Urban Sustainability and Justice presents an innovative yet practical approach to incorporate equity and social justice into sustainable development in urban areas, in line with the commitments of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda. This work proposes a feminist reading of just sustainabilities' principles to reclaim sustainability as a progressive discourse which informs action on the ground. This work will help the committed activist (whether they are on the ground, working in a community, in a non-governmental organization (NGO), in a business, at a university, in any sphere in government) to connect their work to international efforts to deliver environmental justice in cities around the world. Drawing on a comparative, international analysis of sustainability initiatives in over 200 cities, Castán Broto and Westman find limited evidence of the implementation of just sustainabilities principles in practice, but they argue that there is considerable potential to develop a justice-oriented sustainability agenda. Highlighting current successes while also assessing prospects for the future, the authors show that just sustainabilities is not merely an aspirational discourse, but a frame of reference to support radical action on the ground.

Green Gentrification looks at the social consequences of urban "greening" from an environmental justice and sustainable development perspective. Through a comparative examination of five cases of urban greening in Brooklyn, New York, it demonstrates that such initiatives, while positive for the environment, tend to increase inequality and thus undermine the social pillar of sustainable development. Although greening is ostensibly intended to improve environmental conditions in neighborhoods, it generates green gentrification that pushes out the working-class, and people of color, and attracts white, wealthier in-migrants. Simply put, urban greening "richens and whitens," remaking the city for the sustainability class. Without equity-oriented public policy intervention, urban greening is negatively redistributive in global cities. This book argues that environmental injustice outcomes are not inevitable. Early public policy interventions aimed at neighborhood stabilization can create more just sustainability outcomes. It highlights the negative social consequences of green growth coalition efforts to green the global city, and suggests policy choices to address them. The book applies the lessons learned from green gentrification in Brooklyn to urban greening initiatives globally. It offers comparison with other greening global cities. This is a timely and original book for all those studying environmental justice, urban planning, environmental sociology, and sustainable development as well as urban environmental activists, city planners and policy makers interested in issues of urban greening and gentrification.

"Merging together the fields of urban ecology, environmental justice, and urban environmental education, Urban Ecosystem Justice promotes building fair, accessible, and mutually beneficial relationships between citizens and the soils, water, atmospheres, and biodiversity in their cities. This book provides a framework for re-centering issues of justice and fairness in sustainability discourse while challenging the profound ecological alienation experienced by urban residents. While the urban sustainability movement has had many successes in the past few decades, there remain areas for it to grow. For one, the benefits of sustainability have disproportionately benefited wealthier city residents, with concerns over equity, justice and social sustainability frequently taking a back seat to economic and environmental considerations. Additionally, many city dwellers remain estranged from and unfamiliar with ecological processes, with urban environments often thought of as existing outside of nature or as hopelessly degraded. Through a citizen-centered lens, the book offers a guide to reconciling these issues by demonstrating how questions of equity, access, and justice apply to the biophysical dimensions of the urban ecosystem: soil, water, air, waste, and biodiversity. Drawing heavily from the fields of urban ecology, environmental justice, and ecological design, this book lays out a science of cities for people: a pedagogical platform that can be used to promote ecological literacy in underrepresented urban communities through affordable and decentralized means. This book provides both a theoretical and practical field guide to students and researchers of urban sustainability, city planners, architects, policymakers and activists wishing to develop reciprocal relationships with urban ecologies"--

This edited volume provides a fresh perspective on the important yet often neglected relationship between environmental justice and urban resilience. Many scholars have argued that resilient cities are more just cities. But what if the process of increasing the resilience of the city as a whole happens at the expense of the rights of certain groups? If urban resilience focuses on the degree to which cities are able to reorganise in creative ways and adapt to shocks, do pervasive inequalities in access to environmental services have an effect on this ability? This book brings together an interdisciplinary and intergeneration group of scholars to examine the contradictions and tensions that develop as they play out in cities of the Global South through a series of empirically grounded case studies spanning cities of Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Environmental activists and academics alike are realizing that a sustainable society must be a just one. Environmental degradation is almost always linked to questions of human equality and quality of life. Throughout the world, those segments of the population that have the least political power and are the most marginalized are selectively victimized by environmental crises. This book argues that social and environmental justice within and between nations should be an integral part of the policies and agreements that promote sustainable development. The book addresses the links between environmental quality and human equality and between sustainability and environmental justice.

This book discusses the current demographic shifts of blacks, Latinos, and other people of colour out of certain strong-market cities and the growing fear of displacement among low-income urban residents. It documents these populations’ efforts to remain in their communities and highlights how this leads to community organizing around economic, environmental, and social justice. The book shows how residents of once-neglected urban communities are standing up to city economic development agencies, influential real estate developers, universities, and others to remain in their neighbourhoods, protect their interests, and transform their communities into sustainable, healthy communities. These communities are deploying new strategies that build off of past struggles over urban renewal. Based on seven years of research, this book draws on a wealth of material to conduct a case study analysis of eight low-income/mixed-income communities in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. This timely book is aimed at researchers and postgraduate students interested in urban policy and politics, community development, urban studies, environmental justice, urban public health, sociology, community-based research methods, and urban planning theory and practice. It will also be of interest to policy makers, community activists, and the private sector.

Urban centres are bastions of inequalities, where poverty, marginalization, segregation and health insecurity are magnified. Minorities and the poor – often residing in neighbourhoods characterized by degraded infrastructures, food and job insecurity, limited access to transport and health care, and other inadequate public services – are inherently vulnerable, especially at risk in times of shock or change as they lack the option to avoid, mitigate and adapt to threats. Offering both theoretical and practical approaches, this book proposes critical perspectives and an interdisciplinary lens on urban inequalities in light of individual, group, community and system vulnerabilities and resilience. Touching upon current research trends in food justice, environmental injustice through socio-spatial tactics and solution-based approaches towards urban community resilience, Resilience, Environmental Justice and the City promotes perspectives which transition away from the traditional discussions surrounding environmental justice and pinpoints the need to address urban social inequalities beyond the build environment, championing approaches that help embed social vulnerabilities and resilience in urban planning. With its methodological and dynamic approach to the intertwined nature of resilience and environmental justice in urban cities, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners within urban studies, environmental management, environmental sociology and public administration.

Case studies explore the Million Trees initiative in Los Angeles; the relationship of cap-and-trade policy, public health, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice in Southern California; Urbanization, vulnerability and environmental justice in the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and São Paulo, and in Antofagasta, Greater Concepción and Valparaiso in Chile; Sociospatial patterns of vulnerability in the American southwest; and Urban flood control and land use planning in Greater Taipei, Taiwan ROC.

Julian Agyeman once again pushes us all to think more critically about how to integrate two important political and intellectual projects.

While global urban development increasingly takes on the mantle of sustainability and "green urbanism," both the ecological and equity impacts of these developments are often overlooked. One result is what has been called environmental gentrification, a process in which environmental improvements lead to increased property values and the displacement of long-term residents. The specter of environmental gentrification is now at the forefront of urban debates about how to accomplish environmental improvements without massive displacement. In this context, the editors of this volume identified a strategy called "just green enough" based on field work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that uncouples environmental cleanup from high-end residential and commercial development. A "just green enough" strategy focuses explicitly on social justice and environmental goals as defined by local communities, those people who have been most negatively affected by environmental disamenities, with the goal of keeping them in place to enjoy any environmental improvements. It is not about short-changing communities, but about challenging the veneer of green that accompanies many projects with questionable ecological and social justice impacts, and looking for alternative, sometimes surprising, forms of greening such as creating green spaces and ecological regeneration within protected industrial zones. Just Green Enough is a theoretically rigorous, practical, global, and accessible volume exploring, through varied case studies, the complexities of environmental improvement in an era of gentrification as global urban policy. It is ideal for use as a textbook at both undergraduate and graduate levels in urban planning, urban studies, urban geography, and sustainability programs.