BC3 Seminar – The Urban Green Divide or Segregating by Greening

BC3 Seminars
“The Urban Green Divide or Segregating by Greening“

Prof. Isabelle Anguelovski

ICREA Research Professor
Director, Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability

Abstract:
In the past two decades, cities in the Global North and South have invested in urban greening projects such as parks, gardens, greenways, or green climate resilient infrastructure to address a variety of environmental, health, economic, and social challenges. Such interventions are often accompanied by large scale real estate projects. However, the marriage of greening and urban redevelopment creates a paradox: Even while greening certainly provides a variety of benefits to many, it may create new social vulnerabilities and exacerbate existing inequalities in the urban space. There is thus a green divide between more privileged residents able to benefit from urban greening and harness its value while historically marginalized groups tend to remain in grey neighborhoods or be displaced to more affordable, yet grey and climate-exposed environments. Drawing from her international research at the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Isabelle Anguelovski will present a variety of drivers and manifestations of this green divide and its associated green injustices and discuss counter-movements and counter-policies that can help build green, resilient and healthy cities for all.

About the Lecturer

Isabelle is the director of BCNUEJ, an ICREA Research Professor, a Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator at ICTA and former coordinator of the research group Healthy Cities and Environmental Justice at IMIM. She obtained a PhD in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT before returning to Europe in 2011 with a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. Her research examines the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, and how community groups in distressed neighborhoods contest the existence, creation, or exacerbation of environmental inequities as a result of urban (re)development processes and policies. Since 2016, she is the PI of a five-year ERC-funded project called GreenLULUs which examines green inequalities in 40 cities in Europe, the US, and Canada. She is the research group coordinator and co-leader of the research lines “Environmental and Climate Gentrification” and “Urban Climate Risk, Infrastructures, and Justice” at BCNUEJ.

More information about the lecture: www.bcnuej.org/about.