Ecosystems and urbanization: A colossal meeting of giant complexities: This article belongs to Ambio’s 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Urbanization: A colossal meeting of giant complexities: This article belongs to Ambio’s 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Urbanization

There is a long tradition in urban and environmental studies to understand urbanisation and ecosystem change as entwined. In 2020 I published a paper in Ambio with co-authors that adressed this problem from a non-equilibrium systems ecology perspective. This article is a "behind the paper" reflection for Ambio's 50th anniversary on the 2010-article which was called "Urban transitions: on urban resilience and human-dominated ecosystems." I reflect upon the value of the 2010-article, in particular how we were early out in using infrastructure to address the relation between urbanisation and ecosystem change. I also reflect on how my research has changed since then to more explicitly address two key aspects that were only vaguely articulated in the 2010-article: knowledge politics and uneven social power relations. The reflection hopes to contribute inspiration and support to the many efforts already existing among urban ecologists and environmental scientists to develop interdisciplinary collaborations that explicitly consider how knowledge, power, and capital shape the "colossal meeting of giant complexities," how urbanization and complex ecosystems meet and evolve.