Uneven environmental health and pollution patterns
"Racialized or ethnically exclusionary urbanization" as a driver of injustice refers unequal exposure to harmful and health-impairing pollutants, conditions and urban environments and/or unequal access to safe and healthy environments.
General introduction
In cities, environmental health concerns manifest as an injustice where lower income, marginalised, and/or racialized groups are unequally exposed to pollution, climate-vulnerable infrastructure, or otherwise unequally exposed to conditions of climate-health risk (Collins, 2010; Kabisch & van den Bosch, 2017; Morello-Frosch et al., 2001; Pearsall & Pierce, 2010). Access to healthy environments and choices thus largely coincides with privilege (distributive justice).
Manifestations and types of injustice
- Hazardous environments inhabited by vulnerable people
In many cases the production of hazardous environments inhabited by vulnerable people is the consequence of Exclusive access to the benefits of sustainability infrastructure(Driver 1) and Uneven and exclusionary urban intensification and regeneration (Driver 4), whereby privileged groups tend to move to neighbourhoods characterised by healthier, greener, and safer environments while other areas become “social dumps” characterised by pollution, crime, unwelcoming public space, and disease where marginalized residents are displaced (Anguelovski, 2016[1]; Armiero & D’Alisa, 2012[2]). Apart from a manifestation of injustice in cities, these neighbourhoods and their inhabitants can become stigmatised, “ghetto-ised”, and systematically unrecognized and excluded from conversations about urban sustainability and health (participatory & recognition justice).
Illustration
[Source: NATURVATION [1] and GREENLULUS [2] projects; including personal communication.]
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Ways forward
Links to projects
This driver links to the following research projects:
- ↑ Anguelovski, I. (2016). From toxic sites to parks as (green) LULUs? New challenges of inequity, privilege, gentrification, and exclusion for urban environmental justice. Journal of Planning Literature, 31(1), 23–36
- ↑ Armiero, M., & D’Alisa, G. (2012). Rights of resistance: The garbage struggles for environmental justice in Campania, Italy. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 23(4), 52–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2012.724200