Justice, energy and infrastructure in the ‘greenest city in America’

Urban infrastructure, often lauded for its transformative potential, is a frequent component of government solutions to sustainability challenges. While urban infrastructure scholarship has long examined government strategies to advance radical change, research on inequity has largely been confined to distributive, procedural and recognition justice. In this empirical case-study analysis, I draw insights from critical urbanism and trace nearly two decades of energy infrastructure interventions in Chicago, IL. I propose a multidimensional conception of justice that goes beyond the three-tenet framework to examine the innovation-supporting strategies and justice-related outcomes that followed a catastrophic heatwave in 1995, which left 700 dead and prompted then-mayor Richard M. Daley’s promise to transform Chicago into the ‘greenest city in America’. Evidencing the reproductive power within infrastructure transformations, the Chicago case demonstrates how failure to explicitly and comprehensively address socio-environmental injustices risks reproducing, or worse strengthening, inequities.