EQUITY AND JUSTICE
The most important climate work of our generation.
Guide to the Page
- Healthy Places Index
- Equity and Justice Data Layers
- Community-based frameworks have never been more important.
- Special Focus: Shade Equity
- Community-Based Planning Tools
- Engaging Communities in the Planning Process: Booklet
- Community-Based Planning Rating System
- In Action: Case Studies in Southern California & Communities Fighting to be Heard in the Inland Empire
Equity and Justice Layers
The Healthy Places Index is a national measure that combines everything from crime rates to air quality. Explore the map below to see where your neighborhood could benefit most.
Some things are visible in maps, and others, not so much. One of the most difficult things to represent spatially is community engagement and integration into the decision-making processes. Or the strength of social networks. Or the difference between policy frameworks and actions on the ground. See below for more.
Community-based frameworks have never been more important.
Addressing the unequal distribution of environmental harms and benefits can be a creative, inclusive process that works toward mutual benefit. Things to remember:
Environmental benefits are
more heavily concentrated in privileged communities.
Environmental burdens are more likely to be located in predominantly minority areas, contributing to health disparities.
Historical inequities, such as redlining and histories of toxic land use, lower property values.
Environmental justice is a movement that focuses on the abolition of environmental harms and increased environmental benefits for all. Access to parks, green space, healthy food, and tree coverage, freedom from exposure to toxins and increased heat, breathable air, clean water, and meaningful community engagement in the planning process can build healthier communities with increased climate resilience.
Community-Based Planning Tools
What is the difference between community-based and technocratic planning?
- Technocratic planning is top-down, in the hands of "experts," and often divorced from community members.
- Community-based planning recognizes the bottom-up expertise of local residents and offers full inclusion in the planning process.
Most planners are not trained in the subtle arts of community engagement. Forming meaningful relationships with community partners that go beyond the box checking required by law is one of the most important ways to get started!
Want to do better? Download handy infographics and a toolkit for community-based planning below! And remember:
- Residents are experts in their own lives and neighborhoods.
- The people closest to the problem are closest to the solution.
- Nothing about us without us.
The Ladder of Community Participation: New and Improved!
Community-Based Planning Rating System
Use the sliders to rate projects, yourself, your elected leaders, or your local planning system on a scale of 1 (Fully Technocratic Planning) to 5 (Fully Community-Based Planning).
Exclusivity
Decisions are made before public input stages/public input is ineffective. Cooption of community voice for project approval but no real or meaningful community engagement. Exclusion is cemented through inaccessible language.
Inclusivity
Ensures that all members of a community have the opportunity to be involved in the decision making process (collaborative decision-making).
Top-Down
Dismissal of community members based on technocratic determinations of 'expertise' and often overrepresentation of developers.
Bottom-Up
Begin project approval with community. Starting with individual micro components and utilizing them to construct a larger system that accounts for smaller pieces.
Cultural Contempt
Disregard for cultural values, knowledge, and historical connection to land. Privatization of natural resources and displacement of human and ecological communities.
Culturally Appropriate
Taking into consideration the cultural values of community members to ensure that the final result reflects something appropriate and respectful to all, including linguistic inclusion.
Unequitable
Divide between deserving and undeserving human communities. Disregard of long-term climate, equity, health, environmental, or other issues.
Equitable
Ensuring that community needs are met in both the short and the long-term and promoting resilience.
Single Loop
Unquestioned assumptions based on archaic views of society drive the planning process, neglecting cumulative impact, boundary crossing, or climate change. Plans created that are harmful to or not valued in resident communities, and lack resilience in the face of pressure or change. Oversimplifies or ignores societal, environmental, and equity complexity that accompanies project planning.
Double Loop
The planning process continuously evolves with the introduction of new knowledge and conditions. Challenges assumptions and continually refines planning process based on the needs of those who the outcomes will affect and based on new inputs or information. More resilient in the fact of pressure or change. Recognizes complex societal, environmental, and equity problems that accompany project planning.
Separate
Planning is divorced from community knowledge and relationships. "Orthodox planning relies on stakeholder engagement in controlled spaces"--JPB Neglects the expertise of community residents about the sociocultural aspects of neighborhood and can lead to cooption of community voice.
Embedded
Embedded planners prioritize street-level engagement by collaborating with residents in public spaces and getting to know community members personally. "We cannot plan from our desks." JPB.
The Inland Empire: Communities Fighting to be Heard
Watch as local communities fight for agency over their neighborhoods in films by our ecodocumentaries students in a special collaboration between the Robert Redford Conservancy and Intercollegiate Media Studies.