Urban Political Ecology and Environmental Governance

Urban political ecology examines the intertwined processes through which urbanisation shapes, and is shaped by, ecological systems and social relations. It views cities as socio-natural constructs in which power dynamics determine how resources are produced, distributed and contested across space. Environmental governance in this context encompasses the institutions, policies and practices that regulate urban environmental change, from grassroots movements to municipal planning and transnational agreements. Together, these fields reveal how questions of justice, access and sustainability are negotiated in the making of infrastructure, land use and ecosystem services. Recent scholarly work has deepened understanding of how material flows—such as water, sand and pollution—are governed and resisted, and how design principles for green and grey infrastructures reflect competing social priorities. By integrating analyses of political economy, ecological processes and multi-scalar governance, this research offers critical insights for addressing urban inequality, climate adaptation and the equitable distribution of environmental benefits.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Urban Political Ecology and Environmental Governance publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in urban political ecology and environmental governance across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Urban political ecology: A theoretical approach that analyses cities as products of intertwined social, economic and ecological processes, focusing on power relations in resource control and environmental change.

Environmental governance: The ensemble of formal and informal institutions, policies and practices through which environmental decisions are made and implemented across scales.

Urban metabolism: A framework for quantifying the flows of materials, energy and wastes through cities, treating them as living systems with inputs, transformations and outputs.

Ecological infrastructure: Engineered or designed systems—such as green roofs, constructed wetlands or urban forests—that combine natural processes with built elements to provide ecosystem services and resilience.

References

1. Geologising Urban Political Ecology (UPE): The Urbanisation of Sand in Accra, Ghana. Antipode (2021).
2. Water and the political ecology of urban metabolism: the case of Mexico City. Journal of Political Ecology (2015).
3. Green climate change adaptation and the politics of designing ecological infrastructures. Geoforum (2020).