The Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNEJ) was founded in 2016 as a research laboratory carrying comparative and interdisciplinary scholarship, developing new teaching, and promoting learning in environmental justice and sustainability in cities. We welcome researchers at different stages of their career for research collaboration, co-learning, and co-reflection on how to create more green, just, and resilient cities in the global North and South.

Research

Our research is centered on studying processes, dynamics, tensions, and even conflicts that lead to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, bringing together theory from urban planning, public policy, urban and environmental sociology, and urban geography.  Projects examine the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, and how community groups in distressed neighborhoods contest the existence, creation, or exacerbation of environmental inequities as a result of urban (re)development processes and policies.

Our empirical studies take on a multi-method approach, combining spatial, quantitative, and qualitative research. They examine urban change and (re)development in cities both in the global North and South. Researchers in the Cities and Environmental Justice line have training in urban studies and planning, geography, sociology, policy and political science, economics, and public health. We engage in collaborative researchers with colleagues in Spain, the UK, Germany, Finland, Italy, the United States, Canada, Columbia, Ecuador, South Africa, India, and Australia.

Some of our recent projects include an analysis of at community mobilization for neighborhood clean-up and greening in Boston, Barcelona, and Havana; community initiatives toward low-carbon economies in Barcelona, Rome, Aberdeen, Berlin, and Oulu; sustainable and equitable slum upgrading in Rio and Medellin; and equities in land use planning for climate adaptation in Boston, New York, New Orleans, Durban, Jakarta, Dhaka, Metro Manilla, Surat, Santiago, and Medellin.