This dissertation seeks to examine whether neighborhood public parks have a relationship to neighborhood change, including gentrification outcomes, through the investigation of a city-wide study of the neighborhood parks system in Philadelphia. It addresses the gap in the literature that examines investments in existing neighborhood parks and examines how they effect the surrounding community. In this dissertation, I ask the following research questions: What does a multi-dimensional concept of public park accessibility look like? What effect does proximity to a small neighborhood park have on the demographics and quality of the surrounding built environment? What effect does park quality of small neighborhood parks have on the quality of the surrounding built environment? Four methodological tools were used in this study: analysis of policy documents, Google Street View remote surveying, geographic information system (GIS) analysis, and statistical analysis. This study is the first of its kind that examines existing neighborhood parks, their quality, and the relationship to demographics and development in neighborhoods at a city-wide scale. The findings expand existing green gentrification literature and finds that while parks themselves are associated with gentrification and increased built environment development, the number of amenities in a park is not associated with an increase in the gentrification of the surrounding neighborhood. This key finding opens the door for cities to invest into their existing neighborhood parks without fear that improvements will trigger gentrification and displacement in vulnerable neighborhoods as long as additional policy steps are enacted to keep residents in place. / Geography

Bayview-Hunters Point, a neighborhood in southeastern San Francisco, has long been one of the most impoverished and polluted areas in the city. In an example of environmental racism, much of the African American community in San Francisco was segregated to Bayview-Hunters Point by racist housing policies and practices. This neighborhood was home to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), which was widely polluted with hazardous wastes from shipyard operation as well as radioactive contamination from the Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory established on this property. The former HPNS was made a federal Superfund site in 1989 and has been in remediation by the Navy since, with the goal of eventual transfer of the land to the city of San Francisco for redevelopment into residential and commercial areas. Throughout the history of the HPNS, government agencies have obscured both radioactive contamination and the nearby disadvantaged community in pursuit of military and economic power. As a result, the forces of redevelopment have outpaced remediation in Hunters Point. In this thesis, I argue that in continuing the environmental racism marginalizes the community in Bayview-Hunters Point and working to hide the contamination at the nearby Superfund site government agencies, primarily the Navy and city government, have fostered the conditions for green gentrification to occur, which could have ill effects on both the longstanding community and new residents.

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Essa dissertação aborda o processo de reestruturação imobiliária da região noroeste da metrópole de São Paulo, em particular o distrito de Perus, cujas transformações socioespaciais progrediram de um bairro operário para uma periferiadormitório e, então, potencialmente, para um local adequado à logística e à sustentabilidade. Este último movimento ocorre, sobretudo, através do impulso dado pela construção do Rodoanel que estimula a construção de novos produtos imobiliários, notadamente, centros logísticos e condomínios residenciais. Também atuam nessa transição projetos urbanísticos sustentáveis que estão previstos ou em implantação em Perus. A pesquisa analisa o conteúdo desses projetos e a sua origem, visto que foram financiados com dinheiro da venda de créditos de carbono negociados pela Prefeitura de São Paulo com empresas transnacionais. Nossa hipótese é que esses planos urbanísticos cumprem papel de esverdear a fronteira urbana e de promover uma espécie de gentrificação verde, através da remoção forçada de famílias e do controle do tipo de uso do solo. Examinamos ainda a política pública de implantação de parques lineares, localizados em sua maioria na periferia da cidade de São Paulo, refletindo a respeito dos impactos desses projetos na vida da classe trabalhadora e na dinâmica do processo de urbanização, o que nos conduziu a observar uma relação entre o urbanismo sanitarista e o urbanismo sustentável. / This dissertation examines the process of real estate development in the northwestern region of the São Paulo metropolis, in particular, the district of Perus, where a process of socio-spatial transformation has resulted in its character progressing from from being a working-class neighborhood to a dormitory-periphery suburb of São Paulo and, as such, an area potentially suitable for investments in logistics and sustainable living. This most recent changes have occurred mainly due to the impulse provided by the construction of the São Paulo ring road (\"Rodoanel\"), which has stimulated the construction of new real estate developments, notably, logistics centers and residential condominiums. Other factors that contributed to this transformation were the sustainable urban projects, planned or already under construction, in Perus itself. This research analyzes the content of these projects and their origin, since they were financed with funding from the sale of carbon credits by the São Paulo Municipal Administration to transnational companies. Our research hypothesis is that these urban plans effectively fulfill the role of \"greening the urban frontier\" and promote a kind of \"green gentrification\" which involves the forced removal of families and the control of land use. We also examined the public policy of implementing linear parks, which are mainly located in the outskirts of the Municipality of São Paulo. We reflected on the impacts of these projects on the life of the working class population and the dynamics of the urbanization process, leading us to observe that there is a relationship between sanitary urbanism and sustainable urbanism.