ABSTRACT
Global economic and environmental crises are colliding in the major cities of the global North, with important implications for social justice and environmental sustainability. As cities work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance green spaces, and promote themselves as environmental leaders, interesting contradictions are emerging among the renaturing of urban spaces, deindustrialization, and environmental justice. The role of cities as important players in global environmental governance is intimately connected with their increasing importance as central sites for the establishment of the conditions necessary for capital accumulation. In order to compete for the investment capital and skilled labor of the global economy, city leaders began adopting a series of policies that came to be called urban entrepreneurialism, "in which traditional local boosterism integrated with the use of local governmental powers to try to attract external sources of funding, new direct investments or new employment sources".
