Ecological Gentrification: A Research Agenda Exploring Justice in the City

Abstract

In this symposium convened to celebrate the tenth anniversary of David Harvey's "Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference", it is fitting to re-visit key themes in that seminal work, including: (1) the mutual reciprocity between social and environmental changes; and (2) the contradictions that emerge from a dialectical analysis of these changes in urban spaces. In challenging scholars to explore the spatial dialectics associated with environmental and social changes, Harvey's political and intellectual project included demonstrating the dialectical linkages between notions of justice and nature in urban environments. My work responds to Harvey's challenge by documenting how the ideological constructions of "home", "homeless" and "public green space" produce and perpetuate injustices experienced materially and spatially in the daily lives of homeless people living in urban green spaces. Using Agamben's notion of bare life as my analytic framework, I explore two issues: (1) the disconnection between notions of home articulated by homeless people living in green spaces and the ideological constructions of homeless espoused by government and planning agencies; and (2) the tensions in urban green spaces resulting from homeless people who have opted to live there because all other options are not viable for them, and the ideological constructions of urban green spaces developed by the city parks department and housed citizens involved in planning for future green spaces in the city. I present the concept of "ecological gentrification", which I define as the implementation of an environmental planning agenda related to public green spaces that leads to the displacement or exclusion of the most economically vulnerable human population - homeless people - while espousing an environmental ethic. I conclude by advocating a robust pluralism of "home" and "public green spaces" as an initial movement towards renegotiating concepts of justice in urban areas. I present short- and long-term strategies for resisting the displacement, exclusion and expulsion of homeless individuals from public urban green spaces with the goal of improving their material and spatial lives, and argue that such strategies require a re-imagined practice of urban ecological planning that draws inspiration from Harvey's commitment to producing spaces of justice, nature and difference. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Les quartiers durables français à l’épreuve de la mixité sociale : de la diversité de l’habitat aux normes d’habiter écologiques

“…Plusieurs auteurs ont montré que les aménités environnementales étaient l'un des ressorts de processus spéculatifs (Smith, 1996;Lees, 2003), produisant une « eco-gentrification » (Quastel, 2009;Dooling, 2009). Deux lectures se distinguent, certains considérant que l'action publique, qui met l'accent sur la qualité de vie, un cadre paysager et des valeurs qui sont celles des classes moyennes ou supérieures, produit des effets de sélection (Béal, 2011).…”

The Contribution of Nature-Based Solutions to Socially Inclusive Urban Development– Some Reflections from a Social-environmental Perspective

“…Existing studies on UGI, UES and NBS have so far a bias with regard to the views and perceptions of middle-class inhabitants and the needs and wants of specific (environment-minded) lifestyle groups; this largely by-passes the views of various precarious population groups including the unemployed, poor families, alternative subcultures, migrants, other minorities (see Berbes-Blazques et al 2016). The ecogentrification debate, again, considers this fact, stating that ecological projects or solutions often designated for a bourgeois aesthetic (Dooling 2009) and that urban gardening and farms picture a niche or "glossy representations of sustainability" (Steinberg 2015). By and large, the views of low-income groups or people not taking part in participatory events tend to be less considered when discussing on green developments, the potentials of UES or NBS as solutions for a sustainable neighbourhood development.…”

“…the evolving debate on eco-or green gentrification. This debate is intrinsically concerned with the relationship between green strategies, general upgrading and displacement (Dooling 2009;Quastel 2009;Banzhaf and McCormick 2007: "clean up and clear out"). The debate focuses on revitalization of urban brownfield sites, creation of new neighbourhoods/new built housing projects and upgrading of neighbourhoods, or, as Curran andHamilton (2012, p. 1027) state:…”

Race, Power and Economic Extraction in Benton Harbor, MI

“…At the former Superfund site, now Hole 14, the very remediation efforts inadvertently created a new carcinogen, vinyl chloride (although the golf course manager has proclaimed the area safe because "you really have to eat this stuff…to cause you any major concerns at all" (Keagle, 2010 Harbor Shores represents a case of "environmental gentrification" (Checker, 2011;Dooling, 2009;Pearsall, 2010), capitalizing on the alleged environmental benefits of their development-a case of the "commodification of nature" (N. . This helped them capture tens of millions from future city tax revenue for "remediating" the polluted land.…”