The genesis and spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 have transformed urban social life across the world. In this essay, I show how COVID-19 epitomizes but does not exclusively define global reach of China's cities, which is weaving new interconnections between humans and non-humans, including viruses and endangered wildlife.

Throughout this volume, infrastructure is revealed as a site of uneven development and exploitation, wherein progress for some is achieved through violence toward others. However, this important feature of infrastructure is not consistently highlighted by the volume’s contributors.

On August 3, 2019 Patrick Crusius opened fire in a crowded WalMart, killing 22 people and injuring 24 more. The killer left behind a manifesto in which he justified his actions as a defense against the “replacement” of white Americans by Latinx people, a threat exacerbated, he explains, by climate change.

In the early summer morning of the first day of the 2017 G20 summit, thousands of red-clad protestors descended on the Port of Hamburg. For six hours, they blocked all major road and rail routes out of the port, bringing the monotonous flow of shipping containers to a standstill.

Scientists from Santiago travel thousands of miles to the dusty Atacameñan desert community of Camar to tout hydraulic recharge models that predict restoration of a freshwater aquifer by 2600. Others pontificate on the validity of using CropSyst, a model developed by wheat researchers in eastern Washington, for understanding the impacts of water use on fragile, perennial vegetation.