Environmental justice

Latin American immigrants in urban nature: Exploring mental health and belonging through walking interviews

Urbanization is linked to mental health challenges, while urban nature is increasingly recognized for its restorative benefits. Yet, access to these benefits remains unequal. Latin American (LA) immigrants—a small but growing population in Canadian cities—may face distinct barriers to engaging with natural spaces, despite often relying on public resources for mental health and belonging. This […]

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Learning on the Go: Experiences Researching Urban Stewardship Practices Through Walking Interview

The following paper offers an in-depth, experiential analysis of the walking interview, applied within a participatory action research context. I share both reflection and critique, analyzing my experience conducting two walking interviews with stewards of urban green spaces in Vancouver, Canada and Medellín, Colombia that explored practices of care in urban nature as well as

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Hot stops, cool looks: Aesthetic solutions for thermal comfort at transit stops

Increased urban heat intensifies thermal discomfort, particularly in critical public spaces such as transit stops. This study investigated the predictors of transit users’ thermal perceptions in Denver, Colorado—a semi-arid city. Sixty bus stops spanning a gradient of land cover compositions were selected for study. Micrometeorological data, including thermal comfort indices, were collected alongside survey responses

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Pathways towards equity: Solutions-focused workshops with urban greening professionals

Urban green governance refers to the complex network of actors working across sectors to manage urban vegetation. While recent research has identified barriers to addressing green space inequities, there has been much less focus on how these barriers interact as self-reinforcing systems or on potential solutions. This study explores how urban greening professionals understand and

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The relative importance of greening in attracting gentrifiers to urban Vancouver and suburban Calgary neighbourhoods

Green gentrification describes how greening neighbourhoods (e.g. by creating parks, community gardens, etc.) can result in higher-income households moving in and displacing/excluding marginalised residents. While some researchers assert that greening attracts higher-income households, this has rarely been empirically tested. Further, green gentrification research has focussed almost exclusively on greening attracting households to urban neighbourhoods, despite

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Sustainability gentrification and implications for health

This chapter aims to present the current scientific findings concerning the potential associations between sustainability gentrification and population health. To do so, this chapter starts by describing the related and sub-types of eco-, ecological, environmental, resilience, climate, green, and green climate gentrification. Then, delves into examining the prevalence of sustainability gentrification within and between municipalities,

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Literature review of human interactions with urban nature and their mental health associations

This review explores the mental health benefits of human-nature interactions in urban areas. Considering increasing mental health concerns in cities, nature offers a widely available intervention to enhance well-being across diverse populations. We conceptualize nature interactions as behavior that occurs in/relates to a natural environment within a certain time frame, and examine associated mental health

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What is equitable urban forest governance? A systematic literature review

Urban forest governance comprises the formal and informal rules, institutions, and processes that influence collective decision-making in urban forest management. As such, it shapes key processes and outcomes that are implicated in urban environmental justice, including whose priorities and values are reflected in urban forest management and how and where urban trees are distributed. However,

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Equity, travel, and park visitation in 10 US metro areas: A smartphone mobility study

Urban planners and urban forestry researchers use various methods to evaluate how well different populations access the benefits of parks, often by assessing park distribution in relation to the social and economic conditions of surrounding neighbourhoods. However, without precise visitation data, it remains unclear whether proximity to parks translates into actual use. This study analyses

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How common is greening in gentrifying areas?

Green gentrification occurs when urban greening/sustainability interventions become implicated in neighbourhood upgrading and displacement of existing residents. However, current emphasis on urban sustainability in planning/policy agendas, coupled with political-economic factors producing uneven development, lead us to ask whether all gentrifying areas experience greening. Our descriptive analysis identified gentrifying areas in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto (Canada),

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