Call for Papers: American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, April 5-9, 2017
Environmental Justice Dimensions of Urban Greening
Session organizers: Hamil Pearsall (Temple University), Jonah White (Michigan State University), Troy D. Abel (Western Washington University), Isabelle Anguelovski (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Many city officials and civic leaders around the world support urban greening as a way to improve sustainability and livability in cities and to redress inequalities and injustices in environmental amenities and disamenities. However, some residents, communities and scholars note that environmental projects, such as brownfield redevelopment, green space creation, or bike infrastructure expansion, either fail to deliver benefits to or have unintended (and negative) consequences for the populations most in need. In some communities, urban greening has become a code word for gentrification, with projects that exclude input from longtime residents and serve newer, wealthier, and whiter populations. In other places, greening projects ignore the needs of the most vulnerable populations, and they might exacerbate their exclusion over the mid or long term. Urban greening has become increasingly contested, and the question remains about how to improve the social justice and equity components of urban greening and assess the scope and magnitude of its impact.
This session seeks a wide range of inquiry on the environmental justice dimensions of urban greening, and we welcome papers on the following topics:
- Theorizations of urban greening or environmental gentrification
- Analysis of social, economic, or environmental impacts of urban greening
- Advances in methodologies for assessing scope and magnitude of impacts
- Procedural justice in urban greening
- Contested urban greening projects around the world
- Urban greening governance/ Politics of urban greening
- ‘Just green enough’ and other ways to promote social justice and equity
- Public policies and planning tools for addressing the negative social and racial impacts of greening
Please submit abstracts for consideration to Hamil Pearsall (hamil.pearsall@temple.edu) by October 15, 2016.