Beyond flood risk reduction: How can green infrastructure advance both social justice and regional impact?
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Beyond flood risk reduction: How can green infrastructure advance both social justice and regional impact? Linda Shi1 Received: 12 June 2020 / Accepted: 20 August 2020 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract Green infrastructure is being pulled in divergent directions. As climate impacts intensify, advocates are promoting larger, ecosystem-scale strategies to help mitigate flood risks. Yet, research on existing urban greening projects finds that they can cause gentrification and displacement, suggesting that smaller projects may be more desirable from an equity perspective. This essay argues that cities need both large-scale and justice-enhancing nature-based solutions. They can help overcome tensions in these goals by (1) reframing green infrastructure as a way to support community development and integrated socio-ecological landscapes, and (2) advancing metropolitan regional governance strategies that alleviate municipal fiscal imperatives to maximize local land development. These proposals suggest that the practice of green infrastructure would benefit from diversifying its ranks to include social and government policy, community development, and agroecology, as well as learning from the Global South and those currently positioned as “off the map” of technical expertise. They also point to the need for interdisciplinary research that provides an evidence base for more transformative social, ecological, and governance strategies. While the essay focuses on the US context, it is relevant to an international audience given that similar challenges confront cities worldwide and that it highlights how the Global North can learn from the Global South. Keywords Green infrastructure · Nature-based solutions · Flooding · Climate adaptation · Governance · Equity
1 Green infrastructure at a crossroads For decades, cities have implemented smaller-scale green infrastructure projects, such as green roofs, rain gardens, and bioswales, to mitigate stormwater pollution and urban heat islands (Escobedo et al. 2019; Gill et al. 2007; Meerow and Newell 2017). Now, as cities struggle with climate impacts and decreased permitting for shoreline hardening (Dyckman et al. 2014, pp. 216–217), many environmental and government groups are advocating larger-scale green infrastructure, such as sand dunes, restored floodplains, and wetlands, to reduce urban flood risk (Carter et al. 2018; FEMA 2020, pp. 6, 8; Liao 2019; Matthews et al. 2015; Opperman 2014; Spalding et al. 2014). Meanwhile, critical urban scholars argue that governments and developers are using urban greening projects to boost property values and dispossess already disadvantaged groups (Anguelovski et al. 2019a, b; * Linda Shi [email protected] 1
Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, 213 West Sibley Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Blok 2020; Brand and Baxter 2020; Dooling 2009; Garcia-Lamarca et al. 2019). From household-level projects to reduce stormwater runoff in Philadelphia to urban greenbelts that reduce lands
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