From greening the climate-adaptive city to green climate gentrification? Civic perceptions of short-lived benefits and exclusionary protection in Boston, Philadelphia, Amsterdam and Barcelona

Abstract

Municipal governments are increasingly promoting green climate-adaptive infrastructure projects to address climate threats and impacts while maximizing multiple socio-environmental benefits. Although these strategies are repeatedly advanced as “win-win” solutions for all, recent literature has drawn attention to numerous negative effects, especially the displacement and exclusion of vulnerable social groups, pointing at yet another layer of climate injustice. In this article, we focus our analysis on the experienced and/or perceived negative social effects of greening interventions for climate adaptation on historically marginalized groups through a cross-case qualitative comparison of four neighborhoods in North American and European cities (Boston, Philadelphia, Amsterdam and Barcelona). Interviews conducted among a diverse sample of civic groups related to each neighborhood reveal that most respondents highly value green resilient infrastructures for their socio-environmental benefits. However, unless these green interventions are implemented alongside policies that guarantee equitable outcomes for all, then civic respondents mostly identify negative social impacts on marginalized residents, making those benefits short-lived. Most prominent negative impacts include physical displacement and the related threat of more displacement together with risks that new (green) real estate developments and resilient greening will remain exclusionary for marginalized groups. Such similar findings across different socio-political contexts point to the need for bolder policies that guarantee that investments in green climate adaptation interventions secure both environmental and social benefits in underinvested and environmentally neglected neighborhoods and mitigate the negative impacts of such interventions, namely sociocultural and physical displacement and overall exclusionary climate protection.