Ringvorlesung Spatial and environmental justice

Lecture Series

Spatial and environmental justice

Summer term 2025
Tuesdays, 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Our societies are confronted with an escalation of socio-ecological crises. This makes solutions for spatial and environmental justice more urgent than ever. The Institute for European Urban Studies (Weimar) is therefore inviting renowned experts as well as committed young academics from various countries and disciplines to an English-language lecture series in the summer term 2025 to discuss these pressing issues with them:

How are geographical spaces interconnected by globally unequal material flows? What shape are transformation conflicts currently taking in urban and rural areas? Which forces are defending a fossil and imperial mode of living – which are pushing for change? What political orientation does the spatial justice approach offer? How can it be translated into planning, urban design and architecture?

The lectures will be broadcast digitally – only the last event will take place in person in Weimar.

22 April (digital)
Spatial justice – between theoretical debate and practical orientation
Stephen Przybylinski
Assistant Professor
Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences
Michigan State University (USA)
Spatial justice is a ubiquitous concept within geography, urban studies/planning, and many more disciplines. Where does the concept come from, how has it been used, and what are its limitations? This talk begins to address these questions by overviewing the origins of the concept and by pointing to examples of how it has been applied to social and spatial research.

6 May (digital)
The political geographies of the far right: Between ecofascism and climate obstructionism
Lise Benoist
Doctoral researcher
Department of Human Geography
Uppsala University (Sweden)

… and Sonja Pietiläinen
Doctoral researcher
Geography Research Unit
University Of Oulu (Finland)
In their joint presentation, the speakers will discuss far-right responses to the climate and environmental crises from a political geography perspective, grounded in their respective empirical research. These are usually articulated around two main poles: ecofascism on the one hand, and climate denialism on the other. Lise Benoist will talk about the former, with examples from the French far right and how its actors mobilize strategies of green nationalism, eco-bordering and localism. Sonja Pietiläinen will present on the latter, showing how climate obstruction is inseparable from racism and coloniality, drawing on examples from Finland.

20 May (digital)
Turning up the heat – urban political ecology for a climate emergency
Maria Kaika
professor in Urban, Regional and Environmental Planning
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
In this talk Maria Kaika argues that Urban Political Ecology’s (UPE) ontologies, epistemologies, and methods are not simply an academic exercise; they are scientific developments that make academic research more relevant to the politics of climate change. Urban political ecology unsettles ‘traditional’ understandings of ‘cities’ as ontological entities separate from ‘nature’, and develops methods to examine how urbanization is inseparably and metabolically interlinked with flows of capital, labour, and resources, and with the metabolism of the entire biophysical world.  In the talk, The speaker proposes four ways forward, to replace the currently dominant catastrophism over climate, with new forms of prefigurative politics and socio-political action for ‘impossible’ solutions. 

4 June (digital)
(Beyond) immunitary governance: Uneven socio-ecological urbanization in the planetary city
Erik Swyngedouw
Professor of Human Geography
School of Environment, Education and Development
University of Manchester (United Kingdom)
The speaker will mobilize ‘the Anthropocene’ — or better the Urbicene — as the popularized term to denote a new geological era during which humans have arguably acquired profound planetary geo-physical agency. Planetary urbanization is the geographical imprint of this Anthropocenic forcing. Under these conditions, a global urban intellectual and professional planning technocracy has spurred a frantic search for a ‘smart’ socio-ecological urbanity and seeks out the socio-ecological qualities of sustainable eco-development, retrofitting, eco-sensitive architecture, adaptive and resilient urban governance, the commodification of environmental ‘services’, and innovative – but fundamentally market-conforming – eco-design. These techno-managerial dispositifs that search for eco-prophylactic remedies for the predicament we are in have entered the standard vocabulary of both governmental and private actors, and have now been consensually established as the frontier of architectural, planning, and urban design theory and practice, presumably capable of saving both city and planet. The speaker will examine critically these planning tools and discourses, and suggest different possible ways forward.

17 June (digital)
Eco-scepticism of the countryside? Just transitions for rural Europe
Mathilde Gingembre
postdoctoral researcher
School of Global Development
University of East Anglia (United Kingdom)
From the yellow vests movement in France in 2018 to the farmers' protests in 2019 and 2024, peripheral populations across Europe are increasingly voicing discontent over society’s misrecognition of their socio-economic struggles and of the unequal burdens of climate action. In an era where feelings of being “left behind” are instrumentalised by exclusionary, anti-green political parties, a nuanced understanding of rural subjectivities and material experiences of green transitions is essential. The session aims to equip participants with theoretical tools and empirical insights to grasp the plurality of injustice claims that are voiced in reaction to current and anticipated impacts of environmental policies on rural landscapes and land-based livelihoods. It underscores the importance of recognizing this complexity to foster pathways toward more plural, just, and sustainable futures.

1 July (in presence: Marienstraße 13C, lecture hall D broadcasted hybrid)
The walkable city – mobility and urban design for environmental justice
Lawrence D. Frank
professor – Urban Studies and Planning
School of Social Sciences Public Engagement Building (PEB)
University of California San Diego (USA)
A growing body of evidence documents ways in which community design impacts public health. This presentation will provide an overview of this evidence to date more specifically summarizing health impacts of transportation and land use actions. Levels of walkability and transit supportiveness and other investments in active transportation infrastructure including the construction of greenways offer the potential to shift relative utility from driving to active modes and increase physical activity and reduce sedentary car dependent behavior while further reducing GHG emissions. These are behavioral changes in response to physical environment or community design solutions that can result reduced prevalence of chronic disease.

Moreover, walkability is systematically associated with environmental justice: Wealthy people can live in places with increased access to opportunities while also breathing clean air, have less noise, more shade, and where it is safe to walk. The less advantaged can typically only afford to live in walkable places with increased exposure to air pollution, noise, extreme heat, and risk of injury.

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