Research

Research Interests: Low-carbon urbanism, green gentrification, urban metabolism, suburbanization of poverty

Abstract: As the threat of catastrophic climate change becomes ever more pressing, a growing number of cities are adopting plans to move towards carbon neutrality. But while these plans have increased in number, they rarely achieve their stated goals. Critics of existing low-carbon politics argue that this is because municipal governments repeat the same neoliberal paradigm of climate governance, reliant on market mechanisms, that has found little success on national or international scales. This thesis presents Graz, Austria, as an emerging example of an alternative model of low-carbon governance, one based on bringing the material benefits of the low-carbon city to the working class. Deploying both class politics and ecological Marxist frameworks, this thesis argues that the infrastructures of the low-carbon city are an effective grounds for collaboration across class in practice as well as in theory, and that urban decarbonization reaches its greatest potential when the representatives of the working class are in a position to set the political agenda. These observations from Graz lead to a suggestion to reframe the narrative around climate collaboration. As both strong social policy and an anti-market stance are required to move beyond neoliberal models of climate governance, this thesis argues the challenge of low-carbon politics will be to bring the professional class to support a more radical social and economic political platform rather than to convince working-class people about the threat of climate change.