Border ecologies of urban distincion

2026, published in full length in Spanish, in Fronteras urbanas latinoamericanas: heterogeneidad, productividad y epistemología de la frontera para repensar la ciudad, edited by R. Segura, T. Lulle, and A. Salcedo Fidalgo. Buenos Aires: Clacso, pp. 27-51. (Spanish full text, full OA book)

Border ecologies are key to understand urban differentiation in the ongoing ecological transformation of cities. Rather than perceiving equality as a side product of sustainability, border ecologies highlight the persistence of inequality as socio-ecological differentiation. Apart from toxicity, pollution and overheating, the abyssal side of the (urban) ecological crisis, the presence/absence of certain materials defines border ecologies, such as wood. In border ecologies wood appears in form of the arborization of public spaces, the presence of wooden derivatives in construction, or artfully crafted wooden interiors. The multifaceted appearance of wood, the deep contradictions in its material presence, and the urban relations it forges unravel the workings of the ecological reproduction of social inequalities. In this article, I develop a political ecology of urban borders by discussing its key three conceptual dimensions: (1) the productivity of border thinking; (2) insights from a political ecology of urban borders; and (3) the materiality of distinction. I use globally comparative literature on the urban transformation and wood-related analysis to further sustain that sustainable urban change remains deeply unequal. 

Border thinking is productive to understand urban processes of differentiation as it highlights the relationality of processes of differentiation in three-dimensional zones of contact. It draws from a long tradition that ranges from the relational work on ethnic groups (Barth, Wimmer) and margins of the state (Das/Poole) to the debate of mixing and intersectional struggles (Anzaldúa) as well as border thinking as a decolonial option (Mignolo). Despite the vast variety of concerns, border conceptually provides valuable insights into the layered and contradictory dynamics of border ecologies in contemporary urban processes. At the border, difference is produced through forms of relation. The dynamics of contact, even if asymmetric or partial, move centre stage. It is at borders or margins that relations of power and mechanisms of their reproduction become tested and eventually institutionalized. The limits define the core, and at the border the hegemonic forms of social organization and governance are contested. 

Conceiving a political ecology of borders can renew the analysis of the reproduction of urban differentiation as part of sustainability. The ecological or new materialist foundations of urban life are entangled with the political and capitalist logics through extraction, degradation, and renewal. Socio-ecological borders further dissect the discontinuous urban space. Obvious examples are the distribution of materials and matter in lived space, mapped in cartographies of building materials, biomass, leave cover, urban heat islands, infrastructure densities, air pollution, or the habitats of co-living species. How do ecological densities, rifts and shifting zones map onto economic and social differentiation? How do sustainable urban development initiatives related to the reproduction or dismantling of social inequalities? Which political and economic explanations can be found? These are some of the relevant questions to be asked to address the political ecology of urban borders. 

The urban materiality, such as concrete, brick or tarmac, mirrors urban inequalities. Wood, a player in the urban sustainable transformation, does not seem to be an exception. Border ecologies are interested in the full range of material distinction. The techno-material variation may reaffirm or contradict the social meanings afforded by specific materialities. Regarding wood, social meaning and techno-material quality animate the dynamics of social distinction. In accordance with its substance, appearance and manipulation, urban dwellers animate either discourses of beauty, life quality, and distinction, or of negligence, risk, and precarity. Questions of taste and desirability have a strong material basis which in response, conditions their direction and power of distinction. This interrelation changes over time in response to parallel processes. These can be market logics and fashions, global concerns regarding sustainability or climate change, or the local and transnational manifestations of neoliberal exploitation and zombification. The materiality of distinction offers tangible expressions of the cross-cutting effects of these processes. The various dimensions of the border ecologies of urban distinction appear on all scales of urban life, from the private to the public, from the house to the metropolitan area, within the city, and – possibly – beyond.