“Humanistic” City in the Age of “Capitalocene”

The humbling climate crisis of the twenty-first century poses a challenge to classical humanism that cherishes the spontaneity of human action and its possibility of instigating newness. With more-than-human philosophies on the mainstream horizon, there remains a conundrum regarding how one can retain the “humanistic” core while attending to the arresting gravity of environmental degradation. This article addresses this enigma in three ways. First, we synthesize urban environmentalism debates and their embattled relationship with humanistic concerns; second, we illuminate everyday creative interventions that urban youth themselves are generating in their continual negotiations between individual and social, old and new, vernacular and technical; and third, we deflect the linear projection of a “Capitalocene” future by exhibiting contingent practices of southern urbanism. Accordingly, we propose new ways of reinventing urban environmentalism that see humans as a part of its divergent future landscapes. Our version of humanistic city frames the urban as a provisional space in which youth socialities and sensibilities are seen as emerging potentialities calibrating the pace of spatial transitions.