Green infrastructure and socioeconomic dynamics in London low-income neighbourhoods: A 120-year perspective

Green infrastructure (GI) and nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly adopted as urban planning and development solutions to enable sustainable and healthy urban transitions. However, urban green(ing) has featured as an instrument of urban planning for several centuries. The extent and causal effect of these instruments in delivering environmental and social sustainability outcomes are, however, often unclear, but raise concerns of green gentrification. This paper presents a 120-year analysis of GI in London low-income neighbourhoods drawing on below (soils) and above (urban greenery) components of GI. Three testable relationships are analysed in a long-term perspective (1881–2001): soils, geology and initial socio-spatial structures; impact of urban greenery in comparable low-income neighbourhoods; and the impact of urban greenery in low-income neighbourhoods set in their wider urban systems adjustments. The results suggest that new greenery in comparable low-income neighbourhoods had little independent effect on neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics. Where gentrification does occur, wider processes of social, economic, and technological adjustment, rather than urban greening, is likely causal. The non-random distribution of soils is found to anchor socio-spatial structures. Future productivity of GI and NBS, e.g., sponginess or mass of green that can be sustained, will likely also vary spatially, and continue to anchor socio-spatial structures. •Combining above (urban greenery) and below (soil and geology) components of green infrastructure with socio-spatial analysis.•Long-term analysis (1881-2001) combining unique 19th and 20th socioeconomic, slum clearance and transport infrastructure data with contemporary data sources.•Soil and geological components of green infrastructure found to anchor socio-spatial patterns.•New urban greenery an insufficient shock (intervention) to generate an independent gentrification (socioeconomic displacement) effect in comparable low-income London neighbourhoods characterised by slum clearance history.•Potential GI productivity (e.g., sustaining GI and sponginess) determinants found to correlate with existing socio-spatial patterns and inequities.