Greening cities – To be socially inclusive? About the alleged paradox of society and ecology in cities
Introduction
Global environmental change and urbanization are major issues of the international political agenda and are highly interlinked. As of today, 54% of the world's population resides in urban areas, and more than two thirds of the world's population is projected to urbanize by 2050 (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2014). One of the major challenges for future urban planning is, thus, to prepare urban spaces for an increasing number of people while developing and maintaining cities as sustainable and liveable places. When urban green areas are put increasingly under pressure, e.g. because of ongoing urban land conversion for housing and transport, it becomes important to acknowledge their multifunctionality in maintaining and improving human health and wellbeing by providing ecosystem services such as flood and climate regulation and air filtration (Larondelle, Haase, & Kabisch, 2014).
The European Commission has introduced legislation and several strategies for developing and enhancing urban green and blue spaces, such as the Green Infrastructure Strategy (EC, 2013), the Biodiversity Strategy (EC, 2011), the Habitats Directive (CEC, 1992) and the Water Framework Directive (CEC, 2000). These initiatives (more indirectly) and the current research EU research programme Horizon 2020 (EC, 2016) emphasize two concepts in particular – Green Infrastructure (GI) and Nature-based Solutions (NBS) – as important concepts in the discussion about sustainable cities and as ways to address the UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org). Both GI and NBS are concepts based on the different contributions of green spaces to the urban environment: GI refers to an interconnected network of green spaces that helps stop the loss of biodiversity and enable ecosystems to deliver their many services to people and nature (Benedict & McMahon, 2002). NBS are instruments inspired by nature and using the properties and functions of ecosystems to enhance ecosystem services (EC 2013) and multiple health benefits (Kabisch et al., 2016, Mathey et al., 2015). They claim to provide solutions for a broadly contextualized ‘environmental and health challenge’ in cities mainly referring to air pollution, extreme heat and flood events and increasing numbers of cardio-vascular diseases, asthma or obesity on the one hand, and losses of life and disproportional property values on the other (UN Habitat, 2012). These arguments build upon the ‘healthy city debate’ (e.g. World Health Organization, 2012), and the discussion around climate change adaptation (Cohen-Shacham, Walters, Janzen, & Maginnis, 2016) where urban green spaces play an important role in mediating climate change related impacts.
At the same time, GI and NBS often claim to address social issues such as social cohesion, socio-spatial inequalities and an unequal distribution of goods and burdens in/across cities. EU documents on GI and NBS (European Commission, 2015) argue that the multiple benefits of their installation include ‘fostering social cohesion’ (p.5), and contribute to the solution of ‘various societal challenges’ (p.5). The EC's report uses the term social inclusiveness to describe the cumulative social benefits created and supported by GI and NBS in cities: „ … Nature-based solutions use the features and complex system processes of nature, […] in order to achieve desired outcomes, such as […] improved human wellbeing and socially inclusive green growth.” (p.5). However, in reality, little is known about how the implementation of green strategies or policies affect health and wellbeing, livelihood and the living conditions of the urban poor in the mid and longer term (Anguelovski et al., 2015).
This paper (1) reflects on current debates about the relationship between greening cities and social inclusiveness; (2) provides examples from cities where trade-offs between social and ecological development can be observed; and (3) draws conclusions on what this means for the future debate on how to use greening to shape more liveable and healthy urban environments that meet the needs and wants of various groups of urban dwellers in a socially balanced and inclusive way.
Section snippets
Greening cities: the concepts of green infrastructure and nature-based solutions and what they say about social inclusiveness
To green cities is an active intervention to enlarge and to maintain the quantity, enhance the quality and improve the network of green spaces in a city. As mentioned above, two main concepts, GI and NBS are at the forefront of the agenda, in Europe and elsewhere, of innovation and demonstration relating to the greening of cities.
GI is a strategically planned and designed network of natural and semi-natural areas, integrated with other environmental features and managed to conserve biodiversity
The (dis)connection between the green space and the social space
It is this alleged straightforward relation between GI, NBS and the socio-spatial dimensions of urban life as described above that we seek to challenge and scrutinize in this paper. As these concepts become more popular and political processes mainstream their use, it is important to establish a more nuanced understanding of the social implications of greening strategies central to both GI and NBS concepts. We argue that, under certain circumstances, greening strategies carry a paradoxical risk
Greening cities and social inclusiveness: a reality check
Looking at history, green spaces have been part of the urban fabric and of its segregated structure for a long time (Breuste, Pauleit, Haase, & Sauerwein, 2016). However, lessons about past city greening practices are missing from many current discussions about GI and NBS. Quantitative and qualitative increase in green space has, as a rule, positive impacts on the price and location assessment of housing (Kolbe & Wüstemann, 2014). Exceptions are brownfield sites and vacant lots, especially if
Selected examples of urban green space development projects involving social trade-offs
The first example that we would like to introduce is the Lene-Voigt-Park in Leipzig, Eastern Germany. This park serves as an example for a strategy of upgrading a dilapidated district and close-by brownfield sites, through a greening strategy, among other strategies. It was created in 2001 on the area of a former local railway station encompassing 10 ha. In an area characterized over several decades by vacant buildings and extensive brownfields, the park has now become part of a green network
Reflecting reality and claims or the challenge to be socially inclusive
The reality reflected in the aforementioned examples and together with the claims of urban greening strategies lead us to the following conclusion: Greening, without disregarding its many positive effects on urban quality of life, does not lead per se to social inclusiveness. In some cases, like in the marked examples, greening strategies can support or contribute to the displacement of lower income households and to the transformation of a residential environment into higher cost or luxury
Prerequisites for a sustainable and socially inclusive urban green space development
Simply establishing and implementing GI and NBS for improving quality of life bring to light a comparatively narrow vision of what it means to bring green into the city. It appears to ignore the drawbacks of such greening projects for low and moderate-income residents. As such, greening, which does not consider social impacts, might serve, unintentionally, as another malign sign of current urban policies. We should not consider greening strategies as panaceas or silver bullet solutions in
Where are we heading to?
When returning to the research questions posed earlier, we can summarize the answers as follows: Although the relation between greening and social inclusiveness is not clear-cut but a complex one, this complexity and the various trade-offs and twists existing in social-ecological processes are not appropriately acknowledged in both ecological and social science literature and the debate around greening strategies. While in recent years there have been more attempts from both sides to
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