Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology

Lively Cities argues that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities, drawing attention to the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across the city. It reconceptualizes key themes in urban thought, including infrastructure, the built environment, design, habitation, and everyday practices of dwelling, and proposes a new grammar of urban life.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 408 pages
Publication date: 16 May 2023
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

The process of urbanization has brought about a significant transformation of nature, with domestic animals now comprising more than twice the biomass of humans on the planet. Cities are teeming with nonhuman life, yet current accounts of the urban remain predominantly anthropocentric. In his book "Lively Cities," Maan Barua challenges conventional notions of urban studies by arguing that cities are lived achievements shaped by a diverse array of entities, including both human and nonhuman beings.

Through his exploration of the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across various cities, Barua reconceptualizes key themes in urban thought, such as infrastructure, the built environment, design, habitation, and everyday practices of dwelling. He provides a critical intervention in animal and urban studies, generating fresh conversations between posthumanism, postcolonialism, and political economy.

By employing novel combinations of ethnography and ethology and focusing on interlocutors that are not typically associated with urban theory, Barua's work considers nonhuman lifeworlds and the unique perspectives they offer in understanding urbanicity. "Lively Cities" is an agenda-setting intervention that proposes a new grammar of urban life, challenging us to reimagine our relationship with the natural world and the diverse beings that inhabit our cities.

Weight: 482g
Dimension: 139 x 215 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517912567