CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Mihailova, Darja |
|---|---|
| Title | Exploring Environmental Justice in the Post-indsutrial, Neo-liberal City |
| Summary | Social issues and environmental problems are tightly tied together, often pulling one another and exacerbating each other. Scholars describe the study of this tension as environmental justice. Environmental justice has historically looked at the disproportionate inequalities that result from the placement of polluting industries or toxic waste in urban areas. Recently, however, the literature has turned to the study of green amenities like parks and green development programs. These greening measures have the potential to change the physical and social fabric of an urban area as much as disamenities like toxic waste sites or polluted areas. Much of this recent literature has investigated cases in North America and several in Europe where urban areas have pushed forward environmental programs with sometimes unintended societal consequences. The aim of this thesis is to explore environmental justice – and the impact of green amenities – in a new context: a post-industrial city in Scandinavia. Green amenities have previously been studied in the post-industrial landscape in cities such as Toronto, New York, Portland, and some European cities such as Manchester, Leeds, and Barcelona. However, the Scandinavian context is new and presents an additional element: the area’s traditional image as a welfare state that accommodates all. The post-industrial city chosen as a case study in this thesis is Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city located in the southern tip of the country. Sweden, often considered by the West to be a model welfare state, has also in recent years become prone to the tension between societal strain and forward-looking environmental programs as it becomes increasingly market-dependent. Once an industrial city, Malmo has reimagined itself as attractive to different industries and people; it projects itself as “clean” and “green” city. This transition has been aided by a number of sustainability-focused projects. These projects have shown the ability to exclude certain populations from the planning (Gutierrez, 2015). Segregation among Malmö’s neighbourhoods has frequently appeared in academic literature. Foreign-born populations and the less affluent are concentrated in pockets in the city. Meanwhile, policy-makers try to appeal to wealthier Swedish-born residents to fill the city’s new development projects (Scarpa 2016; Scarpa, 2015; Salonen, 2012). Gradually, equity has become a greater concern. This thesis investigates green amenities – sustainability measures in residential housing – in the Scandinavian context with the goal of adding to the environmental justice literature and understanding whether social sustainability and environmental sustainability can coexist. |
| Supervisor | Smedby, Nora; Tojo, Naoko |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/mihailova_darja.pdf |
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