Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Earth & Environmental Sciences

Advisor

Juliana Maantay

Committee Members

Rupal Oza

Marianna Pavlovskaya

Valerie Were

Subject Categories

Environmental Health | Geographic Information Sciences | Human Geography | Nature and Society Relations | Physical and Environmental Geography | Political Economy | Spatial Science

Keywords

Dialectical Materialism, Environmental Health, Green Gentrification, Resilience, Urban Greening

Abstract

Background: This project analyzes the spatial coincidence between gentrification typologies and urban greening in Brooklyn, New York from 2010 to 2020. Assets formed under the NYC Green Infrastructure Program were chosen as a proxy for urban greening to represent the spatial practice specifically within the 21st-century climate change resilience paradigm of development. Methods: First, five indexes measuring variations of economic and demographic conditions related to gentrification were applied to Brooklyn for comparative analysis: NOAA’s Social Vulnerability Indicators of Gentrification Pressure, The NYC Heat Vulnerability Index, The Small Area Index of Gentrification, Typologies of Gentrification and Displacement, and The Housing Risk Chart. Then, for each index, a point-in-polygon count vector analysis was conducted using GIS software to determine the prevalence of green infrastructure assets within the varying gentrification categories. Finally, using the method of dialectical materialism, close readings of theoretical, governmental, and corporate literature were used to examine the forces driving development practices during that time. Results: Gentrification varies per spatial unit with each index application, owing to varying index factors. However, the highest socioeconomic, gentrification, and ecological risk hot spots, regardless of index used, tend to be in northern Brooklyn, while cold spots tend to be located in southern Brooklyn. Despite variability in gentrification hot and cold spots, every hot spot was highly associated with green stormwater infrastructure installed through the Green Infrastructure Program, while cold spots had few assets installed in their boundaries, if any. A review of the quantitative results against the reviewed literature indicate that NYC’s “green” planning and policies are related to ongoing “green” gentrification trends in the United States.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Download

Share

COinS