Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: Transatlantic Reflections on Carbon Neutrality, Circularity, and Justice

Abstract

Unjust practices have shaped the built environment, involving land dispossession, exclusionary planning and development, exploitative labor practices, and environmentally harmful material building cycles. These practices have (re)produced material and spatial inequities. Embodying Justice in the Built Environment is a framework to answer the question: How can planners, government agencies, and communities meaningfully centre justice and equity in working towards carbon neutrality and reducing embodied carbon? Developed through collaborative and case study methods, this research produced a series of guides and workbooks to support local governments and community organizations in addressing 1) Circularity and Waste and 2) Just and Equitable Land Use Transitions. Though rooted in North American cases, the framework offers insights for educators, policy-makers, and planners in other contexts.