A research lab at ICTA-UAB
The Green Divide documentary exposes the ignored injustices suffered by minority and working class communities in the race for cities to go green. Featuring interviews with urban researchers, activists and residents, the film delves into six stories from neighborhoods in Europe and North America, where the tensions between municipal greening and local community struggles results in new forms of activism and participation for improving the rights of all residents to the green and healthy city.
Host a screening
If you would like to host a screening, please contact our communications officer Ana Cañizares at ana.canizares@uab.cat
Synopsis
A new film documents the dark side of greening
Not all that is green is good, at least not for working class residents who are displaced by or excluded from new green developments in their neighborhoods. We all want–and need–our cities to be greener, but what if this only deepens the divide between rich and poor? Created by filmmaker Alberto Bougleux with urban researchers from Barcelona’s Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB), The Green Divide chronicles the stories of residents and community activists struggling against the growing phenomenon of green gentrification, revealing the hidden costs of greening our cities while letting real estate speculation run rampant.
In recent years, greening agendas have come to the forefront of urban development and sustainability plans across Europe and North America. Despite widespread municipal efforts to improve livability through amenities like parks, greenways, green corridors, and urban farms, urban greening is increasingly linked to real estate speculation, housing inequities, gentrification, and social and physical displacement in mostly working-class and racialized neighborhoods. In response, residents are organizing to promote urban justice in the form of housing rights, anti-displacement policies, and improved public and green space.
The film is fruit of a six-year study carried out by urban justice researchers at ICTA-UAB within the Barcelona Lab for Urban Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ), who analyzed how urban greening projects impacted historically marginalized groups in distressed neighborhoods across 40 cities in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Filmmaker Alberto Bougleux brought some of these cases to life by documenting the poignant stories of residents and community leaders in six cities: Barcelona, Boston, Nantes, Washington, Portland and Montreal. Previously illustrated in part as an interactive web documentary, the stories now come to the big screen with additional footage, interviews with researchers and updated testimonies from residents.
The film hopes to bring attention to the injustices committed under the veil of sustainable greening agendas, and calls on cities to implement effective policies to ensure that developments are inclusive and equitable.
Testimonials
“There’s this idea of Portland as a green utopia, but that is contradictory to the realities of the lived experiences of so many Portlanders. It’s the wealthier, whiter communities who are able to have these enclaves in which only they will be protected from the devastating impacts of a very uncertain future.”
— Vivian Sutterfield, Portland activist
“We wanted to amplify the voices of the people affected by climate and housing injustice in cities, which is something we feel we have a responsibility to do, as researchers. Science has to engage with society in order to meet the magnitude and acceleration of environmental and social challenges.”
— Isabelle Anguelovski, BCNUEJ director
“This project has been an amazing opportunity to meet a generation of local activists struggling for a new social and environmental awareness, especially amidst the current climate crisis. It was a unique chance to make documentary where it matters.”
— Alberto Bougleux, filmmaker
Featured communities
BARCELONA
Albert Valencia | Activist of Observatori dels Barris del Poblenou
Manuela Fernández | Neighbor of Ptge. de Morenes
BOSTON
Chris Marchi | Activist of Airport Impact Relief
Noemy Rodríguez | Activist of Greenroots
Kannan Thiruvengadam | Director of Eastie Farm
MONTRÉAL
Shannon Franssen | Former coordinator of Solidarité Saint Henri
Pauline Cordier | Member of Youth Council and Community Gardens
Fred Burrill | Historian and activist of POPIR – Comité Logément
NANTES
Luce Chevillon | Activist of the civic initiative Commune de Chantenay
François Orhan | Activist of the civic initiative Collectif de Bois Hardy
PORTLAND
Cameron Harrington | Former program manager of Living Cully
Vivian Sutterfield | Activist of Verde
WASHINGTON DC
Ginger Rumph | Executive director of Douglass Community Land Trust
Min30
Ari Theresa | Gentrification attorney at Stoop Law
Dominic Moulden | Activist of ONE DC Black Workers & Wellness Center
Featured researchers
Isabelle Anguelvovski is an ICREA Research Professor, Principal Investigator, and Head of the Gender, Diversity, and Wellbeing Committee at ICTA-UAB, where she leads BCNUEJ and examines the compounding environmental racisms and injustices faced by marginalized groups when exposed to climate impacts, resilient infrastructures, and displacement pressures.
Panagiota Kotsila is a ‘Ramon y Cajal’ research fellow at ICTA-UAB. As part of BCNUEJ, she explores processes of urban nature neoliberalisation and the grassroots struggles for urban climate, envioronmental and health justice, particularly in relation to migration and racialized groups.
Melissa García Lamarca is an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies in Sweden, and an affiliated member with BCNUEJ. Her research explores housing injustices and urban green inequalities by looking at both political economic processes and situated, everyday lived experience.
Andreanne Breton-Carbonneau is a doctoral researcher with BCNUEJ at ICTA-UAB, where she explores the health equity impacts of planning and implementing green resilient infrastructure.
Helen Cole is a Senior Researcher at ICTA-UAB. She joined BCNUEJ in 2016 as a postdoctoral researcher on the GREENLULUs project studying the relationship between green gentrification and health equity.
Margarita Triguero-Mas is a senior researcher at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and an affiliated senior researcher at BCNUEJ, where she works at the intersection of public health, urban planning and environmental justice.
Funding
This film is supported by funding from the Maria de Maeztu (MdM) Unit of Excellence grant (CEX2019-0940-M), at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals within the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). It was also supported by the GREENLULUs (678034) and NATURVATION (730243) projects funded by the European Commission.