Neighborhood Decline and Green Coverage Change in Los Angeles Suburbs: A Social-Ecological Perspective

Farnaz Kamyab () and Luis Enrique Ramos-Santiago
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Farnaz Kamyab: School of Architecture, Clemson University, Fernow Street, Lee Hall, Clemson, SC 29634, USA
Luis Enrique Ramos-Santiago: Department of Urban Planning and Community Development, School for the Environment, University of Massachusetts (Boston), 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125, USA

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 21, 1-36

Abstract: Suburban green areas provide significant health, economic, social, and ecological benefits. They are a key element in advancing sustainability at local and regional scales. However, they become threatened in the presence of other competing land uses, neighborhood-change processes, and/or weak built-environment governance. Consequently, suburban green area loss and/or degradation is problematic. In this study, we tested whether socioeconomic decline is significantly correlated with loss or degradation of suburban green areas at a neighborhood scale. This phenomenon has been previously studied with a limited sample and methodology and needs further empirical documentation and more nuanced modeling and testing. We employed Social-Ecological System theory in scoping and framing this multidisciplinary study and informing multilevel panel-data regressions. This approach allowed us to identify key factors and lagged effects behind green area degradation in outer-ring suburbs of Los Angeles. In addition to internal socioeconomic factors, random components associated with ecological zonal distribution and county-level clustering registered significant variability in their influence on greater likelihood of green coverage loss and degradation in declining outer-ring suburbs. Findings from this study can inform intelligent spatial planning, management, and monitoring of suburban areas, and showcase the value of a social-ecological system lens in suburban green infrastructure research, as well as contribute to SES theoretical development and research methodology at the neighborhood scale.

Keywords: social ecological system; suburbs; green coverage; neighborhood decline; green infrastructure management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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