A research lab at ICTA-UAB
Recent research on sustainability planning and urban greening has revealed how socially vulnerable residents tend to become excluded or made invisible as cities create or restore green amenities as part of new urban interventions. In response, local activists and communities are increasingly contesting and resisting unjust processes and outcomes through a variety of strategies. Much civic organization takes place in the context of municipalities co-opting the demands and successes of the environmental justice movement. The strategies that community groups adopt include collective neighborhood organization, direct tactics, active participation in neighborhood redevelopment projects, alliances with gentrifiers and other groups, and demands for complementary policies and regulations in order to manage exclusion. However, new research needs to be conducted on the development and impact of community mobilization, on how activists manage a difficult balance between fighting for greener and more sustainable neighborhoods and risking displacement, and on the response of municipal decision-makers to displacement and marginalization concerns. Much of our research at BCNUEJ has been focused on building new studies on these key questions. Access the abstracts below.
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A ‘fertile soil’ for sustainability-related community initiatives: A new analytical framework (Environment and Planning A, 2017)
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Power and privilege in alternative civic practices: Examining imaginaries of change and embedded rationalities in community economies (Geoforum, 2017)
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Contesting and resisting environmental gentrification: Responses to new challenges and paradoxes for urban environmental justice (Sociological Research Online, 2016 )
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From toxic sites as LULUs to green amenities as LULUs? New challenges of inequity, privilege, and exclusion in urban environmental justice (Journal of Planning Literature, 2015)
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Equity Impacts of Urban Land Use Planning for Climate Adaptation. Critical Perspectives from the Global North and South (Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2016)
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Tactical developments for achieving just and sustainable neighborhoods: The role of community-based coalitions and bottom-to-bottom networks in street, technical, and funder activism (Environment and Planning C., 2015)
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The ‘Environmentalism of the Poor’ revisited: Territory and place in disconnected glocal struggles (Ecological Economics, 2014)