News & Events

Environment and Planning F

Edited by: Kate Derickson, Hannah Jo King, Aaron Mallory, Hannah Ramer and Rebecca Walker

Geographers, planners and scholars of the human built environment have drawn attention to the way that racialization and white supremacy structure the biophysical landscapes of cities.^1–5 Transformations of the built and natural landscape are often imbricated in the project of whiteness, both shaping and shaped by the interrelated processes of settler colonialism and racial segregation. Ecological transformation of the landscape, for example, was integral to the political and economic project of settler colonialism and the production of settler cities.^6–8 Anti-Black urban development regimes exacerbated racial segregationresulting in deep disparities in the biophysical urban environment, including tree canopy cover, proximity to greenspace, exposures to extreme heat, and residential air quality.^9-14 Today, shifting landscapes of climate risk and resilience threaten to displace marginalized communities, via both physical threats posed by climate change and rising land values and speculation tied to new green infrastructure.^14–16

Spurred by social movements to contest these conditions, decades of scholarly research in the field of environmental justice has extensively documented the unevenness of urban nature and its toll on the health and well-being of overburdened and under-resourced communities. Yet it is not always clear how research on this topic might lead to disruptions of—or resource interventions in—the systems that produce these outcomes. Many have noted that research that documents, even to critique, these injustices, is not necessarily sufficient to disrupt the systems and structures that produce racial inequality in the urban environment.^17,18 Further, this research can, at times, flatten communities and places as the objects of racial violence and inequality. Likewise, the field of political ecology has long interrogated the relationship between nature and power, but has not always directly engaged whether and how this scholarship aims to materially contribute to the making of different environmental futures.

In this special issue, we invite papers that go beyond simply documenting racial disparities in urban nature and instead take head on questions related to how ways of knowing about dispossession might contribute to changing the social relations that produce it. In particular, we seek papers that center the relationship between knowledge about racialization, ecology and the built environment, and social change. We are interested in papers that explore whether and how scholarly research contributes to disrupting forms of displacement and how we might produce science about environmental change in ways that resource minoritized communities to pursue adaptations.

Possible topics of submissions could include, but are not limited to:

• Co-production of urban ecological knowledges

• Urban political ecology

• Social-ecological feedbacks among real estate abandonment and gentrification

• Urban property regimes and ecological outcomes

• Cooperative urban natures

• Indigenous ways of knowing about ecological change

• Case studies for greening without displacement

• Ecological outcomes of green gentrification

• Climate risk, securitization, and gentrification

• Black ecologies

• Housing market consolidation and climate risk and resilience

• Historical dynamics of real estate and urban nature

• Ecological impacts of policing

• Decolonizing urban greenspaces

• Biological consequences of racialized real estate valuation

• Ecological dimensions of the racial wealth gap

• Feminist political ecology

• Critical race theory and urban nature

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted by September 1, 2022. The Editors will consider all abstracts by September 15, 2022 and invite a selection to submit full papers for peer review. Papers will have a target maximum length of 10,000 words (including abstract, main text, references, tables, figure captions, etc.). First draft of papers should be submitted to the editors by February 2023 and will be returned with comments by March 2023. Drafts will be due to EPF’s review portal by May 15, 2023 and final papers will be due by October 1, 2023 for publication in 2024. Submissions should be sent to kdericks@umn.edu.

References

1. Pulido, L. Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: White supremacy vs white privilege in environmental racism research. Progress in Human Geography 39, 809–817 (2015).

2. Pulido, L. Flint, environmental racism, and racial capitalism. (Taylor & Francis, 2016).

3. McClintock, N. Urban agriculture, racial capitalism, and resistance in the settler-colonial city. Geography Compass 12, e12373 (2018).

4. Bonds, A. & Inwood, J. Beyond white privilege: Geographies of white supremacy and settler colonialism. Progress in Human Geography 40, 715–733 (2016).

5. Goetz, E. G., Williams, R. A. & Damiano, A. Whiteness and urban planning. Journal of the American Planning Association 86, 142–156 (2020).

6. Bacon, J. M. Settler colonialism as eco-social structure and the production of colonial ecological violence. Environmental Sociology 5, 59–69 (2019).

7. Simpson, M. & Bagelman, J. Decolonizing Urban Political Ecologies: The Production of Nature in Settler Colonial Cities. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, 558–568 (2018).

8. Dillon, L. Civilizing swamps in California: Formations of race, nature, and property in the nineteenth century U.S. West. Environ Plan D 02637758211026317 (2021) doi:10.1177/02637758211026317.

9. Glotzer, P. How the Suburbs Were Segregated. New York: Columbia University Press (2020)

10. Hoffman, J. S., Shandas, V. & Pendleton, N. The Effects of Historical Housing Policies on Resident Exposure to Intra-Urban Heat: A Study of 108 US Urban Areas. Climate 8, 12 (2020).

11. Nardone, A., Rudolph, K. E., Morello-Frosch, R. & Casey, J. A. Redlines and Greenspace: The Relationship between Historical Redlining and 2010 Greenspace across the United States. Environmental health perspectives 129, 017006 (2021).

12. Li, D., Newman, G. D., Wilson, B., Zhang, Y. & Brown, R. D. Modeling the relationships between historical redlining, urban heat, and heat-related emergency department visits: An examination of 11 Texas cities. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 23998083211039856 (2021).

13. Moxley, D. & Fischer, B. Historic HOLC Redlining in Indianapolis and the Legacy of Environmental Impacts. Journal of Public and Environmental Affairs 1, (2020).

14. Wilson, B. Urban Heat Management and the Legacy of Redlining. Journal of the American Planning Association 86, 443–457 (2020).

15. Shokry, G., Connolly, J. J. & Anguelovski, I. Understanding climate gentrification and shifting landscapes of protection and vulnerability in green resilient Philadelphia. Urban Climate 31, 100539 (2020).

16. Walker, R. H. Engineering gentrification: urban redevelopment, sustainability policy, and green stormwater infrastructure in Minneapolis. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 1–19 (2021).

17. Taylor, Z. J. & Aalbers, M. B. Climate gentrification: risk, rent, and restructuring in Greater Miami. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 1–17 (2021).

18. Derickson, K. D. Disrupting Displacements: Making Knowledges for Futures Otherwise in Gullah/Geechee Nation. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 1–9 (2021).

19. Gibson-Graham, J. K. A postcapitalist politics. (U of Minnesota Press, 2006).

This was an amazing year for students in the Praxis Lab, with a range of excellent accomplishments.

Margaret Anderson, a graduating senior, was awarded a Fulbright to continue her work in Brazil. Margaret is double major in Geography and Spanish and Portuguese and has been doing research in Gullah/Geechee Nation for the past few years with Kaleigh Swift and Dr. Derickson.

Emma DeVries was named an Au Sable Gradaute Fellow, and joined the first cohort of the CREATE Initiative as a CREATE Scholar.

Kevin Ehrman-Solberg's work was featured in a PBS Documentary titled "The Jim Crow of the North" and he was invited to deliver a TEDx Minneapolis talk on his work.

Eric Goldfischer was named an expert fellow with the Robin Hood Foundation, and awarded at Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota to finish his dissertation titled "The Difference that Seeing Makes" based on his work with Picture the Homeless.

Aaron Mallory was awarded the 2019 Brown Fellowship, which will allow him to complete his dissertation on the role of evidence based medicine in changing the landscape of HIV/AIDS activism in Atlanta. Aaron was also elected student representative of the Black Geographies Specialty Group.

Gabriel Schwartzman was awarded a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to support his research on the political economy of energy transition and its implications for social and environmental justice organizing in Appalachia, where Gabe has deep connections from years of organizing and community-based work.

Kaleigh Swift completed her degree in Biology, Society and Environment from the U of M and began a full time position as the program coordinator for the CREATE Initiative.

Robin Wright was awarded the Denis Cosgrove PhD Research Award from the Cultural Geographies specialty group.