This conceptual contribution argues that the urban should remain a contested field rather than a settled spatial category. It questions approaches that treat nature as an external service provider or a consensual design resource and instead foregrounds conflict, uneven power and the agency of non-human life.

The article situates urban ecology within debates on more-than-human geography, political ecology and post-growth transformation. By unsettling the distinction between urban society and an external nature, it draws attention to the labour, habitats and vulnerabilities through which metropolitan environments are produced.

The text marks an important development in Daniela Perrotti’s research trajectory: from integrating ecosystem services into urban metabolism toward a more critical multispecies account of who benefits from and who bears the costs of urban ecological transformation.