The Pursuit of a Just and Sustainable Place
Cities are where most humans live, with more people moving to them every day. As anyone who has lived in a big city knows, existence in urban environments is a challenge. This challenge is greater the less money one has. Like everything else, the advent and growth of the neoliberal economy has exacerbated the challenges associated with urban life in a multitude of ways. In response to these challenges, various movements have arisen. Perhaps the most important of those movements is the one involved with creating a just and sustainable existence. A multi-faceted movement, this movement has almost as many interpretations as it does participants.
Many of its most vocal proponents tend to emphasize an approach that fails to fairly address issues of race and class, focusing instead solely on environmental issues and solutions that are often expensive. As a result, many poor and working-class people do not see the movement as one for them, leaving them at the whims of corporations motivated by profit and governments that cater to them.
Julian Agyeman, director of the Department of Urban + Environmental Policy + Planning at Tufts University and co-founder of the Black