Spatial disparities in environmental quality and practices are contributing to rising health inequalities worldwide. To date, the field of health promotion has not contributed as significantly as it might to a systematic analysis of the physical environment as a determinant of health nor to a critique of inequitable environmental governance practices responsible for social injustice—particularly in the Canadian context. In this paper, we explore ways in which health promotion and environmental justice perspectives can be combined into an integrated movement for environmental health justice in health promotion. Drawing on Canadian experiences, we describe the historical contributions and limitations of each perspective in research, policy and particularly professional practice. We then demonstrate how recent environmental justice research in Canada is moving toward a deeper and multi-level analysis of environmental health inequalities, a development that we believe can inform a comprehensive research, policy and advocacy agenda in health promotion toward environmental health justice as a fundamental determinant of health. Lastly, we propose four key considerations for health promotion professionals to consider in advancing this movement.

In this article we seek to encourage geographers to consider the discursive dimensions of urbanization as a locus for activist inquiry into the right to the city. Drawing from literatures on urban branding and critical toponymy, we implicate the entrepreneurial phenomenon of neighbourhood branding as a primary enabler of urban gentrification and dispossession. Placing the discursive elision of local history, identity, and aspirations into dialectical relation to material infringements upon inhabitants’ collective rights, we suggest how both branding and activist counter-branding tactics may be fruitful sites for future empirical research on the right to the city.