An urban political ecology for a world of cities

The critical considerations in this commentary have been stimulated by the articles joined together in this inspiring collection. Specifically, this commentary reflects on how one might imagine an urban political ecology for the age of planetary urbanisation. While the editors of and contributors to this special issue have done an admirable job of providing intellectual coherence to this project, there remains work to do, especially on the conceptual and theoretical front. The conveners of this symposium lay out an ambitious agenda for the papers in this issue and ultimately for the field: They ask: ‘why does everyone think cities can save the planet?’. It is part real inquiry, part rhetorical question. These questions also provide the entry point into a coherent and serious theoretical project that lies at the bottom of the assembled papers here and is elegantly laid out by the special issue editors in their introduction. This commentary takes up the challenges posed by the theoretical and empirical projects discussed in this issue and discusses them in light of past advances in thinking across the city–nature divide, technological politics and the changing spaces and times of current urbanisation.