).

The term ecology originated in natural sciences and describes the biologic interactions between organisms and the natural environment. However, it has also been broadly applied in a wide range of academic fields and given a variety of interpretations. Politically, ecology entails the adoption of a non-hierarchical, ecocentric outlook on the relationship between humans

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3 themselves and between humans and their natural environment. Such environmental ethics revolve around concepts of decentralisation, direct democracy and “a dynamic unity of diversity” (Bookchin, 2005: 88). Economically, ecology involves just as radical of a transformation. It requires steering our modes of production and consumption towards a strong respect for environmental sustainability – “leaving stocks of each different kind of natural capital that are as large as those we enjoy today” (Hahnel, 2002: 64). Making our economy more ecological will likely bring about a sense of re-empowerment for communities while instilling in us a real sense of stewardship towards nature that will in turn inspire and propel meaningful action. If we are to perceive cities and ecology in their politico-economic sense, these definitions have rather radical implications for the ways we organise our society.

This thesis will therefore ask the following questions: how can cities be transformed to come in line with ecological standards? To start with, what is it that makes our current cities so unsustainable? Which standards should we strive for and which particular economic and political arrangements can be suggested for cities to advance towards this ‘ideal’? These questions are important because, depending on the theoretical framework through which cities are analysed, the urban environment tends to be considered either as the epitome of environmental degradation or as the incubator of an ecological transformation of society. Briefly outlined, the modern city has been an essential component of the growth of capitalism, most notably in its industrial and post-industrial forms. Originally, in Western Europe, the workforce required to join the factories in urban centres was drawn from the population of serfs through the process of enclosures (turning previously commonly-owned land into private property), thereby further alienating them from the land. When it comes to agricultural production, the break in the flow of nutrients caused by the separation between the country and the city, as little organic waste is distributed back to the land, requires us to use an increasing amount of chemical fertilizers (whose production and consumption generates copious amounts of externalities).

However, it does not necessarily need to be so. Reversing the current trends, I will argue, requires that we radically rethink the political, economic and cultural arrangements that uphold capitalist societies. For example, libertarian municipalism, which establishes a political ethic of

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4 social ecology centred around face-to-face democracy at the level of the municipality, remains one of the most thorough attempts at drawing an alternative model of ecological society. Likewise, the model of participatory economics provides a vision for a more ecologically-fit and domination-free economy. The cultural shift, pushed by the establishment of these ecological institutions and a growing awareness of biological relationships instilled through education, could shed our existent anthropocentric vision of the natural world to spur an ecocentric outlook on the web of life. Ultimately, such a far-reaching ecological framework entails that we apply the permaculture principles to most, if not all of our designs; here, it will be suggested, human settlements should be no exception. In essence, the aim of this thesis is to argue for the rise of the ‘permaculture city’ both as a break with capitalist urban development and as a fit to the broader institutions of the ecological society. As such, this thesis brings a spatial dimension to the dialectical methodology of historical materialism; it will examine, under the lens of political ecology, the processes and forces that have historically shaped the modern city and caused the environmental crisis. This analysis will in turn provide fertile ground for the eco-anarchist rationale used to formulate my proposed ecological framework.

To understand the role of the city as both the creator and eventual mitigator of ecological degradation, this thesis will incorporate literature stemming from two of the most prominent schools of thought within the radical left, namely Marxism and anarchism. This is necessary because authors on both sides of this spectrum have tended to develop one-sided analyses by either looking at cities as the cause of or as the remedy to environmental problems. These disparate bodies of work have remained partial and fail to provide a broad account of the current role and potentiality of the urban environment in the face of this mounting crisis. More precisely, on the one hand, the Marxist tradition (and its following eco-socialist movement) has consistently looked at the development of the urban environment under capitalism as a bane for ecosystems. Their critique of modern urbanism points to cities as ‘capitalist nuclei’, where material and financial accumulation reaches its peak. To many Marxist scholars and environmental activists, urban areas embody the growing separation of man from nature and the consequent domination of the former over the latter; a concept that is theoretically captured as

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5 a metabolic rift, whereby “the interactive relationship between humans and nature undergoes a significant transformation due to the dissolution of their original unity” (Saito, 2017: 66). On the other hand, some, as Harvey (2012), assert that cities, due to their intrinsic qualities, contain the seeds for a radical (and ecological) transformation of our society. Cities have proven to both nourish much relevant theoretical insights and pioneer environmental governance (as illustrated with the C40 organisation or through good practices and bold innovations). The existing anarchist literature highlights the fact that the city (perhaps divided into neighbourhoods) is an appropriate scale to democratically manage resources and run ecologically-centred policies. More precisely, in this regard, the eco-anarchist tradition has discussed the role of urban agglomerations in the construction of an ecological society. It can be said that this is so because anarchist ideology is inherently in symbiosis with the root principles of ecology that are decentralisation, diversity, networks and opposition to hierarchies. Hence, whereas Marxism has enabled us to conceptualise the metabolic rift, along with its causes and consequences, anarchism allows us to envision the metabolic shift that humanity is badly in need of. Articulating both of these schools of thought together allows us to better grasp the direction that future ecological societies can take. It also demonstrates that most of the theoretical tools we need to establish such a society are within reach and that some of these tools have even already been put into practice within the politico-economic constraints of capitalism.

To unfold this reasoning, this thesis will be structured around four chapters, each with its own distinct line of inquiry. To begin with, a transhistorical and transcultural definition of the city – one that can be applied independently of the material and historical context within which all cities evolve – will be argued for. This is particularly important since, throughout time, the conception and realisation of urban environments have reflected vastly disparate social orders and their foundations. In line with what has been characterised as the ‘sociospatial’ understanding of urbanism, the political, economic and cultural properties of city will here be highlighted. The third chapter will more precisely investigate the historical development of the city since the 19th_{century and its relation to capitalism and the consumer society. An in-depth}

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6 others, such as Saito, alongside Harvey’s life work on urban anthropology will here constitute the principal theoretical bodies. This analysis will allow me to relate the ongoing urbanisation to the ecologically-destructive nature of capitalism. In response to this, Chapter IV will provide some of the general standards that an ecological society should strive for. These standards will be drawn mostly from Bookchin’s political philosophy of libertarian municipalism and Hahnel’s economic vision of participatory economics. This chapter shall not discuss, per se, the type of urban environment that such a society will produce as, after all, the sociospatial approach to urban settlements perceives the city as a corollary to wider political, economic and cultural arrangements. It is important to first distinguish the underpinnings of an ecological society before we can understand the way an ecological city will be developed. After determining these underpinnings, Chapter V will delve into the implications of the framework for the urban environment by arguing in favour of a certain type of anarchist urban development, the permaculture city. Finally, Chapter VI will conclude by summing up the arguments, outlining the limitations of the thesis and discussing potential avenues for further research.

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II) The Sociospatial Approach to Urban Settlements

In order to formulate a broad definition of the city that goes beyond particular historical developments, a look at the rich research on urban sociology provides many insights. Most particularly, Gottdiener’s ‘sociospatial perspective’ captures the main forces shaping the process of urban development as “it takes an integrated view of [urban] growth as the linked outcome of economic, political and cultural factors” (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 76). This approach draws on the works of classical sociologists Max Weber and Karl Marx. As inherently qualitative, it also comes at odds with attempts to quantitatively define the city. Taking into consideration solely population or density criteria can be misleading: a conurbation becomes a city at more than 250 inhabitants in Denmark, 2000 in France or 30 000 in Japan (Fijalkow, 2013). Such thresholds are constantly evolving and reflect levels of development from which no historical parallel can be drawn. This is why the sociospatial approach to urban settlements can be very convenient to students of social sciences. Furthermore, from it, one can infer that it is possible to go beyond the current dominant view on urban development which tends to see cities as impersonal ‘growth machines’. Indeed, it entails that the construction of the ecological city could constitute the upcoming historical paradigm.

A) A Politico-Economic Framing of the City

It is generally argued that the first primitive cities arose from what has been characterised by Gordon Childe, the renowned archaeologist and anthropologist, as the ‘urban revolution’ approximately 10 000 years ago. It was propelled by a turn from hunting-gathering to a more rural and sedentary lifestyle which in turn required the formulation of new economic relations. It can therefore be argued that, originally, cities have emerged to fulfil first and foremost an economic function, namely that of “the regular production of a social surplus” (Childe, 1950: 6). As the pursuit of shared economic interests went on, a system of division of economic activities and labour came about. This greatly increased productivity (and its associated social surplus) and allowed cities to grow in both geographic size and population. This specialisation also led to the upsurge of ‘dynamic density’ which is characteristic of cities. This term, coined by

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8 Durkheim in his Division of Labour in Society ([1893] 1960), describes the process of modernisation as a result of the dynamic relationship between population density and the web of social interactions in a given community. The growing complexity of the economic organisation, along with the recognition that “everyday actions in a market society generate problems and conflicts that call for regulation”, likewise implied the institutionalisation of political affairs to build “trust and solidarity (stressed by Durkheim), the regulation of power (Marx and Weber) and the provision of both meaning and legitimation for social activities so prized by Weber” (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 27; Eisenstadt & Shachar, 1987: 50. Quoted in Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 27).

This institutionalisation implied a geographic concentration of political power in a territory, just as the places of institutionalised political power have tended to occupy a geographically-centred position within the city. Likewise, the bulk of economic affairs has often taken up a central location in urban organisation. The historical core of the city gradually became the place of the centrality of power. Simultaneously, cities became true political and economic hubs for ever-growing territories. This entails that the growth in ‘dynamic density’, which had political and economic ramifications, impacted both the production of urban spaces and the wider territorial organisation surrounding the city. Countless examples illustrate the prominent politico-economic centrality of cities throughout history: the agora in Athens, which was both a marketplace and the space for political deliberation; the fortified castle, the place of residence of the nobility, with its guilds and merchants in Western medieval cities; or the city hall and shopping streets in modern city centres. It is true, however, that as cities develop and expand, they grow into “multicentred metropolitan regions” with “many separate centres, each with its own abilities to draw workers, shoppers and residents” (ibid, 5). Nonetheless, as historical centres constitute the primary sites where those particular economic and political factors came to interact, my analysis will mainly consider those spaces as the central focal point for an understanding of cities as either environmentally unsustainable or radically ecological.

The institutionalisation of economic and political relations in cities has played a prominent role in their construction as central agents in the organisation of human life.

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9 Inasmuch as cities embody and reproduce dominant, institutionalised social relations, they at the same time constitute a much more informal political battleground. As Roncayolo puts it: “The city, as the place of centrality, is also a privileged site of expression, idea diffusion and of struggle too; […] it organises domination just as it breeds revolutions” (Roncayolo, 1990: 145; self-translated1_{from Grafmeyer & Authier, 2008: 16). This is most particularly true of cities since}

the first industrial revolution, a time when urban social movements emerged as political agents “targeting urban space as the point of struggle and in using urban space as a resource for political mobilisation” (Tonkiss, 2005: 59; emphasis in the original).

Despite all these arguments highlighting the intertwined importance of politico-economic factors in the emergence of modern cities, some have claimed that urban environments are increasingly becoming ‘post-political’. The post-political city has been described as a place where certain private interests, mostly those of the privileged, are understood as working for the public good. Simply put, it assumes that capitalist economic objectives and practices have depoliticised urban entities. In the post-political city, any meaningful debate on alternative modes of organisation is censured; conversely, free-market capitalism, liberal/representative democracy and consumer culture are taken for granted and presented as the best possible outcome (Davidson & Iveson, 2015; Millington, 2016). A good example of this phenomenon is the growing privatisation of numerous previously-public spaces or services (such as museums or transportation systems). Similarly, at a much earlier stage of capitalist development, the ‘Haussmannisation’ of Paris between the 1850s and the 1870s illustrated an attempt to undermine political protests that were detrimental to elitist interests (see III) B)). Although it is true that, overall, the pursuit of the urban development agenda has been encroached upon by private monetary and financial interests, I would like to contest the idea that cities have stopped to be critical grounds for political contestation and the formation of alternative models of development. As shown throughout the past two and a half centuries, the urban environment has remained the principal space where revolutionary moments have erupted and broken with

1_{Original quote: “La ville, lieu de centralité, est également site privilégié de l’expression, de la diffusion des idées,}

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10 previous orders (i.e. Paris in 1789 and 1871, Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, or Tunis and Cairo during the Arab Spring).

B) Cities as Products and Producers of Culture

The emergence of the early forms of urban settlements prompted the formulation of new economic and political relations that have ever since increased in complexity. Despite the importance of politico-economic factors in the construction of modern cities, the urban environment must also be understood as culturally-constituted and culture-producing. That is to say, urban culture can be seen as both the result of the dynamic density particular to a city (and is therefore culturally-produced) and the reproducer of a pre-existing urban culture (and is therefore culture-producing). For example, a large group of foreign immigrants will culturally impact the development of a city. An illustration of this is how Berlin came to be one of the döner kebab capitals thanks to its Turkish immigrants. On the other hand, migrants, especially those coming from rural areas, often have to adapt to a distinct urban culture that seems immutable. This urban culture is marked by more hierarchical and impersonal social relations (or Durkheim’s ‘organic solidarity’); social relations that are at odds with the previous “bonds of kinship and social interdependence” that define earlier societies (qualified by Durkheim as ‘mechanical solidarity’) (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 44). Some scholars, such as Bookchin (2005: 131), argue that, ever since the original ‘urban revolution’, the early “social division of labour shed […] traditional egalitarian features and acquired an increasingly hierarchical form”. Although this might to an extent be true, the dichotomy between ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’ solidarities has generally been applied to urban culture after the first industrial revolution. This is so because the division of labour in industrial cities vastly expanded, thereby making social relations more contractual and impersonal than ever before. I will, in section III.B., elaborate on the environmental consequences of this modern urban culture.

To sum up, there is a dynamic relationship between urban development and micro- and macro-cultural developments. Macro-culturally, cities have come to embody a cultural division (based on that of labour) that is often hierarchical in character. They were the place where the

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11 first forms of social domination arose: where a man’s work was deemed more valuable than that of a woman or where the artisan’s craft was superior to that of the food cultivator (ibid). This aspect is widely shared in cities around the globe and throughout time. Micro-culturally, the city remains the product of certain socio-historical relationships and as such is more ‘malleable’. The various subcultures and events shape public life just as they influence the production (and perception) of urban space. As a result, distinct cultures (expressed through architecture, music, food or public art for example) can emerge that make each city unique. In our globalised world, the micro-cultural context of cities has often become a place of struggle, whether that is between different communities or against the encroachment of a global capitalist culture upon popular and local cultures.

The definition of the city I have just formulated, following the sociospatial approach of urban sociology, places focus on political, economic and cultural factors. Developments in these three spheres are often historically intertwined which is why dialectical analyses of the urban environment are frequent within the scholarly literature. The following subchapter will now undertake such an analysis. In order to underline the ecological consequences that have stemmed from the growth in industrial/capitalist urbanisation, I will turn first to the classical and recent Marxist understandings of the production of space. This aims to highlight the fact that the urban environment under capitalism has, indeed, been dominated by private interest, as is reflected by the grip of the real estate industry on city planning or the peaks of consumer culture in urban centres. Second, an analysis will be presented of how the capitalist city, the singular place where both accumulation and poverty reach unseen heights, is fundamentally anti-ecological. This analysis will outline the eco-socialist concept of ‘metabolic rift’.

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III) The Modern City: A Fundamental and Anti-ecological Outgrowth

of Capitalism

Now that some of the broad transhistorical characteristics of the city have been established, I will turn to an analysis of the particular ways in which such characteristics have developed under capitalism. This chapter asks the following questions: what is the relationship between the modern city and capitalism? What is it about the modern city that is so environmentally unsustainable? Highlighting the fact that capitalism requires this specific form of urban development to grow, along with positing this specific form as inherently anti-ecological, allows us to articulate a comprehensive critique of the overall unsustainable nature of capitalism (and not solely of its urban forms). Conversely, it implies that the construction of the ecological city cannot be pursued as long as capitalism remains the dominant paradigm. Furthermore, understanding the ecological contradictions that pertain to the modern city is necessary if we are to establish ecological ‘best practices’ that run counter to our current ones.

A) The Modern City as a Primary Component of Capitalist Organisation

During the 19th_{and 20}th_{centuries, as capitalism came to be the dominant economic}

system in Western societies, the city emerged as one of the primary foci for social scientists. This is so because, due to many unfolding socio-economic processes, cities grew both quantitatively and qualitatively. Authors like Tönnies, Durkheim, Weber, Engels, Marx, Simmel or Wirth are amongst the most influential sociologists and political economists to have discussed, and at times criticised, the relationship between urban and capitalist developments. Their collective body of work has produced results that are, in most ways, still applicable to analyses of the modern, late capitalist city. The development of an industrial system and the advent of a ‘profit over people’ mentality showed, even as early as the 1850s, some of the contradictions inherent to capitalism. The distinct urban lifestyle, or culture, that emerged out of this new socio-economic order also came at odds with previous orders and therefore spurred much scholarly interest. The subject matter of the city has remained a fundamental concern and focus of critique of modern

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13 capitalism for authors as Lefebvre and Harvey. In keeping with the sociospatial approach outlined earlier, political, economic and cultural rationales linking capitalist processes and urban development will be investigated.

1) Politico-economic Foundations

Cities, as new industrial and economic centres, drew many workers from the surrounding countryside. Unchecked urbanisation led to “uneven development” in which “a small group of affluent people is surrounded by a sea of poverty” (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 69). Poor working and living conditions contributed to much social unrest. In order to contain this growing unrest, many of the early industrial cities had to be redesigned for control to be maintained, private property to be enforced and capital to flow. This is most readily exemplified by the briefly mentioned ‘Haussmanisation’ of Paris. Between 1853 and 1870, wide boulevards, designed for the deployment of military forces and to prevent the building of barricades, were built; neighbourhoods were rearranged. This was both a political response to the 1848 Revolution and an economic strategy for the “’embourgeoisement’ of the city centre”, as working-class communities were pushed out to the periphery (Low & Smith, 2006: 21). In fact, the Paris renovations did not impede uneven development; they merely relocated the “extended conditions of capital accumulation, which involve the reproduction of social relations that ensure the continued use of the working class across the generations” (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 67; emphasis in the original). Early urban development across the globe, in the advent of capitalism, was propelled by the fusing of the interests of political and economic elites. This was not without consequences for the lives of many people, at a time when much of the rural population left traditional communities in search of a better life in the city.

The confrontation between traditional and modern social relations, at the individual level, during the early years of industrial capitalism has likewise engendered much academic interest. Simmel’s work The Metropolis and Mental Life shows the effects that such an abrupt socio-economic break had on individuals. From the vantage point of political economy, the citizen adopted a “blasé outlook” through which, due to the constant hustle and bustle of the

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14 city, he would pay less attention to his immediate environment and be less inclined to political involvement. This attitude also resulted from the fact that citizens, in the capitalist city, had to adjust to the rhythms of industrialisation. Citizens were reduced to mere consumers and workers who had to budget their time (i.e. labour) and money (i.e. wage) based on increasingly rationalised, individual deliberations. These social relations, that erupted from new politico-economic practices, were fundamentally at odds with previous ones that were constituted on rather personal and stable grounds (Simmel, [1903] 2012). As will be shown, the ascent of the money economy over barter or gift systems similarly had cultural repercussions

The processes set in motion during the early phase of capitalism have continued to encroach upon many aspects of life in the city. In contemporary research on urban development, particular focus has been placed on the responsibility of the real estate industry in the production of space with ever-increasing rent prices and privatisation. In the modern city, technocratic urbanism has tended to discard the people’s right to a good quality of life. Public spaces, whose “primary ideal is based on equality of access”, are being redesigned as “spaces of private consumption” (Tonkiss, 2005: 73-74). Moreover, cities now have to compete globally to draw investments and their centres have become important hubs for financial speculation. To appeal to the eyes of foreign investors, city centres have to appear visually-ordered and free of “intolerable public spectacles, such as begging, drinking or rough sleeping” (ibid). As a result, city centres have been subject to much policing and renovations as compared to other, less well-off parts of the city.

In addition to its impact on the production of space in the centre, the real estate industry’s appetite for growth has generated a massive suburbanisation process. As middle- and lower-class populations were pushed out of the very expensive city centres, suburbs, that came to sprawl over large areas around historical cores, were erected. The acquisition of individual houses was made possible by new credit systems and governmental subsidies. Almost unequivocally, suburban life adopted similar socio-economic ideals to those dictated in the city centres: ideals of merit, individualism, rationality… As Harvey puts it, ever since the 1960s,

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This increasing polarisation in the distribution of wealth and power [is] indelibly etched into the spatial forms of our cities, which increasingly become cities of fortified fragments, of gated communities and privatised public spaces kept under constant surveillance. The neoliberal protection of private property rights and their values becomes a hegemonic form of politics, even for the lower middle class (Harvey, 2012: 15).

This economic transformation of the city also has political implications. The people’s ‘right to the city’ faded away as it was seized by an elite which meant to privatise public spaces and speculate with properties. The political ‘right to the city’, stemming from the ‘right to nature’ (equivalent to, for example, enjoying clean air and wild natural areas), concerns first and foremost the people that inhabit a place. This is important because the people that nowadays have access to the resources required to influence urban development do not inhabit the city; they tend to live in wealthy neighbourhoods in the periphery or in palaces in the countryside. The city centre, to them, is a place meant for profit-making and the enjoyment of luxurious activities. To Lefebvre, the fundamental human right to the city, which is understood as the freedom to exert influence over one’s self-construction and direct (urban) environment, has sled into the hands of a small wealthy elite (Lefebvre, 1968). The right to the city, from the 1850s onward, grew as a “bourgeois prerogative”; even more so since the 1980s with the global financialisation of the economy and the emergence of “public-private partnerships as a model for governance of public property and hence public space” (Low & Smith, 2006: 21, 67). Increasingly, citizens have been treated as passive consumers of and in their environment. Public advertising is here a case in point. However, this fact does not mean that the city has become ‘post-political’ in recent days. Rather, the urban environment has remained the primary ground in the fight against global capitalist encroachment (as in Seattle 1999, the Occupy Movement or the many climate marches and civil disobedience acts that are currently going on in many European cities). This shows that alternative political, economic and cultural practices are continually made and unmade in urban centres

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16 2) Cultural Foundations

To understand the original cultural disruption that occurred in the 19th_{and early 20}th

centuries, delving into Simmel’s work once again is useful. First, the “blasé outlook”, aside from having politico-economic consequences, shaped urban culture as it was increasingly adopted and replaced the traditional culture based on kinship solidarity. The restructuring of one’s day due to industrialisation shed previous cultural practices and spurred new ones. The combined influence of this new outlook and the rise of the commodity society gave way to “a mass spectacle of consumption” (Gottdiener & Hutchison, 2006: 47; Simmel, [1903] 2012). New urban design, often steered by government officials, as illustrated by the ‘Haussmanisation’ of Paris, was the material representation of this phenomenon. As this process was unfolding, and supporting the order necessary to maintain this emerging culture, a new civic culture arose in urban centres. This culture entails a certain respectful ‘distance’ (although, clearly not physical) between citizens, adherence to liberal universalism and the isolation of dissident political forms in a public life that is intended to be cordial and free of conflict (Delgado, 2016). This type of socio-cultural practices was turned into law in most Western democracies (through the various Civil Codes) and transgressing them became punishable. As such, the city represented the cultural ideal of civility and modernity and was seen as superior to the country; an idea that continues to hold true today. To an even greater extent, what I have explained here is still very much at play in the modern city. The daily rhythm of life has increasingly come to equate that of our labour time (rush hour in public transport; afterwork drinks; relaxing at home on the weekends because it is the only moment we are allowed not to feel bad about doing nothing…). Giving in to the spectacle of consumption, a true ‘society of the spectacle’, to employ Debord’s terms, took precedence. It is based on mass media, commodity fetishism and an analogy between religion and marketing; in this type of society, appearing meant being (Debord, [1967] 1992). These are the macro-cultural implications that capitalist influences have had on urban development.

The (uneven) production of space in the modern city also has a micro-cultural facet: the spatial segregation this process entails, regrettable as it is, has produced much popular culture. One could think of how lower-class neighbourhoods in New-York in the 1970s produced a

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hip-17 hop ‘street’ culture that became popular throughout the 1980s and 1990s; of the old industrial areas which are being transformed into spaces for contemporary art (such as NDSM in Amsterdam-Noord); of the ethnically-segregated neighbourhoods that acquire a life of their own (Barbès in Paris, for example). This resembles what Chicago urban sociologists have termed the “ecological approach” to urban settlements: they observed that people naturally coalesced to inhabit with similar social groups, leading to the formation of a harmonious mosaic of cultures that, in the aggregate, makes a particular urban life. I believe this to be debatable, however. Indeed, as seen previously, the direction taken in urban planning and development has been guided by capitalist interests. The formation of distinct neighbourhoods based on class, sexuality or ethnicity reflects, at least, the defensive positions that the different groups hold. At best, it illustrates a fight that politico-economic elites are currently winning.

In the modern city, the cultural is undeniably an important battleground. Popular cultures are being marketised to make cities attractive to tourists. What was before in the realm of the public is used to make profits: you can for example pay $30 to go on a graffiti tour in New-York or experience the life of a ‘local’ with AirBnb. Plagued by a ‘lifestyle tourism’, which can, it is true, be a major engine of economic growth more energy has been devoted to making and remaking the urban as a haven for tourism, at the expense of locals’ culture and quality of life. Moreover, in this quest to commodify the cultural aspect of the city, the real estate industry has generalised the practice of ‘gentrification’. Gentrification is defined by a renovation process of shabby, popular neighbourhoods. Renovations and reconstructions are achieved through financial investment and the replacement of previous, poorer populations by more prosperous ones (usually, middle to upper-middle class). This leads to an increase in rent prices and a shift in commercial activity to fit the needs of the new inhabitants and their globalised tastes (Tonkiss, 2005). As quoted earlier, gentrification indeed is the material representation of the modern ‘embourgeoisement’ of certain neighbourhoods of the city; it shows the way capital has been able to seize the popular cultures, produced by citizens in their urban environment, to make money out of them. The cultural struggle going on in cities is, however, not as lopsided as when it comes to the aforementioned economic one. Cities have been used as places of resistance in which some

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18 neighbourhoods actively fight (whether artistically or politically) against mass tourism and gentrifying practices. Practically, this is often done by anti-tourist messages in the streets or the organisation of squats where citizens can live in community and for an insignificant rent. For this, Barcelona is a good example: it is simultaneously one of the most visited cities in Europe and the one where the population has expressed the most discontent with tourism (see Figures 1 and 2 below).

The urban environment, as it appears, has taken a very distinct shape since the first industrial revolution. In fact, it could be said that capital, in both its industrial and modern forms, requires the city to grow and therefore appropriates it. As shown, it is the place where the real estate industry has a prominent say in planning, where time is bound to the pace of economic life, where a bland global consumerist culture is promoted and where popular cultures become marketised. The particular ways we apprehend and develop urban spaces, I would argue, very much reflects the current state of global capitalism and the extension of neoliberal ideologies. Trends in urban development have generally paralleled the gradual advancement of capitalism as the dominant economic paradigm. After showing the relationship between capitalism and the modern city, I must now turn to the ecological implications of this trend in order to show that capitalism cannot simply be made ‘green’.

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19

B) The Modern City as a Primary Component of Ecological Degradation

So far, I have demonstrated that, throughout history and cultures, the city has consistently fulfilled first and foremost an economic role from which particular political orders and cultures have emerged. As such, the way the urban environment is imagined, organised and, ultimately, developed represents the agenda of certain social orders. The implications of this statement are twofold: first it means that, since the 18th_{century, urban development is a}

particular reflection of capitalism, our contemporary politico-economic and social order; second it means that we can look beyond the way the urban environment is currently managed. More particularly, as compared to previous social orders, capitalism has needed the geographic concentration of capital and people in urban centres. To pursue the line of reasoning I set out in my argument, the anti-ecological nature of the capitalist city must now be assessed. This is necessary because, if the capitalist city is shown to be irreconcilable with ecological imperatives, and if, overall, capitalism requires this type of urban environment (which, as we have seen, it has

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20 shaped over the past two centuries), then it can be inferred that capitalism cannot be made ecological.

With regards to the ecological responsibility of the capitalist city, the works of Marx have spurred much insight. This might, at first glance, be surprising as Marx is often charged with being ‘Promethean’ in character. That is to say, critics often argue that Marxist theory falls prey to the productivism that is inherent to capitalist systems. To them, Marx was arguing for perpetuating the human domination of nature, ever-increasing outputs and an infinitely-growing economy (Burkett, 1999). It is true that, in Marx’s vast body of work, ecological considerations appear as a minor concern. Indeed, considering that cases of capitalist-induced ecological degradation were much scarcer in his time than they currently are, his analysis has mostly pointed at practices of deforestation, pollution in cities and the development of agriculture along the lines of industry. It is on the latter point that this subchapter will mostly expand.

What’s more, some of Marx’s ecologically-oriented works have been printed fairly recently and are still being translated. This is for example the case of Grundrisse (published for the first time in 1939 and translated to English in 1973) and other notebooks (such as the Paris Notebooks). Recent research has disproved Marx’s ‘Prometheanism’. Although Marx’s ecological insights can mostly be found in his early work, an ecological critique of capitalism has permeated his entire theory through his central concepts of metabolism, ground rent and capitalist alienation. These concepts have been theorized upon and articulated together by recent eco-socialist authors. In accordance with the sociospatial framing established so far, the anti-ecological character of the modern city will be analysed along politico-economic and cultural lines.

1) The Political Economy of the Metabolic Rift

Before delving into the particular ways through which the modern city fostered ecological degradation according to Marx and his eco-socialist followers, the concept of metabolism as a fundamental notion of Marx’s ecology must be fleshed out. The term metabolism originated in

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21 1815 but was popularised in the 1840s in the natural sciences to describe chemical and material exchanges and reactions within cells or organisms. These biochemical exchanges are required for life to be sustained and grow. Metabolic relations transform both the individual and its direct environment. A well-known example is that of respiration, a typical metabolic process: when I breathe, I take in air (mostly made up of nitrogen and oxygen) which I then exhale as carbon dioxide, in turn slightly altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The process of transformation of air into carbon dioxide, which is a necessary action for survival, is part of my metabolic interaction with the environment. This is also the case of photosynthesis or digestion to name just two. In essence, all life on Earth is supported by metabolic processes, which take in resources from, and release waste into, the surrounding environment. In the long history of evolution, metabolisms have been so diverse as to often become complementary: what was one organism’s waste could soon become another’s intake, effectively balancing the amount of materials and (bio)chemicals present in ecosystems.

The term metabolism was to greatly influence the writings of Justus Von Liebig, who was a famous 19th_{-century agricultural chemist. Liebig analysed the way plants take in nutrients from}

the ground and the particular chemical processes and flows that enable plant growth. Through his work, he became one of the pioneers of the second agricultural revolution, between 1830 and 1880, which “was characterised by the growth of a fertiliser industry and a revolution in soil chemistry” (Foster, 1999: 373). The discovery of metabolic processes, associated with a deeper understanding of soil chemistry, indeed propelled the demand for fertilisers as it was proven that soil fertility was not necessarily fixed. This also came to counter previous theories on ground rent, notably those of Malthus and Ricardo, who assumed that the value of agricultural land was linked to its (natural) level of fertility. To these authors, the most fertile lands would be the first ones to be used for food production and as the demand for agricultural products increased (a necessary consequence of population growth), so would production expand to less fertile lands. This would eventually lead to the infamous ‘population problem’ formulated by Malthus which predicted that, soon enough, population growth would outpace progress in agricultural production. To Marx, this showed that soil fertility was a product of particular social

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22 arrangements and that rent price was derived from historical changes in fertility rather than from absolute, naturally-determined levels of it. These matters gained impetus as, during the mid-19th

century, agricultural land in Western Europe was reaching a point of soil exhaustion, where land was so poor in nutrients and eroded that it barely could support crops anymore. Many fertilisers (such as guano, bones or manure) were imported from exotic parts of the world to make up for the lack of nutrients in the soil (Foster, 2000).

At the same time, progress in agricultural technology implied that, increasingly, farms could be run as industries and that decreasing amounts of workers were required to farm the land. This led Marx to formulate his concept of ‘social metabolism’, based on that of ‘natural metabolism’ outlined earlier. He saw nature as humanity’s “inorganic body”, in that “nature is (1) [its] direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of [its] life-activity” (Marx, 1988: 76). It is through labour, and in order to organise production, that humanity mediates with its inorganic body. Labour can indeed be considered a socio-metabolic process because it takes resources from nature, modifies it to enable human survival and growth, and in turn generates waste which has to be disposed of. Different societies through history have had different metabolic relations with their inorganic bodies. To Marx, capitalism disrupted metabolic processes because it

collects the population in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. […] It disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil. […] All progress in [artificially] increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility (Marx, 1976: 637-638; quoted in Foster, 2000: 156).

These socio-economic forces therefore spurred the creation of a ‘metabolic rift’ between human society and nature. This rift stemmed from the fact that humanity became alienated both from its inorganic body (as Man left rural and natural land for the city) and from its labour (as it did not - collectively or individually - own means of production anymore). The imports of

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23 fertilisers from around the world only served to show that capitalist agriculture was unable to sustain itself. In a similar vein, Marx and Engels perceived the situation in London, with the Thames polluted with several tons of excrements produced by 4.5 million residents, as another of the contradictions of capitalism (Foster, 2002). Indeed, such organic waste (along with, for example, compost) constituted one of the major ways through which nutrients could be returned to the surrounding land in order to improve the composition of the soil and its fertility. The geographical organisation of capitalism, with great urban centres and depopulated rural areas, meant that repurposing human manure on a large scale was too costly and therefore not profitable.

As time passed since Marx’s time, this process grew in intensity. Around the mid-20th

century, most of the Western European population was urban rather than rural, an unprecedented trend. Moreover, the expansion of the agro-industrial system implied that the raising of stock was from then on separated from the cultivation of feed grains employed to raise livestock. Instead of directly fertilising the soil around animals to facilitate grass growth, the natural fertiliser provided by animal manure started piling up in factory farms. Again, short-term cost-benefit analyses prohibited it from returning to the surrounding land. Nowadays, even when animal manure is repurposed for fertilising the land used to grow grains for livestock, it is often at vast environmental costs. This is readily illustrated by the case of Lake Erie, which is regularly infested by algae bloom due to “runoff pollution [that] occurs when rainfall washes fertiliser and manure spread on large farm fields into streams that flow into Lake Erie” (Alliance for the Great Lakes, n.d.; Vox, 2019). Figure 3 sums up the progressive separation first of humanity and second of livestock from our inorganic body.

The agricultural practices of repurposing human and animal waste, however, had been used for thousands of years across cultures to maintain soil fertility (Geilig, 2014). Therefore, this agricultural shift - from small-scale peasants, stewards to their land for generations, returning organic waste to the land in a complete metabolic cycle, to large-scale farmers employing artificial fertilisers in a mechanised agriculture tailored for profit-making - implied a far-reaching break in the flow of nutrients.

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24 To be sure, one could attribute such environmental ills to the particular ways that capitalism has organised agriculture and the countryside, with single farmers being responsible for an increasing share of the food production, rather than the urban environment. However, this would be dismissing the tendency of capitalism to concentrate citizens in urban centres in order to draw on the cheap workforce it essentially requires. For the factories to function in a profitable manner, peasants had to become city-dwellers. At the same time, farmers’ productivity had to keep up as city-dwellers were dependent on them to eat. The fate of the countryside was thus intrinsically linked with developments in the urban environment.

The city was now absorbing more and more resources from the countryside without giving back the precious nutrients necessary to uphold fertility levels. These processes are still largely at play: currently, in the US, about 50% of so-called biosolids produced by humans and animals are applied to agricultural land as fertiliser, levels that are far below those required for sustainable practices. In 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) stated that “unless new approaches are adopted, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level in 1960; […] the causes [of which] include chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation, and global warming” (Arsenault, 2017). Politicians in the EU have tried to respond to this, as UN officials warned that we might have

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25 only 60 harvests left before soils “are too degraded to feed the planet”, but the suggested regulations were given up on following “heavy lobbying, some of it from the Conservative-led coalition” (Harvey, 2018).

As the economy became global in character, and as industrial capitalism showered Western societies with all sorts of commodities, this rift grew ever-more evident. Indeed, another way to perceive the eruption of the metabolic rift (next to the dichotomy between city and country) is between colonisers and colonies. Throughout the 19th_{and 20}th_{century, many of the}

colonies in the Southern hemisphere were pillaged for natural resources to feed an ever-expanding industrial system. Similarly, under Western impulses, colonies had to specialise in their agricultural production often at the expense of subsistence farming in order to provide exotic products to colonisers (Moore, 2000). Long-distance trade and the exploitation of natural resources as part of a global capitalist system meant that returning nutrients to the original exporters was simply not conceivable. This became particularly true as technological progress and the advent of a consumer culture induced a growing share of non-organic waste that cannot be easily recycled and that often ends up in landfills.

To sum up, the term metabolism can be used to refer to two different, but interlinked, processes. First off, natural metabolism entails the individual material exchanges that occur in cells and (more broadly) organisms as part of their interaction with the environment. Natural metabolic relations are the product of evolution and constitute the basis for the survival and growth of life. Marx’s sociological interpretation considers the metabolic interaction between human societies and their inorganic bodies (i.e., the natural world) which is mediated through labour, an activity that is peculiar to humans. From what has just been exposed, it can be said that capitalism has disrupted both natural and social metabolic processes, especially, in Marx’s days, in terms of soil fertility and the disposal of waste. As this particular socio-economic system gained ground, the metabolic rift that such disruption entailed grew in both size and intensity. Problems related to quick and unplanned urbanisation became common matters throughout the globe; the waste generated by a global industrial system skyrocketed while organic waste became only a small part of the total waste produced by human societies. For now, the environmental

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26 implications of the distinct urban culture that arose with capitalism (which has been outlined in the previous subchapter) will be elaborated upon.

2) A Cultural Rift

Culturally speaking, the original irruption and subsequent entrenchment of urban life in capitalism has, I would argue, disrupted metabolic processes in two different, but closely related ways. One relates to the urban environment as the particular place where the ideological standards of individualism and privatisation have fostered a culture of mass consumerism which is directly detrimental to ecosystems; the other can be understood as the manner through which societies have related to the natural environment under capitalism. It can be said that both of these aspects have fed on each other to lead to the levels of environmental degradation we are currently witnessing.

As we have previously seen, the modern city has been shaped by the interest of capitalism and the state as its centre became both heavily policed – it is said there are about 500.000 CCTV cameras in Greater London for example – and the concentration of a ‘spectacle’ of consumption where ‘high streets’ are the most visited places. This shows that the city is to “be consumed passively, rather than actively created by the populace at large through political participation” (Low & Smith, 2006: 23). Consumption became an end in itself while it had formerly been a way to meet the needs of humans. Indeed, citizens have increasingly been understood as mere consumers (although popular uprisings in cities periodically remind us that this is not the case) and this has led the city to be the primary place for consumption. This is especially true since the 1970s. Privatisation, as the leading motto of urban development, gave away an increasing share of the public realm to market forces. A case in point is that of advertising: the visual realm (which is intrinsically public) is being undermined by private interests in an effort to convince citizens that they must consume. The private ownership of advertising spaces prohibits a democratic management of this space; instead, it is used to further the interest of capital.

As such, the ever-encroaching consumer society that arose in the urban environment has been one of the main components of the deepening metabolic rift. Resources required to fuel

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27 the growing consumption of the city had to be drawn in great numbers and from far-away places. With the advent of globalisation, capital’s quest to reduce the costs of production led it to relocate to countries with cheap workforce and lax social and environmental law (Saito, 2017). With the free flow of capital that is distinct to neoliberal economics, governmental plans to further protect the environment would be faced with threats of industry relocation, which would occur at the expense of local employment and welfare. Indeed, integrating the costs associated with environmental degradation (which, under capitalism, is most often regarded as a negative externality to be borne by the whole of society) in the economic calculations of companies would surely make a good share of industries unprofitable. This spurs a race, especially between developing countries, towards the regulatory ‘bottom line’ in order to attract capital investments (Foster, 2002). The infinite material accumulation promoted by capital through the creation of needs (i.e., advertising or marketing strategies), and taken up on by the aforementioned consumer society, led to the supposedly-infinite hoarding of natural resources which is at odds with the material reality of the world. In comparison, such a phenomenon did not occur in “pre-capitalist society because surplus labour was [then] generated only through the exercise of external compulsion. There was no motivation to work further once the basic needs were satisfied, and the range of use values was, accordingly, relatively small” (Saito, 2017: 123). This is not the case under capitalism because new needs can constantly be manufactured and labour is subject to competition and alienation.

In the globalised world, resources are therefore extracted in one place, shipped to be turned into commodities in another, and exported once more to their final place of consumption; detached from its inorganic body, the act of consumption came to equate an environmental threat. The physical separation of the various steps of production and consumption has two broad implications. First, it means that even more waste has to be generated to transport products across the globe (and to construct the ‘tools’ required for this transport). Second, it also means that the environmental impact of one’s consumption is removed from the consumer’s direct environment. As such, even the most obviously-unsustainable practices can be perpetuated so long as the price mechanism (rooted in the

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28 exchange value of commodities in capitalism) does not reflect the associated environmental, social and health costs.

Another one of the ways through which urban cultures impede ecological considerations is linked to the necessary alienation that is fostered by capitalist systems. As we have seen, the process of urban development leads to an estrangement from the material conditions (or inorganic body of humanity) required for proper human development. Simply put, by moving to the city, Man loses touch with nature and adopts a productivist outlook towards the natural world. Such a view embodies the anthropocentric (i.e. human-centred) outlook that humans hold regarding nature. Such a view is not unique to capitalist systems: Aristotle, in his Politics, had already argued that “nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man” (Stanford Encyclopedia, 2015). What was new with the advent of capitalism is that, due to the geographical concentration of the population in man-made environments, Western society started to envision itself as not only separated, but ultimately independent, from its natural environment. Natural resources are appreciated only to the extent that they can be exploited and marketised, and not necessarily for their role in sustaining humans for generations. That is to say, “natural resources are carefully and economically treated, insofar as they go into the valorisation process, because their value must be transferred to new products without any loss” (Saito, 2017: 132). Since humanity did not need to consider (or, at least, perceived it did not need to consider) its inorganic body in the mediation of metabolic processes, the gates were open for the unsustainable production and consumption of commodities on a mass scale. Conversely, the fact that humanity surrounded itself with commodities in a man-made environment only came to reinforce the anthropocentric feeling that spiritually disconnected it from the natural world. It is in this sense that these processes can be said to be mutually-reinforcing.

The modern city can therefore be understood as an inevitable component of capitalism. It fulfils a distinct political and economic role as the space where state power and capital are most concentrated. Additionally, the geographical concentration of the population in urban centres is a necessary prerequisite for a cheap workforce. It also greatly facilitates surveillance and policing. The modern city has also been of cultural importance in the development of capitalism:

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29 it has nurtured a civic culture based on individualism and liberalism. Ultimately this diffused the people’s right to the city and spurred a culture of consumerism based on the ‘spectacle’ of commodities. These elements demonstrate the fact that capitalism both needs and shapes urban development in order to sustain itself. However, it has also become obvious that the particular type of urban environment that is produced by these processes is an ecological hazard. The same politico-economic forces that served to promote the formation and deepening of capitalism turned out to come at great environmental costs. The irruption of a metabolic rift between the city and the country disrupted age-old flows of nutrients, a process that was only exacerbated by globalisation and technological progress. As a consumption centre, the city also became a pollution centre. Finally, the metabolic rift heightened the anthropocentric outlook that society holds by disintegrating the ‘original unity’ between humanity and the natural world (Saito, 2017).

Since the 18th_{century, but even more so in current days, the city is the necessary}

anti-ecological outgrowth of capitalism. I have in this chapter established the specific political, economic and cultural factors that have enabled this path to be taken. From this premise, the remainder of this thesis will focus on theoretical perspectives and practical strategies that must be undertaken to provide the means for a metabolic shift in the way human societies mediate with their inorganic bodies. This is necessary if we are to establish a society that can exist within environmental limits; something that the current capitalist society cannot manage to do.

Towards a metabolic shift? : the political ecology of urban development