Green justice through policy and practice: a call for further research into tools that foster healthy green cities for all

ABSTRACT

Green or environmental gentrification has been shown to be directly related to residential physical and socio-cultural displacement and insecure housing conditions among socially or racially underprivileged residents, with clear related health impacts. In this context, those vulnerable groups become unable to benefit from the social, well-being, and overall health benefits of green amenities. To date, despite increasing gentrification and related civic concerns, cities in North America and Europe are still slow to respond. Siloed and reactive planning approaches to (re)development and greening generally do not include housing security and affordability provisions in ways that would be strategic and equity-driven. In this Commentary, we call for further research on the mix of policies and tools that posit multi-sectoral and de-siloed greening agendas in coordination with affordable and stable housing. We open the discussion on four justice-driven policies and tools presented in the Policy Tools for Urban Green Justice (BCNUEJ 2021) report that derives from research conducted in 40 cities, analyzing 480 interviews with key neighborhood stakeholders across Europe and North America. We also call for research that identifies how urban policy developments and anti-gentrification and anti-displacement strategies can be combined with inclusive greening tools to build healthy, green cities for all.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing equity
• greening equity
• planning policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the supplementary materials of this article and on request from the corresponding author. All data are not publicly available due to information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2022.2072057.

Notes

1. http://www.bcnuej.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Toolkit-Urban-Green-Justice.pdf.

2. See Supplementary Materials for further details of the parent study and methodology of the report.

3. http://www.bcnuej.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Toolkit-Urban-Green-Justice.pdf.

4. http://www.bcnuej.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Toolkit-Urban-Green-Justice.pdf.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Horizon 2020 GreenLULUS (GA678034), Maria de Maeztu (CEX2019-000940-M), Juan de la Cierva Incorporación (IJC-2018-035322-I) and Melissa Garcia Lamarca by Juan de la Cierva Incorporación (FJCI-2016-30586).

Notes on contributors

Emilia Oscilowicz

The Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability was founded in partnership with the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) and a research group from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) in Barcelona. The BCNUEJ lab examines the structural and systemic drivers of social inequalities, exclusion, oppression, and neo-colonization in cities. Building on the theory and methods from urban planning, public policy, urban and environmental sociology, urban geography and public health, we analyze the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, and how community groups in distressed neighborhoods contest environmental inequities as a result of urban (re)development processes and policies.