“This Port Is Killing People”: Sustainability without Justice in the Neo-Keynesian Green City

Abstract

This article examines how regional policymakers in Southern California deployed a green growth strategy that cemented racial, environmental, and class precariousness into the region's ecological fabric. It uses participant observation and extant data to show how environmentalist statecraft provided ideological cover for a type of neo-Keynesian logistics growth regime that used infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy without addressing underlying issues of racial, economic, and environmental justice. Urban political ecology and racial capitalism are used as theoretical frameworks to stretch the boundaries of how sustainability is conceptualized and to challenge assumptions behind a green capitalism framework. Finally, the article examines how labor and environmental justice activists used what Sze et al. (2009, 836) called “cultural and ecological discourses” to challenge the green capitalist agenda by incorporating subaltern spatial imaginaries.

本文检视南加州的区域政策制定者, 如何部署绿色成长策略, 将种族、环境与阶级的不安定固定于该区域的生态纹理之中。本研究运用参与式观察与当下的数据, 展现环境保护主义的国家机器, 如何提供意识形态, 掩盖一种运用基础建设花费来刺激经济, 但却未能应对其所涉及的种族、经济和环境正义之根本问题的新凯因斯罗吉特成长体制。本文运用城市政治生态学与种族资本主义, 作为延伸可持续性如何概念化之疆界、并挑战绿色资本主义架构背后的预设之理论架构。最后, 本文检视劳动与环境正义行动者, 如何运用 Sze 等人 (2009, 863) 称为的 “文化与生态论述”, 透过纳入从属的空间想像, 挑战绿色资本主义的议程。

Este artículo examina el tema del modo como los legisladores de California del Sur desplegaron una estrategia de crecimiento verde con la que afianzaron la precariedad racial, ambiental y clasista en la fábrica ecológica de la región. Se usa la observación participativa y los datos existentes para mostrar cómo el arte de gobernar ambientalista suministró la cubierta ideológica para un tipo de régimen de crecimiento logístico neo-keynesiano que utilizó el gasto en infraestructura para estimular la economía, sin abocar los asuntos subyacentes de justicia racial, económica y ambiental. La ecología política urbana y el capitalismo racial sirvieron de una suerte de marco teórico para estirar los límites como se conceptualiza la sostenibilidad y para retar los supuestos que se esconden detrás de un marco de capitalismo verde. Por último, el artículo examina el modo como los activistas de justicia laboral y ambiental usaron lo que Sze et al. (2009, 836) denominaron “discursos culturales y ecológicos,” con lo cual desafiar la agenda capitalista verde, incorporando imaginarios espaciales subalternos.

Key Words:

• environmental racism
• logistics
• ports
• racial capitalism
• social movements
• sustainable development
• urban ecology
• urbanism

关键词：:

• 环境种族歧视
• 罗吉特
• 港口
• 种族资本主义
• 社会运动
• 可持续发展
• 城市生态学
• 城市主义。

Palabras clave:

• racismo ambiental
• logística
• puertos
• capitalismo racial
• movimientos sociales
• desarrollo sustentable
• ecología urbana
• urbanismo

Notes

1. The statement was made at a harbor commission meeting early in his tenure as president (Schoch 2006).

2. Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties make up the South Coast Air Basin. The California Environmental Protection Agency has divided the state into fifteen different air basins.

3. Environmental justice advocates commonly referred to the ports as a diesel death zone. Examples include Cone (2011) and Gonzalez and Miller (n.d.).

4. The material and virtual objects that make up logistics (computer networks, ships, distribution centers, etc.) are absolutely important to this story, and I have written about them elsewhere (De Lara 2012, 2018).

5. References about the contents of the CAAP are taken directly from the policy and supporting documents (Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach 2006).

6. All references to public statements are taken from the author's field notes and from transcriptions made from official meetings that took place between 2006 and 2008.

7. TEUs are a standard unit of measurement. It means twenty-foot equivalent unit. Author calculations are based on data taken from port documents.

8. Freeman was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose election in 2005 signaled a liberal and progressive political swing in local politics after decades of conservative and centrist administrations.

9. These comments were taken from a special joint meeting between POLA and POLB on 14 January 2008, transcribed by the author.

10. These data are taken from the 2010 U.S. Census (see www.census.gov).

11. Simon Goodal, Boston Consulting Group, presentation before the POLA Commission, 6 March 2008, author's notes.

12. Simon Goodal, Boston Consulting Group, presentation before the POLA Commission, 6 March 2008, author's notes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juan De Lara

JUAN DE LARA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089–2534. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include social justice and social movements, urbanization, race and ethnicity, labor, the U.S.–Mexico border, and the intersections between big data technologies and race.