Sustainability Myth

Melissa Checker is the Hagedorn Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town and co-editor of Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice.

"Using the saga of the doomed New York Wheel as a dramatic example of short-sighted, ill-conceived urban development or 'sustainaphrenia,' Melissa Checker's ethnography cruelly exposes the failings of neoliberal technocracy. From redlining to rezoning, from environmental justice to environmental gentrification, she brilliantly exposes the ruptured logics of pairing sustainability with urban redevelopment." - Julian Agyeman, co-author of Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities "In this revelatory study, based on assiduous fieldwork, Melissa Checker exposes the false promises of "sustainability." She coins the word 'sustainaphrenia' to convey the feeding frenzy of politicians, real estate moguls, developers, planners, and upscale homebuyers who are lulled by the siren of Bloomberg's 'luxury city,' facilitated by the rezoning of vast swaths of New York City. The result is the greening of some neighborhoods and the browning of others. Checker also comes to the epiphany that the environmental justice activists whom she admired are another symptom of sustainaphrenia, as the twin threats of overdevelopment and climate change are cast asunder." - Stephen Steinberg, author of Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy "A timely work on the burgeoning literature surrounding environmental gentrification as it relates to New York City's intent to become the world's most sustainable metro area … Libraries with reserves focusing on environmental gentrification, urban issues, and political change should have this volume in their collection." (CHOICE)