Overview

This book explores the historical relationship between ‘technonatures’ and urban transformations in the Global North. In recent years, various interdisciplinary movements such as Urban Political Ecology, STS and New Materialism have affected urban history and generated new scholarly insights into the formation of cities and urban life based on notions of hybridity, entanglement and metabolism. While scholars have increasingly attempted to grasp the socio-natural and technical complexity of cities, studies dealing with urban transformation within urban history have, however, mostly concentrated on political actors or broader social and economic changes. Seeking to introduce the concept of technonatures to the field of urban environmental history, this book instead takes its empirical and analytical starting point in the technonatural fabric of cities. Focusing on urban rivers, dumps, railways, flood walls and housing, the chapters of the book thus examines how different entanglementsof environment, technology and agency have shaped cities and processes of urbanization in the Global North from the seventeenth century onwards. By foregrounding the transformative role of urban natures, materialities and technologies in shaping the politics of urban life and cities more broadly, the book aspires to probe the potentiality of technonatures as a conceptual and analytical strategy for urban environmental historians.

Full Product Details

9783031469565

Table of Contents

Reviews

“It includes a wide range of case studies, from Vienna to Copenhagen and from Sudan to the United States, providing well-documented and concrete examples of urban dynamics and offering global and comparative perspectives. … A common feature of all the essays is that the authors offer innovative interpretations and renewed conceptualizations of existing literature … . This volume is particularly interesting to read due to its interdisciplinary approach, varying case studies, formulation of innovative concepts, thorough historical analysis … .” (Federico Paolini, Technology and Culture, Vol. 66 (4), October, 2025)

Author Information

Mikkel Thelle is Senior Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark. Mikkel Høghøj is Postdoctoral Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark.

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