Sustainability Policy, Planning and Gentrification in Cities explores the growing convergences between urban sustainability policy, planning practices and gentrification in cities. Via a study of governmental policy and planning initiatives and informal, community-based forms of sustainability planning, the book examines the assemblages of actors and interests that are involved in the production of sustainability policy and planning and their connection with neighbourhood-level and wider processes of environmental gentrification.

Drawing from international urban examples, policy and planning strategies that guide both the implementation of urban intensification and the planning of new sustainable communities are considered. Such strategies include the production of urban green spaces and other environmental amenities through public and private sector and civil society involvement. The resulting production of exclusionary spaces and displacement in cities is problematic and underlines the paradoxical associations between sustainability and gentrified urban development. Contemporary examples of sustainability policy and planning initiatives are identified as ways by which environmental practices increasingly factor into both official and informal rationales and enactments of social exclusion, eviction and displacement. The book further considers the capacity for progressive sustainability policy and planning practices, via community-based efforts, to dismantle exclusion and displacement and encourage social and environmental equity and justice in urban sustainability approaches.

This is a timely book for researchers and students in urban studies, environmental studies and geography with a particular interest in the growing presence of environmental gentrification in cities.

About the Author
Susannah Bunce is Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Geography at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, Canada.

Reviews

"Sustainability Policy, Planning and Gentrification in Cities demonstrates how assemblages of social actors intending to create more environmentally sustainable cities also reproduce inequitable cities. The uncritical replication of urban intensification and sustainable master planning approaches has lead to the spread of environmental gentrification globally. While plans may promise social justice, when they hit the ground, private for-profit interests trump public-minded goals. Even well-meaning gentrifiers with progressive sustainability ideologies contribute to social displacement. Bunce suggests that a shift toward de-growth and de-commodification discourses and actions may be the best way to promote just sustainability." - Kenneth A. Gould and Tammy L. Lewis, authors of Green Gentrification: Urban Sustainability and the Struggle for Environmental Justice

"Sustainability Policy, Planning and Gentrification in Cities is a pointed and cogent analysis of contemporary trends in urban environmental gentrification. It offers insightful -- but rarely discussed -- critiques of sustainability master plans and the aesthetics and preferences of today's urban hipsters." - Melissa Checker, Associate Professor, PhD Programs in Anthropology and Environmental Psychology, The CUNY Graduate Center

Book Information
ISBN 9780367358365
Author Susannah Bunce
Format Paperback
Page Count 168
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 267g