Ecosystems and urbanization: A colossal meeting of giant complexities

Abstract

Our Ambio article on urban transitions 10 years ago (Ernstson et al. 2010) sought to provide a non-equilibrium ecology framework to understand how cities and urbanization draw upon and are embedded in the dynamics of local to regional ecosystems. This mean more specifically to expand 'resilience theory' to include contested process of urbanization. In this article I reflect upon what the article contributed but also what it, now in retrospect and in light of my own turn away from systems ecology towards political ecology and postcolonial theory was lacking. While the article contributed an early — and mainly unacknowledged — contribution to the "infrastructural turn" in urban studies, which I discuss, it only vaguely articulated how ecosystems and urbanization intersects with knowledge politics and uneven social power relations. This article forms part of the journal Ambio's 50th Anniversary Issue under the theme of Urbanization.