Digital Commons Network^™

The Detroit Food System Report 2009-2010, Kameshwari Pothukuchi

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

Assesses the state of the city’s food system, including activities in production, distribution, consumption, waste generation and composting, nutrition and food assistance program participation and innovative food system programs.

Growing Greener In The City: Open Space Advocacy For Environmental Justice In Jackson Heights, Donovan Finn

School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences Faculty Publications

Local residents in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York City, develop a do it yourself solution to the community's lack of park space. The case study shows how civic advocacy can address issues of environmental justice and open space access in urban communities. by harnessing local social capital and building coalitions with city agencies and non-governmental partners.

Portland Mercado: Community Economic Development To Revitalize, Uplift, And Empower, Abigail Cermak, David Ruelas, Bridger Wineman, Ellen Wyoming

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Realizing public goals of an inclusive and vibrant society requires an advocacy approach to urban planning and economic development. Adelante Planning outlines strategies based on research and case studies to successfully implement a Mercado as an economic development and business incubation strategy for Portland’s Latino community. A Mercado is a strategic planning approach targeted toward Latino populations and other minorities, particularly in gentrifying locations of the Portland Metro region.

This project was conducted under the supervision of Ellen Bassett, Lisa Bates, Karen Gibson, Ken Pirie, and Sumner Sharpe.

Cultural Competence In Urban Affairs And Planning, Tom Angotti, Marly Pierre-Louis, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Sigmund Shipp, Angela Tovar

Publications and Research

In the Fall of 2009, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) undertook the Centro Cultural Competence Initiative (CCI) with the support of a one-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). The goal of the CCI is to address the need for culturally appropriate work in a variety of professions by training students to be culturally competent practitioners. In the Fall of 2010, the Urban Affairs and Planning Department at Hunter College joined CENTRO as a partner in this initiative. Full time Professors Sigmund Shipp, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, and Tom Angotti worked …

Community Gardens And Urban Agriculture: Reclaiming The Market Place, Sara Prendergast

Social Sciences

This paper will first explore the health of low-income communities living in inner cities. I will use obesity as one of the main indicators of poor health and explore the lack of access to holistic diets, high costs of fresh foods, and minimal education, with the aim of revealing how hunger is a consequence of a capitalist dominated market. Following, I will investigate how urban agriculture is a holistic solution in subduing the advent of food deserts and food insecurity by serving health, educational, and social needs in low-income communities, which further creates a more socially just market.

Simplicity And The City: Understanding The Voluntary Simplicity Movement In Melbourne, Gershwin Penn

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this study was to understand the lifestyle of members of the voluntary simplicity movement in an urban setting. I sought to understand how they practiced simplicity in their day to day lives, how simplicity effected their emotional life, how simplicity influenced their values, how simplicity influenced their interaction with the city, and what their general ethos was. This study was conducted to understand how it is possible for individuals to live ecologically and socially responsible lives in settings that, by in large, reject their values. I conducted fifteen face to face in-depth interviews in Melbourne in April …

Service Versus Advocacy? A Comparison Of Two Latino Community-Based Organizations In Chelsea, Massachusetts, Glenn Jacobs

Trotter Review

Anyone walking down Chelsea’s main drag, Broadway, would be struck by its raucous cacophony of sights and sounds, a panoply of foreign languages spoken by women (many mothers with young children and infants), children, teenagers, and men of a variety of physiognomies and skin tones; a collage of small specialty shops selling jewelry, clothing, religious statues, CDs, and mobile phones; and restaurants and eateries serving El Salvadoran, Vietnamese, Mexican, and Chinese food; pawnshops, check-cashing places, bakeries, and coffee shops, with occasional rectangles of negative visual space occupied by the post office and chain drug and convenience stores. It is a …

Expanding Service Learning Models In Transportation, Robert Parker

TREC Final Reports

This OTREC education project links experiential education with local transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between the University of Oregon, the Lane Transit District, and the cities of Eugene and Springfield. The Community Planning Workshop (CPW) is an experiential/service learning program affiliated with the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. Through this service learning program, graduate students learn professional planning skills while assisting communities in actual planning and policy projects.

The project results include: (1) the completion of the following six deliverables: EmX Evaluation Framework Document, EmX Stakeholder Perceptions Document, Bus Rapid Transit Case …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Widely Available 3-D Visualization Tools In Support Of Public Participation, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Jennifer L. Weeks, Tim Case

Publications and Research

There is a persistent need for improved tools and techniques to facilitate public involvement in transportation decision making. Despite continuous improvements in increasing public involvement at all phases of transportation decision making, transportation agencies are still seeking more affordable, accessible, and effective means of communicating with a wide range of stakeholders. The report documents a survey of a wide variety of transportation agencies on their use of interactive 3-D visualization for public involvement using an electronic survey. Supplemental qualitative data was generated through telephone interviews with selected survey participants. It concludes with three case studies illustrating applications of interactive 3-D …

It's All Happening At The Zoo: Children's Environmental Learning After School, Jason A. Douglas, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Pairing dynamic out-of-school-time (OST) programs with zoos can encourage young people's relationships with and sense of responsibility for animals and the environment. The project presented in this article, Animal Rescuers, gave the authors the opportunity to examine how such a pairing can work. OST programs enable learning in settings that are generally unavailable during school time (Honig & McDonald, 2005). They provide space for collaboration among students, teachers, and others such as program visitors or outside educators. Taking advantage of the flexibility, location, and educational playfulness of an OST setting, the authors worked intensively with a small number of 10-12-year-old …

Slides: "Mitaku Oyasin" Means "We Are All Related", Bob Gough

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Bob Gough, NativeEnergy, Inc.

72 slides

An Environmental Justice Analysis: Superfund Sites And Surrounding Communities In Illinois, Angela Maranville, Tih-Fen Ting, Yang Zhang

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Is there an association between Superfund sites and the socioeconomic makeup of the surrounding communities? This research analyzes the current economic and racial demographics of Illinois counties that contain Superfund sites. Specifically, variables that are indicators of environmental injustice are analyzed; e.g. race, median household income, and home ownership. Since the inception of the environmental justice movement in the late 1980s, studies have been conducted nationally and at state levels in Michigan, California, Ohio, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina (i.e. Cutter 2006; Mohai & Saha 2006; Pastor et al. 2004; Anderton et al. 1997; Bevc et al. 2007; Bowen et …

Good Planning, Good Health: An Interview With Rajiv Bhatia, Vivek Shandas

Institute of Metropolitan Studies Publications

Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH, is the Director of Occupational and Environmental Health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. He is also a faculty member at both the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health. He is a founding member of the Health and Social Justice Committee for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Nationally recognized for leadership in developing the health impact assessment tool, Bhatia thinks poor health resulting from social factors can be combatted by cooperation among health officials, policy makers, and …

Ferry Parking And Landside Access Study: Implementing Public Outreach And Impact Assessment, Jochen Albrecht, Stephanie Camay, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Brandon Derman, Eric Bohn, William Milczarski, Maria Boile, Sotiris Theofanis

Publications and Research

Through federal regulations, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are mandated to perform public outreach and impact assessment. Although there are some established parameters, the quality and effectiveness of public outreach efforts vary widely, and in many instances information dissemination becomes the central focus of public outreach efforts. However, information dissemination, although essential, is not as effective as a two-way process of public involvement in which members of the public may provide feedback to shape agency initiatives. Research conducted for the Ferry Parking and Landside Access Study is used to describe best practices in public outreach, focusing on socio-economic and community impact …

The National Environmental Policy Act In The Urban Environment: Oxymoron Or A Useful Tool To Combat The Destruction Of Neighborhoods And Urban Sprawl?, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To some, applying the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to decisions affecting land use in an urban or built environment is an oxymoron. Cities have historically not been seen “as natural entities but as foreign impositions upon the native landscape,” places where the physical environment is already largely destroyed or reduced to insignificant remnants. Moreover, detecting the required federal presence to trigger NEPA may initially seem difficult when decisions affecting urban resources appear to be principally made by local or state agencies.

At the Institute for Public Representation (IPR) at the Georgetown University Law Center, the author has learned that …

Epistemological Pluralism: Reorganizing Interdisciplinary Research, Thaddeus R. Miller, Timothy D. Baird, Caitlin M. Littlefield, Gary Kofinas, F. Stuart Chapin Iii, Charles L. Redman

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite progress in interdisciplinary research, difficulties remain. In this paper, we argue that scholars, educators, and practitioners need to critically rethink the ways in which interdisciplinary research and training are conducted. We present epistemological pluralism as an approach for conducting innovative, collaborative research and study. Epistemological pluralism recognizes that, in any given research context, there may be several valuable ways of knowing, and that accommodating this plurality can lead to more successful integrated study. This approach is particularly useful in the study and management of social–ecological systems. Through resilience theory's adaptive cycle, we demonstrate how a focus on epistemological pluralism …

Summary Of Presentation: Climate Of Environmental Justice Conference, Michael B. Gerrard

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Michael B. Gerrard, Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP, New York, NY

2 pages.

Indigenous Peoples And Environmental Justice: The Impact Of Climate Change, Rebecca Tsosie

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Rebecca Tsosie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University

1 page.

Healing Earth, Helping Neighbors: Using Brownfield Remediation Projects To Advance Environmental Justice [Outline], Willie Shepherd

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Willie Shepherd, Chairman and Co-Founder, Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert, LLP

2 pages.

"Presentation Outline"

Deadly Waiting Game: An Environmental Justice Framework For Examining Natural And Man-Made Disasters Beyond Hurricane Katrina [Abstract], Robert D. Bullard

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Clark Atlanta University

1 page.

Action On Global Warming: Making Room For Tribal Governments In The New Kind Of Wedge Issue, Dean B. Suagee

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Dean B. Suagee, Of Counsel, Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker LLP, Washington, D.C.

1 page.

Second Generation Environmental Justice: Challenges And Opportunities, Rachel D. Godsil

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Rachel D. Godsil, Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School

3 pages.

Slides: Environmental Justice: Comprehensive Approach, Nicholas Targ

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Nicholas Targ, Holland & Knight, former Associate Director for Environmental Justice Integration, Office of Environmental Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

16 slides

Climate Changes And The Poorest Nations: Further Reflections On Global Inequality, Ruth Gordon

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Ruth Gordon, Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law

3 pages.

Climate Justice: The Next Movement [Outline], Richard J. Lazarus

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Richard J. Lazarus, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

2 pages.

Creating A Roadmap For Achieving Intergenerational Environmental Justice, Clifford Rechtschaffen

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Clifford Rechtschaffen, Professor of Law and Director, JD Environmental Law Program; Co-Director, Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, Golden Gate University School of Law

5 pages.

Agenda: The Climate Of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

On March 16-17, The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock conference gathered 125 academics and practitioners from around the country to consider the pressing issues facing low-income and/or communities of color that continue to be subjected to a disproportionate share of environmental maladies.

"Some people are more equal than others when it comes to bracing ourselves for the impacts of climate change," said conference organizer Professor Maxine Burkett. "Whether it's because poor folks lived in the lowest areas of New Orleans when Katrina floodwaters rushed in, or are less able to afford the cooling bill during increasingly frequent heat waves, …

2035 Regional Transportation Plan Update: A New Look At Transportation - Background Information And Proposed Work Plan For Public Participation, Eco Northwest, Ltd.

Metro Collection

No abstract provided.

Environmental Justice And The Role Of Social Capital In An Underserved Urban Community, Lorraine Ann Dillon

Community & Environmental Health Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to evaluate a community's beliefs, attitudes, and experiences regarding their neighborhood's environmental health issues and the ways in which individuals utilize social capital (the degree to which a community collaborates and cooperates) to improve their environmental health. Research correlating social capital with health status shows that the higher the level of social capital in a community, the better the health. An understanding of why some groups exhibit more social capital than others is important in improving the public health system. The study was accomplished by comparing a convenience sample of two specific groups …

An Evaluation Of The Oregon Department Of Transportation’S (Odot) Environmental Streamlining Efforts: A Focus On Cetas, Connie P. Ozawa, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Oregon Department of Transportation responded to the federal call in the late 1990s to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by (1) implementing organizational and procedural changes internal to the agency, (2) funding ODOT-dedicated staff positions in state and federal resource agencies, and (3) convening regular meetings with state and federal agencies with NEPA-related regulatory responsibilities. This latter effort evolved into the CETAS (Collaborative Environmental and Transportation Agreement for Streamlining) process that includes a management and a technical team element. This document reports an assessment of the effectiveness of these efforts. Phase I of the study was designed …