CITIES, NATURES AND THE POLITICAL IMAGINARY

摘要

This contribution focuses on the paradoxical situation that despite the increasing attention paid to urban environmental problems on the part of policy makers, architects, planners and a variety of non-governmental and citizens' organisations, the urban ecological conundrum has become more intractable than ever. The last decade has seen Hurricane Katrina ransacking New Orleans, increasing CO_2 levels (mainly from urban environments) aggravating the threat of global warming, Fukushima's nuclear nightmare, lack of access to basic resources (water, food, land, medicine) persisting as the main cause of premature mortality in the megacities of the Global South, and recurring quasi-epidemics (HIV, SARS, Avian and Mexican Flu) reshaping global and local geographies of uneven urban development.