Abstract

Urban greening and sustainability have become well-established goals for improving the urban environment and combating the climate crisis. The greening of cities (e.g., creating new parks, converting obsolete or unused infrastructure to green spaces or productive environmental uses, transforming vacant and derelict land to community gardens, open space, etc.) is seen as an environmental benefit by cleaning up potentially contaminated lands and bringing them back into public use or for the overall public good. However, evidence from recent studies has shown that greening efforts may have unintended consequences resulting in the surrounding communities being actively harmed by or at least not benefiting from these initiatives. Using a framework of Geographic Information Science and spatial analysis, three case study examples are examined here—the social and economic impact of community gardens in Brooklyn; the creation of new city parks in Barcelona; and the repurposing of a disused rail line in New York City into an elevated park corridor. The analyses show that all three examples exhibit, to varying degrees, a propensity for spurring “green gentrification.” Green gentrification refers to the process whereby existing residents of newly greened areas frequently suffer from displacement or exclusion from their communities, as well as adverse financial and cultural impacts, in favor of attracting wealthier residents to the newly greened areas. In this way, greening can disproportionately impact the most vulnerable urban communities, usually the least affluent and those with the highest proportion of ethnic or racial minority or immigrant populations. Measures can be taken by cities that may prevent or at least slow the green gentrification process, in order to mitigate its deleterious impacts on existing residents and improve equitable distribution of environmental benefits. Greening efforts and urban sustainability initiatives need to incorporate social equity goals as a major component of any project, using incentives, regulations, and policies crafted towards those ends, and “nature” must be integrated more seriously and thoroughly into all urban planning throughout the city.