Environmental Justice

At the expense of the environment, urbanization and industrialization have been primary modes of economic development. In their article The Sustainability of Privilege: Reflections on the Environment, the Third World City, and Poverty, Olpadwala and Goldsmith discuss urbanization, environmental problem, and poverty in the Third World. The rapid and continuing urbanization of these countries places more pressure on the earth’s fragile environment. Olpadwala and Goldsmith explain that although the poor are blamed for this environmental degradation, they are often not the root vehicles of destruction. The agents of environmental degradation are the decision makers in developed countries. Poor people shoulder a disproportionate burden of environmental problems; “the real environmental crisis is not that of air, forests, or water, or the rest of nature, but the trauma of the poor, present today as it has been for ages” (630).  The results of environmental degradation are not just super storms and higher temperatures, but adverse health and socio-economic affects on the poor. In their paper Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale, Swyngedouw and Heynen explain, “there are a series of urban and environmental processes that negatively affect some social groups while benefiting others. A just urban socioenvironmental perspective, therefore, always needs to consider the question of who gains and who pays”(902). 

The Creative Class and a Local Consumption Base

The “creative class” according to Richard Florida is artists and knowledge-based workers that are drivers of economic development in post-industrial cities. Ascribing to Florida’s concept that the creative class will drive economic growth, cities and towns have attempted to lure this group of people through mixed-use developments and enhancing the vibrancy and walkability of urban cores. If cities, however, only pay attention to the wants and desires of the creative class, then they ignore the needs of a large segment of the population. What about the needs of the aging Baby Boomer generation who have no money for long term care? What about the needs of low wage workers? What about the needs of children? Markusen debunks Florida’s “creative class” theory as a “fuzzy concept” conflating occupational categories. Florida’s creative class inappropriately lumps together jobs that require higher education and labels them as, “creative.” Markusen points out that Florida’s definition includes jobs as diverse as funeral directors to dental hygienists. She critiques the implication in his theory that creativity is dependent educational attainment. Instead of focusing on the “creative class” to drive economic growth, cities and towns should consider the broader scope of a local consumption base. Markusen and Schrock argue that locally produced and consumed goods and services can be a source of economic growth. Instead of concentrating on luring the “creative class” of workers, cities can focus on the welfare of all residents by promoting a local consumption base. 

Time-Space Compression

Globalization has led to not only a scaling and rescaling of urban processes, but also how human beings relate to place.   “Time-space compression” makes the world smaller. Massey defines “time-space compression” as, “movement and communication across space, to the geographical stretching-out of social relations, and to our experience of all this.” This mobility not only refers to transnational flows of capital but to people, ideas, and culture. This movement is socially differentiated between individuals who are agents of their own mobility to those who move out of necessity like refugees and undocumented migrant workers to those people who are imprisoned by time-space compression.  Some individuals are contributors to time-space compression through the production of culture, but are at the same time restricted in their own movement across borders. This shrinking of the globe has changed the way we relate to place and community. While human beings are globally connected through transnational linkages, we, especially in the United States, respond with a reactionary individualism. Harvey describes this trend as, “a world in which the neoliberal ethic of intense possessive individualism, and its cognate of political withdrawal from collective forms of action, becomes the template for human socialization”(32). Massey argues that instead of a reactionary clinging to place, we must begin to cultivate a more global sense of place.