Blackwell Reference Online

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The question that now begins to gnaw at your mind is more anguished: outside Penthesilea does an outside exist? Or, no matter how far you go from the city, will you only pass from one limbo to another, never managing to leave it?Italo Calvino ([1974] 1979: 122)The exploitation of man and of nature, which takes place in the country, is realized and concentrated in the city.Raymond Williams ([1973] 1993: 48)It is in many ways astonishing that in the ballooning literature on the environment and among the innumerable environmental social movements, the city often figures in a rather marginal or, worse, antithetical manner. Even more surprising is the almost complete absence of a serious engagement with the environmental problematic in the prolific literature on the city. At a time when the world is quickly approaching a situation in which more than half of its population dwells in big cities, the environmental question is generally often circumscribed to either rural or threatened “natural” environments or to “global” problems. Yet, the urbanization process is central to the momentous environmental changes and alleged problems that have inspired the emergence of environmental issues on the political agenda. Environmental movements are largely distinctly urban phenomena; environmental ideologies and discourses on the environment as well as the material transformation of nature generally ... log in or subscribe to read full text