Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability

V. Kelly Turner, David H. Kaplan, V. Kelly Turner, David H. Kaplan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000331882
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The 21st century has been called the "century of the city." Unprecedented and uneven urban growth and expansion coupled with climate change have compounded concerns that current urbanization pathways are not sustainable. Calls for scholarship on urban sustainability among geographers cite strengths in both examining human-environment interactions and unravelling urbanization patterns and processes that positioned the discipline to make unique contributions to critical research needs.

Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability reflects on the contributions that geographers have made to urban sustainability scholarship on varied domains such as transportation, green infrastructure, and gentrification. Contributed chapters probe uniquely geographic perspectives on urban resilience, environmental justice, political ecology, and planning that arise from empirically integrating social and biophysical realms that arise from considering spatial dimensions of problems like scale- and place-based peculiarities of phenomena.

This book will be of great value to scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Urban and City Planning, Political Ecology, and Sustainable Urbanism.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.

Geographic perspectives on urban sustainability: past, current, and future research trajectories

V. Kelly Turner and David H. Kaplan

ABSTRACT
The 21st century has been called the “century of the city” and compounded concerns that current development pathways were not sustainable. Calls for scholarship on urban sustainability among geographers cites strengths in the human-environment and urban subfields that positioned the discipline to make unique contributions to critical research needs. This special issue reflects on the contributions that geographers have made to urban sustainability scholarship. We observe that that integration across human-environment and urban subfields reflects broader bifurcations between social theory and spatial science traditions in geography. Piggy-backing on the rise of sustainability science, the emergence of urbanization science compels geographers to reflect upon the ways in which we are positioned to make unique contributions to those fields. We argue that those contributions should embrace systems thinking, empirically connect social constructs to biophysical patterns and processes, and use the city as a laboratory to generate new theories.

Introduction

Urban sustainability scholarship as an outgrowth of sustainability science has been established as a major interdisciplinary academic research priority, with recent calls for a new field of “urbanization science” that would generalize our understanding of human and environmental processes shaping cities (Alberti, 2017; Seto, Golden, Alberti, & Turner, 2017; Seto & Reenberg, 2014; Solecki et al., 2013; Wigginton, Fahrenkamp-Uppenbrink, Wible, & Malakoff, 2016). Geographers have previously commented that the discipline appears to be well positioned to contribute to urban sustainability scholarship due to long traditions in both human-environment and urban subfields and interest in interdisciplinary integration (Baerwald 2010; Bettencourt & Kaur, 2011; NRC, 1999; NSF 1999; Hanson & Lake, 2000; Kates, 2011; Mooney et al., 2013; Robbins, 2007; Skole, 2004; Turner, 2002; Wolch, 2007; Zimmerer, 2001). This special issue is motivated by the observation that integration across human-environment and urban subfields reflects broader bifurcations between social theory and spatial science traditions in geography. Specifically, urban sustainability scholarship within the urban geography subfield and political ecology within the human-environment subfield look to social theory to understand environmental themes in cities, but rarely integrate environmental data on biophysical dynamics into empirical studies (e.g., Longley, 2002; Walker, 2005). Urban sustainability scholarship in the land systems science tradition within human-environment geography integrates environmental data into spatial science frameworks to understand coupled human-biophysical dynamics in urban regions, but rarely integrates existing explanatory theory from the social sciences (Munroe, McSweeney, Olson, & Mansfield, 2014). Moreover, geographers aligned with land system science have already led development of interdisciplinary sustainability and urbanization science fields, while the contributions of geographic traditions aligned with social theory are less apparent in those realms.

In this introduction, we review the intellectual, methodological, and institutional dynamics in human-environment and urban geography that shape integrative urban sustainability scholarship in the field. We argue that some lines of urban sustainability scholarship in geography may miss an opportunity to shape the field of urbanization science if the level of integration between urban and human-environment subfields in geography remains siloed between social theory and spatial science. Importantly, we offer avenues to advance a more holistic integrative approach that dovetail with the urbanization science approach and introduce examples that highlight those approaches in this special feature.

Urban themes in human-environment geography

Human-environment geography has major scholarly traditions in land systems science and political ecology, informed by spatial science and social theory, respectively (Turner & Robbins, 2008; Zimmerer, 2010). Both traditions emphasize topics such as land management and livelihoods in resource dependent communities, human induced land degradation and conservation of natural resources, and human and environmental vulnerability because of development (Turner & Robbins, 2008). These areas of common topical interest have historically steered research towards non-urban systems.

Remote sensing data have been central to land systems science approaches and, until recently, been too course to provide meaningful insights into urban land dynamics (Wentz, Seto, Myint, Netzband, & Fragkias, 2011; Yang, 2011). Foundational work in land systems science, therefore, tended to frame urbanization as one of many drivers of land consumption and degradation and did not address intra urban dynamics (Turner, Lambin, & Reenberg, 2007). Recent insights into phenomena like the urban climate have accelerated more nuanced scholarship on cities as complex land systems (Georgescu, Morefield, Beirwagen, & Weaver, 2012; Stokes & Seto, 2016, Wentz et al., 2011). Urban land systems scholarship is leading development of fields like urbanization science because the spatial science approach favored in land systems science corresponds well to environmental sciences, seeks generalizable knowledge of urban systems, and considers how best to corral that knowledge into actionable insights to effect policy change (Magliocca et al., 2018; Zimmerer, 2010). Yet, land systems science struggles at times to empirically link social and ecological causes and consequences, especially those observable at local scales (Rindfuss, Walsh, Turner, Fox, & Mishra, 2004). As a result, land systems science empiricism has held traction in global forums like IPCC, but contributed less to local decision-making in cities.

Political ecology began to shift toward urban themes earlier than did land systems science. The subfield is less constrained by remote sensing and GIS technology and has been “suspicious” of the politics of these research tools (Turner & Robbins, 2008). In fact, analytic approaches, like metabolism studies of flows between material resources and capital are well suited to urban analysis (Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2004). Conventional themes in political ecology – social production of nature and environmental justice – bring cities into the foreground. The emerging subfield of urban political ecology challenges the logic of spatial patterns observed through land systems science approaches (Robbins, 2007; Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2004). Urban political ecology also aligns with urban geography perspectives that draw from social theory, as is evidenced by several publications in this journal (Cooke & Lewis, 2010; Keil, 2003, 2013; Myers, 2008; Quastel, 2009, Quastel, Moos, & Lynch, 2012; Ranganathan & Balazs, 2015). Yet, the political ecology tradition often fails to fully capture nature in practice, emphasizes representation over generalization, and it avoids policy prescriptions, which impedes collaboration with the natural sciences (Blaikie, 2012; Walker, 2005). At best, integrating qualitative case study and environmental data sets presents methodological and epistemological challenges and, at worst, some in the environmental science community view qualitative case study data as less rigorous (Meyfroidt, 2016, Petts, Owens, & Bulkeley, 2008).

The biophysical environment in urban geography scholarship

Historically, urban geography developed in tandem with urban sociology for which the natural environment was not at the forefront of scholarship concerning the place of the city within an urban system (e.g., Berry & Garrison, 1958; Getis & Getis, 1966;). Despite the metaphorical use of the term “ecology” of the city (Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1984), nature has remained absent later quantitative assessments of human activities and how they shaped urban space within and between cities (Abler, Adams, & Gould, 1971; Kaplan & Holloway, 2014; Pred, 1964; Wehrwein, 1942; Wheeler, 1993). Structuralist and humanist paradigms entered urban geographic explorations of cities in the 1970 and 1980s, but these perspectives largely focused on either political economic structures or human agency and perception (Harvey, 1973; Ley, 1983). The Los Angeles School that emerged as a competing approach to the Chicago School in the 1990 and 2000s may come closest to engaging the role of the natural environment in cities (Dear, 2002a, 2002b; Nicholls, 2010; Shearmur, 2008). Dominated by Marxist and postructuralist social theorists, however, this line of scholarship was primarily concerned with the politics of nature and far less attentive to biophysical processes. Ashmore and Dodson (2017, p. 105) observe that “it is curious that urban geography as a specialization has been seen within geography as tacitly the preserve of human geographers.” When Wheeler (1993) examined the articles published in Urban Geography between 1980 and 1991, none of the 18 themes that he identified related to nature and the environment. Even more contemporary “readers” reexamined urban geography, but included very little about urban environmental or sustainability concerns (Fyfe & Kenny, 2005). Urban space and place, at least, was “devoid” of nature (Hanson, 1999).

There was a missed opportunity to engage the work of physical geographers in the 1970s and 1980s (Berry & Horton, 1974; Detwyler & Marcus, 1972; Douglas, 1981, 1983). They argued that the city was a particular kind of ecosystem, with feedback loops between human and biophysical system components (similar to the aforementioned urban land systems work), and that any search for answers to the social ills of cities must include an understanding of the biophysical dimensions of urban issues alongside the socio-cultural explanations (Douglas, 1981). Dynamics within geography at the time potentially explain this lost opportunity for collaboration between physical and urban geographers. The cultural turn within urban geography was ill fit with the systems approaches favored by physical geographers. Physical geographers were reluctant to interface with social theory, especially cultural ecology framings, based on their fears of environmental deterministic explanations. Whatever the reason for geographer’s reticence to contribute, an ecology of the city that empirically integrated ecological and social realms did develop in the ensuing years (Grimm et al., 2008). The absence of social theorists in this new urban ecology creates explanatory holes and, sometimes, misappropriation of social science constructs (Grove et al., 2015; Ramalho & Hobbs, 2012).

The concept of sustainability, harnessed to urban design, planning, and economic development, have invigorated urban geography research on environmental themes (NSF, 1999, Wolch, 2007). Design-oriented perspectives seek to mitigate the social and environmental ills associated with urban sprawl through smart growth, transit-oriented development, conservation design, and New Urbanism among others (Arendnt et al., 1996; Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2000; McHarg, 1969; Reid & Cervero, 2001). Some of the design goals such as building to a human scale, increasing walkability, and embracing socio-economic diverse communities resonated among urban geographers (Ellis, 2002; Platt, 2006; Talen, 2002). For the most part, design-oriented approaches have drawn sharp criticism among urban geographers that have argued that much of what is described as sustainable design is environmental design and ignores the social processes (Braun, 2005; Talen, 2002). For instance, this journal has featured multiple articles on the New Urbanist design school, including a special feature in 2001. These articles argue that New Urbanism at best produces mixed social and environmental outcomes or at worst constitutes a green marketing tool that, perversely, enables gentrification and sprawl (Al-Hindi & Till, 2001; Till, 2001; Trudeau & Kaplan, 2016; Trudeau & Malloy, 2011; Zimmerman, 2001). Given its emphasis on social theory, it is unsurprising that urban geography scholarship engaging with environmental design theories has produced little in the way of empirical evidence of environmental outcomes.

Entrenching divides via academic institutions

Academic institutions have reinforced the division between the human-environment and urban geography subfields, especially by pulling geographers from the land systems science traditions into interdisciplinary society-environment fields. Much of the geographic work on human-environment interactions has come under the umbrella of sustainability science, an interdisciplinary field recognized by top scientific venues such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Science, major funding bodies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) Coupled Natural Human Systems Program, and international research agendas and consortiums such as the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP, http://www.igbp.net/), Future Earth (http://www.futureearth.org/), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/) (Cash et al., 2003; Clark, 2000; Clark, 2007; Clark & Dickson, 2003; Lubchenco, 1998; Kates et al., 2000). Land System Science in particular has formal institution...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Geographic perspectives on urban sustainability: past, current, and future research trajectories
• 2 Transportation sustainability in the urban context: a comprehensive review
• 3 Urban resilience for whom, what, when, where, and why?
• 4 Green infrastructure, green space, and sustainable urbanism: geography's important role
• 5 Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city
• Index