Urban ecologies on the edge: Making Manila's resource frontierKristian KarloSaguinUniversity of California Press Oakland, 2022. 216 pp., paperback $37.95 (ISBN 978‐0520382664)

The Philippine capital region, Metro Manila, is sandwiched between Manila Bay on its western side and Laguna Lake in the southeast. To date, the role of these bodies of water in the urbanization processes at work in Manila has largely been examined from the standpoint of land reclamation projects, which have multiplied in recent years. Kristian Karlo Saguin, however, shows that putting the spotlight on Laguna Lake can illuminate the regulation of urban space in the Philippine metropolis. In doing so, he makes a compelling case for scholars to consider peripheral areas more closely as spaces of urban provisioning that shape the socioecologies of cities. The book's objective is to trace “the intertwined socioecologies of the city and its resource frontier” (p. 3), and the author provides a well-documented and engaging account of Laguna Lake's history (mainly from the mid-20th century to the present day) and relationship with the Philippine capital region. To present this story, Urban ecologies on the edge is divided into two parts, which revolve around two concepts that Saguin seeks to advance. Part One analyzes how Laguna Lake was envisioned as a frontier space and subsequently transformed to accommodate the Philippine capital region and materialize its visions of urban modernity (Chapter 1). This part also examines the social, spatial, and environmental reorganization that ensues in and around the lake (Chapter 2), as well as the socio-environmental frictions that arise and challenge decisionmakers' plans (Chapter 3). Part Two centres on metabolism and how resources and flows circulate between the city and its frontier. It offers a general (though extremely detailed) portrayal of the social and material infrastructures that allow for the circulation of fish between Laguna Lake and its adjacent urban market (Chapter 4), before zooming in on the case of a specific kind of fish, the bighead carp, whose journey from outside the country to the mouths of Manileñas and Manileños is described and analyzed (Chapter 5). The final chapter turns its attention to the infrastructure that mediates another metabolic relationship between the lake and the city, namely water flows that can be diverted from Manila to the lake. This two-part construction can be convoluted at times, given that the author backs his arguments with two sets of empirical observations (covering food and water, respectively) that are examined alternatively throughout the different chapters. Overall, the book is nevertheless pleasant to read; it introduces snippets of interviews or accounts of field observation that make it engaging to the reader. On this note, the material the book draws on is impressive: the author's multisite and multiyear fieldwork includes a collection of semi-structured interviews with more than 115 research participants and extensive participant observation, complemented with archival work that gives historical depth to this study. In my view, one of the book's greatest strengths is its ability to offer a synthesis of recent developments in urban political ecology (UPE). Thematically, it echoes a recent paper by Tzaninis et al. (2021, p. 242) calling for “a situated more-than-urban political ecology” and proposing that more emphasis be placed on urban peripheries that play a key role in the provisioning of cities. In this regard, Saguin's book convincingly demonstrates that taking a sidestep and focusing on Laguna Lake as an urban frontier offers invaluable insights into processes of urbanization. Furthermore, the author's choice to study flows of fish is a welcome contribution to a field of study that has often neglected the circulation of non-human animals, focusing rather on water, energy, or waste. Theoretically, the book is able to navigate between the Marxist roots of UPE and more recent poststructuralist developments that place the emphasis on everyday practices that transform urban environments in a more diffuse manner (Cornea et al., 2017). In this regard, Saguin's ethnographic look at lake fisher-folk and fish market workers in Manila is of particular relevance. This approach allows for fine-grained analyses of the circulation and transformation of fish, as illustrated brilliantly by the “biography” of the bighead carp in Chapter 5. Here again, Saguin offers a timely contribution to ongoing debates in UPE—see for instance recent invitations to leverage the concept of “metabolic pathways” as a way to analyze the forms of regulation of urban flows, and repoliticize their materiality (Desvaux, 2019). In short, Urban ecologies on the edge provides a compelling account of how a peripheral space of provisioning evolved alongside a major urban centre, and contributed to shaping its process of urbanization. It also constitutes a remarkable panorama of the latest debates and developments that have taken place in the field of UPE.

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