Research

INTRODUCTION

Inequity in the distribution and quality of urban vegetation, including street trees, parks, private trees and gardens, community gardens, and remnant woodlands, has become an increasingly popular topic of discussion among urban greening scholars (Jesdale et al. 2013, Fernández-Álvarez 2017, Kwon et al. 2017, Nesbitt et al. 2018, Quinton et al. 2022a) and in civil society (Mahdawi 2019, Tanner 2020, Bulowski 2021, Hoag 2021, Griffiths 2022). The increasing evidence of the benefits of urban vegetation (van den Bosch and Ode Sang 2017, Jarvis et al. 2021, 2022, Yuchi et al. 2022) and its inequitable distribution have raised pivotal questions surrounding the purpose and intention of urban greening. The need to address urban green inequities has inspired changes in the way urban greening is planned and practiced, leading to equity-focused municipal policy development (NYC Parks 2014, City of Vancouver and Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation 2018, Portland Parks and Recreation 2018, Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation 2019) and programs and tools to measure and rectify green inequities, such as American Forests’ Tree Equity Score (American Forests 2022). Urban greening and associated practitioners, including urban foresters, landscape architects, recreation and open space managers, urban ecologists, urban planners, and developers, have had to reimagine their roles and strategies accordingly, with an increased focus on equity in urban greening practice (Nesbitt et al. 2019).

In seeking to ameliorate green inequities, a potential challenge has emerged: green gentrification. Green gentrification (also called ecological or environmental gentrification) occurs when urban greening interventions intersect with increased financial investment in urban renewal or development, triggering the physical displacement of long-term and/or under resourced residents or creating a feeling of disconnection from the neighborhood among those who stay (Sax et al. 2022a). A growing body of research related to this phenomenon has described its nuances across contexts, including the displacement of economically vulnerable populations because of environmental planning agendas (Dooling 2009), the role of sustainability narratives in depoliticizing redevelopment and associated displacement (Quastel 2009), and gentrification facilitated by “the creation or restoration of an environmental amenity” that increases property values and attracts wealthier in-movers (Gould and Lewis 2012:121). Research from around the world has now analyzed the relationship between gentrification processes and improvements to, or installation of, different types of urban vegetation (Anguelovski et al. 2018a, 2022, Rigolon and Németh 2020), although the mechanisms through which greening leads to gentrification are still poorly understood, and displacement has not been well documented (Quinton et al. 2022a). Previous research has documented key patterns related to green gentrification, but further study is needed to understand this phenomenon. To our knowledge, there has yet to be exploration of practitioner understandings of the term and roles in green gentrification processes (but see Rigolon et al., 2020 for strategies for park professionals to alleviate green gentrification outcomes), an approach we offer to rectify this gap.

This is an essential gap to address given greening practitioners’ central role in diagnosing, solving, or even creating the conditions that encourage green gentrification. Greening practitioners and associated urban planning and development professionals are those who are most likely to influence urban vegetation on public land and the urban systems that intersect with urban vegetation in gentrification processes (such as housing and transit; Day et al. 2022). They are also often those who enforce or enact controls on vegetation management on private land (Vogt et al. 2016, O’Herrin et al. 2020). They may thus have an important and grounded understanding of the processes of green gentrification that can inform theory and practice, building on the established history of practice-linked theory co-creation and action in the environmental justice discipline (Taylor 2000). Urban greening practitioners are also those whose work may (unintentionally) perpetuate green gentrification and who may have opportunities to prevent it. Given the inherent critique in green gentrification research, engaging practitioner perspectives may also improve understanding of whether critics are being heard in the realm of policy and practice.

This research investigates the conceptualization and application of green gentrification knowledge among greening practitioners working in Metro Vancouver (MV) and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada. Our objectives were to: (1) identify the meaning of and scope of knowledge about green gentrification from a practitioner perspective, and (2) explore if and how practitioners encounter green gentrification in their work, including barriers to addressing the phenomenon, through the specific cases of MV and the GTA. In approaching green gentrification from the perspective of practitioners, we aim to bridge gaps and facilitate knowledge transfer between academia and practice. We hope that our efforts lay the groundwork for innovation in urban greening, moving toward a justice-oriented, contextually grounded practice cognizant of the risks and rewards of greening projects.

METHODS

Study sites

Metro Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area are two of the most populous and densely inhabited Canadian metropolitan areas. Each comprises a major city (the cities of Vancouver and Toronto, respectively) surrounded by and connected to communities, suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas of varying sizes and population densities. MV and the GTA are major economic centres, have growing populations, act as important locations for immigrant reception, and struggle with housing costs decoupled from local incomes (Florida 2017, Ley 2017, Kramer 2018). Previous research has highlighted complex distributional patterns of vegetation in these metropolitan areas, with many areas showing negative relationships between vegetation abundance and indicators of marginalization (Tooke et al. 2010, Greene et al. 2018, Jarvis et al. 2020, Quinton et al. 2022b) and new greening occurring frequently before, during, and after gentrification in these cities (Quinton et al. 2023).

Within each of the metropolitan areas, each city/town/district has its own local municipal government with primary authority over local planning and policy matters, although regional and provincial bodies have some involvement in regional greening and planning. Given the power of local municipalities within MV and the GTA, there is variability in the extent and content of plans, policies, strategies, and bylaws related to urban greening. Many plans incorporate recurring themes such as maintaining and enhancing urban forests and green space; increasing biodiversity; improving public awareness, education, and stewardship; and promoting equitable distribution/access. Local and regional municipalities highlight common challenges to achieving their goals such as climate change, limited budgets, future population growth/urbanization, and invasive species.

Sampling procedure

The research team invited participation in the study using a purposive sampling method (Campbell et al. 2020) via professional networks, listservs, and social media platforms (UBC BREB Certificate number: H21-00693). We chose this method to target professionals working in sectors potentially influencing or influenced by green gentrification, including urban forestry and allied green industries, and urban planning and development. All practitioners working in these sectors within the Vancouver and Toronto metro areas were eligible to participate.

Participants

Fifty-one participants completed the full survey, including 24 working in the GTA and 27 working in the MV region. Table 1 provides information on participants’ work experience.

Survey

We used an online survey (text in Appendix 1) to assess the green gentrification issues that practitioners encounter in their work. In a two-step process, participants were asked first to select the domains of work in which they engage and second to select the green gentrification issues they encounter within each of those domains. Green gentrification issues were referred to as equity concerns (although they were specifically related to green gentrification) to allow participants to think about their work process without anchoring responses to subsequent questions related to green gentrification. Participants were asked to indicate the percentage of their time allocated to each selected issue using a horizontal visual slider. The slider displayed numbers in the scale (zero–100) as users moved the slider along the horizontal bar. The percentage time allocated to all selected issues could add to over 100 because participants may deal with more than one issue at the same time. Participants were also asked to identify tools used and barriers encountered in addressing equity concerns in open-ended questions. Few participants (two to 10 per domain/issue) identified tools used to address equity concerns and those who did gave short responses that could not be meaningfully interpreted. These data were thus removed from the analysis.

Participants were asked whether they were familiar with the green gentrification concept, if yes, how they had learned about it, and then to define green gentrification in writing before being shown a literature-derived definition. We developed our own scale to measure how respondents understood and used the concept of green gentrification. The scale was designed to examine three constructs: familiarity with the concept of green gentrification, uses of green gentrification at work, and perpetuating green gentrification. The scale included 12 statements, each assessed using a seven-point Likert scale of agreement.

Analysis

We did not examine differences between MV and the GTA because this research is exploratory, and we were not confident that our sample was representative of practitioners in each metro area. Similarly, we did not examine differences among job or organizational types. All open-ended data were analyzed using NVivo 12 software. Members of the research team reviewed codes at the conclusion of each cycle to ensure consistency and validate codes. All statistical analyses were completed in R 2.4.1 GUI 1.18 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria).

Defining green gentrification

The coding strategy for open-ended answers of green gentrification definitions relied on a multi-cycle inductive analysis process (Vanover et al. 2022). First, the definitions were reviewed holistically to get a broad sense for the facets of green gentrification most often identified. Initial codes were created using the explicit language of respondents to remain close to the data (Saldaña 2016). A second round of coding then created thematic categories drawn from the specific facets of green gentrification mentioned. The codes identified in the first cycle were categorized and sorted within these themes, revealing both the range of definitions practitioners offered as well as the frequency with which practitioners discussed each element of green gentrification.

Understanding green gentrification

Open-ended answers describing how respondents learned about green gentrification were analyzed using an inductive coding approach to classify respondent data into broad categories indicative of their learning process (Bingham and Witkowsky 2022). Codes were then refined to identify sub-categories and illuminate themes consistent across respondents.

We assessed the role of domain of work on responses to Likert scales via one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) using the aov function in the stats (v. 4.2.0) R package and Tukey’s post-hoc test to identify significant differences using the TukeyHSD function in the stats (v. 3.6.2) R package. The three Likert scales each contained four items that were intended to address the same construct (familiarity with green gentrification, uses of the concept at work, and perpetuating green gentrification). The ANOVA tests were conducted using the average values from each construct.

Encountering green gentrification

We explored the green gentrification issues that practitioners encounter in their work both generally and within each specific domain. We assessed differences in (1) time spent on gentrification issues generally by each domain of work, (2) the amount of time spent on each gentrification issue across all domains of work, and (3) time spent on different gentrification issues by respondents working in different work domains via two-way ANOVA with interaction using the aov function in the stats (v. 4.2.0) R package, and Tukey’s post-hoc test using the TukeyHSD function in the stats (v. 3.6.2) R package. Descriptions of barriers to addressing green gentrification were coded using an inductive approach that revealed themes across gentrification issues and domains of work (Creswell 2018, Bingham and Witkowsky 2022).

RESULTS

Participants’ domains of work

Participants spent most of their time working in the domains of urban forest policy, planning and design, urban planning and development, and public engagement and stewardship (Fig. 1). Green equity and environmental justice was the domain of work on which participants spent the least amount of time.

Defining green gentrification

When asked to define green gentrification in their own words, respondent answers were varied but usually defined green gentrification as the displacement of existing or vulnerable residents due to the installation or improvement of green space that attracts wealthy in-movers and increases property values. Respondent answers aligned with four emergent themes: (1) displacement, (2) attracting and catering to in-movers, (3) increasing property and land values, and (4) drivers of, or pathways to, green gentrification (Table 2).

When discussing displacement, most respondents focused on the physical displacement of people caused by the improvement of green infrastructure. A wide range of terms were used to refer to communities that may be displaced—some respondents referred to historically marginalized and/or vulnerable communities and others considered the tenure of residents (e.g., long-term, former, or original residents). A few respondents alluded to the displacement of businesses as a wider reaching socio-spatial change occurring as a result of urban greening.

Often related to the theme of displacement, respondents understood green gentrification as a process that attracts wealth to an area typically in the form of affluent in-movers. This concern was often phrased in terms of increased desirability or demand because potential residents view the installation or improvement of green infrastructure as a sign of positive change. The majority of respondents discussed in-movers solely in terms of income or wealth; however, a few centered broader notions of privilege and whiteness in their definitions.

Most respondents mentioned the potential for green gentrification to increase property and/or land values. Seven respondents directly related the increase in cost of living with the targeting of neglected, undervalued, or derelict urban spaces. Six respondents noted that the greening efforts associated with green gentrification are well-intentioned, even if they result in inequitable outcomes.

Finally, almost all definitions included comment—either tacit or explicit—on the primary drivers of green gentrification. There was near consensus among respondents that green gentrification is triggered by the installation or improvement of green space; however, two respondents challenged this assumption, suggesting instead that, within the Vancouver context, greening policy agendas embedded within high-cost developments and an atmosphere of growth and densification were necessary precursors to green gentrification outcomes.

Understanding green gentrification

Overall, 39 respondents (76%) reported that they were familiar with green gentrification when answering the yes/no question. When asked to describe how they had learned about green gentrification, 15 (29%) reported learning about green gentrification in their capacity as green practitioners in a variety of settings, from development and greening policy to conversations with colleagues and professional development opportunities. Thirteen (25%) attributed their understanding to personal learning facilitated through various media sources (e.g., social media, op-eds, and news media) and academic scholarship. Seven (14%) said that they learned about green gentrification in university courses, typically in the planning field.

When responding to the Likert scales, respondents reported a moderate level of familiarity with the concept of green gentrification (Fig. 2), with a majority of respondents reporting confidence in their ability to explain it but less confidence in the strength of their understanding and ability to identify drivers or outcomes. Although 29 respondents (57%) reported that green gentrification is a useful concept for their work, they reported low levels of actual use of the concept at work (Fig. 3). Respondents reported some concern that their work is implicated in green gentrification (Fig. 4), with a majority reporting that they agree with each of the four items in the construct related to perpetuating green gentrification. ANOVA results indicated that domain of work did not influence responses to Likert questions on participants’ familiarity with the concept of green gentrification, their uses of the concept at work, or their role in perpetuating green gentrification (p > 0.05).

Encountering green gentrification

Time spent on green gentrification issues differed significantly among domains of work, F(5, 1259) = 14.78, p < 0.00, with an eta² of 0.055. Respondents working in urban planning and development, green equity and environmental justice, and public engagement and stewardship spent significantly more time on green gentrification issues than those working in other domains (Fig. 5). Time spent on different gentrification issues was not affected by domain of work (p > 0.05).

Percent time spent differed significantly among the green gentrification issues, F(10, 1254) = 7.649, p < 0.000, with an eta² of 0.057. The green gentrification issues on which respondents spent the most time in their work were changes to neighborhood character and uneven investment in public infrastructure (Fig. 6).

Four primary themes emerged from respondents’ descriptions of barriers to addressing green gentrification issues at work: limited institutional capacity (n = 21), limited access to data and relevant knowledge/information (n = 21), restrictions from policies and mandates (n = 17), and lack of appropriate engagement tools (n = 16). Barriers related to institutional capacity included a lack of time and budget dedicated to addressing equity challenges and limitations on staff capacity to both take on additional work and adapt current work to better consider green gentrification. Concerns for time and budget often intersected, with respondents noting a need for higher quality community engagement and more long-term support for equity-related projects—both tasks that require high levels of staff attention.

Access to data and relevant knowledge was another point of concern among respondents. A few noted a need for accessible and reliable data related to green gentrification but most expressed concern that they did not know where to begin when addressing green gentrification. This was because of both a lack of information regarding the signs and impacts of green gentrification and a lack of tools to address equity concerns related to the phenomenon. They also noted a general lack of awareness and understanding around green gentrification that makes it challenging to garner support for equity-related initiatives among clients and municipalities.

Respondents noted a number of barriers related to municipal and provincial policies as well as mandates internal to their organizations. In terms of policy, respondents felt restricted by growth-centric provincial and municipal policy that leaves little room to respond to green gentrification. They noted that it was unclear how much power or will the municipality has to address green gentrification and related equity issues, questioning the extent to which changing the status quo is possible within the current social, economic, and political climate. When discussing internal priorities and mandates, respondents problematized a lack of will among employers and clients to address equity challenges, with questions of green gentrification often overlooked or labeled as out of scope because of competing priorities.

Lastly, some respondents expressed a wish for better engagement tools and strategies to work with communities most vulnerable to green gentrification outcomes. Concerns surrounding budget and time constraints were again raised and respondents noted that long-term, participatory engagement processes are resource intensive. One response discussed the uneven advocacy power of wealthy neighbourhoods that interrupts efforts to deliver services evenly. There were also calls for better tools and strategies, particularly focused on engaging racialized and historically marginalized residents.

DISCUSSION

Defining and understanding green gentrification: perspectives on drivers, processes, and outcomes

The overwhelming majority of respondents identified urban greening as the catalyst for green gentrification in their definitions of this concept, with only two respondents identifying greening policy or a context of rapid development and existing gentrification processes as key components of green gentrification. This framing of greening as the main driver of green gentrification, absent other systemic pressures toward gentrification, is implied by the term itself. It also reflects a key tension in the green gentrification literature—where and when greening plays a central, rather than secondary, role in gentrification, or where greening does not influence gentrification (Anguelovski et al. 2022). For example, a multi-city, international analysis of green gentrification trends by Anguelovski et al. (2022) found variable evidence across space and time of the links between greening and gentrification. Increasingly, green gentrification scholarship is identifying the complex relationships between greening, contextual factors such as residential development and investment (Anguelovski et al. 2018b, García-Lamarca et al. 2021, García-Lamarca et al. 2022), proximity to downtown and level of existing greening (Rigolon and Németh 2020), the green gentrification cycle that can include both green gentrification and gentrified greening (Reibel et al. 2021, Rigolon and Collins 2022), and gentrification processes, resulting in a broader understanding of the ways in which greening can influence gentrification. Some scholars have identified neoliberalism as a key factor in producing gentrifying outcomes from urban greening (García-Lamarca et al. 2021).

Higher income in-movers, increased land values, and displacement

Practitioner definitions of green gentrification were particularly attuned to two facets of the process: attracting wealthy in-movers and increasing land values. This mechanism connecting greening to gentrification is commonly found in academic definitions of green gentrification (e.g., Gould and Lewis 2017). However, such a connection seems to be mainly inferred from, for example, hedonic pricing analyses of housing prices adjacent to existing green spaces (Tyrväinen 1997, Czembrowski and Kronenberg 2016) and the high value residents place on them (Peckham et al. 2013). There have been some economic analyses of the impact of environmental improvements (Banzhaf and McCormick 2007) or new green spaces (Immergluck 2009, Immergluck and Balan 2018) in the field of green (or environmental) gentrification, but little research has directly engaged with gentrifiers to determine the extent to which new greening (vs. other, non-green, factors) motivated them to move into an area (Quinton et al. 2022a). Practitioner definitions also identified a consistent concern for displacement of marginalized/vulnerable or long-term residents. These characteristics of green gentrification are similar to those seen within green gentrification and gentrification literature broadly (Rigolon and Németh 2018, 2019), for example, reflecting the following characteristics of gentrification (Davidson and Lees 2005): capital investment (in this case, increasing land values requiring higher capital investment from home buyers and renters), social upgrading (in this case, attracting wealthy in-movers), landscape change (in this case, greening), and displacement (in this case, displacement of marginalized/vulnerable and long-term residents). In addition, respondents’ focus on marginalization across the axes of racialization and class reflects a common narrative within green gentrification scholarship that treats these two variables as common indicators of resident vulnerability. However, there is also a call across gentrification and green gentrification research to question the generalizability of this narrative and to ensure attention to how context drives understandings of which factors determine the vulnerability of residents to displacement (López-Morales 2015). This is not to say that racialization and class are not essential facets of gentrification, but rather that the ways in which they intersect with other gentrification factors differ across contexts (Lees 2016).

Practitioner definitions showed a consistent focus on the physical displacement of people, which has also been emphasized in the green gentrification literature (Quinton et al. 2022a). However, within some green gentrification scholarship, displacement is also conceptualized as a psychological impact (Dooling 2009, Quastel 2009, Sax et al. 2022a), calling attention to the alienation produced by changing socio-spatial conditions (Alkon et al. 2019, Quinton et al. 2022a). Improvement or installation of green spaces alongside novel opportunities for retail and commercial investment, for example, can alter the accessibility and use of an area, particularly when developments are not planned for/with existing residents or programming is not designed for and inclusive of existing residents (Rigolon et al. 2020, Sax et al. 2022b).

Contextualizing practitioner definitions of green gentrification

The definitions of green gentrification provided by practitioners must also be contextualized by practitioners’ reported familiarity with green gentrification as a concept, their uses of it at work, and their perceived role in perpetuating the phenomenon. Our results suggest that the practitioners in our sample are aware of the concept of green gentrification but do not have a nuanced working knowledge of the concept and do not use it actively in their work, despite concern that their work may perpetuate it. This is somewhat to be expected, given that green gentrification scholarship has only gained prominence in the past decade (Anguelovski et al. 2018b, Quinton et al. 2022a) and so is less likely to be informing practice in a nuanced way. However, these results also suggest a resistance among some greening and associated practitioners to critically engage with the potential negative outcomes of their work or a perception of green gentrification theory as something abstract and not to be taken seriously in practice. Some respondent definitions of green gentrification attempted to challenge the idea that gentrification is negative and highlighted the importance of greening initiatives, even if they cause gentrification. Although urban greening is certainly of critical importance, this finding is concerning given the central role that greening and associated practitioners play in potentially contributing to green gentrification but also in finding ways to better manage the phenomenon. It appears that the critical analysis of urban greening present in the green gentrification literature is not sufficiently reaching practitioners or influencing policy and practice.

It is interesting to note that most respondents learned about green gentrification through their capacity as greening professionals rather than formal educational channels. This finding may also reveal a lack of adequate knowledge sharing between academia and practice on this topic. Many respondents expressed concern that they may perpetuate green gentrification through their work. This suggests a desire to learn more about what green gentrification is and how practitioners influence the process, highlighting again the need for more translation of research knowledge to practice. The concern expressed by practitioners also aligns with their identification of urban greening as a catalyst for green gentrification, implicating practitioners as those who do the urban greening. Taken together, the findings clearly call for increased communication and theory co-creation between academia and practice to support practitioners in managing green gentrification and finding solutions.

What is missing from practitioner definitions?

Practitioner definitions focused on the role of consumer preference for green spaces in the process of green gentrification. However, academic definitions have elucidated other ways in which urban greening can become connected to gentrification and displacement. For example, narratives and successes within the environmental justice movement have been co-opted to serve continued uneven economic growth (Checker 2011). Greening initiatives can also be used by developers and politicians to legitimize broader (re)development and mitigate public backlash (Dooling 2009, Quastel 2009). Related to this is the role that sustainability planning/policy agendas play in upholding uneven development while touting an environmental ethic (Dooling 2009). These pathways suggest a greater intentionality in using green spaces to gentrify areas rather than gentrification being an unintended consequence of trying to address existing green inequities, as some researchers (and some of our survey respondents) have suggested (Pearsall 2018). The omission of these more intentional pathways in the practitioner definitions could be because practitioners do not view themselves as intentionally trying to promote gentrification or are resistant to this view. It could also be because, as described by respondents, their work is very siloed and focuses on matters related to greening rather than housing, development, social policy, and so on, which may limit their consideration of how these factors connect across urban systems and the role different actors (e.g., themselves, developers, elected officials, etc.) play in facilitating such connections.

Encountering green gentrification: sectors, issues, and barriers

Sectors: who encounters green gentrification?

Although urban greening was identified by practitioners as a catalyst for green gentrification, those domains of work most closely involved in urban greening were least likely to encounter green gentrification issues in their work. Instead, those most often engaged with the built environment, human populations, and their interactions, were most likely to encounter green gentrification issues. This has two key implications for theory and practice. First, this suggests nuanced dynamics of green gentrification, where greening is part of a larger gentrification process that engages and is possibly driven by non-greening factors. This has also been suggested by recent literature (García-Lamarca et al. 2021, Anguelovski et al. 2022, Sax et al. 2022b). Second, there is a potential disconnect between a key part of the green gentrification process and its outcomes. Those who are responsible for enacting urban greening are least likely to encounter or manage green gentrification in their work. Linking to the findings discussed above, this may also point to a resistance among some practitioners to engage with issues related to green gentrification or to a tendency to see these issues as outside of the scope of their work. This has implications for urban forest governance and urban planning more broadly. Governance frameworks that help connect urban greening with urban planning/development may be better able to counter green gentrification pressures.

Issues: changes in neighborhood character and uneven public investment

The gentrification issue that practitioners were most likely to encounter, changed neighborhood character, aligns with theories of socio-spatial change leading to psychological displacement, which are becoming more common in the green gentrification literature (Sax et al. 2022a). This finding is interesting given that this conception of green gentrification was largely absent from the definitions of green gentrification provided by practitioners. Practitioners may be encountering green gentrification in their work without connecting it to the theoretical concept, limiting their ability to identify and manage green gentrification on the ground. Of course, an alternative explanation for these findings is that the changes to neighborhood character encountered by practitioners are not due to gentrification or are regarded as apolitical progress toward more livable cities (Grossmann et al. 2021). One survey response in particular reflected this perspective, pointing out the need for positive improvements to underinvested urban areas and the potential for urban greening to facilitate this. Changes to neighborhood character are a contentious issue in the urban planning sphere, regardless of gentrification dynamics, as cities grapple with housing shortages and the need to densify low-density neighbourhoods (Cheshire et al. 2019, Wicki and Kaufmann 2022). The other most commonly encountered gentrification issue was uneven public investment in infrastructure, which aligns with green gentrification scholarship showing that uneven investments in public infrastructure, such as bike lanes or urban parks, can lead to gentrification (Immergluck 2009, Loughran 2014, Goodling et al. 2015). This has been implicated in third-wave gentrification in the Global North (Rigolon and Németh 2019).

Barriers to addressing green gentrification

Respondents identified a range of systemic barriers to addressing green gentrification issues. Our findings suggest that practitioners lack strategies to adequately engage with affected communities. These barriers tell a story of organizations with limited resources to engage with equity issues that require time and resources to work through complex, place-based challenges (Nesbitt et al. 2019). They also suggest that organizations are siloed within their sectors, potentially because of limited institutional capacity that encourages narrowly framed mandates, limiting their ability to influence cross-cutting issues such as green gentrification (Rigolon and Németh 2018, Rigolon et al. 2020). Finally, our findings suggest a limitation in urban greening policy that treats greening practice and concerns for equity as separate entities, giving the impression that there is both too little political will pushing for stronger green gentrification protections for residents and a lack of power among practitioners to enact impactful change (Triffo 2022).

Implications for practice: responses to green gentrification

Although this research is exploratory, it suggests potential strategies to support practitioners in their work with the challenge of green gentrification. Our results highlight the need for clearer links between research and practice and contextually rooted understandings of green gentrification. Response to this must be multifold, including the following: an effort to eliminate silos across urban greening practice and related sectors (e.g., housing), an increase in green gentrification case study research relevant to practitioners, and a heightened focus on research mobilization to policy and practice.

The need to eliminate silos

The barriers limiting practitioner capacity to address green gentrification point to a need for improved systemic/multi-sectoral responses to green gentrification and offer specific guidance on how to confront it. Several respondents felt restricted by existing municipal and provincial policies, indicating the need for new (or revised) policy to address green gentrification. The need for affordable housing policies has frequently been raised in the green gentrification literature (Rigolon et al. 2020, García-Lamarca et al. 2021, Oscilowicz 2021), but this falls outside the scope of work of our survey respondents. This once again raises the need to address silos within and between government and other organizations. However, this alone will not overcome what respondents viewed as a lack of willingness from elected officials to address issues of equity and green gentrification. The need for action on housing affordability has become impossible for Canadian politicians to ignore, and recent responses have emphasized increasing housing supply (e.g. Ontario’s More Homes Built Faster Act 2022). This is the most politically palatable response because it supports the development and real estate industries, but its ultimate impact on affordability is unclear. The Barcelona Urban Environmental Justice Lab has also released an urban green justice toolkit, which suggests approaches to urban green development that are anti-displacement (Oscilowicz 2021).

Context-specific research and community engagement

Increased political recognition for the threat of green gentrification and related equity concerns is a necessary precursor to addressing capacity limitations for practitioners. Beyond this, respondents reported a dearth of data useful for understanding the scope and severity of green gentrification. The lack of available data to quantify displacement is common across gentrification studies (Easton et al. 2020), making it difficult to demonstrate to policymakers the need to address the issue. As Quinton et al. (2022b) revealed, there are relatively few Canadian-based green gentrification studies, with the dominant narrative surrounding green gentrification coming from the United States. This can complicate practitioners’ ability to understand and apply green gentrification theorizing to their local context because the drivers for and climate of gentrification in Canada are distinct (Hackworth 2016, Ley 2017).

Although community engagement related to urban greening projects is something that often falls within their scope of work, many respondents indicated they lacked resources to undertake meaningful engagement. Ensuring that greening projects reflect the needs and desires of existing residents supports equity and may limit gentrification outcomes in some instances (Amorim Maia et al. 2020); however, literature on how urban agriculture becomes co-opted by growth coalitions (Alkon and Cadji 2020, Sax et al. 2022b) suggests that this alone is unlikely to be a sufficient tool for mitigating gentrification in many cases—particularly when greening is occurring alongside broader (re)development.

Research mobilization and knowledge sharing

Improved approaches to knowledge sharing can occur between research and practice, as well as among practitioner disciplines and community members. Such an approach to discourse also recognizes that green gentrification is a process involving multiple systems and that practitioners can learn from each other to better understand gentrification processes across sectors. Communication and collaboration across urban greening practitioners, residents, and researchers must form the foundation of any response to green gentrification, building on the tradition of cocreated theory and action in the environmental justice movement (Taylor 2000). Although research offering a closer look at how green gentrification shifts across contexts would help to clarify links between greening and gentrification, practitioners can also lead the way in informing research approaches. A localized view into the particularities of green gentrification could create a channel for practitioners to inform green gentrification research and have a more prominent voice in the ways by which green gentrification is discussed and taught. Such an approach may also help concretize the concept of green gentrification for practitioners and help them engage in the critical reflection needed to grapple with the potential outcomes of their work and address them on the ground. This offers a way forward in melding a systems-level perspective among scholars with the grounded knowledge of practitioners and aligns with the collaborative approaches to resisting green gentrification suggested in other literature (Pearsall and Anguelovski 2016).

Limitations and future research

This research is exploratory and has limitations that should be addressed by future research. The participant sampling procedure leveraged professional connections, social media, and email listservs in a purposive sampling approach. Those professionals who chose to participate in the research may have been more comfortable and familiar with green gentrification than other practitioners in their fields. In particular, invited participants who were less familiar with the core themes of the research may have assumed that they did not have anything meaningful to contribute (but see Coppock et al. 2018). A potential sampling bias toward those practitioners most familiar with green equity and gentrification may have provided richer data, particularly related to definitions of green gentrification and barriers to addressing it. However, urban greening and associated practitioners in MV and the GTA may be less familiar with the topic of green gentrification than our results suggest.

Given the format of the survey instrument, we were not able to engage with the nuances of practitioner experiences such as the ways by which practitioners in different jobs, organizations, and sectors encounter different gentrification issues, seek to address them in their work, or experience barriers to action, or specific strategies used to overcome barriers to action. Our sample prevented us from examining differences between the two metro areas studied. Future research should engage with practitioner perspectives in a more nuanced way, for example, using case-based qualitative methods.

CONCLUSION

The information concerning green gentrification accessible to practitioners and how it is adopted into practice, if at all, has implications for the individual and institutional responses mounted when grappling with the threat of green gentrification. Our findings point to practitioners being somewhat familiar with the concept of green gentrification but lacking confidence in their knowledge of the concept and rarely using it in their work, although they are concerned that their work may perpetuate green gentrification. The barriers identified by practitioners make the case for integrated responses to managing green gentrification, working across sectors and between academia and practice, to build greener and more equitable cities.

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