Confronting the urban climate emergency

Abstract

Nothing will shape urban life in this century more than carbon—efforts to abolish it, and the consequences of its pollution. Critical urban studies must put the climate emergency at the very core of the discipline. This paper suggests four methodological injunctions to this end: (1) a field-wide development of carbon literacy along the lines of how all critical urbanists understand capital and inequalities; (2) research that links technical low-carbon urban projects to urban spaces’ core political conflicts; (3) both a recuperation of historical cases of democratizing, massive built environment intervention, and an engagement with the cutting-edge technologies of green urbanism, each in service of producing egalitarian visions of climate-friendly urban spaces; finally, (4) I argue that critical urbanists must join the fight, forging new alliances within and beyond universities to prevent eco-apartheid, and articulate a no-carbon, radically democratic alternative.

• urbanization
• climate change
• density
• carbon
• social movements
• political economy

Notes

1 I owe the idea of investigating London’s example to David Madden.

2 The phrase is not new; Pettifor gives a detailed genealogy of its first appearances, and how it came to prominence again in 2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Aldana Cohen

Daniel Aldana Cohen is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)². He is the co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso 2019). Email: [email protected]