Preventing Environmental Gentrification: Perspectives from Practitioners

Background: Pollution cleanup, green space creation, and other improvements to environmental quality in cities are important to urban sustainability. However, because they occur within a political economy that combines neoliberal free market forces, structural and cultural racism, and austerity measures, urban greening initiatives can intentionally or unintentionally reproduce racial, economic, and social inequities through environmental gentrification. Associated harms can include the marginalization, exclusion, and displacement of vulnerable populations.

Methods: This study adds to the emerging body of solutions-oriented studies that aim to prevent displacement or exclusion of vulnerable residents in the context of environmental cleanup and/or urban greening. Rather than portraying environmental gentrification as an inevitability, we focus on the knowledge, tools, and experiences that residents, activists, community organizations, and municipalities draw upon to build green and just cities. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews (N=27) with community organizers, environmental justice advocates, urban planners, housing specialists, and others who held deep expertise through their lived and professional experience in relevant fields in Chicago, IL, USA. By centering the voices of practitioners who are experimenting with inclusive decision-making processes within equitable development, we identify policies, programs, and other interventions that might support environmental investments without displacement.

Results: Five interrelated themes emerged through our inductive, thematic analysis of the interview data. These themes offer guidance to help mitigate and prevent the harms of environmental gentrification: (1) co-construct knowledge and share decision-making power, (2) design inclusive community engagement that centers historically excluded voices, (3) implement multi-issue interventions, (4) disrupt structural racism and other causes of disparities, and (5) coordinate policies and programs across local, state, and federal scales. The findings provide preliminary directions for designing inclusive, community-driven, intersectional, multi-scalar greening initiatives that help disrupt the systemic drivers of environmental injustice in order to achieve equitable outcomes.

Implications: This study demonstrates how investments in pollution remediation, environmental amenities, and other urban greening projects risk reproducing existing disparities unless they explicitly attend to the social justice aspects of sustainability.