Green Utopianism
Politics, Practices and Perspectives
Edited by Johan Hedrén, Karin Bradley
Published May 15th 2013 by Routledge – 256 pages
Series: Routledge Studies in Environment, Culture, and Society
Description
In the last decade of planning and policy making, utopian thought and experimental approaches to the organization of society and the built environment have been rare. What has evolved instead is a firm consensus on sustainable society as something created within the framework of current society and by small steps (such as eco-labeling, urban densification and recycling). In the midst of the current ecological and economic crisis, however, social movements and researchers have called for other developmental paths and more deep-reaching approaches. The aim of this book is to empirically and theoretically analyze alternative green futures through perspectives such as political ecology, environmental justice, and utopian thought. The book includes analyses of strategies and emerging practices on the macro levels of institutional, infrastructural and economic change, and also analyzes micropractices in the form of case studies of self-organised cooperative housing, new forms of local exchange and energy provision. The book thus not only criticizes current mainstream sustainability programs but also explores alternatives and utopian practices, their potential, their problems and their challenges.
Contents
1. Introduction: Contemporary Politics, Policies and Planning for Green Futures
Part I. Trends, Obstacles and Pathways
2. Trouble with Nature: "Ecology as the New Opium of the People"
3. Sustaining Places: Disclosing New Development Pathways
4. Utopian thought, Political Ecology and Resilience
5. Why Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees
Part II. Micro-Practices: Spatial Micro-Politics, Grass-Roots Movements and Place-Based Activism
6. Toward a Genealogy of the Urban Commons
7. Spatial Forms of Post-Capitalist Futures
8. R-URBAN Strategies and Tactics for Participative Utopias and Resilient Practices
9. Globalism, Particularism, and the Greening of Neoliberal Energy Landscapes
Part IV. Transforming Politics and Planning
10. The Utopian Content of Alternative Mobility Futures
11. "Instant City" through Participation: How to Turn Utopian Ideas into Reality?
12. National Urban Parks: Nature Conservation and Spatial Distinctions in the Urban Landscape
13. Politicising Planning through Images of the Future
14. Architecture, Sustainability and Utopia: Three Contrasting Approaches
15. The Ecotopia of WELGAS: A Historical Account of a Small-Scale Renewable Energy Vision Realised in the 1980s
16. Prosumption Urbanism
17. Green Utopian Thought in Different Genres
Author Bio
Johan Hedrén is a senior lecturer at Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University.
Karin Bradley is Assistant Professor of urban and regional studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department Water and Environmental Studies at Linköping University.
Name: Green Utopianism: Politics, Practices and Perspectives (Hardback) – Routledge
Description: Edited by Johan Hedrén, Karin Bradley. In the last decade of planning and policy making, utopian thought and experimental approaches to the organization of society and the built environment have been rare. What has evolved instead is a firm consensus on sustainable society as something...
Categories: Environmental Studies, Environment & the City, Environment & Society, Environment & Theory, Urban Sociology, Social Theory, Urban Geography