Scholars in urban political ecology, urban geography, and planning have suggested that urban greening interventions can create elite enclaves of environmental privilege and green gentrification, and ...exclude lower-income and minority residents from their benefits. Yet, much remains to be understood in regard to the magnitude, scope, and manifestations of green gentrification and the forms of contestation and resistance articulated against it. In this paper, we propose new questions, theoretical approaches, and research design approaches to examine the socio-spatial dynamics and ramifications of green gentrification and parse out why, how, where, and when green gentrification takes place.
This paper analyzes environmental gentrification (EG), or the exclusion, marginalization, and displacement of long-term residents associated with sustainability planning or green developments and ...amenities, such as smart growth, public park renovations, and healthy food stores. We consider how activists, communities, and urban planners address these unjust processes and outcomes associated with EG and how these strategies compare to those used by environmental justice (EJ) activists. Our evaluation of relevant literature indicates several similarities with EJ resistance tactics, including collective neighborhood action, community organizing, and direct tactics. We also identify several different strategies enabled by certain urban environmental conditions, such as leveraging environmental policies and taking an active role in neighborhood redevelopment planning processes, collaborating with ‘gentrifiers,’ and creating complementary policies to manage displacement and exclusion. Our analysis indicates a need for more research on how activists can better assert the social and political dimensions of sustainability and their right to the city, and how green and sustainable cities can achieve justice and equity.
Flooding is increasing in urban areas around the world, leading to loss of life and property damage, and cities are using urban green spaces (UGS) for flood regulation. The spatial attributes of UGS ...have an important role in controlling and regulating urban flooding, and there is a need for a systematic map on how spatial factors of UGS, such as shape, size, location, or connectivity, impact flooding in urban areas. The objectives of this study are to analyze and synthesize published material to evaluate the impacts of the spatial dimensions of UGS on flood regulation and to identify knowledge gaps and future research directions. Pertinent literature was reviewed and synthesized using the systematic mapping method. The results of this study show that previous research on spatial configuration have examined how variables such as slope, DEM, green space coverage, and landscape shape index impact runoff reduction. Slope was found to be an important, but not determining factor in flood regulation. There is a need for further research on how the geographic context of urban regions, including climatic conditions and land use changes, impacts UGS functionality. Additionally, there is a need for further research on how the spatial configuration of UGS impacts flood vulnerability and intensity, two under-addressed yet important topics in urban flooding.
As cities are facing environmental and societal challenges, including climate change, rapid urbanization, and the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars and policymakers have recognized the potential of ...small-scale urban green infrastructures (UGI), such as rain gardens and street trees, to support important ecosystem services (ES) during periods of crisis and change. While there has been considerable research on the design, planning, engineering, and ecology of small-scale UGI, the governance modes of such spaces to support ES and manage ecosystem disservices (EDS) have received significantly less research attention. In this article, we provide a systematic review to evaluate how different modes of governance support different ES in small-scale green infrastructure. We evaluated governance in six types of small-scale green infrastructure: small parks, community gardens, vacant lands, rain gardens, green roofs, and street trees. Our review examines the different characteristics of four new governance approaches, including adaptive, network, mosaic, and transformative to understand their bottom-up nature and applicability in governing ES/disservices of small-scale UGI. Each governance mode can be effective for managing the ES of certain small-scale UGI, given their associations with principles such as resilience thinking, connectivity, and active citizenship. Our synthesis highlights knowledge gaps at the intersection between governance arrangements and ES in small-scale UGI. We conclude with a call for further research on the environmental and contextual factors that moderate the linkages between governance modes and ES/EDS in different types of UGI.
This study analyzes socio-spatial patterns in land surface temperature (LST) and vacant land across Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city with an estimated 30,000–40,000 vacant lots and a history of ...increased mortality associated with extreme heat events. Urban sustainability planning efforts typically encourage a compact city to improve quality of life and reduce sprawl, yet these same characteristics contribute to surface heating and the urban heat island effect (UHI). City officials often aim to redevelop vacant lots into conventional, tax-generating uses (e.g. commercial, industrial, or residential development), but few studies consider the role of vacant land in urban heating. This study employs LST and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) metrics derived from Landsat 8 imagery acquired on August 7, 2014, data on imperviousness from the 2011 National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), vacant parcels from the City of Philadelphia, and socioeconomic data on median household income and minority populations from the American Community Survey (ACS) 2009–2013 5-year estimates at the Census Block Group level. The results of this study indicate that neighborhoods with low socio-economic status are hotter and have more vacant lots than their wealthier counterparts. This study points towards the potential of green conversions of vacant lots for mitigating inequities in urban heating in the most socially and economically vulnerable neighborhoods across the city.
•Study analyzes socio-spatial patterns in heat exposure and vacant land.•Temperature hot spots have higher poverty rates and more vacant lots.•Green conversions of vacant lots could mitigate heating in hot spots.
Community geography is a growing subfield that provides a framework for relevant and engaged scholarship. In this paper, we define community geography as a form of research praxis, one that involves ...academic and public scholars with the goal of co-produced and mutually-beneficial knowledge. Community geography draws from a pragmatist model of inquiry, one that views communities as emergent through a recursive process of problem definition and social action. We situate the growth of community geography programs as rooted in two overlapping but distinct traditions: disciplinary development of participatory methodologies and institutional traditions of community engagement in American higher education. We then trace the historical development of these programs, identifying common themes and outlining several challenges that community geographers should prioritize as this subfield continues to grow.
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Focusing on material and social forms of infrastructure, this edited collection draws on rich empirical details from cities across the ...global North and South. The book asks the reader to think through the different ways in which infrastructure comes to be present in cities and its co-constitutive relationships with urban inhabitants and wider processes of urbanization.
Considering the climate emergency, economic transformation, public health crises and racialized inequality, the book argues that paying attention to infrastructures' past, present and future allows us to understand and respond to the current urban condition.
Green infrastructure (GI) initiatives, including programs to plant trees and install bioswales, have been adopted by a growing number of local government and non-governmental organizations. While the ...details of these programs vary, a common characteristic of most Canadian and US GI initiatives is a distributed approach that includes both public and private land. To date, little research has explored residents’ knowledge of GI or their engagement with related initiatives even though residents’ installation of GI is often key to creating distributed GI networks. In this study, we (1) assess residents’ knowledge of the term GI, (2) identify residents’ level of engagement with GI initiatives, and (3) examine whether factors like level of concern about local environmental issues can predict GI knowledge or level of engagement with GI initiatives. We explored these objectives through a survey of residents in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, US). We found that about a quarter of survey respondents in both cities had previously heard the term “green infrastructure”. Neither knowledge of GI nor level of engagement with GI initiatives could be predicted by the level of concern about local environmental issues, but residents’ interest in using their outdoor space for nature activities (e.g., gardening) predicted GI knowledge in both cities and level of initiative engagement in Philadelphia. Our results suggest the need for widespread education campaigns that clearly define GI so that residents can be participants in policy discussions, link it with their needs, and identify ways to manage GI to create desired benefits.
•Location of green spaces was important for their gentrification potential.•Green spaces in nongentrifiable neighborhoods were the most publicly accessible.•Many spaces in gentrifying neighborhoods ...were privately managed and had surveillance.
This study examined gentrification patterns associated with eighteen new public green spaces created across Philadelphia, Pennsylvania around 2010. Our study had three primary goals: 1) Characterize the local relationships between green space creation and gentrification across the city; 2) Investigate how different models of ownership and management approaches impact the public accessibility of newly created green spaces, 3) Examine connections between the public accessibility of new parks and the gentrification of the neighborhood. We drew on data from the 2000 US Census and the 2011–2016 American Community Survey Estimate data at the Block Group level, a field survey on public accessibility for parks that explores ownership, management, use/users, and quality, and semi-structured interviews conducted with six key informants from July-October 2018. We used Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) to examine local patterns of gentrification and qualitative analysis to examine the public accessibility of the public green spaces and experiences of residents and community leaders during the park development process. We found that public green spaces may anchor gentrification processes. Additionally, new spaces in wealthy neighborhoods were more publicly accessible than parks in gentrifying neighborhoods. Many spaces located in gentrifying neighborhoods relied on private management and had surveillance strategies, including cameras to security personnel. Our research points towards several key paradoxes associated with park development that can inform policy decisions regarding equitable park provision.
•Study provides a framework for managing competing objectives for vacant land reuse in Philadelphia.•GIS-based multi-criteria evaluations and multi-objective land allocation models are used.•Results ...show areas most suitable for residential, commercial, or green space objectives.•Approach provides decision-support tool for planners at multiple scales.
The redevelopment of vacant land is a contested issue in most urban places. Municipal governments advocate for the conversion of underutilized lots into tax-revenue generating developments, while residents may prefer additional green space or parks. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for managing these competing objectives through an analysis of vacant land redevelopment alternatives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This study employs a GIS-based multi-objective land allocation (MOLA) methodology at two scales – citywide and neighborhood level – to balance three competing objectives: green space, commercial, and residential. The results of the multi-objective land allocation (MOLA) model identify the most suitable reuses of vacant land across Philadelphia. Further, this study provides a policy-oriented framework and methodology for balancing competing objectives in vacant land planning that could be readily applied in different contexts.
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