Ecological city-zenship

ABSTRACT

City-based citizenship (city-zenship) and its ecological ramifications increasingly inform people’s social and political lives, rendering the link between ecological citizenship and political city-zenship a topical subject for analysis. The questions analyzed here are: How can and how do citizens of cities promote sustainable urban development? What are their goals and motivations? And how do these forms of engagement reflect the theory of ecological citizenship in cities? The research is based on semi-structured and in-depth interviews with environmental and political activists in German and Israeli cities. The analysis indicates that the city is a meaningful political arena for ecological citizenship, with distinct patterns of political participation in relation to a city’s particular identity. However, political participation in cities is not independent of the state, but dependent on the political and civic rights enshrined therein.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecological citizenship
• urban citizenship
• urban politics
• urban sustainability

Acknowledgments

I thank the interviewees for sharing their thoughts and reflections. I benefited from comments at the Philosophy of the City conference (San Francisco 2016), WPSA annual meeting conference (San Francisco 2018), and NYU’s Urban Democracy Lab (2019). I thank Avner de Shalit and Timothy Luke for their comments on previous drafts, and I thank my editor John Meyer and the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks and suggestions. Lastly, I am grateful to Martina Löw who generously hosted me at the Technische Universität Berlin and contributed to this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. https://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/.

2. https://www.uclg.org/.

3. https://www.c40.org/.

4. For critical reviews of ecological citizenship see Gabrielson (2008), MacGregor (2014, 2016), Dobson and Bell (2006).

5. The term was originally coined by Lefebvre (1996) and has since been claimed by social movements (Blokland et al. 2015), organizations and governments (e.g. Brazil’s constitution), and has become a central pillar in the New Urban Agenda (UN-Habitat 2017). Meanings attributed to it range from radical resistance to capitalist urbanization to reformist approaches that emphasize the safeguarding of human rights in cities (Turok and Scheba 2018, p. 2–3).

6. For want of space I do not elaborate on the legal status of non-national city-zens (e.g. immigrants, refugees) who constitute a significant percent of the population within many cities (e.g. in 2017–16.7% in Berlin and Freiburg, 16.2% in Hannover; source Eurostat online data-code: urb_cpopcb). The centrality of cities for immigrants poses extremely important political and moral questions, especially with regards to the political rights that membership lends. Several attempts to establish city-zenship rights for non-nationals succeeded (cities in New Zealand) and some failed (e.g. Hamburg, Toronto). For a representative discussion on political rights (e.g. voting, running for office) for non-national residents see de Shalit (2018, chap. 2), Lenard (2015), and Arrighi and Bauböck (2017).

7. At the time of the research I lived in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and worked in Jerusalem. 55% of the interviews were conducted in Berlin over four consecutive months. I also spent 3 days in Hannover and 7 in Freiburg.

8. This method was previously used for research in urban and environmental political theory (de Shalit 2000, 2018, Bell and de Shalit 2011); a similar method was used to assess a political model of ecological citizenship (MacGregor 2006a).

9. See: https://www.vauban.de/en/.

10. For a model of socio-ecological selfhood in cities see Barak (2017).

11. Compare Bauböck’s (2003, pp. 142–5) argument regarding the normative task of urban citizenship to reunite the city with its periphery; and article 11a of the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda (2015): ‘Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning.’.

12. Helmut’s remark exemplifies the political and environmental agendas (resistance to consumer capitalism, and reduced ecological footprint), the inseparability of these agendas, and also reveals that his real motivation is, in fact, political.

13. Colony Collapse Disorder of beehives is considered a major environmental threat due to bees’ critical role in agriculture.

14. It may be assumed that this is a result of the conflict with the Palestinians and Israel’s strong national identity. It is also possible that interviewees in the German cities distanced themselves from nationalist identities because of my nationality (Israeli).

15. Berlin’s overall density is 4,000 people per square kilometer; in the borough of Mitte it is approximately 8,500/km2, in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg it is roughly 14,000/km2. In comparison, the density of Paris is 21,500/km² and of Manhattan around 28,000/km².

16. For an analysis of temporary uses of space in Berlin see Colomb (2012).

17. Considering the implications of Israel’s ethno-national conflict, this analysis does not imply that Jerusalem is an inclusive city. It does suggest, however, that Jerusalemites exhibit a more complex approach to inclusion than city-zens of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Cf. de Shalit’s (2018, chap. 3) analysis of different city approaches to social inclusion of immigrants.

18. For a representative debate on the significance of membership for ecological citizenship see the exchange in Environmental Politics between Hayward (2006a, 2006b) and Dobson (2006).

19. In Israel, Palestinian residents of East-Jerusalem (over 30% of the city population) are recognized as city-zens de jure implying full political, economic and social rights in the city, while de facto there are complex limitations to their realization; in Tel Aviv, African migrants and asylum seekers were denied any form of right at the state level, but some were de facto granted limited social and economic rights in the city (Cohen and Margalit 2015). In Germany, cities provide a rather expansive set of social and economic rights to migrants (Katz et al. 2016).