"Nature in the City" Chapter 2

This reading was a very different way for me to examine cities and the dynamic of the city system and structure. He begins by talking about our everyday connection with our surroundings and the importance of this connection. He believes that everything we use or have a connection with in our lives comes from our surroundings. I definitely agree with this and this is why we should look at our world and our lives as a system intsead of a series of static events.

He moves on to discuss the politics and structure surrounding the local state. He talks about the connection between the physical space and political awareness. It is said that political science literature often completely forgets about the space in which it exists in. I definitely agree with this i think that all too often the official and business side of poitics disconnect itself from the world in which it exists in. Next he talks about the importance of the civil society for the "constitution of the political and local state." This point is a bit confusing to me becuase i became confused about his definition of the civil society. To me the civil society is the common man, but i am worried that this is the simplifying concept to which he talks about. Next he says that the local state obtains a key position in the place of globalization in the way that they consider the urban as the place of conflict. I do not really agree with this idea about the local state i am confused as the the connection between conflict and world globalization i think that they are not productive in working together but mroe opposing factors. I could be misunderstanding the used definitions of conflict and globalization but to be they are not forces that work together. Finally he talks about the the local state is a policy arena and an active participant of a rescaling processes that has characterized the era in which we are living.

Overall he talks about discources in urban environmental policy making and makes it clear that he does not want to make either discourse nor political economy primacy more important than one another. He also breaks with common practice and does not make then either base or superstructure as many other people do.