ABSTRACT

This introduction approaches the urbanization of nature as a historical process. In order to do so, we start from the concept of agency, applied to transformations in the production of (urban) nature between 1500 and today. The relevance of different concepts of agency for a historical approach to city-nature relationships is discussed, confronting insights from Actor-Network Theory, Science & Technology Studies, Socio-environmental Studies and Urban Environmental History. We argue that the predominance of ‘system’ approaches in environmental studies and environmental history tends to obscure the question of agency and actors—including the city as an actor—which steer transformations in urban nature, all the more so since overriding forces like industrialization and technological transformation are mostly singled out as determinants. A long-term approach, covering both the pre-modern/pre-industrial and the modern age, is particularly helpful in moving away from such linear modernity narratives in which the transition to fossil fuel regimes, the development of networked technologies, or the dissociation between nature and culture are considered ‘natural’ and self-evident. Instead we want to move toward a more complex story of multiple transitions and layered transformations, which need to be explained starting from their specific historic contexts, as well as the specific actors involved in their design and implementation. In the final part of the chapter we argue for a more active role for historians in answering the environmental challenges of today. The combination of a long-term perspective and an actor-centered analysis allows to question the inevitable and self-evident character of environmental changes. Socio-natural configurations, as they come into existence, are not inevitable but the result of a myriad of individual decisions.