Climate Justice and the Right to the City
The two great challenges facing cities worldwide in the decades to come are inequality and climate change. Yet the two challenges, and the two sets of political infrastructures that prioritize them, largely operate in isolation from each other. Often, it is argued or assumed that actions to redress social and environmental challenges are in tension; they must be balanced. In this paper, drawing on case studies of low-carbon policy and water scarcity in São Paulo, I argue that the opposite is true. I outline the case that, for both infrastructural and political reasons, the best strategy to slash carbon emissions and adapt to the inevitable climate-linked disasters we cannot prevent is for public authorities working with community-based groups and movements to take immediate action to reduce urban inequalities, housing inequality in particular. In short, the best way to prevent ecological breakdown is to democratically pursue climate policies that reduce social inequality. Shorter: effective urban climate politics converge with the already-thriving “right to the city” agenda
Reading Development 