Green-trification
Does cleaning up a neighborhood spur gentrification?
Nobody’s against cleaner, greener neighborhoods. But some social scientists have worried that cleaning up could end up clearing out the poor residents who often live around polluted sites. Now, a study from Portland, Oregon looks for a link between gentrification and environmental clean-up.
Researchers have long documented the impact of LULUs — “locally undesirable land uses” – on surrounding neighborhoods. In general, the arrival of a polluting factory or waste dump ends up driving down property values, attracting poorer, less-educated residents who tend to be members of minority groups. But what happens if the LULU goes away? Do boutiques and BMWs move in?
To find out, Adam Eckerd of Ohio State University in Columbus looked at how 94 downtown neighborhoods in Portland changed during the 1990s after officials cleaned up Superfund sites and other polluted areas. As a measure of gentrification, he used an index that rested on the percentage of adult residents with a college education, and the percentage of adults working in managerial and professional positions. He plugged that data into 8 models that also tracked things like changes in rents and vacancies, the hazard posed by contaminants, and the amount of polluted land.
Overall, he found little evidence for environmental gentrification. “Neither actual environmental improvement nor perceived improvement had an effect on whether a neighborhood gentrified,” he writes in a paper published online on August 27 by Urban Affairs Review. “Cleaning hazardous sites does not substantially change the makeup of urban neighborhoods in cities like Portland, at least in the short term.” Instead, Eckerd found that gentrification appeared to have tighter links to other factors, such as a neighborhood’s age and type of housing stock, and its distance from the central business district.
It’s possible that Portland’s experience, however, isn’t representative, he notes. The city is known for its efforts to combat urban ills, and things may play out differently elsewhere. But the study does assuage fears that efforts to protect the environment will benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. – David Malakoff
Source: Eckerd, Adam. (2010). Cleaning Up Without Clearing Out? A Spatial Assessment of Environmental Gentrification. Urban Affairs Review DOI: 10.1177/1078087410379720
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