The value of analytic diversity in urban and sustainability studies

ABSTRACT

In a commentary essay, Westman and Castán Broto claim that some choices of analytic strategy are inappropriate for research in urban environmental studies (“Transcending Existing Paradigms: The Quest for Justice in Urban Climate Change Planning.” Local Environment, 26(5), 536–541). In contrast, this commentary argues that there can be benefits from research projects that have analytic distinctions between and within sustainability and justice goals in addition to having analytic categories that consider justice and sustainability together. Moreover, projects that focus on one or more sectors with sector-specific research questions, and that focus on goals or frames, can also contribute interesting and novel research in the field. Should such choices of method and analytic strategy be stigmatised or devalued, the research field would lose some of its analytic diversity and robustness. This commentary points to conditions under which such approaches can be beneficial to improved knowledge in both environmental research fields and political fields, and it outlines the types of research questions that can be lost by devaluing such analytic choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Cities
• justice
• planning
• climate change
• sustainability

In a commentary on methods and analytic frameworks in local environmental and sustainability studies, two researchers argue that many studies of justice and climate planning in cities make three questionable assumptions: “(1) the separation of social justice and environmental sustainability; (2) thinking of cities through a sectoral approach; [and] (3) the focus on planning and aspirations instead of action” (Westman and Castán Broto 2021, 537). This commentary provides an alternative view to their argument that such assumptions are necessarily problematic. Instead, there can be valuable insights gained from research that 1) makes theoretical and methodological distinctions between different types of goals and frames related to justice and sustainability; 2) focuses on a single sector or limited number of sectors; and/or 3) is limited to a particular aspect of urban environmental politics, such as plan processes and goals. More generally, this commentary defends the value of theoretical and methodological diversity that can include these analytic choices, especially when such choices are justified by the project’s goals and framework.

One area of agreement with their perspective is that the choices of research design and analytic framework that they defend are a valuable part of a diverse research community. Indeed, such perspectives are not novel, are widespread in the literature, have been adopted extensively in my work and that of my colleagues and students, and were cited in the study that they select as a negative exemplar (Hess and McKane 2021). For example, on approaches that consider justice and sustainability together, we have developed multiple projects on environmental justice (Hess 2007b; McKane et al. 2018; Hess and Satcher 2019); energy justice and energy democracy (Hess 2018, 2020); just transitions (Hess, McKane, and Belletto 2021); different types of justice in the context of environmental conflict (Hess, McKane, and Pietrzyk 2022); and a series of books on social movements, the environment, and urban and industrial transitions (Hess 2007a, 2009, 2012, 2016). Likewise, on their call for integrated perspectives that situate analyses in broader macro- and meso-frameworks, our projects also highlight structural inequality (e.g. Hess et al. 2017; McKane and Hess 2022) and power relations in social fields (Frickel and Hess 2014; Kungl and Hess 2021). On the relationship between practices and goals, frames, imaginaries, and other interpretive schemata, many of my projects have situated such analysis in broader fields of relations between actors (e.g. Hess 2018, 2019, 2020; Hess and Gentry 2019; Hess, McKane, and Belletto 2021; Lee and Hess 2019; Hess, McKane, and Pietrzyk 2022; Sovacool et al. 2022). In short, the study of ours that they criticise is situated in a body of other studies, and it makes specific analytic choices, rather than unconscious assumptions, for clearly defined purposes.

My concern with the commentary of Westman and Castán Broto is that the prescriptions that they make for good research could negatively affect the analytic diversity of the research field by stigmatising some types of research questions and methodological choices. Rather than recognise that different studies make analytic choices for specified purposes, they devalue all research that they could classify as violating at least one of their three prescriptions. To the contrary, there are many examples of research projects that have justifiable analytical goals that lead to analytic choices that differ from their prescriptions.

With respect to their first topic, the analytic distinction between justice and sustainability goals, they write, “Justice and sustainability are often intrinsically connected, and it is often impossible to address one without the other,” and they offer a just transition perspective as an alternative framework (Westman and Castán Broto 2021, 538). Although it is clear that justice and sustainability in political fields are connected, there are various conditions under which an analytic distinction between justice and sustainability provides clarity and opportunities for good research. Indeed, in the history of just transitions thinking, the relationship between justice and sustainability varied over time and across contexts (Hess, McKane, and Pietrzyk 2022).

Our analysis of sustainability plans and related programme initiatives in 50 U.S. cities, which is a carefully demarcated topic appropriate for a short article, is one example of a project that makes a justifiable distinction between goal types. Just as an anthropologist begins with the “emic” categories of the community that is being described, our analysis of sustainability plans in 50 cities started with actually existing plans and their categories, which involve distinctions between sustainability and justice goals. Our methodological decision makes it possible to explore how the plans are undergoing changes to 2.0 versions that include increasing attention to the ways in which equity- or justice-related goals can be integrated with the sustainability focus of previous generations of plans, and we suggest ways that this trend can be developed. It would be possible to write a normative critique of the plans based on the view that the plans should be revised from the ground up from a more integrated perspective. However, there is also value in a method that that starts from the categories of the plans themselves, and there are potential strategic benefits to this approach. The decision generated a study that provided valuable information to government officials, advocates, community groups, and other actors who are engaged in 2.0 revisions and who want to understand what other cities are already doing.

A similar problem occurs with the authors’ prescription to avoid a sectoral approach to urban policy and planning. They write that “sectoral thinking obscures alternative conceptualisations of the city” and that “a sectoral perspective alone is not sufficient to address climate justice in the city” (Westman and Castán Broto 2021, 538). There is no reason to disagree with the view that studies that critique the assumptions of planning documents, including a sector-based approach, can be a valuable part of the mix of research in a social science field. However, the analysis of how sectors and planning processes are embedded in urban politics and power structures is a different project from one that begins with the categories of the plans themselves, which are constructed in terms of sectors. Again, by engaging with the conceptual categories currently at work, researchers can point to ways of achieving helpful revisions in 2.0 planning processes and plan goals that could benefit marginalised communities. Indeed, an approach that starts with actually existing urban plans could be more effective at achieving some types of outcomes related to planning processes than broader structural, institutional, or field analyses that my colleagues and I have conducted in many other projects.

In addition to the value of a methodology that begins with the emic categories of actors themselves, there are also examples of other types of methods that have good reason to violate one or more of the authors’ prescriptions. For example, when researchers engage in comparative analysis, it can be helpful to construct ideal types of urban planning goals and sectoral categories that can allow the researchers to develop rigorous comparisons. Likewise, quantitative research on urban plans, some of which we cite, may opt to construct variables that involve similar distinctions. In both qualitative comparative analysis and quantitative analysis, these decisions of analytic strategy are defined in the context of literature reviews and projects that involve hypothesis development or hypothesis testing. Likewise, many researchers specialise in a single sector, and there is also room for research that focuses on one sector or a small number of sectors and their relationships. Indeed, some of Castán Broto’s publications have an analytic framework that violates their own prescriptions by lacking a justice or just-transition orientation and by focusing on a single sector (e.g. Doick et al. 2009; Huang et al. 2018).

With respect to the argument that research that focuses on plan goals “draws attention away from actual practices” (Westman and Castán Broto 2021, 539), our study is based on a methodological decision to focus on goals based on clear research questions and a specified data set. Again, the study is based on the plans themselves, which use goals as a prominent category. The study of goal-practice relationships would be a different research project with a different method, such as survey research or interview-based case studies (Hess and McKane 2021, 463). We noted that many plans “only articulate goals and do not have a robust implementation process” (463), we noted that plans and their goals serve a variety of purposes such as public relations for city leaders, and we cited the relevant background literature on the factors that affect implementation and on the relationship between goals and outcomes. There are many studies in the literature that focus on goals or similar topics (e.g. frames, storylines), and there is ample room in the literature for studies of plan goals, just as there is room for studies that examine the relationship between goals and practices or outcomes.

The second main area of disagreement is their blanket claim that all urban planning and climate policy “reproduce inequality and justice in cities” such as by “contribut[ing] to gentrification” (Westman and Castán Broto 2021, 537). It is well known that urban sustainability initiatives can have negative implications for marginalised communities, including the facilitation of gentrification by making urban spaces more expensive. Moreover, the potential is particularly strong in the 1.0 plans, which focus on sustainability and often have new urbanist approaches that have been associated with gentrification. However, a more nuanced and empirical approach to the issue is to view urban planning as a social field where actors engage in relations of conflict and cooperation to produce symbolic products (on the field approach in sustainability studies, see Kungl and Hess 2021). The extent to which urban sustainability and climate adaptation plans and policies reproduce inequality and justice, versus become opportunities for addressing such problems, depends on local conditions and can be analyzed with empirical research on planning processes as social fields. For example, if one were to conduct such a study of U.S. cities, one would find substantial variation across cities. Given the emerging coalitions in many large U.S. cities that have included the progressive politics of “Green New Deal” thinking in their planning processes, the assumption that all plans reproduce urban inequality is particularly inappropriate for some cities in the U.S. data set that we developed.

In summary, rather than engaging in dismissive commentaries against researchers whose broader body of work shows sustained attention to many of the issues raised, it would be better to develop an inquiry into the conditions and purposes under which some types of methodological choices are better or worse at achieving specified research goals. There are interesting empirical questions that emerge from research that distinguishes goal types and sector types and from research that focuses on specified sectors or on planning documents. For example, one might explore causal relationships between actor types and goal types by specifying which actors support which types of goals or frames. In the tradition of largely quantitative, North American, policy adoption studies (which we cite and with which we engage in the appendix), another example is research that explores the conditions under which some types of goals or plans are more likely to be adopted or implemented. Such research could distinguish between subtypes of sustainability goals or subtypes of justice goals, and it could also include more synthetic goals related to energy democracy, energy justice, just transitions, just sustainability, or environmental justice. Likewise, research could explore similarities and differences in the ways in which justice is defined across different sectors. Comparative analysis across sectors could lead to improved understanding of differences in political opportunities for advocates and activists and of causal relationships between sector types and goal types. With respect to practices and implementation, the research could examine which types of goals tend to result in higher and lower levels of implementation and under what conditions. But all of these questions would require a more open-minded approach that does not automatically stigmatise a group of analytic choices that researchers could decide are valuable for specified purposes.

In conclusion, we have long known from research on scientific fields that the analytic diversity and social diversity of research fields are connected in complex and unpredictable ways (Haraway 1989). It is an assumption to suggest that one type of analytic strategy will automatically favour or preclude certain types of insights or benefits without investigating the details. In general, diversity in an intellectual field can improve knowledge making through processes of “strong objectivity” (Harding 2015). Likewise, the social effects of research are unpredictable, and modest interventions that start with existing plans are not necessarily less helpful for marginalised communities than other approaches.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).