ABSTRACT
This essay offers a critical examination of urban sustainability and the degree to which it intersects with considerations of environmental inequities and social justice. Based on my participatory, ethnographic research with environmental justice activists in New York City, I find that sustainable initiatives often accompanied high-end redevelopment, a process known as environmental gentrification. I argue that this process threatened to displace long-term, low-income renters and owners and to co-opt the efforts of environmental justice activists. In addition, it concentrated environmental burdens in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. I conclude by suggesting that more holistic policies and practices will create a city that is both sustainable and just.
