Bob Bolin

Bonding and Bridging Understanding the Relationship between Social Capital and Civic Action

This study investigates the relationship between social connections and collective civic action. Measuring social capital in eight Phoenix, Arizona, neighborhoods allowed the authors to determine that individuals with strong social bonding (i.e., association and trust among neighbors) are more likely to take civic action. However, while social capital lessens the relationship between an individual’s social status and the likelihood of taking action, it does not eliminate the positive relationship. The analysis also suggests that bonding and bridging are distinct forms of social capital that have some different antecedents

Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Disaster Vulnerability

Hurricane Katrina and the disaster that unfolded in its wake provided a stark example of the pervasiveness and perniciousness of race and class inequalities in the United States. The media images constructed an unambiguous story: tens of thousands of mostly low-income African Americans were left to fend for themselves as the city of New Orleans flooded from breached levees on Lake Pontchartrain. Their only refuge was a large sports arena unequipped to serve as an “evacuee center” and devoid of any resources to support the thousands of people who gathered, many arriving only after wading through the toxic flood waters gathering in the city. In a city with a poverty rate of more than 30%, where one in three persons does not own a car, no significant effort was made by government at any level to assist the most vulnerable people to escape the disaster (Alterman, 2005). While Hurricane Katrina momentarily and unavoidably called attention to issues of race and class vulnerabilities, hazards and disaster research has clearly shown that social inequalities are core conditions that shape both disasters and environmental inequalities on a global scale. My goal in this chapter is to discuss what five decades of hazards and disaster research have revealed about race, class, and ethnic inequalities.

The Ecology of Technological Risk in a Sunbelt City

In this paper we examine the spatial distributions of four types of technological hazards in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area. The focus is on the locations of hazardous industrial and toxic waste sites in relation to the demographic composition of adjacent neighborhoods. Our interest is to determine whether hazardous sites, including industrial facilities in the EPAs Toxic Release Inventory, Large Quantity Generators of hazardous wastes, Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities, and federally identified contamination sites, are disproportionately located in areas with lower income and minority residents. We examine patterns of environmental inequity in Phoenix, a sprawling Sunbelt city with a growing post-Fordist industrial sector. First, using 1996 EPA data for four types of technological hazards, and 1995 Special Census data for Maricopa County, we employ a GIS to map the spatial distributions of hazardous sites and to analyze the demographic characteristics of census tracts with and without point-source hazards. A second methodology is used to produce a cumulative hazard density index for census tracts, based on the number of hazard zones—one-mile-radius circles around each facility—that overlay each tract. Both methodologies disclose clear patterns of social inequities in the distribution of technological hazards. The cumulative hazard density index provides a spatially sensitive methodology that reveals the disproportionate distribution of risk burdens in urban census tracts. The findings point to a consistent pattern of environmental injustice by class and race across a range of technological hazards in the Phoenix metropolitan region.

Environmental equity in a sunbelt city: the spatial distribution of toxic hazards in Phoenix, Arizona

Abstract This paper examines the spatial distributions of industrial facilities emitting toxic substances in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan region. The analysis relies on geographic information system mapping of hazardous facilities listed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) to assess the spatial distribution of polluting industries in relation to the demographic composition of host neighborhoods. The research addresses four questions: (1) Are there differences between the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods with and without polluting industrial facilities? (2) Is there a relationship between the volume of toxic chemicals released from industrial facilities and the socioeconomic characteristics of host neighborhoods? (3) Is there a relationship between the toxicity of the chemicals released from industrial facilities and the socioeconomic characteristics of those living in proximity? (4) Do alternative methods for determining the distribution of potentially affected populations produce different observed patterns of environmental inequities? The study concludes that there is a clear pattern of environmental inequity in Phoenix based on the location and volume of emissions of TRI facilities. Analysis of the toxicity of emissions found a more equal distribution of risk, reflecting the suburbanization of high-technology industries into predominantly white middle-class communities.

Situating Hazard Vulnerability: People’s Negotiations with Wildfire Environments in the U.S. Southwest

This article is based on a multimethod study designed to clarify influences on wildfire hazard vulnerability in Arizona’s White Mountains, USA. Findings reveal that multiple factors operating across scales generate socially unequal wildfire risks. At the household scale, conflicting environmental values, reliance on fire insurance and firefighting institutions, a lack of place dependency, and social vulnerability (e.g., a lack of financial, physical, and/or legal capacity to reduce risks) were found to be important influences on wildfire risk. At the regional-scale, the shift from a resource extraction to environmental amenity-based economy has transformed ecological communities, produced unequal social distributions of risks and resources, and shaped people’s social and environmental interactions in everyday life. While working-class locals are more socially vulnerable than amenity migrants to wildfire hazards, they have also been more active in attempting to reduce risks in the aftermath of the disastrous 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire. Social tensions between locals and amenity migrants temporarily dissolved immediately following the disaster, only to be exacerbated by the heightened perception of risk and the differential commitment to hazard mitigation displayed by these groups over a 2-year study period. Findings suggest that to enhance wildfire safety, environmental managers should acknowledge the environmental benefits associated with hazardous landscapes, the incentives created by risk management programs, and the specific constraints to action for relevant social groups in changing human-environmental context.

Characterizing vulnerability to water scarcity: The case of a groundwater-dependent, rapidly urbanizing region

Abstract Groundwater overdraft is a resource management issue that poses a threat for the security of communities. Impacts of groundwater overdraft are influenced by the biophysical and social contexts of water management. This paper presents a method for assessing vulnerability to water scarcity in spatial terms using biophysical and social indicators. A geographic information system was used to establish areas of vulnerability based upon hydrologic variability in water resource availability within a groundwater basin, three types of water management systems, and 10 sociodemographic characteristics. Our study area is in the rapidly urbanizing Arizona Central Highlands, located ~150km north of the Phoenix metropolitan region, USA. Results indicate that the most biophysically vulnerable places do not necessarily intersect with the most vulnerable populations and that local differences in vulnerability are interrelated, rather than independent, outcomes in a process of socioenvironmental transformation. Vulnerability is influenced by laws that deny access to local surface waters and lead to dependence on fossil groundwater, and by economic reliance on urbanization. Localities attempt to reduce vulnerability through the development of community water systems and the expansion of water frontiers. While such strategies may reduce local vulnerability, they are not sustainable solutions because they transfer risks to other places, and thus contribute to vulnerability elsewhere.

Examining the Significance of Housing Enclaves in the Metropolitan United States of America

A significant number of Americans now live in housing that is marked by walls and in many instances by gates. While an increasing amount is written on these enclaves, relatively little research has been done on the developments themselves, the Home Owner Associations (HOAs) that run them, or their residents. This paper draws on the American Housing Survey and the Phoenix Area Social Survey to present demographic information on the housing and to indicate some of the attitudes of these homeowners. The data are used to question some popular conceptions concerning both gated communities and common interest neighborhoods, especially those relating to issues of fear and security, and to the functioning of the HOA. It is argued that it is important to continue the process of empirical research as these phenomena diffuse globally and are the focus of speculation, comment and policy development.

Water resources, climate change, and urban vulnerability: A case study of phoenix, Arizona

This paper examines the security of water resources in Phoenix, AZ, under different scenarios of climate change, consumption patterns, and reductions of available surface water. Phoenix constitutes a key site for examining the projected effects of climate change on water resources in the US West. Water providers in Phoenix rely on a mix of water sources to deliver to their customers. These include groundwater, water from the Salt and Verde River watersheds, water from the Colorado River, and effluent (water reuse). Water providers in Phoenix vary in terms of their access and rights to different sources of water for municipal delivery. As a result, providers differ in terms of their exposure to cut-backs in available water. To assess vulnerability to climate change and reduced water resources available for delivery, we consider two primary questions. (1) Based on current water provider portfolio mixes, what is the current relative security of each providers mix of water sources? (2) Using three different climate change scenarios for the Western USA and projected growth-related demand increases, what patterns of water supply vulnerabilities are likely to manifest themselves in 2030? We map projected supply shortages and discuss implications for the vulnerability of people and places and mitigation strategies.

ZONING AND LAND USE: A TALE OF INCOMPATIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE IN EARLY PHOENIX

ABSTRACT: Little attention has been paid to the role of early land use institutions in development patterns, the creation of disamenity zones of environmental injustice, and the promotion of space-consuming suburban development. This study uses historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and spatial analytic techniques to expose zoning’s tendency to spread disamenities and disperse incompatible land uses in early Phoenix. While on paper Euclidean zoning’s stratification of land uses in Phoenix promotes progressive ideals for reduction of blight and improvement of city health, analysis at a finer scale using Sanborn maps reveals that zoning decisions in Phoenix tended to promote the expansion of fragmented land uses, especially disamenity zones that targeted poor minority neighborhoods. Zoning encouraged the expansion of industry while attracting residents to newly developed suburbs with guaranteed protection from blight.

Emerging Environmental Justice Issues in Nuclear Power and Radioactive Contamination.

Nuclear hazards, linked to both U.S. weapons programs and civilian nuclear power, pose substantial environment justice issues. Nuclear power plant (NPP) reactors produce low-level ionizing radiation, high level nuclear waste, and are subject to catastrophic contamination events. Justice concerns include plant locations and the large potentially exposed populations, as well as issues in siting, nuclear safety, and barriers to public participation. Other justice issues relate to extensive contamination in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and the mining and processing industries that have supported it. To approach the topic, first we discuss distributional justice issues of NPP sites in the U.S. and related procedural injustices in siting, operation, and emergency preparedness. Then we discuss justice concerns involving the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and the ways that uranium mining, processing, and weapons development have affected those living downwind, including a substantial American Indian population. Next we examine the problem of high-level nuclear waste and the risk implications of the lack of secure long-term storage. The handling and deposition of toxic nuclear wastes pose new transgenerational justice issues of unprecedented duration, in comparison to any other industry. Finally, we discuss the persistent risks of nuclear technologies and renewable energy alternatives.