Forests are not statues: the socio-successional tensions of redlined urban forests in a time of racial re-awakening and climate change imperatives

Keywords: Climate, Race, Segregation, Succession, Parks, Urban Forests, Political Ecology, Urban Geography
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 48

Abstract

My research examines how the history of neighborhood segregation in Boston intersects with plans to revitalize Franklin Park’s public forest. As implemented by Fredrick Law Olmstead in 1885, Franklin Park’s woodlands kept with his philosophy that forests were a particularly valued form of nature beneficial to cities’ physical and social ills. However, since the Park’s establishment, the perceptions and management of the forest have evolved in direct relation to changing racial demographics of the surrounding neighborhoods, with periods of governmental and weak non-profit stewardship mirroring these shifts. My central conceptual question is how forests manifest histories of racial struggle while avoiding green gentrification and the often-stigmatized option of letting plant agency prevail. One revitalization strategy has the potential to greenwash racial history in favor of Olmstead’s bucolic ideal, while the other leaves the representation of the past to unpredictable successional dynamics. I employ archival research, semi-structured interviews, and forest characterization to illuminate the socio-successional tensions at play in plans to revitalize Franklin Park. My work aims to reframe views of urban forests as less ecologically neutral so as to analyze the role race has played in succession. I discuss how racial awareness might be attuned to the situatedness of spontaneous natures, and caution against the risks of erasing place-based histories through forest restoration. Statues contextualized by injustice may be removed, but forests that parallel racial histories require more creative responses, as their removal, neglect, or green gentrification are unsound climate policies and may even reinforce racial and economic segregation.