Digital Commons Network^™

Climate Change And Liberation In Latin America, Ernesto O. Hernández

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to propose the liberation movements in Latin America as alternative philosophical frameworks to the crisis of climate change. These movements have provided the grounds to identify inequities and injustices and have practiced ethical methodologies to overcome them. Additionally, the movements seek to represent and reflect the value of non-traditional philosophical agents in Latin America. The work focuses on four major Latin American ecological liberation movements; theology, philosophy, pedagogy, and feminism. Eco-Theology advances the role of Religion as the practice of Religação, reexamination, and resetting our relationship with nature by reconnecting with it. Eco-Philosophy of …

El Futuro De La Urbanización Y El Cambio Climático, April 2020, Makeyla Hayes

Monteverde Institute: Culture, Community, and Health

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Urbanization And Climate Change, April 2020, Makeyla Hayes

Monteverde Institute: Culture, Community, and Health

Urbanization is an inevitable process that affects all countries and major cities. As societies continue to adapt to urban development, the environment is left defenseless to these changes. Through environmental, economical, and social analysis, this case study of Boston – the capital city of Massachusetts – examines the impact of urban growth and development on climate change. Urban areas are densely populated and constantly experience population growth and overpopulation, making them more vulnerable to climate change. Unsustainable practices and living increases the impact that communities and residents have on the environment. Environmental gentrification has been implemented to resolve the consequences …

Toxic Colonialism And Green Victimization Of Native Americans: An Examination Of The Genocidal Impacts Of Uranium Mining, Averi R. Fegadel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While the field of criminology has delved into environmental justice issues in Black communities through the exploration of urban exposure to toxins, it has failed to expand this research orientation to examine issues affecting peoples in different locations, which in the U.S. draws attention to the green victimization of Native Americans. In short, existing criminological research has largely ignored the social, economic, and environmental injustices experienced by Native Americans. This study addresses this research gap by exploring environmental justice issues as they relate to the ways toxic colonialism affects Native Americans. Specifically, this study confronts historic and current struggles endured …

Governmentality, Biopower, And Sexual Citizenship: A Feminist Examination Of Sexual And Reproductive Healthcare Experiences Of 18-24 Year-Olds In The U.S. Southeast, Melina K. Taylor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sexual and reproductive healthcare in the U.S. is a contentious and often stigmatized topic. Conservative politics and Christian religious ideology guide laws and policies that inform narratives of sexual citizenship that promote white, heterosexual, procreative, cis-gendered relationships as the ideal. For young people, exposure to sexuality education greatly influences their self-identity as sexual citizens and guides how they form intimate relationships. While sexual and reproductive healthcare has been included marginally in the discipline of anthropology, almost no research has focused on young people’s sexual and reproductive healthcare within the U.S.

This dissertation examines the viewpoints and experiences of 18-24 year-old …

Fields Brook Superfund Site: Race, Class, And Environmental Justice In A Blasted Landscape, Richard C. Bargielski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1980, the United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This federal law provided the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the legal tools necessary to pursue polluters who had improperly stored or disposed hazardous wastes. Since its passage, more than a thousand sites have been added to the National Priorities List (NPL), but only a fraction have been cleaned up. Proponents of neoliberalism argue that aggressive environmental policies such as CERCLA harm workers by making it impossible for businesses to operate profitably. This coincides with a drop of nearly 50% in the U.S. …

Elemental Climate Disaster Texts And Queer Ecological Temporality, Laura Mattson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis approaches climate disaster texts as an opportunity to challenge constructions of the body, space, and time. Developed from embodied experiential knowledge about hurricanes, my work will explore how climate disasters can teach us to reimagine human-nature relationships. In my two analysis chapters, I use critical textual analysis and autoethnography to challenge particular representations of the human-nature relationship as a binary between nature and culture. By intervening in the nature-culture binary, I theorize queer ecological temporality as an opportunity to reveal and challenge constructions of nature and time. Working at the intersections of queer and ecocritical theory, this thesis …

Fostering Preservice And In-Service Ela Teachers’ Digital Practices For Addressing Climate Change, Richard Beach, George Boggs, Jill Castek, James Damico, Alexandra Panos, Renee Spellman, Nance Wilson

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

This report presents research on preservice (PST) and in-service teachers acquiring digital practices for addressing climate change related to knowing how to employ digital practices for studying visual representations of climate change and engaging students in critiquing online information about climate change. Study 1 examined PSTs understanding of climate change through participation in visiting a laboratory involving scientific study of ecological systems to interact with scientists, collect digital artifacts, and create a virtual field trip using these artifacts for instructional purposes. Study 2 involved PSTs and in-service teachers responding critically to the NASA Climate Change website, identifying digital literacies their …

Adult Environmental Education: Active Vs. Passive Learning Pedagogy, Kelly Mckenna

USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

From wildfires to coral bleaching, the global effects of climate change are difficult to ignore. Unfortunately, the number of environmental education (EE) programs that target adults in the United States is lacking. Adults have the biggest impact on the environment and the greatest ability to make positive environmental changes and therefore, the need to expand environmental education for adults is imperative. In order to contribute to improved environmental quality, adults need to be exposed to environmental problems and to be taught ways to reduce their environmental impacts. Existing research highlights the difficulties when attempting to include adults in environmental education …

Examining Spatial Accessibility To Covid-19 Testing Sites In Florida, Ran Tao, Joni Downs, Theresa M. Beckie, Yuzhou Chen, Warren Mcnelley

All publications

Massive and rapid testing is crucial for containing the spread of COVID-19. Health and policy planners must ensure that access to and uptake of SARS-CoV-2 testing is adequate and equitable. This study measures the spatial accessibility to testing sites in Florida at the census tract level at the end of May 2020, using the 2-step floating catchment area method that integrates both driving and walking modes. Accessibility scores were found to be heterogeneous across geographic regions and among different groups of people. In particular, many rural areas were in a testing desert. While people in larger cities tended to have …

Perceptions Of The Effectiveness Of Food Policy Coalitions In Strengthening Community Food Security In The United States., Joseph G. England Iii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity is experienced most acutely and addressed most innovatively at the community level to which the concept of community food security (CFS) finds purchase (Hamm and Bellows, 2003). In recognition of the many varying dynamics embedded in the CFS concept, Food Policy Coalitions have become an organizational model adapted by communities across the United States. While FPCs have grown in number considerably over the last decade, there remains a considerable lack of empirical research documenting evaluation and engagement methods, as well as strategies used to address community food security. This research, framed by the Community Coalition Action Theory, draws …

Toxic Tropics: Purity And Danger In Everywhere In Everyday Life, Liza Grandia

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

In contrast to popular images of the tropics as verdant Edens, forest dwellers face various pollutants with little-understood environmental health impacts. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic research in northern Guatemala through the lens of Mary Douglas' work on purity, danger, and culture, this paper describes how the inventive re-use of modern waste exposes rural people to new and unknown toxic substances from “matter out of place.” While environmental justice literature has emphasized industrial, extractive, and military disasters, this note draws attention to the less dramatic yet lethal pollutants encountered in the everyday lives of the rural poor through “chemical trespass.”

Exploring The Equity Performance Of Bike-Sharing Systems With Disaggregated Data: A Story Of Southern Tampa, Zhiwei Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rising adoption of bike-sharing systems brings significant benefits to individuals and society as a whole. However, whether these benefits are distributed throughout society in a fair manner is still an open question. This study presents a methodological framework for assessing the equity performance of bike-sharing systems, with Coast Bike Share system in southern Tampa as a case study. The framework integrates three different datasets: bike-sharing infrastructure, individual travel itineraries and individual sociodemographic attribute data. With these datasets, we model individual accessibility to activity locations using bike-sharing as the mode of transportation by analyzing the “walking-cycling-walking” process of a bike-sharing …

2018 Assessment Of The Practice Of Public Involvement In Florida, Jeff Kramer, Nicole Tremblay

Transportation Planning, Policy, and Processes (TP3) Final Reports

This study was designed to document the current state of the practice of public involvement in transportation decision-making and provide an update to the 2006 report documenting public involvement in the state of Florida. A literature review was completed as the first phase. Surveys and interviews were then conducted with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Districts. The final report comprises a synthesis of these findings. The first chapter provides an introduction and key findings from the literature review. The second chapter is a detailed description of observations from each agency type. Noteworthy practices are included …

Making A Case For Equity Planning In Transportation Development: Identifying Indicators And Building A Framework For Hillsborough County, Fl, Dayna J. Lazarus

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The idea that planners should work toward an equitable society has been part of the profession since the 1960s, largely based on the work of planning theorists like Paul Davidoff, Sherry Arnstein and Norman Krumholz. Transportation planning, however, has been slower than other sectors of the profession, such as housing, to embrace equity planning concepts. That has begun to change as concerns about income inequality, environmental justice and climate change have become more salient. This thesis makes the case that in order to improve social equity outcomes, transportation planners must make social equity an explicit goal and add social equity …

Perceptions Of Infrastructure, Flood Management, And Environmental Redevelopment In The University Area, Hillsborough County, Florida, Kris-An K. Hinds

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The University Area (UA), a low-income, unincorporated neighborhood in Hillsborough County, Florida, is a site of sustainable redevelopment by the local government and nonprofit organizations. Throughout the past decade, the transitions in local and state political climates have significantly impacted the residents’ ability to advocate for infrastructural and environmental improvement to the site. This thesis discusses the findings of a research project dedicated to exploring resident perspectives of stormwater management, infrastructure, and the redevelopment currently occurring the University Area. Drawing from theoretical concepts in political ecology, environmental justice, and the interplay of agency and structure, this research investigates the impacts …

Low-Income Access To Employer-Based Transit Benefits: Evidence From 10 Large Metropolitan Regions, Andrea Hamre

Journal of Transportation Demand Management Research

While national aggregate statistics suggest employer-based transit subsidies may be inaccessible to the majority of the working poor, this is the first study to investigate the subject with disaggregate data while controlling for additional factors. This study uses household travel surveys for 10 of the largest Metropolitan Planning Organizations, grouped into seven cases. In each case, the share of workers offered an employer-based transit subsidy is lowest for workers in the lowest income quintile. Binary logistic regression results for the odds of being offered an employer-based transit subsidy are presented for two cases, Washington, DC, and Denver, CO, and the …

Investigating Air Pollution And Equity Impacts Of A Proposed Transportation Improvement Program For Tampa, Talha Kemal Kocak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transportation infrastructure is important for human mobility and population well-being. However, it can also have detrimental impacts on health and equity, including through increased air pollution and its unequal social distribution. There is a need for better understanding of these impacts and for better approaches that improve health and equity outcomes of transportation planning programs. In this study, we are investigating the air pollution and health equity impacts of an ongoing large-scale metropolitan transportation improvement program, Tampa Bay Next (TBNext). Specific objectives are: 1) to characterize and quantify the air pollution levels and population exposures resulting from the roadway expansion …

Mpo Regional Coordination Structure Research & Best Practices For The Tampa Bay Region, Cutr

Transportation Planning, Policy, and Processes (TP3) Final Reports

No abstract provided.

Equity Assessment For Emerging Transportation Technologies: A Comprehensive Literature Review And Case Study, Yujie Guo, Amy L. Stuart, Xiaopeng Li, Yu Zhang

Environmental and Occupational Health Faculty Publications

Emerging transportation technologies (e.g. connected vehicles) and services (e.g. shared mobility) provide efficient, sustainable and cost-effective alternatives to traditional travel modes. However, whether these innovative technologies bring benefits to different population groups in an equal and reasonable manner is still an open question. This report aims to tackle this question and is divided into the following two parts: transportation equity literature review and a case study on bike-sharing systems. The first part of the report comprehensively surveys the literature about methodologies for analyzing transportation equity for traditional and emerging transportation technologies in terms of economy, environment and public health. It …

Sociodemographics And Access To Organic And Local Food: A Case Study Of New Orleans, Louisiana, Chuo Li, Amir Ghiasi, Xiaopeng Li, Guangqing Chi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This study examined the association between physical accessibility to organic and local food, and sociodemographic factors in New Orleans, Louisiana. Spatial regression models were used to investigate how sociodemographic variables such as income, race/ethnicity, education, and age correlate with driving, bicycling, and walking distances to stores that sell organic or local food. The distances were calculated from GIS and real-time speed information from Google Maps. The results indicated that physical access to such stores is positively associated with population density, median housing value, education, non-Hispanic Blacks, and Hispanics, and is negatively associated with median housing age. We found no disparities …

Proceedings Of The Global Conference On Business And Economics: Volume 1, Cihan Cobanoglu, Abdulkadir Corbaci

University of South Florida (USF) - M3 Publishing

This is the first volume of the Global Conference on Business and Economics Proceedings Series.

ISSN: 2641-502X

Capacity Building, Environmental Justice, And Brownfield Redevelopment: A Case Study Of Harvest Hope Park, Tampa Bay, Fl, Gabrielle R. Lehigh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Harvest Hope Park is a brownfield redevelopment project for the University Area Community Development Corporation (University Area CDC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the sustainable redevelopment of north Tampa neighborhoods. While the project is still in progress, the University Area CDC has noted a lack of community engagement by local residents. The neighborhood, sometimes referred to as “suitcase city” because of the presumed transient nature of the population, has been plagued with poverty, blight, decay, high crime rates, and a lack of basic resources for decades (32 percent of the population in this area lives below the 2016 national poverty …

Policing The Riverfront: Urban Revanchism As Sustainability, Jared J. Austin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An unnoticed shift is underway in the revanchist model of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) that is rebranding the neoliberal reorganization of space and economic growth. I call this shift “Urban Revanchism as Sustainability,” following Mike Davis and Daniel Monk (2007). In this study, I describe how Tampa elites, led by Democratic Mayor Bob Buckhorn, use politically popular discourses of ‘sustainability’, ‘walkability’, ‘bike-ability’, among others, to coopt the rhetoric and symbols of social and environmental justice as cover for urban capital accumulation. I describe how in the wake of 2008 which devastated Tampa, and in the context of the subsequent …

Extraction: Impacts, Engagements, And Alternative Futures, Richard C. Bargielski

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

No abstract provided.

Is It Time For A Public Transit Renaissance?: Navigating Travel Behavior, Technology, And Business Model Shifts In A Brave New World, Susan Shaheen, Adam Cohen

Journal of Public Transportation

Travel behavior is undergoing a period of significant change in the United States. In 2016, public transit ridership fell in almost all major U.S. metropolitan regions. While Americans are still heavily dependent on the personal automobile for mobility, technological and societal changes are transforming how mobility is accomplished. This paper reviews the convergence of five trends leading to fundamental changes in public transportation: (1) changing generational behavior toward suburbanization and automobility; (2) new attitudes toward information communications technology; (3) shifting attitudes toward sharing and mobility on demand; (4) innovative alternatives to work and non-work travel; and (5) an increasing number …

Understanding The Linkages Between Urban Transportation Design And Population Exposure To Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Application Of An Integrated Transportation And Air Pollution Modeling Framework To Tampa, Fl, Sashikanth Gurram

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid and unplanned urbanization has ushered in a variety of public health challenges, including exposure to traffic pollution and greater dependence on automobiles. Moreover, vulnerable population groups often bear the brunt of negative outcomes and are subject to disproportionate exposure and health effects. This makes it imperative for urban transportation engineers, land use planners, and public health professionals to work synergistically to understand both the relationship between urban design and population exposure to traffic pollution, and its social distribution. Researchers have started to pay close attention to this connection, mainly by conducting observational studies on the relationship between transportation, urban …

A Landscape Of Thermal Inequity: Social Vulnerability To Urban Heat In U.S. Cities, Bruce Coffyn Mitchell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A combination of the urban heat island effect and a rising temperature baseline resulting from global climate change inequitably impacts socially vulnerable populations residing in urban areas. This dissertation examines distributional inequity of exposure to urban heat by socially disadvantaged groups and minorities in the context of climate justice. Using Cutter’s hazards-of-place model, variables indicative of social vulnerability and biophysical vulnerability are statistically tested for their associations. Biophysical vulnerability is conceptualized utilizing a urban heat risk index calculated from summer 2010 LANDSAT imagery to measure land surface temperature , structural density through the normalized difference built-up index, and vegetation abundance …

Longitudinal Awareness: A Study Of Vulnerability To Flooding In Polk County, Iowa, Kerri A. Dickey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Flooding has become a problem of national proportion and many scholars have started to take note of the human impacts in this area. This study will focus on the social vulnerability framework in tandem with the environmental justice theoretical frameworks being applied to Polk County Iowa so that information can be added to the body of works within a Midwestern U.S. context. This research will contribute to the current geographical knowledge in natural hazards, environmental justice, and vulnerability to flood hazards. Taking into consideration the scarcity of county or sub-county studies in the Midwest U.S. measuring spatial tendencies in hazards …

Public Transit To Public Lands: The Nature Express, Cutr

Research Reports

No abstract provided.