When You’re Green You’re Growing Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities When You’re Green You’re Growing: Greenwashing and Speculative Urbanism in ‘Green’ Cities

ABSTRACT

Green urbanism, or the practice of creating sustainable built environments, is increasingly regarded as essential for any global city. Concern about ‘greening’ the city occurs at a time of much speculative urbanism, where city-makers are constantly looking to make their urban projects as profitable as possible. As such, there has been a conflation of the two urban phenomena. The present paper investigates the rising prevalence of ‘greenwashed’ green cities, those that selectively highlight positive dimensions about the city’s environmental impact, whilst hiding the negative dimensions. My main argument is that green urbanism has been harnessed as a tool of speculative urbanism by city-makers and is used to bolster economic development and corporate images, rather than provide eco-friendly structures. I contextualize this argument with a case study of Forest City, a luxury new ‘green’ master-planned city being built in the special economic zone of Iskandar, Malaysia. I will demonstrate that Forest City is greenwashed rather than truly green, as its greenness is directed towards generating clout and foreign capital at the cost of the local environment.

1 Sarah Moser, “Forest city, Malaysia, and Chinese expansionism.” Urban Geography 39, no. 6 (2018): 936, https://doi.org /10.1080/02723638.2017 .1405691.

2 Moser, “Forest city”, 936; Sin Yee Koh, Yimin Zhao, and Hyun Bang Shin, “The Micropolitics of Speculative Green Urbanism at Forest City, Iskandar Malaysia.” Papers in Urbanisation, Planning and Development 21, no. 1 (2021): 1. INTRODUCTION

Given the environmental ills of urban life, how can rising urbanization be reconciled with climate action? Around the world, a growing number of ‘green’ cities position themselves as the answer to this question, offering investors an opportunity to enjoy the amenities of a smart and modern city whilst mitigating their environmental impact. These green cities are tied to ‘green urbanism’, the practice of creating built environments that benefit both humans and the environment. Often, the greenness of green cities is visually reinforced with tree-lined boulevards and blooming gardens. The most notable green city is Malaysia’s Forest City, a new master-planned city that has been under construction since 2014 within Iskandar, a Malaysian Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for regional economic development.1 The project is a joint venture between Chinese developers and the local government and will be four times the size of Central Park.2 Developers have doubled down on emphasizing Forest City’s greenness, promoting it primarily

3 “Forest City Vertical Greenery System- Green & Smart”, Forest City CGPV, accessed March 21, 2021b, https://www. forestcitycgpv.com/aboutforest-city/green-smart.

4 Ibid.

5 Dushan Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change: Power Games and Greenwashing Through Transnational Urban Networks” (Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2015), 32.

6 Marit Rosol, Vincent Beal, and Samuel Mossner, “Greenest cities? The (post-)politics of new urban environmental regimes.” Environment and Planning A 49, no. 8 (2017): 1711, https://doi. org/10.1177%2F030851 8X17714843.

7 Peter Newman and Anne Matan, Green Urbanism in Asia: The Emerging Green Tigers (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2013), 7.

8 Eugene McCann, “Mobilities, politics, and the future: Critical geographies of green urbanism.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 49, no. 8 (2017): 1820. https://doi. org/10.1177%2F030851 8X17708876. as a “green and smart” city, featuring a ‘forest-like environment’ with vertical greenery crawling up the sides of buildings.3 Forest City’s website also boasts of its sustainability, making promises of ‘smart water, waste, and energy’ technology.4 However, when observed critically, alleged green cities such as Forest City are not as eco-friendly as they seem.5 In a global speculative market, many city-makers are more interested in the economic benefits of promoting greenness, rather than the environmental ones. My main argument is that green urbanism has been harnessed as a tool of speculative urbanism by city-makers and is used to bolster economic growth and corporate images rather than provide eco-friendly urban developments. This results in ‘greenwashed’ green cities, which promote select environmentally friendly aspects of the city to appeal to foreign investors and capital whilst hiding their negative environmental impacts. I contextualize my argument with a case study of Forest City, a new green city project that has been greenwashed by the speculative green urbanism of city-makers. This paper is divided into four sections. First, I survey the existing literature concerning speculative green urbanism and greenwashing in the context of cities. Second, I explain how ‘greenwashed’ cities are the products of speculative green urbanism. Thirdly, I investigate the local and foreign actors behind Forest City’s ‘green’ aesthetic, concluding that speculative green urbanism is being used by all parties, albeit for different reasons. Finally, I suggest that Forest City has been ‘greenwashed’ by speculative green urbanism, highlighting the hidden environmental impacts and selective greening of the project.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A growing body of literature discusses the degradation of the meaning behind the ‘green city’, having gone from symbolizing an obvious commitment to sustainability to being an ‘empty signifier’ that “can mean almost anything”.6 According to Newman & Matan, green urbanism refers to settlements that are “smart, secure, and sustainable,” and often notably filled with greenery.7 Though originally rooted in visions of ecological preservation and meeting social needs, McCann argues that in the competitive neoliberal economy, both state and private actors covet the title of the ‘greenest’ city, looking to leverage green urbanism for economic growth.8 Indeed, there is money to be made by going green. Rosol, Beal and Mossner (2017, 1711) identify the “emergence of a proper economic sector centered around green urbanism” where city-makers have realized the transformative

power of greening the city to attract the upper classes and foreign investment.9 It is also acknowledged that the commodification of green urbanism, a ‘socio-spatially selective process’, usually fails to benefit local deprived areas or disadvantaged populations, favoring the business of global elites.10 Over the past decade, city-makers have tied green urbanism to speculative urbanism, which refers to a land development regime where the production of the built environment specifically aims to produce quick returns on often-risky investments such as masterplanned cities.11 Koh, Zhao and Shin argue that city-makers, identifying the global economic interest in ‘green cities’, now adopt green urbanism to increase the speculative value of their projects in a type of ‘speculative green urbanism’.12 There is a large body of literature on greenwashing, which refers to the efforts an organization takes to be perceived as more environmentally responsible than they are, deliberately hiding condemning information from the public.13 Scholars have applied greenwashing theory to the rising number of ‘green’ cities across the world.14 Tateishi argues that, given rising global demand for eco-friendly products and services, “real estate developers employ greenwashing strategy in order to avoid or mitigate green pressures, and increase attractiveness and competitiveness of their project by reaching at green demands”.15 Pjevovic explains this phenomenon, arguing that presenting progressive environmental policies is now a necessary condition for a city to attract capital and young professionals, as an increasing number of individuals want to align themselves with sustainability.16 Mention of speculative green urbanism is often left out of the academic ‘greenwashing’ discussion, although the concepts seem inextricably combined. Building on recent critical scholarship of urban greening, the present essay synthesizes the existing literature on speculative urbanism, green urbanism, and greenwashing. While Koh, Zhao, and Shin advance the argument that speculative green urbanism is at play at Forest City, they have a relatively narrow scope concerning speculative green urbanism’s origins.17 They primarily focus on the transfer of China’s ‘ecological civilization’ aesthetic to its Malaysian new-city projects to attract Chinese investment.18 I want to situate Forest City’s greenwashing in the broader context of a world that increasingly expects ‘green’ or sustainable promises from real estate developments. While previous literature has confronted greenwashing, and the economic motives behind creating the ‘greenest’ city, scholars have yet to apply this specific concept to Forest City.19 Moser and Avery come close, offering a critical assessment of the economic and geopolitical motives behind Forest City’s urban greening, but stop short of discussing greenwashing.20 So, this essay presents a fresh perspective

9 Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 1714.

10 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 7.

11 Ibid, 7.

12 Ibid, 7.

13 Eigo Tateishi, “Craving gains and claiming “green” by cutting greens? An explanatory analysis of greenfield housing developments in Iskandar Malaysia.” Journal of Urban Affairs 40, no. 3 (2017): n.p. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 07352166.2017.1355667.

14 Ibid.

15 Eigo Tateishi, ““Greenwashing and Capitalist Production of Urban Space: A case study of Iskandar Malaysia” (Master’s Thesis, Lund University, 2015), 4.

16 Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change”, 19.

17 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 24.

18 Ibid, 6.

19 Pjevovic, “Cities and Climate Change”, 19; Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 1711; Tateishi, “Craving Greens”.

20 Sarah Moser and Emma Avery, ““The multi-scalar politics of urban greening in Forest City, Malaysia.” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 60 (2021): 4, https://doi. org/10.1016/ j.ufug.2021.127068.

21 Chien Shiuh-Shen, “Chinese eco-cities: A perspective of landspeculation-oriented local entrepreneurialism.” China Information 27, no.2 (2013): 173, https://doi. org/10.1177%2F0920203 X13485702; Frederico Cugurullo, “Urban ecomodernisation and the policy context of new ecocity projects: Where Masdar City fails and why.” Urban Studies 53, no.11 (2016): 14, https://doi.org/ 10.1177%2F00420980155 88727.

22 Moser and Avery, “Multi-scalar”, 3; McCann, “Mobilities”, 1820.

23 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”,1.

24 Shiuh-Shen, “Chinese eco-cities”, 176.

25 Ibid, 177.

26 Ibid, 179.

27 Cugurullo, “Urban eco-modernisation”, 2430.

28 Ibid, 2430; “Home Page”, Masdar - A Mubadala Company, accessed March 21, 2021, https://masdar.ae/. on greenwashing and speculative green urbanism, identifying that the latter produces the former, and that both concepts are at play in new green cities such as Forest City.

SPECULATIVE GREEN URBANISM GIVES WAY TO GREENWASHING

As scholars have argued, green urbanism is increasingly being used as an economic development strategy that has more to do with bringing in revenue than saving the planet.21 Often, customers are willing to pay more for ‘green’ real estate, which appeals to notions of sustainability and health.22 City-makers, wanting to maximize the speculative value of their projects, are therefore incentivized to engage in green urbanism. I follow Koh, Zhao, and Shin’s argument that city-makers have used speculative urbanism to hijack green urbanism, thereby creating a new form of speculative green urbanism.23 However, I wish to build on their argument and identify the product of such speculative green urbanism: greenwashed cities. In new green cities, speculative urbanism primarily seeks to capitalize on a green economy, rather than deliver sustainable cities.24 This is evident in China, where the state’s commitment to ‘ecological civilization’, the goal of sustainable social and environmental reform, has worked in tandem with increasing market environmentalism to produce a wave of new green cities.25 Developers are dually incentivized to capitalize on green cities: they can align themselves with the goals of the state and attract potential investors who are especially interested in such projects. Promotions for these projects often feature lush greenery and energy-conserving home appliances. However, many new green cities are built in the peripheries of China, without public transit connecting them to neighboring municipalities.26 While these green cities may attract many eco-conscious investors, their remoteness will likely introduce large highways and increased motor traffic to the area. In effect, these cities have been greenwashed by city-makers engaging in speculative green urbanism. Developers highlight their project’s adherence to ecological civilization and sustainability to attract potential investors whilst hiding their high-carbon implications. Masdar City, a new master-planned green city in Abu Dhabi, further demonstrates how speculative urbanism has appropriated green urbanism to produce greenwashed cities. Cugurullo argues that the plans for the ‘alleged eco-city’ are not motivated by studies of the surrounding biophysical environment “but rather [by] market analyses”; the project’s developers speculate that a green city will be the most attractive to investors in a market increasingly concerned with clean tech-

nology and sustainability.27 While Masdar City faces environmental challenges such as securing sustainable water and energy supply chains, these issues are ignored by developers in favor of further promoting it as one of the world’s “most sustainable urban communities”.28 The contrast between Masdar City’s green, eco-friendly marketing and its unsustainable use of resources consolidate it as greenwashed. In this section, I have brought together two concepts that are gaining traction in urban studies but have yet to be fully connected: speculative green urbanism and greenwashing. I propose that oftentimes, speculative green urbanism is now the motivating force behind the transnational trend of new green cities, thus producing greenwashed cities rather than sustainable ones. Within the current economic environment, one of market environmentalism, ‘greening’ the city is attractively profitable. Greenwashing new city projects allows city-makers to capitalize from the popular green image in an act of speculative urbanism while hiding practices that remain unsustainable and harmful to the environment.

INVESTIGATING THE MOTIVES BEHIND A ‘GREEN’ FOREST CITY

In previous sections, I established that green city rhetoric is often a form of speculative urbanism used by city-makers to market greenwashed cities. The concept of green cities has been perverted by city-makers looking to foster economic growth instead of providing sustainable urban solutions. I now seek to situate Forest City, a Malaysian new-city project which claims to be a “smart and green futuristic city”, as one of these greenwashed cities born of speculative green urbanism.29 Forest City is developed by Country Garden PacificView Sdn Bhd (CGPV), a joint venture between the Country Garden Group (CGG), a Chinese property developer, and the Malaysian-government-backend Esplanade Danga 88 Sdn Bhd (EDSB).30 CGPV regularly interacts with the Iskandar Regional Development Agency (IRDA), a branch of the local government, to oversee Forest City’s construction.31 In this section, I demonstrate how the IRDA and the CGPV, the primary actors behind Forest City’s development, employ speculative green urbanism to the project, compromising its ‘greenness’. Recognizing that the green economy has become very profitable, urban actors are not only trying to monetize greenness, but competitively establish their cities as the ‘greenest’ to reap the largest share of the rewards.32 It is evident that the IRDA is among those urban actors coveting the title of ‘greenest’. In 2014, the IRDA established the Green Accord Initiative Award (GAIA) in Iskandar, Malaysia.33 The GAIA is supposed

29 Forest City CGPV, “Green & Smart”.

30 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”,1.

31 Ibid, 9.

32 Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 1711.

33 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 12-13.

34 Ibid, 13.

35 “HOME”, CGG, accessed March 21, 2021, https://en.bgy.com.cn/ index.aspx.

36 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 14.

37 Ibid, 16; Moser and Avery, “Multi-scalar”, 2.

38 Ibid, 2. to promote and reward sustainability in the built environment. Koh, Zhao, and Shin suggest that the IRDA uses the GAIA to emphasize the higher green standard of Iskandar’s real estate developments compared to those of their global competitors to attract foreign investment.34 This demonstrates that the IRDA is engaging in speculative green urbanism when it comes to the SEZ’s new developments. The GAIA has two reinforcing purposes: to incentivize developers to create ‘green’ projects such as Forest City, and to situate Iskandar as having the greenest cities, most ripe for investment. As a subsidiary of CGG, CGPV benefits from having a parent company with clout. CGG is a well-established developer in the eyes of many Chinese, easily identifiable due to its marketing emphasis on green urbanism and smart cities.35 Mr. Yang Guoqiang, the founder of CGG, insists that there be “green everywhere you can see” in CGG developments.36 This ‘green everywhere’ notion is best encapsulated by the vertical greening of CGG’s headquarters in Shunde, China (see Figure 1). Recent scholarship suggests that the reproduction of CGG’s vertical greening in Forest City (Figure 2) is a strategic marketing and branding move on CGPV’s part.37 By transplanting CGG’s distinctive ‘green everywhere’ aesthetic and smart technology to Forest City, CGPV attracts CGG’s existing Chinese customer base, who trust and recognize the allure of this kind of green urbanism and smart technology. Moser and Avery identify Forest City’s urban greening as “potentially highly profitable to Chinese property developers” such as the CGG, “as it is calculated to attract particular demographics of Chinese nationals” including retirees or young families.38 Consequently, CGPV benefits from the business of these Chinese consumers in Forest City, and CGG can further consolidate its ‘green and smart’ brand. In this way, the greenness of Forest City is a vehicle for branding and business, and any environmental benefits are a bonus to successful economic development.

Figure 1 Image of CGG’s headquarters, exemplifying their distinct vertical greening. The Edge Communications, untitled, 2019, photograph, CGG’s Chinese headquarters, https://www. theedgemarkets.com/ article/country-gardenholdings-sees-688-jumpnet-profit)

Figure 2 Mockup of Forest City’s vertical greenery, reminiscent of CGG’s headquarters. Forest City CGPV, untitled, Forest City, Iskandar Malaysia, https://www. forestcitycgpv.com/ about-forest-city/greensmart

Both the IRDA and the CGPV have caught onto the economic potential of exploiting green urbanism within new city projects. Subsequently, speculative green urbanism has been employed by the local Malaysian state and the CGPV, albeit for different economic motives. Through the GAIA, the IRDA seeks to position Iskandar Malaysia’s developments such as Forest City as ‘greener’ than those of its global competitors to attract more investment; the CGPV utilizes the ‘green and smart’ rhetoric of Forest City to profit from CGG’s existing Chinese customer base and charge a price premium on their development. Thus, the development process of Forest City is one premised on speculative green urbanism, a perversion of the original green city ethos. In the next section, I will demonstrate how the CGPV and the IRDA’s uses of speculative green urbanism have greenwashed Forest City.

39 CGG, “HOME”.

40 Moser, “Forest City”, 935.

41 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 10.

42 Mohammad Hossain, Mazlan Hashim, Japar Zakarai, and Aidy Muslim, “Assessment of the impact of coastal reclamation activities on seagrass meadows in Sungai Pulai estuary, Malaysia, using Landsat data (1994-2017).” International Journal of Remote Sensing 40, no.9 (2019): 3599, https://doi.or g/10.1080/01431161.201 8.1547931.

43 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 18.

44 Moser and Avery, “Multi-scalar”, 2.

45 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 22.

46 Ibid, 22.

47 Rosol, Beal, and Mossner, “Greenest Cities?”, 24.

48 Joseph Williams, “ “EVALUATING MEGAPROJECTS: THE CASE STUDY OF FOREST CITY IN JOHOR, MALAYSIA.” Cambridge: Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016), 48, https://malaysiacities.mit. edu/sites/default/files/ documents/Williams.pdf.

49 Koh, Zhao, and Shin, “Micropolitics”, 20.

50 Ibid, 21. GREENWASHED: THE ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS OF FOREST CITY

CGG’s website proudly boasts that the firm pioneers the phenomenon of smart green cities, having “brought modernization to over 300 cities, which improves life quality of indigenous people and beautifies cities’ landscapes”.39 Meanwhile, the consequences of Forest City’s land reclamation, poorly maintained construction workers’ camps, and exclusivity tell a different story, having proven detrimental for local Malaysians. Forest City will sit upon four reclaimed islands dredged from the Malay Peninsula of the Johor Strait.40 Because its construction site spans an area rich with seagrass and marine life, the fishing-based livelihoods of many local Malaysians are threatened by Forest City.41 In a longitudinal study spanning 1994-2017, Hossain et. al, found that similar land reclamation projects in Johor had devastated local seagrass meadows.42 Therefore, to create the ‘green’ Forest City, which advertises the perfect combination of the environment and technology, existing ecosystems and indigenous ways of life are being destroyed. Like in Masdar City, the water supply chain of Forest City also raises local concern. Government officers say that as developers rapidly introduce more people into Iskandar Malaysia, it gets increasingly difficult to plan and distribute water to everyone.43 As the state of Johor experiences a surge in droughts, the water-intensive nature of Forest City’s lawns and sparkling swimming pools seem blatantly environmentally insensitive.44 Other Malaysians report that due to Forest City’s construction, local villages have been experiencing electricity disruptions and dangerously increased traffic.45 Moreover, Forest City’s construction workers’ camps, situated near the villages, further stress water supply and have continuous waste-disposal issues, dirtying the local environment.46 While upsetting, these injustices are not unusual. The benefits of speculative green urbanism are seldom distributed equitably. Rosol et al. underscore the fact that green infrastructure and technologies are frequently materialized to benefit the speculative investor, “oftentimes to the detrimental exclusion of local populations who are left to bear the negative costs of such ‘green’ pursuits”.47 With basic units priced at RM 500,000 (approx $152,500 CAD), Forest City is inaccessible for most Malaysian locals, whose median annual salary is around RM 55,000.48 In fact, 98.54% of Forest City’s phase 2-10 units were sold to foreign buyers, speaking to the project’s target consumer base of international elites.49 Interviewing local Malaysian youth about their first impressions of Forest City, Koh, Zhao, and Shin report that some expressed feelings of alienation from the green city, and worried that it threatened their existing way of life.50 The evidence of green-

washing in Forest City is overwhelming: behind the advertised vertical green facades and smart energy condominiums are the local Malaysians and construction workers who bear the brunt of the project’s environmental impacts but are excluded from enjoying it. Forest City is greenwashed rather than truly green, as its greenness is directed towards generating speculative clout and foreign capital at the cost of the local environment. Forest City’s eco-friendly promises of low carbon emissions and carless streets do little to offset the new environmental issues that it creates.51 Through land reclamation and the cultivation of an exclusive ‘green and smart’ city, the natural ecosystems that local livelihoods depend on are being threatened. Moreover, the camps of construction workers brought into Iskandar Malaysia by developers place both the workers and locals in unsustainable predicaments. Behind the glitz and glamour of Forest City’s mockups and eco-rhetoric hides the unsustainable exploitation of the local environment and the destruction of traditional ways of life.

CONCLUSION

In an era of speculative urbanism and an increasingly ‘eco-conscious’ global economy, urban trends such as the green city must be critically examined. Despite their sustainable, eco-friendly rhetoric, many so-called ‘green cities’ are merely greenwashed, with their negative environmental impacts being swept under the rug by city-makers. These are acts of speculative green urbanism, where city-makers try to leverage a project’s ‘greenness’ to attract capital and raise real estate values. Branding a city as green has a twofold economic benefit for city-makers: developers can profit off their brand’s association with greenness, and local governments can compete for international investment in the emerging green economy. Forest City embodies a ‘green’ city that is truly greenwashed; behind the exclusive city’s aesthetically placed trees and vertical greening lies a local population watching the destruction of their local environment. City-makers engaging in speculative green urbanism have hijacked the original sustainable ethos of new green cities and green urbanism; the only green that developers are seeing is money. 

51 “Community - Design & Concept | Forest City’’, Forest City CGPV, accessed March 21, 2021, http://forestcitycgpv.com/ community.

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