Green Gentrification

By Caroline van Zeijts

It is well discussed that national parks (and the Patagonia and Instagram culture that surround them) have become symbols of white environmentalism. Glenn Nelson writes in Why Are Our Parks So White? that in 2011, 22% of national park visitors were not white. As of 2011, 37% of the United States was BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). These numbers do not line up, and are reflective of exclusionary and expensive perceived relationships to the outdoors. What could redefining public space and communal engagement with the “outdoors” provide? How does the outdoors become a symbol of Whiteness and a tool of gentrification and capitalism? Considering surveillance and policing, what can be imagined as comfortable outdoor spaces for marginalized communities? What reclamation of outside space has taken place? We will be unpacking that all here.

Moving from national parks, I would like to explore what access to parks as public space looks like on a city-scale. Especially in discourses of environmental racism, it is clear that there are members of urban spaces that live in proximity to clean and safe air, water and resources. Environmental racism, as proven by the EPA and countless lived experiences, is that people in poverty, specifically non-White folks, are burdened with lives and livelihoods that expose them to more pollution and environmental degradation than wealthier white communities (see Newkirk’s article in The Atlantic). With that, there are many who are intentionally displaced away from green infrastructure, which could be a park but also effective ways of filtering storm water runoff to prevent water pollution. As an example, David Rouse notes how in Oakland, “tree-canopy coverage ranged from 47 percent in high-income council districts to 12 percent in a low-income council district.” In the same vein, many low-income communities lack access to parks. Ramya Sivasubramanian speaks towards the intentional actions to curb environmental racism by the addition of parks in low-income (sometimes referred to as park-poor) neighborhoods. This has looked like Measure A and Proposition 68 in Los Angeles. David Rouse quotes Alexandra Dapolita Dunn’s statement that “the ‘exceptional benefits for the urban poor’ that green infrastructure (including parks) can provide are better air and water quality, improved public health, enhanced aesthetics and safety, green job opportunities, increased food security and more.” Beyond aesthetics, green infrastructure curbs environmental racism.

There has also been a general push to have greener cities for “everyone.” Projects like this can be seen with the Philadelphia Rail Park or the High Line in New York. Though intra-city green space is nourishing and valuable, it has a direct tie to “Green Gentrification.” Crompton explains this as the “proximity principle”: there is “a positive impact of 20% in property values abutting or fronting a park.” The HBO documentary Class Divide exposes the rapid green gentrification of West Chelsea since the opening of the High Line in 2009. In a neighborhood home to public housing with residents making $21,000 a year, the High Line-driven development sells for $5-15 million for a three-bedroom apartment. Alexandra Owens outlines how “since 2009, the average rent for Chelsea apartments rose almost ten times faster than all of Manhattan.” This is not an isolated incident. The 606 Trail in Chicago raised surrounding rent by 48% since its opening. Atlanta’s Beltline has erased the history of the once-African American and working class Ponce City Market neighborhood. When we know that green infrastructure is a means of healthy survival for poor communities of color, how can we hold the gentrification green space causes with the environmental racism it prevents, especially as those it has the potential to benefit get further displaced into new environmentally racist conditions?

Researchers Winifred Curran and Trina Hamilton have offered a solution to green gentrification through the term “just green enough.” This is to clean up toxic neighborhood sites of environmental racism with community input and activism without commodifying the “just green enough” space for non-residents. A good example of this that Rouse mentions is the 1.5 acre Lindsay Street Park in Atlanta: “It was the first park in the English Avenue neighborhood, which has a history of crime, vacancy and unemployment…Led by residents, the project uses green storm water infrastructure to reduce flooding and improve water quality. Co-benefits include reclamation of vacant lots once filled with weeds and trash, training and jobs for local youths, and providing a safe place for kids to play and the community to gather.” Counter-green gentrification work has also looked like the “Beltline for All” campaign. This campaign has pushed successfully for affordable housing to be built alongside Atlanta’s Beltline with a mandatory inclusive zoning policy. Though the Beltline developers promised 5,600 affordable housing units, none have been built. Green gentrification causes such community frustration that there are multiple organizations that work with PRADS, or Park Related Anti-Displacement Strategies. PRADS can manifest in the aforementioned inclusive zoning policies. PRADS can also look like small business disruption funds to benefit and sustain local businesses or first source hiring ordinances to offer park or gentrified jobs first to long term residents in the neighborhood. See Rigolon and Christensen’s Greening Without Gentrificationfor more examples of Park Related Anti-Displacement Strategies. Similar to the efforts community activists partook in with Atlanta’s Beltline, the 11thStreet Bridge Park in Washington, D.C. also used PRADS in incorporating tenant protections into its development.

This is a video about the mission of Lindsay Street Park

This is a map of public spaces around the U.S. intentionally enacting PRADS to prevent green gentrification.

Part and parcel to this conversation is the very definition of public space and the uses of public space “we” are comfortable with. There are clearly value-laden ideas of public use of parks. Homelessness is demonized as an “incorrect” park usage, and there are huge respectability politics around how park space “should” be used. Diana Budd compounds this in saying, “In cities in the Unites States, we cannot pretend that all bodies have the freedom to move through, occupy, and enjoy public space.” In building public space, Budd encourages developers to ask “the typically untapped people—artists, misfits, elders, immigrants, People of Color, and women what the most joyous, liberatory, and authentic spaces are for them.” Building park space is not about having the most square-footage, as the 1.5 acre Lindsay Street Park shows, but rather building civic activism and feelings of community belongingness. This is Curran and Hamilton’s “just green enough” to a T. In building a different kind of outdoor space, we may need to imagine public space as not only parks, but as public transit, libraries, pools, and places beyond our limits of comfort about how people should move through space. Holding this, it is important to note the way fighting against environmental racism is about reimagining belongingness, but also survival. Though it is empowering to justify how non-White people conceptualize space and togetherness, there is a survival baseline that is not being met by a lack of green infrastructure in poor BIPOC communities. This is a both/and.

Being in conversation with this both/and, there is a deep power in reimagining public space. The “Yes Loitering” project, led by kids of color in Brooklyn “helps kids understand how many spaces they’re excluded from, and then asks them to imagine new kinds of public spaces that would serve them better.” Ariel Aberg-Riger, through CityLab, outlines how loitering laws have been used historically to police the use of public space by people of color. Aberg-Riger explains how, in their vagueness, loitering laws allow for unfounded arrests that “keep white spaces white [and] move poor people elsewhere.” Risa Goluboff explains vagrancy and loitering laws as an “ever-present police tool to keep people in their imagined places.” In reconsidering the right to belong, artist Paul Shortt has placed “Reserved for Loitering” signs in multiple cities. The “Yes Loitering” project is another example of this resistance to policing of public space. One of the teens named Travieso in the project explains, “’When people think of creating spaces for young people they think of a youth center or they think of a skate park…Those are great and we should have more of those, but we should think of the city itself—the streets, the sidewalks, everywhere that’s a public space, and also spaces were people congregate like restaurants, as being spaces that are also welcoming to teens.’” This warm welcome Travieso offers into the both/and can also be applied to queer, BIPOC, immigrant, and poor folks in public space. “Yes Loitering” offered the solutions of “Wi-Fi, seating, and shelter from rain [in parks]…Bathrooms should be gender-neutral and accessible without buying food or drink. Affordable food should be available. There should be more places to play different types of sports. More spaces should be open late or 24 hours.” Projects for Public Space’s “Place making Code of Ethics” offers similar goals for new place making that is inclusive. This on-the-ground intentionality must meet the policy new green spaces provide with affordable housing and other PRADS measures.

This is a video from the Yes Loitering project.

The Philly Stoop, to me, is a great example of a vision of variant, accessible public space. In the legacy of Jane Jacobs, the stoop is the opportunity for “eyes upon the street,” where community can partake and share together in a free, comfortable way. Randall Mason, a professor at Penn, explains how “’We talk about public and private space as if it’s black and white. The interesting stuff is always about the gray areas. The more different kinds of public and private space we have, the better the urbanism.” In considering this as a both/and, Philly’s stoop shows a redefinition of public space as not always green, and maybe as quintessentially loitering. There is an agency and power to public loitering on a personal stoop, of sharing lemonade on a hot summer afternoon. In a call to take care, and to sit, and to not police but to share, stoops are a gray area of public space that Philadelphia offers as a template for other cities. Pomerantz’s On The Threshold project, as outlined by Monument Lab, explains stoops as “a site of social interaction, of relaxation, and of participation.” Holding structural forces like the proximity principle, policing and white environmentalism accountable is key. Yet, communities of color affected by environmental racism are not just victims of oppression but inventors of resistance. “Just Green Enough,” PRADS, “Yes Loitering,” and this new gray space of the stoop allow for community thrivance, as defined by Jamie Much to be “community-care and [the] resist[ance of] neoliberal individualism.” On a personal level, is that not the standard we should have for each other? Is that not all we can ask of public space? 

This is an image from the Philadelphia Inquirers’ article about the On The Threshold project, showing the public utilizing reclaimed stoops.

 Works Cited

Aberg-Riger, A. (May 21, 2018). What is Loitering, Really?CityLab. 

Budds, D. (July 18, 2016). How Urban Design Perpetuates Racial Inequality—And What We Can Do About It. Fast Company.

Christensen, J. Greening without Gentrification: Parks-Related Anti-Displacement Strategies. UCLA: Institute of the Environment & Sustainability. 

Class Divide. (2015). HBO. 

Crompton, J. (February 18, 2007). The Impact of Parks on Property Values. Taylor and Francis Online.

Curran, W. and Hamilton, T. (October 5, 2012). Just Green Enough: Contesting Environmental Gentrification in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Local Environment Journal.

EPA: What is Green Infrastructure?

Howard, B. (May 20, 2017). In Praise of the Philly Stoop. Philadelphia Inquirer.

Koh, A. (May 23, 2017). Placemaking When Black Lives Matter. Project for Public Spaces.

Much, J. (February 14, 2017). Thrivance: Community-Care and Resisting Neoliberal Individualism. Dissidentially Speaking.

Nelson, G. (July 10, 2015). Why Are Our Parks So White?The New York Times.

Newkirk, V. (February 28, 2018). Trump’s EPA Concludes Environmental Racism is Real. The Atlantic.

Owens, A. (October 6, 2016). 6 Fascinating Things We Learned from HBO’s Class Divide. Town&Country.

Peters, A. (May 18, 2018). The Yes Loitering Project Asks Kids Of Color to Rethink Public Space.Fast Company.

Pomerantz, K. (2017). On The Threshold (Salvaged Stoops, Philadelphia). Monument Lab. 

Rouse, D. (July 6, 2018). Social Equity, Parks and Gentrification. National Recreation and Park Association.

Rigolon, A. and Christensen, J. (November 26, 2019). Greening Without Gentrification. National Recreation and Park Association.

Sivasubramanian, Ramya. (February 27, 2019). Create Parks & Affordable Homes, Avoid Green Gentrification. NRDC.

Yousef, N. (April 18, 2019). Altanta’s BeltLine: A Gentrified Path. The Emory Wheel.