Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

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Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change. / Blok, Anders.

In: Urban Studies, Vol. 57, No. 14, 2021, p. 803–2816.

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Harvard

Blok, A 2021, 'Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change', Urban Studies, vol. 57, no. 14, pp. 803–2816. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019891050

APA

Blok, A. (2021). Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change. Urban Studies, 57(14), 803–2816. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019891050

Vancouver

Blok A. Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change. Urban Studies. 2021;57(14):803–2816. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019891050

Author

Blok, Anders. / Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change. In: Urban Studies. 2021 ; Vol. 57, No. 14. pp. 803–2816.

Bibtex

@article{1ddb114b3f30451e82c8618ca2ecd373,
title = "Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change",
abstract = "Over the past few decades, notions of environmental, ecological or green gentrification in cities have entered the lexicon of critical urban scholars and activists alike, not least in North American and European settings. This happens amidst growing concerns that the current policy and planning emphasis on making cities more sustainable serves in some cases to exacerbate socio-material inequalities in the city via forms of residential displacement. In this critical commentary, I respond to recent calls for expanding the socio-geographical parameters of green gentrification research, and for enriching the agenda via new theoretical approaches, by highlighting one particular avenue of problematisation that seems so far conspicuously lacking. This is the realisation that, in an unequal world of anthropogenic climate change, green gentrification must be grasped not only at local but also, simultaneously, at transnational scales of risk-induced socio-spatial restructuring. My suggested approach to a more multi-scalar and climate-sensitive notion of green gentrification proceeds via sociologist Ulrich Beck{\textquoteright}s theorising of the intensifying socio-material inequalities of climate change in {\textquoteleft}world risk society{\textquoteright}, along with ethnographic work on urban climate politics in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and in the North-West Indian city of Surat. While allowing us to analyse the many local ambivalences wedded with urban sustainability politics in the global North and global South alike, Beck helpfully insists that we keep their unequal trans-local interconnectedness in view, yielding a radicalised notion of green gentrification as set in-between and connecting localised and globalised frames of inequality in new ways.",
keywords = "Faculty of Social Sciences, displacement/gentrification, environment/sustainability, globalisation",
author = "Anders Blok",
year = "2021",
doi = "10.1177/0042098019891050",
language = "English",
volume = "57",
pages = "803–2816",
journal = "Urban Studies",
issn = "0042-0980",
publisher = "SAGE Publications",
number = "14",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change

AU - Blok, Anders

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Over the past few decades, notions of environmental, ecological or green gentrification in cities have entered the lexicon of critical urban scholars and activists alike, not least in North American and European settings. This happens amidst growing concerns that the current policy and planning emphasis on making cities more sustainable serves in some cases to exacerbate socio-material inequalities in the city via forms of residential displacement. In this critical commentary, I respond to recent calls for expanding the socio-geographical parameters of green gentrification research, and for enriching the agenda via new theoretical approaches, by highlighting one particular avenue of problematisation that seems so far conspicuously lacking. This is the realisation that, in an unequal world of anthropogenic climate change, green gentrification must be grasped not only at local but also, simultaneously, at transnational scales of risk-induced socio-spatial restructuring. My suggested approach to a more multi-scalar and climate-sensitive notion of green gentrification proceeds via sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theorising of the intensifying socio-material inequalities of climate change in ‘world risk society’, along with ethnographic work on urban climate politics in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and in the North-West Indian city of Surat. While allowing us to analyse the many local ambivalences wedded with urban sustainability politics in the global North and global South alike, Beck helpfully insists that we keep their unequal trans-local interconnectedness in view, yielding a radicalised notion of green gentrification as set in-between and connecting localised and globalised frames of inequality in new ways.

AB - Over the past few decades, notions of environmental, ecological or green gentrification in cities have entered the lexicon of critical urban scholars and activists alike, not least in North American and European settings. This happens amidst growing concerns that the current policy and planning emphasis on making cities more sustainable serves in some cases to exacerbate socio-material inequalities in the city via forms of residential displacement. In this critical commentary, I respond to recent calls for expanding the socio-geographical parameters of green gentrification research, and for enriching the agenda via new theoretical approaches, by highlighting one particular avenue of problematisation that seems so far conspicuously lacking. This is the realisation that, in an unequal world of anthropogenic climate change, green gentrification must be grasped not only at local but also, simultaneously, at transnational scales of risk-induced socio-spatial restructuring. My suggested approach to a more multi-scalar and climate-sensitive notion of green gentrification proceeds via sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theorising of the intensifying socio-material inequalities of climate change in ‘world risk society’, along with ethnographic work on urban climate politics in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and in the North-West Indian city of Surat. While allowing us to analyse the many local ambivalences wedded with urban sustainability politics in the global North and global South alike, Beck helpfully insists that we keep their unequal trans-local interconnectedness in view, yielding a radicalised notion of green gentrification as set in-between and connecting localised and globalised frames of inequality in new ways.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - displacement/gentrification

KW - environment/sustainability

KW - globalisation

U2 - 10.1177/0042098019891050

DO - 10.1177/0042098019891050

M3 - Journal article

VL - 57

SP - 803

EP - 2816

JO - Urban Studies

JF - Urban Studies

SN - 0042-0980

IS - 14

ER -

ID: 235597132