IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v58y2021i1p90-112.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban green boosterism and city affordability: For whom is the ‘branded’ green city?

Author

Listed:
  • Melissa Garcia-Lamarca

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Isabelle Anguelovski

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Helen Cole

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • James JT Connolly

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Lucía Argüelles

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Francesc Baró

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Stephanie Loveless

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Carmen Pérez del Pulgar Frowein

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

  • Galia Shokry

    (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

Increasingly, greening in cities across the Global North is enmeshed in strategies for attracting capital investment, raising the question: for whom is the future green city? Through exploring the relationship between cities’ green boosterist rhetoric, affordability and social equity considerations within greening programmes, this paper examines the extent to which, and why, the degree of green branding – that is, urban green boosterism – predicts the variation in city affordability. We present the results of a mixed methods, macroscale analysis of the greening trajectories of 99 cities in Western Europe, the USA and Canada. Our regression analysis of green rhetoric shows a trend toward higher cost of living among cities with the longest duration and highest intensity green rhetoric. We then use qualitative findings from Nantes, France, and Austin, USA, as two cases to unpack why green boosterism correlates with lower affordability. Key factors determining the relation between urban greening and affordability include the extent of active municipal intervention, redistributional considerations and the historic importance of inclusion and equity in urban development. We conclude by considering what our results mean for the urban greening agenda in the context of an ongoing green growth imperative going forward.

Suggested Citation

  • Melissa Garcia-Lamarca & Isabelle Anguelovski & Helen Cole & James JT Connolly & Lucía Argüelles & Francesc Baró & Stephanie Loveless & Carmen Pérez del Pulgar Frowein & Galia Shokry, 2021. "Urban green boosterism and city affordability: For whom is the ‘branded’ green city?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(1), pages 90-112, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:1:p:90-112
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098019885330
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098019885330
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098019885330?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Delores Conway & Christina Li & Jennifer Wolch & Christopher Kahle & Michael Jerrett, 2010. "A Spatial Autocorrelation Approach for Examining the Effects of Urban Greenspace on Residential Property Values," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 150-169, August.
    2. Federico Cugurullo, 2013. "How to Build a Sandcastle: An Analysis of the Genesis and Development of Masdar City," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 23-37, January.
    3. Murat Arsel & Bram Büscher, 2012. "Nature™ Inc.: Changes and Continuities in Neoliberal Conservation and Market-based Environmental Policy," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 43(1), pages 53-78, January.
    4. Timothy W. Luke, 2005. "Neither sustainable nor development: reconsidering sustainability in development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(4), pages 228-238.
    5. Erick Guerra & Mariel Kirschen, 2016. "Housing Plus Transportation Affordability Indices: Uses, Opportunities, and Challenges," International Transport Forum Discussion Papers 2016/14, OECD Publishing.
    6. David Albouy & Gabriel Ehrlich & Yingyi Liu, 2016. "Housing Demand, Cost-of-Living Inequality, and the Affordability Crisis," NBER Working Papers 22816, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Sarah Dooling, 2009. "Ecological Gentrification: A Research Agenda Exploring Justice in the City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 621-639, September.
    8. Megan Heckert & Jeremy Mennis, 2012. "The Economic Impact of Greening Urban Vacant Land: A Spatial Difference-In-Differences Analysis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(12), pages 3010-3027, December.
    9. Aidan While & Andrew E. G. Jonas & David Gibbs, 2004. "The environment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban ‘sustainability fix’ in Manchester and Leeds," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 549-569, September.
    10. Mike Hodson & Simon Marvin, 2010. "Urbanism in the anthropocene: Ecological urbanism or premium ecological enclaves?," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 298-313, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alessandro Rigolon & Timothy Collins, 2023. "The green gentrification cycle," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(4), pages 770-785, March.
    2. Triguero-Mas, Margarita & Anguelovski, Isabelle & García-Lamarca, Melissa & Argüelles, Lucía & Perez-del-Pulgar, Carmen & Shokry, Galia & Connolly, James J.T. & Cole, Helen V.S., 2021. "Natural outdoor environments’ health effects in gentrifying neighborhoods: Disruptive green landscapes for underprivileged neighborhood residents," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    3. Giuseppe Salvia & Irene Pluchinotta & Ioanna Tsoulou & Gemma Moore & Nici Zimmermann, 2022. "Understanding Urban Green Space Usage through Systems Thinking: A Case Study in Thamesmead, London," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-24, February.
    4. Adrian Robert Bazbauers, 2022. "Translating climate strategies into action: An analysis of the sustainable, green, and resilient city action plans of the multilateral development banks," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(2), March.
    5. Cole, Helen V.S. & Anguelovski, Isabelle & Connolly, James J.T. & García-Lamarca, Melissa & Perez-del-Pulgar, Carmen & Shokry, Galia & Triguero-Mas, Margarita, 2021. "Adapting the environmental risk transition theory for urban health inequities: An observational study examining complex environmental riskscapes in seven neighborhoods in Global North cities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    6. Vera Götze & Josje Anna Bouwmeester & Mathias Jehling, 2024. "For whom do we densify? Explaining income variation across densification projects in the region of Utrecht, the Netherlands," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(7), pages 1273-1290, May.
    7. Leon Wansleben & Nils Neumann, 2024. "Entrepreneurs beyond neoliberalism: Municipally owned corporations and climate change mitigation in German cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(5), pages 799-820, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Byron Miller & Samuel Mössner, 2020. "Urban sustainability and counter-sustainability: Spatial contradictions and conflicts in policy and governance in the Freiburg and Calgary metropolitan regions," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(11), pages 2241-2262, August.
    2. Marit Rosol & Vincent Béal & Samuel Mössner, 2017. "Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(8), pages 1710-1718, August.
    3. Charlotte Glennie, 2020. "Growing Together: Community Coalescence and the Social Dimensions of Urban Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-25, November.
    4. Daams, Michiel N. & Sijtsma, Frans J. & Veneri, Paolo, 2019. "Mixed monetary and non-monetary valuation of attractive urban green space: A case study using Amsterdam house prices," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 1-1.
    5. Dan Lin, 2019. "Urban Growth-Oriented Green Accumulation: Ecological Conservation Planning in the Shenzhen DaPeng Peninsula in Southern China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-24, January.
    6. Valeria Saiu, 2017. "The Three Pitfalls of Sustainable City: A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating the Theory-Practice Gap," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-23, December.
    7. Jenni Viitanen & Richard Kingston, 2014. "Smart Cities and Green Growth: Outsourcing Democratic and Environmental Resilience to the Global Technology Sector," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(4), pages 803-819, April.
    8. Tan Yigitcanlar & Federico Cugurullo, 2020. "The Sustainability of Artificial Intelligence: An Urbanistic Viewpoint from the Lens of Smart and Sustainable Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-24, October.
    9. Annegret Haase, 2024. "Inequalities and Injustices of Urban Green Regeneration: Applying the Conflict Analysis Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-16, February.
    10. Federico Cugurullo, 2016. "Urban eco-modernisation and the policy context of new eco-city projects: Where Masdar City fails and why," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(11), pages 2417-2433, August.
    11. Grossmann, Volker & Larin, Benjamin & Löfflad, Hans Torben & Steger, Thomas, 2021. "Distributional consequences of surging housing rents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    12. Georgina Blakeley, 2010. "Governing Ourselves: Citizen Participation and Governance in Barcelona and Manchester," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1), pages 130-145, March.
    13. Hervé Corvellec & Johan Hultman & Anne Jerneck & Susanne Arvidsson & Johan Ekroos & Niklas Wahlberg & Timothy W. Luke, 2021. "Resourcification: A non‐essentialist theory of resources for sustainable development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 1249-1256, November.
    14. Liu, Li & Liu, Qigui & Tian, Gary & Wang, Peipei, 2018. "Government connections and the persistence of profitability: Evidence from Chinese listed firms," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 110-129.
    15. Zhang, Yue-Jun & Liu, Zhao & Zhou, Si-Ming & Qin, Chang-Xiong & Zhang, Huan, 2018. "The impact of China's Central Rise Policy on carbon emissions at the stage of operation in road sector," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 159-173.
    16. Carlos Pestana Barros & Zhongfei Chen & Luis A. Gil-Alana, 2012. "Housing sales in urban Beijing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(34), pages 4495-4504, December.
    17. Mariya Letdin & Hyoung S. Shim, 2019. "Location choice, life cycle and amenities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 567-585, June.
    18. George Cusworth & Jennifer Dodsworth, 2021. "Using the ‘good farmer’ concept to explore agricultural attitudes to the provision of public goods. A case study of participants in an English agri-environment scheme," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(4), pages 929-941, December.
    19. van der Hoff, Richard & Rajão, Raoni & Leroy, Pieter & Boezeman, Daan, 2015. "The parallel materialization of REDD+ implementation discourses in Brazil," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 37-45.
    20. Jay Mittal, 2017. "Valuing Visual Accessibility of Scenic Landscapes in a Single Family Housing Market: A Spatial Hedonic Approach," ERES eres2017_1, European Real Estate Society (ERES).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:1:p:90-112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.