Search results

As a sustainability initiative with the backing of civil society, business, or government interests, urban agriculture can drive green gentrification even when advocates of these initiatives have good intentions and are aware of their exclusionary potential for urban farmers and residents. I investigate this more general pattern with the case of how urban agriculture became used for green gentrification in Denver, Colorado. This is a city with many urban farmers that gained access to land after the Great Recession but faced the contradiction of being a force for displacement and at risk of displacement as the city adopted new sustainability and food system goals, the housing market recovered, and green gentrification spread. I argue that to understand this outcome, it is necessary to explain how political economy and cultural forces create neighborhood disinvestment and economic marginalization and compel the entrance of urban agriculture initiatives due to their low-profit mode of production and potential economic, environmental, and social benefits. Central to how urban agriculture initiatives contribute to green gentrification is the process of revalorization, which is how green growth machines repurpose such initiatives by drawing on their cultural cachet to exploit rent gaps. I conclude with a set of hypotheses to help other scholars test the conditions under which urban agriculture is more or less likely to contribute to green gentrification. Doing so may help nuance convictions about the benefits of urban agriculture within the context of entrenched inequalities in rapidly changing cities.

Public spaces within our cities are being redefined through a wide range of nature-based solutions (NBS) including green spaces. In this chapter, we will focus on public green spaces in the wider sense. If well planned and managed, green spaces can promote social inclusiveness by enhancing the livebility of neighborhoods and promoting the development of social interactions. The creation of new green space does not automatically lead to socially just and inclusive development; co-benefits should be available and accessible to the entire community. Prejudices, marginalization, and discrimination on socioeconomic condition, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, or disability still prevent the equitable distribution of these benefits and need to be fully understood before any planning process is undertaken. The governance of public green spaces is still viewed primarily as a matter for the state or as a purely private activity. It is important, therefore, to identify ways to ensure the integrated and transdisciplinary participation of diverse actors, as is shown in some examples from different countries. The planning and design of green interventions should start with the evaluation of existing or potential trade-offs between environmental and social development. Urban green spaces must be designed as places for multiple and diverse social groups. If all these issues are duly considered and addressed, NBS can serve as climate mitigation and adaptation tools that produce co-benefits for societal well-being, thereby serving as strong investment options for sustainable urban development and making our cities green, healthier, and happier places to live.

The essence of finance has become essential in the sustainability discussion in recent times as a result of the capital intensive nature of sustainable projects. This has motivated financial experts and institutions to develop various financial instruments and mechanisms to further advance the course of protecting the environment, and decreasing the release of excess carbon and GreenHouse Gases. This is to also provide the opportunity for funding Green or sustainable infrastructure development. This chapter advances a discourse on matters relating to sustainable financing of infrastructure projects. The fundamentals of sustainable or green funding of infrastructure projects, and sustainable schemes of financing green infrastructure projects are discussed.

The chapter explores how tourism creates even more dependence as spaces become gentrified and too expensive for local occupation through colonial tropes, and accumulation models. Tourism consumes gently. In the wake of Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Dorian, The Bahamas and Puerto Rico have experienced an accelerated strike on their natural and social resources: from land deals and tax concessions to power infrastructure and school closures. Debt has plagued the countries; the policies designed to get them out of debt prior to the natural disasters, then converted into man-made disasters, have only deepened dependence and indebtedness. In fact, both have become externalized communities where land is being accumulated through dispossession. Tourism is more than just hotels and resorts; it is now the gated communities and private islands that build on coloniality and inequalities. Tourism, disaster capitalism, and green grabbing accumulate by dispossessing locals of land in the name of improving their economic health. Economic well being seems to result in loss.

Urban green space can be viewed as a preventative public health measure. Nature contributes to health through disease prevention, disease management, and well-being (physical, mental, and social) promotion. Those contributions are based on improvement in health determinants. Nature and green spaces have been related to more physical activity, restoration and less stress, more social capital, and ecosystem services such as better air quality, less traffic noise, less heat island effects, more biodiversity, among others. Nature, vegetation, and green spaces have also been associated with better mental health, immune system, metabolic system, pregnancy outcomes, reduced cardiovascular disease, and premature mortality. This chapter presents the connections between nature and health, describing how nature impacts key health determinants, how those health determinants are associated with health outcomes (i.e. diseases, injuries, deaths), and provides examples of urban nature interventions that have been related to public health.

This study aims to investigate whether the correlation between Saudi Arabia’s social and economic reforms, urban megaprojects and sustainable urbanism can lead to an increased quality of life (QoL) in the capital, create a comprehensive lifestyle setup for Riyadh’s residents while also aiming to attract foreign investment.

This research examines five government-sponsored mega-destinations and their master plans against the objectives of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030’s Quality of Life Program. Furthermore, the author analyzed to what extent the proposed projects fulfill global mandates of sustainable urban development and how they might help raise the QoL for Riyadh’s residents. The author’s methodology rests primarily on detailed policy evaluation proposed by Vision 2030, literature research and data collected from proposed urban development plans. In parallel, the author conducted informal conversations with people living in affected areas and architectural offices who are involved in the design of the five megaprojects. After collecting the data for each project, the author compared the QoL Program criteria to the data of the proposed megaprojects to examine to what extent the proposed designs implement the QoL criteria of Vision 2030. In the last step, the author evaluated whether and how the proposed plans adhere to globally established guidelines of sustainable urban revitalization by studying possible overlaps and contingencies on an urban level.

The analysis reveals that although each case study project targets one or more specific lifestyle domains, the projects combined fulfill all lifestyle categories specified in Saudi Arabia’s QoL program. In addition, each project contributes measures to improve livability in the categories of urban design and environment, infrastructure and transport, social engagement and safety while also providing a range of economic and educational opportunities for different demographics. In terms of sustainable development criteria, the analysis demonstrates that all case studies provide ample measures to enhance Riyadh’s mobility by providing greenways for pedestrians and cyclists, which connect to public transport. Furthermore, when strategically combined as a series of urban layers, the projects demonstrate potential to form urban synergies among different lifestyle domains that could positively affect existing and proposed neighborhoods, particularly when extended through an inclusive, participatory planning framework, which, in turn, could significantly raise the QoL for a broad socioeconomic demographic.

This research reveals the complex role of megaprojects as change agents for socioeconomic reforms, as signifiers of livability and as planning frameworks to implement sustainable urbanism in Saudi Arabia’s capital, while also creating a lifestyle infrastructure for Riyadh’s residents.

With their sensitive approach to climate, ecologically driven landscape projects and regionalist architecture inspired by the traditional Arab city, these case study projects may serve as an example to other countries in hot arid zones on sustainably revitalizing their urban environments.

This study demonstrates how social and economic reforms intertwine with sustainable urban planning and placemaking to create a comprehensive lifestyle setup for Riyadh’s residents that has not previously existed. On the planning side, this includes creating a massive public infrastructure that encourages walkability and residents’ active participation in recreational, cultural, entertainment and sports activities. However, as the analysis has also revealed, while offering a large number of public facilities, the projects do not embrace a mixed-income project model, which would allow low-income families to live within a market-rate environment. In addition, one of the projects entails the displacement of benefit low-income and migrant communities. Although the government has a separate program that specifically aims at providing affordable housing in other areas of the city, these model destinations primarily target luxury tourists and affluent Saudis, potentially cementing existing socio-spatial divides in the city. Consequently, the megaprojects demonstrate Saudi Arabia’s conflicted response to the logic of entrepreneurial neoliberalism: on the one side, progressive attempts to promote an egalitarian approach to urban livability; on the other, strategic efforts to use megaprojects as spectacular showcases in the global marketplace.

The correlation between Saudi Arabia’s socioeconomic reforms, megaprojects and sustainable urbanism in Riyadh has not been previously explored. Compared to Western countries’ cities, few attempts have been made to investigate the role of livability in the context of emerging countries’ fast-growing urban areas. This paper presents a considerable case study in Saudi Arabia that ties into a more extensive debate on cultural globalization where cities, particularly in the developing world, use megaprojects as change agents to reconstruct their urban territories according to standardized livability indices to elevate their image in the global marketplace.

Unprecedented levels of investment in transit and transit-oriented development in Los Angeles County have not resulted in gains for transit-dependent populations or overall higher ridership for that matter. They have instead saddled them with inordinate cost burdens and displacement pressures. Yet racialised, low-income communities that rely on transit are far from passive victims. Rather, they are participating in advocacy campaigns that penetrate decision-making venues and procedures and co-create institutional practices, policy priorities, and public and private investments that serve their interests and build a Los Angeles that is more widely accessible and affordable. This chapter presents a case study of the Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles (ACT-LA), a regional coalition of over 40 community-based organisations at the helm of direct-action policy campaigns and participatory planning initiatives to advance transit justice and equitable transit-oriented communities (TOC). After examining ACT-LA's origins in the LA-based movement for community benefits agreements, the analysis focuses on how ACT-LA has combined political mobilisation for ballot-box measures with participatory policy-making and planning processes to advance just, equitable, sustainable transit systems, and TOC. The concluding discussion considers the implications of the ACT-LA case for reformulating participatory policy-making and planning around transportation and land use to further equity and climate goals.

The purpose of this paper is to address the apparent slow acceptance on the part of developers located in the USA to seek green certifications. If green-certified construction costs more than non-green construction, then is there a financial reason for not seeking a green rating. Do green buildings perform better than non-green buildings financially? The paper develops and presents a discounted present value model for doing a cost-benefit analysis for building green. This model enables an investor to determine the feasibility of constructing a new green-certified building instead of a conventional non-green building. Non-green buildings are not certified by a rating agency such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Energy Star or Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM). Real estate permits are granted by local municipalities in the USA. This means that local government mandates requiring green construction that significantly adds to the initial cost of a project could have the unintended result of encouraging new non-green construction just outside their municipal boundaries.

The paper collects publically available research data for office buildings located in the USA, and inputs this information into an income statement. It tests the hypothesis: is green-certified construction a financially feasible choice for an investor? An incremental approach using a 15-year holding period is presented. This time period takes into account equipment wear and tear. Heating/cooling systems and other green-technologically based operating systems have a limited life and do not last for 30 or 40 years. They are likely to need replacement after 15 years have lapsed.

The negative net present value (NPV) results and high payback periods indicate that increased rents for green construction, a tax credit for the present value loss and/or property-tax reduction covering the shortfall is needed as an incentive to commercially build green. The implication of a negative NPV is that green office buildings will be built by government agencies where green is mandated, corporations that want a green image and benefit from this image, where local ordinances mandate green construction features and where local and federal tax incentives are available increasing a construction project's feasibility.

The limitation of any cost-benefit study is that analytical models and/or data used to forecast energy and water consumption savings in green-certified buildings compared to conventional buildings can be inaccurate. Forecasting models can understate or overstate the actual savings realized from green construction especially in the long-term given the difficulty of predicting equipment wear and tear, net rents and energy costs. The modeled percentage cost associated with green new construction features could remain constant or grow through time. Tables I and II results assume energy and water expenses remain a constant percentage over the 15-year period. The agency costs associated with obtaining a LEED or BREEAM certification was not calculated as an upfront cost. Certification by LEED or BREEAM increases the upfront cost associated with building a green building.

The length of the payback period estimates coupled with negative NPV for green certified compared to non-green construction suggests that developers do not have an incentive to build green. Higher WACC rates would result in green-certified projects being less feasible to build.

The LEED certification point system may need to be reviewed. Points are assigned for features that improve occupant satisfaction, but may have little impact on reducing energy usage.

A model is presented for determining whether green-certified construction is financially feasible. The model enables the investor to determine the size of a tax incentive that is needed to enable new green construction to be economically feasible to build. The higher the negative NPV the larger the income or property tax incentive or other financial incentives needed. Prior research studies compared green and non-green buildings, but did not compare the energy savings generated to the additional construction and upfront costs incurred using a discount rate. They assumed the energy savings justified the additional initial cost associated with building a new green certified.