Green Experiments and Informed Consent in Black and Indigenous Communities

Keywords: ecological urbanism, planning, green, governance, urban, Black, Indigenous
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 22

Abstract

The city of Detroit—synonymous with its auto industry—has become a site of ecological modernization experiments. In 2010, a billionaire developer and private foundations hired international consultants to (ecologically, financially) “green” Detroit. These experts had ties to design programs at elite universities that advocated walkable neighborhoods, carbon capturing landscapes, urban farms, renewable energy, and green industries—innovations that were touted as means to revive the economies of old industrial cities and reduce their environmental harm. Planners did not disclose the risks (e.g., gentrification) of market-driven greening and excluded low-income Black Detroiters from decision-making. Beyond the lack of local democratic planning, the global north ignores protests in the global south by rural communities that are impacted by green policies. For example, Detroit's production of electric cars--spurred by federal policies--increases lithium mining on Indigenous land in Latin America. Indigenous displacement for “white gold” (lithium) updates land grabs for precious metals at the dawn of settler colonialism. What (and whose) criteria should be used to evaluate urban greening? As Black and Indigenous communities in distant socio-spatial locations become unwilling (and sometimes unwitting) subjects of green experiments, what should "informed consent" be made to mean?