After Pristine Nature

The chapter examines alternative urbanisms that have emerged in the context of the Anthropocene in South America. Drawing on three case studies – Indigenous resistance to colonial settlement in Paraguay and Guayrá, multispecies agrarian landscapes in the Atlantic Forest, and abandoned extractivist company towns in the Amazon – it interrogates how urban forms in forested environments have historically diverged from Western-centric models. Rather than viewing tropical forests as untouched wilderness, the study emphasizes their long-term human shaping and cosmopolitical entanglements. It critiques persistent Eurocentric assumptions in environmental historiography, including linear models of development, state-centered urbanism, and narratives of environmental collapse. The chapter situates these case studies within broader debates on the Anthropocene, arguing for a plural understanding of global environmental change that accounts for the uneven impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and ecological transformation in the Global South. Ultimately, the chapter reconceptualizes tropical forest urbanism as central to both historical and contemporary configurations of urban space, knowledge production, and planetary crisis.