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The health disparity between rich and poor folk is much smaller in areas with plenty of parks and green space, according to a large study published in British medical journal The Lancet. Says lead author Richard Mitchell, "This is the first time we have demonstrated that aspects of the physical environment can have an impact in such a good way."

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Four major cities are poised to create urban parks several times bigger than New York's iconic Central Park, itself a not-at-all-shabby 843 acres. In Orange County, Calif., a portion of a former air station will become a 1,347-acre park; in Memphis, a 4,500-acre former prison farm has been snatched from developers by a conservation easement; Atlanta is trying to add enough parkland to attach nearly every neighborhood to green space; and a Staten Island landfill will become a giant park with amenities to attract bikers, boaters, and fishers. (No word on whether the Staten Island park will maintain the unsettling moniker of the Fresh Kills Landfill.) The push for parks comes as industrial land lies vacant, property values rise near green space, and demand for urban parkland increases. Says Catherine Nagel of the City Parks Alliance, "There's a growing awareness of the importance of providing green space to cities around the country."

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Atlanta, Ga.: the famous "Hot-lanta" of Southern heat and hospitality, home of "down-home" fried chicken and a growing black middle class, cradle of the largest historically black college community in the world, hotbed of the civil-rights movement, and ... the sprawl capital of the South.

As Atlanta gets greener, who will benefit?

Photo: iStockphoto.

As a resident of Atlanta for the past 15 years, I have witnessed one bad urban-planning decision after another. I have watched the fare for public transportation go up to pay for its expansion into the suburbs, while services in the inner city got cut -- a double whammy for the poor and transit-dependent who make up the system's core ridership. I have seen public housing for poor, black, and elderly residents be converted into upscale condos and townhouses. I have seen a boom in McMansions in historic inner-city neighborhoods, raising property values, contributing to global warming, and making it almost impossible for longtime residents to remain.

Now, I see a proposal that seems, at first glance, like it should be welcome. The city of Atlanta is embarking on one of the most massive redevelopment initiatives in its history: the BeltLine, an ambitious project to transform a mostly unused railroad into a 22-mile, in-town loop of parks, trails, and transit. The plan will increase overall parklands by over 1,200 acres (this, in a city that has significantly less green space than others of similar size around the country) while adding walking trails and bike paths and improving public transportation into the urban core.

On the surface, the BeltLine sounds like a great project, and it could be one. But, although the proposal promises an unprecedented amount of affordable housing units, questions like, "what is affordable?" and "affordable for whom?" have been sidelined in the public debate. Meanwhile, the project also includes plans to develop an abundance of upscale housing in Atlanta's inner city, likewise raising many questions about the likely effect on poor and moderate-income neighborhoods. Thus far, the plan's backers have failed to take these questions seriously -- which speaks volumes about the larger failure of civic leaders to sufficiently incorporate the poor and working class into their process and vision.

Without a fight, I am concerned that these neighborhoods (mine included) will not receive their fair share of the project's economic benefits. I am concerned that they will not be adequately connected to the BeltLine via the new transportation alternatives. I am concerned that they will not benefit equally from the improved parks system and environmental protection and remediation. And I am concerned that, if these neighborhoods do benefit, those who currently make their homes there will not be able to afford to stay.

These concerns are rooted in my awareness of patterns of community transformation across the country. Time and again, when long-neglected poor and polluted neighborhoods are revitalized, they cease to be affordable for the people who lived there (mostly from lack of choice) through the tough times.

Take Atlanta: The region's rapid growth in the 1990s perpetuated suburban sprawl and economic disinvestment in Atlanta's central city. Now, after years of long commutes and unbearable traffic congestion, those who abandoned the city want to come back and create a new Atlanta. City officials welcome this reverse migration and the increase in the tax base that it will undoubtedly bring. But poor and moderate-income citizens know to fear the likely outcome: property taxes, mortgages, and rents will skyrocket. Those who lived in poverty and pollution for years will essentially be shipped out when their neighborhoods are "cleaned up." Poverty will not be eradicated; it will simply be exiled.

If the BeltLine project is going to buck this pattern and help meet the needs of the citizens who could benefit the most, many as-yet-unanswered questions will have to become central to the public debate. What is the timeline for the revitalization, and which areas will be prioritized? Will quality-of-life enhancements for underserved and blighted neighborhoods come late or never, while middle- and upper-income residents benefit sooner? Will the maintenance facilities required for the transit system and other industrial uses be equitably distributed, or will they continue to be concentrated in the lower-end real-estate markets?

As a community leader, I have been invited to numerous pep rallies for the project. But I have been to far too few meetings where the presenters go beyond the canned, pro-BeltLine presentations and answer real questions like these. Indeed, the fact that months after the primary financing for the project has been secured many people in blighted neighborhoods know little or nothing about it is indicative of the limited outreach conducted -- despite boasts from the plan's proponents that they have engaged residents in the process. Moreover, the same people who are touting inner-city transit as a BeltLine gain have been silent on the subject of much-needed capital and service improvements to the existing transit system -- improvements that would better serve those who most rely on and financially support the system.

The "pros" of the BeltLine project can be hyped ad infinitum, but without real action to address key economic and social-justice issues, the project will fall prey to the same old unjust pattern of urban development. At the end of the day, Atlanta's long-suffering inner-city residents need to know: Will the BeltLine equitably distribute economic growth, improved transit, and environmental amenities? Or will it follow the course of other Atlanta revitalization efforts -- making way for the rich folks while moving the poor and underserved out of benefit's way?

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In the southeast corner of Washington, D.C., the capital of the most powerful nation in history, lies a polluted, neglected neighborhood known as Anacostia. Slated for a grand renewal project centered on the local river that gives it its name, the area stands at the juncture of poverty and opportunity. If plans move forward, it will one day be a showcase of urban design, with revitalized neighborhoods, verdant parks, rolling pedestrian and bicycle paths, and an occasional eagle soaring overhead -- in other words, a paradise. Today, Anacostia is more of a nightmare.

Capital improvements are coming to
D.C.'s other river.

Older residents of the area recall a time before incomes and population plummeted, a time before the exodus of the black middle class, a time when the banks of the Anacostia swelled with beaches, bathing, and fishing. But for decades, the story of the river -- which is fed by Maryland tributaries, then melds with the Potomac on its way to Chesapeake Bay -- has run a different course.

"Washington has always been a tale of two rivers, what you could call the white river and the black river," says Jim Dougherty of the D.C. Sierra Club, who sits on the national board of directors. While the Potomac has been blessed with plentiful green space, with the Jefferson Memorial and the Marine Corps War Memorial gracing its banks, the Anacostia has been home to the jail, incinerators, and power plants. Activists have continually fought projects that threaten to encroach upon the already degraded corridor -- projects that, according to Dougherty, "would never be allowed in western D.C."

As a result, the place and its people are suffering. Old tires are only the most ostentatious artifacts, with great mounds of litter here and there, and speckles of glass and paper woven among grassy banks. Contaminants affect such bottom-feeding fish as the brown bullhead, which have cancerous growths on their skin and in their livers, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others. With a 100-year-old, combined-use sewage system intended for a much smaller population, the river suffers dozens of overflows a year, during which strong rains bring untreated human waste rushing to its waters.

Glen O'Gilvie.

Photo: Ethan Goffman.

"The state of the river has an impact mentally," says Glen O'Gilvie, president and CEO of the Earth Conservation Corps, which has worked with local residents to clean up the area since 1989. For those who live in the most impoverished portion of our nation's capital -- where violence, unemployment, and lack of opportunity have shrunk the population to well under 100,000, with 38 percent living below the poverty line -- O'Gilvie says, "this is one more avenue of hopelessness."

Six years ago, full-scale plans to revamp the area began in earnest with the signing of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, a favorite project of D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams (D). The manager of the ambitious project, Uwe Brandes, explains that it reflects a "new perspective, that rivers can play an important role in the regeneration of cities. Historically they've been seen as a way to dump pollution. Now, the national resurgence of the river itself can be the green engine of growth."

While Brandes' optimism is reflected by supporters of the city's efforts, others are more guarded, wondering what price local residents will pay in exchange for an "improved" neighborhood. "Restoration is always a two-edged sword," says Robert Boone, president of the Anacostia Watershed Society, a community group based in Bladensburg, Md., which bleeds into the blighted urban areas of D.C. He worries that the city's efforts will end up benefiting those who need them least: "When you start restoring, the poor get forced out. That's inevitably how our culture works."

The city's 25-year redevelopment plan includes creating a network of paths to nearby neighborhoods by restoring green spaces long turned brown. These areas, such as Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens, Kingman Island, and Watts Branch Park (soon to be renamed Marvin Gaye Park), are saddled with trash, frequented by drug dealers, and often contaminated with toxic chemicals. Leaders also seek to create new housing, including low-income options, and to connect isolated neighborhoods with a trolley system. And after a century's worth of sewer overflows, relief is expected soon: newly installed pumps and valves should result in 40 percent less raw sewage making its way to the river.

Residents get a raw deal.

Photo: Ethan Goffman.

A more complete solution to the sewage problem is some 25 years removed, according to Brandes. Pollutants flow from the Anacostia's numerous Maryland tributaries, thousands of little capillaries and veins that zigzag just north of the district. "Over 80 percent of the watershed is in Maryland, so automatically there's an environmental-justice issue there," Brandes explains, "and that is that the District of Columbia, being downstream, is essentially the recipient of all of this pollution." From the Anacostia, the combined waste flows onward to Chesapeake Bay, itself the subject of grand and unfulfilled cleanup aspirations.

The Waterfront Initiative is coordinating efforts on the part of community groups, businesses, and local governments to minimize tributary runoff through such techniques as rain gardens, swales, and green roofs. (Known as "low-impact development" and largely pioneered in Maryland's Prince George's County, these techniques are now integral to numerous D.C. projects.) All told, says Walter Smith of the advocacy group D.C. Appleseed, "It's going to be a huge, costly, and a decades-long process." Brandes agrees: "There's a lot of goodwill, but there's a long way to go."

Despite the long haul, local communities are ready to dig in. "All of the communities that reside east of the river have been advocates for revitalization," says southeast D.C. resident and Sierra Club D.C. environmental-justice organizer Linda Fennell. "They have always been at the forefront." Fennell believes the passage of the Waterfront Initiative prompted "an increased level of energy, with communities advocating for better libraries, better parks."

According to Smith, development plans include significantly more low-income units than projects in the 1990s that displaced low-income residents as western D.C. gentrified, and will also reserve 51 percent of jobs for the local labor force. As Brandes puts it, "We're attacking this in terms of jobs, in terms of housing affordability, but we're not limited to that. We're also attacking it with regard to actual capital-equity participation." As Anacostia redevelops, existing neighborhood businesses will be drawn into the process. "In other words," says Brandes, "we have requirements that local, small, disadvantaged businesses in the District of Columbia participate in the redevelopment process directly."

While D.C. community organizers believe those behind the initiative are seriously concerned with helping the community, they worry that the efforts will not be enough. "Everyone's saying the right things, and everyone's heart is in the right place," says Robert Nixon, chair of the Earth Conservation Corps, "but I haven't seen a plan yet that involves the entire community."

Many longtime residents of the watershed are also skeptical, fearing deeply entrenched historical patterns will play out here. Impoverished areas have commonly been denied amenities and granted minimal basic services. As they begin to attract attention and become desirable, environmental degradation is cleaned up and services are enhanced -- but swelling housing prices often drive away those who have suffered through the worst years.

Alexandria Lloyd, a resident of Prince George's County, expresses a common fear. Revitalization, she says, "pushes poor people back into other neighborhoods. Then [rich] people tend to get antsy, taking over neighborhood after neighborhood -- and then the gentrification cycle begins all over again."

The Earth Conservation Corps holds classes, planning sessions, and activities in a historic pumphouse on the river's banks. Prior to its 1994 restoration, the structure was a blighted shell surrounded by "a snowplow graveyard, with snowplows piled 50 feet high," says O'Gilvie. Inside, bird droppings reached knee-level, while holes in the floor allowed a glimpse of the brown water below. The degraded pumphouse served as a fine metaphor for the state that has been allowed to fester along the Anacostia. Amid such despair, violence is endemic: the corps suffered a murder each year during its first decade.

Still, the number of participants has continued to grow. Today it stands at 45, and the group's influence has expanded exponentially. Its first river cleanup attracted 300 people; this year, 5,000 volunteers picked up some 30 tons of trash and debris. The pumphouse, too, has altered dramatically; today it is a tidy brick building full of life. The group's most prominent achievement, perhaps, is helping to return the bald eagle to the nation's capital. But as its film Endangered Species asks: if the bald eagle can be restored, why do the youth of Anacostia remain endangered?

During their year of service, corps participants cultivate skills that create future opportunities, from cleaning and operating equipment to learning the ins and outs of computers and boats. O'Gilvie explains that the program seeks to help "solve youth crime and violence, train local residents, and allow them to compete for jobs."

Indeed, the program claims an 85 percent success rate, based on graduates' education, employment, and continuing community involvement. As the Waterfront Initiative brings new opportunities, O'Gilvie says, local residents will have the background to fill positions that would once have gone to outsiders: "Skills and training cannot be gentrified."

His fellow community organizers hope that he's right. D.C. Appleseed's Smith fears that the restoration process will be subverted, that it will fail to help those who most need it, that if planners get behind in their goals, "there's a risk they'll never catch up." And the history of the region suggests little margin for error.

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