Luke Harris
2025
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This article examines the socioecological metabolism of soils in New York City, tracing their production, circulation, and transformation within the dynamics of extended urbanisation. It explores how soil, as both a biophysical and socio-political entity, alternates between being treated as lively or inert in response to the demands of capital.
The study explores three cases: a soil mixing facility in New Jersey, the regional extraction of sand, and the municipal Clean Soil Bank program. By integrating scholarship on urban metabolism and the metabolic rift, the article challenges reductionist and technocratic perspectives framing soil as a passive substrate, emphasising instead its dynamic role in urban life and agrarian urbanism. The findings reveal how soils, shaped by socioecological histories, resist simplistic binaries of life and nonlife, offering new possibilities for understanding the interplay between urbanisation, ecological relations, and political economy.
Received 3 January 2025, Accepted 28 May 2025, Published online: 15 July 2025