Greening and Just Cities: Elements for Fostering a South–North Dialogue Based on a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The design and deployment of green amenities is a way to tackle cities' socio-environmental problems in the quest for urban sustainability. In this study, we undertake a systematic review of research published in international peer-reviewed journals that analyzes environmental justice issues within the context of the deployment of urban green amenities. Since most studies focus on the Global North, where this scholarship first emerged, our goal is to link the literature focused on the North and the South. This study aims to outline similarities and differences regarding the nexus of justice and the greening of cities in both contexts as well as to identify knowledge gaps in this scholarship in the Global South. “Green infrastructure” and “nature-based solutions,” as the leading concepts for cities' greening agendas, are used as descriptors in combination with “justice” and/or “green gentrification” in searches undertaken of two bibliographic databases. Our results show there is a need to better delineate a research agenda that addresses such issues in a heterogeneous Global South context while gaining insights from advances made by research on the Global North.

The green gentrification cycle

“…We called the spatiotemporal processes connecting greening and gentrification ‘the green gentrification cycle’. Most of the evidence for gentrification preceding greening has emerged from Global North contexts, probably due to the limited research on green gentrification in the Global South (de Souza and Torres, 2021) and different political–economic conditions affecting greening initiatives in such contexts (Chen et al, 2021). Thus, with the evidence to date, the green gentrification cycle might be more applicable to Global North than Global South contexts, but more work on green gentrification is needed in the Global South in particular.…”

“…Similar accounts have also been reported in qualitative studies across numerous Global North countries (Blok, 2020; Goossens et al, 2020; Krivý, 2021). Thus, the part of the cycle wherein gentrification precedes greening might apply more to the Global North than to the Global South, but this is possibly due in part to the limited number of studies on green gentrification in the Global South (de Souza and Torres, 2021).…”

“…Future quantitative studies in Global South contexts could examine whether gentrification precedes greening initiatives, and whether gentrification both precedes and follows greening in the same place. Further, qualitative studies could examine how demand-side, supply-side and resource-side explanations for gentrification preceding greening play out in Global South countries with varying political economies (de Souza and Torres, 2021). Similar studies could also compare these mechanisms between Global South and Global North cases.…”

“…These studies have focused on greening initiatives such as new or improved parks, greenways, community gardens, urban trees, green infrastructure for climate adaptation or mitigation, bike lanes and trails and brownfield regeneration (Anguelovski et al, 2018; Chen et al, 2021; Donovan et al, 2021; Gould and Lewis, 2017; Kwon et al, 2017; Maantay and Maroko, 2018; Rigolon and Németh, 2020; Wu and Rowe, 2022). This work has mostly focused on the Global North, but researchers have also recently examined the connections between greening and gentrification in the Global South (Anguelovski et al, 2019a, 2019b; Chen et al, 2021; de Souza and Torres, 2021; Yazar et al, 2020).…”

Guiding restoration of riparian ecosystems degraded by plant invasions: Insights from a complex social-ecological system in the Global South

“…Despite the need for nature-based solutions in the Global South, most research in this field has been done in the Global North (de Souza and Torres 2021 ); there are few well developed studies that embrace Global South contexts (Du Toit et al 2018 ). This is especially so for small cities and peri-urban areas, which are generally underrepresented in terms of nature-based solutions in the international literature (Chausson et al 2020 ).…”