Abstract
Broto and Westman’s (2020) book is a new critical analysis of sustainability practices and the introduction of the concept of ‘just sustainabilities’ in the context of urban settlements. Sustainability and development are faced with unpredictable current and future challenges, and this book offers an overview of how we can achieve urban sustainability across different contexts. The concept of just sustainabilities is one that is key in addressing all sustainable development goals long-term and remedy the converging crises we are facing today. Broto and Westman analyze a database of 400 sustainability initiatives in 225 cities to offer a comparative examination of sustainability practice, its implementation and how it looks in diverse contexts. The authors answer the following questions: (a) What measures are deployed to advance urban sustainability? (b) Who is deploying them? (c) How are they achieved? The analytical question is concerned with the extent to which these actions can transform society towards a just, sustainable future. The analysis also helps us reflect on whether ‘just sustainabilities’ provides an appropriate framework to advance emancipatory goals that benefit people and the environment in contemporary cities. As the authors note, ‘In our analysis, we found an abundant evidence that local governments, small businesses, NGOs and communities lead many forms of sustainability action in different kinds of cities around the world’ (pp. 4–5). This reinforces the idea that just sustainabilities have emerged from the bottom up and that the recognition of justice as central to addressing sustainability challenges have come from local communities.
By focusing on urban areas, the authors examine the complex and interrelated challenges that make environmental progress difficult. Some of these challenges include ensuring equal access to resources, managing environmental risks, land transformations and managing biodiversity, and restructuring the current systems around reducing consumption and decarbonization. Urban settlements provide an important site for analysis because of these spaces’ diverse natures and the massive inequalities that they present, both in terms of access to resources, and the differing levels of risk to sustainability challenges that inhabitants face. The authors sustain this critical line of thought throughout their analysis.
The analysis starts by deconstructing common values around sustainability and development practice to frame the case for a justice-cantered lens. The common ideology throughout much sustainability thought is that ‘technology is the solution, economic growth is the solution, or consensus is the solution’ (p. 21). First, the authors argue that the appropriation of technocentric sustainability thinking can become very problematic to the advancement of systemic change through its promotion of a focus on quantitative measurements, universality, and an obsession with information-based solutions. Second, economic growth is another standard sustainable development solution that does not address the underlying challenges of systemic inequality and ecological integrity. Conversely, these framings miss experience-based interventions and solutions which focus on urban realities.
Development practice and environmental science have emerged through eurocentric colonial systems and traditionalist worldviews that we can now recognize as problematic and destructive to minorities globally. In examining change for just sustainabilities, the authors argue that we must recognize that planning is a powerful tool for intervention and change. As the authors explain,
Just sustainability’s principle of quality of life and well-being represents a call to reclaim dignity in the place where one lives…. It calls for an understanding of what urban citizens consider a life worth living…This principle ties sustainability action to questions of deprivation, poverty and urban inequality (p.93).
Action to improve the well-being of the current and future generations depends on how we understand the complex sustainability needs and dreams of those generations. When looking at images of the future, it enables interventions of the present. However, the future’s uncertainty can make this challenging to plan. Broto and Westman note that ‘Fundamental shifts in values, discourses, behaviours and institutions are necessary to respond to global environmental change’ (p. 128). Claiming the right to the city for all and not a select privileged few and improving representation in both human and non-human forms can allow new ways to tackle long-term challenges around unjust environmental change. For example, ‘If we consider nature as something intrinsically valuable independent of its relation to humans, then nature would have to have a voice’ (p. 135). When planning for a just and sustainable future, involving people in co-producing their present and future solutions should be a priority. We need to empower disadvantaged groups to address and resolve sustainability issues that affect them the most.
In their final chapter, Broto and Westman critically engage with the concept of ecological limits. The authors suggest that ‘A truly sustainable society is one where wider questions of social needs and welfare and economic opportunity are integrally related to environmental limits imposed by supporting ecosystems’ (p. 188). The creation of models such as ecosystem limits creates masking of social injustices and their effect on environmental change by replacing them with universal measurements of scarcity. Moreover, ecological limits separate the emotional connection between humans and nature that cannot be measured and limit the connection between humans and the natural world.
Urban sustainability and Justice: Just Sustainabilities and Environmental Planning offers an excellent analysis of urban sustainability initiatives, providing real-world examples of how sustainability is being addressed across a wide range of settings. The authors go beyond the traditional and embedded colonial ways of doing development by introducing anti-oppressive, post-development, feminist and justice lenses in all topics. The book provides an excellent general overview. It invites readers to do further research on different topics, perspectives, initiatives and so on. However, this can also be overwhelming for a reader and prevents the authors from further explaining how just sustainability action could look like in different contexts.
One area that I found underdeveloped in this volume, however, was the representation of minority and Indigenous voices in response to sustainability crises. The idea of decolonizing our perspectives of development is central in a just sustainability framework. I would add that minorities and Indigenous peoples worldwide have been at the centre for justice in environmental leadership. Those voices should have shown through in the critique. In urban contexts where diverse people interact with various backgrounds, we need to understand how marginalized individuals interact with urban systems/infrastructures and how we can empower them to participate in the proposed urban sustainability/planning projects. By giving an in-depth understanding of the interconnected struggles minorities face in sustainability challenges, the authors would have been able to critique inherent systems of oppression that do not allow sustainable action to progress as much as it should.
Despite these concerns, this book is an important addition to the literature. It provides a critical perspective on global sustainable development. Its application of the just sustainabilities framework to urban sustainability challenges is important to understand to address systems of oppression that limit change for those who are most affected.