http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-5155
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Abstract
Supported by a large body of scholarship, it is increasingly orthodox practice for cities to deploy urban greening interventions to address diverse socioenvironmental challenges, from protecting urban ecosystems to enhancing built environments and climate resilience or improving health outcomes. In this article, we expand the theoretical boundaries used to challenge this growing orthodoxy by laying out a nuanced framework that advances critical urban environmental justice scholarship. Beginning from the now well-supported assumption that urban greening is a deeply political project often framed by technocratic principles and promotional claims that this project will result in more just and prosperous cities, we identify existing contributions and limits when examining urban green inequities through the traditional lenses of distributional, recognition, and procedural justice. We then advocate for and lay out a different analytical framework for analyzing justice in urban greening. We argue that new research must uncover how persistent domination and subordination prevent green interventions from becoming an emancipatory antisubordination, intersectional, and relational project that considers the needs, identities, and everyday lives of marginalized groups. Finally, we illustrate our framework’s usefulness by applying it to the analysis of urban residents’ (lack of) access to urban greening and by operationalizing it for two different planning and policy domains: (1) greening for well-being, care, and health and (2) greening for recreation and play. This final analysis serves to provide critical questions and strategies that can hopefully guide new urban green planning and practice approaches.
城市在部署城市绿化干预措施、应对多元社会环境挑战、保护城市生态系统、到改善已建环境和气候恢复力或改善健康成果, 都会寻求大量学术研究的支持, 这也越来越成为一种惯例行为。在本文中, 为扩展质疑这种日益普遍惯例行为的理论界限, 我们提出了一种略有不同的框架, 推动了对批判性城市环境正义的学术研究。首先我们探讨了现在广受支持的一种假设：城市绿化是一种极具政治色彩的项目, 通常会遵循技术官僚主义的原则, 在宣传的时候会声称：这些项目会让城市更加的公正繁荣。对此, 我们从分配、认可和程序正义的传统视角审视城市绿化不平等问题, 识别出现有的贡献和局限性。随后, 我们主张并提出了一个分析城市绿化正义的不同分析框架。我们认为, 新研究必须揭示一点：持续的支配和从属现象是如何妨碍绿化干预行为, 使其无法获得具有解放性的反从属关系, 成为具有交汇性和关系性的项目的, 无法将边缘化群体的需求、身份和日常生活纳入考量。最后, 我们在城市居民（缺少）享受城市绿化渠道的分析中展示了我们框架的效果, 以及在规划和政策两大领域中可操作性。（1）用于福利、关怀和健康的绿化；（2）用于娱乐和游玩的绿化。本文最后的分析旨在提出关键问题和策略, 希望对新城市绿化规划和实践方法提供指导。
Con el soporte de un gran cuerpo de erudición, para las ciudades constituye una práctica crecientemente ortodoxa desplegar sus intervenciones ecologizantes urbanas como estrategia para enfrentar diversos retos socioambientales, incluidas cosas como la protección de ecosistemas urbanos para fortalecer la resiliencia de los entornos construidos y el clima, o para mejorar los resultados de la salubridad. En este artículo extendemos las fronteras teóricas que se usan para desafiar esa ortodoxia en expansión exponiendo así un marco flexible para estimular la erudición sobre una justicia ambiental urbana crítica. Empezando desde el bien conocido supuesto de que la ecologización urbana es un proyecto de profundo cariz político ––a menudo enmarcado dentro de principios tecnológicos y reclamos promocionales–– para que este proyecto pueda dar lugar a ciudades más justas y prósperas, nosotros identificamos las actuales contribuciones y límites al examinar las inequidades ecológicas urbanas a través de las lentes tradicionales de la justicia distributiva, del reconocimiento y la justicia procedimental. Propugnamos luego por un diferente marco analítico, y lo proponemos, para analizar la justicia de la ecologización urbana. Consideramos que una nueva investigación debe descubrir cómo la dominación persistente y la subordinación impiden que las intervenciones ecologizantes se conviertan en un proyecto emancipador contra la subordinación, interseccional y relacional, que tome en cuenta las necesidades, identidades y las vidas cotidianas de los grupos marginados. Finalmente, ilustramos la utilidad de nuestro enfoque, operacionalizándolo para el análisis de la (falta de) accesibilidad de los residentes a la ecologización urbana y aplicándolo en dos diferentes dominios de planificación y política pública: (1) ecologización para el bienestar, cuidado social y salud pública; y (2) ecologización para la recreación y el juego. Este análisis final sirve para generar cuestiones y estrategias críticas que quizás puedan guiar los nuevos enfoques de planificación y prácticas urbanas.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Isabelle Anguelovski
ISABELLE ANGUELOVSKI is ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. She is also Principal Investigator at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and Director of the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability. Her research examines the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities and how community groups in distressed neighborhoods contest the existence, creation, or exacerbation of environmental inequities as a result of urban (re)development processes and policies.
Anna Livia Brand
ANNA LIVIA BRAND is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720, CA. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on racialized and resistant constructions of the built environment in black mecca neighborhoods in the U.S. North and South. Her work on post-Katrina New Orleans examines how racial geographies have been reconstructed after the storm through disciplines like urban planning.
James J. T. Connolly
JAMES J. T. CONNOLLY is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. He is also Co-Director of the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability. His research focuses on social–ecological conflicts in urban planning and policy.
Esteve Corbera
ESTEVE CORBERA is a Research Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08193, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. His research focuses on understanding the environmental effectiveness and well-being outcomes of conservation and climate change policies, mostly in rural areas of the Global South.
Panagiota Kotsila
PANAGIOTA KOTSILA is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. She is a political ecologist researching urban environments and justice, the biopolitics of public health, and nature’s neoliberalization processes.
Justin Steil
JUSTIN STEIL is an Associate Professor of Law and Urban Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, MA. E-mail: [email protected]. Broadly interested in social stratification and spatial dimensions of inequality, his research examines the intersection of urban policy with property, land use, and civil rights law. His recent scholarship has explored the relationship between space, power, and inequality in the context of environmental justice, disaster recovery, immigration federalism, residential segregation, lending discrimination, and mass incarceration.
Melissa Garcia-Lamarca
MELISSA GARCÍA-LAMARCA is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. She is a geographer whose research seeks to untangle the political economic structures that generate urban and housing inequalities and to explore how collective urban struggles can disrupt the inegalitarian status quo and open up new alternatives.
Margarita Triguero-Mas
MARGARITA TRIGUERO-MAS is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. She is an environmental and public health scientist focusing her research on healthy and just cities, with a special focus on natural outdoor environments (but also on air pollution, transport, and climate), gentrification, mental health, and vulnerable populations.
Helen Cole
HELEN COLE is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. She is a social epidemiologist with training in urban health, health equity, and community health. Her research explores whether and how healthier cities might also be made equitable, placing urban health interventions in the context of the broader urban social and political environments.
Francesc Baró
FRANCESC BARÓ is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include multiscale spatial analysis of urban ecosystem services, urban equity analyses in the access to green infrastructure, and assessment of nature-based solutions and other greening strategies from a critical perspective.
Johannes Langemeyer
JOHANNES LANGEMEYER is a Principal Investigator at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08193, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. He is a geographer with a research focus on urban social–ecological systems, ecosystem services, and integrated assessments.
Carmen Pérez del Pulgar
CARMEN PÉREZ DEL PULGAR is a Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research explores the political and social production of green-playful entanglements in cities. It questions how conflicting discursive, affective, and material registers of green- and child-friendly cities become populated, renegotiated, and fragmented through everyday urban spaces, using a race, gender, and class lens.
Galia Shokry
GALIA SHOKRY is a Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. She is interested in how power relations shape and reconfigure vulnerability, equity, security, and belonging in urban space. Her doctoral research examines the intersection of climate adaptation policies and practices with urban inequalities, green gentrification, and struggles for social and racial justice in the city.
Filka Sekulova
FILKA SEKULOVA is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08003, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Her fields of research embrace happiness economics, degrowth, the governance and politics of nature-based solutions in urban areas, and the role of community-based initiatives in the transition toward a just and “strong” sustainability.
Lucia Argüelles Ramos
LUCIA ARGÜELLES is a Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Fellow at the Estudis d’Economia i Empresa and the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Catalunya, 08035, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on how socioenvironmental transformations interact with broader political and economic dynamics as well as how people imagine and perceive such relations. Her current project studies weeds and weeding technologies as part of the expansion of the agrifood complex, as well as prospective regulatory changes affecting farmers’ practices.