By Irene Regaiolo, Arjun Amar, Péter Batáry, Chevonne Reynolds, Dominic A. W. Henry, Enrico Caprio & Dan Chamberlain

Conceptual framework of the global literature review on the drivers of the Luxury Effect, showing the geographic distribution of the studies considered, the main results and their implications.

Read the full paper here

Nature in cities improves people’s wellbeing, but access to it is not equal across society. In many cities, wealthier neighbourhoods have more trees, green spaces, and wildlife. This pattern, known as the Luxury Effect, highlights that people do not share equally in the benefits of biodiversity. This inequity represents a kind of ‘environmental injustice,’ whereby poorer citizens are less connected to urban wildlife. However, the Luxury Effect does not occur everywhere in the same way.

We did a global analysis of existing knowledge on the Luxury Effect. We looked at how national and city-level factors, such as wealth, income inequality, population size, and population density, influence the extent to which wealthier neighbourhoods have more urban nature.

We found that the Luxury Effect is generally common in many urban areas of the world: biodiversity tends to be higher in richer parts of cities. Interestingly, this effect was most evident in cities and countries with below-average wealth, though it weakened again in the very poorest and richest places, and in cities with intermediate human population sizes.

Our findings suggest that cities in poorer countries may face greater challenges in ensuring equal access to nature. This highlights an urgent social and environmental justice crisis, which is globally shared, though expressed in different ways. Everybody should have access to and thus be able to benefit from nature, but many low income parts of society often have the least, or no, access. Usually these are already marginalised people, who may suffer from other forms of discrimination, such as racism, and may not have the means to provide themselves with access to nature, nor are they provided with accessible biodiversity rich areas (e.g. public green spaces). To reduce disparities in terms of gaining biodiversity benefits for people, we need to understand what drives inequality in access to urban nature and develop strategies that work across different social and economic contexts. Ultimately, understanding the factors that drive the Luxury Effect is essential to develop sustainable cities.