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Nature's Metropolis

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DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0465

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Nature’s Metropolis challenge and reframing of the basic binaries
of city–country and nature–society that made
JAMES SIRIGOTIS this work into a theoretical guide capable of
University of California, Santa Cruz, USA orienting disparate academic fields.
Following Cronon’s formative study, a
INTRODUCTION wide and divergent body of work across the
humanities and social sciences has recog-
“Nature’s metropolis” is both the title of a nized and theorized the role of nature in
seminal text in urban studies and the name the city.
of a theoretical orientation that analyzes
the interdependencies of urban centers and NATURE’S METROPOLIS PRIOR
their rural hinterlands. While the term was TO CRONON: A MARXIST TRADITION
originally coined by William Cronon in his
classic work Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago Marx could arguably be seen as the first
and the Great West (Cronon 1991), the con- scholar to address the central themes of
cept has gone on to inform a wide range of nature’s metropolis, which he did through
research that focuses on the social practices the notion of metabolism. For Marx, the pro-
that coproduce urban and rural landscapes, cesses of human labor acting on nature for
fundamentally challenging the traditional subsistence and commodity production were
Western binary of nature–society. analogous to metabolic processes. Though
The lineage of nature’s metropolis began these ideas remained relatively undeveloped
with Karl Marx and has proceeded within in Marx’s own work, scholars working in
the Marxist tradition. Cronon extended the Marxist tradition further advanced them
this tradition and his earlier work to write in the twentieth century. As Eagleton puts
Nature’s Metropolis as the first distinctly it, the German philosopher Alfred Schmidt
“urban” history that demonstrates the central argued that “human beings are part of Nature
role of hinterlands and natural resources yet able to stand over against it; and this
in urbanization processes. This exposition partial separation from Nature is part of their
highlighted the social and ecological pro- nature” (Eagleton 2011: 233). This claim
cesses that coconstitute nature–society and was influential in challenging the enduring
urban–rural relations. Cronon illuminated ideological belief that humans exist outside
the entangled relations between the rural and the realm of the natural world, as it provided
urban landscapes of Midwestern America the first incisively environmental elaboration
by arguing that urban growth in Chicago on Marx. In the United Kingdom, Raymond
depended on, and drove, the concurrent Williams’s (1973) The Country and the City
growth of agriculture and development also drew on Marxism to examine the ideo-
in the hinterland. Through his exhaustive logical separation between country and city
historical study, Cronon showed that both in Britain. This historical work focused more
urban and rural landscapes were copro- on urban–rural than on nature–society and
duced through the geographically extended on cultural narratives as opposed to material
processes of urbanization. It was its cogent practices, dispelling the historically specific

The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Edited by Anthony Orum.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0465
2 NATU R E’S M ETROPOL I S

ideological construct of an idyllic rural past Cronon’s second book, Nature’s Metropolis,
that was widespread during earlier stages of moved from precolonialist and colonial-
capitalist urban development. ist landscapes to the transformation of the
In the 1980s, the Marxist geographers Midwestern plains and rise of Chicago as
David Harvey and Neil Smith, British scholars coproduced sites and processes of industrial
who worked in the United States, drew on capitalism’s western expansion. Cronon’s
Lefebvre to examine more directly the active concept of nature’s metropolis exposed the
production of space tied to social and natural coproduction of urban centers and their
processes under capitalism. Harvey (1982) extended rural hinterlands by way of the
elucidated how resource extraction, com- interconnected and interdependent urban-
modity production, and capital accumulation ization processes unfolding across urban and
are both shaped by and (re)produce capi- rural landscapes. He argued that rural and
talist sociospatial relations, including those urban spaces were coconstituted by material
between cities and their attendant hinter- and symbolic flows – of commodity, resource,
lands. Smith (1984) extended these ideas to culture, labor, and capital (to name a few).
explain how, along with space, nature itself Through the development and expansion
represents a social product bound up in of modes of transportation (canals, river
political economic decisions of social organi- ways, railroads, etc.), sociospatial relations
zation and production. Smith’s work exposed arose that obscured the commodification
uneven development and the capitalist pro- of natural resources. Here Cronon built on
duction of nature as a spatial arrangement Marx and Schmidt by furthering the con-
inevitably arising from capital’s impera- cepts of first and second nature. Cronon
tives of mobility, expansion, and creative outlined the material processes through
destruction. which first nature, conceptualized as external
nonhuman nature, is transformed into sec-
CRONON’S CONTRIBUTION: THE ond nature, that which is internal to human
SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION society and therefore socially produced (such
OF LANDSCAPES AND THE as the built environment). The transfor-
INTERCONNECTIONS OF URBAN mation of first into second nature occurs
AND RURAL SYSTEMS through the human labor of natural resource
extraction, commodity production, and the
Cronon’s dissertation was his first contribu- processes of rural and urban development.
tion to nature–society questions, and it went As industrial practices accelerated, aided by
on to become a foundational text in envi- technological developments in transporta-
ronmental history. This work, later published tion, communication, logging, agriculture,
as Changes in the Land (1983), provided urban infrastructure, and the deployment of
a historical account of the socioecological surplus capital from Northeastern industrial
transformations of the New England land- centers, this transformation coproduced the
scape after the arrival of European settlers. intertwined landscapes of urban Chicago and
Tracing the impact of new trade, agricul- the rural Midwest. Through his book and its
ture, hunting, and other land-use practices, leading concept, Cronon showed not only
Cronon illuminated how the New England how nature was brought into the city but,
landscape was deeply implicated in human more importantly, how it formed the central
subsistence and production, while concur- element of urban materiality.
rently shaping those very subsistence and After his work on urbanization in the
productive practices. Midwestern United States and the growth of
 NATU R E’S M ETROPOL I S 3

Chicago, Cronon extended those interests as has the interest in urban environmental
toward a more theoretical approach, which research. Cronon’s seminal work influenced
aimed to deconstruct the nature–society, several contemporary strands of urban envi-
urban–rural divide touched on by earlier ronmental research with varying concerns:
scholars. In “The Trouble with Wilder- environmental politics in cities (an EJ tra-
ness: Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” dition); continued inquiry into cities as
Cronon (1996) made a strong case against socionatural sites and processes of urban-
the concept of “pristine” nature. Analo- ization (a Lefebvrian tradition); and the
gously with Williams’s (1973) argument that neoliberalization of nature through practices
the idyllic rural past of industrial England of privatization, abstraction, valuation, and
was a construct situated within a partic- commodification.
ular historical moment, Cronon tracked With its origins in the civil rights move-
the concept of wilderness from its bib- ment and dramatically expanding in the early
lical origins as a symbol of waste to the 1990s, the EJ movement played a pivotal role
associations with sacrosanctity within the in popularizing the notion that nature, or the
larger postfrontier ideological project that environment, is where we live, work, and play.
emerged in the nineteenth century. In the While seemingly banal, the act of drawing
context of the growing US environmental attention to urban nature carries heavy impli-
movement, where wilderness represented cations for politics in cities where the siting
the normative ideal of environmentalism, of environmental hazards was, and remains,
Cronon’s polemic situated environmental- highly uneven. As a matter of scholarly tra-
ists’ preoccupation with wilderness within dition, EJ posits the normative principle that
a particular urban–industrial milieu. Fur- environmental burdens and benefits should
thermore, Cronon and others asserted that be shared equally among different social
the concept of wilderness perpetuated the groups, and this has led to increased focus on
conceptual divorce of human societies from urban environmental politics and environ-
their natural environment while also conceal- mental racism. These ideas reconfigured the
ing precolonialist human–nature relations. landscape of the environmental movement.
Cronon’s critique of wilderness also reiterated While emerging from, and hence initially
claims made by scholars and by low income tied to, a legal framework associated with a
communities of color in the environmental Rawlsian conception of justice as individual
justice (EJ) movement by disseminating rights, today EJ movements and scholars
the idea that the environment is where we have transitioned into a deeper critique of the
“live, work, and play”; that the environment structural constraints that (re)produce urban
was not only something detached from our inequalities, from political and economic to
lives, “out there” in the coral reefs or rain- racial and gendered and to environmental
forests, but also in our backyards and urban forms. Ultimately, the trajectory of EJ can
communities. be seen as a progression from legal battles
about the siting of individual noxious sites
NATURE’S METROPOLIS AFTER to a broader structural approach that seeks
CRONON: A REVIVED INTEREST to transform how communities and envi-
IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS ronments are distributed across the social
landscape.
Since the publication of Nature’s Metropolis, Urban geographers working in a Lefeb-
awareness of nature in cities has grown, vrian tradition have taken up Cronon’s
4 NATU R E’S M ETROPOL I S

argument as well. Henri Lefebvre, widely recognizes the material agency of nonhuman
considered the foundational theorist of nature. Arriving at this concept partially
urbanization, conceptualized urbanization as through a revived interest in Marx’s use of
the totality of processes that sweep across the the concept of metabolism, UPE scholars for-
geographical landscape at various scales, to mulated a sophisticated reconceptualization
produce sociospatial relations. While Lefeb- of the always changing flows of circulating
vre wrote little concerning the role of nature matter, value, and representations that con-
in urbanization, his initial conception of an struct, produce, and organize first and second
urban revolution (a global transformation nature.
toward urbanization) has been employed by Tied to UPE and expanding Cronon’s
many scholars preoccupied with nature in ideas on commodification, there has also
the city. David Harvey and Neil Smith were been an increasing focus in recent years on
among the first to develop Lefebvre’s ideas, how contemporary neoliberal political and
in tandem with a further elaboration on economic policy is reworking socionatural
Marx and Schmidt. Smith, as was mentioned urban spaces. While representing a varie-
earlier, unveiled the relation between the gated subfield, these studies have generally
production of space and the production of employed an institutional political economy
nature. Harvey also takes up Lefebvre and approach that traces the logics, processes,
Marx in his provocative statement that there effects, and evaluations of nature’s neolib-
is nothing “unnatural” about New York City, eralization (see Castree 2008a, 2008b for
as he supports his claim by appeal to the var- review). In line with Cronon’s work, which
ious flows of capital, labor, natural resources, sought to unearth the transformation of
and commodities across the geographic land- first into second nature amid US western
scape that constitute the built environments expansion, this body of work investigates
of urban centers. the heterogeneous practices of neoliberal
The interdisciplinary subfield of urban governance, privatization, commodification,
political ecology (UPE) is closely aligned and valuation through empirically grounded
with the Lefebvrian tradition, while most and theoretically informed case studies.
explicitly furthering the ideas of nature’s As the recognition of nature’s central role
metropolis. Lying at the intersection of urban in urbanization has gained broader audi-
political economy, human geography, polit- ences, the insights of nature’s metropolis have
ical ecology, and political theory, UPE was transcended purely environmental schol-
designed to address the political, economic, arship; this can be seen in Neil Brenner’s
and ecological dynamics of urbanization work on planetary urbanization. The concept
through the production of urban natures and of planetary urbanization takes Lefebvre’s
urban environmental inequalities. UPE schol- notion of the urban revolution and the
ars, perhaps most notably Erik Swyngedouw, insights of nature’s metropolis and uses them
have made major advances concerning the to reconceptualize rural–urban relations on
questions addressed in Nature’s Metropolis. a global scale. This literature challenges the
Through the concept of socionature, UPE claim that cities are discrete spatial entities by
moves beyond social constructionism to drawing attention to an implosion–explosion
address the “missing middle” between nature dialectic of urbanization that produces
and society. While maintaining that nature is both zones of agglomeration (cities) and
socially produced (and hence avoiding envi- transformed operational landscapes (the tra-
ronmental determinism), socionature also ditional hinterlands). This reworking of the
 NATU R E’S M ETROPOL I S 5

concepts of urbanization places a stronger Cronon, Williams. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indi-
emphasis on the socionatural processes that ans, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England.
transform geographic landscapes and overtly New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature’s Metropolis:
ties extractive and other industries outside
Chicago and the Great West. New York, NY:
urban centers to the constitution of urban Norton.
infrastructure and social, economic, and Cronon, William. 1996. “The Trouble with Wilder-
political life. ness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”
Nature’s Metropolis and the broad body of Environmental History, 1(1): 7–28.
literature it informs encourage us to move Eagleton, Terry. 2011. Why Marx Was Right. New
beyond the centuries-old conceptual divide Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Harvey, David. 1982. The Limits to Capital. Oxford:
between nature and society, urban and rural,
Basil Blackwell.
in the hopes that we might “get on with the Schmidt, Alfred. 1971. The Concept of Nature in
unending task of struggling to live rightly Marx. London: New Left Books.
in the world – not just in the garden, not Smith, Neil. 1984. Uneven Development: Nature,
just in the wilderness, but in the home that Capital, and the Production of Space. Athens:
encompasses them both” (Cronon 1996, 25). University of Georgia Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the
City. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
SEE ALSO: Hinterlands; Regional
Development; Urban Metabolism
FURTHER READING
Brenner, Neil, ed. 2014. Implosion/Explosions:
REFERENCES
Toward a Study of Planetary Urbanization.
Castree, Noel. 2008a. “Neoliberalising Nature: The Berlin: Jovis.
Logics of Deregulation and Reregulation.” Envi- Heynen, Nik, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw
ronment and Planning A, 40(1): 131–152. eds. 2006. In the Nature of Cities: Urban Politi-
Castree, Noel. 2008b. “Neoliberalising Nature: Pro- cal Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism.
cesses, Effects, and Evaluations.” Environment New York, NY: Routledge.
and Planning A, 40(1): 153–173.

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