OOS 4-5 - Greening Equitably Through Positive Transformations: addressing legacies of injustice with community engaged research to action

Numerous cities within the United States have embarked on ambitious greening agendas to address intersecting social-ecological challenges. Many of these approaches have used the concept of Green Infrastructure (GI) as a strategic planning tool to improve ecological connectivity, conditions, and functions at multiple scales by simultaneously addressing patterns of land use and built environment development. While the benefits of GI ostensibly accrue to all urban residents, research has shown that the benefits and burdens of GI are highly localized, requiring careful analysis of their social and spatial distributions. And, like historical attempts to improve urban environments, improvement agendas can and do displace existing residents. These linked concerns require careful attention to the social processes transforming urban environments with GI. Here we present the results of a review of how urban plans from 20 cities across the USA frame and operationalize the relationship between Green Infrastructure and social equity and justice. We find an overall failure to define equity and meaningfully include urban residents in planning processes. On the positive side, we found many cities undertaking analyses of the distributional equity of GI, and a growing acknowledgement of the need to address green gentrification. Based on these results, we identify key areas for community engaged research to contribute to the creation of co-designed planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of GI. We conclude with a research to action agenda for addressing interdependent social, ecological, and technological challenges with equitable GI systems and planning processes.