Green City or Green Gentrification?
City governments are starting to get competitive when it comes to sustainability. This is exciting (and relieving) on face value, especially as national governments lag behind. Our cities are taking the lead on climate action. This has brought about the rise of ‘Green Cities’, harnessing cutting edge technological efficiency, upgraded public transportation, high-density living and a proliferation of eco-architectures. Some of these cities — Milan, Barcelona, San Francisco for example — look like what some of us have hope the future will look like.
But this version of the future was created by the imagination of the few, and does not bring that hope to everyone. Many cases of the new ‘Green City’ maintain social inequalities, bring widening income gaps, and a loss of diverse culture for the development of a normalizing commodified culture. In a word, this is gentrification — a green gentrification.
Many aspects of these seemingly sustainability projects should be celebrated — the investment by cities in public transportation for example — but there is growing concern that these projects are just greenwashing the kind of gentrifying development we’ve seen for decades. This issue has recently been flagged, among others, in a 2022 book edited by urban studies scholars Isabelle Anguelovski and James Connolly titled The Green City and Social Injustice.
Gentrification is the pattern of development that, in attempts to revitalize neighbourhoods or parts of cities, make them ‘sustainable’ or attract investment, the people who have been living there are pushed out and replaced by often white middle and upper classes. This can happen through housing prices going up once a neighbourhood is made more walkable or gets more upscale restaurants and arts attractions — the previous residents just can’t afford to live there anymore.
Gentrification is a complicated process with many layers and we can’t make any sweeping generalizations. Gentrification can also look different in different places, depending on the history of the place and what kind of development (or redevelopment) is happening. But this process of lower income and racilaized residents routinely being displaced is happening all over. More recently, we’re seeing Green Gentrification — the gentrification that happens when redevelopment takes place as a move to ‘sustainability’ or ‘eco-friendliness’ (sometimes there is actual climate mitigation and adaptation, and sometimes this is just more expensive greenwashing).
Gentrification is also characterized by top-down planning. A lot of ‘Green City’ projects — fancy, futuristic buildings with vertical gardens up the sides and green roofs, new shiny transit lines, idyllic LEED-certified condos — are done without meaningful consultation with those currently living there. Current residents often don’t get a say in what is to become of their neighbourhood and, because these tend to be marginalized residents, concerns of environmental (in)justice tend to be swept aside or greenwashed out of the project.
But don’t our cities have to become more sustainable?
Yes. Our cities need to bring down their greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for climate impacts to meet the IPCC climate targets. But what are these ‘Green City’ projects actually sustaining?
Gentrification is, following geographer David Harvey’s work, driven by capital accumulation. That is, our economic system is inherently dependent on infinite economic growth (on a finite planet). When capital starts to run out of things to produce, sell and consume, economic growth starts to slow. So new ‘markets’ must be created. In urban areas, this often looks like redevelopment — tear down what was there and build something new that will make more money. It may be obvious that this process is not very sustainable. But it is one of the forces driving urbanization around the world. Some ‘Green City’ projects are sustaining this process, which is very energy intensive, reproduces social inequalities in our cities and in the long run, is pursuing economic growth that is incompatible with the Earth’s limits.
So, how can we make our cities sustainable AND socially just?
One of the defining aspects of gentrification gives us an answer: Instead of top-down planning, we need to shift to bottom-up, or participatory planning. This means involving residents in the planning and design of their communities. It sounds simple, but it’s actually become a major challenge, if not THE challenge for planners and cities. We’re not talking about the typical ‘consultation’ methods we’re used to seeing — public information sessions and surveys. We’re talking about residents and planners working together to co-create communities. All residents, not just those who have the time and know-how. Racialized, disabled, and elderly residents, Indigenous populations, children and youth.
There are several practices that are emerging from innovative planners and city staff and from community-based researchers — and there’s no one right way. Participatory planning will look different in different places — otherwise it would become top-down and recreate the problem with gentrification. Participatory planning makes decisions based on residents’ lived experiences, knowledges and ideas so that projects will reflect their needs and desires. City-building should be empowering for the people in the city. This is a simple statement that most planners would agree with. But it’s hard in practice, because it pushes up against powerful forces.
Here in Toronto, we’re not immune to the pressures of gentrification, so those involved in planning projects have to take extra care to work with communities. Here, I want to point out the Jane Finch Initiative. This project is a community-engagement plan meant to support residents of the Jane Finch neighbourhood through the huge project of developing the infrastructure for a Light Rail Transit (LRT) line. The City of Toronto and their partners, including Urban Minds for youth engagement, are working from the outset with a resident-informed plan to guide work in this neighborhood and help bring resilience and pride to the community.
Sustainability should not just mean development with less environmental impact, but be based on principles of climate justice that recognize that environmental issues and social justice issues need to be addressed holistically, not treated as separate. By meaningfully engaging communities in the creation and re-creation of their neighbourhoods for environmental and social sustainability, we can empower residents, address multiple issues simultaneously and resist the constant pressures of gentrification to build cities that are sustainable in the best meaning of the word.
Kelly Gingrich is an Outreach Coordinator at Urban Minds.
