It is inevitable: when a city fails to make a long-term plans, it finds itself in need of making good excuses for bad decisions. One of the most insidious forms of trickery is the use of the "green label" to blur systemic inequities and provide cover for potential municipal budget shortfalls. These actions carry consequences, usually resulting in rapidly increasing taxes and gentrification.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), there are at least 6 identifiable types of gentrifications:
- Retail gentrification
- Green gentrification
- Climate gentrification
- Tourism gentrification
- Studentification
- Health care gentrification
The NIH defines green gentrification as "improvement or construction of new environmental amenities such as parks, entwined with political and economic agendas, may ultimately socially and physically exclude or even displace long-term underprivileged residents." It should be noted that it is almost universally understood that sustainability is an extremely important aspect of building a resilient city. However, it is equally important to recognize that sustainable development is a complex system with emergent properties and behaviors that must not be confused with any one particular object (a park, EV station, art installations, etc.). This common misconception often results in unintended consequences, instances where well-intended individuals trying to do good things for the community end up harming rather than helping.
The key to reverse this problem begins by first realizing that a successfil sustainable program requires careful and holistic long-term planning. By doing so, a city is able to prioritize HOW things get done above WHAT things can be accomplished. The tragedy of focusing on the rapid acquisition of things rather than on the process of how things must be acquired is a pattern of behavior that is being reepeated across many Utah communities, Cottonwood Heights included, with tragic results. This is a story that begins when cities neglect to properly plan for growth and as a consequence communities find themselves with diminishing options; easily lured to greenwash gentrification in order to accommodate uncontrolled growth.
Why is green gentrification so alluring?
The Environmental Law Institute aknowledges that it is difficult to portray the addition of green space to a city as a negative improvement. However, it echoes the findings of the NIH, by stating the need to focus on the process (HOW) rather than the objects (WHAT) as the determinant for how a sustainable efforts end up gentrifying a community:
"[t]he problem lies in the fact that developing green space is not solely for the benefit of the common people, but also for the economic advantages it may bring—making it so greening projects can serve as a harbinger of environmental justice issues."
This type of gentrification is especially difficult to prevent in communities like Cottonwood Heights, where we have failed to update our long term plan for 20 years as well as being blessed with a significant number of upper-middle class households who are, in large part, very sympathetic to combat climate change. This demographic can be easily persuaded to support a greenwashed initiative that portrays itself a positive climate action plan while giving cover to significant enviromental justice issues; their pereception of a relative low-cost to a project makes them blind to the plight of households with more modest means.
Does 'The Bond' dismiss the plight of the less wealthy in Cottonwood Heights?
It should be noted that the plight of those most impacted by the rapid increase in the cost of living in our community was voiced at a City Council Meeting. District 4 Representative, Ellen Birrell, on August 6, 2024. She made it know to staff & council that members of modest means that she represents had expressed concerns about the rapid increase to the cost of living, and how the bonding of the new 'city center' might imact them. Staff promptly dismissed her concerns by deflecting their problem to Salt Lake County.
It is hard to understand how the mindset of a city employee who can so easily dismiss valid community concerns. Especially at a time when homelessness and housing affordability are crises tearing apart Utah communities.
Gentrification concerns are dismissed by CH City staff
Source: Cottonwood Heights City Council Meeting Minutes for August 6, 2024.
Sustainablity, to be truly what it intends to be, must take fully account of the NEEDS of everyone in the community well over the WANTS of any one particular group or individual. If we stand in defense of representative democracy, then it is incombent on us, the voters, to demand our representatives and staff arrest their impulse to deflect accountability and work towards the common good; meaning securing the needs of all our neighbors. Nothing short of that can ever truly be called sustainable.
We must take solace in knowing that this is a "system" problem, and that means that it is within our means to stop, rethink, and correct the system. What is needed is a congnizant electorate willing to not only aim for doing the right thing, but also doing it correctly; even if at times it might feel like we are giving up expediency while facing an increasingly urgent climate crisis.
On our next blog we will dig deeper into what causes a city government to act with total disregard to the plight of people. Is our city facing insolvency? and if so; isn't taking on debt to shore up a revenue stream a sign that our city is engaging in the Growth Ponzi Scheme?
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