‘The Green Areas Are Out of Our Reach’: Racialisation, Erasure and Resistance in UK Urban Greening Initiatives

Abstract

Commitments to Build Back Greener remain prominent in international approaches to post-pandemic economic recovery. Yet, few studies have considered how the associated processes of valuing, preserving and erasing green spaces in urban greening redevelopment projects are inflected by racialised inequalities. Drawing on 29 interviews with policy practitioners and racially minoritised residents in Oldham (North-West England), this article contests discursive framings of greening projects as vehicles of equality and conviviality, by utilising the lens of racial capitalism. In doing so, the article identifies two processes of symbolic and material erasure in urban greening redevelopment strategies: the overwriting of racial signifiers in local imaginaries of place and the vulnerability to development of urban greenery in racialised localities. The article further documents resistance via the reclaiming of green space by racialised residents and sheds lights on the under-explored synergies of ‘race’ and urban greening initiatives.