Here Comes the Cleanup Crew, There Goes the Neighborhood?

by Jess Leber · 2010-09-01 12:15:00 UTC
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"There goes the neighborhood," isn't the first reaction you'd expect when authorities offer to clean a contaminated waste dump.

But that's exactly what old-timers sometimes fear. In Queens, New York, for example, community members were antsy when the state offered tax credits to remediate a string of abandoned industrial waste sites along the Manhattan-facing waterfront. Their worries were kind of spot on. Today, high-rise luxury condominiums (with some affordable housing mixed in) have replaced empty lots, and the main street strip is filled with hipster bars and cafes.

Call it "environmental gentrification." It's the flip side of your typical environmental justice concerns -- which usually center around a power plant or waste dump moving into a poor neighborhood and making sure it stays that way by depressing property values. Here, the issue is whether an environmental cleanup will push out low-income residents by making the neighborhood a more desirable place to live. Sometimes it seems you just can't win. Can you?

Luckily, as Conservation Magazine reports, a study has found that such concerns may be unwarranted. By studying the fallout of a series of 1990s-era cleanups in Portland, Oregon, an Ohio State University researcher found no major correlation between environmental improvements and gentrification, as measured by white-collar jobs and college degrees. As you would expect, a neighborhood's housing stock and distance from the central business district more closely predicted whether the next Starbucks would open there. The study cautions, however, that progressive Portland might not represent the entire nation.

Makes sense. And the Queens, NY, example -- which I only bring up because I personally experienced it -- may have a good explanation too. Given its prime waterfront location and overall sky-high New York real estate prices, the hazardous waste sites were clearly keeping home prices at artificial bargain basement levels. In this case, gentrification was likely inevitable, and the cleanup is a good thing anyway since the space was used to build much-needed dense city housing.

At least the project is much better than the alternative: yet more suburban sprawl. No?

Photo credit: KirrilyRobert via Flickr

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Jess Leber is a Change.org editor. She most recently covered climate and energy issues as a reporter in Washington, D.C
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