Reimagining the More-Than-Human City

Stories from Singapore

Author Jamie Wang
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An exploration of the multifaceted urban environmental issues in Singapore through a more-than-human lens, calling for new ways to think of and story cities.

As climate change accelerates and urbanization intensifies, our need for more sustainable and livable cities has never been more urgent. Yet, the imaginary of a flourishing urban ecofuture is often driven by a specific version of sustainability that is tied to both high-tech futurism and persistent economic growth. What kinds of sustainable futures are we calling forth, and at what and whose expense? In Reimagining the More-Than-Human City, Jamie Wang attempts to answer these questions by critically examining the sociocultural, political, ethical, and affective facets of human-environment dynamics in the urban nexus, with a geographic focus on Singapore.

Widely considered a model for the future of urbanism and an emblematic new world city, Singapore, Wang contends, is a fascinating site to explore how modernist sustainable urbanism is imagined and put into practice. Drawing on field research, this book explores distinct and intrarelated urban imaginaries situated in various sites, from the futuristic, authoritarian Supertree Grove, positioned as a technologically sustainable solution to a velocity-charged and singular urban transportation system, to highly protected nature reserves and to the cemeteries, where graves and memories continue to be exhumed and erased to make way for development. Wang also attends to more contingent yet hopeful alternatives that aim to reconfigure current urban approaches. In the face of growing enthusiasm for building high-tech, sustainable, and “natural” cities, Wang ultimately argues that urban imaginings must create space for a more relational understanding of urban environments.
“By examining the various human and non-human agents that have co-shaped Singapore’s urban development, Wang breaks new ground and opens up space for imagining more socio-ecologically diverse and inclusive urban futures.”
—Creighton Paul Connolly, Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong

“In this rich and insightful study Jamie Wang uses Singapore as a laboratory to extend our understanding of the more-than-human city. Wang shows that Singapore’s drive to be a global exemplar for ‘green urbanism’ is rooted in an authoritarian discourse of ecological, social, and spatial control."
—Matthew Gandy, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge; author of Natura Urbana

“Jamie Wang offers us a powerful way of counter-imagining the modern city in the Anthropocene: this is a book of hope and creativity, as well as critical insight.”
—Emily Potter, Professor in Literary Studies and Associate Head of School (Research) for the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University

“Reimagining the More-Than-Human City is a vital intervention that speaks not only to scholars of cities and environmental humanities but also to a broader readership grappling with the contradictions of green modernity. Through a careful mix of analysis, critique, and poetic interlude, Wang offers a vital model for thinking the city anew: not as a machine for offshoring sustainability but as a terrain of contested multispecies futures.”
H-Environment

“Its title is particularly apt, as the book not only reimagines futures beyond state-aligned visions but also traverses complex time-space relations. Moreover, its emphasis on the more-than-human—incorporating nonhuman actors such as animals, ancestors, technology, soil and water—reinforces its argument that the city is constituted by more-than-human agencies.”
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

"Utilising an impressive array of sources–including interviews, participant observation, documentaries and poetry–Wang challenges dominant human-centred, high-tech, capitalist approaches to urban development and opens up possibilities for reimagining a more inclusive and diverse urban environment with a range of human and other-than-human entities and beings. Although focussing on Singapore, Reimagining the More-Than-Human City has wider theoretical and practical significance for global urban futures and is poised to become a foundational text in urban studies, especially for those engaging with environmental humanities, more-than-human urbanism and critical sustainability scholarship."
Urban Studies
Jamie Wang is an urban environmental humanities researcher, writer, and poet. She is Research Assistant Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong. Jamie is also an editor of the journal Feminist Review.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Fabricating the Future
1. An Eco-Moderniser’s Garden
Interlude: Who Holds My Name?
2.The Invisible Times
3. Re-Imagining Urban Movement
4. What Comes after Water
Interlude: The Genealogy of Tap Water
5. The Sprouting Farms
Epilogue: A Year of Reckoning?
Notes
References
Index
additional book photo
additional book photo
additional book photo

About

An exploration of the multifaceted urban environmental issues in Singapore through a more-than-human lens, calling for new ways to think of and story cities.

As climate change accelerates and urbanization intensifies, our need for more sustainable and livable cities has never been more urgent. Yet, the imaginary of a flourishing urban ecofuture is often driven by a specific version of sustainability that is tied to both high-tech futurism and persistent economic growth. What kinds of sustainable futures are we calling forth, and at what and whose expense? In Reimagining the More-Than-Human City, Jamie Wang attempts to answer these questions by critically examining the sociocultural, political, ethical, and affective facets of human-environment dynamics in the urban nexus, with a geographic focus on Singapore.

Widely considered a model for the future of urbanism and an emblematic new world city, Singapore, Wang contends, is a fascinating site to explore how modernist sustainable urbanism is imagined and put into practice. Drawing on field research, this book explores distinct and intrarelated urban imaginaries situated in various sites, from the futuristic, authoritarian Supertree Grove, positioned as a technologically sustainable solution to a velocity-charged and singular urban transportation system, to highly protected nature reserves and to the cemeteries, where graves and memories continue to be exhumed and erased to make way for development. Wang also attends to more contingent yet hopeful alternatives that aim to reconfigure current urban approaches. In the face of growing enthusiasm for building high-tech, sustainable, and “natural” cities, Wang ultimately argues that urban imaginings must create space for a more relational understanding of urban environments.

Reviews

“By examining the various human and non-human agents that have co-shaped Singapore’s urban development, Wang breaks new ground and opens up space for imagining more socio-ecologically diverse and inclusive urban futures.”
—Creighton Paul Connolly, Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong

“In this rich and insightful study Jamie Wang uses Singapore as a laboratory to extend our understanding of the more-than-human city. Wang shows that Singapore’s drive to be a global exemplar for ‘green urbanism’ is rooted in an authoritarian discourse of ecological, social, and spatial control."
—Matthew Gandy, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge; author of Natura Urbana

“Jamie Wang offers us a powerful way of counter-imagining the modern city in the Anthropocene: this is a book of hope and creativity, as well as critical insight.”
—Emily Potter, Professor in Literary Studies and Associate Head of School (Research) for the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University

“Reimagining the More-Than-Human City is a vital intervention that speaks not only to scholars of cities and environmental humanities but also to a broader readership grappling with the contradictions of green modernity. Through a careful mix of analysis, critique, and poetic interlude, Wang offers a vital model for thinking the city anew: not as a machine for offshoring sustainability but as a terrain of contested multispecies futures.”
H-Environment

“Its title is particularly apt, as the book not only reimagines futures beyond state-aligned visions but also traverses complex time-space relations. Moreover, its emphasis on the more-than-human—incorporating nonhuman actors such as animals, ancestors, technology, soil and water—reinforces its argument that the city is constituted by more-than-human agencies.”
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

"Utilising an impressive array of sources–including interviews, participant observation, documentaries and poetry–Wang challenges dominant human-centred, high-tech, capitalist approaches to urban development and opens up possibilities for reimagining a more inclusive and diverse urban environment with a range of human and other-than-human entities and beings. Although focussing on Singapore, Reimagining the More-Than-Human City has wider theoretical and practical significance for global urban futures and is poised to become a foundational text in urban studies, especially for those engaging with environmental humanities, more-than-human urbanism and critical sustainability scholarship."
Urban Studies

Author

Jamie Wang is an urban environmental humanities researcher, writer, and poet. She is Research Assistant Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong. Jamie is also an editor of the journal Feminist Review.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Fabricating the Future
1. An Eco-Moderniser’s Garden
Interlude: Who Holds My Name?
2.The Invisible Times
3. Re-Imagining Urban Movement
4. What Comes after Water
Interlude: The Genealogy of Tap Water
5. The Sprouting Farms
Epilogue: A Year of Reckoning?
Notes
References
Index

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additional book photo
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