Urban Political Ecologies and Children's Geographies: Queering Urban Ecologies of Childhood

Abstract

This article focuses on the material and discursive constructions of nature and chil dren in the city. While dominant representations and idealizations of nature and child hood depend on the binary logic of the nature/culture and rural/urban divide, there is also a simplification and romanticization of nature in children's geographies and a lack of chil dren and their spaces in urban political ecology. We argue that children and nature in cities need to be removed from a binary model of being and attended to in more nuanced ways in urban political ecology and children's geographies. In this regard, we suggest that both nature and children in cities need to be queered. We need to ask how the production of urban spaces (re)creates particular romantic and idealized relations with natures that reify the binaries between nature/culture, and male/female through a heteronormative framework. The purpose of this article is to bring the critical nature-society theories of urban political ecology into conversation with work in children's geographies that explores the 'nature' of childhood, and in doing so queer the relationship between children and nature. Drawing on research on queer ecologies, and queered childhoods, we aim to provide a framework to rethink and queer both nature and children in cities.

Moving urban political ecology beyond the ‘urbanization of nature’

“…. A new focus on the micrometabolisms of everyday life beyond the nonhuman would help urban political ecologists to open up what the urban means to a richness of life that exists within the human species' (Shillington andMurnaghan, 2016: 1022).…”

The Places Children Go: Understanding Spatial Patterns and Formation Mechanism for Children’s Commercial Activity Space in Changchun City, China

“…Since the 1990s, research on children's geography has developed rapidly [28][29][30], and relevant studies on children's activity space have increasingly paid more attention to children's geography [31]. Most research on children's activity space has focused on children's access to parks [32], accessibility and design of playground facilities [33][34][35][36], children's neighborhood activity and play space [37][38][39], children's play in public open spaces [24,25], children's interaction with natural spaces [40][41][42][43], etc.…”

Theorizing Public Participation and Local Governance in Urban Resilience: Reflections on the “Provincializing Urban Political Ecology” Thesis

“…Therefore, this article uses "economic determinism" or similar terms with no intentions of homogenizing the contributions of either UPE, or urban political economy, but rather, to highlight and to question one of the major roots of their analytic vectors.) Rejecting the idea that a pre-existing political-economic structure determines singular urban transformation patterns, postcolonial theories emphasize such concepts as environment, knowledge, and power and the ways these analytic components can influence the development of urban change [37][38][39][40][41][42]. The term "provincialize" is a major critique that postcolonial scholars adopt to criticize political economy, as it tends to universalize, totalize, and eventually homogenize urban experiences in various geopolitical contexts.…”