This first 18 months were dedicated to the recruitment and training of the postdoctoral and doctoral team members, including 6 courses offered on spatial methods (2), quantitative analysis, qualitative methods, urban development, and environmental justice. The team also developed the quantitative methodology for the analysis of the scope and magnitude of green gentrification in 40 cities; reviewed existing indices measuring urban equity and developed a strategy for comparing cities at the international level; selected an initial round of cities for which we identified demographic, real estate, development, and greening data, and analyzed green trajectories in 100 cities.
From M18 to M36, the GreenLuLus team dedicated extensive time and effort to clean up, organize, refine, and process the quantitative, green spatial, and real estate development datasets that we searched for and identified in the first 18 months of the project. This work was particularly extensive because it required the organization and categorization of this immense dataset in Excel, which we had received in different languages, formats, files, and with different geographical boundaries. During the project's final stage, we refined our analytical strategy and modeling for the quantitative and spatial data and completed the full analysis of different data sets for 28 cities, with an analysis conducted both at the individual city level and global level. We also finished conducting extensive field work in 24 cities in North America and Europe on community mobilization for equitable greening and on effective green equity policy and planning tools. This qualitative data has been fully transcribed, analyzed, and coded and written-up.
In terms of publications, the GreenLulus project team published a co-authored book in 2018 called Green trajectories: Municipal Trends and Strategies for Greening in Europe, Canada, and the United States (1990-2016). This book examines the urban greening policy trajectories of 50 cities in Europe, Canada and the United States over the last 25 years. In total, we have successfully published more than 60 articles and book chapters on the politics and discourses of urban greening, on trends of green gentrification and other racial and social impacts of new urban green infrastructure, on the political ecology of urban greening, on distributional and procedural injustices in green space planning and allocation, on inequities and insecurities in green urban adaptation planning, on gentrification and health, on the health impacts of urban greening, on the intersection of greening and real estate strategies, on effective mobilizing strategies, and on policy and planning tools for urban green justice.
The team also wrote policy reports for regional and international organizations (Diputació de Barcelona; Metropolis; UCLG; ICLEI) on injustices in urban greening. It participated in local, regional, national, and international workshops and conferences on the topic and also such organized or co-organized such events where researchers shared the results of the project.
Last, these past 18M also led to the development of video materials, including an interactive webdocumentary to enrich the analysis and dissemination of our research and draw activist and policy conclusions to be discussed more broadly.
