A research lab at ICTA-UAB
Urban Environmental Justice Struggles in Barcelona
Our ArcGis StoryMap on urban environmental justice struggles in Barcelona serves as a critical mapping tool that documents how activist groups across Barcelona are fighting for affordable housing, equitable access to green space, and the preservation of cultural heritage in the face of green gentrification. Local community perspectives are often overlooked in progressive cities like Barcelona celebrated for their bold urban sustainability visions, and this collection sheds light on 13 cases of environmental injustice and how residents are pushing for the changes they need in their neighborhood. BCNUEJ lab members have worked closely with activist groups and community initiatives to shed light on the complex dynamics surrounding urban environmental justice struggles in Barcelona that often remain invisible to the general public. Our map currently exhibits only a small fraction of the tensions around issues of accessibility and equitable use of (green) urban space in Barcelona and of the impacts of greening on housing, health, and wellbeing.
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Greening and Gentrification
While the Barcelona StoryMaps above highlight diverse environmental struggles, our StoryMaps collections on gentrification and greening specifically expose the adverse impacts of urban greening interventions in European and North American cities, and shed light on the policy tools and activism pushing for equitable urban sustainability policy. Explore how large and small-scale urban greening interventions in four cities—Barcelona, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Nantes and Dublin—despite addressing diverse socio-environmental challenges linked to climate change, biodiversity, and health, sometimes fail to take pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, racial segregation, and the needs of local communities into consideration, resulting in a greenspace paradox of gentrification and displacement.