2.5 Racial Equity & The Urban Interface

Sustainability has been an emphasis within the planning field, but it’s inherent marginalization of communities of color often goes unseen. According to a Portland journal, City and Community, the rapid trend of green gentrification has caused an outpouring of displacement for communities of color (Lubitow et al., 2019). Green gentrification occurs when cities create new luxury housing developments with greening to clarify the relationship between sustainability and gentrification (Lubitow et al., 2019). This means that green gentrification and sustainability narratives merge together to drive investment capital in neighborhoods in racialized and classed ways (Lubitow et al., 2019). It creates an imbalanced economic divide with a gap widening larger than ever. Green gentrification often includes infrastructure upgrades within communities and with those upgrades, separated bicycle paths and cycle tracks are often installed. Those that experience green spaces are often assumed to have economic privilege while spaces that do not have any green amenities are generalized to come from lower income brackets.

With this dichotomy, other complex issues arise.

Another category of intersectionality that must be considered is the frequency of racial profiling and its role as a social deterrent for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) to engage in bicycle facilities. With the introduction of green gentrification and displacement for communities of color comes the complex issue of mobility justice and racial profiling. In Portland, the topic of bicycling while being a minority is a politicized debate. According to a study, people of color consistently discussed their feelings of

anxiety in relation to biking in public spaces due, largely, to perceptions that their visibility on the street made them targets for violence or police surveillance (Lubitow et al., 2019). When one’s experience on the street is inundated with feelings of vulnerability and anxiety, the likeliness to engage in any particular activity on the street is non-existent. The anticipated fear of police surveillance while making a daily commute through bicycling has been found as a large deterrent for individuals of color. For the purpose of this research

proposal, understanding how social cohesion can break this barrier to cycling and create a safe atmosphere for communities of color is a topic of exploration.