And Housing Justice: - Contradictions of The Climate-FRIENDLY CITY: New Perspectives On Eco-Gentrification
And Housing Justice: - Contradictions of The Climate-FRIENDLY CITY: New Perspectives On Eco-Gentrification
And Housing Justice: - Contradictions of The Climate-FRIENDLY CITY: New Perspectives On Eco-Gentrification
DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12740
Abstract
As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-
carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban
residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets,
and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization
has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing
lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology
workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied
socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of
neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas
emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of
their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are
included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon’s headquarters,
experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-
carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and
non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more
attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.
Introduction
This Interventions piece is based on growing recognition that improvements to
urban nature and sustainability are intimately tied to gentrification and displacement
(Dooling, 2009; Quastel, 2009; Checker, 2011; Immergluck and Balan, 2017). We
especially wish to highlight one understudied, and we argue, not fully understood form
of ecological gentrification associated with ideas of ‘low-carbon’ or ‘climate-friendly’
neighborhoods. While it is connected to forms of ecological gentrification that are more
widely studied (for example, parks, green space, gardens, trails, brownfield remediation),
we argue that there are unique features in both the drivers and outcomes of neighborhood
change that accompany a focus on climate-change mitigation through urban design.
Ultimately, we aim to provide evidence that a new socio-ecological contradiction
accompanies the problem of displacement, where the intentions of low-carbon urban
development (reducing greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions of urban residents) may not
be what is actually occurring: rather, emissions may be increasing. Decarbonizing cities
is, of course, essential and urgent if the catastrophic effects of climate change are to be
averted. Our analysis is important in this effort, because the pursuit of the low-carbon
city is accompanied by several shifts in urbanization that have a direct impact on who
lives in the city, how they live, and with what environmental outcomes. The question
we explore here, therefore, is who benefits from early steps in that direction, and at
what costs––social and ecological?
An enormous amount of gratitude goes to the many social and environmental-justice activists in Seattle who have
contributed to this research over the years, and in particular during the summer of 2017. Jennifer Rice specifically
wishes to thank Kshama Sawant for the many productive and important conversations we shared on the issues
discussed here. We greatly appreciate the thoughtful comments of the three anonymous IJURR reviewers and the
editor on this manuscript. Partial funding for this work was provided by the Housing and Demographic Research
Center in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia, USA.
© 2019 Urban Research Publications Limited
INTERVENTIONS2
The specific purpose of this Intervention is threefold: (1) to describe the ways
in which urban efforts to be more ‘climate-friendly’ are contributing to new forms of
ecological gentrification; (2) to examine the role of creative and technology industries
and professionals in this process; and (3) to explore the actual environmental outcomes
associated with this type of gentrification in terms of recent innovations in GHG
modeling. In the sections that follow, we first identify key insights provided by eco-
gentrification studies that are relevant to an analysis of urban efforts to reduce GHG
emissions. We argue for an expanded and more specific analysis of the intersections
of carbon politics and gentrification as a particular form of ecological gentrification
occurring in many North American cities.1 We then consider economic development
trends that appear to accelerate this process by attracting environmentally minded
professionals––specifically, well-educated, upper-income, highly specialized workers
who are concerned about their environmental impact––to such neighborhoods. Next,
we review recent innovations in consumption-based approaches for GHG emissions
accounting, which suggest that cities have greatly understated the emissions associated
with higher-income urban residents’ consumption, even when they live in dense,
seemingly low-carbon urban areas. We illustrate this contradiction with an empirical
investigation of several centrally located neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington, that
offer an ostensibly ‘low-carbon’ lifestyle and are attracting wealthier residents whose
consumption is likely to lead to higher carbon emissions than that of their lower-income
neighbors. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical innovations, data needs and
political projects that our provocation requires of urban studies scholars.
1 We are not suggesting that all forms of ecological gentrification are centrally about climate change or carbon
politics, but rather that in some areas where a policy focus on climate change and/or carbon predominates, a
particular type of ecological gentrification is occurring, with unique drivers and outcomes that produce specific
contradictions and unintended outcomes.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CITY 3
to encourage residents to lower their personal carbon footprint. 2 This is most often
done by changing, through interventions in the urban form, the ‘day to day activities of
household’ (Salon et al., 2010: 2032), such as shifting one’s mode of transportation away
from car use, living in mixed-use, dense, walkable environments, and choosing energy-
efficient housing. While there are several models for low-carbon development offered
by, for example, C40 and ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), individual
cities pick and choose from a variety of policy options, climate programs, infrastructure
investments and public education campaigns according to their own budgetary
constraints, organizational capacities and policy priorities. These efforts are coupled
with GHG measuring and accounting techniques employed by local governments to
create a new form of urban carbon politics (Rice, 2010; While et al., 2010; Jonas et al.,
2011) with unique and specific drivers and outcomes of gentrification.
While we recognize that some scholars have already shown that urban energy
and infrastructure policies are increasingly characterized by a narrative of climate
mitigation and adaptation (While et al., 2010), we argue that it is the increasing emphasis
on carbon footprints and a parallel policy shift towards a focus on carbon that requires
further consideration in relation to housing justice. This is important on two fronts.
First, the urgency of climate action adds further weight and political salience to the
idea that sustainability-oriented policy ignores social justice and will likely promote
gentrification (Lubitow and Miller, 2013). Secondly, the quantifiable nature of GHGs
allows a tangible target for urban climate policies (Rice, 2014a) that has yet to be fully
interrogated for its actual environmental outcomes.
Therefore, we argue that urban carbon politics produce a distinct form
of gentrification, as middle- and upper-income residents reject classic forms of
suburbanization in favor of residential choices that afford them access to low-carbon
infrastructure and mixed-use urban density. There is a need to expand the eco-
gentrification literature to more explicitly and directly analyze urban development
policies oriented around decarbonization, as they materialize through a specific form
of urban carbon politics. In particular, urban climate politics involves ‘the increasing
prevalence of carbon-centered policy mechanisms in city planning, including the use of
GHG inventorying tools, adoption of GHG emissions reductions targets, and creation
of climate action plans’ (Rice, 2014a: 385) that, while related to broader efforts at urban
sustainability and greening, are distinct.
This form of eco-gentrification is distinct because, first, carbon politics touches
almost all aspects of urban design and urban living, as opposed to specific greening
projects or redevelopments in a city (parks, gardens, brownfield remediation). The
growing concern for mitigating climate change and one’s own carbon footprint that is
now widely accepted by many urban professionals, and encouraged by city planners,
is central to the process by which ‘urban professionals can feel altruistic about riding
their bicycles to work’ (Quastel, 2009: 719). In particular, walkable, bikeable, mixed-
use communities, ideally with higher levels of density than have been typical in more
suburban-style developments, have become popular in the pursuit and marketing
of ‘climate-friendly’ urban lifestyles, and a favorite of new urbanists such as Jeff
Speck. As Speck (2012: 55–6) argues, ‘It turns out that trading all of your incandescent
lightbulbs for energy savers conserves as much carbon per year as living in a walkable
neighborhood does each week’.
These ideas––more walking, more biking, denser development––are at the core
of nearly every climate action plan in North American cities. Leading planners and
policy networks offer up best practices and ready-made toolkits for low-carbon urban
development (for example, ICLEI and the US Conference of Mayors––see Calthorpe,
2 The term ‘climate-friendly’ is also used by many urban professionals involved in climate-change policy and
planning.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CITY 5
2011), advocating urban retrofits that yield four-, five- and six-story high developments
fronted by busy sidewalks, wide bike lanes and public transit. Since 2009, for example,
the number of protected bike lanes has doubled every year in the US (People for Bikes,
2016) and public-transit use is breaking records (APTA, 2015). The implication is that
while specific greening efforts might produce displacement at a proximate scale, there
is the potential for gentrification associated with low-carbon development to cause
gentrification at a much broader level within and across the city.
There are also distinct supply and demand pressures operating at the
intersections of ecological gentrification and urban carbon politics. On the one hand,
supply-side drivers include increased interest on the part of developers and local
governments in building dense, ‘eco-friendly’ housing and neighborhoods, as they
have proven to be quite profitable in some areas (Bagley and Gallucci 2013; Sah et al.,
2013; Seto et al., 2014). These include Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) certified buildings, eco-homes, eco-districts and even developments
marketed specifically around ideas of low-carbon living––such as Portland’s ‘Carbon 12’
condominium development.3 LEED construction, in particular, has been connected to
gentrification in several North American cities, especially as it comes to be a significant
and widely recognized marker for ‘climate-friendly’ building design (Bunce, 2009;
Cidell, 2009; Curran and Hamilton, 2012). This amounts to a new form of ecological
urbanism being marketed and sold in many North American cities. Again, while related
to other forms of urban greening, this emphasis on gray infrastructures is distinct from
longstanding forms of urban greening traditionally associated with environmental
gentrification, as it is conceptualized specifically around the idea of lowering carbon
footprints.
On the other hand, in terms of demand-side drivers of gentrification associated
with low-carbon living, there is increasing alignment between urban development and
young professionals’ desire for environmentally friendly urban living as a key motive
for choosing to live and work in ‘low-carbon’ neighborhoods (Florida, 2013; Cortright,
2014; Florida 2014). This alignment, which began in the 1990s with the emergence of a
‘smart growth’ movement backed by organizations such as the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Sierra Club, has continued to deepen and grow in prominence (Grossarth
and Hecht, 2007; Sierra Club, n.d.). Here, economic development priorities actually
merge with consumers’ subjective preference. This corresponds with new studies on
the youngest people in the workforce, who place increasing value on where they live
relative to what they do (see, for example, Cortright and Coletta, 2004; Schrock and
Jurjevich, 2015). Of course, the trend to ‘revitalize’ and densify strategic urban areas
is not driven by climate-change concerns alone––hardly any social action is driven by
a single motive––yet there is a crystallization of ideas around what a ‘climate-friendly’
lifestyle looks like.
Miriam Zuk, Director of the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley, noting
the clear connection of climate change with gentrification, argued in her 2015 blog entry
entitled ‘How to prevent gentrification and displacement in the fight against climate
change’:
Where you live makes a big difference in your access to public transit, and
to opportunities. Right now, all over the state, we’re seeing displacement
and gentrification; lower-income people are being pushed out of their
neighborhoods and away from that access (Zuk, 2015: npn).
Through this focus, we find a clear and direct relationship between gentrification, the
desires of some urban residents for (what they understand as) low-carbon living, and
municipal efforts to address climate change. We wish to sharpen the focus on low-
carbon policy in US cities and processes of gentrification, which could be conceptualized
as a type of carbon gentrification. We define carbon gentrification as middle- and upper-
income residents’ preference for neighborhoods that offer the opportunity to walk,
bike and ride transit in a mixed-use, dense urban environment, as a means to lower
their carbon footprint, which are often, but not always, centrally located in urban areas,
leading to a rise in housing prices for those areas. Bouzarovski et al. (2018: 2) make
similar observations, stating that ‘the phenomenon of “low-carbon gentrification” ... is
seen as a politically embedded process of changing the social and spatial composition of
urban quarters under the pretext of climate change and energy efficiency imperatives’.
Long and Rice (2018: 11) further implicate low-carbon development as a gentrifying
and even segregating force, because ‘the ability to live a climate-resilient lifestyle is a
matter of income, education, and access’ and increasingly adds the ‘security of living
in insulated districts that are less susceptible to climate hazards’. Given the rise of this
phenomenon, we argue that it is crucial to understand how one of the most significant
environmental challenges society currently faces (climate change) and one of the
fastest-growing domains of urban policy (carbon governance) are implicated in everyday
struggles over access to housing. The idea that by biking to work, walking to dinner
and living in a dense urban environment urban residents can ‘do their part’ in the fight
against climate change, may also mean that these actions are driving up housing values
in neighborhoods perceived as being low-carbon. We turn our attention, next, to a class
of urban workers––young creative- and technology-industry employees––who appear to
accelerate these negative outcomes as they simultaneously desire a low-carbon lifestyle
and have the income to afford it.
to the central city, although not all of them are primarily motivated by environmental
concerns. Yet, as we demonstrate here, the literature does point to a particular class of
creative and tech workers who are part of broader public–private policy shifts towards
greening and decarbonizing the city, while simultaneously promoting white-collar
economic growth. This is an active agenda to green the city and make it ‘creative’ in a
way that palliates environmental/climate concerns and safeguards growth.
In terms of the culture of these gentrifiers, the technology workforce today differs
quite markedly from that in the 1990s, when suburban tech campuses predominated.
Today’s creative and technology workers tend to be relatively young, unmarried, child-
free, and show a tendency towards moving to gentrifying neighborhoods proximate to
the central city (Moos, 2014). These young professionals are prized by tech companies
and startups because they operate well within a neoliberal knowledge economy
that prizes mobility, flexibility and social capital. Furthermore, recent research has
shown that young college-educated (YCE) migrants appear to place greater relative
value on non-economic factors when selecting where to live and work (for example,
political milieu, quality public transportation, walkability, food choices) compared
to employment opportunities (Jurjevich and Schrock, 2012). During the late 1970s
and early 1980s, for example, annual employment growth explained about 75% of the
variation in net inmigration of YCEs. In more recent periods, however, that relationship
has fallen to about 50% (Jurjevich et al., 2016). The environmentally minded professional
class certainly exhibits the socio-demographic characteristics that often accompany
gentrifying populations. In Seattle, for instance, the mean annual salary of computer,
IT and mathematical occupation workers is 78% more than that of all workers, while in
Austin, this same group earns 71% more than the mean annual salary (BLS, 2016a; 2016b).
Both of these cities boast college educational attainment levels that are more than 20%
higher than the national average, reflecting a broader trend in the movement of educated
workers to US technology hubs (CBRE, 2016).
In an effort to recruit the eco-professional class, creative and technology firms
have strategically and intentionally begun appealing to their desires for ‘green’ urban
living (Greenberg, 2015) and using this as part of the green marketing of their companies
more generally. Many technology and startup firms are (re)locating from their traditional
suburban campuses to urban areas that make use of low-carbon infrastructure, higher
levels of density and mixed-use development and better access to diverse food, exercise
and recreational options (Fisher, 2015; Slavin, 2015; Florida, 2016). It is quite common
for tech- and creative-industry firms to explicitly market themselves as working for
environmental sustainability and climate-change mitigation. Firms have also begun
touting the benefits of promoting a culture of health, creativity and sustainability in the
workplace, with many companies opting to provide sustainable food options, ‘worker
wellness’ programs and opportunities to engage with and promote various aspects of
corporate sustainability (Delmas and Pekovic, 2012; NBS, 2013; Lerman, 2016a; Stringer,
2016).
With business support, city planners in several major North American cities have
spurred the ‘revitalization’ of inner-city neighborhoods, the implementation of smart
growth and smart urbanism and public-transit and bike-lane expansion––an economic
development agenda that has slowly merged with a low-carbon politics (Harvey, 1989;
2001; Hackworth, 2007; Tretter, 2012). Further, the aestheticization of the central city
in the late 1990s and 2000s allowed a highly visible mobilization of capital at a time of
heightened interurban competition, serving as an important mechanism for cities to
distinguish themselves through branding and marketing (Brenner and Theodore, 2002;
Scott, 2011). But has the success of these policies in attracting young, elite workers
to densified central areas translated into meaningful reductions of GHG emissions?
This is the question we turn to next, as we argue there is a new and significant socio-
environmental contradiction emerging in the climate-friendly city.
INTERVENTIONS8
4 Prevailing research does not include time series data for moderately high spatial resolution household carbon
footprints; these data should be created, but will require substantial resources. It is theoretically possible that a
subset of environmentally minded professionals who move into gentrifying neighborhoods also consume far
fewer goods and services, and fly far less, than their demographic counterparts who are better represented by
survey data and in models. However, there is no compelling evidence to suggest this.
INTERVENTIONS10
this more holistic perspective, we note Jones and Kammen’s (2014) finding that the
densest American cities with the lowest GHG emissions have the most sprawling, high-
emissions suburbs; in Freiburg, Germany, densification and gentrification of the city
core has led to increased automobile commuting, and ensuing emissions, in the city’s
suburbs (Mössner and Miller, 2016). In short, emissions may be shifting around an urban
area, but those neighborhoods with increasing numbers of affluent residents are very
likely experiencing an overall increase.
Overall, then, the tendency to downplay or obfuscate individual consumption
in conventional (territorially based) inventorying methods has consealed a new and
significant contradiction between desires for ‘low-carbon’ living that are believed
to be achieved via densifying urban design, and actual ecological outcomes, which
are heavily influenced by income levels and consumption behaviors. Certainly,
higher-quality data are needed here to more finely parse these relationships. Still,
in general, high-income, walkable and bicycle-friendly communities catering to
environmentally minded professionals are likely not to yield the advertised levels of
carbon reduction, especially when more accurate methods of carbon accounting for
consumption and purchased goods are considered. Strategies for decarbonizing urban
life––either in terms of carbon reductions, or blending social and ecological policies
in climate governance––should consider consumption-based accounting of carbon,
especially for meeting social and environmental sustainability goals. Such strategies
would need to take economic equity seriously and intervene across the whole of the
urban fabric––not just in designated areas. We argue that this socio-environmental
contradiction, where displacement of lower-income residents from climate-friendly
neighborhoods could increase overall emissions for that area, requires more attention
and evaluation by urban studies scholars interested in housing justice and sustainability
(see also Wachsmuth et al., 2016).
5 Unlike Census 2000 and Census 2010, individuals could only identify as one race in the 1990 census. Thus 1990
data are reported as Black/African-American (Alone), non-Hispanic, while 2000 and 2010 data refer to individuals
identifying as Black/African-American (Alone or In Combination), non-Hispanic.
INTERVENTIONS12
Change in Population
Share Figures for the
Black Population by
Census Tract, 2000-2010
Seattle, WA
Freeways
Water Bodies
2010 Tracts
% Change (Black)
< -5%
-4.9% to -2.5%
-2.4% - 0%
0.1% - 2.5%
2.6% - 5%
> 5%
No data
Source:
National Longitudinal Tract Database 0 1 2 4
Logan, John R., Zengwang Xu, and Brian Stults. 2014. Miles
grew by 14.1 (from 53.3 to 67.4%) and 19.9%, respectively (from 35.6 to 55.5%) (US Census
Bureau, 2000c; 2015a––2000 data compiled by US 2010 Project, 2010).6
6 Data from the American Community Survey five-year combined file (2011–2015) (US Census Bureau, 2015) contain
accompanying margin of error (MOE) values that are not reported here.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CITY 13
Change in Population
Share Figures for the
White Population by
Census Tract, 2000-2010
Seattle, WA
Freeways
Water Bodies
2010 Tracts
% Change (White)
< -5%
-4.9% to -2.5%
-2.4% - 0%
0.1% - 2.5%
2.6% - 5%
> 5%
No data
Source:
National Longitudinal Tract Database 0 1 2 4
Logan, John R., Zengwang Xu, and Brian Stults. 2014. Miles
Bill Gates put the Microsoft campus out in the suburbs [of Seattle] to follow his
workers, and Jeff Bezos [CEO of Amazon] has done the same thing––he has
moved it [Amazon headquarters] downtown because he knows that is where
his worker wants to be. So, for both of them, it’s the high-tech labor market that
drives their geographic decisions.
Other local advocacy groups, including Got Green and Puget Sound Sage, which focus
on sustainability issues for communities of color in Seattle, Washington, have conducted
research on the issue. They wrote in a community-led research report:
Interviewees made the case that any local efforts to build climate resilience for
our communities will be undermined if low-income people and people of color
continue to be displaced to suburban cities, particularly if those suburbs are
under-resourced and unable to conduct rigorous climate resiliency planning
(Got Green and Puget Sound Sage, 2016).
7 Here we report contract rent, which is the monthly base amount paid to the landlord. Other expenses, including
cost of utilities, are not included in this figure.
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CITY 15
These processes have also been documented and observed by the local media. Seattle’s
alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger, for example, captured many of the rapid
transformations in South Lake Union and adjacent neighborhoods of Capitol Hill
(traditionally Seattle’s LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood), First Hill and the Central
District (Seattle’s historically African-American neighborhood) in the article ‘The
mystery of Seattle’s new-to-town tech workers’, which stated:
Observation around Amazon’s new Doppler headquarters also makes these connec
tions evident. New condominium high-rises are under construction all around
Amazon’s headquarters. These are tucked between light rail stations, streetcars and
protected bike lanes, including one that goes right past the Doppler building’s main
entrance.
We believe that, taken together, the various data presented here underscore strong
links between the location of higher-paying, more specialized technology companies,
significant investment in low-carbon infrastructure, and signs of gentrification in these
centrally located Seattle neighborhoods. Based on the trends in recent GHG emissions
studies previously reviewed, we can expect that emissions in these neighborhoods are
also increasing owing to higher overall consumption by upper-income residents. The
question remains how widespread this trend is in various types of North American
cities. It is important to recognize that there is a notable range in the policy priorities
and experiences of US cities, and some metropolitan areas––such as New York City
or Chicago––have been building in a ‘low-carbon’ (i.e. dense, transit-friendly) fashion
for more than a century. Yet cities such as Seattle (but also Austin, Texas, and Atlanta,
Georgia, as well as many others) have experienced significant development in the post-
second world war era and are more recently investing in low-carbon infrastructure.
Thus, further research is needed to investigate the various ways in which these trends
influence Western US and Sunbelt cities versus their effects on historically dense cities
that had developed extensively prior to the automobile era. Still, there are a number
of cities that, like Seattle, are and will continue to invest in low-carbon infrastructure
that will be subject to the processes described here. To determine the significance of
our proposition, we conclude by turning to the various ‘needs’––theoretical, data and
political––that exist to fully understand and address this phenomena in Seattle and
elsewhere.
Discussion and conclusion: what good is the low-carbon city if only the rich
can live there?
The analysis provided here is of critical importance because, not only are other
high-tech and creative firms following in the footsteps of Amazon and Seattle, but
Amazon itself is in the process of building a new headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia
(known as HQ2). Their call for proposals for a new HQ2 highlighted the significant
increase in higher-income workers they will draw to a new city, as it states that ‘Amazon
will hire as many as fifty thousand (50,000) new full-time employees with an average
annual total compensation exceeding one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) over
the next ten to fifteen years’ (Amazon, 2017). Access to mass transit is listed as a ‘core
preference’ of the site requirements, and it lists the potential contribution of $43 million
towards local ‘public transportation system as employees’ transportation benefit’ (ibid.).
The call for proposals goes on to boast about the ‘redevelopment of South Lake Union
INTERVENTIONS16
and Denny Triangle with its sustainable buildings and open spaces’ as part of the
positive impacts of its current HQ in Seattle (ibid.), and a CityLab blog even called
Amazon’s request for proposals for HQ2 ‘transit reckoning’, arguing that:
Leaders of car-oriented cities around the country might be ogling some of the
shiny new mass transit systems in the country and wondering how they might
build one of their own ... Building effective mass transport––presumably, the
kind Amazon is interested in––is not the same as building trains. Cities might
look to Seattle, the city where Amazon already lives, to reverse-engineer their
way to HQ2-style mobility (Bliss, 2017b).
Some social commentators have already noted the negative outcomes that competing
for HQ2 might propose (including, but also going beyond those associated with the tax
breaks and giveaways that might draw Amazon to a city). Seattle native Timothy Egan
warned, for example, of skyrocketing housing prices and culture changes that accompany
the import of thousands upon thousands of new, well-paid high-tech workers in a New
York Times opinion piece titled ‘How Amazon took Seattle’s soul’ (Egan, 2017). More than
75 community organizations signed an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, stating that
‘We love that you’re looking for cities that have robust public transit infrastructure––but
we know that an influx of 50,000 new people will strain our existing service, and building
new transit to serve Amazon could divert funds from the rest of us. Let’s make sure that,
as transit gets built out, it’s working for everyone in our community’ (ourHQ2wishlist.org,
2017). They go on to state: ‘It’s no secret that the tech industry has hastened an affordable
housing crisis in Seattle and other cities around the country’. Practically speaking, these
public warnings illustrate, directly and concretely, that the processes we have described
here will continue to threaten housing justice in the next ‘climate-friendly’ city in which
Amazon (or other major tech companies) choose to locate their headquarters.
Simply stated, our novel thesis is: there is no climate justice without a clear
and central focus on housing justice. Furthermore, the failure of many academics and
practitioners to see climate and housing justice as directly related may actually be
producing negative environmental effects, as higher-income earners have larger carbon
footprints. It is critically important to evaluate whether efforts to decarbonize cities
are, in fact, having the social and environmental outcomes they wish to produce. As
illustrated by our discussion of the New York City High Line earlier, there is widespread
recognition that green spaces, remediation projects and even efforts at densification
and transit-friendly planning create pressures on housing prices. Yet it is important to
more clearly recognize that these pressures are produced by, and articulated around, a
form of urban carbon politics (and their associated gray ecologies) that are much more
widespread and far-reaching than the more localized ‘greening’ projects that have
typically been the subject of eco-gentrification studies. As carbon becomes the primary
metric around which urban sustainability efforts are understood, the contradiction we
identify here is of increasing importance. Moreover, the forms of eco-gentrification
associated with low-carbon living are far more than an unintended outcome, but rather,
they are also a contradiction: greenhouse gas emissions are likely increasing in the areas
meant to reduce overall emissions associated with urban living, primarily because of the
affordability issues associated with desirable low-carbon neighborhoods. It is important
to extend our line of inquiry to evaluate more carefully the actual ecological outcomes
that might result from carbon gentrification. We have suggested here that this is not only
an issue for housing justice, but one for climate and environmental justice too. We must
fully understand the dimensions of this problem to have adequate and robust community
and policy responses.
This shift in focus towards intention and outcomes might also allow us to
address a series of important questions about the ethical dilemmas and obligations
CONTRADICTIONS OF THE CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CITY 17
of gentrification research that have been raised in this journal (see Schlichtman and
Patch, 2014; Marcuse, 2015). For example: Do environmentally minded professionals
and those rejecting the forms of suburbanization that dominated the landscape for
so many decades really believe they are improving the environment? Are they aware
of the displacement they help cause? A theoretical framework that would allow us to
disentangle the motivations of gentrifiers, especially as they seek to employ a lifestyle
that has been normatively espoused as good for the environment, is important to
understand in relation to the goals of urban climate governance. New theoretical
advancements about these ethical aspects of urban sustainability efforts might also allow
us to better understand whether the climate-friendly city has the potential to meet its
carbon-reduction goals in a socially responsible and just way, especially in the context
of neoliberal and capitalist governance regimes.
From an empirical standpoint, the data needs are also significant. We need more
data, from more cities, at a finer spatial resolution, which connect urban activities––
particularly consumption––to GHG emissions, to fully assess the extent of gentrification
that may be occurring. More data are also needed on the influence of the high-tech
industry and its workforce on promoting or appealing to a low-carbon lifestyle, and the
ways in which technology and creative industries interact with environmental policies
and low-carbon infrastructure in the city. For example: How and why do some industries
capitalize on the low-carbon infrastructure investments of cities, and what effect does
this have on nearby populations? Conversely, what kind of lifestyle, encouraged by what
kinds of planning interventions, is compatible with both increased social justice and
reduced carbon emissions?
And finally, as for political commitments, we are concerned with what it means
when densifying, ‘low-carbon’ cities are becoming accessible only to a small portion
of higher-income urban residents through processes of gentrification associated
with desires for low-carbon living. Local policymakers and urban theorists will have
to confront the unintended social and ecological outcomes of low-carbon urban
policies if they wish to achieve their stated social and environmental goals. We also
argue for longtime residents of low-carbon neighborhoods having the ‘right to stay
put’ (Newman and Wyly, 2006), both as a positive social and environmental goal.
We believe that new kinds of dialogue between environmental planners and urban
social movements are needed so that low-carbon, pro-density planning is at once
more equitable and more consistent with the urgent imperative to reduce the carbon
footprint of urban life. Better coalition building and more intentional conversations
between urban sustainability champions and affordable housing advocates are urgently
and critically necessary to address the negative effects of low-carbon gentrification.
Moreover, gentrifiers themselves need to become more aware of, and involved in, the
ways in which their well-intentioned actions have very real and significant negative
outcomes.
Jason R. Jurjevich, Population Research Center, Portland State University, Post Office
Box 751, Portland, Oregon 97207-0751, USA, [email protected]
INTERVENTIONS18
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