ABSTRACT
The Anthropocene requires a radical reconceptualization of the city, its logic of agglomeration, and its role in global capitalist accumulation. Cities are embedded in complex global networks of material flows built around the logic of reinvesting surplus value. Cities now face a legitimation crisis: they cannot make good on their promises to advance social welfare and safeguard planetary health. A wide array of institutions assert that ecological costs are manageable, but they are not. Climate change and biodiversity crises are already imposing enormous costs on people and the planet. The realities of ecological overshoot require seeing corporate profits and landscapes of affluence as public health threats. In this context, “the right to the city,” as David Harvey argues, is an intellectual, cultural, moral, economic, and political moment of reckoning that requires challenging the “hegemonic liberal and neoliberal market logics.” This chapter calls for an ethic of care to integrate human rights and planetary boundaries through urban regenerative developments that emphasize coevolving mutualism. As these practices take root, places become healthier and more resilient, contributing to the capacity to restructure outdated and destructive legal and institutional relationships to align cities with the deep structures of interdependence that allow life to thrive.
