preference for the status quo (or only slight variations of it). This typically translates into unsustainable planning practices and urban forms.


Unpacking planning practices The tools and processes used by planners to design, demarcate and develop cities have significant potential to help move cities on to more just and environmentally sustainable pathways. However, at present, the political- economy of most cities tends to position planning as a barrier to transformation, with the planners’ toolkit largely promoting business-as-usual urban visions. Three areas of practice are particularly worth unpacking as critical for unlocking the potential of cities and catalysing transformative change: the management and expansion of urban land; broadening the scope of infrastructure decisions; and addressing economic development as part of planning practices.


Urban land management Land use regulation and management are critical tools in delivering on transformational objectives, such as the net zero circular, resilient, inclusive and just city dimensions described in chapter 4. In particular, there is an important potential in redefining the use of urban public land for achieving social equity and environmental sustainability goals (see chapter 5). Similarly, the spatial planning tool of land-use zoning, used by cities to manage the distribution of land and resources, has great potential to help protect natural ecosystems and improve the quality of life of urban residents. Yet, in many contexts, zoning regulations are embedded in complex histories that may include colonial, racial, ethnic or communally segregated pasts (Zenoua and Boccard 2000; Porter 2010; Agyeman 2020) and, as a result, they tend to deepen patterns of social, spatial and environmental injustices. In the United States, for instance, ongoing systemic underinvestment in some racially segregated neighbourhoods is directly related to the “redlining” practices of the 1930s that excluded certain communities in certain locations from inward investment and financial markets (Rothstein 2017). Over time, this process led to neighbourhood decline and, in some cases, abandonment. To this day, residents of formerly redlined neighbourhoods suffer from higher heat exposure, leading to the long-term health and social effects of this racialized zoning practice (Wilson 2020). In other locations, the absence of official zoning is used by city governments to create “grey spaces” (or zones of questionable legality) to the advantage of dominant social or higher-income groups, often at the expense of poorer or socially marginalized urban dwellers (Yiftachel 2009).


The darker side of zoning can also be visible in the planning and management of peri-urban areas of growing cities. Here, struggling to balance urban development pressures with environmental protection goals, planners often use zoning mechanisms to regulate rapid, often informal, growth patterns. Frequently taking the form of “green zones” or “eco- corridors” (as for example, in Lima, Peru), these exclusionary zoning instruments, typically designed to confine informal settlements to specific peri-urban areas, can be used to


30 GEO for Cities


restrict access to urban services and reinforce the sense of impermanence and transience for these informal settlements (Allen 2014). Despite their branding as environmental protection mechanisms “in the public interest”, many such instances of land-use regulation leave the peri-urban poor vulnerable to displacement and restrict their ability to act as active agents of environmentally sustainable and just approaches to city-building.


Infrastructure choices Deciding which services and resources will be accessed by whom is critical to put cities on just and transformative pathways (see chapters 4 and 5). Infrastructure planning is influenced by many pressures and inputs, some of which are contradictory. Affordability, environmental sustainability, accessibility, distribution, risk and resilience must all be factored into decisions. In practice, however, the balance of these often ends up reproducing top-down, technocratic solutions, or solutions that only reflect the aspirations and worldviews of dominant urban actors. The result is continuing asymmetrical or fragmented urbanism (Graham and Marvin 2001). In extreme cases, this is reflected in enclaves with easy access to infrastructure and services rubbing shoulders with areas of extreme deprivation. This broad statement holds true for basic infrastructure such as water, waste and sanitation (Allen 2014; Björkman 2015), as it does for mass-transit networks (see section 2.2 for a discussion of differences within cities).


Admittedly, designing an infrastructure investment programme that addresses equity at the same time as taking into account environmental sustainability considerations is not easy. Research on the equity and inclusion indicators for bus rapid transit systems in cities, such as Bogotá, Lima, Mexico City, Ahmedabad, Johannesburg and Istanbul, has found that these sustainable mobility alternatives have a significant impact on environmental and economic (affordability) indicators but often struggle to improve access in the poorest neighbourhoods (Venter et al. 2018). This may be because the initial implementation phases of overall networks have limited spatial coverage (often focused on high-traffic corridors) or because of higher costs associated with travel distances that may exclude poor commuters in peri-urban areas (Venter et al. 2018).


That said, climate-related grey infrastructure can act as a barrier to just transformations. As highlighted by the example of Mandlakazi, Mozambique (chapter 1), in many cities of the Global South, poor communities often live in areas prone to flooding and other hazards (Mitlin and Satterthwaite 2013), such as along canals and rivers or on marshlands and coasts. In the context of increasing climate variability and the frequency of extreme weather events, these communities are at increasing risk of disasters. However, cities’ infrastructural responses can further increase the risk to these communities. In cities like Manila, in the Philippines, for instance, disaster risk mitigation measures have been used as slum-clearing measures in some instances (Alvarez and Cardenas 2019). Generally, increased political attention on climate change resilience,


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