Reconceptualising urban justice and sustainability

Alternative conceptual framings are a feature of many and diverse approaches to urban sustainability and/or justice, and in particular their intersections. Arguments in their favour range from the ethical to the instrumental: the moral right of all those living in cities to contribute to shaping their future, to the practical importance of diverse outlooks, ideas and capabilities in working towards sustainability and justice.

General Introduction to Alternative Conceptual Framings

Critiques of and challenges to dominant narratives, perceptions, approaches to decision-making and forms of action are increasingly prominent in debates about sustainability and justice, within urban settings and beyond. Such counter-normative orientations arise in different ways in different contexts: in some cases as an outcome of critical scholarship or radical political orientation, in others via the voices and actions of marginal and under-represented groups, often as a combination of these resulting from deliberate alliance.

A large body of critical scholarship, backed up by empirical evidence and formal analysis, suggests that injustice and unsustainability are inbuilt structural features of currently dominant political, economic and technological regimes, and therefore difficult to challenge from within them. The academic field of political ecology, for example, emphasises that environmental issues have inseparable social and political dimensions, and can neither be understood nor addressed without taking into account the uneven distribution of costs and benefits of environmental change across differences of class, race, ethnicity and gender, and the power imbalances these both reflect and engender. The concept of Convergence provides an integrative framework for reconciling equity and respect for global environmental limits, in areas such as access to natural resources, energy, governance, trade and human well-being.

Alternative conceptual framings also arise in various instances of practical action. Examination of experiences of transport poverty among diverse groups, including children, migrants, women, elderly people, people with reduced mobility, inhabitants of rural or deprived areas and low income and/or unemployed people, revealed diverse expectations concerning mobility and transportation needs, requiring diverse technical and organisation approaches to transport provision. Urban displacment in southern European cities resulting from the post-2008 economic crisis has been a source of various anti-gentrification practices undertaken by affected, including action against eviction, privatization, speculation and austerity, that radically reshape understandings of urban exclusion and justice, the courses of action available to city authorities, and the consequences of these.. Various forms of self-organised community-based initiatives for sustainability offer problem framings and courses of action that often directly challenge neo-liberal orthodoxy (but may in practice unintentionally reinforce it).

Shapes, sizes and applications

Provide some insight on the different approaches that are included in this cluster. Also provide some insight in the development stage and level of maturity of the approaches, their successes and limitations and level of transferability (max. 1 paragraph).

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

Describe how the approach addresses and/or tackles unsustainability and injustice in cities, taking into consideration the following four questions (max. 1-2 paragraphs)

Urban: to what extent does the cluster/approach focus on the urban? Which scale of the urban or which urban territories? Justice: to what extent does the cluster/approach address (in)justice. What type of (in)justice is addressed, how and at which scale? (see guidelines of D3.1 for the different types of justice). Sustainability: what type of (un)sustainability issues are addressed, how and at which scale? Linking sustainability and justice: to what extent and how does the cluster/approach link or connect sustainability and justice?

Narrative of change

Describe in 1 short paragraph what is the narrative of change of the cluster/approach.

What is the problem that the cluster/approach addresses? What is the underlying premise of how the cluster/approach tries to address this problem and achieve change?

Transformative potential

Describe in 1 short paragraph the transformative potential of the cluster/approach.

To what extent does the cluster/approach alter, change or challenge existing power relations? (To what extent are) which power relations considered as problematic (unequal, oppressive, unjust, excluding etc.) by the cluster/approach, implicitly or explicitly? (How) are these power relations being framed, problematised, challenged, altered or replaced by the cluster/approach? And/or which existing power relations are (at the risk of) being reproduced/ strengthened by the cluster/approach, and how? (see mapping guidelines D3.1 for a conceptualisation of transformative potential).

Relevant Approaches

Illustrate 1 or 2 specific approaches/instances as part of the cluster Briefly describe one or two illustrative approach(es) or case study based on the questions 1,2,3 & 4 above. Add info on geographic coverage (Rotterdam, Spain, Europe etc.) and scale/scope (level of organisation; city, neighbourhood etc.). This might be part of the cluster-wiki or become a separate wiki page in itself.

Mapping and distillation of previous EU-funded research projects identified eleven approaches in this cluster:

• Anti-gentrification practices
• Ecological economics
• Political ecology
• Intersectionality: gender, migration and multiculturalism
• Post‐Carbon Urbanism concept development
• "Landscape of resistance"
• Environmental Justice (EJ) in marginalized communities
• multi-scalar understanding of spatial justice
• Innovative solutions for just mobility
• Scaling and connecting of transition initiatives for low-carbon society
• Community based sustainability initiatives
• Urban resilience understanding

An interview with Marilyn Hamilton of Integral City emphasised the importance of the integral approach, which integrates multiple perspectives within a meta-framework recognising that all phenomena have both interior/exterior and individual/collective dimensions, and develop and evolve in each of these. Approaches to sustainability and justice tend to emphasise exterior dimensions of phenomena, and in particular to overlook the caring qualities prominent in inner dimensions and essential for justice. Inclusion is another important feature of an integral approach, which honours pluralism and recognises that all perspectives express some degree of relative truth and bring valid insights into complex problems. Locating different perspectives on the integral map allows each to be honoured in its own terms, and enables collaboration towards inclusive action.

Link to other clusters and approaches

Please add a summary of keywords or tags to other possible Wiki-pages (both clusters and individual approaches or projects).