Understanding Nature in New York City Through Gentrification and Environmental Justice

Nature in New York City seems contradictory. However, if you look closely and think critically, it does exist, sometimes in quite copious amounts. When considering nature in New York City, you need to be creative and think outside of the box. Because in practicality, it is the concrete jungle. There are parts of New York City where blocks are tree-lined and it’s refreshing, and then there are places where you don’t see a tree for blocks upon blocks. Nature appears in small ways in urban areas. They’re not accosting you, up front and center. For the most essential purposes of this essay, I will draw upon Jenny Price’s third and fourth way of seeing nature in urban areas from her Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A. Within New York City, experiencing nature is not equal. Nature for people living across the street from Central Park is very

Understanding Nature in New York City through Gentrification and Environmental Justice

Photo by Caio Christofol from Pixels

By Eana Bacchiocchi

different for nature for people living in Midtown. There is a disparity across neighborhoods within New York City that benefit the most from nature around them and those who benefit the least from the lack thereof (Price 6). Central Park is within walking distance of some of the wealthiest neighborhoods, whereas if you lived in the South Bronx, the closest public park could be a train ride away. Furthermore, viewing nature as the resources around us, nature is, of course, not equal. The story of how your food traveled from where it was grown, probably hundreds of miles away, to a produce store or perhaps shipped directly to one of the new trendy restaurants in town is nature (Price 5). The many hands that followed the growth and then transportation of the avocado that you just smashed onto your toast is a story of nature. The economic disparity between what the avocado workers get paid to what you paid your avocado smoothie at Avocaderia is a story of natural resource value and economic inequality. Nature is actually quite abundant in New York City: from the resources used to build the incessant high rises to the many or few, depending on the way you view it, parks and recreational spaces around the city, nature exists. And with a city of 8 million people, through the inequality of understanding and experiencing nature, environmental injustice exists.

When thinking about environmental injustice, it’s easy to see instances of environmental racism or exclusion across the world with coastal regions

and climate refugees or impoverished populations facing food insecurity. However, looking inward, to your home, brings a vulnerability to the place you grew up. New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the United States, economically, culturally and ethnically. In a fairly homogeneous body at Colby College, I’m proud to have grown up experiencing an urban lifestyle, in arguably one of the best cities in the United States. The value of growing up in New York City versus a small New England town is almost indescribable and has impacted the way I approach thinking about issues in general and of course, environmental issues. Coming to Colby, my Environmental Studies courses have reiterated and gone into more depth of the environmental issues we face today: climate change, first and foremost, biodiversity loss, water, land, and air pollution, the list is endless. As an Environmental Humanities student, I’m taught to think critically about the way we convey these environmental issues to our peers using the humanities, but also simply the humanitarian aspect of environmental issues defined as environmental justice. Now, taking a piece of my New Yorker background, through this essay I attempt to explore the link between environmental injustice and gentrification within the city I know and love.

Now, New York City is enormous and tackling all instances of environmental injustice and gentrification within the city is nearly impossible within the context of this essay. Therefore, I propose for you to accompany

me, along the B/Q train line to a small neighborhood in the middle of Brooklyn, to my home for the past fourteen years, into Ditmas Park.

At the age of six, my parents moved our family from the center of SoHo to a quiet neighborhood in Brooklyn. From Broadway to a Victorian house and tree-lined street called Westminster Road, the disparity between these two places I’ve grown up was clear. SoHo was crowded and filled with tourists, probably the epitome of what you would think of was Manhattan. Ditmas Park is an almost suburban-like neighborhood in the middle of a huge city. The neighborhood boasts quiet streets with huge Victorian homes and scattered apartment buildings filled with families hoping to expose their children with an atypical urban lifestyle: exposure to forms of nature that are limited elsewhere in the city, but take the subway and in 35 minutes, you can be in Midtown. My family’s transition from SoHo to Ditmas Park was for two reasons:

the first one is a common saying of all New Yorkers- “I’d like to see some trees in my life.” The second and more significant reason was financial. My parents wanted to make the transition from renting to buying their own home and prices in Manhattan were and continue to be overpriced and unaffordable for our family.

The past few decades, Manhattan has become almost unlivable for the middle and upper-middle class and thus, a new wave of people had begun to move into the outer boroughs. Brooklyn and my very own Ditmas Park has experienced its own surge of gentrification as former Manhattanites and wealthy Brooklyn-ites came settling into deeper Brooklyn. More coffee shops and restaurants began to line a newly bustling Cortelyou Road and the neighborhood gradually saw a steady increase in real estate prices. Ditmas Park, once named one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City, witnessed a wave of “yuppies” coming to settle down and

start a family. Particularly, I should add, Brooklyn yuppies, those who fit this hipster-like stereotype of those who live in Brooklyn: young, uppermiddle class, flannels, and organic.

Today, I look at my neighborhood and the biggest takeaway I can get is that embodying a green lifestyle requires some form of economic privilege. Particularly in the realm of food consumption, the captivating branding of organic or all-natural or local grants the payment of higher prices and those paying the higher prices are wealthier and of higher economic class. In Ditmas Park, there are two organic food markets, one a food co-op and another a natural food market. The emergence of these two food markets epitomize how within the past twenty or so years, Ditmas Park local businesses have begun to cater to the environmentally-conscious ideals of their consumers. The coffee shops charge $4-$6 for a cup of coffee, but of course, it’s fair-trade and topped off with some wicked cool latte art. The restaurants are close

to Manhattan prices with upwards of $25 per dish, but of course, they boast using local produce in many of their dishes, conforming to the new trend of farm-to-table restaurants. The families I’ve babysat for fill their fridges with almost exclusively organic produce and grass-fed meats because of course, they only want the best for their family. These consumptive behaviors and the price paid for one’s food indicate the presence of green consumerism here in Ditmas Park. However, I question whether those around me truly recognize the importance of eating food grown by sustainable agricultural practices. Or are they simply following the trend Big Organic has marketed extensively as the “environmentally-friendly, better, healthier” option because they have the financial means to?

Furthermore, looking at real estate, green spaces indicates privilege. Seven years ago, my co-op building decided to turn the “backyard” of the building, which at that moment was a pile of barren dirt, into a green space. The following two years, a newly formed garden committee took charge and brought our building’s backyard back to life. Today, the garden consists of plants only native to Brooklyn and areas meant for lively entertainment. Every so often during acceptable temperatures outside, I hear shrieks of children playing or having a birthday party in the backyard. This concept of calling it “my backyard” is foreign to most New Yorkers.

Space is something that every New Yorker struggles dealing with as well as justifying their lack of space. It seems unnatural to many non-New Yorkers cramming a four-person family into a little over 1,000 sq ft apartment. Therefore, New Yorkers find ways to find space elsewhere:

the local playground for the children, a coffee shop for the parents, perhaps a weekend house if you have the financial means. The co-op knew that a green space for the building would yes, attract more families and simply provide another nice space for its residents, but also heavily considered the financial incentive: having a wellmaintained, quaint backyard for an already coveted building in Ditmas Park would drive building real estate prices up, increasing the wealth of each and every co-op owner. It would make the building and consequently Ditmas Park a more desirable, a more gentrified area for the Brooklyn yuppies. Therefore, this mere $500k green backyard project would be worth it in the long run, right?

Almost all parts of New York City have experienced gentrification and with Amazon moving to Queens, current residents of one of the remaining boroughs that hasn’t experienced an enormous amount of gentrification yet, may begin to be displaced. Gentrification is a process: the area where the wealthier begin to move into begins to cater to these new residents’ higher end lifestyle through the introduction of new businesses and upgrading real estate development. These new developments and the new residents change the current perceptions of the neighborhood particularly through the mode of safe versus unsafe. The consequent rising prices thus increase or decrease the viability of certain demographic groups moving to the neighborhood. Voila, the neighborhood’s character and culture can be completely altered through gentrification. The gentrification of Ditmas Park has been gradual, but it’s been strong. I look at the current real estate prices and like almost everyone around us that was here in

Ditmas Park before gentrification fully happened, I realized that my family could most certainly not afford an apartment in Ditmas Park now. And there’s the silver lining of gentrification: the pushing out of the lower income households to make way for wealthier households, which by many, is perceived as “bettering” the neighborhood. In many cases, gentrification pushes out minority cultures for white cultures. And in the case of Ditmas Park, here comes the supposedly environmentallyconscious, Brooklyn yuppie culture.

What does gentrification mean for environmental injustice? Through two specific modes, green spaces and food consumption, gentrification has created Ditmas Park into a neighborhood where there is a divide: those with the financial means are able to consume foods purchased at the food co-op or farmer’s market, sporting healthier and more environmentally-conscious consumer choices versus those who do their grocery shopping at supermarkets with limited produce and aisles upon aisles of processed foods. And then there are those who live in nicer, wealthier buildings in the neighborhood have access to a privatized green backyard or perhaps a green roof versus the buildings that don’t. Across the city, access to healthier food options or simply green space has been constricted by financial mean. Furthermore, gentrification has incited a trend of creating areas that are yes, may be more environmentally conscious through local businesses or spatial usage, but not affordable or accessible to those of lower income.

Experiencing any form of nature around you is valuable. While many quickly disregard the presence of

nature in New York City, there are many instances, on a small or large scale, where one is able to be captivated by their natural surroundings within the city, particularly through the presence of green spaces. However, not all green spaces are created or placed equally. The beauty of New York City is that yes, all public parks are of course, open to the public and accessible by mass transit, but think about where these public parks are located. The beautiful strip of Riverside Park runs alongside one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, the Upper West Side. Battery Park City, a notable neighborhood home to the 1%ers with families, has invested tons of money into building gorgeous lawns, playgrounds, walking and running spaces right next to the

Hudson River at the bottom tip of Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn is still putting money into Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Piers surrounding it, filled with recreational spaces and maintained lawns and sitting areas. Within these past few decades, the development of public green spaces have almost exclusively centered around the wealthy areas of New York City.

Furthermore, opportunities to build smaller-scale green spaces are only afforded to buildings or homes that have the financial means to. The beautification of a building’s roof or backyard is a luxurious choice to make; many buildings don’t have the ability to refinance and/or create funds for a green development project. And even if they had the

financial means, buildings’ priorities are not necessarily to create green spaces, but rather upgrade facilities. Environmental injustice exists through the possibility or lack thereof of creating spaces where experiencing nature is available to all. The value of having a place outside your probably small, cramped apartment and simply take a walk and enjoy a (relatively) breathe of fresh air is priceless. However, readily available spaces like this don’t exist everywhere and if they aren’t convenient, why even consider taking that quick walk? Green spaces provide cleaner air for its surroundings and in the midst of the dreadful NYC summers, reduce the heat buildup from the concrete jungle. The simple benefits linked to green spaces needs to be available for residents across different neighborhoods, ensuring the

development of their own connection to nature and consciousness of the environment they’re in.

Patterns of food consumption relay another indicator of gentrification’s link to restricted environmentalism. Only certain types of people flock to the Sunday farmer’s market. If you shop exclusively at Whole Foods, everyone knows that you are an upper middle-class believer that organic and local is the only way to eat. However, the placement of these organic stores and farmer’s markets as well as the higher prices of local or organic food demonstrates the environmental injustice within our food system. Gentrification plays a role in food injustice through encouraging a culture where food deemed all-natural, organic, or grass-fed as better, but unaffordable for many. A few years ago, Whole Foods placed a store in the middle of Harlem, claiming to help bring fresh produce to communities that don’t have easy access to it. The backlash was quick: why place an overpriced organic market in a neighborhood where almost every single resident couldn’t afford it. Food politics is complex and there are certain initiatives in place, such as food stamps that attempt to address some of the food inequality. The movement of more expensive grocery stores into newly gentrified areas is unavoidable because yes, gentrified areas is where they will be receiving more business. However, initiatives and policies that address the overall need for access to healthier food options for lower income areas and households, particularly within urban areas where so much economic diversity exists, need to be implemented in response.

So what does all of this mean? How

can we make New York City a green city for everyone? Sustainable urban development must be constructed equally across buildings and districts. Upgrading a neighborhood should not mean immediately gentrifying it, but rather improving areas that still remain affordable for more than the upper classes. Coupling sustainability and affordability is a challenge for this next generation as more cities and states pledge their support for environmental urban planning and shifting towards 100% renewable energy. As one of the most arguably important cities in the United States, New York City’s transition to become a more sustainable city needs to recognize and tackle environmental injustice along the lines of gentrification. Ensuring that the arrival of Amazon doesn’t upset the communities surrounding its headquarters and doesn’t incite opportunities for environmental injustice through gentrification seems idealistic, yet critical for the next steps of New York City’s urban planning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eana Bacchiocchi is from Brooklyn, New York and is a sophomore studying Environmental Policy and English at Colby College. She was a participant in Sustainable Summer’s 2016 Seeds of Change trip. She is currently interested in pursuing a career in environmental policy and law.