Hamil Pearsall

From Brown to Green? Assessing Social Vulnerability to Environmental Gentrification in New York City

Although urban sustainability programs frequently include measures that focus on the environmental and economic components of sustainability, the social dimension of sustainability remains underrepresented. An analytical vulnerability approach from global change vulnerability research provides one way to evaluate the distributional impacts and procedural aspects of sustainability initiatives. I apply the vulnerability approach to a study of one contemporary sustainability initiative in New York City, brownfield redevelopment, and identify populations who are vulnerable to the negative impacts of the redevelopment process: elderly residents, renters, and residents receiving government assistance. The results of the case study suggest that the vulnerability approach provides a way to develop indicators of social sustainability for inclusion in existing urban sustainability indicator projects.

Moving out or moving in? Resilience to environmental gentrification in New York City

Dooling [2009. Ecological gentrification: a research agenda exploring justice in the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33 (3), 621–639] and Quastel [2009. Political ecologies of gentrification. Urban Geography, 30 (7), 694–725] reveal several ways in which urban sustainability efforts can produce gentrification, resulting in displacement and financial burden for the most vulnerable urban denizens. In the absence of adequate procedural justice measures, their studies suggest that long-time and vulnerable residents are negatively affected by urban sustainability efforts. However, some residents are able to remain in their neighbourhoods, and this study employs a resilience framework to explore what enables residents to resist displacement in three gentrifying neighbourhoods in New York City. Analysis of 42 interviews with residents in Manhattan and Brooklyn uncovers the multiple strategies residents use to adapt to an increasingly expensive urban environment. The case studies detailed in this paper highlight the multidimensional and context-specific nature of resilience, as well as the multiple scales at which resilience manifests. Gentrification, while reducing resilience at some scales, has not reduced resilience at all scales. Individual-level coping strategies emerge as an important characteristic of resilience during this period of gentrification. This study highlights the connections between scale and resilience and indicates how a better understanding of resilience can further contest the disruptive and socially unjust process of gentrification.

Superfund Me: A Study of Resistance to Gentrification in New York City

Municipal governments have incorporated brownfield redevelopment programmes into urban sustainability plans to encourage the redevelopment of these sites into productive uses. The combination of government support and developer initiatives indicates potential for the gentrification of brownfields. However, developer proposals to expedite the conversion of contaminated properties along the Gowanus Canal in New York City into residential and commercial venues resulted in the addition of the canal to the US National Priorities List (NPL) of uncontrolled hazardous sites, rendering the site less attractive to developers. It is argued that the listing process became an effective tool in the struggle to resist gentrification in the Gowanus Canal neighbourhood. Place stigmatisation slowed developer-driven redevelopment and the NPL designation allows for a comprehensive remediation approach and increases opportunities for community input. This study provides an interesting case study of resistance to developer-driven ‘smart-city’ planning that represents a meaningful departure from neoliberal urbanism.

Linking the stressors and stressing the linkages: Human—environment vulnerability and brownfield redevelopment in New York City

This paper suggests that the mitigation of one hazard—soil contamination—can unintentionally affect vulnerabilities and perceived vulnerabilities to additional stressors in the local human—environment system through a study of brownfield redevelopment in New York City. This study employs a Vulnerability Scoping Diagram (VSD) approach to identify components that contribute to vulnerabilities and perceived vulnerabilities in the local community, based on the thematic analysis of 55 interviews with residents from four neighbourhoods with brownfield redevelopment activities in New York City. This analysis of resident observations and perceptions of post-redevelopment hazard conditions indicates how mitigating vulnerability to one urban hazard—soil contamination—has the potential to affect vulnerabilities and perceived vulnerabilities to additional hazards like flooding and air pollution because of the complex linkages among multiple stressors. A causal model of vulnerability to the unintended impacts of brownfield redevelopment is subsequently developed to further demonstrate the interactive linkages among exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to multiple stressors. This study also provides measures that stakeholders can monitor and evaluate over time to track the socio-spatial and environmental implications of brownfield redevelopment and subsequent changes in the local human—environment system.

Assessing green gentrification in historically disenfranchised neighborhoods: a longitudinal and spatial analysis of Barcelona

ABSTRACT To date, little is known about the extent to which the creation of municipal green spaces over an entire city addresses social or racial inequalities in the distribution of environmental amenities – or whether such an agenda creates contributes to green gentrification. In this study, we evaluate the effects of creating 18 green spaces in socially vulnerable neighborhoods of Barcelona during the 1990s and early 2000s. We examined the evolution over time of six socio-demographic gentrification indicators in the areas close to green spaces in comparison with the entire districts. Our results indicate that new parks in the old town and formerly industrialized neighborhoods seem to have experienced green gentrification. In contrast, most economically depressed areas and working-class neighborhoods with less desirable housing stock and more isolated from the city center gained vulnerable residents as they became greener, indicating a possible redistribution and greater concentration of vulnerable residents through the city.

Contesting and Resisting Environmental Gentrification: Responses to New Paradoxes and Challenges for Urban Environmental Justice:

This paper analyzes environmental gentrification (EG), or the exclusion, marginalization, and displacement of long-term residents associated with sustainability planning or green developments and amenities, such as smart growth, public park renovations, and healthy food stores. We consider how activists, communities, and urban planners address these unjust processes and outcomes associated with EG and how these strategies compare to those used by environmental justice (EJ) activists. Our evaluation of relevant literature indicates several similarities with EJ resistance tactics, including collective neighborhood action, community organizing, and direct tactics. We also identify several different strategies enabled by certain urban environmental conditions, such as leveraging environmental policies and taking an active role in neighborhood redevelopment planning processes, collaborating with ‘gentrifiers,’ and creating complementary policies to manage displacement and exclusion. Our analysis indicates a need for more research on how activists can better assert the social and political dimensions of sustainability and their right to the city, and how green and sustainable cities can achieve justice and equity.

Exploring youth socio-spatial perceptions of higher education landscapes through sketch maps

Previous research on broadening participation in higher education and Science Technology Engineering and Math has inadequately examined the role of place. This article explores the socio-spatial perceptions of youth of a college campus and changes in perceptions youth experience during their transition from being a university neighbor to becoming part of a university community. This study uses sketch maps and qualitative Geographic Information Systems to document the changing perceptions of 43 youth aged 14–18 during their participation in a university program. The results suggest that some students started to identify with campus spaces as a university student or employee rather than as a neighbor of the university.

Examining the Impact of Environmental Factors on Quality of Life Across Massachusetts

Several studies indicate that there are significant relationships among quality of life, green vegetation, and socioeconomic conditions, particularly in urban environments. The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) to compare two weighting and aggregation techniques, data envelopment analysis (DEA) and principal components analysis (PCA), in the development of a socioeconomic index; and (2) to test for and explore spatial variation in the relationship between socioeconomic index and environmental variables using geographically weighted regression (GWR). The analysis was conducted at the census block group level in Massachusetts. First, DEA and PCA were used to generate two separate socioeconomic indexes. Second, the relationship between these indexes and environmental variables including percentage impervious surface, percentage industrial land use, percentage land used for waste, and traffic density was modeled using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and GWR. The GWR models explained more variance in the relationship than the OLS models and indicated that there is considerable spatial variation in the character and the strength of this relationship. The results of the GWR analyses were similar between the models generated using DEA- and PCA-derived indexes, indicating that the results were corroborative. The study concludes that the environmental variables are generally a strong predictor of the socioeconomic conditions at the scale of census block group; however, there is substantial geographical variation in the strength and the character of this relationship. The results of this study also suggest that various weighting and aggregation methods should be tested in every study that uses or creates composite indicators.

Forest fragmentation in Massachusetts, USA: a town-level assessment using Morphological spatial pattern analysis and affinity propagation

Forest fragmentation has been studied extensively with respect to biodiversity loss, disruption of ecosystem services, and edge effects although the relationship between forest fragmentation and human activities is still not well understood. We classified the pattern of forests in Massachusetts using fragmentation indicators to address these objectives: 1) characterize the spatial pattern of forest fragmentation in Massachusetts towns using Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA); and (2) identify regional trends using archetypal towns in relation to town history, geography and socioeconomic characteristics. Six fragmentation indicators were calculated using MSPA for each town to represent patterns and processes of fragmentation. We then used these indicators and the proportion of forested land to group towns across Massachusetts with similar patterns of fragmentation. Six representative towns typify different types of forest fragmentation, and illustrate the commonalities and differences between different fragmentation types. The objective selection of representative towns suggests that they might be used as the target of future studies, both in retrospective studies that seek to explain current patterns and in analyses that predict future fragmentation trends.

Diversification and Adaptive Capacity across Scales in an Emerging Post-Frontier Landscape of the Usumacinta Valley, Chiapas, Mexico

SUMMARY This study investigates impacts and implications of recent landscape change in rural Mexico, through a case study in the Usumacinta Valley of eastern Chiapas. It addresses types of livelihood diversification strategies associated with changing land cover from 1984–2013, and the processes and roles that vary by actors and their scales of influence. After widespread forest loss and the expansion of extensive cattle ranching during the twentieth century, the region has exhibited several new economic and livelihood strategies in recent decades. Results from a combination of satellite imagery analysis and individual interviews from a wide range of land use decision makers demonstrate the dynamism of this landscape. The introduction of new crops, including teak, rubber and oil palm, as well as off-farm work, continue to shape the social and physical landscape and differentially impact the adaptive capacities of residents. Results indicate that small landholders often need to incorporate more crops into their agricultural portfolio and increase off-farm activities, leading to an atomization of livelihood strategies. By contrast, large landholders are able to pursue more specialized and lucrative agricultural opportunities.