From the Ground Up: Why Urban Ecological Restoration Needs Environmental Justice

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colette Palamar

While increasing urbanization intensifies the need for ecological restoration in densely populated areas, projects implemented in urban settings are often beset with conflicts stemming from a mismatch between traditional restoration practices and social realities. As ecological restoration practitioners seek to protect and remediate urban ecosystems, I contend that the broad set of principles developed by the environmental justice movement can provide an excellent conceptual framework for integrating social ecologies into restoration plans. Successful integration is constrained, however, by a number of challenges both within the Principles of Environmental Justice and ecological restoration theory and practice. Using a case study of New York City's Green Guerillas community gardening program, I show how the principles can begin to be operationalized to provide an effective grounding methodology for the design, development, and implementation of urban restoration projects.

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-41

05–88Haley, Marjorie Hall (George Mason U, USA). Implications of using case study instruction in a foreign/second language methods course. Foreign Language Annals (New York, USA) 37.2 (2004), 290–300.05–89Lozano, Albert S. (California State U, USA), Padilla, Amado M., Sung, Hyekyung & Silva Duarte M. A statewide professional program for California foreign language teachers. Foreign Language Annals (New York, USA) 37.2 (2004), 301–309.05–90Rilling, Sarah, Dahlman, Anne, Dodson, Sarah, Boyles, Claire & Pavant, Özlem (Kent State U, USA). Connecting CALL theory and practice in pre-service teacher education and beyond: processes and products. CALICO Journal (TX, USA) 22.2 (2005), 213–235.


Author(s):  
Juliana Maantay ◽  
Andrew Maroko

Gentrification is a growing concern in many urban areas, due to the potential for displacement of lower-income and other vulnerable populations. This process can be accelerated when neighborhood “greening” projects are undertaken via governmental or private investor efforts, resulting in a phenomenon termed environmental or “green” gentrification. Vacant land in lower-income areas is often improved by the existing community through the creation of community gardens, but this contributes to these greening efforts and paradoxically may spur gentrification and subsequent displacement of the gardens’ stewards and neighbors. “Is proximity to community gardens in less affluent neighborhoods associated with an increased likelihood of gentrification?” Using Brooklyn, New York as a case study, we examined this question using Geographic Information Systems and two spatial methods: a census block group proximity analysis, and a hot spot analysis, to determine the potential impact of proximity to community gardens in lower-income areas. The results of the analyses suggest that proximity to community gardens is associated with significant increases in per capita income over the five years study period, which is indicative of areas undergoing gentrification. This has implications for environmental justice because existing lower-income residents are likely to be displaced after their community is improved environmentally.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Robert M. Anderson ◽  
Amy M. Lambert

The island marble butterfly (Euchloe ausonides insulanus), thought to be extinct throughout the 20th century until re-discovered on a single remote island in Puget Sound in 1998, has become the focus of a concerted protection effort to prevent its extinction. However, efforts to “restore” island marble habitat conflict with efforts to “restore” the prairie ecosystem where it lives, because of the butterfly’s use of a non-native “weedy” host plant. Through a case study of the island marble project, we examine the practice of ecological restoration as the enactment of particular norms that define which species are understood to belong in the place being restored. We contextualize this case study within ongoing debates over the value of “native” species, indicative of deep-seated uncertainties and anxieties about the role of human intervention to alter or manage landscapes and ecosystems, in the time commonly described as the “Anthropocene.” We interpret the question of “what plants and animals belong in a particular place?” as not a question of scientific truth, but a value-laden construct of environmental management in practice, and we argue for deeper reflexivity on the part of environmental scientists and managers about the social values that inform ecological restoration.


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