IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v51y2019i2p487-504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cities and planetary repair: The problem with climate retrofitting

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Knuth

Abstract

In the 2010s, major US initiatives framed urban retrofitting as a decarbonization solution. These programs address an obtrusive legacy of industrial capitalism: its built environments shed energy and emissions when they fall into disrepair. Political ecology and economy have been slow to engage retrofitting, an absence that is conspicuous as these fields take on planetary repair as a conceptual provocation and turn in mainstream conservation. This paper explores US retrofitting as a distinctive material repair practice, one born as an energy poverty program amid the scarcity fears of the 1970s Energy Crisis but seeing a renaissance today as a program for green capitalist growth. I interrogate two economies of repair now emerging around retrofitting, energy market and cleantech aspirations to make energy efficiency a resource and articulated efforts to sell retrofits as new green value for real estate development and investment. Such urban revaluation efforts join an expanding array of green gentrification schemes today. Paradoxically, even as would-be green entrepreneurs are drawn to these seemingly intangible and “clean†forms of waste and value-in-waiting, retrofitting presents intransigent materialities. Its decarbonization ambitions demand not just profit-generating urban repair today but large-scale urban maintenance into the future. This need confronts longstanding efforts to render US cities and built environments flexible to recurrent creative destruction in service of ongoing economic growth. Such logics of de/revaluation and essential disposability permit concurrent US programs for gentrification and urban abandonment today. However, decarbonization requires a more substantial confrontation with capitalist ruination-as-usual.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Knuth, 2019. "Cities and planetary repair: The problem with climate retrofitting," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(2), pages 487-504, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:51:y:2019:i:2:p:487-504
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18793973
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X18793973
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0308518X18793973?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becky Mansfield & Martin Doyle, 2017. "Nature: A Conversation in Three Parts," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(1), pages 22-27, January.
    2. Rosemary-Claire Collard & Jessica Dempsey & Juanita Sundberg, 2015. "A Manifesto for Abundant Futures," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 105(2), pages 322-330, March.
    3. Stefan Bouzarovski & Jan Frankowski & Sergio Tirado Herrero, 2018. "Low‐Carbon Gentrification: When Climate Change Encounters Residential Displacement," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(5), pages 845-863, September.
    4. Matthew T. Huber, 2017. "Hidden Abodes: Industrializing Political Ecology," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(1), pages 151-166, January.
    5. David Wachsmuth & Hillary Angelo, 2018. "Green and Gray: New Ideologies of Nature in Urban Sustainability Policy," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 108(4), pages 1038-1056, July.
    6. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015. "The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10581.
    7. Colin McFarlane, 2011. "Assemblage and critical urbanism," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 204-224, April.
    8. Gareth A S Edwards & Harriet Bulkeley, 2017. "Urban political ecologies of housing and climate change: The ‘Coolest Block’ Contest in Philadelphia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(5), pages 1126-1141, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qing He & Haiyang Zhao & Lin Shen & Liuqun Dong & Ye Cheng & Ke Xu, 2019. "Factors Influencing Residents’ Intention toward Green Retrofitting of Existing Residential Buildings," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-23, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anders Blok, 2020. "Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(14), pages 2803-2816, November.
    2. Shivant Jhagroe, 2024. "Fences, seeds and bees: The more-than-human politics of community gardening in Rotterdam," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(8), pages 1488-1507, June.
    3. Alida Cantor & Sarah Knuth, 2019. "Speculations on the postnatural: Restoration, accumulation, and sacrifice at the Salton Sea," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(2), pages 527-544, March.
    4. Jan van Duppen, 2021. "Book review: The Botanical City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(8), pages 1746-1750, June.
    5. Meagher, Kate, 2019. "Working in chains: African informal workers and global value chains," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91590, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Hillary Angelo & David Wachsmuth, 2015. "Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 16-27, January.
    7. Hervé Charmettant & Yvan Renou, 2021. "Cooperative conversion and communalization: Closely observed interactions between the material and the mental," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(1), pages 55-77, March.
    8. Sebastian Ureta, 2014. "The Shelter that Wasn’t There: On the Politics of Co-ordinating Multiple Urban Assemblages in Santiago, Chile," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(2), pages 231-246, February.
    9. Van Assche, Kristof & Duineveld, Martijn & Beunen, Raoul & Valentinov, Vladislav & Gruezmacher, Monica, 2022. "Material dependencies: hidden underpinnings of sustainability transitions," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 24(3), pages 281-296.
    10. Kristina Mjörnell & Paula Femenías & Kerstin Annadotter, 2019. "Renovation Strategies for Multi-Residential Buildings from the Record Years in Sweden—Profit-Driven or Socioeconomically Responsible?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-18, December.
    11. Katherine Farley, 2022. "“We ain't never stolen a plant”: Livelihoods, property, and illegal ginseng harvesting in the Appalachian forest commons," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 309-321, June.
    12. Jahrl, Ingrid & Moschitz, Heidrun & Cavin, Joëlle Salomon, 2021. "The role of food gardening in addressing urban sustainability – A new framework for analysing policy approaches," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    13. Dr. Ahmadi Begum, 2024. "“From IT Hubs to Slum Pockets Bangalore’s Urban Disparitiesâ€," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 8(6), pages 2919-2925, June.
    14. Megan Horst & Nathan McClintock & Adrien Baysse-Lainé & Ségolène Darly & Flaminia Paddeu & Coline Perrin & Kristin Reynolds & Christophe-Toussaint Soulard, 2021. "Translating land justice through comparison: a US–French dialogue and research agenda," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(4), pages 865-880, December.
    15. Nieto-Romero, M. & Parra, C. & Bock, B., 2021. "Re-building historical commons: How formal institutions affect participation in community forests in Galicia, Spain," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    16. Kevin Ward & Timothy Bunnell, 2021. "Reflections on five years of the Summer Institute in Urban Studies," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(4), pages 863-878, March.
    17. Wang, Ke & Cui, Qingming & Xu, Honggang, 2024. "Sensory therapeutic assemblages in tourism: Qi and the health of snowbirds in China," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    18. repec:sae:envval:v:29:y:2020:i:1:p:47-66 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Jenny von Platten & Karl de Fine Licht & Mikael Mangold & Kristina Mjörnell, 2021. "Renovating on Unequal Premises: A Normative Framework for a Just Renovation Wave in Swedish Multifamily Housing," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-32, September.
    20. Dominic Piacentini, 2021. "Beside the berm: The convenience of roadside picking," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 208-218, June.
    21. Caroline Faria & Vanessa A Massaro & Jill M Williams, 2020. "Feminist political geographies: Critical reflections, new directions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(7-8), pages 1149-1159, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:51:y:2019:i:2:p:487-504. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.