Reimagining urban environmentalisms. A comparative framework.

Abstract

Urban sustainability now commands unmatched attention and presumes unprecedented importance. It enjoys political traction and invokes a sense of urgency, which often seems automatic and universal. Calls for sustainability convey imperatives and an agenda for action. In its absence, the very demise of humanity on the planet seems plausible, if not inevitable. This urgency obscures the extent to which sustainability, and its underlying pillars, are carefully analyzed and understood as products of social dynamics. These dynamics – moral logic and aspiration (ethics), and struggles over power (politics) – are important, yet under-analyzed components for understanding how calls for sustainability and urban environmentalism are produced. This chapter focuses on how sustainability projects align with real estate development, and top-down authoritarian approaches to urban planning. Urban land-use development is one sector where sustainability contravenes economic justice, and where ethics loses in the face of marketization. Based on research in Shanghai (2015) and New York City (2007), I propose a comparative transnational framework through which to analyze the emergence of spectacular urban sustainability projects and their ideological limits. I argue that sustainability is not “good” (as in moral) or individualized consumption of housing (solar panels) or food (organic). Rather, it is a struggle over goods, which are not consumerist objects but struggles for space, mobility and belonging.