CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Winter, Amanda Kay |
|---|---|
| Title | Contested Sustainability and the Environmental Politics of Green City Making |
| Summary | Rather than understanding the city’s role in and connection to global economic and ecological systems, green city policies are often dominated by technology and energy efficiency measures in general, and carbon control in particular. Targets and best practices are devised accordingly and in this way, cities are often reified and their borders re-conceptualized, producing a new discourse with political expectations for citizens to base their lives around green city goals. My research demonstrates a growing rift between ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ where the emphasis on narrowly defined environmental initiatives creates a detachment from the balanced approach often sought after under the sustainability paradigm. To explore alternative ideas and move away from this dominant approach, I ask: How do community groups contest green city policies; and, what are the implications of these contestations for sustainable lifestyles in particular, and sustainability in general? This dissertation investigates Copenhagen (DK) and Vancouver (CA) as internationally recognized green cities, through the right to the city, the politics of scale and urban neoliberal contestations to understand the contestations around sustainability and sustainable lifestyles, as a counter to the dominant techno-managerial approach. In response to a lack of empirical evidence on how ‘sustainable lifestyles’ is defined in practice, I focus on how ‘sustainable lifestyles’ is conceptualized in green city discourse by the City and sustainability-oriented community groups. I show how ideas of sustainability get sedimented, translated, and (re)produced in accordance with measurement models to attain ‘greenest’ and ‘carbon neutral’ city titles. Along with policy documents, I analyze material collected from ethnographic field research as data. My findings are presented based on the following interrelated themes: (1) the ‘win-win’ framing of Copenhagen and Vancouver’s green action plans; (2) the associated imagining of green city subjects and the different conceptualizations of sustainable lifestyles; (3) translations of situated sustainabilities with examples from land and waste policies; and (4) the paradox of eco-gentrification shown through alternative food initiatives and their prefigurative politics. My findings contribute to conceptual debates regarding sustainable lifestyles, where I question its appropriateness as sustainability vocabulary given that in practice sustainable lifestyles was often expressed as exclusive, privileged, individualistic and resonated with the dominant technological approach. These empirical examples and findings are important given the popularity and mobility of ‘green’ and ‘carbon neutral’ policies. I claim that there is now ‘too much green’ where negative socio-economic outcomes of environmental improvements are a strong possibility. I call for a continued critique of ‘win-win’ scenarios and close attention to conflations such as green and sustainable and with this, we should move forward with careful attention to the different articulations of sustainability in an unequal world. |
| Supervisor | Watt, Alan |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/winter_amanda.pdf |
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