IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i11p4670-d368698.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Quest for an Adequate Test: Justifying the Sustainable City as an Order of Worth

Author

Listed:
  • Meg Holden

    (Urban Studies Program and Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 515 W. Hastings St., Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada)

Abstract

The sustainable city represents an ideal of good and just living that has inspired urban development work for at least 25 years. While criticized by many for its scientific, social and political vagueness, the concept of the sustainable city has nonetheless continued to frame material and political efforts in urban redevelopment. From a perspective grounded in the pragmatic sociology of critique, this article takes this phenomenon as evidence of an international movement to generate not just political pronouncements or technical fixes, but a new order of worth, from the concept of the sustainable city. After presenting the pragmatic sociology of critique and the application of this body of social research as it pertains to better understanding sustainable urban development, we reflect on the factors that challenge the acceptance of the sustainable city as an order of worth, or as a mode and manner of justifying significant decisions in the public domain, recognizable and understandable to a majority. For efforts to create the sustainable city to justify themselves, socioculturally, in this way, the work demands a clear test of worthiness. This article illustrates the search for an adequate test through a review of two distinct efforts to generate new systems of assessment for sustainable building projects, and points out the contrasting nature of these two tests: one which aims to be accessible to thoroughgoing public debate fit to transform a context toward a political discourse of urban sustainability as well-being; the other that interprets the need for a test as affirmation of expertise related to the unfolding climate emergency.

Suggested Citation

  • Meg Holden, 2020. "The Quest for an Adequate Test: Justifying the Sustainable City as an Order of Worth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-19, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:11:p:4670-:d:368698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4670/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/11/4670/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Meg Holden & Charling Li & Ana Molina, 2015. "The Emergence and Spread of Ecourban Neighbourhoods around the World," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(9), pages 1-20, August.
    2. Eve Chiapello & Luc Boltanski, 2005. "The New Spirit of Capitalism," Post-Print hal-00680089, HAL.
    3. Anders Blok, 2012. "Greening Cosmopolitan Urbanism? On the Transnational Mobility of Low-Carbon Formats in Northern European and East Asian Cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(10), pages 2327-2343, October.
    4. Douglas Torgerson, 1995. "The uncertain quest for sustainability: public discourse and the politics of environmentalism," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Frank Fischer & Michael Black (ed.), Greening Environmental Policy, chapter 1, pages 3-20, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Pierre Pech, 2016. "The French eco-neighbourhood evaluation model: Contributions to sustainable city making and to the evolution of urban practices," Post-Print halshs-01802418, HAL.
    6. Eve Chiapello & Luc Boltanski, 2005. "The New Spirit of Capitalism," Post-Print hal-00678024, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Vigvári, Gábor, 2022. "Transzformáció és a populizmus a visegrádi országokban [Transformation and populism in the V4 countries]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 339-366.
    2. Louis Moreno, 2012. "Looking backward," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 345-354, June.
    3. Stéphane Debenedetti & Isabelle Huault & Véronique Perret, 2015. "Resisting the power of organizations in Modern Times : May we all be Charlot? [Résister au pouvoir des organisations dans les Temps Modernes : Peut-on tous être Charlot ?]," Post-Print hal-01525807, HAL.
    4. Sikka, Prem, 2015. "The corrosive effects of neoliberalism on the UK financial crises and auditing practices: A dead-end for reforms," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 1-18.
    5. Milena I. Kremakova, 2014. "Trust, Access and Sensitive Boundaries between ‘Public’ and ‘Private’: A Returning Insider's Experience of Research in Bulgaria," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 19(4), pages 148-161, December.
    6. Luppi, Roberto, 2023. "Die Einsamkeit des Prekariats und die Bedürfnisse des "Wir": Warum es notwendig ist, das Konzept der gemeinsamen Bedürfnisse in die Definition des Prekariats aufzunehmen," Discussion Papers 01/23, Europa-Kolleg Hamburg, Institute for European Integration.
    7. Münnich, Sascha, 2016. "Note from the editor: Economic sociology and capitalism," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 18(1), pages 2-5.
    8. Antonio ALOISI & Valerio DE STEFANO, 2020. "Regulation and the future of work: The employment relationship as an innovation facilitator," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 159(1), pages 47-69, March.
    9. Lutter, Mark, 2014. "Creative success and network embeddedness: Explaining critical recognition of film directors in Hollywood, 1900-2010," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/11, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    10. Rob Shields, 2008. "The Urban Question as Cargo Cult: Opportunities for a New Urban Pedagogy," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 712-718, September.
    11. Stefano Dughera, 2020. "Skills, preferences and rights: evolutionary complementarities in labor organization," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 843-866, July.
    12. Guéorguieva-Bringuier, Laura & Ottaviani, Fiona, 2018. "Opposition and Isomorphism with the Neoliberal Logic in Community Exchange Systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 88-97.
    13. Imre Kovách & Boldizsár Gergely Megyesi & Angela Barthes & Hasan Volkan Oral & Marija Smederevac-Lalic, 2021. "Knowledge Use in Education for Environmental Citizenship—Results of Four Case Studies in Europe (France, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-17, October.
    14. Wolf, Marcus, 2018. "Ain't misbehaving: Behavioral economics and the making of financial literacy," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 19(2), pages 10-18.
    15. Davis, Reade, 2015. "‘All in’: Snow crab, capitalization, and the future of small-scale fisheries in Newfoundland," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 323-330.
    16. Ionut Jianu, 2020. "The impact of government health and education expenditure on income inequality in European Union," Papers 2007.11409, arXiv.org.
    17. Guillet de Monthoux, Pierre, 2015. "Art, Philosophy, and Business: turns to speculative realism in European management scholarship," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 161-167.
    18. Jonathan S Davies, 2012. "Network Governance Theory: A Gramscian Critique," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(11), pages 2687-2704, November.
    19. Marie LEMAIRE, 2018. ""It's a Bible!" Unexpected use, misuse and non-use of CSR standards among "activist" workers," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2018-08, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.
    20. Andy Scerri, 2016. "Deep Ecology, the Holistic Critique of Enlightenment Dualism, and the Irony of History," Environmental Values, , vol. 25(5), pages 527-551, October.

    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:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:11:p:4670-:d:368698. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.