Theory and Practice: Urban Green Space A Case Study of Environmental Decision-Making

University for Life and Peace: Winter School 2021
Andrew Turner Poeppel, New York University

Theory and Practice: Urban Green Space

A Case Study of Environmental Decision-Making

In recent decades, city planners and architects have prioritized the creation of urban green space, along with the preservation and restoration of biodiversity in cities. This emphasis on ‘urban greening’ has followed a transition in the scholarship of environmental and urban studies

– one centered on examining cities as artificial ecosystems with human and nonhuman components that continuously interact. Interest in urban ecology has exposed the structural inequalities and environmental health issues present in metropolitan areas around the world. This has encouraged researchers to examine the perspectives and decision-making processes that lead to unsustainable social and ecological relationships. It has also highlighted the need to design resilient and morally defensible human-environment systems that can readily respond to the ecological threats of the 21st century, including climate change and biodiversity loss. The development of urban open space speaks to this decision-making challenge, and it has led a growing number of policy-makers to recognize the social and ecological dimensions of environmental health initiatives. Urban planners and revitalization strategists define urban open space as land that is generally reserved for green space such parks, or blue space such as recreational areas along waterbodies. The pursuit of urban greening has increased the development of shared open spaces that are often highly maintained to bring economic benefits and create aesthetically pleasing urban landscapes. While the creation of urban open space has become a key policy issue in many metropolitan areas, these initiatives have encouraged researchers to question the ethical consequences of sustainable development projects.

Contemporary scholarship around urban ecology reveals that the ‘greening’ of cities and development of urban open space cannot be separated from issues of equity, justice, and fair- access, and must therefore be analyzed through a synthesis of conceptual frameworks.

Environmental History of the City

Until the 1990s, many environmental historians accepted the anthropological nature- society divide – a structural separation of nature, the environment, ecosystems, and wildlife on one side, and human activity and urban development on the other. This outlook received significant pushback as emerging interdisciplinary research revealed how the process of urbanization alters the ecology of the surrounding artificial landscape. In 1993, historian Martin Melosi argued that environmental historians must thoughtfully consider the impact of the city’s built environment on the natural environment (Melosi, 1993)1. The degree to which humans affect ecosystems through urban development encouraged scholars such as Melosi to move away from the argument that urbanization should not be analyzed through the lens of ecology.

Mainstream environmental historians had, until that point, viewed urbanization as a phenomenon that is separate from surrounding ecological systems and their biological, physical, and chemical processes. In response to this rigid conceptual framework, the discipline of urban environmental history stressed that arriving at a more substantive understanding of coupled human-environment systems requires that scholars move away from a strict division of natural and built environments.

Political Ecology of the City

A growing number of academics representing sub-disciplines of environmental and urban studies shifted away from the nature-society dichotomy throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s, and researchers turned their attention to the intersection of urbanization and structural inequality. The global acceleration of urbanization has continued into the 21st century, and this acceleration has been matched by a growing interest in the social and ecological aspects of building greener and more equitable cities. In his essay, “The Right to the City,” economic geographer David Harvey argues that, “Urbanization has always been… a class phenomenon, since surpluses are extracted from somewhere and from somebody, while the control over their disbursement typically lies in the hands of the few” (Harvey, 2008)2. Harvey’s writings emphasize that the commodification of nature, processes of extractivism, and decisions that perpetuate class inequality are foundational to urbanization itself. As these issues came into focus, urban political ecology (UPE) arose as a conceptual framework that centers its analysis on the political and ethical questions that are integral to environmental phenomenon in cities.

The interdisciplinary collection, In the Nature of Cities, frames the approach of urban political ecologists as distinct from the rigidity of earlier theoretical frameworks: “To the extent that cities are produced through socio-ecological processes, attention has to be paid to the political processes through which particular socio-environmental urban conditions are made and remade.” (Heynen et al, 2006)3. This branch of political ecology was established with the recognition that research into urban environmental practices is inherently political. It underscores that processes of urbanization and the pursuit of sustainable development are directly linked to the existence (and also the perpetuation) of structural economic and racial inequalities. The conceptual framework of UPE encourages reflection on how the pursuit of urban greening and development of open space might be informed by a broader, Marxist critique of capitalism. This critical analysis brings the following questions to the foreground: who has access to urban open space, and how might the greening of a city speak to the existence of economic or racial disparities? Do sustainability initiatives that fail to address underlying mechanisms of structural inequality represent a form of greenwashing? Should this emphasis on the commodification of nature, processes of extractivism, and the inequities they generate encourage skepticism about the development of green space in cities?

The development of urban open space might be viewed through this conceptual framework as a practice that often falls short of promoting genuine social and ecological wellbeing, primarily because it continues to operate within the overriding structure of resource extraction and capital accumulation. This critique highlights that establishing greener cities cannot come at the cost of a more just socio-economic landscape. Efforts to reform the political ecology of a city require far more work than building aesthetically pleasing green spaces that are accessible only to a privileged few – spaces that may even establish the structures and decision- making processes that perpetuate inequality. Although urban political ecologists may take different forms of structural inequality into account (including racial inequality and injustice), it has been suggested that UPE does not necessarily contain a central theory of racial injustice.

Various UPE scholars have responded to this criticism, arguing that contemporary research is taking a more nuanced approach to issues of racial inequity than earlier Marxist-inspired analyses. As a result, there has been a renewed effort to highlight the achievements of the environmental justice (EJ) movement in the United States. This scholarship has highlighted the actions of community organizers and activists who, in many cases, translate the desire for socio- ecological health and wellbeing into a workable policy agenda while highlighting institutionalized racial injustices.

Environmental Justice in the City

American Studies Professor Julie Sze argues in her book, Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger, that the environmental justice movement was founded on the belief that communities must reform the structures of power that lay at the foundation of inequitable urban environments (Sze, 2020)4. Throughout the 1980s, the EJ movement gained momentum in the United States as an increasing number of organizations, advocacy groups, and local organizers protested the institutions and practices that perpetuate slow, ecological violence against communities of color. Since its inception, groups associated with the EJ movement have highlighted that landfills, bus routes, hazardous waste sites, etc., were deliberately and systematically placed in these communities, thereby leading to detrimental short and long-term public health effects. The movement was founded on the idea that no community should be targeted by any forms of ecological violence due to race, income, gender, or any other factor, and that broad environmental protections are necessary to protect the health and safety of the general public. These principles were clearly defined in 1991 at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and have since become central to grassroots environmental movements both in the United States and abroad.

Advocates for environmental justice may arrive at dissimilar conclusions on the issue of urban greening and the development of shared open space in cities. Those seeking broad structural change might argue that an overemphasis on the establishment of green space fails to address issues such as redlining, housing discrimination, gentrification, and other systemic racial injustices. However, EJ activists have also argued that that genuine social and ecological sustainability can be achieved at a local level if, in addition to the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems, it also entails the protection of all community members. Disparities in access to urban open space are, in large part, determined by the practice of redlining. As a result of this systematic denial of goods and services to communities of color, neighborhoods such as Hunts Point in the Bronx have the lowest ratios of parks-to-people in New York City (Carter, 2006)5. In light of this discrepancy, urban revitalization strategist Majora Carter argues that Hunts Point serves as an example of successfully using green space to address structural inequalities related to land-use. As a result of Carter’s efforts founding the nonprofit organization Sustainable South Bronx, support for community organizing initiatives has fostered enough political pressure to funnel into green development projects in neighborhoods that benefit most from investment. Though investment in activist-driven urban greening projects does not necessarily escape the aforementioned structural issues related to commodification and extractivism, it also reveals that progress towards social justice and environmental health can be made at a local level. This green investment strategy has also revealed the benefits of establishing urban open space while simultaneously preventing land values from increasing to the point where low-income communities are driven out by increasing costs (Wolch et al. 2014)6. The connection between sustainable development and gentrification highlights the central issue of fair access to urban open space: who is benefitting from the decision to pursue green infrastructure, and how can the creation of publically-accessible green space be used as a tool to address structural inequality, rather than perpetuate it?

Deep Ecology of the City

The aforementioned developments in urban environmental history reveal that scholars, activists, and residents are examining the city through the lens of environmental ethics, and this raises important questions about the ethical obligations of city-dwellers in an age defined by global environmental crises. Considering the limitations of individual harm-reduction strategies, it is important to examine the ethical perspectives necessary to shift decision-making processes in the direction of social and ecological wellbeing.

The urgency of global environmental crises has led to a renewed focus on the interdependence of human and nonhuman life, particularly in cities, and this perspective arguably evokes the philosophical and ethical principles of the deep ecology movement. Norwegian ecophilosopher Arne Næss introduced the concept of deep ecology in his essay, “The Shallow and the Deep,” in which he outlined the transition towards ‘biospherical egalitarianism’ and away from anthropocentric environmentalism. Næss declared that, “To the ecological field worker, the equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively clear and obvious valuable axiom. Its restriction to humans is an anthropocentrism with detrimental effects upon the life quality of humans themselves” (Næss, 1973)7. Næss departed from the widely-held notion that the value of the natural world can be ascertained in terms of its utility or instrumentality to humans, instead advocating for a transformation of consciousness in order to recognize the right of all wildlife to live and flourish independent of human progress (Næss, 1989)8. This vision of the natural world led him to believe that each life, human and nonhuman, is not only inherently valuable, but also an integral part of the ecological system that it depends on. According to this deep ecological perspective, individual lifeforms are inherently reliant on one another, given that the complex of human and nonhuman relationships contributes to the function of the biosphere as a whole.

Therefore, in order to protect the complex networks of life, Næss argued that humanity must radically shift towards biospherical egalitarian thinking and direct action. He argued that this social and cultural transformation was deep, in the sense that its conclusions were far more substantive and radical than the ‘shallow’ ethical and philosophical conclusions that mainstream environmentalists arrived at.

Næss’ philosophical framework raises the question of whether debates around urban open space and green infrastructure reflect a substantive shift towards deep ecological decision- making in the city, or if it exemplifies shallow environmentalism. Proponents of deep ecology may argue that the development of urban open space serves as an example of communities extending the ‘equal right to live’ to urban wildlife, and expanding beyond anthropocentric conceptions of human wellbeing in cities. On the other hand, the deep ecological critiques of shallow environmentalism may generate skepticism, as urban open spaces are generally designed for instrumental use by humans. This critical perspective may lead individuals to view green space initiatives as inherently anthropocentric, given that there is the potential to reinforce a harmful outlook that nature’s value is determined only by its utility to humans. A close examination of individual green space initiatives is necessary to determine if the labels of anthropocentrism or shallow environmentalism are appropriate. Nevertheless, while it is certainly valuable to debate anthropocentric versus ecocentric city-planning projects, research into urban ecology has revealed that green space provides clear benefits to both humans and urban wildlife. The human benefits of urban open space are regularly emphasized, particularly when it comes to the promotion of physical and mental health; however, the multitude of benefits for nonhuman city-dwellers are often neglected or forgotten. These synthetic environments provide vital habitats for urban wildlife and establish green corridors that enable populations remain mobile. In light of the urgent need to protect habitats for urban wildlife, individuals may conclude that urban green space does reflect a substantive shift towards a more egalitarian socio- ecological landscape, despite the inherent flaws of anthropocentric approaches to green design.

In order to ensure that conceptions of sustainable cities are morally defensible, both community- level decision-making processes and large-scale urban planning processes must place a greater emphasis on the needs of both human and nonhuman city-dwellers.

Næss’ conception of biospherical egalitarianism may only be pursued if decision-making processes are grounded in the recognition of the city itself as a vital habitat for nonhuman life – a complex of human and nonhuman relationships that continuously interact and influence the artificial urban landscape. Continued interdisciplinary research is certainly needed to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the real and perceived benefits of urban open space. The fact that sustainable development projects related to green space are receiving renewed scrutiny is arguably a positive indication that decision-making processes can head in the direction of more environmentally egalitarian thinking at a local level. A growing number of climate activists and environmental justice advocates are taking part in these debates, and there is significant intellectual energy behind the effort to critically re-examine conceptions of sustainability and resilience in cities. The internal debates over designing anthropocentric versus ecocentric urban open spaces also underscores the increasing attention being placed on human and nonhuman interdependence. As a result of this change in perspective, nonhuman city-dwellers are now being recognized as an essential component of interconnected urban ecosystems by researchers and local residents alike. The re-examination of the city from an ecocentric perspective reveals that academics, activists, policy-makers, and residents are navigating the difficult transition towards social and ecological awareness, and grappling with the ethical dilemmas raised by fundamentally unsustainable policies and practices in urban areas. These concerns highlight the existential challenge and responsibility of establishing healthy and resilient urban ecosystems, and it encourages individuals to reflect on the urgency of building greener and more just cities.

Normative Recommendation: Critical Interdisciplinarity

The concept of green space speaks to the central theoretical and practical challenges of urban environmental politics – the deconstruction of the nature-society divide, and the intersection of socio-ecological justice and wellbeing in cities. In his essay, “Theorizing the Nature-Society Divide,” geographer Bruce Braun outlines why the deconstruction of the nature- society divide has proven to be challenging for academics from various disciplines, arguing that these efforts, “have often merely subsumed one pole of the binary under the other” (Braun, 2008)9. This assertion raises important questions about attempts to reconcile city-dwellers’ alienation from nature through sustainable development projects. In spite of the difficulties associated with escaping binary thinking on nature and society, perspectives from urban environmental history, urban political ecology, and environmental justice have generated valuable scholarship that informs the study of building greener and more equitable cities.