Green for All? Social Justice, Power, and Populism in Urban Green Projects

Local projects of urban green addresses among other climate change, climate adaptation and question of social justice. Thereby, concepts such as sponge cities and further nature-based solutions have gained prominence in Germany. While participation process embedded in these initiatives promise to strengthen democratic practices and foster just urban development, the planning and implementation of these projects often local conflicts, exacerbated by the polarization of environmental politics and populist instrumentalization. Due to the potential of transformative impact of participatory green projects, it is essential to understand why these projects fail and how social justice is constructed in local discourses. Aiming at further understanding the black box of local participation the following central question arises: How do right-wing populist narratives and their understandings of social justice shape contestations over urban green projects? This question is researched among others in the research group "Green for Everyone? Equitable Urban Resilience Transitions". Theoretical Framework The paper draws on radical democratic theory, particularly Laclau and Mouffe's hegemony concept, where social order emerges discursively through contested "empty signifiers" like justice. Critical discourse analysis (Fairclough; Link/Reese) examines how meanings, values, identities, and power relations stabilize—or contest—within participatory arenas. This reveals participation as sites of inclusion, conflict management, and socio-ecological inequality reproduction. Research Design The study proceeds in two phases. First, a theoretical framework rooted in radical democracy identifies key potentials of conflicts, identities, and power in participatory discourses, with explicit attention to right-wing populist narrative impacts. Second, critical discourse analysis reconstructs signifiers like "justice" and "fairness," tracing their equivalential chains and hegemonic/counter-hegemonic articulations across actors and arenas. The research is structures in two phases: first, I develop a comprehensive theoretical framework grounded in radical democratic theory and supplemented by additional perspectives on transformative participation within socially just climate adaptation contexts. This phase identifies key potentials and the significance of conflicts, identities, and power constructions within participatory spaces focusing on discourses. Additionally, aspects of impacts of right populist narratives in local discourses are theoretically explored. Second, the paper conducts a critical discourse analysis: it identifies key signifiers such as “justice” and “faireness” reconstructs their meanings and chains of equivalence and analyses hegemonic and counter-hegemonic articulations across different actor constellations and arenas. Hereby, a focus will be on the impact of right-populist on the local discourse of social justice. Contribution: The study opens up the “black box” of participation by reconstructing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic notions of justice, moving beyond formal legitimation views to unpack justice constructions. It combines radical democracy theory, hegemony theory, and critical discourse analysis, thereby making a theoretically sound contribution to the debate on urban transformation, nature-based solutions and populist backlash. Local discussions on urban green projects provide insights into broader social conflicts and resistance to ecological transformation. Furthermore, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of why participation often fails, particularly when right-wing actors hijack justice narrative.