(In)Justice in Urban Greening and Green Gentrification

Abstract

Large cities are increasingly using urban greening, nature-centered projects, and green infrastructure to address socio-environmental and health challenges and harness widespread benefits for citizens, industries, and investors, while protecting existing urban ecosystems, resources, environmentally-sensitive areas, and built infrastructure. This chapter starts with the argument that the alliance of urban redevelopment with greening creates a paradox and examines the production of inequalities as a result of greening projects. I argue that even while greening certainly provides economic, ecological, health, and social benefits to many, it may create new and deeper vulnerabilities and processes of green gentrification for historically marginalized residents – working-class groups, minorities, and immigrants – even in the many cases where interventions are meant to redress historic inequalities in the provision of parks or green spaces. Urban greening inequalities are thus particularly acute because of what can be defined as “green gaps” upon which municipalities, private investors, and privileged residents capture a “green rent” through new commercial and residential investments. As a result, as I show in this chapter, urban greening interventions targeting lower-income, minority, and immigrant neighborhoods risk being increasingly associated with a GreenLULU or green Locally Unwanted Land Use (Anguelovski, J Plan Lit, 1–14, 2016). Last, I examine civic responses to green inequalities and close this chapter with a broader discussion around the need to repoliticize urban greening practices.