This blog has sought to apply the lens of urban political ecology to the intense network of socionatural metabolisms that render New York into the complex, unique and endlessly fascinating city that it is today. As we reflect on the topics discussed – whether relating to stormwater, urban canopies, asbestos, air pollution, or coronavirus –…
Category: New York
The Tiger Who Came To Test – Hiding Coronavirus Truths?
Some readers will recall – early in the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the world in 2020 – reports of a tiger at the Bronx Zoo testing positive for COVID-19. While both an unsettling and entertaining piece of reporting, it perhaps served to obscure the very human tragedy that would befall the New York metropolitan area in…
(Extra)ordinary Entanglements – 9/11 and the Foregrounding of Asbestos Histories
‘When life depends on it, you use asbestos.’ The great irony of this line is that it was printed almost a decade after the illumination of the cancerous implications of asbestos exposure catalysed its prohibition in New York City. Despite the ban coming into effect in 1972/73 – at which point only 38 floors of…
Ecologies of Prestige – The Complexities of Urban Canopy Inequality and Maintenance in NYC
One million trees planted by 2017: a lofty goal declared in 2007 by Mayor Bloomberg and subsequently achieved two years early under Mayor de Blasio, who together watched the millionth tree take root in Joyce Kilmer Park in the South Bronx in October 2015 (Foderaro, 2015). The programme sought to harness the supposed multi-faceted benefits…
Coronavirus and Sewage – Reinforcing Health Inequalities?
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed an unlikely spotlight on the New York City sewer system as offering a potential method for tracking and even predicting local outbreaks. Coronavirus RNA is present in the faecal matter of infected persons and can be detected through daily sampling of sewage sludge at wastewater treatment centres, and the concentration…
Majora Carter, Air Pollution and Children in the South Bronx
Last week’s story of WATERWASH is part of a much broader and long-running narrative of environmental injustice in the South Bronx which involves – perhaps unsurprisingly – not only the pollution of water but also of air, and while the urban political ecology of New York City does not entirely revolve around the Bronx, it is an…
An Artist’s Solution to New York City’s Stormwater Governance Problems?
Having applied the City Blueprint Approach – a comprehensive set of indicators for the evaluation of urban water governance and management capacities – to various cities across the US, Feingold et al. (2017) tell us that if these cities are to adapt and survive the inevitable water-related challenges of climate change, improvements to ‘stormwater separation,…
New York, Hybrid City
Anyone who has visited New York City will undoubtedly experience it as a uniquely weird and wonderful assault on the senses, with its stark juxtapositions of lush parkland with densely-packed skyscrapers, the obscenely rich with the inescapably poor, a multitude of cultures and livelihoods that co-exist under various tensions which enliven the city that never…
The Urban Digest 