Keddie, Katie
(2025)
Sustainability transformations in the ‘Rebel City’: emotional geographies of place, justice and action in Nottingham, UK.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
Using a lens of emotional geographies, this thesis explores urban environmental transformations in Nottingham with a focus on place and justice. In the context of the city’s ambitious target of becoming the UK’s first carbon neutral city by 2028 (CN28) amidst significant challenges including a recent local authority bankruptcy, the thesis examines multifaceted environmental action from ‘above’ and ‘below’.
The interdisciplinary study reveals how emotions of love, fear, anger and hope intersect with environmental engagement and action in varied ways, with significant implications for sustainability and justice. By engaging activists, residents, local businesses, climate experts, local authorities, community groups, and third-sector organisations, it provides a holistic understanding of action occurring in the city during the fieldwork window (2022-24) and beyond, highlighting how such action is deeply tied to emotion.
Participant accounts demonstrate how love can promote solidarity, encourage action and build social capital yet also creates forms of othering and non-belonging. Fear surrounding Nottingham’s economic precarity, climate-related anxieties, and the increasing penalties associated with activism impact action and both drive and hinder engagement with climate issues. It explores how such fear can be leveraged in harmful ways, amplifying social divisions and hindering collective action. Reflections reveal how anger is directed toward local, national and global policy and practice, as well as the injustices present within much of the environmental sector. Finally, the thesis explores hope as a sustaining yet fragile force for grassroots action.
The thesis reveals how intersecting emotions produce complex outcomes for social and environmental sustainability, contributing to the ‘emotional turn’ in transformation research and challenges linear and technocratic understandings of change. While focusing on Nottingham, insights extend across several urban contexts, with many cities worldwide dealing with overlapping socio-economic and environmental challenges, while acting as key sites for transformative action. Contributing to debates within sustainability science and human geography, the thesis provides insights for grassroots action and policy, highlighting the need for emotionally attuned approaches in building just place-based environmental transformations.
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