Nature-based solutions in hiding: goslings and greening in the still-industrial city
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PERSPECTIVE ESSAY
Nature‑based solutions in hiding: goslings and greening in the still‑industrial city Winifred Curran1 · Trina Hamilton2 Received: 9 June 2020 / Accepted: 20 August 2020 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract Nature-based solutions (NBS) include a wide range of ecosystem restoration and green infrastructure projects that are meant to also create economic and social benefits. In practice, NBS are increasingly tied to an outward-looking, post-industrial urban growth agenda. This focus ignores interventions which are less visible, smaller scale, and serve a working-class population in still-industrial areas of the city. In this short piece, we consider various small-scale interventions undertaken by the Newtown Creek Alliance to accomplish demonstrable environmental improvements along the heavily polluted industrial waterway of Newtown Creek in New York City. Though largely invisible within the larger conversation on NBS and urban development, these interventions have the potential for substantive environmental improvement that benefits existing long-term residents and users rather than being a tool to attract new residents and luxury development. We offer this example as an attempt to diversify the “best practice” case studies that will inform future NBS growth. Keywords Nature-based solutions · Environmental gentrification · Urban greening · Industrial retention · Brooklyn
1 Introduction Nature-based solutions (NBS) include a wide range of ecosystem restoration and green infrastructure projects that are meant to create economic and social benefits, as well as environmental resilience (Fernandes and Guiomar 2018; IUCN 2016; Kabisch et al. 2016). Although it is a big-tent concept by definition (IUCN 2016), in practice it is often tied to an outward-looking, post-industrial growth agenda (Fan et al. 2017, p. 273). When it comes to urban industrial spaces, nature-based solutions are often offered as a strategy to reclaim what many see as wasted or abandoned spaces, areas of the city that experienced disinvestment for decades. Indeed, the industrial or manufacturing case studies on the most prominent public NBS databases (e.g. EU Repository of Nature-Based Solutions) are exclusively focused on * Winifred Curran [email protected] Trina Hamilton [email protected] 1
Department of Geography, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA
Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
2
post-industrial transitions (Oppla, n.d.). This ignores the fact that industrial uses are still necessary, that these spaces are populated by people who have suffered through decades of environmental injustice as both residents and workers, and that industrial users can be active in creating better environmental outcomes.
2 Industrial gentrification The narrative around urban industrial space is that it is necessarily a wasteland requiring whole-scale redevelopment. This ignores both the long-term businesses and residents that continue to survive, and even thrive, in industrial neighbor
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