Hurricanes Expose The Foundations Of Our Cities And The Limits Of Urban Sustainability

Many have observed that the outcomes of pseudo-sustainability forward environmental interests at the expense of social equity. In 2011, Liz Mueller and Sarah Dooling noted that “Environmental and economic rationales for redevelopment implicitly focus on the benefits brought by future residents of redeveloped neighborhoods,” but not on those of existing residents. A similar argument was made last year in the journal Nature by David Wachsmuth and colleagues who pointed out that urban sustainability policy narrowly targets ecological goals in a manner that leads to indifference to the effects on marginalized people. Earlier this year in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Robert Sampson reviewed evidence from Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles to further support the argument that urban sustainability initiatives often focus on ecosystems and physical infrastructure at the expense of creating “fissures in the civic infrastructure.” And, in her recent post to the Green Inequalities blog, Isabelle Anguelovski provides several examples, from the greenbelt in Medellin to the Highline in New York City, where cities seeking to attract new high paying industries are awash in urban greening that sometimes serves as a thinly veiled means of targeted upgrading to displace vulnerable residents.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hurricanes-expose-the-foundations-of-our-cities-and_us_59bfdbdfe4b02c642e4a18b8?utm_hp_ref=new-york-city