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The Scalar Production of Injustice within the Urban Forest
Abstract
Research has recently argued, quite successfully, for a more dialectic appreciation of urban nature/society relations. Despite this progress, there is still the need to recognize that the social production of urban environments explicitly leads to uneven urban environments and environmental injustice. Environmental inequalities clearly exist within cities; when taking into account how environmental externalities play out at different scales, the degree to which something is unjust becomes less clear. This paper discusses how the scales at which socially produced urban forest externalities play out pose difficulties for considering environmental injustice. This issue, while interesting from the point of view of considering scalar nature/social dialects, also makes policy considerations for urban reforestation problematic as a result of the ways in which urban forests contribute to local/global ecological scenarios.
... Each of these land-use types is also subject to inequities. Planted urban trees are unevenly distributed commodities, in constant flux of "unequal patterns of maintenance and neglect" (Heynen, 2003) where upper-middle-class dominant areas benefit most from an urban canopy (Donovan, 2017; Greene et al., 2018). Heynen (2003) makes the case that there is enough available urban land, primarily in lowerincome areas where vacant lots and brownfields are more common, that substantial reforestation is possible. ...
... Planted urban trees are unevenly distributed commodities, in constant flux of "unequal patterns of maintenance and neglect" (Heynen, 2003) where upper-middle-class dominant areas benefit most from an urban canopy (Donovan, 2017; Greene et al., 2018). Heynen (2003) makes the case that there is enough available urban land, primarily in lowerincome areas where vacant lots and brownfields are more common, that substantial reforestation is possible. Where communities desire and can accommodate an urban forest garden approach to reforestation, benefits beyond the ecosystem services of urban trees might also be realized. ...
... The unequal distribution and maintenance of urban trees and their associated social and public health benefits (Donovan, 2017;Heynen, 2003;Kuo & Sullivan, 2001) is a manifestation of deeper-seeded inequities beyond the scope of this review but which affect access to those sites suitable and safe for cultivation. In light of health sovereignty concerns accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic, access to alternative plant medicines and health-promoting foods is now also of great concern as a component of urban harvests (Poe et al., 2013). ...
Urban agroforestry efforts have focused primarily on food production, but these dynamic, multiple‐strata systems can host a much broader set of functions. This exploratory synthesis describes opportunities and considerations for urban forest gardens’ (UFG) capacity to include diverse, biologically important, and culturally relevant nontimber forest species that have medicinal properties, provide decorative and landscaping products, supply raw material for crafts, and other valuable outputs. Literature relevant to social and ecological aspects of design for ‘beyond‐food’ specialty forest crops in urban forest gardens reveals a need for collaborative, participatory, and culturally relevant UFG decision making that addresses access inequities, potential contamination from urban pollutants, and a continued need for education and awareness of UFG multifunctionality. These production spaces can serve as both a biological and cultural repository for species that may be otherwise overlooked in a narrowly oriented food garden, though case study examples indicating contextual elements of implementation are needed to understand specific cultural and health sovereignty benefits. Currently, traditional tropical homegardens serve as a model for biocultural diversity in small‐scale urban green spaces. Incorporating conservation goals into urban agroforestry initiatives at varying scales holds potential for growing interest in and commitment to building capacity for this emergent land use.
... Research that addresses access to public participation in urban forests is growing across the developed world (Conway et al., 2011;Landry and Chakraborty, 2009;Carreiro and Zipperer, 2008;Heynen, 2003), however gaps remain in terms of citizen-based urban forest governance, including: 1) appropriate communication of science and civic problems to the public; 2) increasing awareness and knowledge of citizens; 3) opportunities for citizens to engage in monitoring; 4) volunteer or free labour; and 5) venues for participation in decision-making (Conway et al., 2011;Rosol, 2010;Wolf and Kruger, 2010;Carreiro and Zipperer, 2008;Konijnendijk, 2003). ...
... Community participation in urban forest governance is not homogeneous, and not all residents participate from all neighbourhoods, highlighting the need to better understand how local engagement affects the management and conservation of urban forests in different neighbourhoods (Conway et al., 2011;Carreiro and Zipperer, 2008;Heynen, 2003;Carr and Halvorsen, 2001). As such, there is a need to focus on how knowledge influences the experiences and abilities of RAs to affect urban forest goverance and more importantly, how knowledge may be a function of the socio-economic and political capacity of these members. ...
... While public participation keeps residents engaged with their government, in turn, the local government benefits from hearing from the community in terms of gaining new perspectives and information to; i) make decisions that meet the public's needs; ii) provide their citizens with information regarding their programs; and iv) allowing them to interact and engage with each other (Asah and Blahna, 2012;Lyndsay and King, 2007;Janse and Konijnendijk, 2007). Uneven public participation across different neighbourhoods can lead to imbalance in the planning and decision-making for greenspaces that impact not only climate change adaptation measures and environmental protection, but also community improvement, concern for social conditions, empowerment in decision-making processes, and lack of confidence in elected officials' platforms (Heynen et al., 2006;Heynen, 2003;Balgram and Dragicevic, 2005;Vogler, 2003). ...
Urban forests, integral to a city’s critical infrastructure, are traditionally under the mandate of local governments, yet in reality, the decision-making for their conservation is influenced by a myriad of factors operating at the neighbourhood level. In some neighbourhoods, decisions are heavily influenced by formal Resident Associations (RAs). Using a case study approach, in depth interviews were conducted with selected engaged and committed RA members in Mississauga, Canada to determine: 1) What is the role of urban forest knowledge in motivating people to engage with their local community group, i.e., how does knowledge play a role in developing a critical consciousness that leads to action? 2) How does an individual’s knowledge shape strategies used by the community group? and 3) How can we characterize the knowledge of community group leaders in terms of urban forest governance? Our study shows that knowledge is embodied in all roles that RA executive members take on and that it is key in motivating their engagement. The critical role of ‘knowing ‘was also clear in the ability of RAs to develop and establish local-level strategies that help conserve urban forests. Based on our research, it is clear that RAs and local governments (individually and/or collectively) can enhance the knowledge of residents at the neighbourhood level to improve engagement. We recommend that RA members engage via an ongoing collaborative knowledge building process to become better equipped at confronting urban forest management practices and impacting urban forest governance.
... While we often use words like "wider" or "larger" to differentiate between scales, scale acts more as a lens for understanding than as the size of spatial container. For example, Heynen (2003) notes that judgements about environmental justice mitigation rely upon the scalar lens of analysis. At the block scale, the optimal pattern for planting new trees is to distribute them as widely as possible, so each block gets some of the social and visceral effects of tree planting. ...
... Geographers have argued more broadly that spatial scales are actually constitutive of the action or process that is taking place at that scale -making doing the exact same thing at a bigger spatial scale a logical impossibility (Brenner, 2001;Heynen, 2003;Moore, 2008). ...
... La modernidad revela una contradicción tácita: ha estructurado a la naturaleza y a la sociedad como categorías ontológicamente diferentes del ser; e irónicamente, la misma modernidad las ha integrado, creando y reproduciendo constantemente una suerte de híbridos socio-naturales (Grove, 2009). De esta manera, la modernidad ha separado y unido a la vez a los sistemas ecológicos y sociales (Heynen, 2003). ...
... Es así que las ciudades en particular, y los sistemas sociales en general, se transforman en híbridos socio-naturales. Éstos revelan que los procesos sociales y ecológicos forman parte del mismo metabolismo, y por tanto, los procesos ecológicos que están detrás de la producción de nuevos ambientes, a través de la dinámica política-económica, son fundamentales para la reproducción de la sociedad y para garantizar su calidad de vida (Heynen, 2003). ...
El metabolismo social es una ampliación del concepto del metabolismo de los organismos, surgido en el siglo XIX. Esta idea permite reconstituir y revincular a nivel simbólico al sistema ecológico y al sistema social. Sistemas que, por otro lado, nunca estuvieron separados orgánicamente. El metabolismo social, sin embargo, es mucho más que un grupo de procesos orgánicos, es un proceso dialéctico, ecológico-histórico, donde radica el fundamento de lo social, su existencia y su posibilidad de perdurar.
... Recent research has sought to uncover the historical drivers of these inequities, such as redlining (Locke et al., 2021) and urban renewal (Roman et al., 2021a). Furthermore, structural differences in urban form such as housing density (Heynen, 2003;Roman et al., 2018), and a lack of municipal plans that address gaps in UTC (Kolosna and Spurlock, 2019) have contributed to persistent UTC inequities in US cities. ...
... Broader trends in neoliberal governance have pointed to uneven spatial distribution of city services over decades, with disinvestment often tied to a lack of municipal development of new greenspaces, or care for existing ones (Roman et al., 2021a;Heynen, 2003). In many cases, these neighborhoods, often Black and Brown communities, are left to 'make due', creating their own form of 'DIY' urbanism in the form of maintaining or creating urban gardens on abandoned plots of land (Kinder, 2016). ...
Urban tree cover is inequitable in many American cities, with low-income and non-white neighborhoods typically having the least coverage. Some municipal and non-profit tree planting programs aim to address this inequity by targeting low-income neighborhoods; however, many programs face lack of participation or resistance from local residents. In this study, we aimed to uncover the economic, social, cultural, and physical barriers that community leaders face in planting trees and fostering engagement in a neighborhood with low tree canopy. In collaboration with an urban greening nonprofit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (US), twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with community leaders in a low canopy neighborhood, North Philadelphia. Half of these leaders were already involved with local tree planting programs, while the other half were not. Findings reveal that despite broad appreciation for trees and greenspaces, there are concerns about the risks and costs residents assume over the course of a tree’s life cycle, the threat of neighborhood development and gentrification associated with trees, limited plantable space, and limited time and capacity for community organizations. Additionally, these barriers to participation may be amplified among low-income and communities of color who face the legacies of historical tree disservices and municipal structural disinvestment. Addressing community concerns regarding the long-term care of trees beyond the initial tree planting would likely require further programmatic support. Overall, this research highlights the complexity of addressing inequities in tree canopy and the importance of integrating resident and community leader perspectives about disservices and management costs into tree planting initiatives.
... (Sandoiu, 2021) Recent work in political ecologies of health (PEH) takes up the question of race and its differential impacts on the health of BBIA people. This comes out of the combination of political ecology's concern with how capitalism and ecology-the social and the biological-work together to produce environmental problems and uneven illness (Jackson & Neely, 2015;King, 2010;Mansfield, 2008;Nichols & Casino, 2020) and environmental justice's focus on the impact of (racial) capitalism and the environment on human health (Harrison, 2008;Heynen, 2003;Holifield, 2001;Pulido, 1996Pulido, , 2000Pulido, , 2006. As Madison Barbour and Julie Guthman (2018) write, environmental justice focuses on "structural and political vulnerabilities that make certain populations more likely to be exposed to environmental health hazards" (p. ...
... As Madison Barbour and Julie Guthman (2018) write, environmental justice focuses on "structural and political vulnerabilities that make certain populations more likely to be exposed to environmental health hazards" (p. 334) like pollution and other damage (Heynen, 2003;Holifield, 2001;Pulido, 2000Pulido, , 2006. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic and state violence converged in the U.S. in 2020 highlighting the uneven distribution of illness and death. In this article, we mobilize three bodies of literature–political ecologies of health and the body, Black geographies and racial capitalism, and Black feminist work on care—to understand the disproportionate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian people, and to imagine different, more just futures. We argue that these literatures center relationships, enabling an analysis that incorporates viruses and cellular processes, histories of racism, power differences, and political economy. We conclude by taking inspiration from the uprisings and Black feminism to envision a more caring future that nurtures relationships.
... Dawson et al., 2018;Enssle and Kabisch, 2020;Ernstson, 2013;Pascual et al., 2014). Third, it internalizes the particular spatial challenge raised by planetary processes of urbanization (Heynen, 2003;Jansson, 2013) and it pushes toward a more balanced approach to the temporal implications of ES Derkzen et al., 2017;Wilkinson et al., 2013). ...
... For such a framework, two issues are most relevant. These include the 'socioenvironmental metabolic relations that come together' in a specific global-local place (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003) as well as how environmental externalities and injustice play out at different spatial scales (Heynen, 2003). We refer to these issues in our model as 'downscale' and 'interscale' ES justice, respectively (Fig. 2). ...
In a rising urban age planning for cities around the globe is increasingly based on assessments of ecosystem services, making enhanced considerations of ecosystem service justice critically important. Yet, justice remains a ‘blind spot’ in urban ecosystem service models and research, which can be traced back to the ecological and economic legacies of the concept itself. This legacy reproduces the normative focus on natural capital as a guarantee of sustaining ecosystem services, enforces a static understanding of nature that insufficiently considers human agency, and conceptualizes ecosystem service flows from nature to humans in a way that does not reflect the social-ecological structure and constantly shifting priorities of the urban realm. In response, this conceptual paper aims at broadening the analytical foundation for justice in urban ecosystem service assessments by presenting a model that links the co-production of urban ecosystem services (including infrastructure, institutions, and perceptions) with established lines of recognition, procedural, and distributional justice. It further highlights the need to embed these classical dimensions of justice within both spatial (downscaled and inter-scalar approaches) and temporal (interrelated past, present, and future conditions) justice frames. Relying on urban environmental, social, spatial and temporal justice theory as well ecosystem service scholarship, we outline theoretical entry points and provide practical examples for weaving notions of justice into urban ecosystem service research and practice, while highlighting future research needs.
... Distribution of UOS is a key environmental justice concern (Walker, 2012) related to the distribution of environmental goods, such as spacious high-quality parks and environmental bads, including toxic industrial land and polluted water bodies. Despite this, numerous examples illustrate that the distribution of UOS and, specifically, vegetation is often inequitable globally (Heynen, 2003;Buijs et al., 2016;Nesbitt et al., 2019). High-quality UOSs are more frequently located in wealthier neighbourhoods (Poudyal et al., 2009), while lower-income and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods are more often associated with lower levels of tree canopy cover (Schwarz et al., 2015;Nesbitt et al., 2018). ...
... High-quality UOSs are more frequently located in wealthier neighbourhoods (Poudyal et al., 2009), while lower-income and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods are more often associated with lower levels of tree canopy cover (Schwarz et al., 2015;Nesbitt et al., 2018). Ethnically and socioeconomically diverse users are sometimes excluded from UOS governance and management processes (Buijs et al., 2016) and feel a lack of control over UOS resources (Heynen, 2003). Studies show that ethno-cultural preferences and a lack of 'sense of belonging' impact the distribution of cultural goods in UOS development, raising the question of which services are provided through ecological networks and for whom (Byrne, 2012;Gulsrud et al., 2018). ...
... Developing on perspectives from political ecology, critical urban history, 13 and critical urban studies 14,15 this study examines solid waste management in Brahmapuram as a multi-scalar socio-political process. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating concepts from from environmental history and political ecology. ...
In urban context, solid waste management is not merely a question of bureaucratic efficiency but a deeply political issue, entangled in various forms of socio-environmental contradictions. In Cochin, a major port city and industrial urban space in Southwest India, the issue of urban waste circulation intersects with urban land commodification, industrialisation of leisure, water management, and urban planning. Government-led urban waste management programmes, especially the clean city initiatives, promote hygienic urban citizenship through intensive campaigns, moral appeals to reduce waste production, and educational efforts targeting waste collection and processing works. The existing studies on the issues of urban waste production and landfill focuses on the administrative spaces of the cities. This study analyses the politics of urban waste through the theoretical lens of environmental history and political ecology. By analysing the debates and movements related to the Brahmapuram landfill, the article argues that the ‘green city’ initiatives contributes to the elimination and dispossession of marginalised social groups – including peasants, fishers, and migrant workers - as well as the degradation of ecologically sensitive areas such as backwaters, rivers and marshlands. By adopting multi-scalar geographical frames of analysis, this paper argues that solid waste management is not limited to a city. The study carried out qualitative field visits to understand the complex spatialities of waste production and circulation in the context of Cochin. Informed by the concept of urban social metabolism concept, this paper argues that the production, circulation and the processing of waste constitutes a geographically extended urban process. This process, in turn, generates precarious environments for people located outside of visible boundaries of the city. The research underscores the need to frame urban waste production and circulation as a question of the right to the city and the right to sustain indigenous modes of life, which are increasingly getting toxified. In doing so, it challenges the commodification landforms as mere landfills spaces and proposes an alternative discourse on the issues of the right of everyone to access the city as non-commodified nature.
... Political ecology as an approach in geography has also been inflicted by the rural-urban binary through the development of 'urban political ecology', with 'political ecology' initially being assumed to be largely situated in rural areas, especially from the 1980s to the 2000s (Robbins, 2004;Forsyth, 2002). Efforts were made to breakdown the spatial divide between 'third world political ecology' and 'first world political ecology' (Robbins, 2002), with first-world political ecology developing into urban political ecology (Heynen, 2003;Heynen et al., 2006;Robbins, 2007). Indicative that urban political ecology only developed in the 2000s, Robbins (2004), in the first edition of Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, does not even mention urban political ecology, but the second edition of the same book includes a section titled, "New Concerns: Cities, Subjects and Objects", and a sub-section titled "Urban metabolism" (Robbins, 2012, pp. ...
... Urban forests are socially constructed (Heynen 2003, Hauer et al 2018 and unevenly distributed (Heynen et al 2006). Decisions, policies, plans, and actions regarding trees shape our urban forests (Conway et al 2011). ...
Urban nature stewardships can connect people to nature in their neighbourhood, foster a sense of belonging and citizenship, and increase well-being and place-making. This article examines how race intersects with urban nature stewardship, via a critical autoethnography by two co-authors who are racialised volunteers, Black and South Asian, in stewardship projects. Race is centered as a unit of analysis. In Toronto, Canada, racialised people are the majority of the population but are noticeable by their absence in nature stewardships and the broader environmentalism. Most urban nature stewardships operate on a colour-blind approach which masks how systemic racial inequities shape stewardship projects at the personal, place-making, and ecological levels. The article is illustrated by stewardship in tree planting and community gardens as urban ecology restoration projects. It concludes with some recommendations on how to engage racialised volunteers in nature stewardship.
... Nature can be described in several different ways, and the expressions that have been used to do so are linked to the exercise of power in societies (Swyngedouw, 2004;Whiteside, 2002). Thus, it is fundamental to explore different notions of nature to understand the economic, political, and cultural processes that rule the metabolisation of what is not human (Heynen, 2003). Our knowledge has been structured by very specific cultures and by different languages and experiences (Hajer, 1997;Rosen, 2000). ...
This transdisciplinary research aims to propose one path, among multiple paths, to transcend the nature/society dichotomy in ecological economics, through an ecology of knowledge between Sumak Kawsay-an Andean indigenous cosmovision-and the epistemology of complexity. A qualitative methodology has been used, which includes a critical revision of scholarship on Sumak Kawsay, the definition of nature, complexity, complex systems, and the epistemology of complexity. This effort points to a critique of the conception of nature held by 'tradi-tional science'; one that has also resulted in the nature/society dichotomy as an epistemic basis within ecological economics. Thus, an epistemic convergence between Sumak Kawsay and the epistemology of complexity is advocated not only to disregard the nature/society dichotomy in ecological economics but also to include ancestral indigenous principles and values in knowledge production. In conclusion, such a dialogue between Sumak Kawsay and the epistemology of complexity could transcend the nature/society dichotomy within ecological economics by including notions like Pacha Mama and socio-ecological systems. It also has the potential to influence science production by considering principles from ancestral knowledge that points towards community, inclusion, hori-zontality, complexity, interculturality, and trans-disciplinarity.
... See both examples in footnote 7. 14 There are yet unexplored connections to be made between issues of the hostile absence of urban tree coverage and empirical research on issues of canopy equity (e.g.,Heynen, 2004;Schwarz et al., 2015;Locke et al., 2021). ...
A discussion is emerging over what is called “hostile design,” among other names, i.e., the construction of public-space objects in ways that exclude particular usages, and with an alleged effect of discrimination against already vulnerable populations. Critics outline various examples, from spikes added to a ledge to deter loiterers from sitting, to armrests added to a bench to discourage the unhoused from using it as a place to sleep. In an effort to sharpen the notion of hostile design as a critical tool, I develop an original typology, one in which the various examples are organized in terms of the mechanisms through which their hostility is enacted. This sets up reflections on some variables of hostile design—such as their level of “conspicuousness,” and their “domain of effect”—that cut differently across these categories.
... UPE literature, as Lawhon, Ernstson, and Silver (2014) succinctly summarized, teaches two important lessons. One is that material flows (of resources, water, electricity, and infrastructure investment) often function in the service of capitalist accumulation-for example, forests (Heynen 2003) and lawns (Robbins 2007) becoming biophysical objects that manifest how power operates through artifacts. The other is that capitalists have a tendency to coopt environmentalism as a means of justifying their work through a new discourse. ...
... The concept of environmental justice is related to the field of political ecology (Ranganathan and Balazs 2015;Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003) that examines how the unjust socioeconomic and environmental conditions are (re)produced through the underlying mode of governance and power relations in a political economy (Heynen 2003;Svarstad and Benjaminsen 2020). Critical environmental justice studies emphasize a need for an understanding of the institutional set-up that generates social and environmental injustice, and suggest that social and environmental inequalities are deeply embedded in society and reinforced by powerful groups such as the state (Pellow 2017). ...
The central government of China aims to transform the Pearl River Delta (PRD) from a polluting and low value-added global factory to a sustainable region. The transformative vision of the PRD is underpinned by the ecological civilization concept. While ecological civilization represents a significant initiative in moving toward sustainable development, China’s top-down and command-and-control mode of environmental governance may fall short of addressing multi-dimensional and multi-scalar social and environmental justice issues of the PRD cities. The authors therefore suggest embracing the concept of environmental justice to enhance ecological civilization, with the aim of benefiting every stratum of society. The concept of environmental justice is multi-faceted, embracing recognition, procedural, distribution and compensatory justice at different geographical scales, often calling for institutional changes. Without environmental justice, a harmonious and sustainable PRD would not be possible. In recent years, China has made unprecedented institutional adjustments to deal with environmental issues, such as conducting annual “health screening” and five-yearly thorough evaluations to monitor conservation and development. To embrace environmental justice, legislative changes are required to recognize individual environmental rights through collective action and public participation, incorporating citizens’ inputs to the appraisal of cadres, and establishing intergovernmental institutionalized organizations.
... As is well documented, the story of parks in the United States is a tale of race (Byrne and Wolch 2009;Byrne 2012;Finney 2014;Loughran 2017;Williams 2021). Parks are socially produced natures (Heynen 2003), reflecting the spatialization of race and racialization of space. From the settler colonial establishment of U.S. national parks-premised on the preservation of "untouched nature"-that made Indigenous peoples trespassers on their own homelands (Katz and Kirby 1991;Hern et al. 2018;Parish 2020), to the racially uneven landscape of parks development in cities (Byrne 2012), and the surveillance and expulsion of Brown and Black people, the poor, and those deemed "out of place" (Mitchell 1995;Williams 2021;Wright 2021), park spaces are made and remade through White supremacy and the sociospatial relations of race (Finney 2014). ...
In May 2020, Christian Cooper, a Black man and avid birder in New York City’s Central Park, was reported to the police by Amy Cooper, a White woman enraged at his request that she leash her dog. His cell phone recording of the encounter generated immediate national outcry and she faced misdemeanor charges—later dropped—for making a false report. On one level, the event is a depressingly familiar story, one of many devastatingly common incidents in which White women’s vulnerability is weaponized and wielded against Black people in public space to potentially lethal ends. It also serves as a stark reminder of the ways that racism continues to shape and structure relationships with urban park space in the United States, through practices of social control ranging from official policing and permits to informal surveillance. On another level, however, the incident also raises novel questions about what it might mean to theorize parks—as sites of refuge, recreation, protest, and surveillance—in terms of a more-than-human ethic of care and caring relations. Through a rereading of this incident, we argue for conceptualizing parks both as spaces of social control and as spaces of care, and we show how racism fundamentally shapes conflicts over caring practices and the rules that govern them.
... That is how specifically cities and social systems, in general, are transformed into socio-natural hybrids that are behind the production of new environments, through cultural-social-political-economical dynamics. These dynamics are fundamental for the reproduction of society and to guarantee its quality of life [23]. ...
The socio-ecological metabolism of the water connects concepts that emerge out of the complexity of ecosystems, linking endosomatic processes that are indispensable for society while forming different hierarchic levels and relations among as well as aligning to their par-ticularities. The consumptive uses of Cuenca city in their different categories and social metabolism both at rural and urban levels were assessed, inquiring about diverse typologies of the city's water. Water Metabolic Rates (WMR) were calculated for each one of the con-sumptives' uses gauged in liters per hour of human activity. Our results indicate that farming and industrial uses of water were highly inefficient. Linked to farms, both consumption of water and metabolic rates were higher in the rural areas. While paid work showed higher metabolic rates than households. Rural households evidenced a greater use of water and higher metabolic rates than urban households as water use combines human consumption and family farming. This research determined the water metabolism of the socio-ecological system in the canton of Cuenca, Ecuador through different dimensions of water metabolism. Formulating a system of flows and uses of water that were metabolized by different hierarchy levels of diverse consumptive uses within the aforementioned canton, as a tool to implement policies that guarantee water access and ecological metabolism, linking social dynamics within ecosystems.
... That is how specifically cities and social systems, in general, are transformed into socio-natural hybrids that are behind the production of new environments, through cultural-social-political-economical dynamics. These dynamics are fundamental for the reproduction of society and to guarantee its quality of life [23]. ...
The socio-ecological metabolism of the water connects concepts that emerge out of the complexity of ecosystems, linking endosomatic processes that are indispensable for society while forming different hierarchic levels and relations among as well as aligning to their particularities. The consumptive uses of Cuenca city in their different categories and social metabolism both at rural and urban levels were assessed, inquiring about diverse typologies of the city’s water. Water Metabolic Rates (WMR) were calculated for each one of the consumptives’ uses gauged in liters per hour of human activity. Our results indicate that farming and industrial uses of water were highly inefficient. Linked to farms, both consumption of water and metabolic rates were higher in the rural areas. While paid work showed higher metabolic rates than households. Rural households evidenced a greater use of water and higher metabolic rates than urban households as water use combines human consumption and family farming. This research determined the water metabolism of the socio-ecological system in the canton of Cuenca, Ecuador through different dimensions of water metabolism. Formulating a system of flows and uses of water that were metabolized by different hierarchy levels of diverse consumptive uses within the aforementioned canton, as a tool to implement policies that guarantee water access and ecological metabolism, linking social dynamics within ecosystems.
... The societal benefits of ecosystems services provided by blue or green space do not however benefit all people in the same way, and depends upon social and political processes that model their generation, distribution and related values (Ernstson, 2013;Heynen, 2003). In addition, while focusing on urban green processes, Anguelovski et al. (2020) suggest that these green interventions tend to leave aside issues of exclusion, gentrification and displacement. ...
Over 60% of the global population are expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Urban blue spaces are critical for biodiversity, provide a range of ecosystem services, and can promote human health and wellbeing. Despite this, access to blue space is often unequally distributed across socioeconomic gradients, and the availability of quality blue space could extend to environmental justice issues. Three stages of analysis were carried out in Mexico City, Mexico and Bristol, UK to (i) assess associations between blue space and socioeconomic metrics at a regional scale, (ii) apply a rapid assessment tool to assess amenity, access and environmental quality, (iii) consider local quality across socioeconomic gradients at a regional scale. Still water availability was indicative of higher socioeconomic status, but contrasting city evolutions underpinned differences. Locally, there were environmental gradients from more complex to disturbed habitats that influenced potential wellbeing and amenity benefits. In combination, this may exacerbate inequalities and risk increasing ecosystem disservices. If cities are to be socially, and environmentally resilient to higher levels of disturbance in the future, healthy ecosystems will be key. However, further research is needed to address various dimensions of injustice in urban areas beyond blue space distribution.
... Political ecology as an approach in geography has also been inflicted by the urban-rural binary through the development of 'urban political ecology', with 'political ecology' initially being assumed to be largely situated in rural areas, especially from the 1980s through the 2000s (Forsyth, 2002;Robbins, 2004). Efforts were made to breakdown the spatial divide between 'third world political ecology' and 'first world political ecology' (Robbins, 2002), with first world political ecology developing into urban political ecology (Heynen, 2003;Heynen et al., 2006;Robbins, 2007). Indicative that urban political ecology only developed in the 2000s, Robbins (2004), in the first edition of Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, does not even mention urban political ecology, but the second edition of the same book includes a section titled, 'New Concerns: Cities, Subjects and Objects', and a sub-section titled 'Urban metabolism' (Robbins, 2012: 72-73). ...
Geographers have been challenging problematic spatial concepts for decades. Gillen et al. usefully add to this work by disrupting the urban–rural binary in human geography, suggesting that we take people in the Global South more seriously, especially those ‘whose perspectives on urbanization are entangled with ongoing rural dynamics’. They advocate for advancing the concept of relational ruralization. In this commentary, I express my general support for Gillen et al.'s efforts to expose the limitations associated with the urban–rural divide. However, I go somewhat beyond their work to suggest that human geographers should consciously reduce the primacy of the urban–rural binary when conceptualizing space, especially when looking at activities that transcend the urban–rural. There are more productive ways to consider connections.
... Examining the correlation coefficients associated of Fort Collins' racial and ethnic groups reveals a positive relationship between UTC and the population percentage who self-identified as white / Caucasian and negative relationships for block group population percentages for those self-identifying as Hispanic / Latino or black / African American (Fig. 2). Although not significant, there was a (Flocks et al. 2011;Heynen 2003;Schwarz et al. 2015;Riley and Gardiner 2020). Fort Collins currently has low racial and ethnic diversity compared to larger, more mature cities in the US (see Table 1), yet based on our results, we still see potential distributional inequities that may be developing within the city. ...
Research has shown that urban tree canopy (UTC) provides a multitude of ecosystem services to people in cities, yet the benefits and costs of trees are not always equitably distributed among residents and households. To support urban forest managers and sustainability planning, many studies have analyzed the relationships between UTC and various morphological and social variables. Most of these studies, however, focus on large cities like Baltimore, MD, Los Angeles, CA, and New York, NY. Yet, small and midsized cities are experiencing the most growth globally, often having more opportunity to alter management strategies and policies to conserve and/or increase canopy cover and other green infrastructure. Using both a linear and spatial regression approach, we analyzed the main drivers of UTC across census block groups in Fort Collins, CO, a midsize, semi-arid city projected to undergo significant population growth in the next 20-30 years. Results from Fort Collins indicated that block groups with older buildings and greater housing density contained more UTC, with 2.2% more canopy cover for every 10 years of building age and 4.1% more for every 10 houses per hectare. We also found that distributional inequities may already be developing within this midsized city, as block groups with more minority communities were associated with lower UTC. We compared the drivers of UTC in Fort Collins to other cities located in different climate regions, or biomes, and in various stages of urban development. Based on these results, we suggested future urban forest management strategies for semi-arid cities like Fort Collins.
... This helps us to unravel the political and social forces that shape energy and environmental [in] access, management and transformation (Robbins, 2020). Complexities arise when scalar dynamics are considered, as management decisions that appear more just or sustainable at one scale may be less so at a different scale (Heynen, 2003). ...
Studies that attribute energy poverty to a lack of technical resources abound in Zimbabwe. However, such line of reasoning falls short of giving a rigorous analysis of the existing political-economic factors and scalar politics. These include power dynamics, gender relations, class, historic patterns of dominance and marginalisation at different geographical scales and the discourse on energy poverty. Accordingly, a political ecology framework can address these theoretical gaps given its expansive scope. Using a qualitative approach, a political ecology analysis of the Zingondi Resettlement Area in Zimbabwe illuminates the interaction between these factors. Furthermore, it extends the argument through a Foucauldian view on apparatus of security in order to understand how the state uses its calculated power to address energy poverty. It concludes that energy poverty is a processual outcome, which is socially constructed. Therefore, there is need to pay attention to the complex and diverse nature of rural development. This includes embracing a development with and for the people approach, which takes into account pertinent aspects of the intended beneficiaries’ contexts.
... Consequently, the state-centered approach frequently leads to exclusion of some urban citizens and other key stakeholders (e.g., civic society) in the planning and development of urban green spaces (Makakavhule and Landman 2020;Shackleton and Njwaxu 2021). Hence, access and rights to urban green spaces are curtailed for some segments of the urban society, thereby promoting environmental injustices (Heynen 2003). ...
Although foraging wild plants is commonly perceived to be synonymous with rural areas, it is now increasingly recognized in urban areas. Notwithstanding, the regulations conditioning access to and rights to foraging in urban green spaces have seldom been examined. This study explored the formal and informal regulations governing access to and defining rights to forageable plant resources in the towns of Potchefstroom and Thabazimbi, South Africa. A random sample of 374 households was considered for the survey, complemented by in-depth interviews with 26 participants. Foraging occurred in a variety of public and private spaces, with the frequency of access differing with the type of space. The majority of the respondents were unaware of formal and informal regulations governing access to and use of urban landscapes. Recognizing foraging activities in urban landscapes is a fundamental step toward fostering active community involvement in the management and production of urban green spaces.
... The voices of Blacks, Latinx, and other persons of color have been absent in the history of public administration. The field has not explored whether there were persons of color early on studying or practicing 7 For other useful empirically quantitative studies applying CRT to environmental justice see, for example, Heynen (2003) and Hamilton (1995) and also meta-analyses by Ringquist (2005) and Mohai & Bryant (1992). 8 Asking explicit questions about racial discrimination, microaggression, and unfair treatment, and if it was officially reported. ...
This essay addresses how critical race theory (CRT) can be applied to the field of public administration. It proposes specific areas within the field that could benefit from the application of a CRT framework. This requires a paradigmatic shift in the field, which is desirable given the high priority that the field places on social equity, the third pillar of public administration. If there is a desire to achieve social equity and justice, racism needs to be addressed and confronted directly. The Black Lives Matter movement is one example of the urgency and significance of applying theories from a variety of disciplines to the study of racism in public administration.
... Walker investigates how spatial analytic issues of territory, place, scale, and network inform, frustrate, and produce a politics of environmental justice. Scale, in particular, has been a fruitful conceptual tool for thinking spatially about environmental justice (Heynen 2003;Bickerstaff and Agyeman 2009;Sze et al. 2009). A spatial justice approach to the question of environmental justice provides a distinct set of analytic tools for problematizing environmental degradation. ...
Political theorists have recently become interested in the role of nonhumans in politics, as evinced in the recent literature on “new materialism”. This literature raises questions such as: how do nonhumans participate in politics as more than mere objects, and what implications might this suggest for normative concepts like justice? I explore this question by theorizing and analyzing the concept of spatial justice. The central claim of spatial justice is that the organization of space – a set of material and ideological relations that act on, yet are formed by, social relations – influences the fair ordering of human relations. As such, it provides one window onto the question of nonhumans and politics. I argue that spatial justice is best understood as an analytic lens that illuminates the ways in which “space” - a term denoting the location of things relative to each other – participates in the formation of justice claims. Spatial justice is a concept already deployed in geography and urban planning, yet it is most frequently understood as a normative evaluation: that any particular space is just or unjust. I argue that such an understanding of spatial justice simply adds a not-particularly helpful adjective to some well-worn justice claims – in other words, calling an injustice spatial merely states that it happens “in space.” I argue that when spatial justice is better instead understood as an analytic framework, it illuminates the representative effects of the urban planning process: spatial representations frame justice debates by making certain constituencies – both human and nonhuman – present in the political process. To make this argument, I engage authors in critical geography, political theory, and science and technology studies. I argue that critical environmental scholars and political theorists have much to gain by incorporating spatial justice into their analyses. I examine the controversy around the policy document Detroit Future City (DFC), which literally maps a future for Detroit in which the city’s widespread vacancy is transformed into sustainable uses. Against both critics and boosters of the plan, I argue that DFC’s most important effect is to represent the city in its numerous maps, surveys, and data tables, all of which have already become the subject of debate in the city. DFC visualizes a Detroit where low density neighborhoods are part of a more just city, a marked departure from dominant approaches to urban planning that posit population increase as the solution to Detroit’s planning problems. I argue that although DFC is unlikely to directly guide Detroit’s master plan, development, and investment strategy, it has already influenced policy and activist debates with data and maps that inscribe vacancy into the city. I analyze DFC and its surrounding controversy to argue that only by understanding spatial justice as an analytic lens can DFC be appreciated in this productive light. My theory of spatial justice informs new materialism by emphasizing the capacity for nonhumans to participate in politics. I differentiate this participatory approach from a tendency among new materialists to emphasize the innate capacities of nonhumans to transform human behavior. Against this latter analysis, in which nonhumans are said to disrupt humans’ ethical and political commitments, I argue that nonhumans like spatial relations transform the political alliances that represent them. Thus spatial justice provides a language for analyzing nonhumans' emergent political power.
... Provided the concerns of geographers in understanding the multiple dimensions of environmental change, establishing a political-industrial ecology provides an exciting opportunity to develop and consider sustainable transitions. Political ecologists have provided trenchant insights into the structures of power that shape relationships between nature, society, and technology (Birkenholtz, 2013;Heynen et al., 2006a;Meehan, 2013b), and the scalar and geographic dimensions of environmental decision-making (Cohen and Bakker, 2013;Heynen, 2003;Lawhon and Patel, 2013). We propose that by extending these insights to approaches in industrial ecology the field can provide important analyses to foster more sustainable and resilient futures. ...
This dissertation focuses on the factors that shape how water resource managers shape the flow, or metabolism, of water through cities. Through a comparative and mixed-method approach drawing on archival research, key informant interviews, Q-methodology, and spatial analysis, this dissertation presents a framework for understanding the social and material factors that shape urban water flows. Focusing on Chicago and Los Angeles, the study concentrates on the methods and approaches water resource managers use to control volumes of water and achieve political goals. The results reveal the shortcomings of overly technical approaches to solve water resource problems, which are enmeshed within a spatially complex set of socio-political and historical processes. I also reveal the multiple ways water resource managers approach water challenges and come to particular ways of understanding solutions for them. I identify seven perspectives on stormwater governance: Market Skeptic, Hydro-managerial, Hydro-rationalist, Hydro-reformist, Hydro-pragmatist, Market Technocrat, Regulatory and Administrative Technocrat, Institutional Interventionist, Infrastructural Interventionist. It is shown that these viewpoints are shaped through multiple institutional and bureaucratic practices. Some viewpoints are geographically and idiosyncratically defined, while others transcend geographical and institutional specificity. Whether invoking stormwater as a “new” resource to achieve water quality and quantity goals, or negotiating the role of new technologies and financial mechanisms to control the flow of water, this dissertation reveals the commonalities across different ways of understanding water in order to offer more acceptable policies.
... Socio-economic predictors (SOCIO-ECO) are important drivers of local trends in urban societies that have already been used to assess changing influences on the exposure of people towards nature [59,60]. Such patterns and processes are generally generated by a combined effect of socio-economic gradients that shape the human-nature relationship in spatially varying settings [61]. ...
Understanding and explaining the use of green spaces and forests is challenging for sustainable urban planning. In recent years there has been increasing demand for novel approaches to investigate urban green infrastructure by capitalizing on large databases from existing citizen science tools. In this study, we analyzed iNaturalist data to perform an assessment of the intentional use of these urban spaces for their value and to understand the main drivers. We retrieved the total number of observations obtained across a set of 672 European cities and focused on reporting from mapped green areas and forests. We used two separate multivariate explanatory models to investigate which factors explained variations in the number of observations for green areas and forests. We found a relatively heterogeneous use of these two urban green spaces. Gross domestic product was important in explaining the number of visits. Availability and accessibility also had positive relationships with the use of green areas and forests in cities, respectively. This study paves the way for better integration of citizen science data in assessing cultural services provided by urban green infrastructure and therefore in supporting the evaluation of spatial planning policies for the sustainable development of urban areas.
... Scholarship has emphasized urban ecologies and urban nature as distinct aspects in the production of inequality (Anguelovski et al. 2019;Bryson 2013;Cucca 2012;Gandy 2004;Heynen 2003Heynen , 2006Swyngedouw 2006), but has also highlighted how urban nature in various forms potentially reconfigures socio-material relations between actors such as humans, animals, plants, water, earth and buildings with possibly positive implications (Angelo 2019;Bryson 2013;Classens 2015;Dorst et al. 2019;Hinchliffe and Whatmore 2006). Many conceptualizations of urban nature are rooted in a historical understanding of 'nature as something that resides outside of social relations' (Gandy 2006: 70). ...
This chapter’s focus is on two urban nature strategy workshops held with a diverse group of professionals working with municipal planning in Copenhagen. Urban greening – the rearrangement of urban space around an imaginary of nature – has become a ubiquitous principle for renewal and redesign of urban environments across the globe (Angelo 2019). In the City of Copenhagen, new policies for dealing with urban nature prompts planners and administrators to transform practice to facilitate ‘greening’. This chapter describes our attempt to participate in and shape the process of stabilizing action around a hybrid conceptualization of ‘urban nature’. We use the staging of human and non-human actors to inquire into the stabilization of planning practice as a form of situated intervention (Zuiderent-Jerak 2015), helping to sort and articulate urban nature attachments in a setting characterized by an abundance of normativities. This process reveals that the material-semiotic quality of urban nature relevant to municipal actors is grounded primarily in documents and suggests further storytelling to connect bureaucratic practice with concern for urban nature.
... Biophysical setting, socio-economic and demographic conditions, and developmental legacies at a variety of spatial scales, therefore, have the potential to affect the distribution of UTC within and among cities (Nowak et al., 1996;Heynen, 2003;Roman et al., 2018;Johnson et al., 2020). Given that patterns of UTC vary across regions and types of cities (Nowak and Greenfield, 2012), it is likely that the distribution of UTC within a city (and how equal it is) could also vary substantially across cities and regions (Schwarz et al., 2015;Nesbitt et al., 2019;Riley and Gardiner, 2020). ...
Urban forests provide a variety of ecosystem services that influence environmental and social welfare, but variable distribution of urban tree canopy (UTC) within and among urban areas can lead to inequitable provisioning of these benefits. Variation in UTC among and within urban areas is associated with local development patterns and socio-economic factors as well as broad-scale variation in the biophysical and socio-cultural context of urban regions. The objective of this study was to evaluate regional and continental trends in UTC distribution within and among urban areas, including assessing relationships of UTC and UTC inequality with socio-economic/demographic factors and characteristics of urban regions. Remotely-sensed UTC assessments and US Census data were used to derive census block group-level UTC-related response variables (e.g., percent UTC, inequality in UTC) and socio-economic/demographic predictor variables (e.g., median income, population density) for forty U.S. cities spanning several biophysical and socio-cultural regions. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze relationships of UTC with socio-economic/demographic predictor variables and the strength of these relationships was compared among cities across regions. There was a significant negative relationship (R² = 0.45) between total UTC and UTC inequality across the 40 cities, as the equality of UTC distribution within cities increased with decreasing total UTC. There was significant variation across biophysical and socio-cultural regions in UTC, UTC inequality, and the strength of the correlation of fine scale UTC with socio-economic/demographic factors. These findings illustrate the important role of broad-scale biophysical and socio-cultural factors as drivers of UTC patterns within and among cities.
... Critical urban theorists argue that urban environments are produced and controlled in ways that cater to elite interests at the expense of marginalized groups (Harvey 1999;Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003). Capitalism is a powerful force in the production of urban space, leading to the creation of unequal resource distribution (Heynen 2003). Individuals and groups who are able to control production, consumption, and exchange create, re-create, and maintain urban environments, while those who lack resources to control such processes often suffer social and environmental injustices (Low and Gleeson 1998;Swynedouw 1999). ...
There is growing interest in the role of new urban agriculture models to increase local food production capacity in cities of the Global North. Urban rooftop greenhouses and hydroponics are examples of such models receiving increasing attention as a technological approach to year-round local food production in cities. Yet, little research has addressed the unintended consequences of new modes of urban farming and food distribution, such as increased competition with existing peri-urban and rural farmers. We examine how small-scale farmers perceive and have responded to a recently established rooftop greenhouse and online marketplace enterprise in Montréal, Canada. Drawing on interviews with key informants and small-scale farmers, we find that peri-urban and rural producers have been affected in three key ways that represent tensions, adaptations, and synergies arising from this new urban agriculture and food distribution enterprise. First, many farmers are concerned about increased competition and value conflation with the ideals of community supported agriculture (CSA) and organic farming. Second, some farmers have adapted by developing novel marketing strategies and working with local bridge organizations to collectively market their produce to urban consumers. Third, a few farmers have decided to wholesale their produce to this new enterprise, allowing them to specialize production and avoid marketing their produce directly to urban consumers. Our study suggests that the emergence of a new form of alternative food network in Montréal has created both positive and negative disruptions for existing small-scale producers. Advocates for the expansion of new urban food production and distribution models should therefore give greater consideration to the effects on other actors in the local food system.
Campus forests are highly managed landscapes that provide ecological services and social benefits to actively enhance our spaces of higher education. Managing these forests, however, is challenging due to multiple and at times conflicting perspectives, including aesthetics, maintenance, ecological consideration, recreation, function, and institutional continuity. Ongoing efforts to study and shape Allegheny College’s campus forest through student research, campus initiatives, and institutional efforts demonstrate how campus landscapes offer opportunities to provide educational activities and work toward more sustainable communities. Current efforts include courses developing policy and management directions for a climate resilient forest that includes agroforestry. This paper presents recent efforts by Allegheny’s Environmental Science and Sustainability department to consider the past, present, and future of its campus forest through lenses of resiliency, productivity, and history. The paper explores challenges to maintaining a sustainable campus forest, including the need to undertake a full inventory of campus forests, centralizing decision-making while remaining inclusive of varied stakeholders, and developing community relationships through those forest activities. We also outline possible solutions to these challenges, leveraging the many assets of a campus community to pursue the goal of more resilient campus forests.
Since its introduction, the concept of “nature-based solutions” has gained much attention, drawing public funds and private investments. Nature-based solutions conceptualise the use of nature in planning as a cost-efficient and sustainable means to address societal, economic, and ecological challenges. However, this “triple win” premise tends to conceal potentially resulting injustices, such as displacement through green gentrification. While these injustices have attracted the attention of environmental justice scholars, as exemplified by the “just green enough” approach, links to the “nature-based solutions” concept are mostly implicit. Further, the concept of environmental privilege, questioning who benefits from created natural amenities, has rarely been taken up. This article, therefore, argues that environmental justice should be linked closely to nature-based solutions. Supported by a theoretical perspective, the article aims at exploring who benefits from, and who loses out on, urban nature-based solutions processes. It builds on a qualitative literature review of the scholarly landscape on environmental justice and urban greening while linking to nature-based solutions, adding perspectives of environmental privilege. In this, it attempts to offer three important contributions to the current academic discussion. First, the article provides an overview of the debate on urban greening, (in)justice, and environmental privilege. Second, it relates the concept of nature-based solutions to the debate on environmental justice, opening nature-based solutions up for critique and conceptual refinements. Third, it outlines a way forward for reframing nature-based solutions through the lens of environmental justice and privilege. Thus, this article provides a starting point for further discussions on the implementation of just nature-based solutions in cities.
Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet, we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life - particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.
Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet, we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life - particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.
Stewardship consists of acts of claims-making on space and caretaking of place that activate urban environments to function as social infrastructure. While stewardship practices are enacted by actors across the governance network, there is a need to better understand the role of civil society. Civic stewardship groups care and advocate for green, grey, and blue spaces, and can strengthen social trust and foster civic engagement. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 26) with a sample of New York City civic stewardship groups from a previous survey dataset (n = 754); the sample was stratified by network position and geographic scale. This paper analyzes how these groups operate in physical geographies and through relational networks. We describe the practices by which stewards activate and transform urban environments to create more sustainable cities, finding that activation of social infrastructure depends upon the degree of group connectivity and scale at which groups work.
Urban populations benefit greatly from the ecosystem services provided by urban green and blue spaces. While the equity of provision of and access to urban green and blue spaces has been widely explored, research on equity of ecosystem service provision is relatively scant. Using household level data, our study aims to assess the supply equity of five regulatory ecosystem services in Singapore. We employed linear mixed-effects models and Hot Spot Analysis to analyze their distributional equity across individual households of various demographic characteristics (horizontal inequality), and calculated Gini coefficient for the distribution of PM10 removal service among households categorised into demographic subgroups (vertical inequality). Our results show little evidence of inequitable ecosystem service provision among Singapore's diverse socio-demographic groups. This can be attributed to the early integration of environmental management strategies and meticulous socio-economic desegregation efforts into urban development plans, which maximised provision and maintenance of urban green spaces to all residents.
ABSTRACT
It is usually believed that the role of international NGOs is meant to reinforce environmental justice all over the world. However, it is not the case with the Environmental Justice Organizations Liabilities and Trade’s (EJOLT), whose approach seems distorting the real picture in the Moroccan Sahara. Against the expectations and principles of environmental justice, the EJOLT has targeted many achievements made in the region in the area of economic and social development. From its perspective, the exploitation of the region’ resources is an environmental justice issue given the fact that the Polisario front – an armed militia that has been fighting Morocco over the territories for more than 45 years – has not been consulted about the extraction and trade of such resources. To argue for this position, the EJOLT preferred taking a pro-Polisario disinvestment stand in the region claiming that environmental justice should prevail, making a separatist movement benefit from the disputed resources. In the same vein, EJOLT uses a political discourse which considers that the exploitation of the region’ resources is a ‘reinforcement of the occupation by Morocco’. To demystify such a discourse, this chapter examines the EJOLT’s homepage and extracts its narratives using the content analysis (CA) method. The first investigation revealed that there are six infrastructures targeted by the EJOLT. The analysis also revealed that the EJOLT uses a biased discourse – mostly distorted and defamatory – that failed to provide the real picture of the population in the region. Moreover, the EJOLT argues that the Polisario militia which lives in the Algerian territory, NOT the Moroccan population living in the Moroccan Sahara provinces, must benefit from the existing resources. Similarly, the rhetoric used in the narratives has failed to recognize that one million inhabitants inside the Moroccan Sahara have been directly benefiting from the many projects developed in the region. Equally important, the results show that EJOLT’s discourse aims at triggering violence, insecurity, and instability in the region, thus serving potential interested agendas.
Beginning 21 February 2022, free access for the first 2 weeks, to read online or download a PDF:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009122986
This Element explores Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its potential application to the field of public administration. It proposes specific areas within the field where a CRT framework would help to uncover and rectify structural and institutional racism. This is paramount given the high priority that the field places on social equity, the third pillar of public administration. If there is a desire to achieve social equity and justice, systematic, structural racism needs to be addressed and confronted directly. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is one example of the urgency and significance of applying theories from a variety of disciplines to the study of racism in public administration.
Cette thèse de géographie analyse les rapports mutuels de production entre les espaces ouverts et la double métropole constituée de Valparaiso et de Santiago du Chili. Devant les fortes pressions urbaines que connaît la région centrale du Chili depuis les années 1970, la permanence de nombreux espaces de superficie différente mais tous encore peu bâtis et aux usages faiblement intensifs à une vingtaine de kilomètres seulement des centres des deux principales agglomérations de ce pays émergent peut en effet paraître paradoxale. Mais le processus de métropolisation a besoin des ressources que représentent les espaces ouverts pour s'alimenter et à l'inverse les espaces ouverts ont besoin de la métropole pour exister à travers ses infrastructures, ses acteurs, ses lois. Dans une démarche de géographie sociale inspirée des travaux d'Henri Lefebvre et en se fondant sur un travail de terrain approfondi autour de trois zones d'étude de la troisième couronne périurbaine de Santiago et de Valparaiso (une littorale, une de moyenne montagne et une dans la dépression centrale), cette recherche développe une méthodologie plurielle permettant de saisir au mieux la triple dimension conçue, vécue et perçue des espaces ouverts en lien avec la métropolisation. Pour marginaux et divers qu'ils soient, les espaces ouverts constituent des enjeux stratégiques pour la métropolisation qui expliquent à la fois les conflits qu'ils créent et qu'ils subissent ainsi que la nécessité pour les autorités de les prendre en compte dans leurs aménagements.
The article presents the results of research on the current condition – the breed composition, quality characteristics and spatial organization of the urban vegetation in a city with a population of more than a million people on the example of the Beyond the river part of the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The research is based on field work, carried out by the authors in the period 2016-18, processed using GIS technologies, and supplemented by the results of analysis of remote sensing data, interpolation, statistical analysis, correlation of the composition and structure of tree stands and functional zones of the Beyond the river part of the city. In addition to the analysis of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of trees in the territory of the Beyond the river part of Nizhny Novgorod, the article presents the results of a comparative evaluation of the provision of urban forest areas of the Beyond the river part of Nizhny Novgorod (according to the results of interpolation). The main problems of the current condition and spatial organization of urban forest in the Beyond the river part of Nizhny Novgorod are identified.
There are certain structures in cities that exemplify the grandiose designs of the city builders at the turn of the twentieth century. The Prince Edward or Bloor Viaduct is one of these structures crossing Toronto’s key landform, the Don Valley, immortalized in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion. Plans to build the bridge emerged as early as 1897, although the construction did not begin until 1913. The Bloor Viaduct can help us consider the progressive era by examining how discussions of nature/culture and country/city were incorporated into the discourses of its planning and construction. Technically, the bridge was an engineering feat spanning three valleys, making east-west travel in the growing city more efficient, improving the transportation of food and lumber. Symbolically, this monument highlighted the ability to overcome nature with a bridge and bring an aestheticized nature to the city. This contradiction between overcoming and improving access to nature is built into the bridge’s planning and construction history. By exploring the symbolic and material aspects of this bridge, the contradictions of nature in the process of nation building appear more striking.
Urban forests are increasingly acknowledged as sources of multiple benefits and central to climate resilience and human well-being. Given these diverse and significant benefits, it is important to govern urban forests so as to ensure that all residents have equitable access and enjoyment. Understanding urban forest preferences, and including them in planning and management, is a key aspect of informed and contextually relevant urban forest governance. Although many studies have examined public urban forest preferences, we lack an understanding of the preferences of a key stakeholder: urban foresters. This study presents the results of semi-structured interviews with 22 urban forestry and allied green practitioners focused on preferred and least-preferred aspects of the urban forest. Participants expressed their preferred urban forest characteristics according to four themes: administration, spatial attributes, naturalness, and social benefits. Least-preferred characteristics were expressed under the themes of administration and degradation. Results suggest that practitioners employ a systems-level lens when discussing urban forest preferences. However, they also draw on personal experience when constructing their preferences, particularly in relation to naturalness and spatial diversity. These results provide insight into the urban forest preferences of practitioners and highlight the importance of innovative approaches, such as mosaic governance in urban forestry, to facilitate a just integration of the diverse preferences of urban forest stakeholders.
Environmental inequality is a phenomenon drawing much attention in the scientific and policy-making debates about urban forests and city greening. Most studies on the subject have shown that socially vulnerable, multicultural neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by the lack of urban forest while richer neighborhoods tend to be greener. But are there differences in the resilience of urban forests between poor and rich neighborhoods? We tackled this question using a newly developed indicator of urban forest resilience, functional diversity, to determine if environmental injustice is also found in the resilience of urban forests in poor neighborhoods. Using Canadian census data at the census tract scale, Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and urban tree inventories, this study investigated if urban forest resilience is also part of the environmental inequality phenomenon in four urban areas in eastern Canada: Toronto, Gatineau-Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. Multivariate analysis of the dataset shows that urban forest functional diversity, used as an indicator of resilience, is inversely correlated to a set of variables associated with social vulnerability. The same relationship also exists with canopy cover; a pattern of inequality found in many cities around the world. With these findings, we show that social vulnerability and urban forest resilience are intertwined, meaning that neighborhoods already lacking urban forest are also more at risk of losing it due to a sudden environmental disturbance. When confronted with global change, considering this new insight into urban environmental inequality could be of great importance for maintaining a comfortable living environment for every city-dweller.
Urban land in the United States currently occupies about 69 million acres with an estimated average crown cover of 28% and an estimated tree biomass of about 27 tons/acre. This structure suggests that the current total urban forest carbon storage in the United States is approximately 800 million tons with an estimated annual net carbon storage of around 6.5 million tons. Besides directly storing carbon, urban trees also reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by cooling ambient air and allowing residents to minimize annual heating and cooling. A method is provided for organizations to calculate the number of trees necessary to offset the CO2 emissions associated with the energy used in their office buildings. Tables are also provided to show how many trees an American could steward or plant to offset his or her per capita carbon emissions (2.3 tons/year). -from Authors
For older adults, social integration and the strength of social ties are profoundly important predictors of well-being and longevity. Can the physical environment be designed to promote older adults' social integration with their neighbors? We examined this possibility by testing the relationships between varying amount of exposure to green outdoor common spaces and the strength of ties among neighbors. Results of interviews with 91 older adults (between the ages of 64 and 91 years) from one inner-city neighborhood show that the use of green outdoor common spaces predicted both the strength of neighborhood social ties and sense of community. Although the strength of these relationships were modest, the findings suggest that the characteristics of outdoor common spaces can play a role in the formation and maintenance of social ties among older adult residents of inner-city neighborhoods. The results have implications for designers, managers, and residents of housing developments.
Children growing up in the inner city are at risk for a range of negative developmental outcomes. Do barren, inner-city neighborhood spaces compromise the everyday activities and experiences necessary for healthy development? Sixty-four urban public housing outdoor spaces (27 low vegetation, 37 high vegetation) were observed on four separate occasions. Overall, inner-city children's everyday activities and access to adults appeared remarkably healthy; of the 262 children observed, most (73%) were involved in some type of play, and most groups of children (87%) were supervised to some degree. In relatively barren spaces, however, the picture was considerably less optimistic: Levels of play and access to adults were approximately half as much as those found in spaces with more trees and grass, and the incidence of creative play was significantly lower in barren spaces than in relatively green spaces.
Spain is arguably the European country where the water crisis has become most acute in recent years. The political and ecological importance of water is not, however, only a recent development in Spain. Throughout this century, water politics, economics, culture, and engineering have infused and embodied the myriad tensions and conflicts that drove and still drive Spanish society. And although the significance of water on the Iberian peninsula has attracted considerable scholarly and other attention, the central role of water politics, water culture, and water engineering in shaping Spanish society on the one hand, and the contemporary water geography and ecology of Spain as the product of centuries of socioecological interaction on the other, have remained largely unexplored. The hybrid character of the water landscape, or “waterscape,” comes to the fore in Spain in a clear and unambiguous manner. The socionatural production of Spanish society can be illustrated by excavating the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization process. In the first part of the paper, I develop a theoretical and methodological perspective that is explicitly critical of traditional approaches in water-resources studies, which tend to separate various aspects of the hydrological cycle into discrete and independent objects of study. My perspective, broadly situated within the political ecology tradition, draws critically from recent work by ecological historians, cultural critics, sociologists of science, critical social theorists, and political economists. My main objective is to bring together what has been severed for too long by insisting that nature and society are deeply intertwined. In the second part of the paper, I excavate the origins of Spain's early-twentieth-century modernization process (1890–1930) as expressed in debates and actions around the hydrological condition. The conceptual framework presented in the first part helps structure a narrative that weaves water through the network of socionatural relations in ways that permit the recasting of modernity as a deeply geographical, although by no means coherent, homogeneous, total, or uncontested project. In sum, I seek to document how the socionatural is historically produced to generate a particular, but inherently dynamic, geographical configuration.
We have before us, here and now, a whole. It is both the condition for production and the product of action itself, the place for mankind and the object of its pleasure: the earth.1 ...a thing cannot be understood or even talked about independently of the relations it has with other things. For example, resources can be defined only in relationship to the mode of production which seeks to make use of them and which simultaneously "produces" them through both the physical and mental activity of the users. There is, therefore, no such thing as a resource in abstract or a resource which exist as a "thing in itself."2 A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.3 The two extremes, local and global, are much less interesting than the intermediary arrangements that we are calling networks....Is it our fault if the networks are simultaneously real, like nature, narrated, like discourse, and collective, like society?4.
Urban trees occupy a wide variety of habitats, from a single specimen competing in the urban jungle to extensive remnant or planted forest stands. Each is shown to produce distinct micro- to local scale climates contributing to the larger urban climate mosaic. These effects are discussed in relation to the radiative, aerodynamic, thermal and moisture properties of trees that so clearly set them apart from other urban materials and surfaces in terms of their exchanges of heat, mass and momentum with the atmosphere. Their resulting ability to produce shade, coolness, shelter, moisture and air filtration makes them flexible tools for environmental design.
In conventional buildings, trees increase, decrease, or have little effect on energy use depending on general climate, building type, tree species, and tree location. Tree arrangements that save energy provide shade primarily for east and west walls and roofs and wind protection from the direction of prevailing winter winds. Particularly for buildings specially designed to use solar energy and those with solar collectors, it is important to place tree crowns so they do not block sun from collectors and south walls. But conventional houses also benefit from winter sun. Deciduous trees provide better year-round shade than conifers, but do reduce solar energy significantly even without leaves. In winter, reductions in solar energy on south walls by a deciduous tree may be greater than reductions by the same tree in summer. Hence, growth rate and crown shape are important criteria in selecting shade trees, and the placement of trees around the house is important. A summary of research data suggests that the max- imum potential annual effect of trees on energy use in conven- tional houses is about 20 to 25% compared to the same house in the open.
... children were attracted to outdoor spaces with higher levels of trees and grass (Coley, Kuo, & Sullivan , 1997 ... Wells, a public housing development in Chicago, Illinois . ... of the families in Ida B. Wells receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (Chicago Housing Authority, 1992 ...
The paper links the rapid deforestation taking place in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest to the alliance of the Brazilian government with world-systemic or global institutions in developing Amazonia. This alliance accelerated the pace of destruction by extending the capitalist frontier into the region, with devastating consequences for the people of the forest, (i.e Indians, rubber tappers, etc.) The paper argues that changes in the ecopolitics of the world-system beginning in the mid-1980's strengthened the cause of the people of the forest against the systemic agents of destruction. They won important allies abroad, while the Brazilian government lost allies. The political leverage gained by the people of the forest allowed them to win a few important victories in attempting to preserve their lands and livelihoods. Pressured by international demand, the Brazilian government agreed to create extractive reserves and to demarcate Indian lands. The paper concludes that a country-by-country approach to the problem of deforestation is insufficient. The world-system must be taken into account for a more comprehensive picture of the problem. I also argue, however, that internal or national processes are also critical for our understanding of environmental problems in the Third World. The world-system and national processes interact.
This book challenges the widely-held view that Marxism is unable to deal adequately with environmental problems. Jonathan Hughes considers the nature of environmental problems, and the evaluative perspectives that may be brought to bear on them. He examines Marx's critique of Malthus, his method, and his materialism, interpreting the latter as a recognition of human dependence on nature. Central to the book's argument is an interpretation of the 'development of the productive forces' which takes account of the differing ecological impacts of different productive technologies while remaining consistent with the normative and explanatory roles that this concept plays within Marx's theory. Turning finally to Marx's vision of a society founded on the communist principle 'to each according to his needs', the author concludes that the underlying notion of human need is one whose satisfaction presupposes only a modest and ecologically feasible expansion of productive output.
The biosphere is increasingly dominated by human action. Consequently, ecology must incorporate human behavior. Political ecology, as long as it includes ecology, is a powerful framework for integrating natural and social dynamics. In this paper I present a resilience-oriented approach to political ecology that integrates system dynamics, scale, and cross-scale interactions in both human and natural systems. This approach suggests that understanding the coupled dynamics of human-ecological systems allows the assessment of when systems are most vulnerable and most open to transformation. I use this framework to examine the political ecology of salmon in the Columbia River Basin.
City residents who planted their own street trees were more satisfied with the outcome,than residents whose trees were planted by the city or an outside agency. Within the circumstances described in the study, those residents who paid for their trees were more satisfied with the outcomes,than those who,received them without extra charge from the city or from a voluntary organization. The results underscore,the importance,of active resident involvement,in tree-planting programs. Most research on public attitudes toward the
This article describes Brazil's role in the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Brazil has a large stake in the climate change issue because some of its national economic, social, and security interests are contingent on the growth of its energy sector and development of the Amazon region. Section one provides an overview of the ongoing climate change negotiations. Section two provides background on Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, which stem primarily from deforestation of the Amazon. Section three describes Brazil's interests and negotiating positions with respect to three key issues: (a) emissions-reduction responsibilities; (b) protocol mechanisms; and (c) land-use change and forestry. The concluding section will then assess Brazil's contributions in terms of both achieving an accord that will slow global warming and promoting Brazilian national interests.
Urban and community forests are often managed as individual trees instead of whole forest ecosystems. Cities inventory and manage these tree species to meet many important needs such as energy conservation, beauty, and recreation in the city. Yet, there are many opportunities for urban forest restoration to provide additional ecological benefits such as storm-water management, wildlife management, and biodiversity. Restoring the urban forest ecosystem is reestablishing the ecological health of the urban forest ecosystem. The goal of restoration is to return the urban forest to a form which is more ecologically sustainable for the community; the restored urban forest will contribute positively to the community instead of being a drain on its resources. Many of our parks, for example, are composed of trees and grass requiring intensive maintenance inputs such as fertilizing, irrigating, mowing and raking. With restoration these parks could take advantage of natural processes such as nutrient and water cycling, thereby saving money, energy and resources for the community. Connecting these restored parks to other ecosystems such as waterways can also contribute to biodiversity and wildlife management and conservation. The options for restoration sites include: yards, vacant lots, shopping centers, schoolyards, parks, industrial parks, and waterways. The projects can be varied such as: (1) The simple act of eliminating leaf-raking in a park to reestablish the natural forest floor and the natural cycling of nutrients; (2) The establishment of understory plant species in a schoolyard to promote wildlife; (3) The eradication of an invasive plant species which is eliminating much of the understory biodiversity in a park; (4) The re-design of a parking lot to decrease stormwater runoff and provide a small ecological wetland; or (5) The re-creation of a park with species and ecosystems to be just the way it was in the 1800s. The United States hosts an abundance of successful and innovative urban forest restoration projects. The two key ingredients that make these projects so successful are the involvement of people from the community and the formulation of a restoration plan.
The use of trees and other plants in urban areas has a long history, as long as urban living itself. This paper reviews the most important landscape forms that have contained the urban forests of European and North American cities before the twentieth century: residential gardens, linear promenades, small squares, and large parks. Plants in the urban landscape also play social roles, and in them we can see the cultural values represented by the urban forest. The three major social roles played by the urban forest before the twentieth century were as a natural element in a humanized landscape, as an aestllctic object in the urban landscape, and as a social object expressing power relations within urban society. The papcr concludes with a look at adaptations and reuse today of original urban forest landscape forms and at implica- tions for the present from the lessons of the past.
This book is a synthesis and overview of the complex interactions between atmospheric contaminants and forest ecosystems. The author provides a compendium of the most significant relationships between forests and air pollution under low, intermediate, and high dose conditions. He reviews the ability of forests to function as both a source of and a sink for air contaminants. The varied biological interactions between pollutants and forests - involving, for example, altered reproduction and species composition, nutrient cycling and foliar growth, insect outbreaks and microbial diseases, as well as increased morbidity and mortality - are examined from an individual tree and total ecosystem perspective.
