Belonging and misbelonging to the climate-resilient city in racialized, settler colonial America

Abstract

This paper rethinks the concept of belonging in the context of green climate resilience planning and waterfront redevelopment in the settler colonial city. While critical adaptation scholars highlight the exclusion and dispossession of racialized residents via climate urbanism, our analysis of the impacts of climate resilience infrastructure and planning for sense of belonging reveals a complex and multi-faceted experience of gentrification and displacement. This article focuses on East Boston which has historically been a point of entry and settlement for lower-income migrants and minoritized groups. Drawing on insights from civic actors, we develop a novel understanding of belonging, which entails shades of (mis-)belonging rather than an either/or situation. Such a nuanced reading, focused on the performative-affective dimensions of belonging, sheds light on the ways in which climate coloniality is perpetuated, but also how less visible placemaking practices and alternative forms of addressing socio-climate vulnerability may contribute to a decolonized climate justice. It further reveals the kinds of political subjects and socio-cultural relations that emerge from the lived experience of climate adaptation projects, and may facilitate new imaginative, equitable and healing interventions in the context of addressing multiple risks (not just climate risks).