Climate justice in urban public space adaptation: Developing and testing a collective assessment tool in Hunters Point, New York City

Public spaces play a crucial role in climate action as the main setting of many urban adaptation interventions, while also critical for public life and social resilience. Public space is often contested since it can help develop justice-based urban climate adaptation, but can also drive different forms of injustice and maladaptation. Examining public space adaptation processes through the lens of climate justice is essential to identifying, learning from, and preventing maladaptation outcomes. However, there are currently no frameworks to facilitate the understanding of the relationship between climate justice and the design of public spaces or evaluation tools to assess its outcomes. To fill this gap, we developed and pilot-tested a new evaluation tool for the collective assessment of climate justice in already implemented public space design projects through a case study in Hunters Point South Park, New York City. While examining the particularities of this case, we also critically explore the potential and applicability of this assessment tool in other contexts and for broader justice assessments of urban adaptation interventions. • Monitoring adaptation project performance is still unusual but can bridge expected outcomes and actual effectiveness. • Our tool revealed differing stakeholder perceptions of climate justice at Hunters Point South Park. • Understanding how public space adaptation interacts with real estate and markets is central to achieving climate justice. • Multi-perspective collective assessments deepen understanding of climate justice and help guide community decision-making.