Planning for environmental justice - reducing well-being inequalities through urban greening

Abstract

Urban green spaces provide cultural ecosystem services, and urban policies typically aim to enhance these services by targeting new investments in deprived areas. The implementation of urban greening policies is one way to reduce inequalities in well-being, for example by targeting areas where increased access to green spaces will benefit citizens of low socioeconomic status. Most research has addressed the targeting of green infrastructure development by considering income and access to green spaces, while few studies have considered a multidimensional definition of well-being. The aims of this paper are to i) integrate inputs from the economic and political philosophy literature to propose a broader definition of well-being, including health, education, insecurity, and social relations; ii) develop a criterion to prioritise areas where urban greening would have the greatest impact on well-being inequalities; and iii) apply this criterion to the Paris metropolitan area (Ile-de-France region), a spatially heterogeneous region where areas deprived of access to green spaces are not systematically deprived in other dimensions. Our analysis shows that the city of Paris and the inner suburbs would be targeted when considering inequality in access to green spaces only. The results differ when inequalities in income or multidimensional well-being are taken into account, in which case the northern inner suburbs and some outer suburbs become a higher priority.

Finding the “Heart” in the Green: Conducting a Bibliometric Analysis to Emphasize the Need for Connecting Emotions with Biophilic Urban Planning

“…Many of these benefits, though, especially the personal ones, hinge upon high, consistent levels of access to green spaces [ 71 ]. While White et al [ 52 ] claim “green spaces such as parks are accessible to all” (p. 926), most of the relevant scholarship disagrees with such a claim based on mounting evidence of unequal distribution of/access to green space due to historical environmental injustices that disproportionately affect lower-income, minority areas [ 10 , 69 , 73 , 74 , 75 ]. Research shows green stormwater infrastructure projects in some cities are also inequitably distributed [ 76 ] or constructed without much consideration of social factors [ 77 , 78 ].…”

Greening and Just Cities: Elements for Fostering a South–North Dialogue Based on a Systematic Literature Review

“…The selected articles focusing on distributive justice mainly address, in both the Global North and South, issues regarding whether GI is prioritized in areas inhabited by disadvantaged communities and the extent to which GI projects tend to be concentrated in wealthier areas (Venter et al, 2020;Verheij and Nunes, 2020). This aspect also encompasses methodological approaches to address this problem, such as indexes to identify sites with greater demand for green amenities (Zhu et al, 2019;Liotta et al, 2020). Such research, however, highlights that indexes alone do not guarantee environmental justice as a whole, and it is essential to consider ways to address the other justice dimensions holistically.…”

“…The undesirable side effects resulting from GI and/or NbS implementation reported in recent scholarly research are related mainly to environmental injustice and the deepening of economic inequalities, which are mostly linked to green gentrification processes (Anguelovski et al, 2020). Therefore, environmental justice has been increasingly recognized as a crucial investigatory approach within the context of the new urban agenda for green spaces (Silva et al, 2018;Liotta et al, 2020;Mabon, 2020). Studies in environmental justice since Robert Bullard's classic "Dumping in Dixie" (Bullard, 2008) have exposed the uneven distribution of environmental harm in the territory, with greater exposure to black and more vulnerable populations.…”

Analisis Zonasi Hijau di Jakarta

“…Pembagian zona hijau di perkotaan harus dapat diakses oleh masyarakat untuk mendapatkan keadilan lingkungan dengan berbagai manfaat RTH yang ada (Williams et al 2020). Penerapan kebijakan penghijauan perkotaan merupakan salah satu upaya dalam mengurangi ketimpangan dengan meningkatkan akses ruang hijau dan memberikan manfaat kepada warga (Liotta et al 2020). Ventera et al (2020) menyatakan bahwa akses infrastruktur hijau yang adil bagi masyarakat dan distribusi properti perkotaan yang berkualitas adalah masalah hak asasi manusia.…”