Aesthetics of Care and Urbanocene

This text undertakes a critical review of the diverse terms and frameworks currently employed to describe the eco-social crises of our time – such as the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Plantationocene – emphasizing that rather than privileging a single explanatory model, it is more analytically fruitful to maintain a plurality of hypotheses. This epistemological openness allows for a richer understanding of the multiple, intersecting dynamics that shape our present condition. In this context, the chapter proposes the Urbanocene as a conceptual tool that foregrounds the role of urbanization in both the material transformation of the planet and the symbolic reconfiguration of human–environment relations. By shifting the focus to the imaginaries and affective dimensions of uninhabitable futures, the work introduces the aesthetics of care as a transdisciplinary framework. This approach not only allows to question the dominant modes of inhabiting the world – characterized by extraction, acceleration, and disposability – but also nurtures the emergence of alternative ways of inhabiting the world. In doing so, the aesthetics of care becomes a space of both resistance and creation, offering tools to reimagine human and more-than-human coexistence in times of crisis.