Social Justice and the Green City

Liette Gilbert

doi:10.7213/urbe.06.002.se01

Abstract

A transition to a new, greener urbanism is increasingly imperative in the face of environmental crises. However, such a transition is not possible without considering social justice. This essay examines some tensions between social justice and urban sustainability and some of the reasons why a social justice approach to urban sustainability is often marginalized by a neoliberal sustainability ontology. This essay first engages with various normative concepts of social justice and its long existing but unfulfilled claim in the city. It then considers some gains toward greener urbanism but contends that urban sustainability responses have generally been more preoccupied with ecological modernization and the reproduction of best practices rather than with socio-spatial justice. In looking at some workings of green neoliberalism, the essay points to how the ecological is easily recuperated for neoliberal ends. The last section addresses some reasons why the social is de-privileged in the dominant sustainability discourses and practices, and how social justice serves, through citizenship practices, as a claim to urban change where participation is not a bureaucratized process but an everyday practice. Overall, the essay cautions against certain sustainability discourses and green neoliberalism without addressing its ingrained inequalities.

Highlights

In his very in luential book, Social Justice and the City, published forty years ago and still of great relevance in the face of widening urban inequalities produced by neoliberal capitalism, David Harvey (1973, p. 314) contends that a revolutionary practice can only accomplish the transition from “[...] an urbanism based in exploitation to an urbanism appropriate for the human [and other] species.” In many urban contexts, such transition is increasingly presented as an imperative in the face of ecological destruction and obsolete urban infrastructure
This essay examines some tensions between social justice and urban sustainability and some of the reasons why a social justice approach to urban sustainability is often marginalized by a neoliberal sustainability ontology
It considers some gains toward greener urbanism but contends that urban sustainability responses have generally been more preoccupied with ecological modernization and the reproduction of best practices rather than with socio-spatial justice

Summary

Introduction

In his very in luential book, Social Justice and the City, published forty years ago and still of great relevance in the face of widening urban inequalities produced by neoliberal capitalism, David Harvey (1973, p. 314) contends that a revolutionary practice can only accomplish the transition from “[...] an urbanism based in exploitation to an urbanism appropriate for the human [and other] species.” In many urban contexts, such transition is increasingly presented as an imperative in the face of ecological destruction and obsolete urban infrastructure. This essay contends that social justice, as a claim and means for addressing equity de icits, has often been neglected in dominant sustainability discourses that drive the development of “greener” cities. Such an argument is not necessarily new but remains critical because sustainability, often articulated in the economic language of the triple bottom line, mobilizes the environment at the service of pro it-driven agendas, which further exacerbate social divides (AGYEMAN; BULLARD; EVANS, 2012; DAVIDSON et al, 2012). The last section addresses some reasons why the social is de-privileged in the dominant sustainability discourses and practices, and how social justice serves, through citizenship practices, as a claim to urban change where participation is not a bureaucratized process but an everyday practice

Social justice in the city

Urban sustainability

Green neoliberalism

Sustaining Social Justice

Conclusion