• Helen V S Cole, Melisa Garcia Lamarca, James J T Connolly, and Isabelle Anguelovski.
• Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques and Institut de Ciѐncia i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
• J Epidemiol Community Health. 2017 Nov 1; 71 (11): 1118-1121.

AbstractWhile access and exposure to green spaces has been shown to be beneficial for the health of urban residents, interventions focused on augmenting such access may also catalyse gentrification processes, also known as green gentrification. Drawing from the fields of public health, urban planning and environmental justice, we argue that public health and epidemiology researchers should rely on a more dynamic model of community that accounts for the potential unintended social consequences of upstream health interventions. In our example of green gentrification, the health benefits of greening can only be fully understood relative to the social and political environments in which inequities persist. We point to two key questions regarding the health benefits of newly added green space: Who benefits in the short and long term from greening interventions in lower income or minority neighbourhoods undergoing processes of revitalisation? And, can green cities be both healthy and just? We propose the Green Gentrification and Health Equity model which provides a framework for understanding and testing whether gentrification associated with green space may modify the effect of exposure to green space on health.© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

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