The “Dark Side” of Climate Action Planning

Abstract

We are increasingly seeing the unintended social consequences of climate action planning as urban efforts to be climate-responsive create uneven exposure to climate risks and contribute to new forms of gentrification and displacement. I use Yiftachel’s four dimensions of planning control as a framework to explore the circumstances in which planning emerges as an oppressive activity in the context of climate change. I argue that seemingly progressive mitigation and adaptation actions are accompanied by a “dark side” that can advance regressive outcomes despite the positive intentions of planners.

Introduction

More than two decades ago, urban planning scholar Oren Yiftachel (1998) described the progressive potential of planning as being accompanied by a “more sinister dark side” (359). At a time when planning was predominately viewed as a progressive social project, Yiftachel (1998) critiqued planning scholarship for uncritically viewing planning as a positive force for the public good. Yiftachel (1998) argued that planning often functions as a form of deliberate social control and oppression with territorial, procedural, socioeconomic, and cultural dimensions. This perspective piece suggests that contemporary climate action planning is contributing to the reemergence of Yiftachel's (1998) four dimensions of planning control by creating shifts in urbanization that entrench existing forms of oppression and create new disparities. Yiftachel (1998) suggests that planning as oppression exists in a variety of settings, citing examples in housing policy, inner city development, and land use planning. Climate action planning differs from these efforts in its purpose and scope but is captured under Yiftachel's (1998) definition of planning as any public policy that affects urban development or the public production of space.

The inequitable impacts of climate change are well documented. Environmental and climate justice literature demonstrates that lower-income households and racialized communities tend to have reduced disaster preparedness and constrained access to environmental and social amenities (Bourne and Hulchanski 2020; Kashem, Wilson, and Van Zandt 2016). These groups are also more likely to reside in locations that are susceptible to the impacts of climate change, such as floodplains and unstable hillsides, where response times are slower and recovery is more difficult (Thomas et al. 2018). Disruptions often exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities, further exposing populations rendered vulnerable to future impacts (Steele et al. 2012).

To respond to these and other concerns, several cities in the Global North and South are preparing climate action plans to guide local mitigation and adaptation efforts. Scholars advocate the need to embed equity and justice principles into climate change plans, but a substantial amount of research points to the regressive outcomes of these plans as efforts to be low-carbon and climate-ready create uneven exposure to climate risks (Rice et al. 2020) and contribute to new forms of gentrification and displacement (Schrock, Horst, and Ock 2022). These outcomes point to a “dark side” of climate action planning and highlight the need to critically consider the regressive potential of planning's response to climate change.

I establish the ongoing relevance of Yiftachel's (1998) conceptual framework by demonstrating that the dimensions of social control and oppression Yiftachel (1998) describes have taken new forms under the banner of climate action planning. I respond to Yiftachel's (1998) call for further consideration of the connection between spatial policies and social oppression by exploring the circumstances in which planning emerges as an oppressive activity in the context of climate change.

Dimensions of Planning Control

Yiftachel's (1998) four dimensions of planning control capture the core aspects of planning: spatial outcomes (the territorial dimension), power relations and decision-making processes (the procedural dimension), material consequences (the socioeconomic dimension), and the repercussions of planning activities on identities and ways of life (the cultural dimension). Collectively, these dimensions of planning control create uneven social relations by deepening intergroup disparities. Using Yiftachel's four dimensions of planning control as a conceptual framework for categorizing the risks associated with planning for climate change, I explore some unintended social and distributional consequences of climate action planning across the Global North and South.

Territorial Dimension

The territorial dimension of planning control relates to patterns of intergroup land control resulting from plans and policies that determine land use patterns and access to amenities and services (Yiftachel 1998). Territorial policies can be used to oppress marginalized groups by restricting land ownership, controlling land use, and segregating social groups based on class, race, and ethnicity. Historically, planning and planning-adjacent professions in North American cities have contributed to creating and entrenching vulnerability to climate change through racially oppressive practices such as segregation, racial zoning, and redlining. These practices have created uneven exposure and sensitivity to current climate risks by concentrating socially marginalized populations in more climate-exposed geographic areas.

These patterns are evident in the United States, where urban areas that were historically targeted for disinvestment through redlining now have higher land surface temperatures than non-redlined areas. Hoffman, Shandas, and Pendleton (2020) observed temperatures up to 7 °C hotter in formerly redlined areas across 94% of the cities they studied. Wilson (2020) similarly documented higher heat exposure in formerly redlined areas of Baltimore, Dallas, and Kansas City. Demographic data reveal that lower-income and minority residents are overrepresented in formerly redlined areas, meaning these residents experience greater heat exposure than their wealthier, whiter neighbors (Hoffman, Shandas, and Pendleton 2020; Wilson 2020). These studies demonstrate that “global climate change will further exacerbate existing, historically-codified inequities” in several cities (Hoffman, Shandas, and Pendleton 2020, 9) where environmental benefits and burdens are distributed along racial and class lines.

Despite growing awareness of the historical and structural forms of racism and discrimination that create differential vulnerability to climate change, climate action plans in American cities largely fail to fully acknowledge and address these inequities (Zoll 2022). This oversight means that historical planning policies continue to oppress lower-income and racialized populations in the current context of climate change by predetermining where these groups live, and what resources and services they have access to (Long and Rice 2019).

The territorial dimension of planning control also emerges in Global South cities when informal settlements are relocated in the name of climate change adaptation or preparedness. In Metro Manila, Philippines, decades of largely unplanned growth have intensified the region's vulnerability to climate change by supplanting the natural environment with a built environment that is highly susceptible to the adverse effects of extreme events (Cash 2021). Risks are heightened for the urban poor, especially residents living informally in flood-prone areas without secure land, adequate housing, or properly serviced communities (Cash 2021). Devastating flooding events in Manila have prompted efforts to upgrade the city's flood management infrastructure, leading to the relocation of thousands of informal households away from waterway embankments to resettlement sites where they have fewer livelihood resources to cope with impacts (Anguelovski et al. 2016). The displacement of vulnerable groups in the name of climate change adaptation resembles the type of spatial oppression associated with the territorial dimension of planning control. Climate action policies and plans that are supportive of the urban poor can reduce vulnerabilities to both displacement and natural hazards, but these approaches require significant scaling up.

Procedural Dimension

The procedural dimension of planning control emerges during plan development and implementation processes. Planning processes can marginalize and repress certain groups by excluding them from meaningful participation in decision-making, which directly affects societal power relations. This form of control can be applied explicitly through the exclusion of certain groups, or implicitly through information distortion and meaningless forms of consultation. Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) requires parties to ensure that there is public participation in efforts to address climate change, but experts and elites tend to be privileged in climate change planning processes at the expense of participation by less privileged groups (Meerow and Woodruff 2020).

In Global North and South cities, marginalized communities are frequently omitted from adaptation planning processes, leading to maladaptive outcomes that exacerbate socio-spatial inequities (Anguelovski et al. 2016). In Mzuzu, Malawi, where climate-related disasters are increasingly being experienced, youth make up almost half of the population, but this group is largely excluded from planning processes related to climate change (Zimba, Simbeye, and Chirwa 2021). Climate change adaptation planning in Delhi, India similarly falls short in terms of adequate representation of vulnerable groups in planning processes (Hughes 2013). Denying voice to marginalized and vulnerable populations during planning processes represents a form of social control by elite urban governance actors over less privileged residents. As climate action planning increasingly becomes the norm at the city scale and beyond, the risk of oppression through exclusion is heightened.

Socioeconomic Dimension

The socioeconomic dimension of planning control emerges when planning activities create externalities that have indirect social and economic consequences for certain communities. Russo and Pattison (2016) argue that climate action plans do little to ameliorate wealth divides in cities because they are rooted in a long tradition of urban planning that prioritizes profitable growth at the cost of social equity and fairness. For example, nearly every climate action plan in North America promotes the design of more walkable and higher-density mixed-use communities as a pathway toward climate change mitigation, but on the ground these strategies often have unintended consequences. While affluent populations benefit from the climate-resilient lifestyle that denser and more walkable communities provide, less privileged populations experience rising costs (Anguelovski et al. 2022; Rice et al. 2020).

Researchers have observed this phenomenon in Seattle, Washington, where investments in low-carbon infrastructure have converged with rapidly rising housing prices. Following the development of improved public and active transportation infrastructure and the construction of many new green condominium buildings throughout Seattle's urban core, Rice et al. (2020) recorded a rise in housing values that outpaced the nationwide increase. Rising costs were accompanied by changes in racial and ethnic composition, educational attainment, and income in the neighborhoods studied, indicating rapid gentrification in the area (Rice et al. 2020). These patterns indicate that a focus on climate change mitigation through low-carbon investments can cause sociodemographic shifts that ultimately serve as a segregating force.

Cultural Dimension

The cultural dimension of planning control emerges when planning activities impact the various cultures and collective identities that exist within an urban space. Planning can govern the character of urban spaces by imposing land uses that influence settlement patterns and/or support a certain physical and cultural landscape. Climate-responsive cities are increasingly developing urban green infrastructure such as rain gardens, street trees, green roofs, and urban forestry to capitalize on the value of these urban greening strategies for creating low-carbon and climate-resilient cities. The benefits of urban greening for climate change adaptation and mitigation are universally recognized (De la Sota et al. 2019; Gaffin, Rosenzweig, and Kong 2012), but notable inequities exist in the distribution of these environmental amenities and the benefits they provide. There is growing recognition that greening efforts affect the character of urban space because they are closely tied to the displacement of low-income and racialized residents from urban core neighborhoods (Anguelovski et al. 2022; Schrock, Horst, and Ock 2022).

Using data from Philadelphia, Shokry, Connolly, and Anguelovski (2020) analyzed how neighborhoods’ racial characteristics changed over time relative to the siting of green resilience infrastructure including green roofs, rain gardens, wetlands, and tree trenches. They found that investments in green infrastructure coincided with a decline in the numbers of black and Hispanic lower-income residents in resilience-invested neighborhoods while these numbers increased in neighborhoods where green infrastructure investments did not occur. Shokry, Connolly, and Anguelovski (2020) describe two concurrent processes occurring in Philadelphia alongside the planning and siting of resilience investments: climate protective infrastructure is becoming concentrated in areas with wealthier, whiter, and better-educated residents while minority and low-income residents have shifted to resilience-disinvested neighborhoods. These findings demonstrate how climate action planning can facilitate cultural control by dispersing or concentrating specific populations through the strategic siting of environmental amenities. It becomes evident that seemingly win–win mitigation, adaptation, and resilience-building solutions can inadvertently reconfigure the cultural composition of cities under the pretext of climate change preparedness.

Conclusion

Pervasive forms of urban inequity are often attributed to historical planning practices and ongoing social processes that create patterns of exclusionary urban development. I suggest that regressive planning outcomes including uneven development, segregation, displacement, and social exclusion—which occur alongside urban efforts to respond to climate change—indicate a reemergence of the forms of oppression Yiftachel (1998) identified over 25 years ago. Yiftachel's (1998) conceptual framework remains useful for framing the regressive outcomes of planning activities that are prevalent today, namely, policies and processes for responding to pressing and complex problems like climate change.

Seemingly laudable strategies for reducing carbon emissions and adapting to climate disruption—which are often developed without participation by marginalized groups—can inadvertently cause the physical displacement of lower-income residents and racialized groups and cultures. These outcomes resemble the territorial, procedural, socioeconomic, and cultural dimensions of planning control because they affect access to space and resources, power relations and decision-making processes, and collective identities and ways of life. Importantly, these dimensions of planning control are interdependent and the different dimensions may be more pronounced in some places and less pronounced in others, as demonstrated by the cases described here which span the Global North and South.

Using Yiftachel's (1998) conceptual framework as a guide, planners engaged in climate action planning should consider the spatial outcomes, social relations implications, material consequences, and cultural repercussions of climate-driven planning decisions and investments. Yiftachel's framework could be used as a blueprint for designing more equitable climate transformations by categorizing the potentially regressive outcomes of mitigation and adaptation actions as territorial, procedural, socioeconomic, or cultural. Research that more closely explores the mechanisms by which presumably progressive climate actions create intergroup disparities is needed to alert planners of the potentially regressive outcomes of their work. Addressing forms of oppression associated with the “dark side” of planning for climate change also requires planners to come to terms with their role in creating and entrenching inequitable outcomes, even when this is unintentional (Mendez 2022). Beyond climate action planning, applying Yiftachel's (1998) dimensions of planning control to categorize the unintended outcomes (or, the “dark side”) of other planning activities would contribute to a greater understanding of the ways in which harmful planning practices are replicated and can be avoided.