Review Special Issues

Urban greening: environmentalism or marketable aesthetics

  • Received: 24 March 2015 Accepted: 17 November 2015 Published: 25 January 2015
  • In recent decades, urban greening has been conceptualized, and subsequently marketed, as a way of making cities more sustainable. Urban greening has been actualized in large global cities, regional centers, and also in many cities in the Global South, where it has been touted as a potential solution to the urban heat island (UHI) effect and as a way of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This involves planting street trees and installing curbside gardens, bioswales, green walls, green roofs, and the redevelopment of former industrial zones into urban parklands. This paper questions the assumption that this “greening” of the city must necessarily lead to positive environmental impacts. While such infrastructure itself might be constructed with environmental principles in mind, wider questions concerning the production of such landscapes, and the consumption-orientated lifestyles of those who inhabit these urban landscapes, are seldom considered. Moreover, green aesthetics and environmental sustainability are not always as mutually inclusive as the concepts might suggest, as aesthetics are often a dominating influence in the process of planning green urban environments. This review reorients the focus on the way in which the UHI effect and CO2 emissions have been framed by utilizing Foucault's (1980) “regimes of truth,” where environmental issues are contextualized within the “colonised lifeworld” of free-market forces. This review suggests that for sustainability to be achieved in urban contexts, the process of urban greening must move beyond quick techno-fixes through engagement in the co-production of knowledge.

    Citation: Dominic Bowd, Campbell McKay, Wendy S. Shaw. Urban greening: environmentalism or marketable aesthetics[J]. AIMS Environmental Science, 2015, 2(4): 935-949. doi: 10.3934/environsci.2015.4.935

    Related Papers:

  • In recent decades, urban greening has been conceptualized, and subsequently marketed, as a way of making cities more sustainable. Urban greening has been actualized in large global cities, regional centers, and also in many cities in the Global South, where it has been touted as a potential solution to the urban heat island (UHI) effect and as a way of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This involves planting street trees and installing curbside gardens, bioswales, green walls, green roofs, and the redevelopment of former industrial zones into urban parklands. This paper questions the assumption that this “greening” of the city must necessarily lead to positive environmental impacts. While such infrastructure itself might be constructed with environmental principles in mind, wider questions concerning the production of such landscapes, and the consumption-orientated lifestyles of those who inhabit these urban landscapes, are seldom considered. Moreover, green aesthetics and environmental sustainability are not always as mutually inclusive as the concepts might suggest, as aesthetics are often a dominating influence in the process of planning green urban environments. This review reorients the focus on the way in which the UHI effect and CO2 emissions have been framed by utilizing Foucault's (1980) “regimes of truth,” where environmental issues are contextualized within the “colonised lifeworld” of free-market forces. This review suggests that for sustainability to be achieved in urban contexts, the process of urban greening must move beyond quick techno-fixes through engagement in the co-production of knowledge.


    加载中
    [1] Lankao PR (2007) Are we missing the point? Particularities of urbanization, sustainability and carbon emissions in Latin American cities. Environ Urban 19: 159-175. doi: 10.1177/0956247807076915
    [2] Betsill MM, Bulkeley H (2006) Cities and the multilevel governance of global climate change. Glob Gov 12: 141-159.
    [3] Heidegger M (2001) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
    [4] Gibbs DC (2000) Ecological modernization, regional economic development and Regional Development Agences. Geoforum 31: 9-19. doi: 10.1016/S0016-7185(99)00040-8
    [5] Myllyla S, Kuvaja K (2005) Societal premises for sustainable development in large southern cities. Glob Environ Change 15: 224-237. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.01.001
    [6] Deonie A, Olive V, Arthur S, et al. (2015). Urban Sediment Transport through an Established Vegetated Swale: Long Term Treatment Efficiencies and Deposition. Water 7: 1046-1067 doi: 10.3390/w7031046
    [7] Hamilton C (2010) Consumerism, self-creation and prospects for a new ecological consciousness. J Clean Prod 18: 571-575. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.09.013
    [8] Li J, Wai OWH, Li YS, et al. (2010) Effect of green roof on ambient CO2 concentration. Build Environ 45: 2644-2651. doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2010.05.025
    [9] Susca T, Gaffin SR, Dell'Osso GR (2011) Positive effects of vegetation: Urban heat island and green roofs. Environ Pollut 159: 2119-2126. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2011.03.007
    [10] Habermas J (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Life-World and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston: Beacon Press.
    [11] Foucault M (1980) Power-knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books.
    [12] Rabinow P (1991) The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin.
    [13] Chichilnisky G (2011) What is sustainability? Int J Sust Econ 3: 125-140.
    [14] Corburn J (2009) Cities, Climate Change and Urban Heat Island Mitigation: Localising Global Environmental Science. Urban Stud 46: 413-427. doi: 10.1177/0042098008099361
    [15] Jasanoff S (2004) States of knowledge: the co-production of science and the social order. London: Routledge.
    [16] Bai X (2007) Integrating global environmental concerns into urban management: the scale and readiness arguments. J Ind Ecol 11: 15-29. doi: 10.1162/jie.2007.1202
    [17] Miller C (2004) Resisting empire; globalism, relocalization, and the politics of knowledge. In: S Jasanoff, M Martello (eds.) Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance, 81-102. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    [18] Ingold T (2000) The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Melbourne: Psychology Press.
    [19] Meinig DW, Jackson JB, Lewis PF, et al. (1979) The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.
    [20] Logan MI (1964) Manufacturing Decentralization in the Sydney Metropolitan Area. Econ Geogr 40: 151-162. doi: 10.2307/142194
    [21] Duncan J (1995) Landscape Geography, 1993-94. Prog Human Geogr 19: 414-422. doi: 10.1177/030913259501900308
    [22] Cosgrove D, Jackson P (1987) New directions in cultural geography. Area 19: 95-101.
    [23] Muir R (1998) Landscape: a wasted legacy. Area 30: 263-271. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.1998.tb00071.x
    [24] Seddon G (1986) Landscape Planning: A Conceptual Perspective. Landsc Urban Plan 13: 335-347. doi: 10.1016/0169-2046(86)90051-4
    [25] Copley S (1994) The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape, and Aesthetics since 1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [26] Kant I (1952) The science of right (W. Hastie, trans.). In: R Hutchins (ed.) Great books of the Western world, Vol. 42: Kant, 397-446. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
    [27] Sauer C (1925) The Morphology of Landscape. Los Angeles: Univ Calif Publ Geogr 22: 19-53.
    [28] Gulinck H (1986) Landscape ecological aspects of agro-ecosystems. Agr Ecosyst Environ 16: 79-86. doi: 10.1016/0167-8809(86)90095-2
    [29] Olwig KR (1996) Recovering the substantive nature of landscape. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 86: 630-653. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.1996.tb01770.x
    [30] Zhang LW, Jianping ZY, Jiong S (2004) A GIS-based gradient analysis of urban landscape pattern of Shanghai metropolitan area, China. Landsc Urban Plan 69: 1-16. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2003.08.006
    [31] Dickinson RE, Crowe PR (1939) Landscape and society. Scott Geogr Mag 55: 1-15.
    [32] Lewis P (1983) Learning from looking: geographic and other writing about the American cultural landscape. Am Quart 35: 242-261. doi: 10.2307/2712650
    [33] Jackson JB (1984) Discovering the vernacular landscape. New York: Yale University Press.
    [34] Cosgrove D, Daniels S (1988) The iconography of landscape: essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments. London: Cambridge University Press.
    [35] Anderson K, Gale F (1992) Inventing places: Studies in cultural geography. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire.
    [36] Zukin S (1998). Urban lifestyles: diversity and standardisation in spaces of consumption. Urban Stud 35: 825-839. doi: 10.1080/0042098984574
    [37] Gobster P, Nassauer J, Daniel TC, et al. (2007) The shared landscape: what does aesthetics have to do with ecology? Landsc Ecol 22: 959-972 doi: 10.1007/s10980-007-9110-x
    [38] Johnston R (1998) Approaches to the perception of landscape. Archeo Dialog 5: 54-68. doi: 10.1017/S1380203800001161
    [39] Seamans S (2013) Mainstreaming the environmental benefits of street trees. Urban For Urban Gree 12: 2-11. doi: 10.1016/j.ufug.2012.08.004
    [40] Baker AR, Biger G (2006) Ideology and landscape in historical perspective: essays on the meanings of some places in the past, Vol. 18. London: Cambridge University Press.
    [41] Thompson JB (1984) Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
    [42] Žižek S (1989) The sublime object of ideology. London: Verso.
    [43] Žižek S, Daly G (2004) Conversations with Zizek. Cambridge: Polity.
    [44] Cosgrove DE (1984) Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble.
    [45] Robinson GM, Liu Z (2015) Greening and “un”greening Adelaide, South Australia. AIMS Enviro Sci 2: 511-532. doi: 10.3934/environsci.2015.3.511
    [46] van Der Heijden H (1999) Environmental movements, ecological modernisation and political opportunity structures. Environ Polit 8: 199-221. doi: 10.1080/09644019908414444
    [47] Baker A (1992) Introduction: on ideology and landscape. In: Baker A, and Biger G (eds.) Ideology and landscape in historical perspective, 1-14. London: Cambridge University Press.
    [48] Bailey I, Gouldson A, Newell P (2011) Ecological modernisation and the governance of carbon: a critical analysis. Antipode 43: 682-703. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00880.x
    [49] Blühdorn I, Welsh I (2007) Eco-politics beyond the paradigm of sustainability: a conceptual framework and research agenda. Environ Polit 16: 185-205. doi: 10.1080/09644010701211650
    [50] Derrida J (1990) Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority. Cardozo L Rev 11: 919.
    [51] Checker M (2011) Wiped out by the ‘Greenwave’: environmental gentrification and the paradoxical politics of urban sustainability. City Soc 23: 210-229. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2011.01063.x
    [52] Shaw W, Menday (2013) Fibro Dreaming: Greenwashed Beach-house Development on Australia's Coasts. Urban Stud 50: 2940-2958. doi: 10.1177/0042098013482507
    [53] Morris ES (2011) Down with ECO-towns! Up with ECO-communities. Or Is There a Need for Model Eco-towns? A Review of the 2009-2010 Eco-town Proposals in Britain. In: T Wong, B Yuen (eds.) Eco-city Planning-Policies, Pract and Design, 113-130. Dordrecht: Springer.
    [54] Meppem T, Bourke S (1999) Different ways of knowing: a communicative turn toward sustainability. Ecol Econ 30: 389-404. doi: 10.1016/S0921-8009(99)00053-1
    [55] Lee KN (2006) Urban sustainability and the limits of classical environmentalism. Environ Urban 18: 9-22. doi: 10.1177/0956247806063940
    [56] Birch E, Wachter S (2008) Growing greener cities: Urban sustainability in the twenty-first century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
    [57] Leff E (1993) Marxism and the environmental question: From the critical theory of production to an environmental rationality for sustainable development. Capital Nat Social 4: 44-66. doi: 10.1080/10455759309358531
    [58] Scott AJ (1997) The cultural economy of cities. London: Sage.
    [59] Friedmann H (2005) From colonialism to green capitalism: Social movements and the emergence of food regimes. Res Rural Sociol Dev 11: 227-264.
    [60] Bakker K (2005) Market Environmentalism in Water Supply in England and Wales. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 95: 542-565. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00474.x
    [61] Gibbs D, Jonas, A (2000) Governance and regulation in local environmental policy: The utility of a regime approach. Geoforum 34: 299-313. doi: 10.1016/S0016-7185(99)00052-4
    [62] Kovacs ZI, LeRoy CJ, Fischer DG, et al. (2006) How do Aesthetics Affect our Ecology. J Ecol Anthropol 10: 61-65. doi: 10.5038/2162-4593.10.1.5
    [63] Svensson K, Eliasson I (2002) Diurnal air temperatures in built-up areas in relation to urban planning. Landsc Urban Plan 61: 37-54. doi: 10.1016/S0169-2046(02)00076-2
    [64] Arnfield AJ (2003) Two decades of urban climate research: a review of turbulence, exchanges of energy and water, and the urban heat island. Int J Climatol 23: 1-26. doi: 10.1002/joc.859
    [65] Oke TR (1987) Boundary Layer Climates, 2nd edition. New York: Methuen.
    [66] Tan J, Zheng Y, Tang X, et al. (2010) The urban heat island and its impact on heat waves and human health in Shanghai. Int J Biometeorol 54: 75-84. doi: 10.1007/s00484-009-0256-x
    [67] Newman PWG (1999) Sustainability and cities: extending the metabolism model. Landsc Urban Plan 44: 219-226. doi: 10.1016/S0169-2046(99)00009-2
    [68] Durkheim E (1972) Emile Durkheim: selected writings. Sydney: Cambridge University Press.
    [69] United Nations, City planning will determine pace of global warming. United Nations, 2007. Available from: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/gaef3190.doc.htm.
    [70] Parker JH (1983) Landscaping to reduce the energy used in cooling buildings. J Forest 81: 82-105.
    [71] Nowak DJ, Crane DE (2002) Carbon storage and sequestration by urban trees in the USA. Enviro Pollut 116: 381-389. doi: 10.1016/S0269-7491(01)00214-7
    [72] Chua BH (1998) World cities, globalisation and the spread of consumerism: a view from Singapore. Urban Stud 35: 981-1000. doi: 10.1080/0042098984646
    [73] Hurrell A, Sengupta S (2012) Emerging powers, North-South relations and global climate politics. Int Affair 88: 463-484. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2012.01084.x
    [74] Norman J, MacLean HL, Kennedy CA (2006) Comparing high and low residential density: life-cycle analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. J Urban Plan Dev 132: 10-21. doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9488(2006)132:1(10)
    [75] Jaffe AB, Newell RG, Stavins RN (2005) A tale of two market failures: Technology and environmental policy. Ecol Econ 54: 164-174. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.12.027
    [76] Thorpe A, Graham K (2009) Green buildings-are codes, standards and targets sufficient drivers of sustainability in New South Wales? Environ Plan Law J 26: 486-497.
    [77] Wolf D, Lundholm JT (2008). Water uptake in green roof microcosms: Effects of plant species and water availability. Ecol Eng 33: 179-186. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoleng.2008.02.008
    [78] Barnes K, Morgan J, Roberge M (2001) Impervious surfaces and the quality of natural built environments. Baltimore: Department of Geography and Environmental Planning.
    [79] Bowler DE, Buyung-Ali L, Knight TM, et al. (2010) Urban greening to cool towns and cities: A systematic review of the empirical evidence. Landsc Urban Plan 97: 147-155. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.05.006
    [80] Dunnett N, Kingsbury N (2004). Planting green roofs and living walls, Vol. 254. Portland, OR: Timber Press.
    [81] Francis RA, Lorimer J (2011) Urban reconciliation ecology: the potential of living roofs and walls. J Environ Manag 92: 1429-1437. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.01.012
    [82] Saiz S, Kennedy C, Bass B, et al. (2006) Comparative life cycle assessment of standard and green roofs. Environ Sci Technol 40: 4312-4316. doi: 10.1021/es0517522
    [83] Ottelé M, van Bohemen HD, Fraaij AL (2010) Quantifying the deposition of particulate matter on climber vegetation on living walls. Ecol Eng 36: 154-162. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoleng.2009.02.007
    [84] Ford LR (1992) Reading the skylines of American cities. Geogr Rev 82: 180-200. doi: 10.2307/215431
    [85] Sudhira HS, Ramachandra TV, Jagadish KS (2004). Urban sprawl: metrics, dynamics and modelling using GIS. Int Appl Earth Obs Geoinf 5: 29-39. doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2003.08.002
    [86] Pincetl S (2010) Implementing municipal tree planting: Los Angeles million-tree initiative. Environ Manag 45: 227-238. doi: 10.1007/s00267-009-9412-7
    [87] Pacey A (1983) The Cult of Tech. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
    [88] Sklair L (2010) Iconic Architecture and the Culture-ideology of Consumerism. Theor Cult Soc 27: 135-159. doi: 10.1177/0263276410374634
    [89] Jackson T (2005) Live Better by Consuming Less? Is There a ‘Double Dividend’ in Sustainable Consumption. J Ind Ecol 9: 19-36. doi: 10.1162/108819805775247873
    [90] Cluley R, Dunne S (2012) From commodity fetishism to commodity narcissism. Mark Theor 12: 251-265. doi: 10.1177/1470593112451395
    [91] Kumar M, Kumar P (2008) Valuation of the ecosystem services: A psycho-cultural perspective. Ecol Econ 64: 808-819. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.05.008
    [92] Gupta S, Ogden D (2006). The attitude-behavior gap in environmental consumerism. APUBEF Proc 3: 199-206.
    [93] Sanne C (2002) Willing consumers-of locked in? Policies for a sustainable consumption. Ecol Econ 42: 273-287.
    [94] Skollerhorn E (1998) Habermas and Nature: The Theory of Communicative Action for Studying Environmental Policy. J Environ Plan Manag 41: 555-573. doi: 10.1080/09640569811452
    [95] Hackworth J (2002) Postrecession gentrification in New York City. Urban Affair Rev 37: 815-843. doi: 10.1177/107874037006003
    [96] LeGates RT, Hartman C (1986) The anatomy of displacement in the United States. In: N Smith, P Williams (eds.) Gentrification of the City, 178-199. Boston: Allen & Unwin.
    [97] Zizek S (2010) Living in the End Times. London: Verso Books.
    [98] Mapes J, Wolch J (2011) ‘Living Green’: The promise and pitfalls of new sustainable communities. J Urban Design 16: 105-126. doi: 10.1080/13574809.2011.521012
    [99] Gray M (2002) Urban Surveillance and Panopticism: will we recognize the facial recognition society. Surveill Soc 1: 314-330.
  • Reader Comments
  • © 2015 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com
  • 1. 

    沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

  1. 本站搜索
  2. 百度学术搜索
  3. 万方数据库搜索
  4. CNKI搜索

Metrics

Article views(7163) PDF downloads(1793) Cited by(5)

Article outline

Other Articles By Authors

/

DownLoad:  Full-Size Img  PowerPoint
Return
Return

Catalog