As climate change accelerates and urbanization intensifies, our need for more sustainable and livable cities has never been more urgent. Yet, the imaginary of a flourishing urban ecofuture is often driven by a specific version of sustainability that is tied to both high-tech futurism and persistent economic growth. What kinds of sustainable futures are we calling forth, and at what and whose expense? In Reimagining the More-Than-Human City, Jamie Wang attempts to answer these questions by critically examining the sociocultural, political, ethical, and affective facets of human-environment dynamics in the urban nexus, with a geographic focus on Singapore.

Praise

Reimagining the More-Than-Human City is a vital intervention that speaks not only to scholars of cities and environmental humanities but also to a broader readership grappling with the contradictions of green modernity. Through a careful mix of analysis, critique, and poetic interlude, Wang offers a vital model for thinking the city anew: not as a machine for offshoring sustainability but as a terrain of contested multispecies futures.
– H-Environment

Its title is particularly apt, as the book not only reimagines futures beyond state-aligned visions but also traverses complex time-space relations. Moreover, its emphasis on the more-than-human—incorporating nonhuman actors such as animals, ancestors, technology, soil and water—reinforces its argument that the city is constituted by more-than-human agencies.
– Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

Utilising an impressive array of sources–including interviews, participant observation, documentaries and poetry–Wang challenges dominant human-centred, high-tech, capitalist approaches to urban development and opens up possibilities for reimagining a more inclusive and diverse urban environment with a range of human and other-than-human entities and beings. Although focussing on Singapore, Reimagining the More-Than-Human City has wider theoretical and practical significance for global urban futures and is poised to become a foundational text in urban studies, especially for those engaging with environmental humanities, more-than-human urbanism and critical sustainability scholarship.
– Urban Studies

“By examining the various human and nonhuman agents that have co-shaped Singapore’s urban development, Wang breaks new ground and opens up space for imagining more socioecologically diverse and inclusive urban futures.”
– Creighton Paul Connolly, Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong

“In this rich and insightful study, Jamie Wang uses Singapore as a laboratory to extend our understanding of the more-than-human city. Wang shows that Singapore’s drive to be a global exemplar for ‘green urbanism’ is rooted in an authoritarian discourse of ecological, social, and spatial control.”
– Matthew Gandy, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge; author of Natura Urbana

“Jamie Wang offers us a powerful way of counter-imagining the modern city in the Anthropocene: this is a book of hope and creativity as well as critical insight.
– Emily Potter, Professor in Literary Studies and Associate Head of School (Research), School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University

Resources
2025. Acuto, M., Decaudin, M., Searle, A., Yeo, S. J. I., & Wang, J. Book review forum Reimagining the More-Than-Human City: Stories from Singapore. Urban Studies, (online first).

14 Aug 2025, Book Interview with Natali Peason, New Books Network: Reimagining the More-Than-Human City.

Sept 2024, Book talk with the Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities, University of Stavanger.

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