If one component of political ecology is the study of political struggles for control over natural resources, urban political ecology is easy to define, and Swyngedouw and Heynen are its begetters: ‘the political programme of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socio-environmental construction’ (Swyngedouw and Heynen (2003) Antipode 35, 5). N. Heynen (2006) calls for ‘more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of the production of nature’; see Myers (2008) Urb. Geog. 29, 3.