When does low-carbon urban renewal deliver justice in China: an fsQCA study

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🔬研究者:Scholars studying environmental justice, urban governance, or low-carbon transitions should note the use of fsQCA to identify configurational pathways to justice in non-Western contexts.

🏛政策担当者:Policymakers in authoritarian or hybrid regimes can learn that culturally grounded inclusion and accountability are key to enhancing the social legitimacy of low-carbon urban renewal.

While research on low-carbon urban renewal often prioritizes techno-economic efficiency, the socio-political dimension of justice remains undertheorized, particularly in non-Western contexts. This study addresses this gap by investigating how diverse governance configurations shape distributive justice during China's urban transitions. By integrating climate justice theory with an institutional lens, we reconceptualize low-carbon renewal as a hybrid governance process in which justice is negotiated through the interplay of top-down bureaucratic pressure and bottom-up participatory inclusion. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to 16 urban renewal cases, this study identifies multiple pathways leading to both just and unjust outcomes. The findings reveal that distributive justice is not merely a product of liberal democratic procedures, but emerges from context-specific configurations of accountability, participation and recognition. By highlighting the way in which justice is produced within specific political–institutional conditions, this study advances climate justice theory beyond Western-centric norms and provides a nuanced framework for the institutional production of justice in transitional settings. <b>Key policy insights</b>Distributive justice in low-carbon urban renewal emerges through diverse pathways when both accountability and culturally grounded inclusion exist.Authoritarian environmentalism produces different justice outcomes shaped by how accountability, participation and performance incentives interact.The erosion of either participatory inclusion or political accountability tends to generate distributive injustice and heighten social and spatial exclusion.Cultural recognition strengthens local responsiveness within hierarchical systems, improving the social legitimacy of low-carbon transitions in nondemocratic contexts. Distributive justice in low-carbon urban renewal emerges through diverse pathways when both accountability and culturally grounded inclusion exist. Authoritarian environmentalism produces different justice outcomes shaped by how accountability, participation and performance incentives interact. The erosion of either participatory inclusion or political accountability tends to generate distributive injustice and heighten social and spatial exclusion. Cultural recognition strengthens local responsiveness within hierarchical systems, improving the social legitimacy of low-carbon transitions in nondemocratic contexts.

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