Are green cities healthy and equitable? Unpacking the relationship between health, green space and gentrification

While access and exposure to green spaces has been shown to be beneficial for the health of urban residents, interventions focused on augmenting such access may also catalyse gentrification processes, also known as green gentrification. Drawing from the fields of public health, urban planning and en...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of epidemiology and community health (1979) 2017-11, Vol.71 (11), p.1118-1121
Main Authors: Cole, Helen V S, Garcia Lamarca, Melisa, Connolly, James J T, Anguelovski, Isabelle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution
Cities
City Planning
Climate change
Environmental Health - standards
Environmental justice
Environmental policy
Epidemiology
Essay
Green infrastructure
Greening
Health care
Health disparities
Health promotion
Health Promotion - organization & administration
Humans
Intervention
Minority & ethnic groups
Neighborhoods
Outdoor air quality
Parks & recreation areas
Political ecology
Public Health
Researchers
Residence Characteristics
Sustainable development
United States
Urban Health - standards
Urban planning
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Summary:While access and exposure to green spaces has been shown to be beneficial for the health of urban residents, interventions focused on augmenting such access may also catalyse gentrification processes, also known as green gentrification. Drawing from the fields of public health, urban planning and environmental justice, we argue that public health and epidemiology researchers should rely on a more dynamic model of community that accounts for the potential unintended social consequences of upstream health interventions. In our example of green gentrification, the health benefits of greening can only be fully understood relative to the social and political environments in which inequities persist. We point to two key questions regarding the health benefits of newly added green space: Who benefits in the short and long term from greening interventions in lower income or minority neighbourhoods undergoing processes of revitalisation? And, can green cities be both healthy and just? We propose the Green Gentrification and Health Equity model which provides a framework for understanding and testing whether gentrification associated with green space may modify the effect of exposure to green space on health.
ISSN:0143-005X
1470-2738
DOI:10.1136/jech-2017-209201