A research lab at ICTA-UAB
Environmental Gentrification and Climate-Linked Displacement
We examine gentrification and exclusion in climate-responsive infrastructure projects, with particular regard to nature-based solutions and green infrastructure projects. We also look at broader global and local dynamics of exclusion and displacement within and across cities due to the combination of climate impacts, uneven development, legacies of segregation and discrimination, and new climate interventions. Many of our studies distill civic, policy, and planning initiatives to contest environmental and climate gentrification and displacement and create more inclusive green cities.
Urban Environments, Health, and Equity
We critically assess the impacts of urban environments on health and well being, with particular regard for equity in marginalized urban populations. We pay particular attention to unequal socio-natures and their alternatives, focusing on everyday, embodied experiences, health impacts, and situated knowledges. Much of our work examines which policy interventions are able to improve equitable, long-term access to the benefits of urban nature and other environmental resources and sustainability interventions as residents also face the impacts of the environmental crisis on their health.
Infrastructures and Social Stuggles for Just Urban Societies
We critically analyze how infrastructure projects transform urban and rural places, socio-natures and livelihoods and the persistent structural factors that continue to push for unquestioned growth. We also explore the role of grassroots activism in contesting environmental, spatial, and social inequities resulting from neoliberal urbanism, extractivism, and infrastructure-led urban development. Many of our studies actively engage with communities and social movements to understand how they challenge the prevailing paradigms of many gray and green infrastructure projects while also proposing alternatives towards more just urban societies.
Housing Inequalities and Climate Change
We analyze the production of urban inequality in the context of urban development and the socio-spatial dynamics of housing precariousness, especially as those become worsened by climate impacts and policy and planning responses to the climate crisis. We specifically unpack the dynamics and impacts of financial processes on secure housing access and affordability, urban development, and everyday life in the context of climate adaptation and mitigation and green branding. Many studies we undertake examine alternative, sustainable housing models; socially just retrofits and equity-driven green energy projects; and planning and policy measures to guarantee housing rights and affordability in the context of adaptation and mitigation interventions.
Critical Sustainability, Greening and Climate Planning
2025
Ana Beatriz Pierri-Daunt, Stefan Siedentop (2025) Unravelling urban typologies in Latin American cities: Integrating socioeconomic factors and urban configurations across scales, Applied Geography, Volume 174.
2024
Bonnevera, I. “New food cultures” and the absent food citizen: immigrants in urban food policy discourse. Agric Hum Values (2024).
Anguelovski, I., Kotsila, P., Lees, L. et al. From heat racism and heat gentrification to urban heat justice in the USA and Europe. Nat Cities (2024).
, , , , , , & (2024). Shifting perceptions of green and blue spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic in gentrifying neighbourhoods: Experiences of inclusion and exclusion by women and non-binary residents. People and Nature, 00, 1–20.
Brian Rosa. (2024). Industrial Obelisks: Working-class memory and Barcelona’s chimney-monuments,
Journal of Historical Geography, 2024.
Perez-del-Pulgar, C., Anguelovski, I., & Connolly, J. J. (2024). Child-friendly urban practices as emergent place-based neoliberal subjectivation? Urban Studies, 61(12), 2349-2369. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241235781
Matheney, A., Anguelovski, I., Kotsila, P., Sekulova, F., & Oscilowicz, E. (2024). Illuminating radical spatial imaginaries: Counter-mapping urban environmental justice struggles for the city yet to come. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0).
Andréanne C. Breton-Carbonneau, Isabelle Anguelovski, Kathleen O’Brien, Mariangelí Echevarría-Ramos, Nicole Fina, Josée Genty, Andrew Seeder, Andrew Binet, Patrice C. Williams, Helen VS. Cole, Margarita Triguero-Mas, Exploring ownership of change and health equity implications in neighborhood change processes: A community-led approach to enhancing just climate resilience in Everett, MA, Health & Place, Volume 89, 2024, 103294, ISSN 1353-8292
Luma Vasconcelos, Johannes Langemeyer, Helen V.S. Cole, Francesc Baró, Nature-based climate shelters? Exploring urban green spaces as cooling solutions for older adults in a warming city, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, Volume 98, 2024, 128408, ISSN 1618-8667
Marquet, O., Anguelovski, I., Nello-Deakin, S., & Honey-Rosés, J. (2024). Decoding the 15-Minute City Debate: Conspiracies, Backlash, and Dissent in Planning for Proximity. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1–9.
Venner, K., García-Lamarca, M. & Olazabal, M. The Multi-Scalar Inequities of Climate Adaptation Finance: A Critical Review. Curr Clim Change Rep (2024).
Mary Kathryn Rodgman, Isabelle Anguelovski, Carmen Pérez-del-Pulgar, Galia Shokry, Melissa Garcia-Lamarca, James J.T. Connolly, Francesc Baró, Margarita Triguero-Mas, Perceived urban ecosystem services and disservices in gentrifying neighborhoods: Contrasting views between community members and state informants. Ecosystem Services, Volume 65
2023
, , , & (2023). Governing intersectional climate justice: Tactics and lessons from Barcelona. Environmental Policy and Governance, 1–19
Filka Sekulova, Isabelle Anguelovski, Lucía Argüelles, Redefining success in organizing towards degrowth, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Volume 48, 2023, 100764, ISSN 2210-4224
Seeking refuge? The potential of urban climate shelters to address intersecting vulnerabilities (Landscape and Urban Planning)
Life Satisfaction and Socio-Economic Vulnerability: Evidence from the Basic Income Experiment in Barcelona (Applied Research in Quality of Life)
Greening plans as (re)presentation of the city: Toward an inclusive and gender-sensitive approach to urban greenspaces (Urban Forestry & Urban Greening)
Equity concerns in transformative planning: Barcelona’s Superblocks under scrutiny (Cities & Health)
Grassroots mobilization for a just, green urban future: Building community infrastructure against green gentrification and displacement (Journal of Urban Affairs)
Promoting Health Equity Through Preventing or Mitigating the Effects of Gentrification: A Theoretical and Methodological Guide (Annual Review of Public Health)
(Mis-)belonging to the climate-resilient city: Making place in multi-risk communities of racialized urban America (Journal of Urban Affairs)
The right to the unhealthy deprived city: An exploration into the impacts of state-led redevelopment projects on the determinants of mental health (Social Science & Policy)
Justice should be at the centre of assessments of climate change impacts on health (The Lancet)
2022
Iengo, I. Armiero, M. Toxic Bios: Traversing toxic time-scapes through corporeal storytelling. In Toxic Timescapes. Examining Toxicity in Time and Space (Ohio University Press)
Exploring green gentrification in 28 global North cities: the role of urban parks and other types of greenspaces (Environmental Research Letters)
A tag is worth a thousand pictures: A framework for an empirically grounded typology of relational values through social media (Ecosystem Services)
Residential Proximity to Urban Play Spaces and Childhood Overweight and Obesity in Barcelona, Spain: A Population-Based Longitudinal Study (International Journal for Environmental Research and Public Health)
Nature-based solutions as discursive tools and contested practices in urban nature’s neoliberalisation processes (Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space)
The notion of justice in funded research on urban sustainability: performing on a postpolitical stage or staging the political? (Local Environment, The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability)
Integrating justice in Nature-Based Solutions to avoid natureenabled dispossession (Ambio)
Endometriosis and Environmental Violence: An Embodied, Situated Ecopolitics from the Land of Fires in Campania, Italy (Environmental Humanities)
Gender and sex differences in urban greenness’ mental health benefits: A systematic review (Health & Place)
Green gentrification in European and North American cities (Nature Communications)
Green justice through policy and practice: a call for further research into tools that foster healthy green cities for all (Cities & Health)
Advancing urban health equity in the United States in an age of health care gentrification: a framework and research agenda (International Journal for Equity in Health)
Citizen participation in the governance of nature-based solutions (Environmental Policy & Governance, Wiley)
Virtual spill-over effects: What social media has to do with relational values and global environmental stewardship (Ecosystem Services)
Collectively organized endurance through space and time to transform debt relations (Dialogues in Human Geography)
2021
“Weaving praxis and knowledges for a situated political ecology” (TRAME: Pratiche e saperi per un’ecologia politica situata)
Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity (Urban Climate)
Nature-based Solutions as Nodes of Green-Blue Infrastructure Networks: A Cross-scale, Co-creation Approach for Prioritization in the Barcelona Region (Nature-Based Solutions)
Assessing the learning process in transdisciplinary research through a novel analytical approach (Ecology & Society)
Healthy cities after COVID-19 pandemic: the just ecofeminist healthy cities approach (Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health)
A take-home message from COVID-19 on urban air pollution reduction through mobility limitations and teleworking (NPJ Urban Sustainability)
“They Didn’t See It Coming”: Green Resilience Planning and Vulnerability to Future Climate Gentrification (Housing Policy Debate)
Sociodemographic determinants of intraurban variations in COVID-19 incidence: the case of Barcelona (Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health)
Active use and perceptions of parks as urban assets for physical activity: A mixed-methods study (Health & Place)
Mental Health Outcomes in Barcelona: The Interplay between Gentrification and Greenspace (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)
From sustainable development to social-ecological justice: Addressing taboos and naturalizations in order to shift perspective (Environment and Planning E)
The relationship between residential proximity to outdoor play spaces and children’s mental and behavioral health: The importance of neighborhood socio-economic characteristics (Environmental Research)
Exposure to nature and mental health outcomes during COVID-19 lockdown. A comparison between Portugal and Spain (Environment International)
Natural outdoor environments’ health effects in gentrifying neighborhoods: Disruptive green landscapes for underprivileged neighborhood residents (Social Science & Medicine)
SI: The governance and politics of Nature-Based Solutions in the city (Cities)
Tracing and building up environmental justice considerations in the urban ecosystem service literature: A systematic review (Landscape and Urban Planning)
Rail-to-park transformations in 21st century modern cities: Green gentrification on track (Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space)
Adapting the environmental risk transition theory for urban health inequities: An observational study examining complex environmental riskscapes in seven neighborhoods in Global North cities (Social Science & Medicine)
Policy and Planning Tools for Urban Green Justice (ICLEI + BCNUEJ)
Breaking Down and Building Up: Gentrification, Its drivers, and Urban Health Inequality (Built Environment and Health)
Three Histories of Greening and Whiteness in American Cities (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution)
The governance of nature-based solutions in the city at the intersection of justice and equity (Cities)
The European Green Deal as catalyst for climate justice in cities (CIDOB)
Decolonizing the Green City: From Environmental Privilege to Emancipatory Green Justice (Environmental Justice)
School greening: Right or privilege? Examining urban nature within and around primary schools through an equity lens (Landscape and Urban Planning)
2020
Nature-based solutions as discursive tools and contested practices in urban nature’s neoliberalisation processes (Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space)
“Everyone wants this market to grow”: The affective post-politics of municipal green bonds (Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space)
Growing Farming Heroes? Politics of Imaginaries within Farmer Training Programs in California (Annals of the American Association of Geographers)
Defining pathways to healthy sustainable urban development (Environment International)
Young families and children in gentrifying neighbourhoods: how gentrification reshapes use and perception of green play spaces (Local Environment)
Whose city? Whose nature? Towards inclusive nature-based solution governance (Cities)
Advancing the green infrastructure approach in the Province of Barcelona: integrating biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services into landscape planning (Urban Forestry & Urban Greening)
The COVID-19 pandemic: power and privilege, gentrification, and urban environmental justice in the global north (Cities & Health)
Hidden drivers of social injustice: Uncovering unequal cultural ecosystem services behind green gentrification (Environmental Science & Policy)
A call to engage: Considering the role of gentrification in public health research (Cities & Health)
Expanding the Boundaries of Justice in Urban Greening Scholarship: Toward an Emancipatory, Antisubordination, Intersectional, and Relational Approach (Annals of the American Association of Geographers)
Weaving notions of justice into urban ecosystem services research and practice (Environmental Science & Policy)
(Urban Climate)
2019
Under one canopy? Assessing the distributional environmental justice implications of street tree benefits in Barcelona (Environmental Science & Policy)
Opinion: Why green “climate gentrification” threatens poor and vulnerable populations (PNAS)
Urban green boosterism and city affordability: For whom is the ‘branded’ green city? (Urban Studies)
Pushing regional studies beyond its borders (Regional Studies)
Grabbed Urban Landscapes: Socio‐spatial Tensions in Green Infrastructure Planning in Medellín (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research) PDF
Determining the health benefits of green space: Does gentrification matter? ( Health & Place)
2018
Green Trajectories: A GreenLULLUs policy book (2018)
New scholarly pathways on green gentrification: What does the urban ‘green turn’ mean and where is it going? (Progress in Human Geography, 2018)
From landscapes of utopia to the margins of the green urban life: For whom is the new green city? (CITY, 2018) PDF
Urban Planning, community (re)development, and environmental justice. In R. Hollifield, G. Walker, and J. Chakraborty. Handbook of Environmental Justice. (Routledge, 2018)
From critical climate adaptation to green resilience gentrification and new social-ecological riskscapes (IFoU 2018: Reframing Urban Resilience Implementation: Aligning Sustainability and Resilience, 2018)
From Jacobs to the Just City: A foundation for challenging the green planning orthodoxy (Cities The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, 2018)
Mapping the intangible: Using geolocated social media data to examine landscape aesthetics (Land Use Policy, 2018)
From Systems Thinking to Systemic Action: Social Vulnerability and the Institutional Challenge of Urban Resilience (City & Community, 2018)
2017
A ‘fertile soil’ for sustainability-related community initiatives: A new analytical framework (Environment and Planning A, 2017)
Power and privilege in alternative civic practices: Examining imaginaries of change and embedded rationalities in community economies (Geoforum, 2017)
Greening cities – To be socially inclusive? About the alleged paradox of society and ecology in cities (Habitat Int., 2017)
Assessing Green Gentrification in Historically Disenfranchised Neighborhoods: A longitudinal and spatial analysis of Barcelona (Urban Geography, 2017)
When we cannot have it all: Ecosystem services trade-offs in the context of spatial planning (Ecosyst. Serv., 2017)
Assessing the Potential of Regulating Ecosystem Services as Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Areas, in: Kabisch, N., Korn, H., Stadler, J., Bonn, A. (Eds.), Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas: Linkages between Science, Policy and Practice. (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2017)
Climate adaptation as strategic urbanism: assessing opportunities and uncertainties for equity and inclusive development in cities (Cities, 2017)
Power and privilege in alternative civic practices: Examining imaginaries of change and embedded rationalities in community economies (Geoforum, 2017)
Biopolitics gone to shit? State narratives versus everyday realities of water and sanitation in the Mekong Delta. (World Development, 2017)
Tracing narratives and perceptions in the political ecologies of health and disease (Journal of Political Ecology, 2017)
Beyond “Socially Constructed” Disasters: Re-politicizing the Debate on Large Dams through a Political Ecology of Risk (Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 2017)
Health dispossessions and the moralization of disease: the case of diarrhea in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam (Journal of Political Ecology, 2017)
2016
Healthy Food Stores, Greenlining and Food Gentrification: Contesting New Forms of Privilege, Displacement and Locally Unwanted Land Uses in Racially Mixed Neighborhoods (IJURR, Volume 39, Issue 6, November 2016 )
Contesting and resisting environmental gentrification: Responses to new challenges and paradoxes for urban environmental justice (Sociological Research Online, 2016 )
Equity Impacts of Urban Land Use Planning for Climate Adaptation. Critical Perspectives from the Global North and South (Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2016)
The urban political ecology of ecosystem services: The case of Barcelona (Ecol. Econ., 2016)
Climate change, happiness and income from a degrowth perspective, Handbook on Growth and Sustainability (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016)
When exposure to climate change is not enough: Exploring the adaptive capacity to heatwaves of a multiethnic, low-income urban community in Australia (Urban Climate, 2016)
Towards critical studies of climate adaptation planning: Uncovering the equity impacts of urban land use planning (Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2016)
Towards justice in urban climate adaptation: A roadmap for research (Nature Climate Change, 2016)
Inclusive approaches to urban climate adaptation planning and implementation in the global South (Climate Policy, 2016)
Urban Environment, Health & Equity
Quality of Life Benefits of Urban Rooftop Gardening for People With Intellectual Disabilities or Mental Health Disorders (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020)
A call to engage: Considering the role of gentrification in public health research (Cities & Health, 2020)
Influence of Socio-Economic, Demographic and Climate Factors on the Regional Distribution of Dengue in the United States and Mexico (PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases) under review
Crisis, racist biopolitics and the reappearance of malaria in Greece, (Geoforum) under review
Under one canopy? Assessing the distributional environmental justice implications of street tree benefits in Barcelona (Environmental Science & Policy, 2019)
Determining the health benefits of green space: Does gentrification matter? (Health & Place, 2019)
Do physical activity, social cohesion, and loneliness mediate the association between time spent visiting green space and mental health? (Environment and Behavior, 2019)
Do green neighbourhoods promote urban health justice? (The Lancet Public Health, 2018)
Active commuting through natural environments is associated with better mental health: Results from the PHENOTYPE Project (Environment International, 2018)
Development of the Natural Environment Scoring Tool (NEST) (Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 2018)
Effect of public transport strikes on air pollution levels in Barcelona (Science of the Total Environment, 2018)
Can Healthy Cities be made really healthy? (Lancet Public Health, 2017)
Are green cities healthy and equitable? Unpacking the relationship between health, green space and gentrification (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2017)
Health dispossessions and the moralization of disease: the case of diarrhea in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam (Journal of Political Ecology, 2017)
Longitudinal and Spatial Analysis Assessing Green Gentrification in Historically Disenfranchised Neighborhoods of Barcelona: Implications for Health Equity (Journal of Transport and Health, 2017)
Does time spent on visits to green space mediate the associations between the level of residential greenness and mental health? (Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 2017)
Living close to natural outdoor environments in four European cities: adults’ contact with the environments and physical activity. (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2017)
Natural outdoor environments and mental health: stress as a possible mechanism (Environmental Research, 2017)
Health impacts related to urban and transport planning: A burden of disease assessment (Environment International, 2017)
Exploring pathways linking greenspace to health: Theoretical and methodological guidance (Environmental Research, 2017)
Validating novel air pollution sensors to improve exposure estimates for epidemiological analyses and citizen science (Environmental Research, 2017)
Neighbourhood green space, social environment and mental health: an examination in four European cities (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2017)
The relationship between natural outdoor environments and cognitive functioning and its mediators (Environmental Research, 2017)
Fifty shades of green; pathway to a healthy urban living (Epidemiology, 2017)
Urban and transport planning related exposures and mortality: a health impact assessment for cities (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2017)
Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Neighborhood Racial Composition and Hypertension Stage, Awareness, and Treatment among Hypertensive Black Men in New York City: Does Nativity Matter? (Journal Racial Ethnic Health Disparities, 2016)
Rights to Home, Place, and Identity in Cities
Real estate crisis resolution regimes and residential REITs: emerging socio-spatial impacts in Barcelona (Housing Studies, 2020)
New scholarly pathways on green gentrification: What does the urban ‘green turn’ mean and where is it going? (Progress in Human Geography, 2018)
Creating political subjects: collective knowledge and action to enact housing rights in Spain (Community Development Journal, 2017)
“Value Grabbing”: A Political Ecology of Rent (Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2017)
From Occupying Plazas to Recuperating Housing: Insurgent Practices in Spain (International Journal for Urban and Regional Research, 2017)
‘Mortgaged lives’: the biopolitics of debt and housing financialisation (Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2016)
Fieldwork inhabitants, Paris (France) (Paris: Université Paris-Est Créteil, 2015)
New Methodologies
Mapping the intangible: Using geolocated social media data to examine landscape aesthetics (Land Use Policy, 2018)
Mapping ecosystem service capacity, flow and demand for landscape and urban planning: A case study in the Barcelona metropolitan region (Land Use Policy, 2016)
Bridging the gap between ecosystem service assessments and land-use planning through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) (Environmental Science & Policy, 2016)
Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in ecosystem service valuation (OpenNESS Ecosystem Services Reference Book, 2016)