Environmental Studies Capstone Project
An Investigation of the Spatial Distribution and Relative Quality of San Francisco's Municipal Parks with Respect to Income and Race
Introduction
Since high school, I have been interested in studying the intersections of environmentalism and social justice. As a result, I chose to major in environmental studies at Swarthmore with a focus on urban environmental justice.
Over the course of my studies, I have been most fascinated by the seemingly benign and rather bland topic of municipal parks and other urban greenery.
Why parks and greenways? We generally hear amazing things about urban green spaces. Parks capture carbon, reduce noise pollution, lower urban temperatures, decrease flood risk, increase community engagement and health, and create new habitats for animal populations. For these reasons, urban "nature-based solutions" have been touted as powerful and cost-effective tools to combat the global climate crisis (Müller).
Unfortunately, there is a darker side to urban greening. New or renovated green spaces, especially those located in poorer communities of color, can also result in gentrification and displacement. Nicer, safer, and more abundant parks attract investors and can lead to economic growth in a neighborhood, but the money tends not to trickle down to local residents. Over time, an area may lose its structure, culture, and ultimately its people.
One oft-cited example of green gentrification continues to evolve in New York City. In 2002, an organization called The Friends of the High Line encouraged Mayor Michael Bloomberg to create a greenway on abandoned, elevated New York Central Railroad tracks in Manhattan’s West Chelsea neighborhood (“The High Line”). Today, the park, known as the High Line, is one of New York City’s biggest attractions with over 7.5 million visitors annually (Sachs). The beautiful greenway, however, has a more threatening aspect. Between 2003 and 2011, property values in this once working and middle-class neighborhood of color increased 103 percent (Anguelovski et al. 418). Instead of serving the residents of West Chelsea, the park supports tourists and the hundreds of developers clamoring to add their name to the skyscrapers continuously popping up around the park. The developers and supporters of the park, including The Friends of the High Line, have acknowledged these shortcomings. As one of the co-founders of the project, Robert Hammond, stated, “We were from the community. We wanted to do it for the neighborhood. Ultimately, we failed” (Anguelovski et al. 418).
Project Overview
Given my interests in urban parks and green gentrification, for my capstone project, I wanted to map environmentally-induced displacement. Unfortunately, due to a lack of quality data over time, I chose to instead examine the quality and distribution of parks in a city with respect to income and race. As I am from the Bay Area, I decided to focus on San Francisco's municipal parks.
Mapping Project
Below you will find a series of six maps. Each map will be accompanied by a description and analysis.
Map 1: Distribution of San Francisco’s Municipal Parks
As an introduction to my project, I wanted to include a map of San Francisco's municipal park boundaries (shown in green). As you can see, San Francisco's 222 parks are distributed fairly evenly across the city. The peach background of this map outlines census tracts in the city. You can reference any feature in the maps via the legend icon located in the bottom left of your screen.
Map 2: Distribution of Park Quality
I thought it would also be helpful to provide a distribution of park quality in San Francisco. Luckily, since 2005, the city has surveyed the majority of its municipal parks and has scored each on a scale from 0-1. The blue circles on this map represent park quality, with larger circles corresponding with higher scores. As you can see, high quality green spaces tend to be clustered in certain locations.
Note: Since the quality scores tended to be, on average, quite high, I chose to map the parks using a four-class quantile distribution. This visualization method allows surveyed parks to be compared to other parks in the city, rather than on an arbitrary numerical scale.
Map 3: Distribution of Parks in Relation to Census Tract Median Income
We now begin to move into the meat of my analysis. I created this map because I wanted to see if municipal parks tend to be located in wealthier or poorer areas of the city. For simplicity's sake, any census tract above the 50th percentile in median household income was considered "high-income" and any tract with below average median income was dubbed "low-income."
As illustrated by the map to the left, 60% of San Francisco’s parks (represented in green) are located in high-income areas, 36% are in low-income tracts (red), and 5% are in both (yellow). Unsurprisingly, wealthier neighborhoods have more parks, which could indicate previous or continuing green gentrification.
Map 4: Distribution of Parks in Relation to the Racial Makeup of Census Tracts
I made this next map to determine if parks were more abundant in majority white neighborhoods or in majority communities of color. Whiter neighborhoods tend to have more political power and perhaps the disproportionate ability to influence the siting of green spaces. Given that whiteness can also be used as a proxy for wealth in this country, I expected my map to look similar to my previous visualization.
As I suspected, despite there being a larger quantity of majority non-white census tracts in the city, majority white neighborhoods contain more parks (52% of all parks) than do majority communities of color (44%). Looking at the map, red parks intersect majority white communities, yellow parks are located in majority communities of color, and green parks are housed in both types of communities.
Note: Again for simplicity's sake, and because there are close to an equal number of majority white and majority non-white tracts, I only modeled two "types" of neighborhoods. Thus, I must qualify my findings since the structure and composition of neighborhoods is far more complicated than I have laid out.
Map 5: Distribution of Park Quality in Relation to Census Tract Median Income
These next graphics are analogous to maps 3 and 4 but focus on green space quality, rather than park location.
From the analysis to the left, you can see that park quality is correlated with income. There are far more "good" parks (above average quality) in higher-income census tracts than "bad" parks. By contrast, there are more low-quality green spaces than high-quality parks in lower-income neighborhoods.
For more information on the significance of the various colors, refer to the legend icon in the bottom left corner of the map.
Map 6: Distribution of Park Quality in Relation to the Racial Makeup of Census Tracts
Similarly, majority white neighborhoods house more "good" parks than "bad" ones, while majority communities of color contain more more low-quality green spaces than high-quality ones.
You can again refer to the legend for detailed information.
Conclusion
As expected, the quality and quantity of municipal parks in San Francisco tend to be correlated with whiteness and income. We must find ways of providing much needed green spaces to low-income communities of color without causing mass displacement.
There are models for creating successful and just urban green spaces. Pogo Park, a community development organization in Richmond, CA, has renovated multiple abandoned parks in the low-income, low-education, poor-health, and high-crime Iron Triangle neighborhood ("Pogo Park"). These parks have reduced crime rates, improved health outcomes, increased community connectedness, and provided jobs to dozens of residents ("Pogo Park"). The Pogo Park model has not led to gentrification because these parks are designed, built, patronized, and staffed by the Richmond community ("Pogo Park"). In addition, the organization, with the help of outside funders, has been purchasing land near the parks to continue to develop the areas in community-centered ways ("Pogo Park"). The Iron Triangle community holds both physical and emotional ownership over the projects and will not sacrifice the integrity of the spaces for corporate interests.
