Just Air? The Spatial Politics of Urban Air Pollution.

Air pollution is the largest environmental health hazard in the Western world. Especially cities are often ‘hotspots’ of air pollution. However, we are not all equally exposed to bad air. Due to the increasing role of traffic as one of the most important causes of air pollution, mainly people living near major roads suffer from its detrimental health effects. This project develops two case studies in Antwerp and London, where this unequal distribution of air quality has become a topic of public interest and debate. Concretely, it investigates the controversies concerning the closure of the ring road in Antwerp and the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street in London. The project studies, first, the root causes of the current uneven distribution of air pollution in Antwerp and London by looking how and why major infrastructural decisions were made, and how this affects particular social groups more than others. Second, it investigates how scientists, medics, policy makers, civil society and other actors put this problem on the public agenda and how and why they succeed in turning it into an issue of political contention. Third, it examines whether and how making abstraction from spatial differences in exposure to air pollution depoliticises the problem, or alternatively, whether and how the framing of air pollution as an issue of spatial (in)justice stimulates citizens to raise their voices and engage in action and debate.