Green Gentrification

Urban sustainability and the struggle for environmental justice

Kenneth Gould, Tammy Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317417798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Desarrollo sostenible

Green Gentrification looks at the social consequences of urban "greening" from an environmental justice and sustainable development perspective. Through a comparative examination of five cases of urban greening in Brooklyn, New York, it demonstrates that such initiatives, while positive for the environment, tend to increase inequality and thus undermine the social pillar of sustainable development. Although greening is ostensibly intended to improve environmental conditions in neighborhoods, it generates green gentrification that pushes out the working-class, and people of color, and attracts white, wealthier in-migrants. Simply put, urban greening "richens and whitens, " remaking the city for the sustainability class. Without equity-oriented public policy intervention, urban greening is negatively redistributive in global cities.

This book argues that environmental injustice outcomes are not inevitable. Early public policy interventions aimed at neighborhood stabilization can create more just sustainability outcomes. It highlights the negative social consequences of green growth coalition efforts to green the global city, and suggests policy choices to address them.

The book applies the lessons learned from green gentrification in Brooklyn to urban greening initiatives globally. It offers comparison with other greening global cities. This is a timely and original book for all those studying environmental justice, urban planning, environmental sociology, and sustainable development as well as urban environmental activists, city planners and policy makers interested in issues of urban greening and gentrification.

1	Urban greening and social sustainability in a global context

Urban greening is a global phenomenon

Cities and mayors are leading the way in responding to the global ecological crisis, especially in addressing threats stemming from climate change, by “going green.” Resilience planning and adaptation plans are well underway in major urban areas. Environmental discourse has become a normal part of urban politics worldwide (Evans 2002; Isenhour et al. 2015; Sze 2015). This has the potential to have a tremendous impact given that in 2014, 54 percent of the world’s population lived in cities and the United Nations (2014) projects that to grow to 66 percent by 2050. Greening includes, literally, increasing the amount of public green spaces, such as parks (Harnik 2010). Green initiatives also promote increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, developing public transportation, providing healthy, locally sourced food, and improving recycling programs, among other initiatives (Birch and Wachter 2008; Fitzgerald 2010).

A quick Internet search of green cities yields hundreds of green projects from around the world. Ecowatch’s “Top Greenest Cities in the World” (Pantsios 2014) are praised for high rates of bicycling (Amsterdam), cleaning up industrial pollution (Singapore) and for setting a goal to become carbon neutral (Copenhagen). Tourists looking to visit green cities might look to Vancouver for its city parks and “clean-technology innovation like solar-powered garbage compactors” or to San Francisco, the first major U.S. city to ban the use of plastic bags (Green Uptown 2015). The Latin American Green City Index ranks the Brazilian city of Curitiba as the greenest city in the continent in part due to its history since the 1960s of integrated greening initiatives and the incorporation of environmentalism into public consciousness (Abruzzese 2010). Portland, Oregon is often ranked the greenest city in the U.S. (Karlenzig et al. 2007).

New York City is one of the leaders in creating adaptation and resiliency plans and establishing urban greening policies (Karlenzig et al. 2007; Birch and Wachter 2008). Under the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (2002–2013), New York City created the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and PlaNYC 2030, the city’s “sustainability and resiliency blueprint.” Bloomberg’s leadership resulted in a number of highprofile greening projects. For example, he helped bring to fruition two highly successful park projects: the High Line Park in Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn. Both parks, which were transformed from dilapidated industrial infrastructure sites, are funded through public-private partnerships, with city, state and developer funding. They are public green spaces that integrate sustainable practices. The High Line, which was transformed from an abandoned rail trestle, took an unwanted land use and turned it into an environmental amenity for the neighborhood (and visitors from far and wide). Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP) was transformed from a 1.3-mile stretch of abandoned industrial piers into a public urban waterfront amenity. Like the High Line, environmental sustainability is one of its main features. The park was constructed with recycled building materials, and its design incorporates sustainable environmental processes, including the collection of rainwater in large tanks for reuse, helping address a problem the city has with overflowing storm water. Funds from high-end residential and commercial spaces along BBP are used for the park’s maintenance, thus promoting economic sustainability.

These projects are successful in literal greening, and in that they have some degree of fiscal security. They also laid the groundwork for nearby areas to gentrify, and in the case of BBP, created hyper-gentrification of an already wealthy neighborhood. We call this process – greening initiatives followed by gentrification – green gentrification to represent how green initiatives cause and/or enhance gentrification. Gentrification is a social equity problem because it pushes out low-income residents in favor of high-income in-migrants (Marcuse 1986). While greening initiatives such as New York’s improve the environmental quality of neighborhoods and turn economically “wasted” spaces into productive spaces, they do not do so equitably. They contribute to environmental sustainability, and economic sustainability, but not social sustainability. The greening of neighborhoods prepares them for gentrification, which allows elites (politicians and real estate developers) to benefit (Bryson 2012). We call these elites the green growth coalition because they work together to advocate for greening. We elaborate on this in the next chapter.

Social equity matters

We assess urban greening initiatives in terms of whether they promote sustainability in a broad sense. The idea of sustainability grew out of the concept of “sustainable development,” which was popularized in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit. Up to that time, advocates for the “development” of poor nations promoted economic development that often came at the cost of environmental protection. For instance, agents of development promoted industrialization as a means of increasing a poor nation’s income even if it increased pollution. The pollution was considered a cost of economic development. However, in 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development (known as the Brundtland Commission) promoted the concept of “sustainable development” in their report Our Common Future. The simple idea behind it was that both economic development problems and environmental pollution problems could be solved by generating economic growth that did not spoil the environment: sustainable development. The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” At the time, this was a significant shift in thinking: poor countries could be lifted out of poverty without degrading their environment, thus sustaining opportunities for future generations. The report explicitly refers to inequality reduction as central to sustainability. Since that time, “sustainability” and “sustainable development” have been defined as having three pillars: environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity. The inclusion of the “social” pillar acknowledges the importance of power, decision-making, and distribution in development (Hess 2009; Pavel 2009; Manzi et al. 2010). Social equity has been interpreted in a number of ways, including its comprising at least two parts. One part of social equity focuses on process: who has a say about development? Who makes decisions? Who gets to participate? The second part is focused on outcome: the equitable distribution of environmental goods and bads. In other words, who bears the costs of development and who gets the benefits? Over time, the concept of sustainable development has been contested. For instance, what should be sustained? What should be developed? Is development the same as growth? Whose needs should be promoted? Which pillar should be prioritized? (Humphrey, Lewis and Buttel 2002: 223).

Governments around the world, from the national level down to local levels, incorporated sustainable development into their planning. For instance, in 1992 President Bill Clinton established the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. The following is one of the fifteen principles the council established: “Economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity should be interdependent, mutually reinforcing national goals, and policies to achieve these goals should be integrated” (cited in Daly 1996: 13). Historically, in New York City’s plans, sustainability has been defined largely by environmental and economic criteria. The social equity piece has not been well integrated. However, social equity – in terms of process and outcomes – is a key element of urban sustainability (Evans 2002; Manzi et al. 2010; Pavel 2009; Isenhour et al. 2015).

In terms of process, for a development trajectory to be sustained it must have buy-in from the community experiencing development. Development that is imposed upon neighborhoods by outside interests will be resisted or rejected by residents. Those residents then have an interest in derailing, rather than sustaining, a development trajectory. If the goal of urban sustainability is to improve the quality of life for residents, while providing rewarding livelihoods, and maintaining a healthy and clean environment, residents must participate in, agree to, and benefit from development plans. There must be process equity (Agyeman 2005). Communities must be key agents in establishing the livability of their urban spaces (Evans 2002; Harvey 2008). In terms of outcomes, when environmental goods and bads are inequitably distributed, separate environmentally rich and environmentally poor communities are created. When more powerful residents live in areas with greater amenities and vice versa, there is a severed feedback loop between the natural system and the social system. Specifically, when powerful decision makers live near beautiful parks with nature views, they are less concerned about environmental bads. Pollutions, toxics, and waste sites are out of sight and out of mind. This reduces environmental consciousness and incentives to improve the environment overall. Those living in environmentally poor areas suffer from ecological degradation, declining health, reduced livelihood capacities, and overall this reduces their capacity to make changes to the development trajectory. Thus, on both ends of the spectrum, but for different reasons, when social equity is not an outcome of development plans, environmental sustainability is diminished (Gould 2006).

There is no doubt that urban greening and sustainability initiatives are necessary to address environmental issues, especially climate change. However, without policies that are attentive to the social justice aspects of sustainability, greening leads to greater inequality, and adds credence to claims of environmentalism and environmentalists being elitist. But this does not need to be the case. For example, in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, elected in 2013, promotes a higher percentage of “affordable” housing in new developments, which would lessen the widening income gap in gentrifying neighborhoods. Affordable housing in New York City used to mean public housing and rent control. In the neoliberal city, it now means that private developers negotiate with the city over what percentage of new multifamily developments will be set aside at below-market, “affordable,” rates. These rates are based on the median income in the area where construction takes place. Affordable housing policies are one mechanism to address equity. De Blasio’s “One NYC: The Plan for a Strong and Just City” explicitly adds equity as a component to earlier sustainability and resiliency plans. This sort of planning that places justice and equity at the center is closer to what some academics call “just sustainability,” discussed below. Recall, however, that equity is one of the three pillars of “sustainable development,” thus in some way adding justice to such plan names is redundant. De Blasio’s plan won’t stop the green growth coalition and the process of green gentrification in a city dominated by real-estate interests, but it might diminish the most severe inequities.

Finally, in New York City there is sometimes an irony to green gentrifi...