Digital Commons Network^™

Centering Equity In Oregon’S 100 Year Water Vision: A Student-Led Policy Paper Prepared By The Oregon Water Stories Team At Portland State University, Clare T. Mcclellan, Sadie Boyers, Victoria Cali De Leon, Tony Cole, Laura Cowley-Martinson, Shersten Finley, Dustin Lanker, Julia Seydel, Aakash Nath Upraity, Janet Cowal, Melissa Haeffner

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this report is to provide evidence for the need to further intentionally incorporate equity into Oregon’s 100 Year Water Vision. Four case studies contextualize this need and highlight the variety of water issues throughout the state, supported by linguistic analyses of local newspapers. As Oregon policy-makers are responsible for ensuring working water systems for all Oregonians, we also suggest implementable criteria for the evaluation of equity in water issues and decision-making. This student-led and interdisciplinary report comes from the Haeffner-Cowal Oregon Water Stories research lab at Portland State University.

Urban Green Space: Mitigator Or Multiplier Of Inequality In The Denver Metropolitan Area?, Joshua Charles Baldwin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Studies have shown that communities of color and low-income populations are likely to live in neighborhoods that lack access to quality green spaces, unable to directly benefit from the environmental, recreational, and cultural services they provide. The goal of this research was to determine if the green space inequality patterns seen globally and nationally exist in the Denver Metropolitan Area. Using an existing green space dataset, ecosystem services fieldwork, GIS digitizing, and bivariate correlation analysis I uncovered numerous green space inequalities based on proximity, acreage, and quality. Key findings included 1) Lakewood’s Hispanic and less-educated populations have relatively little access …

Sabin Center Diversity, Equity, Inclusion And Anti-Racism Plan, Sabin Center For Climate Change Law

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The climate crisis is a crisis of unprecedented scope and scale. It arises from everywhere, and impacts everyone. But some – some countries, some companies, some communities, some individuals – are more responsible than others; and some are more impacted, and more vulnerable, than others. Climate change has made clear that diversity increases the power of potential solutions and the resilience to adverse impacts – for ecosystems, social systems, economic systems and their various hybrids and combinations. At the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law we believe that by creating and fostering a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, …

Sustainable Communities, Fall/Winter 2010, Issue 21

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Sustainable & Equitable Financing For Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance And How The Quality Of Pedestrian Infrastructure Affects The Choice To Walk, Alexis Corning Padilla

Civil Engineering ETDs

In many communities, pedestrian infrastructure is poorly maintained. One challenge is finding sustainable and equitable funding since many municipalities across the country require adjacent property to maintain and repair sidewalks adjacent to their property. These policies are difficult to enforce, may place a high cost on lower-income households, and may be partly responsible for the poor condition of many sidewalks. Therefore, in the first part of this research, we evaluated three alternatives for financing the maintenance of sidewalks in Albuquerque, New Mexico: increasing the gross receipts tax, the gasoline excise tax, or the property tax. We concluded that any of …

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 …

In-Groups, Out-Groups And The Challenge Of Increasing Diversity Through Intentional Inclusion And Equity Practices: Exploring The Roles Of Urban Land Managers, Affinity Groups, And Alaska Residents, Susan Newton, Amy Markle, Laurie Stuart

Dissertations

Public lands belong to all of us. Yet, data indicate that some Americans are participating more than others in the decision-making processes that guide use, access, and availability of our public lands and resources. Three researchers investigated three ways public participation intersects with the decision-making process, with a focus on illuminating barriers to full public participation as well as potential bridges to increasing equitable inclusion. Researchers interviewed urban land managers and affinity group leaders, surveyed a sample of residents in Alaska, and examined public testimony from a city council discussion about an inclusion resolution in Homer, Alaska. Qualitative and quantitative …

Clean Energy Equity, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Solar, wind, and other clean, renewable sources of energy promise to mitigate climate change, enhance energy security, and foster economic growth. But many of the policies in place to promote clean energy today are marred by an uneven distribution of economic opportunities and associated financial burdens. Tax incentives for renewables cost American taxpayers billions of dollars every year, yet the tax code effectively precludes all but the largest banks and most profitable corporations from reaping the benefits of these tax breaks. Other policies, such as renewable portfolio standards that set minimum quota to create demand for renewable electricity require such …

Addressing Local Food Inequity: A Youth Participatory Action Research Project In The Alternative High School In Waterville, Maine, Aanavi Patodia

Honors Theses

Food security is a global issue. As food insecurity increases, it is continually important to find solutions. Food insecurity in the United States in children is visible is partially addressed via school programs, like the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). This project explores food inequity in the Alternative High School in Waterville, Maine, which participates in the NSLP and SBP to reduce food insecurity. This project used a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) process to explore school meals and, to a larger extent, food equity from the Alternative High School students’ perspectives as co-researchers. Through …

Sustainable And Equitable Financing For Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance, Gregory Rowangould

Data

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 17PPUNM01. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference:

"In many communities, pedestrian infrastructure is discontinuous, inaccessible to those with physical disabilities, and poorly maintained. Correcting these problems would be a first step in providing infrastructure to achieve the active travel and related transportation goals of many communities. One nearly universal challenge to maintaining sidewalks in a state of good repair and addressing environmental justice concerns is an adequate, sustainable, and equitable source of funding. Municipal governments across the country maintain and repair their streets and roadways; however, most require residents …

Sustainable And Equitable Financing For Pedestrian Infrastructure Maintenance, Gregory Rowangould

Publications

In many communities, pedestrian infrastructure is discontinuous, inaccessible to those with physical disabilities, and poorly maintained. Correcting these problems would be a first step in providing infrastructure to achieve the active travel and related transportation goals of many communities. One nearly universal challenge to maintaining sidewalks in a state of good repair and addressing environmental justice concerns is an adequate, sustainable, and equitable source of funding. Municipal governments across the country maintain and repair their streets and roadways; however, most require residents to maintain and repair public sidewalks adjacent to their property. These policies are difficult to enforce and may …

Can Clean Energy Policy Promote Environmental, Economic, And Social Sustainability?, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Two and a half decades of clean energy policymaking focused primarily on environmental and economic sustainability have yielded considerable environmental and economic benefits. Along the way, however, other policy considerations, such as the social sustainability of the transition to a cleaner, renewably fueled energy economy, have gone largely overlooked. As clean energy technologies continue to gain ever-greater traction in the United States and global energy economies, the social impacts of their enabling policies become more and more salient. Already, ratepayers, taxpayers, and other stakeholders who fear being left behind by the clean energy transition question the “fairness” of today’s renewable …

Science, Advocacy, Policy, Planning: Tools For Advancing Transportation Equity, Garrett S. Mcallister

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The theme of this portfolio is how different tools and approaches can be used for advancing transportation equity. Broadly defined, transportation equity is about fairness in transportation. There are a number of ways this fairness can be assessed. The most common way to assess transportation equity is by looking at the fairness of outcomes, distributed geographically, socially, or even by mode of transportation. Equity can also be defined by the fairness of processes. The first half of the portfolio illustrates some of the problems with the current transportation system and how it is unhealthy (Piece 1) and unjust (Piece 2). …

Assessing Cumulative Barriers To Transportation: An Integrated Framework Of Equity Analysis For Housing Choice Voucher Families In The Dallas Fort Worth Region, Myriam Igoufe

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Transportation is said to be affordable if it does not consume more than fifteen percent of a household’s budget. The widespread normative threshold of transportation affordability, becomes increasingly problematic as households slide down the income spectrum. Most fundamentally, low-income households have vastly different financial capabilities to purchase transportation services, hence to travel. Yet, little is known about the financial capabilities of very-low income households, and the use of a normative cost-to-income-ratio-threshold of transportation affordability obscures our understanding of travel capacities, in monetary terms, of these populations. Failure to comprehensively conceptualize and evaluate transportation affordability inevitably inhibits the formulation of adequate …

A Localized Sourcing Model For The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), Claire H. Burrus

Environmental Studies

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federally funded public food program that combats food insecurity by providing credits to SNAP recipients for the purchase of food products. SNAP is effective in addressing hunger, a symptom of poverty, but is ineffective at addressing nutritional inequity, another symptom of poverty, and is also ineffective at addressing the roots of poverty itself. I propose a localized sourcing model for SNAP which addresses both the symptoms and roots of poverty by improving the capacity of the policy to address nutritional inequity and economic injustices. The localized sourcing model benefits the communities in …

What Hope For Health In All Policies’ Addition And Multiplication Of Equity In An Age Of Subtraction And Division At The Federal Level?: The Memphis Experience, Amy T. Campbell

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Increasingly, people recognize that social factors, such as poverty, the living environment, and educational status, substantially affect health outcomes. A “health in all policies approach” (HiAP) seeks structural reform of policymaking to require purposeful consideration, across an interconnected range of public sector actors, of the health equity and justice policy-level considerations of these factors. With the election of Donald J. Trump as 45th President in the United States, however, the U.S. entered a world where the math of the day is division and subtraction, rather than addition or multiplication. And yet, hope in HiAP remains through examples of innovative approaches …

Increasing Access To The James River Park System: A Community Roadmap With The Blackwell, Oak Grove, And Bellemeade Neighborhoods, Max A. Ewart

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

Natural Parks like the James River Park System offer a host of benefits. They improve our mental health, make us better environmental stewards, Improve socialization, and make a healthier population by lowering the rates of asthma, obesity and hypertension. These public health outcomes disproportionately impacts minority communities in the City of Richmond, a population that visits the James River Park System at a lower rate than white communities do. This plan identifies the barriers preventing access for minority communities and gives recommendations to improve access in the City of Richmond.

Equity In Microscale Urban Design And Walkability: A Photographic Survey Of Six Pittsburgh Streetscapes, Bradley Bereitschaft

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

This paper explores inequity in neighborhood walkability at the micro-scale level by qualitatively examining six streetscapes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A photographic survey is used to highlight differences in the quality and design of the built environment among pairs of streetscapes with high or low social vulnerability but approximately equal quantitative Walk Scores®. The survey revealed discernible differences in the quality and maintenance of the built environment among those in more and less disadvantaged neighborhoods. This was true of several characteristics expected to affect walkability, including enclosure, transparency, complexity, and tidiness. Streetscapes in neighborhoods with high social vulnerability exhibited less contiguous …

Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a “participatory” grid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …

Stand Clear Of The Closing Doors, Please: Transit Equity, Social Exclusion, And The New York City Subway, Taylor Novick-Finder

Pitzer Senior Theses

The history of transportation planning in New York City has created disparities between those who have sufficient access to the public transportation network, and those who face structural barriers to traveling from their home to education, employment, and healthcare opportunities. This thesis analyzes the legacy of discriminatory policy surrounding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and city and state governments that have failed to support vital infrastructure improvement projects and service changes to provide multi-modal welfare to New York’s working poor. By exploring issues of transit equity as they pertain to the New York City subway system, this thesis raises the …

Public Transit Equity Analysis At Metropolitan And Local Scales: A Focus On Nine Large Cities In The Us, Greg P. Griffin, Ipek N. Sener

Journal of Public Transportation

Recent studies on transit service through an equity lens have captured broad trends from the literature and national-level data or analyzed disaggregate data at the local level. This study integrates these methods by employing a geostatistical analysis of new transit access and income data compilations from the Environmental Protection Agency. By using a national data set, this study demonstrates a method for income-based transit equity analysis and provides results spanning nine large auto-oriented cities in the US. Results demonstrate variability among cities’ transit services to low-income populations, with differing results when viewed at the regional and local levels. Regional-level analysis …

Systems Of Access: A Multidisciplinary Strategy For Assessing The Social Dimensions Of Sustainability, Christopher Wolsko, Elizabeth Marino, Thomas J. Doherty, Steve Fisher, Amanda S. Green, Briana Goodwin, Ryan Reese, Andrea Wirth

Library Faculty Research

The concept of access to natural resources has been a specific concern of economists and ecologists and is a distinct component in recent models of social sustainability. Using a series of conceptual and empirical examples, this article extends the notion of access broadly to social institutions and sociocultural norms. We argue that access may be usefully construed as an analytic tool that has direct applicability to many sustainability issues as it allows for cross-disciplinary and public engagement. Here the concept of access, linked to Amartya Sen’s theory of capabilities, also makes visible the multi-scaled and interconnected social processes that influence …

Leveraging Disaster: Promoting Social Justice And Holistic Recovery Through Policy Advocacy After Hurricane Katrina, Tanya B. Corbin

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

After disasters, the recovery process is uneven, and often, the social vulnerability of populations before a disaster translates into a lack of access to political power after the event. This study proposes that a large-scale event presents an opportunity to overcome these challenges and improve social, economic, political, and environmental conditions for affected communities during the recovery process by involving advocates for traditionally marginalized community members in the recovery. Using textual analysis to code the testimony of 240 witnesses who testified in 41 congressional hearings held after Hurricane Katrina, witnesses who advocated for policies that addressed social inequities are identified …

Sustainable Chicago 2015: A Political Analysis, Zachary A. Brown

Master's Theses

Over the last decade, many of America's urban areas have developed "sustainability plans" focusing on the long-term viability of their communities. Although many local governments have concentrated on environmental issues, others have incorporated economic and social policies. A new subset of literature has emerged highlighting equity and social justice within the sustainability dialogue. Scholars and practitioners alike argue that true sustainability requires equal access to all three pillars of sustainability for all groups.

Through interviews with public and private actors, as well as content analysis of the plan, this study investigates the structure of the governance network responsible for the …

The Social Value Of Mortality Risk Reduction: Vsl Vs. The Social Welfare Function Approach, Matthew D. Adler, James K. Hammitt, Nicolas Treich

Faculty Scholarship

We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk reduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost–benefit analysis—i.e., the “value per statistical life” (VSL) approach—and various social welfare functions (SWFs). The SWFs are either utilitarian or prioritarian, applied to policy choice under risk in either an “ex post” or “ex ante” manner. We examine the conditions on individual utility and on the SWF under which these frameworks display sensitivity to wealth and to baseline risk. Moreover, we discuss whether these frameworks satisfy related properties that have received some attention in the literature, namely equal value of …

Naming Race: One Foundation’S Path To A Strategy Of Structural Inclusion And Self- Determination, Lori Bezahler

The Foundation Review

· Common wisdom tells us that by placing people of color in leadership roles in philanthropy, there will be a greater emphasis on issues of racial equity and attention to solutions that are rooted in the experiences of people of color. While diverse leadership is a critical component of inclusion, attention must also be paid to the dynamics of power inherent in the relationship between a philanthropic institution and the community it seeks to serve. Foundations must put in place practices that address the inherent inequities in our sector if we are to contribute to systemic change.

· The Edward …

Assessing The Equity Of Transit Supply Distribution In Metropolitan Areas Using Lorenz Curves And Gini Coefficients, Kelly L. Bertolaccini

Master's Theses

The equitable distribution of transit services is a major concern of transportation planners and policymakers worldwide. In the US, planners are required by law to consider equity concerns when investing in new transportation infrastructure and services. However, equity can be difficult to assess in a consistent, objective, and quantitative way. Australian researchers recently developed a single, system wide measure which reflects the horizontal (or spatial) equity of transit service distribution in a metropolitan area. This measure, a variation of the Gini coefficient, specifically measures how well transit supply meets transit demand. While using a single measure to assess the equity …

Keynote: Sustaining Society In The Anthropocene Epoch, Nicholas A. Robinson

Denver Journal of International Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Kaiser Permanente Community Fund’S Social Determinants Of Health Portfolio, Sarah B. Paige, Emily Bourcier, Carol Cahill, Clarissa Hsu, Chris Kabel

The Foundation Review

· Research over the past two decades repeatedly demonstrates the relationship between poor health outcomes and socioeconomic factors such as poor housing, poverty, racism, and structural inequity.

· In 2005, the Northwest Health Foundation, supported by the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund, began an initiative to address these social determinants of health (SDOH).

· A variety of projects – short- and long-term, large and small – were supported over the five-year period for a total of $12.4 million. The mean project-implementation grant was $175,350 and 2½ years in length; capacity-building grants averaged $50,000 for 1½ years.

· In all, 323 social-determinant …

Mixed Agendas And Government Regulation Of Business: Can We Clean Up The Mess?, Thomas M. Arnold, Jerry L. Stevens

University of Richmond Law Review

The purpose of this article is first to navigate through variousperspectives on government regulation in an effort to develop areasonable and consistent view for regulatory proposals. Parts II and III of this article provide a brief outline of our current regulatory environment and its evolution. Part IV presents arguments for an efficient regulation of business by using market based regulation with a separation of efficiency and equity issues, where feasible. Examples of this regulatory approach appear throughout the article along with suggested reforms.