Creighton Connolly

Southeast Asia is urbanising at unprecedented speed and in unique, and sometimes paradigmatic, ways. As its cities grow, so too does the place and governance of urban nature require critical interrogation as cities start to develop new and more extensive relationships with their non-human inhabitants and natural environments. The articles that comprise this theme issue consider how the governance of nature in urbanising Southeast Asia is a resolutely experimental phenomenon that involves complex, and often contested, negotiations between actors spanning the public, private, and people domains. Foregrounding the role and importance of experimental governance is the primary contribution of this theme issue, with each paper considering how the agency of urban nature often circumvents and subverts linear cause-and-effect relationships and outcomes. A secondary contribution is the focus on Southeast Asia, with the papers contributing rich empirical insight from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Urban development in these countries is, or has been, rapid, and the governance of urban nature has taken a variety of forms, from it being a utopic aspiration of urban futurity, to it being a construct through which new forms of socio-spatial politics become manifest. Collectively, this theme issue advances multiple debates within urban political ecology, environmental governance, and sustainable multispecies flourishing in the Southeast Asian city.

Relentless urbanization, paradoxes, and putting nature first. Michele is out again, this time with Creighton Connolly, knee deep in Asian urbanism and nature. Creighton reflects on his scholarship, and personal journey, across East and Southeast Asia, thinking of the value of unpacking landscapes and the opportunities of thinking of ‘extended urbanisation’. We wonder around a […]

This article outlines the major aspects of Roger Keil's contributions to the study of the relationship between cities and infectious disease to date. We suggest how urban scholars have already and could in the future build on his corpus of work, not just for urban health specifically, but for our grasp of extended urbanization more generally. We do so by recounting Keil's contribution to the urban studies scholarship on various dimensions, including those pertaining to: the networking of urban health, managing urban health within the context of extended urbanization, and finally theoretically grounding urban health into a finer-grained critical grasp of urban questions in our post-anthropocentric era. In our conclusion, we highlight the urgent and continuing need to embrace Roger Keil's steadfast optimism even when facing deeply troubling urban crises—a lesson all too critical today as global affairs veer toward more turbulent and calamitous times, such as those faced in the current geopolitical situation.

The implications of COVID-19 for urban planning and governance are wide ranging and have triggered a rethinking of how policies related to housing, transportation, sustainability, climate change and governance might be redeveloped to be better suited for post-pandemic cities. Over the past five years, both academic and popular accounts have highlighted commonalities between adaptations that cities are making to become more resilient to infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19, while also addressing sustainable development and climate change indicators and goals. Much of this literature has suggested that a shift towards greater implementation of urban blue and green space – along with other interventions, such as encouraging compact city design, reducing sprawl and encouraging active transit modes – can contribute to healthier and socio-environmentally friendly cities, while also reducing carbon emissions and achieving urban climate goals. However, this article argues that there have been significant barriers faced in doing so that have hampered their effectiveness and implementation. These include the entrenched ideologies favouring ‘grey’ over ‘green’ infrastructure; political-economic and financial constraints; reactive forms of urban and climate governance; and what we call the temporal politics of urban climate governance vis-à-vis infectious disease responses. We suggest how these barriers can be potentially overcome through more engaged forms of grassroots planning and governance in cities which can implement more rapid and place-specific responses. Our review is largely based on scholarship that has emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in the fields of urban and environmental studies.