Rethinking relational ideas of place in more‐than‐human cities

In theory and practice, there remains much hope that through greater human–place connections, more ecologically sustainable cities can be achieved. Yet ideas about place remain fluid, at once appealing and ambivalent. Since the 1970s, emphasis has shifted from bounded views of place to relational and progressive conceptualisations. More recently, geographers and other scholars have emphasised that humans are engaged in complex human–nonhuman entanglements. In the context of arguments and empirical moves to make more sustainable and resilient cities, these shifts have implications for the ethics and politics of place, sense of place, and place‐based practices. Continuing empirical work by geographers (and other urban scholars) to explore how place is understood, made, and experienced in more‐than‐human worlds therefore remains important. However, we also need to consider reframing existing conceptualisations of “place.” This paper reviews shifting ideas of place and reiterates the continuing importance of rethinking place and place experience in urban theory, urban dwelling, and design. The paper draws together insights from post‐phenomenology, more‐than‐human thinking, non‐representational theory, urban political ecology, and environmental justice to form a loose theoretical framework that can inform place scholarship. In particular, this framework focuses attention on the ethics and politics of the material, temporal, and discursive particularities of the socioecological entanglements that are understood to make place experience.