Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa

Venter, Zander S.; Shackleton, Charlie M.; Staden, Francini Van; Selomane, Odirilwe; Masterson, Vanessa A

doi:10.21504/rur.c.5388203.v1

Cited by 9 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…However, examining EJ and EP can also be helpful in different geographical contexts. For example, the persistence of unequal green legacies in South Africa, termed by Venter et al (2020) as "green apartheid," can be framed through EP. Likewise, Unnikrishnan and Nagendra's (2015) account of the privatisation of green commons in Bangalore might be understood as an appropriation of privileges.…”

Section: Solutions For Whom? Challenging Nature-based Solutions Throu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reframing Urban Nature-Based Solutions Through Perspectives of Environmental Justice and Privilege

Bauer

2022

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Since its introduction, the concept of “nature-based solutions” has gained much attention, drawing public funds and private investments. Nature-based solutions conceptualise the use of nature in planning as a cost-efficient and sustainable means to address societal, economic, and ecological challenges. However, this “triple win” premise tends to conceal potentially resulting injustices, such as displacement through green gentrification. While these injustices have attracted the attention of environmental justice scholars, as exemplified by the “just green enough” approach, links to the “nature-based solutions” concept are mostly implicit. Further, the concept of environmental privilege, questioning who benefits from created natural amenities, has rarely been taken up. This article, therefore, argues that environmental justice should be linked closely to nature-based solutions. Supported by a theoretical perspective, the article aims at exploring who benefits from, and who loses out on, urban nature-based solutions processes. It builds on a qualitative literature review of the scholarly landscape on environmental justice and urban greening while linking to nature-based solutions, adding perspectives of environmental privilege. In this, it attempts to offer three important contributions to the current academic discussion. First, the article provides an overview of the debate on urban greening, (in)justice, and environmental privilege. Second, it relates the concept of nature-based solutions to the debate on environmental justice, opening nature-based solutions up for critique and conceptual refinements. Third, it outlines a way forward for reframing nature-based solutions through the lens of environmental justice and privilege. Thus, this article provides a starting point for further discussions on the implementation of just nature-based solutions in cities.

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Section: Solutions For Whom? Challenging Nature-based Solutions Throu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reframing Urban Nature-Based Solutions Through Perspectives of Environmental Justice and Privilege

Bauer

2022

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“…The luxury effect has similarly been shown to predict patterns of wildlife diversity in cities, with low-income areas being less biodiverse than wealthier counterparts (Kinzig et al, 2005;Strohbach et al, 2009;Lerman and Warren, 2011;Davis et al, 2012). While the luxury effect is not present in every city, often as a result of distinct development and social histories (Kendal et al, 2012;Chamberlain et al, 2019), the phenomenon is typically linked with the segregation of greenspaces (e.g., Venter et al, 2020), which is characterized by the park-score metric (Trust for Public Land, 2021). While parks are public features of cities, concerted efforts in investment are required at the city and community levels to develop and maintain parks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban parks are a refuge for birds in park-poor areas

Vasquez

Wood²

2022

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Urban parks provide amenities that support both human and animal communities. However, parks are often unevenly distributed within cities. One metric used to assess the distribution of parks to the public is termed the Park Score. The Park Score is an approach to measure access, acreage, investment, and amenities, and is designed to understand a city’s needs for greenspace, with a major focus on public health. In addition to issues related to public health, a disparity in the distribution of urban parks may pose a barrier for wildlife, such as birds. Yet, this remains unclear. We designed a study to quantify the role of parks in providing a refuge for birds across a park-needs gradient in Greater Los Angeles (LA), a metropolis with one of the lowest park scores in the United States. We had two objectives to address our goal. First, we quantified patterns in habitat features and avian communities within and adjacent to parks. Second, we analyzed relationships among habitat features within and adjacent to parks on avian abundance. We sampled birds and habitat features at 48 parks across a park-needs gradient in L.A. from October to March of 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. We found three lines of evidence supporting the refugia effect of parks. First, habitat features within parks were similar between low- and high-needs areas of LA, and this likely influenced avian abundance patterns, which were also alike. Second, avian communities were generally similar across the park-needs gradient, where parks in high-needs areas harbored birds affiliated with forest and shrub ecosystems. Third, bird abundance patterns were related to numerous habitat features within parks, regardless of where parks occurred in the city. The patterns we uncovered were opposite to what is found in residential areas (i.e., luxury effect), suggesting that parks provide important habitat for birds, whether in high- or low-needs sections of LA. Our results stress the role of parks as refugia in park-poor areas because they provide habitat in otherwise inhospitable urban conditions. Continued investment in park development in high-needs areas can thus potentially be a win-win when considering the benefits to people and birds.

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“…They have less access to green spaces (Venter et al. 2020), safe beaches, fresh and affordable food (Cooke 2012), or well‐resourced educational institutions than white city residents, and are more likely to experience evictions (Stokke and Oldfield 2005), negative environmental and mental health impacts (Charasse‐Pouélé and Fournier 2006; Das‐Munshi et al. 2016), and violent crime (Breetzke 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory Justice in Ordinary Urban Spaces: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting in aPost‐ApartheidNeighbourhood

Anderson

Daya

2022

Antipode

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From 1950 onwards, under the apartheid regime’s Group Areas Act, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes across South Africa’s cities. While the removals from some areas, notably District Six in Cape Town, are well documented and memorialised, many others have largely been erased from public memory. In a context of burgeoning research into issues of spatial justice in Southern cities, this paper puts forward the argument that the concepts and practice of memory and memorialising in urban spaces deserve more attention. Specifically, we suggest that the relationships between space and memory, shaped by collective, public acts of remembering and forgetting, can expand our understanding of what constitutes spatial justice in our cities. Reflecting on a research project conducted in Lower Claremont, a racially mixed, middle‐class suburb in Cape Town that was declared White in 1969 and subsequently dubbed Harfield Village, we explore some of the ways in which remembering and forgetting take place on the urban scale, and their implications for imagining just cities. We ask, too, what possibilities exist for active remembering in this place and in similarly ordinary city spaces. Analysing oral histories from former residents and interviews with current occupants of the neighbourhood, we open up some of the complications in surfacing forgotten stories and creating landscapes of memory. In the final section of the paper we reflect on an art installation that formed part of the research project, and suggest some possibilities for active memory work in our urban spaces.

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Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa

Cited by 9 publications

References 37 publications

Reframing Urban Nature-Based Solutions Through Perspectives of Environmental Justice and Privilege

Reframing Urban Nature-Based Solutions Through Perspectives of Environmental Justice and Privilege

Urban parks are a refuge for birds in park-poor areas

Memory Justice in Ordinary Urban Spaces: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting in aPost‐ApartheidNeighbourhood

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