Life support: The political ecology of urban air

Abstract

Humans, increasingly, manufacture their own air. In and around the three-dimensional aerial environments within and above urban regions, this manufacture of air reaches particular levels of intensity. For a species that expires without air in two or three minutes, this anthropogenic manufacture of air is of incalculable importance. Curiously, however, urban air remains remarkably neglected within the political–ecological literatures. Accordingly, this paper suggests a range of key themes, which a political ecology of urban air needs to address. These touch upon the links between global warming, urban heat-island effects and killer urban heatwaves; urban pollution crises; the paradoxes of urban pollution; horizontal movements of polluted air; the vertical politics of urban air; the construction of vertical condominium structures for elites; the vicious circles that characterise air-conditioned urbanism; heat-related deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures in increasingly hot climates; the growth of large-scale air-conditioned environments; and, finally, the manipulation of urban air through political violence.

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