Abstract Body

Urban greenspace and urban forests are widely recognized for the myriad benefits they provide to city inhabitants. However, it has been increasingly noted that not everyone has equal access to urban greenspace or equal input in decision-making surrounding it. These issues of environmental justice and green equity result in some individuals and groups benefiting from greenspace more than others. Some cities have sought to address this by increasing urban greening in underserviced areas, but research on green gentrification suggests such actions may ultimately undermine equity goals.

Green gentrification is an emerging area of research interested in how urban greening influences processes of gentrification, whereby marginalized communities are displaced by inmoving wealthier and Whiter individuals. This ultimately results in marginalized communities not benefiting from targeted urban greening initiatives. For cities to truly address issues of environmental justice and green equity, there needs to be an increased understanding of green gentrification and how it can be avoided. This presentation employs a literature review to examine how green gentrification has been studied thus far and makes suggestions for further advancing our understanding of this phenomenon.

Green gentrification has been largely researched via case studies of US cities, focusing on a wide range of vegetative (e.g. urban agriculture, greenways, and other parks) and non-vegetative greening initiatives (e.g. LEED-certified buildings and cycle lanes). Many studies take a qualitative approach, often employing multiple methods (particularly a mix of document review and interview data), but they can suffer from a limited depth of analysis. Further, it has to be questioned whether green 'gentrification' is actually being studied, given the gentrification indicators used (or not used), lack of temporal breadth in studies, and the difficulty of measuring displacement.

Future study of green gentrification could benefit from 1) expanding case-study contexts to different locales (e.g. outside the US) and types of greening (e.g. street trees); 2) integrating more quantitative methods, including spatial analyses and surveys; 3) applying social media and other technologies in data collection; 4) including gentrifiers and displaced residents in surveys and interviews; and 5) getting creative when measuring displacement.