Urban Green Assemblages: An ANT View on Sustainable City Building Projects

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this article, I sketch an STS-theoretical approach to world-wide growing concerns with urban climate risks and sustainable urbanism more generally in terms of what I call 'urban green assemblages'. This approach draws inspiration from recent attempts to bring actor-network theory (ANT) closer to urban studies, infusing urban political economies with STS sensibility towards the contingencies of eco-socio-technical design and transformation processes. ANT, I argue, offers a new ontology for the city, allowing the study of those concrete and plural sites at which urban sustainability is known, practiced, scaled, negotiated and contested, in heterogeneous and dynamic assemblages of humans and non-humans. I explore the analytical potentials of this ANT urban ontology through a case study of how architects, engineers, and urban planners currently perform Nordhavn, one of Europe's large-scale sustainable city building projects, as a site of multiple matters of public-political concern with urban natures.

Original languageEnglish
JournalScience Studies
Volume26
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)5-24
Number of pages20
ISSN0786-3012
Publication statusPublished - 2013

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