scholarly journals Does an Urban Wilderness Promote Gentrification? A Case Study from Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 973
Author(s):  
Jilleah G. Welch ◽  
Charles B. Sims ◽  
Michael L. McKinney

The Knoxville Urban Wilderness (KUW) is a successful example of a growing global movement to utilize vacant urban land as many cities “de-urbanize”. A key question is whether this particular kind of green space promotes social inequality via green gentrification. Our analysis shows how the KUW has affected nearby home prices. Socioeconomic data including income, educational attainment, and race is also presented to explore the possibility of gentrification in South Knoxville. Our findings do not support strong evidence of gentrification, which implies that lower-income households are benefiting from advances in environmental amenities. Other households in specific areas are benefiting from both increases in home values and from expansions of the KUW. These are encouraging results for urban planning efforts that seek to utilize large areas of vacant urban land while also having positive social and economic impacts.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Christopher Strunk ◽  
Ursula Lang

For the most part, research and policymaking on urban gardening have focused on community gardens, whether in parks, vacant lots, or other public land. This emphasis, while important for many Midwestern cities, can obscure the significance of privately owned land such as front yard and back yard and their crucial connections with gardening on public land. In this case study, we examine how policies and practices related to gardening and the management of green space in two Midwestern cities exceed narrow visions of urban agriculture. The article explores the cultivation of vacant lot gardens and private yards as two modes of property in similar Midwestern contexts and argues that the management of green space is about more than urban agriculture. Instead, we show how urban gardening occurs across public/private property distinctions and involves a broader set of actors than those typically included in sustainability policies. Gardening also provides a key set of connections through which neighbors understand and practice sustainability in Midwestern cities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8490
Author(s):  
Hongjie Peng ◽  
Lei Hua ◽  
Xuesong Zhang ◽  
Xuying Yuan ◽  
Jianhao Li

In recent years, ecosystem service values (ESV) have attracted much attention. However, studies that use ecological sensitivity methods as a basis for predicting future urban expansion and thus analyzing spatial-temporal change of ESV are scarce in the region. In this study, we used the CA-Markov model to predict the 2030 urban expansion under ecological sensitivity in the Three Gorges reservoir area based on multi-source data, estimations of ESV from 2000 to 2018 and predictions of ESV losses from 2018 to 2030. Research results: (i) In the concept of green development, the ecological sensitive zone has been identified in Three Gorges reservoir area; it accounts for about 35.86% of the study area. (ii) It is predicted that the 2030 urban land will reach 211,412.51 ha by overlaying the ecological sensitive zone. (iii) The total ESV of Three Gorges Reservoir area showed an increasing trend from 2000 to 2018 with growth values of about USD 3644.26 million, but the ESVs of 16 districts were decreasing, with Dadukou and Jiangbei having the highest reductions. (iv) New urban land increases by 80,026.02 ha from 2018 to 2030. The overall ESV losses are about USD 268.75 million. Jiulongpo, Banan and Shapingba had the highest ESV losses.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 538
Author(s):  
Anita Kwartnik-Pruc ◽  
Anna Trembecka

Green space is essential for the implementation of the idea of sustainable urban development. This paper contains original research on the implementation of local government tasks in the development of public green space. The aim of this research was to analyse the actions taken by the municipal authorities regarding the development of public green space, including the acquisition of real properties, the regulation of their legal status, as well as the adoption of planning and programme documents. The Polish Central Statistical Office data on the public green space of the largest cities in Poland were analysed in order to determine the dynamics of changes. Then, the focus was placed on Krakow, where the authors analysed in detail the distribution and type of urban green space as well as the actions taken by the Municipality to both extend it and to protect it against building development. The criterion of green space accessibility to city residents was indicated as a necessary aspect to be considered in the overall assessment of the existing greenery. The conclusions include the assessment of the actions of the Krakow authorities and the observed trends in the development of public green space.


Author(s):  
Yuping Dong ◽  
Helin Liu ◽  
Tianming Zheng

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that can be caused by various factors, such as asthma-related genes, lifestyle, and air pollution, and it can result in adverse impacts on asthmatics’ mental health and quality of life. Hence, asthma issues have been widely studied, mainly from demographic, socioeconomic, and genetic perspectives. Although it is becoming increasingly clear that asthma is likely influenced by green spaces, the underlying mechanisms are still unclear and inconsistent. Moreover, green space influences the prevalence of asthma concurrently in multiple ways, but most existing studies have explored only one pathway or a partial pathway, rather than the multi-pathways. Compared to greenness (measured by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, tree density, etc.), green space structure—which has the potential to impact the concentration of air pollution and microbial diversity—is still less investigated in studies on the influence of green space on asthma. Given this research gap, this research took Toronto, Canada, as a case study to explore the two pathways between green space structure and the prevalence of asthma based on controlling the related covariates. Using regression analysis, it was found that green space structure can protect those aged 0–19 years from a high risk of developing asthma, and this direct protective effect can be enhanced by high tree diversity. For adults, green space structure does not influence the prevalence of asthma unless moderated by tree diversity (a measurement of the richness and diversity of trees). However, this impact was not found in adult females. Moreover, the hypothesis that green space structure influences the prevalence of asthma by reducing air pollution was not confirmed in this study, which can be attributed to a variety of causes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 365-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henkjan Honing

While the most common way of evaluating a computational model is to see whether it shows a good fit with the empirical data, recent literature on theory testing and model selection criticizes the assumption that this is actually strong evidence for the validity of a model. This article presents a case study from music cognition (modeling the ritardandi in music performance) and compares two families of computational models (kinematic and perceptual) using three different model selection criteria: goodness-of-fit, model simplicity, and the degree of surprise in the predictions. In the light of what counts as strong evidence for a model’s validity—namely that it makes limited range, nonsmooth, and relatively surprising predictions—the perception-based model is preferred over the kinematic model.


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