Spatial Justice as a Driver of Health in the Context of Societal Emergencies Proceedings of a Workshop (2023) / Chapter Skim
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5 Public Space 101 for Cross-Sector Partnerships That Can Drive Change
5 Public Space 101 for Cross-Sector Partnerships That Can Drive Change
Pages 47-66
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From page 47... ...
He then briefly introduced the panelists for this session: professor Julian Agyeman from Tufts University; Robin Bronen, executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice; and professor Juan De Lara from the University of Southern California. SPATIAL JUSTICE IN URBAN PLANNING Agyeman noted that "there can be no spatial justice unless we acknowledge and recognize the lands on which we are presently situated," and said he is speaking from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the traditional territory of the Wampanoag and Massachusett people.
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From page 48... ...
• Planned community relocation -- where an entire community (such as an Alaskan Native village) needs to relocate due to extreme weather events -- should be voluntary, done in advance of extreme weather events, sufficiently resourced, focused on rebuilding infrastructure and livelihoods, protective of human rights and social connections, and informed by community-based social health and environmental monitoring.
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From page 49... ...
He added that work done in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated street traffic and social interaction are linked, with more social interactions and friendships on lightly trafficked streets, as illustrated in Figure 5-1. Agyeman further pointed out that given who lives in neighborhoods with the heaviest traffic versus the lightest traffic, there is spatial injustice built into cities, and that this injustice has, in many ways, come through urban planning.
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From page 50... ...
"We can do this," Agyeman said. "We have to have the political will and confidence to do it." He also added that urban planning must be about what is possible instead of probable -- only then will the paradigm shift.
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From page 51... ...
. Agyeman went on to discuss a common urban planning method called Complete Streets, which are intended to be multiuse: "people's streets rather than just conduits for vehicles." However, he said, even as cities explore decentering automobiles and reducing traffic, "Will that result in enhanced livability only for the most privileged or will it result in enhanced livability for all?
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From page 52... ...
Agyeman noted this is a "statement of presence … really good for designing an encounter." He concluded his remarks by emphasizing "the need to move on from pure demographic data" to drilling deeper to understand communities via deep ethnographies co-produced with communities. Agyeman called on the audience to imagine community and an urban planning department working together on an ethnographic analysis of the locality.
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From page 53... ...
SPATIAL JUSTICE IN PLANNED COMMUNITY RELOCATION Bronen, a human rights attorney and interdisciplinary social scientist, opened by noting she works on climate-forced displacement, which she considers one of the greatest challenges related to the climate crisis. She described the people she works with from 15 Alaskan Native communities as "the heart of the work … to decolonize the systems that have caused the communities that we work with to face the awful issue of relocation." Bronen then noted colonization is not only part of the historical past, but also part of the current system of governance.
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From page 54... ...
She went on to note the crux of their work is about planned community relocation -- where an entire community (whether an Alaskan Native village or a neighborhood, city council government, or other jurisdiction) needs to relocate due to extreme weather events combined with slow-onset events like sea-level rise and erosion.
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From page 55... ...
Her team is also working with the tribes to identify relocation indicators, "those social and health and well-being indicators that determine that it is no longer possible to stay where a community is because the land is being submerged and is going to become uninhabitable." Bronen described some of the key governance issues she and her collaborators focus on, beginning with the fact that there is no governance framework in the United States or globally to deal with climate-related community relocation, and that there is no federal or state agency in the United States with the mandate or funding to do this work. Bronen said
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From page 56... ...
She described her work at the international level with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, noting that while there is no human rights document that specifically addresses the rights that need to be protected in the context of climate-related community relocation, there are numerous documents (i.e., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) outlining essential human rights that are relevant to this context (i.e., the right to life, the right to self-determination, the right to traditional foods, the right to practice and revitalize cultural traditions, and the right to improve and maintain livelihoods)
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From page 57... ...
. Bronen said their governance framework aims to center communitybased social health and environmental monitoring with community members gathering environmental impact data using their traditional knowledge, while also working with natural scientists to gather information about ongoing environmental changes and resulting impacts in the community (see Figure 5-2)
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From page 58... ...
Bronen responded that Kerry came to Alaska with President Barack Obama in 2015 specifically because of the advocacy of the Alaskan Native tribes, particularly Kivalina, one of the communities that needs to relocate. That said, she said it is "really important to understand that most governments in the world, including the United States, have zero desire to manage the internal movement of people," both because of the historical legacy previously discussed as well as the complexity of these issues.
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From page 59... ...
He explained that many communities in southeast Los Angeles around the ports "were exposed to cancer-causing diesel pollution that essentially was responsible for the premature death of tens of thousands of Angelenos on a yearly basis." The city and the region undertook an effort to clean up the ports, culminating with the Clean Air Action Plan, which included cleaner train yard operations, cleaner burning fuel for ships, and a cleaner trucks program, as well as implementation of policies to minimize exposure to diesel pollution. De Lara said this was "largely written off as a success" and enabled policy makers "to continue to sup port a regional economy that was seen as beneficial to the region." However, De Lara cautioned that when such issues are examined within a narrow definition of environmental sustainability, "that pre cludes us … from being able to see the wider social effects of specific
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From page 60... ...
De Lara said advocates in those neighborhoods argued that "cleaning up the ports essentially would amount to an increase in truck traffic in inland communities that would further exacerbate social inequalities because many of the communities located near these warehouses and distribution centers were people of color, mostly Latinx and working class." De Lara suggested "massive infrastructure projects" and the metrics used to measure their success need to be more clear about the two issues he posed earlier, namely, how spaces that are built represent existing social inequities and produce new ones. Much of that, he said, has to do with scale, because sustainability "metrics used for site-specific projects do not often include larger issues about society and social inequities." Jackson mentioned that through the 1990s, people were repeatedly told free trade would make life better for everyone by making products less expensive.
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From page 61... ...
" De Lara said one of the things he has focused on is what is meant by "just sustainability." He noted it is important to move away from questions about sustainability that do not include social issues. Instead, he said he would like "a model of sustainability that includes things like racial justice, social justice, and economic justice, because I don't think that we can have a conversation, especially in a place like Southern California, if we are going to adopt economic development models -- even if it's the greener economic development models like Green Ports -- without having a conversation about the kind of human experience that is produced by those economies." De Lara addressed Jackson's example about coming into the Los Angeles airport and flying over places like Wilmington and Lennox with oil refineries and other industrial sources of pollution, saying that this needs to be considered holistically, considering particular projects as well as the broader economic development model the locality has adopted.
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From page 62... ...
On the other hand, he said, "deep policy people don't have a lot of content substance." Agyeman responded that each of the panel presentations highlighted this concern and that one of the reasons he is in urban planning is because the field "is a mile wide and an inch deep." He noted that as an urban planner, one is "a bit of a geographer … a bit of an engineer, a bit of an architect, a bit of an ecologist, a bit of a lawyer" -- a very "intersectional profession." Agyeman said that unlike engineers, who solve problems often without thinking in contextual terms, urban planners do consider context. Yet, he said, he runs a master's program for students to become urban planning professionals and recognizes the problem with professionalism: "It's a closed shop.
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From page 63... ...
"How we put our knowledge to work here is so critical in all of this," Jackson said, adding that "the tribal elders … have a knowledge that is so much broader and richer than the one that somebody who's been reading a book has." Agyeman responded by noting that he has called for "deep ethnographic understandings of communities" instead of relying on demographic data as is currently done. He noted that demographic data "gives us a percentage of Black and Brown and other bodies in the neighborhood, but it doesn't tell us anything about their daily spatial practices, their daily coaching practices, their desires, their wants, their fears." Agyeman said such deep ethnographic understanding is another form of knowledge, and one that should be produced not only by the community, but also by planners, urban designers, and others working with communities.
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From page 64... ...
He noted that affected communities largely "have not had a say in the kinds of spaces that produced and planned for and invested in," and that the current model of development is designed to produce only certain metrics of success, primarily job growth. Bronen responded to Jackson's question about where to invest money from a deep pocket foundation by sharing that her team recently received a multimillion-dollar investment from a philanthropic collaborative to create a relocation governance framework based on human rights.
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From page 65... ...
De Lara said it goes back to "what are the measures of success and how do we measure sustainability and wellness," with community health indi cators driving "more of the kinds of spaces that we create in this society." Bronen said her comments are aimed at young people "to have the courage and strength to continue to persevere in your vision of a world that is just and equitable because it is critically important in the times in which we live." Agyeman responded, "Social justice never simply happens. We need to make it happen." He added that policy makers tend to have economic, technical, environmental, and scientific goals.
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