Life support: The political ecology of urban air

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.