Sustainability in the Global City
Myth and Practice

This volume is a vital contribution to conversations about urban sustainability, looking beyond the propaganda to explore its consequences for everyday life.

Cindy Isenhour (Edited by), Gary McDonogh (Edited by), Melissa Checker (Edited by)

9781107076280, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 March 2015

426 pages, 34 b/w illus. 8 maps
23.4 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm, 0.75 kg

'I highly recommend this collection of essays, and hope to have a chance to use it in teaching. It provides insightful and nuanced perspectives on how the language of sustainability is used, how programs get deployed, and their differential impacts on communities.' Stephanie Pincetl, The Nature of Cities (www.thenatureofcities.com)

Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life, particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity. This volume provides a unique and vital contribution to ongoing conversations about urban sustainability by looking beyond the promises, propaganda, and policies associated with the concept in order to explore both its mythic meanings and the practical implications in a variety of everyday contexts. The authors present ethnographic studies from cities in eleven countries and six continents. Each chapter highlights the universalized assumptions underlying interpretations of sustainability while elucidating the diverse and contradictory ways in which people understand, incorporate, advocate for, and reject sustainability in the course of their daily lives.

Introduction Melissa Checker, Gary McDonogh and Cindy Isenhour
Part I. Building the Myth: Branding the Green Global City: 1. 'We're not that kind of developing country': environmental awareness in contemporary China Jennifer Hubbert
2. Green capitals reconsidered Cindy Isenhour
Snapshot 1. Transparency, consumerism, and governmentality: lessons from a very small place Gary McDonogh
3. Going green?: washing stones in world-class Delhi Varsha Patel
Part II. Planning, Design, and Sustainability in the Wake of Crisis: 4. 'The sustainability edge': the postcrisis promise of eco-city branding Miriam Greenberg
Snapshot 2. Developing sustainable visions for post-catastrophe communities Daniel Slone
5. 'I've got a house but no room for my hammock': the tragedy of the commons
or, another common tragedy among the Añu of Sinamaica, Venezuela Ana Servigna and Alí Fernandez
6. Green is the new brown: 'old school toxics' and environmental gentrification on a New York City waterfront Melissa Checker
Snapshot 3. Producing sustainable futures in post-genocide Kigali, Rwanda Samuel Shearer
Part III. Everyday Engagements with Urbanity and 'Nature': 7. Whose urban forest?: the political ecology of gathering urban nontimber forest products Patrick Hurley, Marla R. Emery, Rebecca McLain, Melissa Poe, Brian Grabbatin and Cari Goetcheus
Snapshot 4. One man's trash Brad Rogers
8. Shopping on Main Street: a model of a community-based food economy Kathleen Bubinas
9. Spokespeople for a mute nature: the case of the Villa Rodrigo Bueno in Buenos Aires María Carman
Part IV. Cities Divided: Urban Intensification, Neoliberalism, and Urban Activism: 10. Combining sustainability and social justice in the Paris metropolitan region François Mancebo
11. Shifting gears: the intersections of race and sustainability in Memphis Matthew Farr, Keri Brondo and Scout Anglin
12. Can human infrastructure combat green gentrification?: ethnographic research on bicycling in Los Angeles and Seattle Adonia Lugo
13. Urban sustainability as a 'boundary object': interrogating discourses of urban intensification in Ottawa Donald Leffers
14. Learning 'just' sustainability: a collaboration between the Preserve East Austin Affordability Campaign and the frontiers of geography class Eliot Tretter
Snapshot 5. After sustainability: Barcelona in a time of crisis Gary McDonogh
Afterword Alf Hornborg.

Subject Areas: Sustainability [RNU], Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Environmentalist thought & ideology [RNA], The environment [RN], Human geography [RGC], International environmental law [LBBP], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]