Digital Commons Network^™

Parkindex: Validation And Application Of A Pragmatic Measure Of Park Access And Use, Andrew T. Kaczynski, S. Morgan Hughey, Ellen W. Stowe, Marilyn E. Wende, J. Aaron Hipp, Elizabeth L. Oliphant, Jasper Schipperijn

Faculty Publications

Composite metrics integrating park availability, features, and quality for a given address or neighborhood are lacking. The purposes of this study were to describe the validation, application, and demonstration of ParkIndex in four diverse communities. This study occurred in Fall 2018 in 128 census block groups within Seattle(WA), Brooklyn(NY), Raleigh(NC), and Greenville County(SC). All parks within a half-mile buffer were audited to calculate a composite park quality score, and select households provided data about use of proximal parks via an online, map-based survey. For each household, the number of parks, total park acreage, and average park quality score within one …

Uncertain Regional Urbanism In Venezuela. Government, Infrastructure And Environment, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Uncertain Regional Urbanism in Venezuela explores the changes cities face when they become metropolises, forming expanding regions which create both potential and problems within settlements. To do so, it focuses on three metropolitan areas located in Venezuela’s Center-North region: Caracas, Maracay and Valencia, designated as "Camava."

Considering three core topics, government and territorial administration, infrastructure and environment, as well as looking at the reciprocal impact, this book describes and analyzes the determinant variables that characterize the phenomenon of regional urbanization in this area and in the wider Global South. It includes documentary research, semi-structured interviews and Delphi methodology, involving a …

Framework For A Community Health Observing System For The Gulf Of Mexico Region: Preparing For Future Disasters, Paul Sandifer, Landon Knapp, Maureen Lichtveld, Ruth Manley, David Abramson, Rex Caffey, David Cochran, Tracy Collier, Kristie Ebi, Lawrence Engel, John Farrington, Melissa Finucane, Christine Hale, David Halpern, Emily Harville, Leslie Hart, Yulin Hswen, Barbara Kirkpatrick, Bruce Mcewen, Glenn Morris, Raymond Orbach, Lawrence Palinkas, Melissa Partyka, Dwayne Porter, Aric A. Prather, Teresa Rowles, Geoffrey Scott, Teresa Seeman, Helena Solo-Gabriele, Erik Svendsen, Terry Tincher, Juli Trtanj, Ann Hayward Walker

Faculty Publications

© Copyright © 2020 Sandifer, Knapp, Lichtveld, Manley, Abramson, Caffey, Cochran, Collier, Ebi, Engel, Farrington, Finucane, Hale, Halpern, Harville, Hart, Hswen, Kirkpatrick, McEwen, Morris, Orbach, Palinkas, Partyka, Porter, Prather, Rowles, Scott, Seeman, Solo-Gabriele, Svendsen, Tincher, Trtanj, Walker, Yehuda, Yip, Yoskowitz and Singer. The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effects of disasters. Developing capacity to assess adverse human …

Racial Disparities In Air Pollution Burden And Covid-19 Deaths In Louisiana, Usa, In The Context Of Long-Term Changes In Fine Particulate Pollution, Kimberly A. Terrell, Wesley James

Faculty Publications

Black Americans in Louisiana are disproportionately dying from COVID-19, and environmental disparities may be contributing to this injustice. While Black communities in Louisiana's industrialized regions (e.g., Cancer Alley, Calcasieu Parish) have been overburdened with pollution for decades, this disparity has not been evaluated by using recent data. Here, we explore statewide relationships among air pollution burden, race, COVID-19 death rates, and other health/socioeconomic factors. Measures of pollution burden included satellite-derived particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations and health risks from toxic air pollution (i.e., respiratory hazard [RH] and immunological hazard [IH], estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency). In addition, we evaluate changes …

Addressing The Social Vulnerability Of Mississippi Gulf Coast Vietnamese Community Through The Development Of Community Health Advisors, Susan Mayfield-Johnson, Danielle Fastring, Daniel Le, Jane Nguyen

Faculty Publications

Background:Resiliency is the ability to prepare for, recover from, and adapt to stressors from adverse events. Social vulnerabilities (limited access to resources, political power, and representation; lack of social capital; aspects of the built environment; health inequities; and being in certain demographic categories) can impact resiliency. The Vietnamese population living along the Mississippi Gulf Coast is a community that has unique social vulnerabilities that impact their ability to be resilient to adverse events. Objectives: The purpose of this project was to address social vulnerability by implementing and evaluating a volunteer Community Health Advisor (CHA) project to enhance community resiliency in …

Framework For Implementing Socially Just Climate Adaptation (Post-Print), Jeffrey T. Malloy, Catherine M. Ashcraft

Faculty Publications

The previous two decades of scholarship devoted to the role of social justice in climate change adaptation has established an important theoretical basis to evaluate the concept of just adaptation, or, in other words, how the implementation of climate adaptation policy affects socially vulnerable groups. This paper synthesizes insights from relevant literature on urban climate change governance, climate adaptation, urban planning, social justice theory, and policy implementation to develop three propositions concerning the conditions that must occur to implement just adaptation. First, just adaptation requires the inclusion of socially vulnerable as full participants with agency to shape the decisions that …

The Role Of Climate Change Education On Individual Lifetime Carbon Emissions, Eugene Cordero, Diana Centeno Delgado, Anne Marie Todd

Faculty Publications

Strategies to mitigate climate change often center on clean technologies, such as electric vehicles and solar panels, while the mitigation potential of a quality educational experience is rarely discussed. In this paper, we investigate the long-term impact that an intensive one year university course had on individual carbon emissions by surveying students at least five years after having taken the course. A majority of course graduates reported pro-environmental decisions (i.e., type of car to buy, food choices) that they attributed at least in part to experiences gained in the course. Furthermore, our carbon footprint analysis suggests that for the average …

Identity: Obstacles And Openings, Osamudia James

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Persistence Of High Energy Burdens: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Vulnerability, Poverty, And Exclusion In The United States, M A. Brown, A Soni, A D. Doshi, C King, M A. Brown

Faculty Publications

Using bibliometric methods, we examine the persistently high energy bills borne by low-income households in the U.S. This is a mystifying problem in today's age of abundant and low-priced electricity and fossil fuels. After decades of energy-efficiency programs and targeted policies, the average low-income household still spends a disproportionately large percentage of its income on energy bills. Issues of equity, race and justice are increasingly linked to the problem of persistent energy burdens. In the complex ecosystem of stakeholders that influence energy burden, key gaps still exist in the understanding of causes and solutions. In particular, limited research has examined …

Tempered Radicalism And Intersectionality: Scholar-Activism In The Neoliberal University, Jennifer Richter, Flora Farago, Beth Blue Swadener

Faculty Publications

Using a collaborative critical personal narrative methodology grounded in intersectionality, we interrogated tensions in identifying ourselves as tempered radicals and scholar-activists who were involved in a local university-community activist organization. We assert the value of informal activist spaces within the university and identify issues related to the lack of recognition of scholar-activism as legitimate scholarship, including the paradox of universities as colonizing and liberatory spaces for community engagement and activism. Our themes highlight how mentorship affects scholar-activism and how activism transforms and disrupts the neoliberal university. Yet, activism is rendered invisible, making homeplaces for scholar-activism critical for students, faculty, staff, …

Pollution And Polluter Pays, Aaron Lercher

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Framework For A Community Health Observing System For The Gulf Of Mexico Region: Preparing For Future Disasters, P Sandifer, L Knapp, M Lichtveld, R Manley, P Sandifer, R Caffey, D Cochran, T Collier, K Ebi, L Engel, J Farrington, M Finucane, C Hale, D Halpern, E Harville, L Hart, Y Hswen, B Kirkpatrick, B Mcewen, G Morris, R Orbach, L Palinkas, M Partyka, D Porter, G Prather, T Rowles, G Scott, T Seeman, H Solo-Gabriele, E Svendsen, T Tincher, J Trtanj, A H. Walker, R Yehuda

Faculty Publications

The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effects of disasters. Developing capacity to assess adverse human health consequences of future disasters requires establishment of a comprehensive, sustained community health observing system, similar to the extensive and well-established environmental observing systems. We propose a system that combines six levels of health data domains, beginning with three existing, national surveys …

The Ends And Means Of Decarbonization: The Green New Deal In Context, Jonas J. Monast

Faculty Publications

Disputes about climate policy involve much more than whether or not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is general agreement among proponents of climate policy that strategies should be cost effective, address distributional impacts, and incentivize investments in low-carbon technologies. Yet disagreements abound regarding additional goals of climate policy design.

Decarbonizing the economy means changing the sources of energy we use, how we transport people and products, how we produce food, and which resources we consume. Yet even among proponents of federal climate legislation there is strong disagreement regarding policy instruments. Recent proposals for a revenue-neutral carbon tax and a …