A new Metropolis publication authored by BCNUEJ aims to spark action among urban policymakers and practitioners in keeping with its title Bringing Nature Back to the Metropolis for All.
As local and regional governments worldwide strive to renature metropolitan areas and improve access to green spaces, they face many challenges in assuring that greening benefits all residents. Historical and ongoing exclusionary development practices have led to some of the most daunting environmental injustices and deepened social inequalities across neighborhoods and municipalities. As cities increasingly market themselves as green, smart and resilient hubs, driven by economic growth, green gentrification and the subsequent displacement of socially vulnerable residents has become a rising concern.
A protest sign against real estate speculation in Washington, D.C.
This new report unpacks these challenges and outlines how greening can be more equitable, inclusive and implemented to lend long-term support to the health, safety, diversity and social cohesion of neighborhoods and protect socially and environmentally vulnerable residents. It gives special emphasis to 4 areas in which greening has both beneficial and paradoxical effects: health, climate resilience, children and gender.
The report draws extensively on cases from metropolitan areas around the world of differing cultural, economic and political contexts, including Seoul’s restoration of the Cheonggyecheon Stream, Shiraz’s Green City reforestation project, Cape Town and Gothenburg’s green bonds program, Barcelona’s 30 km Llobregat River Park crossing 16 municipalities, Bucharest’s Ion Creangă Park project for social cohesion, Philadelphia’s Green City Clean Waters plan to reduce stormwater runoff, São Paulo’s Connect the Dots circular economy project, and the women-led community gardens of Quito’s urban agriculture program.
Urban farming in Nantes, France
Lastly, the report provides recommendations for advancing justice in urban greening. Based on extensive research, these policies and practices can support greener, more just metropolitan spaces while preventing displacement that results from the upgrading of environmental amenities in socially vulnerable and long-disinvested neighborhoods and towns.
Bringing Nature Back to the Metropolis for All is available on the Metropolis website in English, French and Spanish.
Top photo: Spray fountain in Bremen Street Park, East Boston, US
