Urbanizacja natury: w stronę relacyjnej ekologii miejskiej
Urbanization of nature: towards relational urban ecology

Summary/Abstract: This paper draws upon relational approaches in social theory, human geography and strategic spatial planning and investigates the complexity and multiscalarity of connections between city and nature. On the one hand, internally disintegrated urban metabolisms increasingly produce and reproduce nature both locally and at very distant locations. On the other hand, nature has a strong impact on cities that – in the face of natural, man-made, or man-influenced environmental disasters – are increasingly shaped by spatial planning practices informed by environment protection discourses and urban resilience programmes. The author argues for considering the urbanization of nature as a deeply economic and political process that calls for political reading and practical engagement. In doing so, in the first section of the paper, the author looks at selected aspects of relational approaches to space. The second section points to deep interplays between natural and urban environments that question the understanding of cities as entities external to natural systems. The third section concludes the paper with a project of ‘relational urban ecology’, whose ultimate aim is to understand the increasingly complex assemblages of cities, natures, cultures and technologies, as well as to open up new avenues for multiscalar politics geared towards the achieving socio-environmental justice.

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