Environmental Justice & Equity

Environmental Justice of Urban Flood Risk and Green Infrastructure Solutions

The Environmental Justice of Urban Flood Risk and Green Infrastructure Solutions project aims to better understand the environmental justice impacts of climate change related flooding on minority and low-income communities and assess social equity in green infrastructure planning for reducing urban flood risks. To learn more click here.

Environmental Justice Implications of Coastal Flooding in New York City

USL Fellow Veronica Olivotto is working on a project to assist two New York-based Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in framing the problem of coastal flooding, collect property data, and produce vulnerability maps for 149 properties. This includes research on the changes in coastal flood risk according to the preliminary updates in flood maps by FEMA and to socioeconomic changes in the population. Additionally, the vulnerability of exposed and unexposed populations was compared at the Community District level, with a focus on Community Districts with a significant population classified as Potential Environmental Justice Areas.

WEACT Social Justice Course

USL Postdoctoral Fellow Elizabeth Cook taught UENV 3710 - Bottom-Up Change for Climate Justice in collaboration with community nonprofit WE ACT for Environmental Justice. The class explored how to improve local climate justice through the intersection of scientific research, community engagement, and activism. Students Phoebe Tran and Nicolette Bull wrote and illustrated a book titled Field Notes for Future Climate Scientists for their final project.

Social Equity in Access to Green Roofs

Green roofs play a key role in climate adaptation and mitigation in cities and positively affect the health and wellbeing of those of us who live in dense urban environments. Much of existing research focuses on assessing the potential for developing future green roof infrastructure as well as quantifying the manifold ecosystem services provided by green roofs. In fact, green roofs have been found to effectively contribute to stormwater retention, reducing the urban heat island effect, lowering energy consumption in buildings, expanding opportunities for recreation, and improving fresh food access, and more. 

Yet, thus far, few studies have examined how the geography of existing green roofs, and the social-ecological benefits they provide, serve the urban populations that would most benefit from them (e.g., communities affected by storms, with low accessibility to urban green space, high levels of energy consumption, and high rates of asthma, obesity, and diabetes). This line of research at USL seeks to fill this knowledge gap and build a deeper understanding of how equity and green roofs in New York City intersect. A complementary goal is to use this insight in order to identify possible city-led initiatives and policy solutions. Gaining a better understanding of who the main beneficiaries of green roofs in New York City are matters if we are to effectively guide future climate resiliency and green infrastructure planning efforts, including the efficient allocation of related resources.

Is Green Infrastructure a Universal Good?

USL Fellow Z Grabowski is working on research related to green infrastructure (GI) and equity. In the United States over the last several decades, Green Infrastructure (GI) has rapidly evolved from a landscape ecology concept to an applied set of infrastructural technologies focusing on urban stormwater management. A largely parallel literature has detailed problematic aspects of urban greening, as part of deeply inequitable cycles of uneven urban development and investment. Here we ask: what is the relationship between the application of GI technologies and ongoing processes of inequitable urban development? To provide a partial answer to this question, we conduct an analysis of urban planning documents pertaining to GI in 19 different US cities for a range of historical, social, and environmental conditions. Our sampling starts with sustainability or climate plans and expands to encompass compliance-oriented infrastructure plans and other greening initiatives, examining two to five plans per city. Using keyword searches and an iterative abductive coding process, we examine the policy-and-planning level relationships between different forms of GI and equity discourses, addressing general rationales, types of GI, and implementation processes. Initial results indicate a significant silence on equity issues in GI planning, as well as divergent rationales, framings, and initiatives in plans. These differences include procedural issues of designating the need and benefits of GI; methods of public engagement around planning, design, and maintenance; spatial dimensions of equity related to the joint distribution of infrastructure needs; defined co-benefits of GI; social characteristics of areas targeted for GI implementation; largely un-addressed concerns over how GI contributes to processes of green gentrification; and significant labor issues.