How Global City Labor Markets Are Undermining Low-Carbon Policymaking

Climate thinkers from across the political spectrum have long argued that cities are uniquely suited to tackling climate change. But now, scholars are pausing to consider what Harriet Bulkeley calls a gap between rhetoric and reality in cities’ low-carbon policy. I offer a new explanation for this gap by focusing on the way that polarizing labor markets in global cities subtly shape the urban politics of climate change so as to undermine potential alliances between middle and working class constituencies, alliances necessary for any government to push through far-reaching reforms. Based on 18 months of fieldwork, including over 100 interviews, in New York and São Paulo, and on secondary data on labor markets, wage levels, and consumption, I argue that well-meaning environmentalists have often ignored working class demands for collective consumption—including housing, and transit—while foregrounding those of middle- and upper-middle-class city residents. This despite the fact that working class political projects frequently make similar demands for liveable, compact cities—albeit it in a different language. I argue that evolving labor markets associated with Saskia Sassen’s global city thesis offer the best explanation for this divergence. And I close by suggesting that the rise of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sandy in New York, and the explosion of protests sparked by transit price hikes in São Paulo, demonstrate that it may be possible to build a rapprochement between working and middle class urban political projects on the basis of resisting the growing inequalities fostered by global city strategies.

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