The theory of neighbourhood decline due to pariah land uses: Regaining control of the downward cycle

Some neighbourhood environments have become dumping grounds for locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) that middle-class Americans do not want near their homes. LULUs may combine with other pariah land uses to collectively undermine the quality of the local environment, reduce investment, government services, the proportion of middle-income people and associated businesses. As important neighbourhood attributes are lost, illegal activities, derelict structures, trash-strewn lots and the concentration of poor and unhealthy people may increase. This paper describes the theory behind the impact of pariah land uses through examples of the downward spiral experienced by Camden, New Jersey and the south Bronx, New York. It then documents the experience of one community, Elizabethport, New Jersey, in reversing that downward spiral. Success in Elizabethport came from the synergistic activities of local, state and federal governments, community groups, and not-for-profit organizations as they struggled to regain control through local environmental management, rebuilding, and reducing crime. Social capital was also strengthened by using a local community health concern—that of childhood asthma. Efforts to reverse the downward spiral of urban decay from pariah land uses should be multi-faceted, spurred by local efforts that address local concerns.     

The theory of neighbourhood decline due to pariah land uses: Regaining control of the downward cycle

Abstract

Some neighbourhood environments have become dumping grounds for locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) that middle-class Americans do not want near their homes. LULUs may combine with other pariah land uses to collectively undermine the quality of the local environment, reduce investment, government services, the proportion of middle-income people and associated businesses. As important neighbourhood attributes are lost, illegal activities, derelict structures, trash-strewn lots and the concentration of poor and unhealthy people may increase. This paper describes the theory behind the impact of pariah land uses through examples of the downward spiral experienced by Camden, New Jersey and the south Bronx, New York. It then documents the experience of one community, Elizabethport, New Jersey, in reversing that downward spiral. Success in Elizabethport came from the synergistic activities of local, state and federal governments, community groups, and not-for-profit organizations as they struggled to regain control through local environmental management, rebuilding, and reducing crime. Social capital was also strengthened by using a local community health concern—that of childhood asthma. Efforts to reverse the downward spiral of urban decay from pariah land uses should be multi-faceted, spurred by local efforts that address local concerns.     

Public perception of locally unwanted facilities in Hong Kong: implications for conflict resolution

This paper aims to investigate factors affecting public attitude towards the siting of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) and to explore the possible strategies to resolve such conflicts. Three questionnaire surveys were undertaken in communities with different siting experiences and socio-economic profiles. Over 750 individuals were successfully interviewed in each study district. The three communities were found to share similar risk beliefs but show variations in the level of awareness of and response to LULUs. In communities with a disproportionate share of LULUs, many residents did not trust the government in handling LULU issues and thought that the siting process was unfair. The results of the binary logistic regression analysis show that people are likely to oppose the siting of a LULU in their community if they have a negative siting experience, do not perceive the need, accord a high risk to the facility and have a low level of trust in government. The resolution strategies preferred by the public are greater public participation and effective mitigation of risks and impacts, rather than provision of compensation and incentives. All these call for policy-makers to be sensitive to local concerns, engage the public in the process, communicate risks effectively and foster trust building.     

Pollution,place, and premature death: evidence from a mid-sized city

ABSTRACT

Neighborhood life expectancy varies by as much as 10 years across the City of Louisville. In 2013, the Greater Louisville Project funded by local government, businesses, and foundations, argued these differences had little to do with environmental factors. The Greater Louisville Project (2013) study argued that these neighborhood differences could be attributed 40% to socio-economic factors (with a major emphasis on education), 10% to physical environment, 30% to health behaviors, and 20% to access to medical care. To test these claims, we construct our own model of neighborhood variation in years of potential life lost (YPLL) by adding two variables testing environmental degradation. We operationalise two separate measures of environmental contamination: proximity to EPA designated brownfield sites and proximity to chemical factories in an industrial park in the neighborhood known as “Rubbertown”. We conduct several regression analyses, which show a relationship between proximity to environmental contaminants and an increase in neighborhood YPLL. Our beta weights challenge the claims made by the Greater Louisville Project, which minimize the impact nearness to environmental contaminants has on reductions in life expectancy in Louisville neighborhoods.     

What influences the pattern of pollutant releases? An investigation of firms’ siting and households’ sorting decisions in Ontario,Canada

The relationship between the pattern of pollutant releases and neighborhood characteristics has been in the center of environmental justice debates for the last decades. One part of the discourse revolves around the question if the siting decision of polluting firms or the sorting decision of households is the explanatory factor for the pattern of pollutant releases. The aim of this study is to contribute to the discussion by investigating the potential correlation between polluting facilities and socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods in Ontario, Canada, using data from the Canadian census and National Pollutant Release Inventory. The analysis shows that when the results are considered from the perspectives of the siting decision of firms and sorting decision of households’ hypotheses, the results weigh in favor of the sorting decision of households.     

“Mama,I can’t breathe.” Louisville’s dirty air has steep medical and economic costs

ABSTRACT

The calls for greater racial equity also means cleaning up the air, water, and soil. Poor people needlessly suffer more in Louisville than the same low-income people in West Coast cites. If we adopted the same tough, environmental regulations as our West Coast Counterparts West Louisville would surely bloom instead of slowly die. The unfairness between black and white neighbourhoods is stark and vivid. As the great urbanist, Jane Jacobs, once said: “everyone hungers for a first class neighbourhood for both pride and dignity?…?nobody wants a second class neighborhood.” First class neighbourhoods are safe, healthy, sustainable, and prosperous. It is a human right; a Worldwide right.     

Environmental Ethics: Should We Preserve the Red Herring and Flounder?

Based on a survey of some popularintroductory anthologies and texts, I arguefrom my experience as a philosopher oftechnology that environmental philosophy mightbe conceived by some researchers in the fieldin terms of an overly narrow theoreticalfoundation. Many of the key figures in thefield take as a basic assumption that theenvironmental crisis is fundamentally bestexplained in terms of some failing in themetaphysical outlooks of most people. However,philosophers of technology typically present atleast two additional types of generalexplanation of the crisis. Environmentalethicists might benefit from consideration ofthese alternative ways of explaining the rootcauses of the ecological crisis.     

Social and Environmental Justice in South African Cities: Including ‘Invisible Stakeholders’ in Environmental Assessment Procedures

In South Africa an intensive reform process to democratize policy, legislation and related institutions in the country commenced after the first democratic elections in 1994. While environmental law reform includes active public participation and equity principles, it is proposed in this paper that ecological modernization dominates current environmental assessment practice. This paper presents a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) of a proposed landfill on the periphery of Durban, where large informal settlements and peri-urban areas exist as a relic of apartheid planning. The methodology of the SIA was explicitly designed within a framework of social justice to include poor and marginalized people, who remain excluded from environmental decision making despite the promise of democratic equality. The study claims to deepen democratic practice by demonstrating that alternative methodologies can be designed to include the interests of ‘invisible stakeholders’ in environmental assessments despite the dominance of ecological modernization in the implementation of environmental law and policy.     

Hazardous waste sites,stress, and neighborhood quality in USA

Summary Seven neighborhoods adjacent to hazardous waste were surveyed. The authors found that respondents did not rate their neighborhoods as highly as Americans as a whole, but, like most Americans, they did rate their present neighborhood better, or the same as, their previous one. The adjacent hazardous waste site was mentioned as distressing more often than any other neighborhood characteristic. Yet in four of the seven neighborhoods, dilapidated buildings and streets, odors and smoke from sewage treatment plants and factories, noise from trains and traffic congestion, or another neighborhood characteristic was mentioned as more stressful than the hazardous waste site. It is argued that govemment needs to be more aggressive about understanding community viewpoints before proposing multi-million dollar hazardous waste remediation plans that could be resisted by a community.Professor Michael Greenberg and Dr Dona Schneider are regular contributors to this Journal. All three authors work in the Department of Urban Studies and Community Health, and support the New Jersey Graduate Program in Public Health at Rutgers University.     

Global dynamics: Gaia or geochemistry?

Summary The nature and evidence of the gaia and geochemical hypotheses describing the dynamics of the ecosphere are reviewed. In particular, the ways in which the unorthodox gaia hypothesis challenges the orthodox global models of geochemistry are discussed in the context of the logic and sociology of science. It is argued that the gaia hypothesis offers environmental scientists a working hypothesis of unusual promise, especially for understanding the processes underlying the long-term dynamics of the global environmental system.Dr Ian Moffatt is a member of the staff of the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Stirling.     

Perceived environmental quality of neighborhoods: Development of assessment scales and their relation to age and gender

The relation of age to perceived quality of neighborhoods is examined. For a large sample of persons age 18 and older (N: 1520), 15 factor scales of perceived quality of neighborhoods were developed and confirmed on a second sample (N: 1021). The scales are reliable (internally consistent and cross-validated) and ‘age fair’ in the sense that the internal structure of the set of scales is constant across age groups. The hypothesis of a positive, linear relationship between age and perceived quality of the neighborhood is supported in both exploratory and confirmatory samples. Some gender differences in scale level are also observed and cross-validated. No evidence of age-gender interaction is found for the age range: 21–69.     

Environmental cognition of small rural towns: The case of older residents

This study reports the relation of town size and personal and demographic characteristics of 989 rural older persons to five environmental cognition dimensions: perceived neighborhood size, neighborhood ratio, awareness of town amenities, number of amenity types and tour ratio. Town size differences were found for all five dimensions: residents of smaller towns (0–500 in population) identified smaller neighborhoods but larger neighborhood ratios, listed fewer town amenities and amenity types, and produced smaller tour ratios, than did residents of larger towns (1,501–2,500 in population). Relations were also found for gender, marital status, dwelling unit type, employment status, religion, and mental health status.     

Neighborhood quality in environmentally stressed areas of Accra, Ghana: a comparison with US counterparts

A sample of 873 residents of Accra, Ghana, stratified by type of neighborhood was gathered in order to measure the association of poor neighborhood quality with neighborhood problems and residents' personal characteristics. Strong associations were found with poor schools, physical blight, rowdy and criminal behavior, ethnic differences, and environmental problems. In addition, poor neighborhood quality was strongly associated with mistrust of authority and a feeling of a lack of control over neighborhood activities. Respondents identified road, street, drainage, sewage, and other infrastructure deficiencies as priorities to address, even though these were not prominent discriminators of neighborhood quality ratings. Many of these findings are common to counterparts in the US, but some findings appear to reflect cultural and differences in urbanization.     

Whose voices count in biodiversity conservation? Ecological democracy in biodiversity offsetting,REDD+, and rewilding

ABSTRACT

Ecological democracy seeks environmentally sustainable ends through broad, active democratic participation. What happens when laws fostering participation in environmental decision-making and biodiversity preservation lead to differing results? What is best for biodiversity may not be what for local citizens believe is best. I examine conflicts and congruencies in the context of Biodiversity Offsetting, REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), and the Rewilding movement. I ask questions that are legal (Who has what legal rights to speak for or against programs that enhance biodiversity?), epistemological (Whose expertise and knowledge matters when scientists and non-scientists don't agree?), axiological (Are some values objectively better, and why?), and normative (Whose opinions about biodiversity should count?). Many people have the right to participate in an ecological democracy: But when protecting biodiversity, who does and should have the right to be heard? I problematize the role that ‘local’ actors play in decision-making and describe the variegated role that experts – particularly biologists – play in ecological democracy when biodiversity preservation matters. To determine whose values and voices should be prioritized, I describe ‘deep equity,’ an axiological and normative groundwork for determining when biodiversity-promoting policies may be preferable even if affected citizens don't agree.     

Attitudes About Recreation, Environmental Problems, and Estuarine Health Along the New Jersey Shore, USA

/ Management of ecosystems has advanced by an improvement in our understanding not only of how ecosystems function, but of how people perceive their functioning and what they consider to be environmental problems within those systems. Central to such management is understanding how people view estuaries. In this article I explore the perceptions and attitudes of people about coastal recreation, environmental problems, and future land use along the New Jersey shore (USA) by interviewing people who attended a duck decoy and craft show on Barnegat Bay. The people who were interviewed engaged in more days of fishing than any other recreational activity and engaged in camping the least. There were significant differences in recreational rates as a function of gender and location of residence, with men hunting and fishing more than women and photographing less than women. Jet skis were perceived as the most severe environmental problem, with chemical pollution, junk, oil runoff and overfishing as second level problems. Birds were perceived as not an environmental problem at all. Fishing, hiking, preservation, and camping ranked as the highest preferred future land uses for the two sites examined (Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, Naval Weapons Station Earle). The preferred future land uses for these two sites, which are not under consideration for land-use changes, were very similar to those of people living near the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, despite the media attention and considerations of nuclear storage.KEY WORDS: Recreation; Perceptions; Environmental problem; Gender; Land use; Coastal     

Environmental justice for the governance of aquatic environments

Environmental justice sheds light on the distributive and procedural aspects of planning and decision-making. We examined the challenges arising from the perspective of environmental justice on multi-level and participatory environmental governance by exploring the governance of aquatic environments in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We found three main challenges and potential responses to them. First, even though most of Helsinki’s shoreline is free and/or accessible by road and accordingly used actively by people for recreational purposes, many parts of the shoreline are perceived as inaccessible, reflecting a need to combine factual and perceived accessibility of aquatic environments in detail during the planning processes and to discuss reasons for possible discrepancies between these two. Second, there was a remarkable seasonal variation in the use of aquatic environments, so more attention should be paid to social-demographic factors explaining the distribution of the use of urban nature. Third, it seems to be difficult to capture the variety of perceptions of people and to integrate them into planning and decision-making processes even on a local scale, and this challenge is likely even more pronounced on higher levels of planning and governance. Thus, better integration of regional and local-scale planning procedures should be encouraged. Building on these observations, we conclude that integration of procedural and distributive environmental justice into the practices of the governance of aquatic environments could remarkably decrease unwanted trade-offs and potential conflicts in their use and management.     

Ethical Considerations in Agro-biodiversity Research,Collecting, and Use

Humans have always played a crucial role in the evolutionary dynamics of agricultural biodiversity and thus there is a strong relationship between these resources and human cultures. These agricultural resources have long been treated as a global public good, and constitute the livelihoods of millions of predominantly poor people. At the same time, agricultural biodiversity is under serious threat in many parts of the world despite extensive conservation efforts. Ethical considerations regarding the collecting, research, and use of agricultural biodiversity are currently topics of great concern. For example, easy access to genetic resources for breeding purposes is important, but international agreements and legal frameworks are necessary to ensure adequate recognition of the contributions of local communities and traditional farmers in creating and nurturing these resources. Here, we assess ethical principles in the context of existing codes of conduct that are relevant for agro-biodiversity researchers. We aim to create awareness among scientists and policy makers who are concerned with agro-biodiversity research and its potential impact on local communities. We encourage a serious assessment of the ethical principles presented here and hope to facilitate an integration of these principles into the reader’s personal ethical framework. Key ethical principles considered here include the importance of obtaining prior informed consent, equity, and the inalienability of rights of local communities and farmers.     

Neighborhood Conditions and Helping Behavior in Late Life

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a latent variable model that explores the ways in which social structural factors influence the amount of social support that older adults provide to their social network members. Neighborhood conditions play a key role in this conceptual scheme. The findings provide support for the following conceptual linkages: (1) low parental education is associated with low respondent education; (2) older people with less education encounter more economic difficulty; (3) greater financial problems are associated with living in a rundown neighborhood; (4) older individuals who live in dilapidated neighborhoods are more hostile; and (5) older adults who are hostile are less likely to provide social support to their social network members. Research indicates that helping others is a key to successful aging. Ways must be found to help economically disadvantaged elders provide support to their social network members.     

Neighborhood satisfaction,physical and perceived naturalness and openness

This study examined neighborhood satisfaction in relation to naturalness and openness. It used Geographic Information System (GIS) and Landsat satellite imagery to physically measure the environmental attributes. Through path analysis it examined the relationship among the attributes, resident ratings of those environmental attributes, their satisfaction with them, and their overall neighborhood satisfaction (n = 725). We expected overall neighborhood satisfaction to relate to the resident's ratings of the environmental attributes and to the physical measures of them. The path model showed that overall neighborhood satisfaction was associated directly with the physical measure of building density and indirectly with the physical measure of vegetation rate through perception and evaluation of them. The perceptions and evaluations of the attributes related to one another. With refinements, GIS and Landsat data geo-related to survey data can offer a powerful tool for understanding the complex nature of neighborhood satisfaction and behavior.     

Detection and decision-making in environmental effects monitoring

The majority of environmental effects monitoring (EEM) frameworks that have been proposed compare selected indicator variables as a means of assessing whether significant changes in stressed ecosystems have occurred. Most are deterministic in nature and do not appropriately account for the natural variability and dynamics within the systems being comapred. This suggests that the comparative procedures should be statistically based and immediately raises the issue of whether the selected comparative procedures are to be used as decision-making tools or conclusive procedures. Conclusive procedures require a significant body of evidence before rejecting the postulated null hypothesis. The costs and time involved in environmental data collection accordingly bias action toward the maintenance of a status quo approach to environmental management. if, however, EEM is treated as a decision-making procedure, risk functions that include consideration of type I and II statistical error may be developed and combined with costs to select a minimum expected loss strategy for environemental management. Examples of the interpretative difficulties and conclusion reversal phenomena caused when EEM is used as a conclusive procedure are presented. In addition, risk functions appropriate for environmental management within an EEM context are constructed and applied. Only when such tools are fully developed and applied can EEM expect to have significant impacts on minimizing environmental degradation.