Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice

As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon's headquarters, experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.     

Beyond a Livable and Green Neighborhood: Asserting Control,Sovereignty and Transgression in the Casc Antic of Barcelona

During the past 15 years, the Casc Antic, a traditionally low‐income and immigrant neighborhood in Barcelona, has been the site of community‐based mobilization to revitalize abandoned areas and improve local environmental conditions. The organization of residents and their supporters is situated within a broader context of urban political and socioeconomic change — the transformation of the urban economy into a decentralized, global and technology‐ and service‐focused system, accompanied by rising socioeconomic inequality and displacement in inner‐city areas. To date, few studies in the urban environmental arena have been placed within processes of urban change and offer specificity on the purposes, intents and goals that poor and minority residents develop as they understand, resist and challenge their marginality. Why do residents of marginalized neighborhoods and their supporters organize to proactively improve livability and environmental quality? To what extent do the environmental struggles of marginalized communities serve as means to advance more complex political agendas in the city? Through the examination of neighborhood organization for livability in the Casc Antic, I analyze how activists use their environmental endeavors as tools to address stigmas attached to their place, control the land and its boundaries, and build a more transgressive form of democracy.     

The evolving role of trade associations in negotiated environmental agreements: the case of United Kingdom Climate Change Agreements

Voluntary and negotiated agreements are becoming increasingly popular instruments for regulating industry's environmental performance. Although their main purpose is to modify the behaviour of individual firms, the coordinating role of trade (or industry) associations is often critical to their environmental effectiveness. Thus, a clear and mutually agreed understanding of associations' role in the agreement process is essential. This paper examines the nature of trade associations' input into the negotiation and implementation of environmental agreements, using the case study of United Kingdom Climate Change Agreements. Results show associations serving a range of coordinating roles, including the aggregation of members' viewpoints, negotiation of agreements, provision of regulatory and technical knowledge and collation of performance data. We conclude that further involvement of trade associations in negotiated and voluntary agreements can bring appreciable, though not uncontested, benefits in terms of environmental effectiveness. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Personality and pay satisfaction: exploring the influence of organizational justice and gender in South Africa

This study contributes to the limited established empirical research on the impact and relevance of individual-level personality variables, specifically the broad dispositional trait, core self-evaluations, on the pay satisfaction of historically disadvantaged individuals. In light of recent inquiries which document the important causal role of personality attributes in the emergence of fairness perceptions, this study examines the mediating role of justice perceptions on the relationship between core self-evaluations and pay satisfaction. Using a sample of historically disadvantaged individuals from South Africa, our results show that organizational justice perceptions fully mediate the relationship between core self-evaluations and pay satisfaction. Furthermore, this study finds that gender moderates the relationship between core self-evaluations and pay satisfaction such that self-confident historically disadvantaged females are more satisfied with their pay than their male counterparts.     

Intra‐Sectoral Differences in Climate Change Strategies: Evidence from the Global Automotive Industry

Companies are increasingly challenged for action on climate change. Most studies on business responses to climate change focus on cross‐sector comparisons and neglect intra‐sectoral dynamics. This paper investigates the influence of supply chain position and regional affiliation on climate change strategies within a particular industry. We present a generic framework integrating both market and non‐market responses to climate change. We argue that climate change strategies comprise several corporate activities that have different foci of interaction and four main objectives: governance, innovation, compensation and legitimation. Using a global sample of 116 automotive companies, we conduct a cluster analysis and identify four types of strategy. We find that the sophistication of automobile manufacturers' strategies significantly differs from that of suppliers. Regional affiliation and firm size prove to be determinants of the strategy type pursued. We cannot find evidence for a relationship between financial performance and a company's strategic approach to climate change. © 2017 The Authors. Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd