Informal urban green space as anti-gentrification strategy?

Access to urban greenspace is vital for urban residents’ wellbeing. Yet investment in new parks can trigger housing price inflation through a process termed environmental gentrification. This can in turn potentially displace marginalized and vulnerable residents. In this chapter, we examine cases from Japan and Australia, investigating how informal urban greenspaces (IGS) (e.g. vacant lots, street or railway verges, brownfields, and power line corridors) could function as an ‘anti-gentrification’ urban greening strategy. Employing conceptual insights from political ecology and environmental justice, we use spatial and statistical analysis to test whether IGS is socio-spatially differentiated by (dis)advantage, and whether factors such as income and education affect residents’ perception and use of IGS. Results suggest that IGS holds considerable potential as a ‘just green enough’ intervention, because it does not appear to trigger gentrification as occurs with more ‘intentional’ green spaces. We argue that a key difference between intentional and informal greenspaces is the apparent empowerment of residents as co-creators, designers, managers and users of greenspace – not as passive consumers. Informal greenspaces may thus fulfill recreational needs while avoiding demands for a ‘return on investment’, a driver of environmental-gentrification. Insights from Japan suggest that planners and urban managers should identify and reduce IGS use barriers, provide better information (e.g. IGS maps), and work with residents to promote its use.