We know from the well-stud­ied eco-dis­tricts of Europe—Vauban in Freiburg, the West­ern Har­bour and Augusten­borg in Malmö, and Ham­mar­by Sjostad and the Roy­al Sea­port in Stockholm—that it is tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble to devel­op or rede­vel­op a large neigh­bor­hood that inte­grates adap­ta­tion fea­tures such as green roofs, stormwa­ter man­age­ment, sea-lev­el rise pro­tec­tion, and mit­i­ga­tion fea­tures includ­ing dis­trict ener­gy, renew­able ener­gy, high­ly ener­gy effi­cient build­ings, pub­lic trans­porta­tion, elec­tric vehi­cles, etc. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we also know that they illus­trate eco-gentrification—green urban enclaves for the well-off. 

The chal­lenge for urban plan­ning is to devel­op green jus­tice zones in less afflu­ent neigh­bor­hoods in a way that does­n’t cre­ate gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and ulti­mate­ly push exist­ing res­i­dents out. That is a polit­i­cal and plan­ning chal­lenge that an increas­ing num­ber of cities are tak­ing on. 

In Europe, the best-known attempt to cre­ate an eco-dis­trict in a low-income neigh­bor­hood is Malmö’s Augusten­borg, a poor neigh­bor­hood with a large immi­grant and refugee pop­u­la­tion. Although the city’s goals were to build green stormwa­ter man­age­ment infra­struc­ture and com­plete ener­gy retro­fits on old­er hous­ing stock, after lis­ten­ing to res­i­dent input, a more inte­grat­ed strat­e­gy adding com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens, car shar­ing, façade upgrad­ing, and oth­er fea­tures were added. All involved cite com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion as an essen­tial aspect of the ini­tia­tive.

Green zones have emerged in the U.S. con­text as strat­e­gy that, like the Euro­pean eco-dis­tricts, inte­grates cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion strate­gies. In the Unit­ed States, green zones often pri­or­i­tize undo­ing past envi­ron­men­tal harms such as high pol­lu­tion or lead lev­els. In this sense, they could also be called green jus­tice zones.

Prov­i­dence’s 2019 Cli­mate Jus­tice Plan, which I high­light­ed in a recent post, is tar­get­ing two green zones in its ear­ly imple­men­ta­tion. Among the poten­tial projects in the zones are micro­grids to main­tain pow­er when out­ages occur, weath­er­iza­tion, renew­able ener­gy devel­op­ment, job train­ing, and zon­ing reform to pre­vent pol­lut­ing land uses.

We saw very soon after its des­ig­na­tion that when get­ting rid of sources of pol­lu­tion got in the way of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, the new source of pollution—in this case a liq­uid nat­ur­al gas facility—won. So, com­mu­ni­ty-devised green zones are only as good as city and state gov­ern­ment sup­port.

In the Unit­ed States, there are two types of green zones. The first type is cre­at­ed by com­mu­ni­ty groups and imple­ment­ed inde­pen­dent of city gov­ern­ment, which I’ll take up in my next post. The sec­ond type is led by the city as part of its cli­mate action plan. Min­neapo­lis and Prov­i­dence are the two exam­ples of the sec­ond type, and the Prov­i­dence team looked to Min­neapo­lis in con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing that city’s approach to green zones.

The 2013 Min­neapo­lis Cli­mate Action Plan calls for reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions by 80 per­cent by 2050 and is the nation’s first to rec­om­mend green zones for cli­mate action. The idea came from mem­bers of the Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Work­ing Group for the Cli­mate Action Plan, who had been fol­low­ing green zone ini­tia­tives in Cal­i­for­nia, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Los Ange­les. They made the case for adapt­ing the idea for inclu­sion in the plan.

Source: Min­neapo­lis Green Zone Ini­tia­tive

The sus­tain­abil­i­ty office pri­or­i­tized green zones for imple­men­ta­tion the fol­low­ing year and in April 2016 cre­at­ed a Green Zones Work Group, com­pris­ing nine staff mem­bers from var­i­ous city agen­cies and a diverse group of ten com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives to iden­ti­fy the pri­or­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties. Ini­tial meet­ings includ­ed train­ings on uncon­scious bias and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice.

The group met month­ly, por­ing over data. Accord­ing to Min­neapo­lis Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Coor­di­na­tor Kel­ly Muell­man, the city’s inter­ac­tive map tool was essen­tial to the group’s being able to nar­row down the com­mu­ni­ties most in need, allow­ing the group to explore pop­u­la­tion char­ac­ter­is­tics, indus­tri­al activ­i­ty, air qual­i­ty, hous­ing qual­i­ty and afford­abil­i­ty, food access, and employ­ment. 

The Green Zones Work­group iden­ti­fied two pri­or­i­ty zones—one on the north side and one on the south­side. The first step was to estab­lish goals for the two zones. Fol­low­ing, the Work­group reviewed data to iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic areas and strate­gies to be imple­ment­ed in each. After draft­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, the Green Zones Work­group held sev­en focus groups in front­line neigh­bor­hoods through­out the city to get feed­back. final report called for an inte­grat­ed approach empha­siz­ing improv­ing air qual­i­ty, clean­ing soil and water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, pro­vid­ing afford­able green hous­ing, adding green space, improv­ing access to healthy food and cre­at­ing green jobs as pri­or­i­ties, while advanc­ing racial equi­ty and pre­vent­ing dis­place­ment and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

In Novem­ber 2016, by unan­i­mous vote, the Min­neapo­lis City Coun­cil asked the city to explore lead­ing prac­tices for com­mu­ni­ty build­ing with­out dis­place­ment from gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and report back their find­ings. In par­tic­u­lar, the sus­tain­abil­i­ty office called for inclu­sion­ary zon­ing, zon­ing for small­er lot and unit sizes, and financ­ing for afford­able hous­ing. With wide com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, the City Coun­cil offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed a north­ern and south­ern green zone in April 2017, both areas with a lega­cy of racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry poli­cies, such as redlin­ing, free­way devel­op­ment and indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion. Then the work of the task forces and advi­so­ry com­mit­tees charged with cre­at­ing work plans for the two green zones began. The South­side Green Zone adopt­ed its plan in Decem­ber 2019, and the North­side Green Zone in March 2020. 

The first thing oth­er cities can learn from Min­neapo­lis is that a green zone approach takes time. It took six years from the Cli­mate Action Plan’s pub­li­ca­tion to the for­ma­tion of the first green zone. The goal was to select the first activ­i­ties from the rec­om­men­da­tions of the North­side Green Zone plan by April 2020. When the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic hit, the work­ing groups had to take three months off, mean­ing the bud­get request for the 2021 bud­get would not get in on time to be con­sid­ered. With the city’s bud­get deficit, no new requests are being con­sid­ered, so it may be a while before the green zones receive any sig­nif­i­cant city fund­ing.

A city con­sid­er­ing green zones has to iden­ti­fy ways to fund the process and the pro­grams. The Min­neso­ta Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Agency pro­vid­ed $10,000 to fund the Green Zones Work­group, which includ­ed stipends for com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pants. As is often the case, a local foun­da­tion is essen­tial to the urban equi­ty agen­da. The McK­night Foun­da­tion, locat­ed in Min­neapo­lis, teamed with the Fun­ders’ Net­work Part­ners for Places pro­gram to pro­vide $150,000 to sup­port the first year of the South­side Green Zone plan­ning process. In addi­tion to fund­ing an equi­ty con­sul­tant and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment con­sul­tants, the grant cov­ered stipends for com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pants who met to cre­ate the imple­men­ta­tion plan, its spe­cif­ic action steps, and to devel­op a bud­get for imple­men­ta­tion. In 2018, the City Coun­cil kicked in an addi­tion­al $75,000 to sup­port the South­side Green Zone and $40,000 for the North­ern Green Zone plan­ning process­es. And in 2019, a City Coun­cil mem­ber ear­marked $100,000 from city bud­get as a one-time addi­tion.  

Muell­man notes that the Min­neapo­lis Green Zones were passed by res­o­lu­tion, not as an ordi­nance. That leaves them vul­ner­a­ble if polit­i­cal winds shift. And they are man­aged by a sin­gle staff per­son, mak­ing a faster progress dif­fi­cult. Fur­ther, Muell­man notes that “One of our big­ger chal­lenges is the polit­i­cal will for more pro­tec­tive poli­cies and/or chang­ing our process­es with­in gov­ern­ment. Chang­ing the polit­i­cal culture—how we do our work and who we work with—takes time.

Plan­ning is rel­a­tive­ly cheap. Afford­able green hous­ing and new ener­gy and trans­porta­tion sys­tems are expen­sive. Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry plan­ning can be an exer­cise in frus­tra­tion if the fis­cal cup­board is bare or if con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment trumps cli­mate objec­tives.

What hap­pens when cities get beyond plan­ning to imple­men­ta­tion? In my next post, I’ll look to the com­mu­ni­ty-led green zones that have been in place for eight or more years to exam­ine progress.