Connect
-
Search
-
Recent Posts
Twitter Updates
- @TuftsGSAS @hummingbird604 Of course! 3 days ago
- @rkeil @hummingbird604 @TuftsGSAS Next time I'm in Vancouver Raul, or you're in Boston Raul, Roger...... 3 days ago
- @TuftsGSAS @jillplev @mmm_jackiez @chrismotz @jgules @harpochief UEP's reaccreditation, #2 master's program nationally, 100% AICP pass rate. 3 days ago
- MT@PhilWood11 "turning the crappy into the happy" #Potholegardener unmasked. Has #tacticalurbanism gone mainstream? dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2… 3 days ago
Blogroll
- City Parks Blog
- CoLab Radio
- Cool Town Studios Blog
- Cultivating Food Justice
- Design with Intent Blog
- Environmental and Food Justice
- Forum for the Future Blog
- GReeNFRASTRUCTURe eNVIRONMENT + eQUITY + eCONOMY
- Highline Blog
- I Love Public Space Blog
- New Economics Foundation Blog
- newgeography
- OpenCity Projects Blog
- PlaceShakers and Newsmakers
- Plurale Tantum
- Polis
- Project for Public Spaces Blog
- Reclaiming Spaces Blog
- Shareable
- Sistah Vegan Blog
- Streets Blog
- Sustainable Cities
- Sustainable Cities and Transport
- Terminal City Times
- The Atlantic Cities
- The City Project Blog
- The Dirt Blog
- The Enabling City
- The Equality Trust Blog
- The Guardian Environment Blog
- The Well-Trained Activist Blog
- This Big City
- Urban Gardens Blog
- Vision 42 Blog
- Zed Books Blog
Tags
alien anthronormative anthropomorphic autonormative campus civic environmentalism conciliation biology critical ethnocultural mass culturally exclusive practice culturally inclusive practice culturally inclusive spaces culturally responsive practice democratizing streetscapes diversity environmental justice environmental space equality equity equity deficit fair share green inclusion intercultural justice leaders multiculturalism native one planet living Partnership for Sustainable Communities per capita resource allocation planning policy practice precaution public space quality of life racism spatial injustice spatial justice sustainability sustainable consumption space under-represented under-served universities wellbeingArchives
Author Archives: Julian Agyeman
Incomplete streets?
From a just sustainabilities perspective, my interest in streets is in spatial justice (Spatial Justice on Södra Vägen) and how it can help in the democratization of streets (Democratizing streetscapes: Rethinking streets as public spaces). This democratization is demonstrated in the growing number of cities with successful road space reclamation and re-allocation schemes which favor pedestrians, cyclists and public transit. Such schemes are described by the increasingly prominent and related U.S. discourses of Complete Streets, Transit Oriented Development and Livable Streets. Combined, this narrative frames the message that streets are, ultimately public spaces, and that everyone in local communities should have equal rights to space within them, irrespective of who they are and whether or not they own a car.
This revolution will be co-produced.
I’ve been mulling over ideas for an economic model that fits in with the concept of just sustainabilities. In the research for my latest book Introducing just sustainabilities: Policy, planning and practice (and the Series to follow it) my co-researcher Duncan McLaren introduced me to the idea of co-production. In its broadest sense it reflects the capabilities approach of Sen (1999). It sees people as assets not as burdens, invests in their capacities, promotes mutuality and reciprocity, facilitates rather than delivering and uses peer-support networks in addition to professionals to transfer knowledge and capabilities. In narrower, economic terms co-production refers to the involvement of the consumer in the manufacture of the goods and services they consume thereby blurring the distinction between producer and consumer.
Mind the crap: Socially successful but not socially just?
Oh dear. How many times have we been here before, and how many times must we go here again? Design for Social Sustainability: A framework for creating thriving communities (April 2012) is a report from the The Young Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental think tank based in London that specializes in insights, innovation and entrepreneurship to meet social needs. The report was commissioned jointly by the U.K. government’s Homes and Communities Agency as part of its Future Communities programme (a partnership between government and the Young Foundation).
Posted in Just Sustainabilities
Tagged social design, social justice, social success
Leave a comment
Cities of (in)Difference?
Cities of difference (Fincher and Jacobs 1998) are places where we are “in the presence of otherness” (Sennett 1990 p123) — namely, our increasingly different, diverse, and culturally heterogeneous urban areas. Yet as I travel around the world I see token, or very little recognition, understanding of, and engagement with this difference, diversity, and cultural heterogeneity in creative and productive ways. Moreover, I’ve seen no examples which could be said to be capable of fundamentally transforming civic institutions, the public realm, its discourses and city management practices.
Fair shares of Oxfam’s doughnut?
I welcome innovations in our thinking which move us closer to realizing just sustainabilities and Kate Raworth/Oxfam’s A Safe and Just Operating Space for Humanity: Can We Live Within the Doughnut? is no exception. Its clarity and ease of visualization make it an excellent communication tool for students, academics, policymakers and activists alike.
The focus of just sustainabilities which I have articulated more fully elsewhere (Agyeman et al. 2003, Agyeman 2005), is the development of policy and planning themes that:
- Improve people’s quality of life and well-being, both now (intra-generational equity) and into the future (inter-generational equity);
Posted in Just Sustainabilities
Tagged environmental space, fair shares, planetary boundaries
1 Comment
Toward flourishing.
Sustainable development means using our unlimited mental and creative resources, not our limited natural resources. If this is true, as I believe it to be, then we need to develop more constructive ways to unleash these phenomenal mental and creative resources, and quickly. Currently, around the globe we waste human potential as wantonly and comprehensively as we lay waste to our environmental potential, and this is no surprise, as both actions are directly related. We need to understand that while there is growing human inequality, there will never be environmental quality.
Posted in Just Sustainabilities
Tagged creative resources, environmental quality, human inequality
Leave a comment
New agricultures, cultural diversity and foodways.
Two agriculture related stories caught my attention recently. One, on National Public Radio’s ‘All Things Considered’ entitled ‘Some US Farms Trade Tobacco for a Taste of Africa’ reported on George Bowling’s 60 acre farm in southern Maryland which has started growing African crops for the region’s 120,000 strong African population. The other, a piece in the New York Times, ‘When the Uprooted Put Down Roots’, highlighted the growth across the US in ‘refugee agriculture‘ among for example Somalis, Cambodians, Liberians, Congolese, Bhutanese and Burundians.
The (frighteningly) fierce urgency of now.
Three years ago today, on October 10 2008, I wrote a blog for Britain’s Forum for the Future whose strapline is ‘action for a sustainable world’. They asked me as a British person, living in the U.S.A. (or Unsure State of America, as I then called it) to comment on the later stages of the 2008 Presidential Campaign and my response was this piece, The Fierce Urgency of Now:
What did your great-grandmother eat?
“Feminist social scientists use the term positionality to refer to the understanding that our lived experiences, particularly those of race, class, and gender, shape our worldviews. The food movement narrative is largely created by, and resonates most deeply, with white and middle class individuals. For example, Michael Pollan’s recently offered list of food rules (2007) is intended to guide consumers toward eating practices aligned with the food movement.
Posted in Just Sustainabilities
Tagged class, food justice, food movement, positionality, race
Leave a comment
“A new redundant elevator is installed”………
For those of you who read my recent Blog Danger. Overhead Catenary Wires are Alive!? you’ll understand I’m not an MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority), or more simply ‘T’ basher. I love it. We need it. I get it. I use it. But who’s in charge of communications? Read the notice above at Porter T Station. Someone at MBTA Customer Communications please, please put me out of my abject and oxymoronic misery and tell me just what is a “new redundant elevator”………?
Posted in Uncategorized
Leave a comment