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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA‑UAB)

New book on the 10 drivers of injustice in urban sustainability

09 Nov 2022
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Injustice in Urban Sustainability. Ten Core Drivers is the new book written by ICTA-UAB researchers Panagiota Kotsila, Isabelle Anguelovski, Melissa García-Lamarca and Filka Sekulova, and published by Routledge in Open Access.

Injustice in Urban Sustainability

Short, sharp, and accessibly written, this volume explores and questions common assumptions around what urban sustainability means, how it can be implemented, and how it is manifested in or driven by urban interventions that hinge on claims of sustainability. For this purpose, a collective of researchers uses a unique typology of ten core drivers of injustice.

Aligned with critical environmental justice studies, the book highlights the contradictions of urban sustainability in relation to justice. It argues that urban neighbourhoods cannot be greener, more sustainable and liveable unless their communities are strengthened by the protection of the right to housing, public space, infrastructure and healthy amenities.

Linked to the individual drivers, ten short empirical case studies from across Europe and North America provide a systematic analysis of research, policy and practice conducted under urban sustainability agendas in cities such as Barcelona, Glasgow, Athens, Boston and Montréal, and show how social and environmental justice is, or is not, being taken into account. By doing so, the book uncovers the risks of continuing urban sustainability agendas while ignoring, and therefore perpetuating, systemic drivers of inequity and injustice operating within and outside of the city.

Accessibly written for students in urban studies, critical geography and planning, this is a useful and analytical synthesis of issues relating to urban sustainability, environmental and social justice.

The Open Access version of this book, available here, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. It has been  funded by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

 

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