Turning Up the Heat - by Maria Kaika & Roger Keil & Tait Mandler & Yannis Tzaninis (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Since its emergence in the 1990s, the field of Urban Political Ecology (UPE) has focused on unsettling traditional understandings of the 'city' as entirely distinct from nature, showing instead how cities are metabolically linked with ecological processes and the flow of resources. More recently, a new generation of scholars has turned the focus towards the climate emergency. Turning up the heat seeks to turn UPE's critical energies towards a politically engaged debate over the role of extensive urbanisation in addressing socio-environmental equality in the context of climate change.

The collection brings together theoretical discussions and rigorous empirical analysis by key scholars spanning three generations, engaging UPE in current debates about urbanisation and climate change. Engaging with cutting edge approaches including feminist political ecology, circular economies, and the Anthropocene, case studies in the book range from Singapore and Amsterdam to Nairobi and Vancouver. Contributors make the case for a UPE better informed by situated knowledges: an embodied UPE that pays equal attention to the role of postcolonial processes and more-than-human ontologies of capital accumulation within the context of the climate emergency. Acknowledging UPE's rich intellectual history and aiming to enrich rather than split the field, Turning up the heat reveals how UPE is ideally positioned to address contemporary environmental issues in theory and practice.

From the Back Cover

'Turning up the heat is an ambitious book that delivers what it promises, a bringing together of the proliferating field of urban political ecology, to take stock, but moreover, to move on. In a hotter world with increasing social inequality, it will function as inspiration for scholarship and political ecological action for many and for years to come.'
Henrik Ernstson, Associate Professor and Docent in Political Ecology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Manchester

'Turning up the heat makes a brilliant contribution to critical scholarship. Here is a rich and much-needed collection of cases and critiques that pushes us to theorise the urban from its margins. It demands creative modes of political thought and action to confront a world of environmental destruction, authoritarianism, and economic inequality.'
Malini Ranganathan, Associate Professor, American University, and co-author of Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City

Since its emergence in the 1990s, the field of Urban Political Ecology (UPE) has focused on unsettling traditional understandings of the 'city' as entirely distinct from nature, showing instead how cities are metabolically linked with ecological processes and the flow of resources. More recently, a new generation of scholars has turned the focus towards the climate emergency. Turning up the heat seeks to turn UPE's critical energies towards a politically engaged debate over the role of extensive urbanisation in addressing socio-environmental equality in the context of climate change.

The collection brings together theoretical discussions and rigorous empirical analysis by key scholars spanning three generations, engaging UPE in current debates about urbanisation and climate change. Engaging with cutting edge approaches including feminist political ecology, circular economies, and the Anthropocene, case studies in the book range from Singapore and Amsterdam to Nairobi and Vancouver. Contributors make the case for a UPE better informed by situated knowledges: an embodied UPE that pays equal attention to the role of postcolonial processes and more-than-human ontologies of capital accumulation within the context of the climate emergency. Acknowledging UPE's rich intellectual history and aiming to enrich rather than split the field, Turning up the heat reveals how UPE is ideally positioned to address contemporary environmental issues in theory and practice.

Review Quotes

'Turning up the heat is an ambitious book that delivers what it promises, a bringing together of the proliferating field of urban political ecology, to take stock, but moreover, to move on. In a hotter world with increasing social inequality, it will function as inspiration for scholarship and political ecological action for many and for years to come.'
Henrik Ernstson, Associate Professor and Docent in Political Ecology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Manchester

'Turning up the heat makes a brilliant contribution to critical scholarship. Here is a rich and much-needed collection of cases and critiques that pushes us to theorise the urban from its margins. It demands creative modes of political thought and action to confront a world of environmental destruction, authoritarianism, and economic inequality.'
Malini Ranganathan, Associate Professor, American University, and co-author of Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City

'A pertinent contribution to UPE scholarship as it brings together a diversity of authors (from the global North and global South) to discuss theory and praxis in relation to what role urbanization could and should play in addressing socio-environmental equality within the context of climate change and related rifts. The volume is also a valuable literature to anyone: policymaker, practitioner or layperson, who wants to unpick further the nuances of the 'urbanization of nature' and 'extended urbanization', the role of past and present socio-economic factors and place in urban inequalities, and their significance for addressing our current climate emergency.'
Hannah Lee, Environment & Urbanization

'Turning Up the Heat is not just an academic achievement, it is a sharp political critique exposing the myriad forces driving deeply uneven socio-spatial relations and indeed environmental breakdown--ranging from systems of extraction, to racialized urbanism, infectious diseases, modernist planning and international experts and populist rhetoric, to name but a few.'
Greet De Block, Urban Studies

About the Author

Maria Kaika is Professor in Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Amsterdam

Roger Keil is Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, Canada

Tait Mandler is a postdoctoral researcher in the Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation group at Wageningen University

Yannis Tzaninis is a researcher in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam