“There is always some moment when other-than-human life bursts into presence amid the clamor of urban routine.” —Maan Barua, Lively Cities

One of the fundamental dimensions of urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. The book Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities, drawing attention to a suite of beings, human and nonhuman, that make up the material politics of city making. From macaques and cattle in Delhi to invasive parakeet colonies in London, author Maan Barua examines the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across the city. Barua is joined here in conversation with Sandra Jasper.


Maan Barua is a university lecturer in human geography at the University of Cambridge.

Sandra Jasper, a geographer and urbanist, is assistant professor of geography and gender at Humboldt University of Berlin.

References:
Matthew Gandy
Tom Fry
Garry Marvin
Vinciane Despret
Anindya Sinha
ARCH+ exhibit Cohabitation: A Manifesto for the Solidarity of Non-Humans and Humans in Urban Space (https://archplus.net/de/cohabitation-EN/)
Yi-Fu Tuan
Deleuze
Charles Elton
Marx
Laura Fortunato
Sylvia Federici



Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Imagining a new—human and nonhuman—grammar of urban life.

How can city makers renew urban spaces in ways that benefit existing residents, rather than displacing them? And how have communities organised to resist their displacement? 

On 28 November, TTiN put these questions and more to a panel of academics and practitioners: Charmaine Brown, community activist in Peckham and Lecturer at the University of Greenwich; Anna Minton, journalist, author, and Reader at the University of East London; Betty Owoo, Senior Design Officer in the Greater London Authority's Design Unit; and Ash Rao, urban designer and planner on the GLA’s Regeneration and Planning team. 

For more info, follow @TTinfraNetwork on Instagram and BlueSky. Please like, subscribe, and review this podcast to help us reach more listeners. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

How Not to Make a City, with Charmaine Brown, Anna Minton, Betty Owoo, and Ash Rao

Thinking through infrastructure – energy, transport, water, waste, housing, health – with methods from the arts, humanities, & social sciences. Follow @TTinfraNetwork and learn more here: https://researchcentres.citystgeorges.ac.uk/thinking-through-infrastructure-network#unit=about

New tracks tagged #city-making