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From landscapes of utopia to the margins of thegreen urban life

Isabelle Anguelovski, James Connolly & Anna Livia Brand

To cite this article: Isabelle Anguelovski, James Connolly & Anna Livia Brand (2018)From landscapes of utopia to the margins of the green urban life, City, 22:3, 417-436, DOI:10.1080/13604813.2018.1473126

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2018.1473126

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Published online: 05 Sep 2018.

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DebatesFromlandscapesofutopia to themargins of the green urban lifeFor whom is the new green city?

Isabelle Anguelovski , James Connolly andAnna Livia Brand

Today, municipal decision-makers, planners, and investors rely on valuation studies of eco-system services, public health assessments, and real estate projections to promote a consen-sual view of urban greening interventions such as new parks, greenways, or greenbelts asa public good with widespread benefits for all residents. However, as new green projectsoften anchor major investment and high-end development, we ask: Does the green cityfulfil its promise for inclusive and far-reaching environmental, health, social, and economicbenefits or does it create new environmental inequalities and green mirages? Through caseexamples of diverse urban greening interventions in cities reflecting different urban devel-opment trajectories and baseline environmental conditions and needs (Barcelona, Medellin,and New Orleans), we argue that urban greening interventions increasingly create newdynamics of exclusion, polarization, segregation, and invisibilization. Despite claimsabout the public good, these interventions take place to the detriment of the most sociallyand racially marginalized urban groups whose land and landscapes are appropriatedthrough the creation of a ‘green gap’ in property markets. In that sense, green amenitiesbecome GreenLULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Uses) and socially vulnerable residentsand community groups face a green space paradox, whereby they become excluded fromnew green amenities they long fought for as part of an environmental justice agenda.Thus, as urban greening consolidates urban sustainability and redevelopment strategiesby bringing together private and public investors around a tool for marketing cities withglobal reach, it also negates a deeper reflection on urban segregation, social hierarchies,racial inequalities, and green privilege.

Key words: green, sustainability, cities, inequality, urban environmentalism, green gentrifica-tion, environmental justice

Introduction

Interviewed by The Atlantic Citylabmagazine about the future transform-ation of an old highway bridge into a

park on the Anacostia River in Washing-ton DC,1 Project Director Steve Kratzexpressed anguish over the equity impactsof this green project. As his words aboutthe new $45 million 11th Street Bridge

# 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, trans-formed, or built upon in any way.

CITY, 2018VOL. 22, NO. 3, 417–436, https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2018.1473126

Park denote, who are new urban parks reallyfor? Who are the real recipients and benefi-ciaries of new or restored green amenitiesin cities? Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenwayand Philadelphia’s Penn Landing projectsare illustrative of similar tensions. Indeed,if we look at the model for such projects,New York’s High Line, new parks are tar-geted to white and socially and economi-cally-privileged residents and tourists(Reichl 2016). The High Line, a formerelevated railroad restored and transformedinto a linear urban park, is now visited by 5million people each year and often modelledas a best practice in urban design and archi-tecture. Yet between 2003 and 2011, prop-erty values near the High Line increasedby 103 percent, raising questions aboutwho has access to this green space.2

Rather than creating an inclusive space,this ‘green’ transformation has intensifiedthe displacement of local businesses andresidents. As High Line founder RobertHammond observed eight years after itsopening, ‘We wanted to do it for the neigh-bourhood . . . Ultimately we failed.’3

In this paper, we argue that academic andpolitical discourses promoting the environ-mental, health, and socio-economic benefitsof urban greening—what we call the ‘urbangreening orthodoxy’—are generatingpowerful and seemingly immutable justifi-cations for greening projects such as green-ways, parks, or ecological corridors whileminimizing their political ramifications andthe highly inequitable socio-spatial out-comes that they intensify. In too manycases, the broadly defined ‘urban greeningorthodoxy’—which includes the economic,environmental, cultural, and social valuesof ecosystem services and the socio-econ-omic and health benefits of urban greeningprojects—advances an a-political, post-pol-itical (Swyngedouw 2007), and technocraticdiscourse of urban sustainability and over-states the positive impacts of green develop-ment while omitting a deeper considerationof the social and spatial impacts of the newgreen urban projects.

In that sense, this scholarship fails to con-sider the broader and deeper question ofwho has the right to a green city, and how‘secure’ this right is over the long term.Additionally, and by minimizing theunequal impacts of green development, thepresumed benevolence and democracy ofthis green orthodoxy obscures the ways thatnew green landscapes avoid questions of dis-tribution and access through immutable (yetpoorly evaluated) presumptions of publicnessand public space and through participatoryprocesses. Indeed, we question the capacityof this orthodoxy, claimed by communicativeplanning scholarship (Innes and Booher 2004;Healey 2005; Shapiro 2009) to mitigate theseeffects, especially so when the unequalimpacts of urban greening are obscured andeven made invisible in democratic processes.We argue that the urban greening orthodoxyis a powerful agenda setting tool that fails totake asymmetric power dynamics into con-sideration and therefore effectively limitsthe capacity of democratic dialogue andengagement to achieve a mutual understand-ing of the issues at stake and, from this under-standing, envision just sustainability planningpriorities that account for benefits, draw-backs, and continued access.

In this paper, we posit that, while greeningcities as a catalyst for urban change is notnew, green urban planning has shifted fromthe urban parks movement of the late 19thand early 20th centuries and the commu-nity-oriented greening that characterizedneighbourhood reclamation efforts in the1970s and 1980s (Jonnes 2002; Connollyet al. 2014) toward development-orientedgreening. The new green paradigm is charac-terized by its presumed responses to environ-mental injustices, urban health issues, andclimate crises. However, given that it takesplace within urban contexts and sites thathave been continuously devalued since themid-20th century, it coincides with a strongmovement back to the city and thereforeacts as an anchor for major urban reinvest-ment and high-end redevelopment (Quastel2009) and as re-attraction for privileged

418 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

residents and visitors (Hutton, Casellas, andPallares-Barbera 2009) at the expense of themost socially fragile and racially excludedresidents that have, especially in the UnitedStates, remained in cities throughoutdecades of abandonment. In an age ofbooming real estate at the global scale,(Sassen 2011) we see that when neighbour-hoods with depressed or below-market prop-erty values benefit from environmental clean-up and/or begin to receive new environ-mental goods, investors and developerstogether with municipal actors see an oppor-tunity to finance new real estate projects,especially in areas with strong locationaland infrastructural advantages. Once a firstwave of daring pioneering gentrifiers movesinto an area undergoing clean-up, those realestate actors have the ‘security’ that the areais ripe for further large-scale investment andgreen development. The unquestioned ubi-quity and centrality of public-private part-nerships means that cities are themselvescentral actors in shaping this new paradigmand opening up land for greening.

Extensive examples of municipally spon-sored urban greening range in scale andlocation and include such projects as therecent 365 Bond luxury development alongthe Superfund Gowanus Canal inNew York City. While the Gowanus Canalis still deeply polluted, the newly built 365Bond condos offer ‘abundant green spaceand stunning views’ for urban residents.4

From Europe (cities like Glasgow, Leipzig,or Genoa) to South East Asia (Seoul,Jakarta), and Latin America (Medellin,Bogota, Mexico City), the new green ortho-doxy has a global reach as a combined redeve-lopment and urban sustainability strategythat brings together private and public inves-tors, builds new flagship and boldly visiblegreen amenities, markets cities as liveableand desirable places, and facilitates new realestate projects. In the process, new enclavesof green urban living are being created—atleast for some. In this paper, we ask: Forwhom is the new green city? Does the greencity fulfil its promise for widespread and

inclusive health, environmental, social, andeconomic benefits or does it create and exacer-bate environmental inequalities through newdynamics of exclusion silencing, and invisibili-zation of the most socially vulnerableresidents?

Through case examples of green space andgreen infrastructure planning, we examine theemergence of an urban green paradox and ofthe diverse manifestations of what has beencalled GreenLULUs—Green LocallyUnwanted Land Uses (Anguelovski 2015)—for long-term marginalized urban residents.Existing environmental justice literaturedefines LULUs in marginalized neighbour-hoods as undesired sites such as landfills,incinerators, and other toxic and contami-nating industries—mostly because of theirdisproportionate locational impacts on min-orities and lower-income residents (Bullard1990; Bryant and Mohai 1992; Lerner 2005;Schively 2007; Sze 2007; Downey andHawkins 2008; Mohai, Pellow, and Roberts2009). We argue here that, despite beingframed as a public good for all residents,urban greening interventions increasinglycreate dynamics of exclusion, polarization,segregation, and invisibilization to the detri-ment of the most socially and racially margin-alized urban groups whose land isappropriated through a ‘green gap’ processand who are being excluded from thesebenefits. When green amenities becomeGreenLULUs in urban distressed neighbour-hoods (Anguelovski 2016), residents andcommunity groups face a green paradoxthat generates a green mirage for those whoare excluded from the benefits. In thatregard, ‘green gentrification’ or ‘ecologicalgentrification’ (Dooling 2009; Checker2011), which is the combined process ofland revaluation, greening, and displacement,should be of central concern for amelioratingenvironmental, racial, and social injustices.

In the next section, we engage with thebroadly defined urban sustainability litera-ture and urban greening orthodoxy in thefields of public health, urban ecology, realestate economics, and urban planning,

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 419

focusing specifically on the presumedbenefits of urban greening. We then articulateour counter-view that urban greening posesnew challenges for environmental equityand justice and democratic practice that areparticular to the hegemony of neoliberaldevelopment paradigms. Next, we drawfrom our recent research in Barcelona,Medellin, and New Orleans to provideempirical examples in which we ground ourdiscussion of green gentrification and exclu-sion. This variety of examples demonstratesthe global reach of urban greening and ofthe green paradox for socially fragile resi-dents. It also shows the extent to which theurban green paradox permeates urban devel-opment, planning discourses, and environ-mental interventions. We conclude withfinal remarks on the combined challenges ofenvironmental gentrification and environ-mental injustice for urban planning scholar-ship and practice.

Urban greening, land re-valuation, andgentrification: questioning dominantnarratives around green interventions incities

Current dominant scholarly and policy nar-ratives around municipal interventions forland (re)development and urban greening—park creation, waterfront restoration, orgreenway construction—emphasize the eco-logical, health, social, and economic benefitsof such projects. This well-developed litera-ture, which we call the ‘urban greening ortho-doxy,’ is represented by research on thebenefits of access to or exposure to naturaloutdoor environments (NOE) in environ-mental epidemiology, the ecological andsocio-cultural benefits of ecosystem servicesin urban ecology, and the economic andsocial benefits of urban greening for localeconomic investment and property values inreal estate economics and, more generallyspeaking, urban planning.

From a health standpoint, being exposed togreen space has been associated with

improved physical and mental health out-comes, including chronic stress anddepression (Triguero-Mas et al. 2015) andlower cardiovascular risks (Gascon et al.2016). For instance, a cohort study onaccess to and use of green space in Europehas found that the prevalence of cardiovascu-lar risk factors and diabetes mellitus are sig-nificantly lower among residents usingparks than among non-users (Tamosiunaset al. 2014). Green spaces have been linkedto improved general self-perceived health,especially in women and residents living inlower density areas (Triguero-Mas et al.2015). Exposure to green space is also posi-tively associated with children’s cognitivedevelopment (Dadvand et al. 2015), with theassociation being partially mediated byreductions in air pollution. In view of theseresults, many environmental epidemiologistscall for the future city to be green, active,social and healthy (Nieuwenhuijsen 2016).

In addition, literature in urban ecologyhighlights the widespread ecological benefitsand ecosystem services from urban greenspaces (Elmqvist et al. 2015)—from carbonsequestration to the removal of air pollutantsto the prevention of carbon emissions (Baroet al. 2014) to natural flood prevention andmitigation to cooler temperatures within thecity (Gomez-Baggethun and Barton 2013).For instance, in Manchester, recent researchhas identified that a 10% increase in treecanopy may lead to a 3 to 4 degree Celsiusreduction in air temperature (Gill et al.2007). The social benefits of ecosystem ser-vices also include increased job satisfactionand decreased job stress (Elmqvist et al.2015), environmental learning, tighter socialties, or stronger place attachment (Anderssonet al. 2015).

From an economic development stand-point, green space and green infrastructurepromise economic growth and neighbour-hood revitalization through real estate devel-opment, business creation (Dooling 2009;Quastel 2009) and tourism expansion. Newgreen spaces and parks make neighbourhoodsmore desirable for potential residents and real

420 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

estate investment, eventually contributing toincreases in property values (Immergluck2009; Sander and Polasky 2009; Conwayet al. 2010; Brander and Koetse 2011) andthus to green gentrification. Research usinghedonic pricing methods reveals that urbangreen infrastructure positively influenceproperty values (Li, Saphores, and Gillespie2015) and that large urban parks togetherwith the percentage of a green space in a500 m radius around residential propertiescontribute to increased housing prices(Czembrowski and Kronenberg 2016).

In urban planning, the green orthodoxytraditionally assumes the social and healthbenefits that individuals experience as wellas the environmental and ecosystem benefitsthrough pro-green development narrativesand land development agendas and often uti-lizes democratic engagement to open up newgreen urban frontiers. Although the greenorthodoxy in urban planning presents a see-mingly immutable set of goods, this agendasetting occurs within the pervasive develop-ment epistemology of advanced capitalism(Brenner and Theodore 2002). Thus, thenegative repercussions of greening or, morespecifically, who will not benefit from theadvancement of this agenda, and the rolethat greening plays in expanding the terrainof how inequality is shaped and exacerbatedin the 21st century are all obscured. In otherwords, both democratic engagement andreal estate development often conceal andtherefore eclipse the new and unequal greenlandscape.

In view of the multiple accumulatedbenefits, urban greening is at the centre ofplanning utopian visions for new landscapesand, therefore gives cities a form of moralauthority or economic imperative tobecome green(er). Many have developed sus-tainability plans as a demonstration of theircommitment to this moral imperative forthe provision or restoration of environmentalamenities (Portney 2013). In this context, realestate developers and investors together withcity planners and policy makers play a keyrole in producing a green city and, in

return, helping to boost a city’s image as live-able and desirable, making it more competi-tive in the global market (Gibbs andKrueger 2007; Tretter 2013). That this‘urban greening orthodoxy’ overlooks orinvisibilizes the tensions and contradictions(i.e. Quastel 2009) derived from the ensuinginequities that stem from this new spatialdevelopment hegemony should, we argue,be of central concern.

The same concerns over the moral auth-ority of greening can be applied to evalu-ations of communicative approaches toplanning for urban sustainability planning.Communication- and dialogue-centeredplanning approaches are meant to promoteparticipation and inclusion, build consensuson sustainability planning priorities and strat-egies, and secure durable decisions and plans,while avoiding top-down decisions (Innesand Booher 2004; Healey 2005; Shapiro2009). Yet, the moral authority ascribed tourban greening and the global reach of thedesirability of the green city have the poten-tial to serve as an overriding agenda settingforce, with very concerning implications forequitable green city planning. Not unlikethe ideal of the ‘public good’ and the pre-sumed diffused benefits of access, greeninggoals can serve as a means for deemphasizingasymmetric power relations and conflictsover competing resources, which risksrecreating unjust outcomes (Flyvbjerg 1998;Yiftachel and Huxley 2000). In this case, theunjust outcomes arise around the issue ofaccess to the benefits of urban (green) life inthe mid- and long-term.

So, who is the green city really for? Recentresearch on ecological or environmental gen-trification has shown that combined strat-egies of environmental clean-up, landrestoration, and green amenity creation areincreasingly remaking urban neighbourhoodsfor wealthier and whiter residents (Dooling2009; Checker 2011). Banking on what wecan call a ‘green gap,’ planners and investorsare increasingly capitalizing on greening toattract more privileged residents with ahigher purchasing (or rental) power (Bryson

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 421

2013; Rosol 2013). The green gap emergeswhen land deemed vacant, underused, or con-taminated is identified by developers as apossible area to be ‘greened,’ generating ame-nities that may allow for higher economicvalue and profit accumulation. We shouldnot forget that this new green frontier hasbeen systematically devalued throughongoing racial (Omi and Winant 2014) andsocio-economic processes. For instance, inSan Francisco, the brownfield redevelopmentand greening of the Hunters Point Shipyardarea illustrates a vision for building an areaattractive to creative class workers in searchof high-end ‘sustainable’ lifestyles and greenliving in new luxury condos (Dillon 2014).Environmental gentrification in circum-stances like these creates new types of urbanspatial injustices over time (Dikec 2001;Marcuse 2009; Soja 2009, 2010). That is,new patterns of unfair and inequitable distri-bution and allocation across space of sociallyvalued resources — green amenities — aretaking shape within numerous and variedcontexts.

In other words, under apolitical andutopian claims that focus only on benefits,green engineering-driven interventions, andimproving the biophysical urban environ-ment, municipalities can sponsor and/orfinance projects that produce and exacerbatehighly inequitable outcomes (Wolch, Byrne,and Newell 2014). Many greening projectsfail indeed to consider (or choose to simplyignore) residents’ social vulnerabilities to dis-placement, particularly residents of colourand low-income residents (Pearsall 2010;Checker 2011). Optimistic visions and dis-courses about the future green city andseemingly consensual discourses aroundurban greening projects undermine the possi-bilities for real politics, through what Swyn-gedouw qualifies as post-political and post-democratic tendencies (Swyngedouw 2007).Ignoring underlying social, economic andenvironmental vulnerabilities (Mueller andDooling 2011) obfuscates the possibility ofbuilding more socially, racially and environ-mentally just landscapes (Steil and Connolly

2009; Connolly Forthcoming) rather thaneroding them. In sum, while urban greeningis increasingly framed as a path toward atechnological and ecological utopia, thisapproach often avoids considering coreurban issues at the intersection of racialinequalities, social and racial hierarchies,and environmental privilege (Anguelovski2016).

We seek here to reframe urban greeningwithin the day-to-day of urban planning asa profoundly political project that, despiteoptimistic and utopian intentions andframing, may generate spatial green segre-gation and environmental privilege. In thenext section, we further develop our argu-ment around the green city as a privilegedsocio-environmental space and illustrate itthrough three case examples.

Exclusion and displacement in greeninfrastructure planning: experiences fromBarcelona, medellin and New Orleans

In this section, we present cases from ourrecent research in cities both in the GlobalNorth and South, for which we used a mixof quantitative and qualitative methods, toprobe green gentrification and develop ourargument around greening as redevelopmentstrategy, greenlulus, and the green paradox.The methods include regression and spatialanalysis (Barcelona), semi-structured inter-views and participant observation (Medellin),and planning document and project analysis(New Orleans). The diversity of methodo-logical approaches provides a multi-perspec-tive view of the emerging global trendsgenerating green inequities. We also selectedthese examples because they represent differ-ent greening strategies, trajectories, andintentions in the Global North and South:park and garden creation (Barcelona), greeninfrastructure, landslide management, andgrowth control (Medellin), and resilience toclimate change and flooding (New Orleans).Our cases demonstrate that the issues we

422 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

raise are increasingly systemic across all ofthese greening approaches.

In addition to demonstrating the globalreach of the green paradox, inequities pro-duced by such projects seem to violate in acombined and self-reinforcing way the threelegs of environmental justice: justice as equi-table distribution of environmental goods,justice as recognition of identities and liveli-hoods, and justice as fair and meaningful par-ticipation (Schlosberg 2007). We do not claimhere that all greening projects will providenew socio-spatial injustices—and many,especially those of smaller scale, vernaculardesign, and community-centred use arelikely not to have such effects (Anguelovskiet al. 2018). What our inductive approachreveals is that greening as a new urbanbrand used by larger cities in visible and flag-ship green projects risks creating new formsof environmental enclaves.

Green displacement and economic growth inBarcelona

The first case example we examine respondsto an overarching empirical question: Howdoes municipal park and garden creation con-tribute to demographic and real estatechanges in socially vulnerable neighbour-hoods? Here we argue that a shift occurredin greenspace planning away from a democra-tically controlled set of interventions for resi-dents and toward a centrally controlledmechanism for attracting internationalcapital, especially those in more centrally-located areas of the city. This process poten-tially intensified existing social vulnerabilitiesfor many residents.

Barcelona is a rich case for examining thisquestion because the city embarked on anaggressive campaign to add public greenspaces to lower income and historicallyindustrial areas since the late 1990s. Duringthis time, 18 new municipal parks andgardens were built in the northern half ofthe city. In order to understand whether thedistribution of new environmental amenities

became more or less equitable as Barcelonaimplemented its greening agenda, twostudies examined how housing and popu-lation trends changed in the area immediatelysurrounding these parks relative to the largerdistrict in which they are located (Connollyand Anguelovski 2018; Anguelovski et al.2018). The findings below report a condensedversion of these studies.

The recent history of the discourse aroundmunicipal greening programmes in Barcelonamight be characterized as progressively apoli-tical. In the late 1970s, greening was associ-ated with building the public infrastructureof a newly democratic society. The legacyof Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, whichended with his death in 1975, left manySpanish cities with a poor quality-builtenvironment (Sauri, Pares, and Domene2009). While there was a citywide shortageof public parks and gardens (El verd: plante-jament i diagnostic verd, 2010), the mostsocially vulnerable areas of the city had a par-ticularly acute lack of green space. After thefirst municipal democratic elections of 1979,Barcelona’s City Council decided to priori-tize increasing the number of parks andgardens through implementation of newurban plans. During this time, green spaceswere primarily designed to provide neigh-bourhood meeting places and playgroundsfor children and elderly residents (Sauri,Pares, and Domene 2009).

In 1986, when Barcelona was designated asthe home for the 1992 Olympic Games,public green spaces began to be seen as ameans for shifting the city toward large-scale redevelopment (Anguelovski 2014).The construction of public infrastructuremoved during and after this time from anexpression of rising democracy to one ofdemocratic capitalism, and slowly capitaltook over. The City Council negotiateddirectly with developers that built the necess-ary infrastructure for the Olympics ratherthan with neighbourhood groups about thedesign and placement of green space. By theearly 1990s, public parks design and con-struction was strongly linked to economic

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 423

development and often used private funds(Montaner 2004; Sauri, Pares, and Domene2009; Anguelovski 2014). The municipalityfocused on the last of the large areas of for-merly industrial space such as the PobleNou neighbourhood where a luxury residen-tial project was anchored by the secondlargest public park in Barcelona. The parkwas the central component of the project’ssustainability strategy but was widely criti-cized for being designed as an amenity forthe high-end condominiums on its border(Anguelovski 2014).

When thinking through the equity impactsof the increasingly development-orientedvision of greening in the new Barcelonaeconomy focused on high human capitalindustrial growth, there are several groups ofpeople that might be considered vulnerableto displacement. These groups include lowerincome residents, residents with a lower edu-cation level, elderly residents living alone,and low-income residents from countries inthe Global South. In order to examinewhether greening was potentially creatingnew social vulnerabilities for these groups,spatial analysis identified whether areas nearparks experienced above normal changes bycomparing the trends within 500 m of parksto those of the districts in which the parksare located. As well, the statistical significanceof these trends was measured by runningglobal ordinary least squares (OLS) regressionto specify the model and local geographicallyweighted regressions (GWR) in order to ident-ify where parks were likely playing a causalrole in the changes observed. In order to deter-mine the parks and gardens that appear to beassociated with green gentrification, onepoint was assigned to parks with buffer areasthat outpaced their districts and the pointswere summed to form a composite scorefrom the five indicators identified in Table 1.

Using these indicators, our studies foundthat several parks built in a time of significanturban revitalization associated with theOlympic Games experienced strong greengentrification (4 out of 4 rating). In addition,parks built later around redevelopment Ta

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424 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

schemes experienced moderate green gentrifi-cation (3 out 4 rating). All other parks locatedin the northwestern and central zones of Bar-celona did not produce strong indicators ofgreen gentrification trends (1 or 2 out of 4rating). The GWR findings supported theseareas as those where distance to parks was asignificant predictor of the given indicator,suggesting that these findings were notrandom artefacts of other geographic pro-cesses. Figure 1 summarizes the results,merging the buffer areas for parks that areclose together.

In sum, these results indicate that theimpacts of park creation in socially vulnerableneighbourhoods depend on their context of

creation, setting, and overall built environ-ment. Parks located in extremely dense dis-tressed neighbourhoods such as the Raval inCiutat Vella (which also tend to be muchsmaller parks) or in neighbourhoods withstock associated with late dictatorship orearly transition housing projects did not gen-erate green gentrification. In contrast, green-ing in neighbourhoods with an industrialhistory and 19th or early 20th centuryhousing stock and with much open vacantspace is being capitalized upon by real estateinvestors and tech firms in a process of‘green gap’ capture. We also found that moreworking-class ‘greened’ neighbourhoodssuch as Nou Barris seemed to see an increase

Figure 1 Areas where strong, moderate, and no green gentrification seem to be occurring in Barcelona.

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 425

in the proportion of socially-vulnerable resi-dents. While those residents might be livingcloser to green space, those green spaces areoften next to highways and in areas withworse housing conditions. The next steps areto examine how green amenities can be intro-duced to redeveloping districts with strongdevelopment pressures without making theminstruments for gentrification.

Social vulnerability in greening, riskreduction, and growth containmentinitiatives: Medellin, Colombia

The second case example we examineresponds to the overall question: Howdoes city rebranding around ‘green’ and‘resilience’ discourses and initiatives createdisplacement and exclusion? Here, weargue that containment, resilience, andbeautification takes place through processesof land-grabbing and greening of poorer

areas and transforming them into utopianlandscapes of pleasure and privilege for afew—under discourses of ‘public good’interventions.

In 2012, the Municipality of Medellin, acity widely recognized for its daring ‘socialurbanism5’ projects as tools for addressingviolence and revitalizing self-built settle-ments, launched a new flagship project, theMetropolitan Green Belt. With a vision ofurban growth and landslide risk reduction,the Green Belt is planned to be a 72 km2

green corridor around the city. Possiblyaffecting 230,000 residents living above an1800-meter altitude limit, it is divided into aZone of Protection (with nature reservesand ecosystem protection projects), a Zoneof Transition (with new parks and risk miti-gation measures for neighbourhoods lackingbasic amenities), and a Zone of Consolidation(an area that requires structural housing andinfrastructure interventions, including the

Figure 2 The sectors of Medellin affected by the Green Belt. Source: Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano (EDU).

426 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

construction of new social housing) (AgudeloPatino 2013) (See Figure 2).

One of the more acute conflicts thatemerged in the context of the Green Belthas been the relocation of thousands of low-income residents from ‘non-recoverableareas’ because of estimated high risk of land-slides or flooding. However, according toresidents, the municipality is purposely over-estimating the number and size of these non-recoverable risk areas to justify housing clear-ance and green infrastructure construction.Such a controversy reflects the socio-politicalnature of risk assessments and the conflictsthat arise between top-down technical assess-ments and local knowledge. There are indeeddifferences between the rational ‘mapping’ ofhouseholds living in ‘non-recoverable riskareas’ (called the Geological Aptitude Map,a map of geological risks associated withdifferent land types) and residents’ estimates.Urban planning experts, engineers, and archi-tects also consider that the municipality hasnot conducted adequate studies on risk miti-gation (Anguelovski et al. 2016).

Personal field interviews conducted inMedellin in 2013 and 2016 also reveal thatthe municipality has not effectively respondedto the concerns of low-income communitiesabout relocation. For instance, in Comuna 8,community members opposed a planned relo-cation of 6600 residents (out of 14,750 resi-dents) to further away public housing in talltower-type buildings, many of them locatedaway from jobs, sources of income, and valu-able social networks (Personal Interviews2016). Residents impacted by this green infra-structure perceive a risk of double trauma anddisplacement—once from the Colombiancountryside in the context of the armed con-flict and once more from the Comunas topalomeras (high-rise social housing build-ings). Furthermore, the number of new unitsseems so far lower than the number of lostunits. By contrast, higher-income neighbour-hoods (El Poblado, Cedro Verde, Alto de lasPalmas) and gated communities like Alto deEscobero are not being displaced and evenfurther expand their development in areas

close to forest reserves that lie beyond theborder of the city. This last point illustratesthe distributive inequities embedded in theGreen Belt planning.

Also, the discourses and images built aroundthe Green Belt indicate a municipal plan toattract outside visitors while dispossessinglong-time residents of their green space forthe formal recreation and esthetical pleasureof historically more privileged groups (partici-pant observation of community meetings,2013; interviews, 2016). On the Pan deAzucar mountain, the municipality has builtmultiple hiking trails and bike paths thatrequired the use of 10 meter-deep concretepillars and the construction of stone and con-crete-based paths and walls, without consider-ing the existing walking paths built and usedby residents (Chu, Anguelovski, and Roberts2017). Here the city seems to have imposed avision of what is an aesthetically and sociallyacceptable style of manicured, disciplined,and controlled nature, recreational use, andlandscape while failing to recognize the‘green’ identities and practices of local resi-dents, especially those around ecologicalpreservation and nature-based recreation(interviews 2016). By doing so, the GreenBelt has also benefited the constructionlobby that contributes to the constructionboom in the city (i.e. Camacol). Such anapproach confirms many communitymembers’ and experts’ fear that the GreenBelt will introduce more social-spatial inequi-ties and that it represents a green mirage forresidents whose cosmology and socio-ecologi-cal relationship have been invisibilized (Inter-views 2016). Municipal councillors andplanning experts concur with community con-cerns, and further argue that such a mega-project may raise land prices, lead to local taxincreases, and eventually change the socialcomposition of hillside communities becauseof increased pressure on land prices.

In addition to losing access to vernaculargreen spaces around the Pan de Azucarmountain, low-income residents are losingaccess to land used for fresh food pro-duction, on which their livelihoods often

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 427

depend. On the bottom part of the Pan deAzucar, the municipality formerly parcelledout land for urban agriculture, but this landbenefits only a few families, those who selltheir products in high-end markets ratherthan within the community itself. This for-malized urban agriculture contrasts with,overlooks, flattens, and eliminates existingfarming community practices and food net-works. It imposes an orderly, formal, andcontrolled imaginary for urban greeningand agriculture while ignoring existing sus-tainable land uses.

In addition, these interventions reflectpoor practices of public engagement and rec-ognition of low-income communities’ devel-opment visions by the staff from themunicipal company EDU and exacerbateprocedural justice concerns. Residents in theComuna 1, 3, and 8 are particularly vocalabout the need for a different type of plan-ning process, one that respects Medellin’s tra-dition of social urbanism and co-productionof neighbourhood territorial redevelopmentplans and projects.

In sum, the case of the Medellin Green Beltreveals that the uneven enforcement of landuse regulations and evictions in the name ofenvironmental risk management and growthcontrol and in the context of green infrastruc-ture planning results in wealthier formalsettlements being given the right to remain inplace and at the same time benefit from newgreen spaces. At the same time, poor informalcommunities are displaced or relocated,especially so as new real estate investorsbank on ‘green gaps’ in the slopes of Medellinand further build the city. Green and resiliencediscourses and interventions can producesocial and physical isolation and distress forvulnerable urban residents and thus contributeto further social vulnerability (Connolly2018). They might also produce newly re-designed and re-created ‘natural’ utopian land-scapes of pleasure and recreation for specificgroups, while overlooking the importance ofsocial cohesion, political recognition, and live-lihood protection for the long-term wellbeingof low-income communities.

Uneven access to a greener and more resilientNew Orleans

The third case example responds to the ques-tion: How does climate adaptation planningtowards living with water in the city omitand invisibilize the most marginalizedgroups in the city? We argue that, in additionto ignoring community voice via residentparticipation (an important though some-what obvious critique), climate adaptationplanning can also invisibilize the latentlyracialized geographies within which it pro-poses solutions and spatial agendas andthereby exacerbate their claims to space andnew amenities and decreased vulnerability.

Much has been written about post-Katrinaurban planning (Hartman 2006; Kates et al.2006; Peck 2006; Ehrenfeucht and Nelson2011; Brand 2015), though less of this workfocuses on the emergence of the greenparadox in the post-Katrina redevelopmentlandscape. Many Post-Katrina planningefforts, including the city’s own post-KatrinaMaster Plan, centred on climate adaptationfor this low-lying and increasingly vulnerabledelta city6 and, more recently, on reclaimingwater as an asset and urban amenity. Briefly,three major planning efforts (the 2005–2006Bring New Orleans Back Commission, 2007City Council / Lambert Plans, and 2007Unified New Orleans Plan) led up to andinformed the city’s Master Plan (adopted in2010) and its 2015 Comprehensive ZoningOrdinance (CZO). Each of these planningprocesses focused, to varying extents, onissues of stormwater management, subsidenceand flooding from heavy rainfall events. Paral-lel to these planning processes, two other plan-ning processes (the 2006–2010 DutchDialogues and 2011–2013 Urban WaterPlan) focused specifically on re-envisioninghow the city lives with water.

Based on Dutch stormwater managementpractices and led largely by a local architec-ture firm (later joined by local and inter-national water management planners), theDutch Dialogues and Urban Water Plan pro-posed wide scale visions for new water

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infrastructure systems across Orleans,St. Bernard and Jefferson Parishes. Fundedby a $2.5 million grant from Louisiana’s Dis-aster Recovery Community DevelopmentBlock Grants (CDBG-DR), the final planincludes an analysis of the regional storm-water management problems and identifiesstormwater management principles thatinclude slowing and storing stormwater(rather than pumping it out) and living withwater (rather than trying to controlnature).7 While city led planning processesall involved citizen participation (to varyingextents), substantive citizen participationwas not the focus of the Dutch Dialoguesnor the Urban Water Plan planning pro-cesses. This omission is an important aspectof how these frameworks invisibilize margin-alized communities and the potential unequalrepercussions of environmental interventionsin New Orleans.

To be clear, the push to rethink stormwatermanagement centralizes latent issues of early20th century development models that haveexacerbated subsidence in the city’s lower-lying geographies and a forced-drainagestormwater system that is not only agingand flawed, but also contributes to subsi-dence and thus increased flooding.8 The cityoften receives rainfall at rates faster than itspumps can alleviate street level flooding,which contributes to personal propertydamage. Yet by pumping water out of thecity, this same pumping system contributesto subsidence by prohibiting groundwaterfrom infiltrating soils. In addition to floodingand subsidence, the Urban Water Plan arguesthat a third problem of wasted water assetsresults from the city’s pump and drainapproach to managing stormwater, resultingin a loss of potential public space and urbanamenities.9

The Urban Water Plan proposes to createsmaller scale urban blueways and raingardens and to redevelop over a large scalethe city’s drainage canals and new water-ways.10 As such, the proposals also vary intheir scale of investment for new publicinfrastructure in a city already taxed

in terms of its resources. Estimates forimplementation range from $2.9 billion for‘basic’ implementation to $6.2 billion for‘intensive’ implementation (Fisch 2014, 48).Yet while we can think of these typologiesand the concept of living with water as aneffort to make this delta city’s blue contextmore visible, it is assumed that by trans-forming the city’s water and drainage infra-structure into an asset and enhancing thelocal green infrastructure we will enhancethe value of public life while simultaneouslyimproving the city’s ecological functions(See Figure 3).

As a spatial imaginary (Lipsitz 2011) and asocio-ecological utopia however, living withwater is imposed onto the city through ananalysis of the city’s environmental historyand context and not its deeply and histori-cally racialized landscapes, all of which havebeen exacerbated by the neoliberal redeve-lopment trajectory of the city post-Katrina(Johnson 2011; Brand 2015) (See Figure 3).Thus, the proposals and metrics for successare often abstracted from their possibleimpacts on lower-income communities ofcolour. In other words, while the floodingissues in New Orleans do directly impact citi-zens across race and class, water does notflood into an equal urban landscape.

The living with water framework, whichthe city has largely adopted in its own 2017resiliency plan,11 invisibilizes minority com-munities through its superficial engagementwith the ways in which racial inequality andurban development are (and have alwaysbeen) geographically linked. While the city’surban morphology has distinct environ-mental components, it also has a longhistory of racial geographic structuring thatpositions different communities and bodiesdifferently within the post-Katrina recoverycontext (Brand 2012). Superficial commit-ments to equity or an equality based distribu-tional approach rather than an equity baseddistributional approach (Brand 2015) do notin the short or long run address the everydayrealities of racialized inequality that commu-nities of colour live within. It is this context

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 429

and this type of green mirage that go largelyunaddressed in the move to live with water.

Importantly, our recent research (and thatof other scholars) is finding that the full-scale adoption of these visions fails to centra-lize the unequal repercussions of urban greenredevelopment (i.e. Birch et al. 2016). In acomparative study of New Orleans’s Resi-liency Plan and the city’s other post-Katrinagreening projects, Birch et al. (2016) arguethat the city’s substantial public investmentsare, coupled with increasing private develop-ment, contributing to green gentrificationacross the city. Despite its own rhetoricalcommitments to social justice and equity,the city’s own metrics for implementationfocus on raising property values in a city,especially those located along the waterfront,that is facing gentrification and real estatespeculation (Birch et al. 2016), and buildingnew development projects. Environmentalplanning, despite its language of enhancingthe aesthetic assets of the city and mitigatingflood damage and the fact that the

environmental benefits of these urban green-ing projects are minimal, contributes tounequal urban greening in a city facingexacerbated housing affordability issuessince Katrina and ongoing geographic andenvironmental racism.

In addition to these critiques, which arenecessary to the work of reimagining a morejust green landscape, redevelopment visionssuch as the Urban Water Plan are themselvesmaking a redistributive claim on the state forsubstantial public investment toward unjustsocial outcomes that are couched in a languagethat obfuscates these impacts, selling a visionof a green urban metropolis at the potentialexpense of everyone’s right to the city(Birch et al. 2016; Fisch 2014). There is anintentionality in this vision that, like projectsuncritically drawing on New York’s HighLine as a model, goes dangerously unad-dressed. Green equity planning wouldnecessitate dealing with the inequities thatunderlie the landscapes within which thesevisions propose a new future. New Orleans,

Figure 3 Rendering, Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan. Source: Greater New Orleans Regional Economic Devel-opment, Inc.

430 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

both pre- and post-Katrina, is not unlikeother American cities in its latent andongoing landscapes of deeply racialized andenvironmental inequality. Without a lensthat specifically takes up these issues withina redistributive framework, green plans suchas the Urban Water Plan, cannot address thespecificity of these contexts and will onlyserve to further generate ‘green gaps’ thatbenefit a few.

Concluding remarks

Today, a large ‘urban greening orthodoxy’scholarship focuses on the numerous health,ecological, social, and cultural benefits ofnew green amenities while obfuscating thefact that large scale or flagship urban greeningstrategies are creating new socio-spatialinequalities over the short and long term. Itis not disputed that greening providesbenefits, but simply based on the mass of itsfindings and by using seemingly a-politicallanguage and discourse around urban sustain-ability, urban greening projects, and partici-patory green planning processes, suchscholarship overlooks how racial inequalities,social hierarchies, and environmental privi-lege intersect in new urban greening projects.Building on these scholarly findings, as wehave argued throughout this paper, underapparently technical and science- (or engin-eering-) driven agendas such as ‘greening,’‘sustainability,’ ‘resilience,’ or ‘climate adap-tation,’ municipalities can champion greeninginterventions which create new socio-spatialinequities.

In fact, greening is now a successful andproductive strategy for urban capital accumu-lation and for accumulating benefits from‘green gaps’ while being presented as apublic good strategy offering numerousbenefits for all under an optimistic andutopian vision for a promising, green, and sus-tainable future. When public officials, plan-ners, and scholars defend the argument ofthe ‘public good,’ they indeed often deempha-size asymmetric power dynamics and conflict

over resources, which might end up recreatingunjust outcomes (Flyvbjerg 1998; Yiftacheland Huxley 2000). In this case the publicgood is framed within a green utopia andunjust outcomes arise over access to andbenefit from green amenities in the mid- andlong-term. Because public problems cannotbe solved by reaching toward a single notionof what is good in the eyes of those whohave the most power, urbanization cannot bemade sustainable through a solitary vision ofgreen nor can more just urban landscapes bemade via a vision that obfuscates injustice.

As our case examples reveal, in Barcelona,the creation of parks and gardens in moresocially and environmentally-deprived areasseems to have contributed to substantialchange in demographic and real estate vari-ables to the detriment of lower-incomegroups, non-college educated residents, andresidents whose nationality is from theGlobal South. Other newly-greened neigh-bourhoods seem to have gained residentsfrom these backgrounds, but those neigh-bourhoods are also further away from thecity centre, surrounded (in some cases) byhighway networks, with poor housing con-ditions, and lower-quality or lower-accessi-bility parks. In Medellin, containment,beautification, and resilience through thegreening of poor areas and through modernforms of land grabbing are transforminglow-income areas into landscapes of pleasureand into controlled and ordered nature for afew. In the process of green infrastructureconstruction, many residents of low-incomeneighbourhoods are being dispossessed ofcommunity assets for the ‘greatest publicgood.’ In contrast to traditional gentrificationprocesses, they are not replaced by wealthynewcomers (at least not yet), but by greeneryand by outside visitors (and constructors)who shape it, control it, and benefit from it.Last, in New Orleans, new green infrastruc-ture might contribute to higher propertyvalues through the planned expansion ofwaterfront development. It also includesnew ‘privileged’ narratives of bringing backthe creative (white) middle class to the city,

ANGUELOVSKI ET AL.: FROM LANDSCAPES OF UTOPIA TO THE MARGINS OF THE GREEN URBAN LIFE 431

while overlooking long-term inequities andracialized landscapes in land use develop-ment. Such developments risk creating newecological enclaves of blue and green spacesand related geographies of exclusion.

In this essay, we demonstrate that whilegreen urban planning is often framed as apo-litical with win-win benefits for all urbanresidents, it is in fact increasingly used as apolitical tool for urban redevelopment andfor addressing ‘green gaps’ while benefitinglocal and global elites. Our cases revealexamples of the lack of planning for equityin municipal neighbourhood sustainabilityprojects and the absence of attention givento distributional, identity-based, and rep-resentational equity. The gentrification andsocial or physical displacement pressuresgreen projects seem to trigger or acceleratein the cases presented here, together withthe inability of the planning profession toaddress such impacts, create a green paradoxfor EJ organizations who may face tragiccircumstances for efforts to make citiesmore sustainable where they are unable todefend greening projects that they longfought for and increasingly perceive greenamenities as GreenLULUs for socially vul-nerable residents. As a result, community-based counter movements against inequitableurban redevelopment and greening might bereduced to defensive moves and compro-mises, especially so in the technocraticdecision-making and exclusionary processesembedded in traditional planning practice(Agyeman 2013).

Yet, we as scholars of urban planning andgeography do not mean to argue that greenplanners intentionally target low-incomeneighbourhoods and communities of colourfor increasing the profit of developers andfor marginalizing vulnerable residents fromthe benefits of green projects. Our researchpoints to the fact that planners are morelikely to neglect the impacts of their planson the exchange values of real estate andthat they are often imprisoned in a logic ofcompetitive urbanism and city (re)branding.That said, it is also true that they are

becoming more aware of the impacts ofgreen planning, cannot pretend to ignorewhat they are, and might even sometimes becontributing to them through plans anddecisions they support.

We also defend ourselves from thedangerous argument (and what might beseen as a next logical recommendation andstep), which would be to call for the elimin-ation of new or restored green amenities inlow-income neighbourhoods or commu-nities of colour. Such decisions wouldfurther marginalize residents, concentrategreen or sustainability investment in richerneighbourhoods, and eventually build newcycles of abandonment and disinvestmentin distressed communities. By developingan argument around GreenLULUs and theparadox furthered by green utopias dis-course, we aim at re-politicizing an a- orpost-political sustainability discourse andpointing at the fact that green projects donot always—by far—bring win-win out-comes for all in the city. The question andchallenge thus becomes: Which regulations,policies, planning schemes, funding mech-anisms, and partnerships—and at whichlevels—can address the unwanted and newunequal impacts of green planning? Inshort, greening for whom?

This essential question demands a trans-formation of environmental planningpractices, including tighter connectionsand commitments to public and socialhousing, funds for community wealth cre-ation projects, community land trusts, andeven municipal financing reforms. A trans-formative and equitable planning practice(Friedmann 2000, 2011; Sandercock 2004;Connolly and Steil 2009; Albrechts 2010,2013; Fainstein 2010; Steele 2011; Song2015) would indeed be one that puts raceand class at the centre of green planning,considers how structural institutionalinequalities have historically permeated thelives of marginalized low-income and min-ority residents, weighs in on the unintended(or intended?) role of green planning in(re)producing or aggravating race and class

432 CITY VOL. 22, NO. 3

inequities in regards to accessing environ-mental goods, and substantively addressestensions in order to co-produce newgreener, resilient, and equitable urbancommunities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by theauthors.

Funding

This research contributes to the Maria de Maetzu Unit ofExcellence grant (MDM-2015-0552) at the Institute forEnvironmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at theUniversitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). It has bene-fited from the funding of the ERC Starting Grant Green-LULUs (GA678034) and from the Juan de la CiervaMINECO program (IJCI-2016-31100).

Notes

1 See interview in http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2017/02/the-high-lines-next-balancing-act-fair-and-affordable-development/515391/.

2 See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/in-the-shadows-of-the-high-line.html.

3 See http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2017/02/the-high-lines-next-balancing-act-fair-and-affordable-development/515391/.

4 http://365bond.com.5 Social urbanism refers to large municipal investment

into Medellin’s poorest and most violentneighborhoods during the 2000s, in an attempt toaddress violence and marginalization and toinnovatively transform the city into a more equitableand livable place for all.

6 City of New Orleans, Plan for the 21st Century,2010, https://www.nola.gov/city-planning/master-plan/.

7 See Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan,Principles: Adapting to the Flow, http://livingwithwater.com/blog/urban_water_plan/solutions/.

8 See Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan,Problems: http://livingwithwater.com/blog/urban_water_plan/problems/ and System Designand Analysis Reports: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c14h3k4tbvvlocu/GNO%20Urban%20Water%20Plan_Water%20System%20Analysis_13Oct2013.pdf.

9 See Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan,Problems, http://livingwithwater.com/blog/urban_water_plan/problems/water-assets-wasted/.

10 See Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan,Design: http://livingwithwater.com/blog/urban_water_plan/plan/.

11 City of New Orleans, Resilient New Orleans:Strategic Actions to Shape Our City, 2017, http://resilientnola.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Resilient_New_Orleans_Strategy.pdf.

ORCID

Isabelle Anguelovski http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-5155James Connolly http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7363-8414

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Isabelle Anguelovski, PhD, Research Pro-fessor, Institucio Catalana de Recerca iEstudis Avancats, Universitat Autonoma deBarcelona, Barcelona Lab for UrbanEnvironmental Justice and Sustainability,Institut de Ciencia i Tecnologia Ambientalsand Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investiga-cions Mediques. Email: Isabelle.Anguelovski@uab.cat

James Connolly, PhD, Research ScientistUniversitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barce-lona Lab for Urban Environmental Justiceand Sustainability, Institute for Environ-mental Science and Technology, Institut deCiencia i Tecnologia Ambientals and InstitutHospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mediques.Email: JamesJohnTimothy.Connolly@uab.cat

Anna Livia Brand, PhD, Assistant Professorof Landscape Architecture and Environ-mental Planning, College of EnvironmentalDesign, University of California, Berkeley.Email: annalivia@berkeley.edu

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