Just Environments

San Antonio has a history of grassroots organizing reaching back to mid-19th-century mutual-aid societies. That organizing tradition continues in force as contemporary organizations respond to 21st-century challenges confronting the nation's seventh largest city, from climate change to the struggle for cultural equity. Just Environments brings this activism to the fore, giving space to those whose stories these are to tell about the dynamic ways that San Antonians are fighting to build a more resilient, just, and habitable community.

Just Environments argues that confronting climate change, inequality, and urban injustice requires grounding solutions in community history, culture, and knowledge. With an approach squarely centered on place, the authors—activists, educators, poets, journalists, organizers, and academics from a wide variety of backgrounds—advocate for the importance of understanding historical context, appreciating the powerful role of nature in shaping the city, and the urgency of building community to protect human value in response to economic forces and legacies of racial exclusion. While exploring how people have been trying to build a more resilient San Antonio, the contributors' efforts speak to the larger challenges U.S. cities are also facing—how to mitigate climate disruptions, social inequalities, and political and spatial inequities to achieve a more perfect union. Their work reminds us that we have the capacity to transform the world around us, one city block, one neighborhood, one community at a time.