How to Plan the Dense and Green City? The Governance of Urban Greening in Densification Projects

Many cities around the world aim to grow through urban densification, the process of adding new land uses to the existing city. At the same time, these cities seek to expand and improve the availability of urban green spaces. In her just defended PhD project, Jessica Verheij researched how cities combine both sustainability goals despite scarce land available.

Greening Growing Cities

In the context of climate change, the availability of green spaces in cities is becoming more important than ever. Urban green, including parks, gardens, green rooftops, and green facades, have a key role in cooling down cities, particularly during heatwaves. Yet as many cities are growing and becoming denser, space for green becomes increasingly scarce. How do planners deal with this challenge? Can cities become greener despite urban growth?

The Planing Processes behind Dense and Green Cities

In my PhD research, I carried out case studies of urban densification projects that integrated some form of urban greening. Hereby, I sought to better understand the role of planning processes in developing cities that are both dense and green. Rather than doing a quantitative analysis of how much green is added per building project, I analysed how densification projects affect what type of green spaces are produced and for whom.

This is significant, because urban greening is not a neutral universally beneficial process. The creation of new green spaces in cities has considerable social implications, mainly because it drives up housing prices in the surrounding cities. On top of that, if green spaces are developed as exclusive amenity just for some, it reinforces social inequalities. In my research, I sought to recognize the politics behind urban greening in densification contexts.

Developers and Investors to Focus on the Economic Benefits of Green Spaces

My case studies are located in Switzerland and the Netherlands, as two countries where building land is scarce, and most municipalities aim to grow through urban densification. During my research, I learned that both public and private actors involved in urban development understand the importance of integrating green spaces. However, while planners aim for improving the overall environmental quality, ensuring public acceptance, and providing access to public green spaces, developers and investors often focus on the economic benefits of green spaces.

My research led to four key findings:

1. Private landownership reinforces the economic interests behind urban development. If densification is carried out by profit-oriented actors, it is more likely that green spaces are developed as exclusive amenity supporting the economic interests behind the densification project.
2. Municipal planning authorities have a crucial role in securing urban greening goals during densification. While private landownership limits the capacity for planners to intervene, planners can act strategically and cleverly use a combination of instruments to achieve urban greening.
3. The use of publicly-owned land in the context of active land policy is highly effective to achieve policy goals, as it allows the public actor to steer urban development through its own property rights.
4. The role of commoning and urban commons can help to shift the logics of urban development away from economic interests, towards more inclusive outcomes. Urban commons can help to achieve both housing affordability and inclusive green spaces in the context of urban densification.