Urban Critical Zones or: How to Ecologize Urban Theory

This presentation is an invitation to study the city as a critical zone, the fragile skin of the Earth, where discontinuous, heterogeneous flows and interactions make life possible. This is urgent, considering that socioecological research increasingly regards cities as “microcosms of the kinds of changes that are happening globally” and “unquestionably the most emblematic signature of the Anthropocene.” Importantly, exploring the city as a critical zone is not a project for the Earth sciences alone, but requires addressing the planetary disorientation—about who, where, and when we are—in which we find ourselves. The presentation explores how to “land on Earth” within cities. Conceiving the city as a critical zone opens new ways of thinking about coexistence, habitability, and planetary interdependence. The paper proposes an ecologization of urban theory through three conceptual shifts: from systems to assemblages, from political ecology to cosmopolitics, and from radical asymmetry to situated criticalities.

Held by: 

Casper Bruun Jensen (Chulalongkorn University), Ignacio Farías (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)