Planning the Green New Deal: Climate Justice and the Politics of Sites and Scales

Climate change and the rise of a grassroots–legislative political–environmental movement in the United States should change how urban planners think and act on spatial change and social justice. After the 2018 U.S. elections, organizing movements and progressive legislators endorsed the Green New Deal. In this Viewpoint I look at the Green New Deal’s potential implications for urban planning. I analyze it in reference to the 1930s’ New Deal inspirations and current climate and urban challenges, and illustrate the contradictions between large-scale spatial change and community-scale social justice. I explain how the imperatives of the Green New Deal, in conjunction with the shifting sites, scales, and politics of planning for climate change, should encourage planners to reframe their spaces and politics of practice toward a reconceptualized urban regional scale and a new politics of more public participation.