Over the past few years, a new trend has emerged in direct response to the problem of eco-gentrification. I will label it “conscious anti-gentrification”. This kind of greening project aims to increase the environmental quality and public health of a neighbourhood but without changing its socio-economic character. This is done by explicitly rejecting elements that tend to lead to gentrification, such as fancy waterfronts; by including neighbourhood residents in the planning process; and by implementing changes gradually. Interestingly, many of the main players in today’s “conscious anti-gentrification” movement were themselves gentrifiers in another era, especially the 1980s.

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Even if not a direct response to environmental gentrification, a variety of other approaches to greening cities exist. At the University of Virginia, urban planner Timothy Beatley has created the Biophilic Cities Project, devoted to developing new ways of making cities more “biophilic”, or close to nature – not only by increasing exposure to green spaces, but also by enhancing the emotional connection of urban residents to life outside. Rather than providing a set of guidelines, biophilic design simply asks urban planners to start by taking nature seriously, as well as its role in wellbeing and quality of life, rather than considering it as an afterthought.

Perhaps the most literal translation of “greening” a city is in simply planting more trees, an initiative taken up by many cities across the world. In Boston, where I live, the municipality plans to increase the number of trees across the city by 100,000 by 2020. It arrived at this number through a 2004-06 survey of tree canopy cover, carried out using aerial photography. The survey determined that the city had 28% canopy cover; increasing this to the municipality’s desired 35% meant adding 100,000 more trees.