ABSTRACT
“Eco-cities” represent an attempt to reinvent the post-industrial city within a liberal progressive environmental politics of sustainability and climate change. The current wave of eco-city proliferation is associated with globalization of the concept through spread of expert knowledge. Using Marx’s ideas of species being and estrangement, I argue that this form of environmental policy/politics leads to commodification that externalizes nature into an environment/ecosystem to be procured through creative use of colonial land acquisition acts and zoning laws. I argue that a critique of nature’s commodification must fundamentally re-think human-nature relationship or species being. I attempt such a critique using New Town-Kolkata, India as an example.
