{"title":"How Should Urban Climate Change Planning Advance Social Justice?","authors":"Bridget Pratt","doi":"10.1353/ken.2023.a899459","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cities are struggling to balance the moral imperatives of sustainable development, with equity and social justice often ignored and negatively impacted by climate change mitigation and adaptation. Yet, the nature of these impacts on social justice has not been comprehensively investigated and little ethical guidance exists on how to better promote social justice in urban climate change planning practice. This article addresses the normative question: How should urban climate change planning advance social justice? It gathers empirical literature documenting the inclusivity and equity impacts of urban climate change planning and thematically analyses that literature for dimensions of social justice drawn from philosophical and urban justice theory. Study findings demonstrate that four characteristics of climate change planning in cities-underlying neoliberal ideology, unequal treatment, green gentrification, and exclusion from decisionmaking-comprise, create, or worsen social injustices across six dimensions. These characteristics are often interconnected and inseparable. Where neoliberal ideology guides urban climate change planning, the other three characteristics frequently occur as well. The article concludes by arguing that, at a minimum, urban planners and climate planners have an obligation of justice to avoid undertaking climate change planning that exhibits any of the four characteristics and to address injustices generated where planning has such characteristics. It further suggests that planners' negative obligations likely extend beyond this because the literature review revealed gaps in existing empirical data on the equity impacts of urban climate change planning.</p>","PeriodicalId":46167,"journal":{"name":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2023.a899459","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Cities are struggling to balance the moral imperatives of sustainable development, with equity and social justice often ignored and negatively impacted by climate change mitigation and adaptation. Yet, the nature of these impacts on social justice has not been comprehensively investigated and little ethical guidance exists on how to better promote social justice in urban climate change planning practice. This article addresses the normative question: How should urban climate change planning advance social justice? It gathers empirical literature documenting the inclusivity and equity impacts of urban climate change planning and thematically analyses that literature for dimensions of social justice drawn from philosophical and urban justice theory. Study findings demonstrate that four characteristics of climate change planning in cities-underlying neoliberal ideology, unequal treatment, green gentrification, and exclusion from decisionmaking-comprise, create, or worsen social injustices across six dimensions. These characteristics are often interconnected and inseparable. Where neoliberal ideology guides urban climate change planning, the other three characteristics frequently occur as well. The article concludes by arguing that, at a minimum, urban planners and climate planners have an obligation of justice to avoid undertaking climate change planning that exhibits any of the four characteristics and to address injustices generated where planning has such characteristics. It further suggests that planners' negative obligations likely extend beyond this because the literature review revealed gaps in existing empirical data on the equity impacts of urban climate change planning.
期刊介绍:
The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal offers a scholarly forum for diverse views on major issues in bioethics, such as analysis and critique of principlism, feminist perspectives in bioethics, the work of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, active euthanasia, genetics, health care reform, and organ transplantation. Each issue includes "Scope Notes," an overview and extensive annotated bibliography on a specific topic in bioethics, and "Bioethics Inside the Beltway," a report written by a Washington insider updating bioethics activities on the federal level.