Repoliticizing Green Spaces in Urban Transitions. The Relevance of Governance for Equitable Ecological Planning

In the pursuit of ecological transitions, city administrations emerge as key players in implementing global strategies. Urban ecological planning responds to several major objectives outlined in global sustainable agendas, and urban experimentation is considered an ideal arena for developing and testing models of renaturalization. However, this greening momentum is also serving as a means to depoliticize planning processes and city governance. Despite ambitious claims, ecological plans are frequently burdened by a fragmented approach, and a lack of structural imbalance and equity-focused provisions. The political significance of ecological planning and management is typically disregarded, with dissent and socio-economic impacts of greening on the population sidelined in favor of emphasizing social green benefits. Conveying a consensual and a-critical view of urban greening as a ‘pure good’ producing widespread benefits for all, and framing social benefits as a consequence of increased environmental quality sustainable planning often results in overlooking the possible unfair outcomes of greening-led urban regeneration. Moreover, emphasizing the urgency for adaptation measures, and celebrating measurable outcomes, ecological planning is embracing a technocentric approach to public space, whereby environmental issues are used to legitimize policies that are exclusionary. Fragmentation of ecological planning and governance, with the involvement of private actors or nonprofits in greening processes, may contribute to the decoupling of social and environmental claims, serving city marketing rather than citizens’ well-being and social cohesion, and may result in the privatization and commodification of nature. By drawing on the analysis of green management experiences, this paper analyzes the need for a political sociology perspective in understanding and re-politicizing the governance of green spaces.