A Tree Grows in Richmond: Southside Moves from Redlining to Greening

A nonprofit-led project seeks to address environmental injustices and improve water quality with targeted tree planting.

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At the peak of a Virginia summer, the difference between the sun and shade is stark. High urban temperatures can be dangerous in the capital city of Richmond. Trees can provide substantial cooling, pull pollution from air and water, and beautify neighborhoods. But in Richmond and other U.S. cities, the racist housing policy of redlining has resulted in less tree canopy for many neighborhoods with predominantly Black residents, making them now hotter in the summer.

In lower-income areas where people of color live, environmental gentrification is a concern.

Southside, an urban region south of the James River and within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, contains formerly redlined tracts. Through the Greening Southside Project, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is spearheading a multisector tree-planting initiative, hoping to cool the local climate, address longstanding inequities, and reduce water pollution. 

A National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant funds CBF’s two-year mission to engage locals to plant hundreds of trees at parks, schools, churches, and residences. CBF previously worked on similar initiatives in this area and now taps into a growing local environmental justice movement through community partnerships.

In the 1930s, federal officials marked Black neighborhoods as “risky” red investments on maps, effectively blocking potential home buyers from receiving mortgages and other kinds of credit. 

Underinvestment meant fewer trees and parks were protected or established, and more roads, industrial sites, and paved surfaces were built—including in the economically distressed Southside of Richmond, much of which continues to be characterized by vacant buildings and asphalt. 

A 2020 study by researchers from Richmond and Portland, Oregon, found formerly redlined neighborhoods are up to twelve degrees warmer in the summer. These once-redlined tracts are now more likely to be lower-income and have Black or Latinx residents, who also suffer from related health disparities. 

“People who are not within an acceptable distance to [green] spaces are not given the same opportunities to exercise, play, breath clean air, enjoy shade, grow food, and change their scenery,” Southside ReLeaf co-founder and lifelong Southside resident Amy Wentz says. 

Southside ReLeaf, which organizes community members to address local environmental inequities, is partnering with CBF for Greening Southside. “Unfortunately, Southside residents in certain communities suffer greatly from heat-related illnesses at larger percentages than other areas of the city,” Wentz says. They also “have higher cases of asthma, diabetes, obesity, and other illnesses that lead to shorter life spans.” 

In 2020, Wentz ran for Richmond City Council to represent the 8th District, where she lives. Her platform aimed to tackle local high rates of health problems and evictions, and to improve food access, and youth and adult education. 

Though she wasn’t elected, Wentz brought renewed public attention to Southside’s challenges and promise. Along with Greening Southside, she is involved with two tourism platforms that feature local Black culture: BLK RVA and the Virginia Black Restaurant Experience.

Richmond’s master plan, released in 2020, strongly focuses on revitalizing Southside neighborhoods through investments in streetscapes (including new greenery), transportation, commerce, and housing improvements and expansions. The plan references redlining and proposes to increase tree cover and reduce pavement in the hottest communities. 

Along with Southside’s racially-motivated lack of trees, the fact that the area lies within the Chesapeake Bay’s watershed was a key motivation for CBF’s new plantings. Some creeks there are polluted—due, in part, to the extensive pavement and resulting stormwater runoff. These creeks feed the James River and, in turn, the Chesapeake Bay. 

Trees can reduce Southside’s runoff and erosion, benefiting the watershed—a potential win-win for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which strives for clean water and environmental justice.

To zero in on Southside neighborhoods, CBF used the Richmond Office of Sustainability’s Climate Equity Index map to identify tracts lacking tree canopy, and with more pavement and heat vulnerability. Black and Latinx residents make up 86 percent of the population in the identified areas.

Along with cooling temperatures and improving air quality, trees and green spaces have been proven to reduce stress and lower blood pressure. Jeremy Hoffman, co-author of the redlining study and chief scientist at Richmond’s Science Museum of Virginia, says, “Planting and maintaining new trees is a long-term investment in generating natural air conditioning and other benefits for these neighborhoods.” 

Hoffman adds that shorter-term strategies are important, too, such as shade structures at bus stops, pedestrian-only areas and “cultivating shaded public pocket parks” on unused land. And, while tree plantings are not a cure-all for climate change—emissions reductions and other approaches are also essential—research continually upholds our tall neighbor’s essential role in cooling and saving the planet. 

Trees are also increasingly recognized as a powerful instrument of environmental justice—American Forests created a Tree Equity Score to guide localities, which also mentions redlining's harmful legacy. But, like most simple solutions to complex struggles, planting trees is not a complete remedy for environmental inequities, and advocates say some greening strategies are more just and sustainable than others. 

“There are a few ways that tree planting can be equitable, including ensuring that planning follows community lead from the beginning, acknowledges history, integrates tree planting with other investments, and accounts for future climate impacts,” says Marissa Ramirez, a senior manager with the Natural Resource Defense Council’s (NRDC) Healthy People and Thriving Communities Program, who is not involved in Greening Southside. 

Wentz, of Southside ReLeaf, says her organization centers local voices, “[especially] voices of the underserved and marginalized communities that often have change happen to them instead of with them. Our neighbors know what they would like to see shaping around them for their benefit, they just need organizations to listen to the already amazing ideas they have.” She says CBF has sought to collaborate with community members. “That effort does not go unnoticed by our neighbors, and that intentionality is so necessary,” Wentz says.

For several years, CBF has worked with Southside communities to establish new trees, rain gardens, and community gardens. Second Baptist Church in the Broad Rock neighborhood now has a fruitful community garden, growing peas, okra, basil, tomatoes, and more. Previously, CBF also offered neighborhood walks and river rides to help residents better understand pollution and local waterways, designated local environmental stewards, engaged neighbors in debris removal and other restoration activities, and funded resident leadership training. 

While planning Greening Southside, CBF Director of Outreach and Advocacy Ann Jurczyk reviewed resident input from the city’s master plan and conferred with Southside ReLeaf, and Richmond Parks and Recreation. Another partner is Groundwork RVA, a nonprofit with experience in community greening in Southside, which will engage youth in ongoing tree maintenance. Richmond Parks and Recreation, and Richmond City Public Schools will also help care for some trees. 

CBF also collaborates with local churches, the Virginia Department of Forestry, and Friends of Swansboro Park, among others. Jurczyk says this Southside Park Friends group “was started by moms who live near and take their kids to the park, so as the park’s primary users, their voice is a top priority.” 

But Jurczyk says the pandemic and related city regulations for in-person volunteering are now “limiting how much face to face contact we can have with community members.” The kickoff was a Zoom meeting instead of a potluck, and the first plantings will take place at a reduced pace at the Swansboro Playground on March 13.

Along with Southside ReLeaf, other local groups have emerged to support green equity in Richmond, including RVA Thrives and its umbrella organization, Virginia Community Voice (VACV). VACV, Southside ReLeaf, Groundwork RVA and others have held community conversations about Southside priorities like jobs, transportation, greening and beautification, some of which CBF also attended. 

Jurczyk says members of Southside ReLeaf, like its other cofounder, Sheri Shannon, ensure “there’s a local and known face to the grant among community members who don’t know me personally.”

VACV is currently drafting a “Greening Master Plan” for Southside which, according to its website, intends to ensure those impacted by racial inequities “are at the center of plans to create a greener and more beautiful South Richmond.” 

CBF plans to collaborate with VACV for upcoming tree plantings. And, if Greening Southside is “wildly successful and [shows] deeper community engagement, improved water quality and a healthier Southside,” Jurczyk would “love to see CBF apply for a second grant for 2023-2024 that is directly driven by the [VACV master plan], assuming [it] identifies potential greening projects that also improve water quality.”

In lower-income areas where people of color live, environmental gentrification is a concern. Community improvements can impact the housing market, leading local residents to be priced out of their homes. The Progressive asked the city of Richmond how it will seek to avoid gentrification, which is already a local issue, and ensure affordable housing near new green spaces. 

Sustainability Manager for Richmond’s Office of Sustainability Alicia Zatcoff says the city partners with community-based nonprofits “to facilitate meaningful engagement with residents who live near these projects,” including Southside ReLeaf and VACV. She says the city follows an Equitable Affordable Housing Plan and has “an interdepartmental team that coordinates the alignment of affordable housing and new green spaces in an intentional way to reduce inequities” by using tools like the Climate Equity Index (CBF also used this index to plan Greening Southside).

Along with CBF, other major nonprofits have their eye on Richmond’s canopy; American Forests is partnering with TAZO Tea and singer SZA to launch the “TAZO Tree Corps.” 

This endeavor aims to grow a paid tree planting workforce “to help combat climate change and create new jobs in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities of color.” It will launch in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other U.S. cities in 2021, and branch into Richmond in 2022. It plans to partner with “grassroots tree groups in each area,” which could very well include Greening Southside partners like Southside ReLeaf, Groundwork RVA, and VACV. 

Shannon of Southside ReLeaf, who previously worked with American Forests, said the Tree Corps sounds like an “amazing opportunity… Planting more trees is only part of the solution. We always need community buy-in, funding, and people-power to maintain those trees in the long term. Developing a skilled workforce with members from Black and brown communities is essential in this process.”