Journal
ENVIRONMENT AND URBANIZATION
Volume 29, Issue 1, Pages 89-102Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/0956247816684763
Keywords
conflict; dissensus; Habitat III; inclusiveness; indicators; New Urban Agenda; political ecology; resilience; safety; smart cities; social innovation; sustainability; Sustainable Development Goal 11
Categories
Funding
- European Union [289374]
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The Habitat III Conference's New Urban Agenda hails a paradigm shift for pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the new call for safe, resilient, sustainable and inclusive cities remains path dependent on old methodological tools (e.g. indicators), techno-managerial solutions (e.g. smart cities), and institutional frameworks of an ecological modernization paradigm that did not work. Pursuing a new urban paradigm within this old framework can only act as immunology: it vaccinates citizens and environments so that they can take larger doses of inequality and degradation in the future; it mediates the effects of global socio-environmental inequality, but does little towards alleviating it. Indeed, an increasing number of communities across the world now decline these immunological offers. Instead, they rupture path dependency and establish effective alternative methods for accessing housing, healthcare, sanitation, etc. I argue that real smart solutions and real social innovation are to be found not in consensus-building exercises, but in these dissensus practices that act as living indicators of what/where urgently needs to be addressed.
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