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Evaluating the Social Equity Implications of Green Infrastructure for Urban Resilience

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_projects/1j92gf76s

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  • As the threat of climate change becomes more imminent and the role of cities in climate adaptation becomes clearer, urban resilience, the ability of a city or urban system to withstand a wide array of shocks and stresses, has gained increasing attention in climate adaptation policy and planning. Critics of traditional resilience-building investments claim that these policies do not adequately consider power, politics, and justice, therefore preventing systemic change and sometimes even exacerbating social inequities. Using panel data at the census tract level in Washington D.C., Portland, Oregon, and Houston, Texas, this research looks at how green infrastructure flood risk reduction (GI-FRR) projects affect housing affordability between 2010 and 2019. This analysis is supplemented by a qualitative review of each city’s climate adaptation plan using the Fitzgibbons & Mitchell (2019) rubric to evaluate how intentionally cities incorporated aspects of justice, equity, and power. Findings indicate that census tracts with newly implemented GI-FRR projects experience increases in household income, housing values, and percentage of people with a bachelor’s degree in Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. However, there was no significant relationship between green infrastructure implementation and gentrification in Houston, Texas. I also identify that while cities incorporate equity to varying degrees, the outcomes in terms of housing affordability and neighborhood change are not significantly different. These conclusions add insight to climate planning on the city and local level by identifying a critical side effect of building urban resilience without an equity lens: gentrification and a widening resilience gap. Further research should investigate how this relationship extrapolates to other cities with varying zoning policies and of varying sizes and regions as well as considering other resilience programs to better understand the impact of resilience investments on housing affordability and community evolution.
  • Keywords: green infrastructure, climate resilience, urban resilience, urban planning, gentrification, social equity, environmental justice
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