Commercializing Environmentalism: Selection Bias and Gentrification By Sustainable Urban Development in US Neighborhoods

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Urban Space, Development, and Gentrification

Abstract

In the face of an escalating climate crisis, the 21st century city has become a battleground for environmental intervention. Policy discourse and urban planning paradigms promoted energy-efficient infrastructure and green amenities as universal public goods. However, while green building is heralded as a technocratic solution to ecological collapse, its role in reproducing social stratification persists. (Checker, 2011)
This research sits at the intersection of political ecology, urban sociology, and environmental justice debates in the literature. It challenges the apolitical "techno-fix"(While et al., 2004) narrative of sustainable urban planning by analyzing green development through the Marxist frameworks of the rent gap theory (Smith 1987) and the green growth machine (Gould and Lewis 2017). Under the logic of racial capitalism, sustainability operates as a strategy for capital accumulation. As the political economy of the U.S. cities shifts from industrial production to service and consumption, historical struggles against environmental bads and toxicity have evolved into struggles for access to environmental goods. (Anguelovski, 2015) Yet, access to these goods comes at a premium. By packaging sustainability as a luxury asset, elite urban coalitions and real estate markets commodify environmentalism, and triggers speculative investment and green gentrification.
This study investigates whether market-based sustainable development serves existing vulnerable residents or acts as a catalyst for gentrification. By disaggregating types of green development, this research isolates the specific accumulative logics driven by privatization and commercialization that perpetuate racial and economic inequality in the built environment.

Author

• Mahir Takak, University of Connecticut