The New Climate Urbanism: Old Capitalism with Climate Characteristics

Shi, Linda

This chapter argues that emerging urban responses to climate change are not necessarily new or urban, but instead recapitulate capitalist processes reproducing spatial, social, and ecological inequality. Drawing on examples from US and Asian metropolises, this chapter shows that climate resilience is becoming a new arena where cities compete for economic development and extract resources from rural or other less powerful jurisdictions in aid of their own security under climate change. Climate urbanism’s competitive and extractive dynamics indicate not a transformative movement towards just and sustainable development, but a Freudian death-drive capitalism with climate characteristics. The chapter concludes with reflections on issues of scale and sources of inspiration that can reshape the growing industry behind global climate urbanism.