Landscapes of risk and resilience: Comparing the socio-spatial production of environmental crisis in Argentina and the United States

How does the process of urbanization generate risk and potential crisis —both environmental and socio-economic—for cities and their residents?  How are these risks distributed within urban populations? And how does this distribution reflect preexisting socio-spatial inequalities, as well as post-crisis redevelopment policies? These questions motivate this joint presentation by urban sociologists at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of California Santa Cruz.  Greenberg, Herzer, and Merlinsky analyze these crises in the context of historic phases of urban capital accumulation and governance, emphasizing the post-1970s neoliberal phase, with its reliance on deregulation, privatization, and austerity as a means of driving global competitiveness.  At the same time, they critique rigid notions of neoliberalism that lack attention to political agency, environmental processes, and urban spaces outside the global north.  Through a comparative analysis of cities in Argentina and the U.S., and using the theoretical tools of political ecology and critical urban studies, they reveal neoliberal urbanization to be globally variegated and ecologically imbricated. 

The presentation interweaves three case studies. Merlinsky explores the historical construction of risk and degradation of the Cuenca-Matanza river due to land deregulation, industrial contamination, and the lack of sanitation infrastructure for people living on the river’s banks. Herzer examines how recurring floods in Buenos Aires reflect public policies that generate increased vulnerability as well as exposure to risk.  And Greenberg explores how redevelopment policies following cyclical crises in New York and New Orleans have exacerbated socio-environmental inequality and generated a new scale of risk. Alongside differences and path depencies, the presenters find that, across their cases, uneven redevelopment shifts the burden of environmental risk onto the poorest citizens while producing conditions for future crises. Meanwhile, they also find innovative, urban-based environmental justice struggles shaped by and responding to these different contexts of crisis.