Urban Approaches to Sustainability

Abstract

Urbanization and climate change are changing not only how the world’s population lives, but also the habitats of humans and nonhuman species alike. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that many such impacts for humans and nature are “irreversible.” These impacts will be felt unevenly across different landscapes, cultures, populations, livelihoods, and ecosystems. Some humans and nonhumans will be more vulnerable than others to the irreversible impacts of climate change. Typically, the worst affected areas are those that already face multiple socioeconomic or environmental disadvantages. Sustainability has been a key concern for cities for at least 30 years. Initially, this was mainly a concern for the environment, but equity is increasingly at the cutting edge of sustainability scholarship and policymaking. Cities are at the frontline of responding to climate change both from mitigation and adaptation perspectives, but such strategies have uneven and often unknown consequences for socially vulnerable groups, and nonhuman species. This chapter is intended as a brief guide to scholarship in the field of urban sustainability from the perspective of equity. It points to the origins and latest developments in urban sustainability, social justice, and climate/environmental justice literatures. It introduces the reader to the limits of liberal notions of justice, and how more radical and political claims for justice emerged, to account for the unequal power underpinning socioeconomic and environmental relations. It invites the reader to bring questions of ethics, rights, morality, and domination to the forefront of sustainability thinking.