- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
These five speakers grapple with shifting notions of sustainability.
Judith Layzer advocates “strong sustainability” in lieu of the conventional approach, which imagines human-made capital and technology can always substitute for the wealth of resources drawn from the natural world. Development and affluence have instead degraded ecosystems. Strong sustainability “entails living within the productive capacity of nature…meeting the needs of the current generation as opposed to their demands.” Wealthy societies must adopt laws to contain population growth and curb consumption, and develop regional cooperation and fair trade policies.
Jason Corburn describes an environmental justice framework that connects ecological, economic and social justice issues, especially in urban settings. Corburn asks about the distribution of environmental goods and evils (such as parks and pollution); who participates in rule-making and enforcement; and how environmental justice evolves institutionally, and is enforced. The key lesson of the past is that voluntary enforcement of environmental justice guidelines don’t work, and we must “find a legal or regulatory stick to implement” its goals.
“Where I’m from, I see this green thing as a rich people’s movement,” says
Phillip Thompson, who was a housing manager in New York. Environmentalists pushed clean air laws that ended the incineration of garbage -- but left housing projects with an unfunded mandate to bag their own waste. Thompson acknowledges the energy crisis is an emergency for many lower-income city dwellers hit with high heating costs: “We can’t do affordable housing if it isn’t green.” But transforming cities into affordable and green places means systemic change. Who, for example, will pay for outfitting buildings in poorer neighborhoods with energy conserving technology, and who will train and educate the workforce required for this transformation?
“What are we trying to sustain?” asks Chris Zegras. He believes the answer is access to opportunities that enable development. How do societies expand accessibility without depriving future generations of the ability to do so? Zegras says it’s hard to argue the importance of climate change to someone “who travels 3 ½ hours a day on a bus to get to a job, and half the salary is eaten up by the bus ride.” First, we must alleviate fundamental issues of accessibility for the poor: their lack of affordable transportation and proximity to schools and jobs. Zegras recommends addressing the worldwide crisis in transportation, in part through such innovations as bike and car sharing.
Looking down on Earth as if it were one country, says Adil Najam, you’d have to conclude it is poor, extremely divided, degraded, poorly governed and unsafe – a Third-world country. Addressing the environment turns on development, since “the poor are hit first and hit most.” The climate question has moved from discussion of molecules to adaptation, but we remain largely ignorant about how to mitigate and adapt, Najam says. Worse, nations are off on the wrong foot, measuring the problem in terms of only “emissions and dollars.” When a Bangladeshi fisherman loses his work to rising waters, what is the cost? “We need to add the currency of livelihood,” concludes Najam.Related Videos
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(eco)Logical: Greening the 21st Century City
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April 7, 2005
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Moderator: Lawrence J. Vale SM '88
Professor and Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT School of Architecture and Planning
Margaret MacVicar FellowLawerence Vale is the author or editor of six books examining urban design and housing. Architecture, Power, and National Identity (1992), a book about capital city design on six continents, received the 1994 Spiro Kostof Book Award for Architecture and Urbanism from the Society of Architectural Historians. Vale is also Co-Editor, with Sam Bass Warner, Jr., of Imaging the City: Continuing Struggles and New Directions (Center for Urban Policy Research Press, 2001), and co-editor, with Thomas J. Campanella, of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster (Oxford University Press, 2005), which was recognized as one of the “Ten Best Books for 2005” by Planetizen, the Planning and Development network.
He attended Amherst College, and received the S.M.Arch.S. degree from MIT and a D.Phil from the University of Oxford. He has been a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as the recipient of the 1997 Chester Rapkin Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. He has taught at the MIT since 1988.Judith Layzer PhD '99
Linde Career Development Associate Professor of Environmental Policy, MIT
Judith Layzer focuses on the roles of science, values, and storytelling in environmental politics, as well as on the effectiveness of different approaches to environmental planning and management. Now in its second edition, Layzer’s book, The Environmental Case: Translating Values Into Policy (CQ Press, 2006) describes 16 prominent cases of environmental policymaking. She has also published Natural Experiments: Ecosystem Management and the Environment (MIT Press, 2008).
With JoAnn Carmin, Layzer co-directs the Environmental Policy and Planning group’s Society, Business and the Environment Project. She also directs the soon-to-be-unveiled Urban Sustainability Project @ MIT.Jason Corburn MCP '96, PhD '02
Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley
J. Phillip Thompson
Associate Professor of Urban Politics, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT
Phillip Thompson is an urban planner and political scientist. Before entering academic life, Phil worked as Deputy General Manager of the New York Housing Authority and as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination. Thompson's latest book is Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Struggle for a Deep Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2005), and he has a recent article in The New Labor Forum entitled “What Are Labor’s True Colors?”
Chris Zegras '01 SM, MCP, PhD '05
Ford Career Development Assistant Professor of Transportation and Urban Planning, MIT
Adil Najam CE '96, PhD '01
Fredrick Pardee Professor of Global Policy and Director, Pardee Center for the Study of Long-Term Future, Boston University
Moderator
Speakers
- About the Host
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About the Host
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is a department within the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. It is comprised of four specialization areas (also referred to as Program Groups): City Design and Development; Environmental Policy and Planning; Housing, Community and Economic Development; and the International Development Group. There are also three cross-cutting areas of study: Transportation Planning and Policy, Urban Information Systems (UIS), and Regional Planning.
Video Player
Sustaining Cities: Environment, Economic Development, and Empowerment
- Moderator: Lawrence J. Vale SM '88
- Judith Layzer PhD '99
Jason Corburn MCP '96, PhD '02
J. Phillip Thompson
Chris Zegras '01 SM, MCP, PhD '05
Adil Najam CE '96, PhD '01 - April 4, 2008
- Running Time: 1:27:07
