Greenways for Climate Adaptation: Avoiding the ‘Green Paradox’ while Improving Urban Resiliency

Greenway planning and design is an important approach to climate adaptation in urban areas. In this paper we bring together literature on green gentrification, climate adaptation, and equity in an early exploration of equity issues specific to urban greenways for climate adaptation (‘adaptation-greenways’). Similar to environmental risks and green space access, impacts of climate change are distributed unevenly across urban space. Climate-vulnerable communities are often minority- and lower-income neighborhoods. Greenways can redress existing inequities (‘pre-equity issues’) by providing green space access and climate adaptation benefits in vulnerable communities. Recent projects demonstrate that greenways, while redressing existing inequities, can introduce new inequities (‘post-equity issues’) at the same time. This is the ‘green paradox’, where poor initial site conditions underlying existing inequities in minority- and lower-income neighborhoods can give rise to intense price and development pressure when these areas are revitalized by urban greening. As a consequence, greenways may lead to ‘green gentrification’ when urban greening creates increased property values and risk of exclusion and displacement. While less explored to date, urban greenways for climate adaptation may yield similar outcomes when improved resilience brings increases in property value, the benefit of which does not accrue to existing residents. The very neighborhoods that need resiliency investment to redress past environmental harms and prevent increased vulnerability are the same ones whose residents may be concerned about being priced out as improvements increase the market value of the newly-safer properties. Green-gentrification literature provides preliminary suggestions of practical steps that can be taken to address the ‘green paradox’. We assess whether the same strategies are likely to apply when greenways are planned for climate adaptation. This is worth investigating, because adaptation-greenways may require differences in the needs of design. We conclude with a summary of considerations for future adaptation-greenway planning and design

Teaching across disciplines: a case study of a project-based short course to teach holistic coastal adaptation design

Climate change has led to the need for innovation in resilient infrastructure and the social policies which will support those. This requires greater interdisciplinary interactions and knowledge building among emerging professionals. This paper presents a case study of a pilot short course intended to immerse graduate students in the design of resilient infrastructure using place-based and interdisciplinary active team learning. This course helps graduate students bridge the gap between research and practice on the social science and engineering of resilient infrastructure for coastal adaptation. The intellectual framework for the course (the Adaptive Gradients Framework) provides a holistic evaluation of adaptation design proposals and was used to recognize the complexity of social, ecological and engineering aspects and varied social benefits. The course provides a model to move outside rigid boundaries of institutions and disciplines to begin to build, in both students and instructors, the ability to work more effectively on complex social-ecological-engineering problems. Finally, this paper presents a summary of lessons learned from this pilot short course

Planning for Climate Change A Reader in Green Infrastructure and Sustainable Design for Resilient Cities, 1st Edition

This book provides an overview of the large and interdisciplinary literature on the substance and process of urban climate change planning and design, using the most important articles from the last 15 years to engage readers in understanding problems and finding solutions to this increasingly critical issue. The Reader’s particular focus is how the impacts of climate change can be addressed in urban and suburban environments—what actions can be taken, as well as the need for and the process of climate planning. Both reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as adapting to future climate are explored. Many of the emerging best practices in this field involve improving the green infrastructure of the city and region—providing better on-site stormwater management, more urban greening to address excess heat, zoning for regional patterns of open space and public transportation corridors, and similar actions. These actions may also improve current public health and livability in cities, bringing benefits now and into the future. This Reader is innovative in bringing climate adaptation and green infrastructure together, encouraging a more hopeful perspective on the great challenge of climate change by exploring both the problems of climate change and local solutions