ABSTRACT
The general proposition of this book has been to insist on the need to understand urban environmentalism in the context of the evolving geography of capitalism, and in particular examine the way in which the environment has been constructed so as to contribute to the re-establishment of a sense of urban well-being during a period of radical change and upheaval. Urban environmentalism has been a constitutive part of the major urban transformations of the past two decades or so, characterized by the conflict inherent in the imposition of the new abstract space of global capital over the lived space of cities. As a consequence, the principal arena of conflict with which we have been concerned is not a general one with nature and natural resource systems – although this of course exists – nor to do with conflicts arising between nation states and regional blocks for the control of the world's resources, although this is also important. The sphere of conflict we have privileged is that of space, and the environment as a means of controlling urban spatial restructuring and mediating the social conflicts which arise within it.
