Selective responsibility: Environmental, social and governance frameworks and the containment of environmental and social harm in urban real estate

As environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks become increasingly institutionalised within real-estate investment, questions of corporate responsibility for urban social and environmental challenges become more evident. Drawing on the case of Zurich and applying Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility, this paper examines how ESG shapes the ways in which real-estate investors identify, articulate and act upon their responsibilities towards urban environments and communities. I argue that rather than constituting a meaningful framework for addressing structural housing inequality and environmental harm, ESG operates primarily as a risk-management tool that translatesc heterogeneous societal concerns into discrete, auditable categories. Environmental metrics dominate due to their compatibility with existing valuation practices, while social dimensions stagnate and governance is reduced to documentation. The result is a form of selective, depoliticised responsibility that acknowledges corporate implication in urban processes while simultaneously containing and neutralising its scope. Nevertheless, ESG’s ambiguity creates organisational openings through which individual actors can advance more ambitious environmental and social agendas. The paper concludes that ESG enables incremental progress while leaving the structural drivers of housing inequality and environmental harm fundamentally unchallenged.