Small spatial greening projects influencing gentrification - Master's thesis, Bas Van der putten (stagiair Commons Lab 2022)

Urban governments are reintroducing urban green spaces as climate adaptation and mitigation measures. The city of Antwerp recently started their ‘Garden streets’ project as a response to the sustainability needs in urban areas. The aim is to transform residential streets into climate-adaptive place and enhances social contact. The project offers positive changes to environmental, social, and economic aspects. This economic revaluation of areas through greening projects is coming more into criticism among academics. The link is more often made with gentrification processes, where green landscape elements are an attraction factor among middle-income class households, and the project is seen as a revaluation project of a neglected neighbourhood that forces the displacement of the lower-income class households: green gentrification.

This thesis focusses on the garden street project in the Lange Riddersstraat, district Antwerp, and the project in the Oud-Berchem neighbourhood, district Berchem. The definition of gentrification is extended to include not only the direct causes, on which previous studies on gentrification mainly are based, but also indirect causes. The thesis aims to establish the link between the researched garden street projects and gentrification processes in the area studied. A focus is placed on how the process of the project took place and whether this can influence the process of gentrification. The data collection is split into two parts. The first part focuses on the gentrification processes. Here, it breaks down into four gentrification drivers: capital (re)investment, social upgrade, (non-)material landscape change, and displacement. The second part is on the process and involved actors of the project. The collection mainly happened by interviewing residents and the organisations and government officials involved. Documents and information found online complemented this.

This research shows that the garden street project in Berchem is at higher risk of reinforcing gentrification processes due to the project’s top-down approach. In contrast, the Lange Riddersstraat used the bottom-up approach to create a stronger social group feeling and designed garden street in unanimous agreement with the citizens. In both cases, capital investment in the direct environment or in the researched area itself is the biggest driver. This driver is more prominent in the case study of Berchem where previous redevelopment processes in the proximity of the researched area are dominantly aimed at economic revaluation (e.g. the ‘Groen Kwartier’). The Lange Riddersstraat struggles with the presence of high-profit markets in the neighbourhood and fears a rise due to the garden streets project. The other three gentrification drivers are more prominent in the case study of Berchem since the top-down approach cannot take all the social needs and wishes of the residents.

The Lange Riddersstraat manage to minimise the other three rivers thanks to good organisation between all actors and the involvement of all residents in the process and designing.

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Bas Van der Putten – 2 oktober 2023