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. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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).
    9. 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.
    10. Dominic Piacentini, 2021. "Beside the berm: The convenience of roadside picking," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 208-218, June.
    11. Pérez-Sánchez, Laura À. & Velasco-Fernández, Raúl & Giampietro, Mario, 2022. "Factors and actions for the sustainability of the residential sector. The nexus of energy, materials, space, and time use," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    12. Letizia Bindi & Angelo Belliggiano, 2023. "A Highly Condensed Social Fact: Food Citizenship, Individual Responsibility, and Social Commitment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-22, April.
    13. Lejla H Pihljak & Maria Rusca & Cecilia Alda-Vidal & Klaas Schwartz, 2021. "Everyday practices in the production of uneven water pricing regimes in Lilongwe, Malawi," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(2), pages 300-317, March.
    14. Fallon S. Aidoo, 2021. "Architectures of mis/managed retreat: Black land loss to green housing gains," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 11(3), pages 451-464, September.
    15. William Monteith, 2018. "Book review: New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(11), pages 2561-2564, August.
    16. Scott Rodgers & Clive Barnett & Allan Cochrane, 2014. "Where is Urban Politics?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(5), pages 1551-1560, September.
    17. Janet McIntyre‐Mills, 2020. "The COVID‐19 era: No longer business as usual," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 827-838, September.
    18. Chihsin Chiu, 2020. "Theorizing Public Participation and Local Governance in Urban Resilience: Reflections on the “Provincializing Urban Political Ecology” Thesis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-12, December.
    19. Gusti Ayu Made Suartika & Alexander Cuthbert, 2020. "The Sustainable Imperative—Smart Cities, Technology and Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-15, October.
    20. The Re‐Arrangements Collective & Fabien Cante & Ajmal Hussain & Timo Makori & Surer Qassim Mohamed & Alana Osbourne & Francesca Pilo’ & Kavita Ramakrishnan & AbdouMaliq Simone & Rike Sitas & Adeem Suh, 2023. "MOVEMENT 2. FORMALIZING ARRANGEMENTS: Re‐signification and the Making of Governable Spaces," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 471-482, May.

    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.