Julian Agyeman is a Professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University in Boston. He is the originator of the concept of “just sustainability,” the full integration of social justice and sustainability, defined as “the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.”
Agyeman is an environmental social scientist with degrees in botany, geography, conservation policy, and environmental education; his expertise and current research interests are in the complex and embedded relations between humans and the environment, whether mediated by institutions or social movement organizations, and the effects of these relationships on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity. He is co-founder and editor of the international journal Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability.
Agyeman has written over 160, including the books Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press 2003), Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice (NYU Press 2005), Environmental Inequalities Beyond Borders: Local Perspectives on Global Injustices (MIT Press 2011), Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability (MIT Press 2011), Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice (Zed Books 2013) and Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities (Routledge 2014). In Fall 2015, MIT Press published his book Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities.
In 1988, Agyeman founded Britain’s Black Environment Network (BEN) and is currently serving on the Advisory Board of EcoDistricts and several journal Editorial Boards.
Contributions to Humans & Nature:
- Fixity or Fluidity? Constructions of Nature Are in the Eye of the Beholder
A response to “How is nature critical to a 21st century urban ethic?”
