GREEN AREAS IN CITIES

An environmental justice issue that affects so many communities is the lack of green space. Green space in urban areas usually refers to a park. Most cities have green areas throughout them for the health of the citizens. In areas that are predominantly lower income or a minority group tend to have less green space. Green spaces are very important to maintain good air quality and promote exercise. There are three major problems in locations that have a lack of green space. Lack of green space affects the environment, health, and the economy. Solutions to this problem would be to address the locations of green space in respect to demographics and add green space where it is needed. But this would obviously require a lot of grass roots movements. In order to fix this problem it needs to be addressed why exactly it is happening in the first place. Other environmental justice problems, such as the location of waste centers, have a clear reason. They put the waste centers where they will not get backlash. The opposite could be said for green spaces. They put them where they would get backlash if there were not any. The citizens in high income communities expect green space and might complain if their was not any. So in order to make other areas the same, the citizens need to be educated. If every area of a city is educated on the benefits of green space they would be more likely to demand it. And eventually the builders and companies would realize that it needs to be put in all communities to avoid backlash (Wolch, 2014).