Urban sociology, like sociology as a whole, has traditionally either excluded the natural environment or, as with the Chicago School’s “human ecology” paradigm, treated it as a metaphor for human society, and thus naturalized socio-spatial inequality and power relations. Such canonical and “de-natured” understandings of urban environments still pervade much urban sociological research, even as interconnected ecological and urban crises, including the collision of climate change with increasing inequality along lines of race and class, are bringing urban-environmental questions to the fore. Urban sociology, meanwhile, has globalized, historicized, and provincialized canonical paradigms and approaches. Yet, despite recurrent calls to develop a socio-ecological approach to the study of urban dynamics by a range of social scientists, the field’s rapprochement with the environment is not yet complete. In the context of today’s climate crisis, as cities cope with extreme weather and pursue far-reaching “resiliency” and “sustainability” plans, and as environmental justice struggles intensify globally, there is a growing need to bridge these divides, and “environmentalize” the field.
This special issue contributes to this effort by foregrounding a nascent urban-environmental sociology. We seek empirical and theoretical work using any methodological approach that brings both environmental questions into urban sociology and the wide-ranging theory and methods of urban sociology (e.g., urban political economy, post- and de-colonial frameworks, urban cultural studies) into the environmental realm. This might include, but is not limited to, topics such as:
- “State of the field” reflections on urban sociology and its intersections with fields such as rural sociology, environmental sociology, or urban political ecology;
- The socio-ecological dimensions of urban life and development, including urban metabolism, exurban settlement, and extended geographies of urbanization;
- The valorization of cities as environmental actors and/or of environmental signifiers in contemporary urbanism, and the articulation of these beliefs with race and racialization, redevelopment, and local and regional politics;
- The rise and contradictions of market-oriented approaches to “urban sustainability,” “resilience,” and “green urbanism”—from gentrification and displacement to environmental inequality and persistent hazards;
- The politics of urban climate adaptation, post-disaster urbanization, emergency (mis)management, and geographies of risk; and
- International, decolonial, and critical approaches to urban-environmental justice and sustainability, and intersections between environmental and urban social movements.
Procedure and Timeline
- Abstracts of 250 words due March 1, 2022. Authors must submit directly to the guest editors.
- Invitations to submit full papers will be issued by April 1, 2022.
- Full papers will be due by September 1, 2022.
- Authors must submit full papers directly to City & Community and follow the journal’s submission guidelines: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/CTY.
- All papers will be subject to the journal’s standard peer-review process.
For more information, and to submit an Abstract, please contact the guest editors: Hillary Angelo, [email protected]; Miriam Greenberg, [email protected].
