I begin by stating the obvious: those of us who read and write in universities, who research and publish, live lives shaped by modern cities. Whether we live in large cities, in towns of various sizes – or in landscapes that are truly rural – we exist within transportation, communication and resource-distribution networks that rely on an array of urban institutions and their sustaining technologies (though these networks may vary from region to region in how smoothly they operate). Moreover, we make sense of the world by drawing on cultures that bear the imprint of the thinking that humans have required if they are to negotiate and reproduce modern cities successfully. Just as importantly, the actuality of urban existence, its material processes, in addition to its cultures, have formed the subjectivity from which our thinking, moment by moment, emerges. Cities, in this sense, represent a normal and obvious fact of our lives, no matter how upsetting or disturbing we may find our particular urban places, which we negotiate as we earn a living, build personal relationships and seek what gratifies us.

The question motivating this chapter begins to address this complex actuality for us as disciplined readers of literature alert to global environmental concerns: how do we read in a way that acknowledges simultaneously our modern urban realities and the fact that failure to grasp human life in relation to natural worlds can lead to damaging consequences – for both humans and the life forms they encounter? This question becomes especially urgent in an era in which we, as a species, need both to adapt to – and, if possible, to mitigate – the effects of climate change. The question, so daunting to face, raises such a wide range of issues that this chapter can take only the smallest steps to address it. And, because ecocriticism with an urban focus has yet to develop, I am as much concerned with method as with conclusions.

As this chapter illustrates, I envision an ecocriticism that joins in multidisciplinary conversation about environmental futures, contributing literary studies’ special insights into language and its crafting.