Urbanising territory: The contradictions of eco-cityism at the industrial margins, Duwamish River, Seattle

Abstract

This paper deepens the conceptualisation of territory as a key dimension of the production of socionatures within Urban Political Ecology (UPE) in order to better understand the emerging citycentric politics and territorial projects to effect change at multiple scales. The industrial district, and Superfund site, the Duwamish River Valley in Seattle, is used as a space to examine how the production of territory plays an integral role in how people perceive cities as leading sites to address global and local socionatural problems, which will be called eco-cityism. Two vignettes are provided to illustrate these points. The first looks at the politics of Superfund cleanup, and the second looks at the attempt to build an Eco-Industrial District. The vignettes demonstrate that the contradictions of territorial politics give rise to both possibilities and limits to producing cleaner urban processes and landscapes. Additionally, they show how marginalised groups within the city engage with the politics of territory and place as they participate in the production of spatial relations.

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