Abstract
For many years, scientific literature on climate change ignored both the contribution of cities to climate change and its impact on them. That has shifted recently as many scholars have turned their attention to climate change in the urban context (e.g., Bulkeley 2013; Rosenzweig et al. 2011). And many scholars are examining climate change strategies within urban sustainability research more broadly. Still, this remains a critical area that needs considerably more attention, particularly now that the majority of the world lives in urban areas. Many experts agree that cities are the places where climate change may wreak the most havoc. So, Ashley Dawson's book, Extreme Cities, is an important and timely contribution.
Dawson, a Professor of English at the City University of New York, was affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, prompting him to investigate the emerging reality that cities are increasingly experiencing climate change impacts. Urban planners and sustainability scholars have lauded New York City as one of the most forward–thinking cities in the United States in addressing climate change, but Dawson charges that Hurricane Sandy “revealed the hubris of celebrations of New York as a green metropolis” and instead exposed the city as “unprepared for the larger threats posed by climate change” (p. 15). The book is organized in six thematic chapters, with catchy titles such as “Climate Apartheid,” “The Jargon of Resilience,” and “Disaster Communism.” Dawson focuses most of the book on New York City, but also includes discussions on climate change in other cities like Miami, Jakarta, and New Orleans.
An underlying principle of the book is that the root of a city's vulnerability to climate change is its economic and social inequalities, which are bound to get worse if we do not confront them. Dawson contends that the contours of climate change tend to reflect preexisting divisions shaped along racial and class lines. Inequality, he argues, presents one of the greatest threats to achieving sustainability. The title of the book comes from an intrinsic connection between disaster/climate change vulnerability on the one hand, and the degree of economic inequality on the other. New York City represents the consummate example of the “extreme city,” and Dawson believes that climate change will only exacerbate these existing inequalities.
Informed by Marxist theory and a political ecology framework, and influenced by the usual suspects, such as Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith, and Mike Davis (who are all referenced throughout the book), the central premise of the book is that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with sustainability and social justice. He points to the “glaring contradiction of capitalism's destruction of nature” (p. 8), and posits that extreme cities like New York “are not a temporary aberration but an inherent feature of capitalism” (p. 12).
Given this framework, it is not surprising that Dawson is skeptical of efforts by city leaders and planners to effectively confront climate change. He is critical about smart urbanism or even recent sustainability plans, referring to them as “urban greenwashing” or “green capitalism.” Dawson highlights the hollow promise of transformation in New York City's 2007 sustainability plan, PlaNYC, a plan some consider the most comprehensive and progressive in the U.S. Neo–Marxist theory says that capitalism has an inherent need to grow; yet the growth imperative tends to benefit the affluent (p. 34). To wit: at the same time city planners were writing the sustainability plan, they were also welcoming the construction of luxury apartment buildings in the middle of Lower Manhattan's flood zone. He also criticizes PlaNYC for focusing mostly on environmental issues but failing to genuinely engage with the city's economic and racial inequalities. While PlaNYC pledged to create affordable housing, thousands of affordable units have not yet been built, leading Dawson to conclude that PlaNYC appropriates the language of sustainability, but transforms it into a market–oriented doctrine for urban development (p. 45). Dawson asserts that green rhetoric has become the lingua franca, but most efforts to address climate change and sustainability are really aimed at protecting and enhancing property values for the elites. He believes that if the city were serious about climate change, it would be limiting development and planning to relocate people and buildings.
It's not much better in the global South. Dawson contends that Jakarta used climate change adaptation projects to justify evictions of squatter settlements, disposing thousands of poor and low–income residents. Similarly, in Kolkata and Manila, engineers have altered estuaries and rivers, exacerbating floods that disproportionately affect the poor. There is also the bleak prospect of what he terms “climate apartheid,” where those fleeing disruptions and disasters will be denied assistance or ignored by the rich.
Ultimately Dawson rejects the idea that “green capitalism” has an answer for climate change. He suggests that because the city is where capitalism's central contradictions play out, it is also where revolutionary movements have emerged. Transforming the extreme city will require new forms of collective, democratic, and socially just planning. There are some glimmers of hope. He reports that the Dutch are experimenting with designs that embrace water back into coastal areas, reimagining floods as inevitable. He also sees promise in neighborhood and local social justice organizations as leaders in progressive planning, citing the environmental justice organization WE ACT as an effective forum for community mobilization around struggles for urban sustainability in New York (p. 284).
But these few examples are less than satisfying, particularly because he argues that we must “dismantle the feckless capitalist culture of ruinous growth” (p. 14) if we are to achieve sustainability and a just city. That's a pretty tall order, and not particularly realistic (Neo–Marxists are far better at critiquing than providing solutions). As a result, it's a pretty bleak future he predicts, and at times I found the book depressing, disempowering, and too easily dismissive of people who are working to advance sustainability and combatting climate change.
Do not get me wrong: Throughout the book Dawson provides many cogent and insightful critiques of the politics of climate change in cities. But this is not a comforting or easy read. And maybe, in this era of climate chaos, it should not be.