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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Environmental Health and Protection

Western Washington University

College of the Environment on the Peninsulas Publications

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Gentrified Sustainability: Inequitable Development And Seattle’S Skewed Riskscape, Troy D. Abel, Jonah White Jan 2015

Gentrified Sustainability: Inequitable Development And Seattle’S Skewed Riskscape, Troy D. Abel, Jonah White

College of the Environment on the Peninsulas Publications

This paper examines the tensions of sustainable development in Seattle, Washington, a commonly recognised urban environmental leader. Drawing on the perspective of sustainability as a conflicted process, this research expected a negative relationship between gentrification and environmental justice when affluent residents outcompete less affluent ones for neighbourhoods with fewer environmental hazards. The methods combine geographic cluster analysis and longitudinal air toxic emission comparisons to analyse socioeconomic changes in Seattle Census block-groups between 1990, 2000, and 2009 coupled with measures of relative potential risk and pollution volume. The property and development conflicts embedded within sustainability lead to pollution exposure risk and …


Climate Risk Polycentricity And The Iad Framework, Troy D. Abel, Mark Christopher Stephan, Dorothy Daley Jan 2014

Climate Risk Polycentricity And The Iad Framework, Troy D. Abel, Mark Christopher Stephan, Dorothy Daley

College of the Environment on the Peninsulas Publications

Climate change is commonly cast as a significant governance challenge demanding national and international actions. Subsequently, political science research tends to focus on the policy and politics of nation-states, their domestic institutions, and/or their interplay in international venues. However, thousands of industrial facilities and hundreds of subnational US governments are active in American climate risk governance. Therefore, we argue that more research should attend to climate governance’s subnational policy and politics, their promise, and their performance. In the vacuum of national policies to mitigate and adapt to climate-change, subnational arrangements offer an ideal opportunity to study not only the spontaneity …