With the profound and rapid changes of urban life, democracy and the economy characterizing the neoliberal city, environmental movements have progressively lost their credibility and capacity to act as a force of change. At the same time, heterogeneous groups of citizens have imagined and experimented with new forms of collective action to counter uneven and unsustainable urban developments. However, their potential to produce a substantial alternative to the neoliberal unsustainable production of urban space remains a contested issue. This paper debates the transformative potentials of these emerging forms of environmental collective action. Considering that the geographies of collective action and their ideas of change are not immutable, the paper uses Deluzean theories to compare some cases of mobilization aimed at affirming citizens’ rights to environmental justice, and map their emerging common features, strengths and weaknesses. Although extremely vulnerable to the hic et nunc imperatives, events and manipulation, the transformative potential of these experiments lies in them being autonomous, acting as incubators of alternatives to the idyllic imaginary of the harmonic sustainable neoliberal city and generators of new circulating narratives and experiences of urban sustainability as a dialectical and contested production.

Sustainability and urban democracy: contradictions and hopes emerging from new forms of collective action / Monno, Valeria. - ELETTRONICO. - (2014), pp. 1310-1320. (Intervento presentato al convegno UPE11 Conducir las transformaciones urbanas tenutosi a La Plata, Argentina nel September 16-19, 2014).

Sustainability and urban democracy: contradictions and hopes emerging from new forms of collective action

Monno, Valeria
2014-01-01

Abstract

With the profound and rapid changes of urban life, democracy and the economy characterizing the neoliberal city, environmental movements have progressively lost their credibility and capacity to act as a force of change. At the same time, heterogeneous groups of citizens have imagined and experimented with new forms of collective action to counter uneven and unsustainable urban developments. However, their potential to produce a substantial alternative to the neoliberal unsustainable production of urban space remains a contested issue. This paper debates the transformative potentials of these emerging forms of environmental collective action. Considering that the geographies of collective action and their ideas of change are not immutable, the paper uses Deluzean theories to compare some cases of mobilization aimed at affirming citizens’ rights to environmental justice, and map their emerging common features, strengths and weaknesses. Although extremely vulnerable to the hic et nunc imperatives, events and manipulation, the transformative potential of these experiments lies in them being autonomous, acting as incubators of alternatives to the idyllic imaginary of the harmonic sustainable neoliberal city and generators of new circulating narratives and experiences of urban sustainability as a dialectical and contested production.
2014
UPE11 Conducir las transformaciones urbanas
978-950-34-1133-9
Sustainability and urban democracy: contradictions and hopes emerging from new forms of collective action / Monno, Valeria. - ELETTRONICO. - (2014), pp. 1310-1320. (Intervento presentato al convegno UPE11 Conducir las transformaciones urbanas tenutosi a La Plata, Argentina nel September 16-19, 2014).
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11589/20364
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