"From Cases, to Configurations, to Improving Environmental Justice Policies"

Racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. have suffered from both too many disamenities and too few amenities. Much evidence on disproportional exposure to environmental disamenities has been accumulated. Evidence is developing with regards to the inadequacy of urban environmental amenities such as green spaces in minority communities. However, environmental amenities are not provided in isolation, but are embedded in cities’ and communities’ efforts to renovate and revitalize polluted, segregated, and low-income neighborhoods. Trying to tackle environmental injustice without understanding neighborhood changes that result from the addition of ameliorative amenties can lead to unintended consequences that aggravate social injustice more broadly. This paper clarifies the analytically separable concepts of gentrification and displacement, identifies crucial factors that involve neighborhood change, and suggests a research approach to gain insight into the clusters of key factors relevant to different types of neighborhood change. We hope that such a nuanced understanding can help cities achieve growth without causing severe justice problems.

• Wednesday, November 11, 2020 , 10:00 AM - 10:55 AM

• APPAM Virtual Fall Research Conference - Room 19

• https://appam.confex.com/appam/2020/meetingapp.cgi/Session/14938

"The Impact of Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) on Adults’ Asthma Rate"

Xiaomeng Xu, a doctoral student in ASU SPA presents her poster on regional greenhouse gas initiative at 2020 APPAM conference.

Formal institutions, especially policies, play a key role in land system change. Compared to other drivers of change, however, the impact of policies on landscapes is under-addressed in land system science, in part due to difficulties isolating their effect on longitudinal land change. We address this gap by examining land system architecture changes in Cuba brought about by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the result- ing economic crisis: El Período Especial (‘Special Period’). Employing a satellite imagery time-series alongside a review of policy documents, we identify statistically significant land system changes linked to the era’s institutional shifts. We find that concentrated policy efforts to transform agriculture and protect forests corresponded to considerable changes for agriculture but minimal changes to forests. Some changes resulting from the institutional shifts of the Período Especial became visible in the landscape as soon as a few years, while others took decades to manifest.

Michelle Stuhlmacher, B.L. Turner II, Amy E. Frazier, Yushim Kim & Jessica Leffel (2020) Institutional shifts and landscape change: the impact of the Período Especial on Cuba’s land system architecture, Journal of Land Use Science, 15:5, 690-706, DOI: 10.1080/1747423X.2020.1829119

This study examines when and how community involvement occurs in the remediation processes of brownfield sites in Los Angeles County, California. Although community participation is usually considered important for determining what happens with these sites, our results indicate that, except in sometimes triggering evaluation by alerting authorities about it, community involvement almost never occurs when important decisions are made. Participation does sometimes occur, but when and how cleanup occurs is driven by administrative processes, with bureaucrats following procedure, rather than following community preferences. The findings suggest that the best space for communities in the process may be the identification of sites that need remediation.

Campbell H, Eckerd A, & Kim Y. Administration of Community Participation in Small-Scale Projects: Brownfield Remediation in Los Angeles. Administration & Society. July 2020. doi:10.1177/0095399720944064