Living Architecture Monitor, January 27, 2020: Does green infrastructure development have to result in gentrification?
According to a March 2019 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, more than 1,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2013. Seven cities accounted for nearly half of these changes – Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Washington, D.C. This makes sense. Cities attract people. They come for work or for education and are drawn to stay by attractive community amenities.
Washington saw 40% of its neighborhoods become gentrified during 2000 – 2013, displacing approximately 20,000 people. Overall, according to Jason Richardson, one of the study’s authors and the director of research for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, “We’ve also shown that revitalization of struggling neighborhoods is unevenly distributed. The big investments that fuel gentrification and cultural displacement didn’t reach most of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and rural areas.”
The type of park or green space built does have an impact on the degree of gentrification. In the previously mentioned study, Alessandro Rigolon points to some interesting statistics. “According to the study, being located within a half-mile of a new greenway park increases the odds that a neighborhood will gentrify by more than 200%. Five of seven new greenway parks in the study spurred significant gentrification in their surrounding neighborhoods, including New York’s High Line, Chicago’s 606 trail and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park.”
