Dissolving the boundaries of the city: Eco-imagination and the ecology of compassionate democracy

Water and imagination are powerful solvents, capable of carrying poison and nourishment, destruction and hope in their embrace. They can both cross, and even dissolve, boundaries that separate and exclude. This chapter moves back and forth between the physical fluidity of water and the conceptual fluidity of imagination. Aware of the inherent ambivalence of boundaries, our aim is to contribute to the erosion of the barriers that try to separate cities from their wider (ecological and social) world and the conceptual barriers that try to separate human from more-than-human interests in the idea of democracy in late-modern societies such as Australia.