ABSTRACT
Planetary boundaries are quantitative thresholds “within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come”. However, “new frontiers” has a more precise meaning within the general framework, referring to the new domains that are emerging in relation to the political economy of the environment. The political economy of cities is of course nothing new. City dwellers are citizens in places: a city is by definition a politicized space, a domain defined by the legal authority under which it is placed by a human community. Developing a broad concept of the distributional effects of environmental policies becomes even more challenging when future generations are also considered, when intergenerational inequality is added to intra generational inequality. In fact, sudden changes in public opinions are especially common for environmental issues, since on the one hand environmental conservation is considered desirable by many, but on the other hand environmental policies are often viewed as socially regressive.
