Uneven development of the sustainable city: shifting capital in Portland, Oregon

Abstract

Portland, Oregon is renowned as a paradigmatic "sustainable city". Yet, despite popular conceptions of the city as a progressive ecotopia and the accolades of planners seeking to emulate its innovations, Portland's sustainability successes are inequitably distributed. Drawing on census data, popular media, newspaper archives, city planning documents, and secondary-source histories, we attempt to elucidate the structural origins of Portland's "uneven development", exploring how and why the urban core of this paragon of sustainability has become more White and affluent while its outer eastside has become more diverse and poor. We explain how a "sustainability fix"-in this case, green investment in the city's core-ultimately contributed to the demarcation of racialized poverty along 82 nd Avenue, a major north-south arterial marking the boundary of East Portland. Our account of structural processes taking place at multiple scales contributes to a growing body of literature on eco-gentrification and displacement and inner-ring suburban change while empirically demonstrating how Portland's advances in sustainability have come at the cost of East Portland's devaluation. Our "30,000 foot" perspective reveals systemic patterns that might then guide more fine-grained analyses of particular political-socio-cultural processes, while providing cautionary insights into current efforts to extend the city's sustainability initiatives using the same green development model.

A critical physical geography of urban soil contamination

“…Whether or not they were crafted with intention, these structures effectively demarcate flows of investment and disinvestment, and even ''quarantine'' devaluation to prevent its impacts from bleeding over. This process of ''demarcated devaluation'' (McClintock, 2011) has historically been highly racialized, through exclusionary zoning, redlining, and neighborhood covenants (Boone et al, 2009;Goodling et al, 2015;Sugrue, 2005). Capital's transformation of the physical environment thus occurs in an uneven manner (Harvey, 2007;Smith, 2008), the contemporary cityscape a map of previous cycles of capital accumulation and devaluation, a palimpsest of construction, decay, and renewal.…”

Contradictions of the Climate‐Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco‐Gentrification and Housing Justice

“…created ecological improvements, but not at such a scale as to attract massive new investment), neighborhood change would be modest enough to avoid major shifts in real-estate valuation. This could be applied to any number of the ecological gentrification problems that have been widely studied in the literature, including parks, gardens, green spaces, natural grocery stores and urban forests (see, for example, Quastel, 2009;Pearsall, 2010;Checker, 2011;Curran and Hamilton, 2012;Gould and Lewis, 2012;Bryson, 2013;Goodling et al, 2015;Anguelovski, 2016), where the connection between a new environmental amenity and the potential for displacement is clear. This could be applied to any number of the ecological gentrification problems that have been widely studied in the literature, including parks, gardens, green spaces, natural grocery stores and urban forests (see, for example, Quastel, 2009;Pearsall, 2010;Checker, 2011;Curran and Hamilton, 2012;Gould and Lewis, 2012;Bryson, 2013;Goodling et al, 2015;Anguelovski, 2016), where the connection between a new environmental amenity and the potential for displacement is clear.…”

Community Theories of Change: Linking Environmental Justice to Sustainability through Stakeholder Perceptions in Milwaukee (WI, USA)

“…Sustainability initiatives call for a more holistic view of local economic, social, and environmental conditions [55,56], and interventions associated with this viewpoint may be better able to engage with the inherent unevenness of social and environmental benefits and burdens. For instance, improving transportation and access from lower income communities to become connected to natural spaces, jobs, and healthy grocery stores is a goal in a variety of city-wide sustainability plans [57,58,59], yet this lack of local access is also considered a form of injustice, as evidenced by participants in our study. Recasting sustainability analysis and planning through the lens of environmental justice provides an opportunity to increase the reach and effectiveness of local interventions.…”