Rethinking climate futures through urban fabrics: (De)growth, densification, and the politics of scale
- 25 November 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Urban Geography
- Vol. 41 (10), 1335-1343
- https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1850024
Abstract
In the face of climate destabilizations and breakdowns, debates about (de)growth and scale have been particularly significant within critical scholarship. These debates counterpose radically different political positionings, with implications for how the planetary future is envisioned. Must societies build their way out of climate change's existential threat via massive new investments in techno-infrastructural (re)development? Or are these visions fatally flawed, requiring altogether different programs of degrowth, techno-skeptical reimagination, and decentralization? We argue that disputes about scale and "descaling" for climate action require a better theory of the urban, especially in relation to density and processes of densification. We must trouble both the (over)sell of urban density and eco-efficiencies as a response to climate change, while also pushing against the persistent anti-urbanism in much thinking around descaling, decentralization, and relocalization. Ultimately, we argue that disputes about scale within climate action need more thorough grounding in actually existing geographies and their politics.This publication has 23 references indexed in Scilit:
- 7. The Other Low-Carbon ProtagonistsPublished by Cornell University Press ,2017
- Destroy what destroys the planet: Steering creative destruction in the dual crisisCapital & Class, 2016
- The geographies of urban densityProgress in Human Geography, 2016
- Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial CityAntipode, 2016
- Seeing Green in San Francisco: City as Resource FrontierAntipode, 2015
- From urban scar to ‘park in the sky’: terrain vague, urban design, and the remaking of New York City’s High Line ParkEnvironment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2015
- Planning Sustainable Cities and RegionsPublished by Taylor & Francis Ltd ,2014
- Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in TorontoInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2014
- In defence of degrowthEcological Economics, 2011
- The compact city fallacyJournal of Planning Education and Research, 2005