Integrating social equity in sustainable development practice: Institutional commitments and patient capital
by

Daniel Trudeau, Macalester College

Date and time: Tuesday, 28 April, 16:00-17:00
RSVP for the Zoom meeting link and password: alexandra.halligey@wits.ac.za

Abstract: Sustainable urban development is widely conceptualized as resulting from a balance of economic, environmental, and social equity concerns. Yet, critics argue that social equity is routinely left out in development practice. Aiming to help identify solutions that can address this problem, this paper examines sustainable development projects that have managed to incorporate social equity in substantive ways into development practice. Drawing on case study research of nine neighborhood-scale development projects distributed across three metropolitan areas in the United States – Austin, Denver, and Minneapolis-St. Paul – this presentation examines the contexts and processes that enable the incorporation of social equity into sustainable development practice. Using data from intensive interviews with actors that shaped the development of mixed-use and transit-oriented neighborhoods designed according to the New Urbanism planning movement, I investigate three storylines that illustrate different ways that social equity concerns are left out, marginalized, or integrated into development practice. Comparison of the processes driving each storyline shows that integrating social equity in sustainable development can succeed when there is an institutional effort to champion social equity and where that effort brings patient capital and provides conceptual resources that help link social equity to concerns of livability.

Biography: Dan Trudeau is a Professor in the Geography at Macalester College in the United States of America. His research interests include the political economy of public–private partnerships, the cultural politics of landscape production, and the social equity implications of urban design initiatives such as the New Urbanism. His scholarship has been published in journals including, Cultural Geographies, Environment and Planning A, GeoForum, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Political Geography, Urban Geography, and Urban Studies. 

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The Faces of the City seminar series is a partnership between the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies (CUBES) and the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) and and the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning (SA&CP) in the School of Architecture and Planning.
 
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