Empower!

The third volume in the Essays on the Political Economy of Urban Form series, Empower! addresses contemporary power relations and their effects on urban and natural landscapes in the age of the Anthropocene, a nascent geological epoch defined by human activity. In order to better grasp the role of architecture and planning today, the publication explores urban transformations through the added lens of political ecology. Understanding the political, economic, and social factors of humanity’s profound effects on the biosphere not only illuminates the interests underpinning environmental change, but also points to more sustainable ways of securing the great amount of resources that rapid urbanization cannot be sustained without. Edited by Marc Angélil and Rainer Hehl, the book explores geopolitics in the Amazon, infrastructural subtraction in Ecuador, circulatory urbanism in Mumbai, and urban development on Brazil’s frontier. With contributions by Paulo Tavares (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador), Keller Easterling (Yale University, New Haven), Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava (Institute for Urbanology, Mumbai/Goa) and Rainer Hehl (ETH Zurich, TU Berlin).