"As cities grow, they colonize surrounding land, resources, air and water -- thereby exacerbating a broad variety of social harms. The edges of cities sprawl outward and upward as a result of everyday life, policy decisions, priorities, control, and government regulation. Various social, environmental, and fire-related harms result from the constant creep of these urban edges. Cities are not just physical constructions. Building bricks, tarmacs, electrical wiring, and building cladding all contain power dynamics, political meanings, and hidden exploited labor. These ordinary and extraordinary elements provoke a range of consequences for more-than-human species (a concept emphasizing human and non-human species and their interconnections) as they compete for space both within and outside of the citys borders. In Ordinary and Extraordinary Harms in the City: A Green Criminological Analysis, Australian-Swedish criminologist Kajsa Lundberg offers a critical, green, and spatial criminological exploration of cities that, like Melbourne, Australia - the city in which Lundberg lives and teaches - are rapidly expanding both upwards and outwards. Cities worldwide are growing and most of the worlds population now lives in urban areas.

Exploring the harms bound up with the citys spatial politics, this book investigates what happens when a city seeks to accommodate this growth. The everyday decisions and tools bound up in planning and architecture contribute to a range of harms to human and more-than-human worlds, including intensified fossil fuel combustion and increased fire risk. In particular, her analysis considers the nature and extent of the sprawl of the city, the socio-economic incentives that drives such growth, and harms associated with the destruction of natural habitats, carbon intense developments, fire risk and other social harms associated with suburban and high-rise living"-- Provided by publisher.