Christopher G. Boone

Urban land teleconnections and sustainability

This paper introduces urban land teleconnections as a conceptual framework that explicitly links land changes to underlying urbanization dynamics. We illustrate how three key themes that are currently addressed separately in the urban sustainability and land change literatures can lead to incorrect conclusions and misleading results when they are not examined jointly: the traditional system of land classification that is based on discrete categories and reinforces the false idea of a rural–urban dichotomy; the spatial quantification of land change that is based on place-based relationships, ignoring the connections between distant places, especially between urban functions and rural land uses; and the implicit assumptions about path dependency and sequential land changes that underlie current conceptualizations of land transitions. We then examine several environmental “grand challenges” and discuss how urban land teleconnections could help research communities frame scientific inquiries. Finally, we point to existing analytical approaches that can be used to advance development and application of the concept.

Parks and People: An Environmental Justice Inquiry in Baltimore, Maryland

This article examines the distribution of parks in Baltimore, Maryland, as an environmental justice issue. In addition to established methods for measuring distribution of and access to parks, we employ a novel park service area approach that uses Thiessen polygons and dasymetric reapportioning of census data to measure potential park congestion as an equity outcome measure. We find that a higher proportion of African Americans have access to parks within walking distance, defined as 400 meters or less, than whites, but whites have access to more acreage of parks within walking distance than blacks. A needs-based assessment shows that areas with the highest need have the best access to parks but also have access to less acreage of parks compared to low-need areas. Park service areas that are predominantly black have higher park congestion than areas that are predominantly white, although differences are less apparent at the city level than at the metropolitan level. Following Iris Young and others, we argue that conceptions of justice must move beyond distributive justice and address the social and institutional mechanisms that generate inequities. For Baltimore, we examine how segregation ordinances, racial covenants, improvement associations, the Home Owners Loan Corporation, and the Parks and Recreation Board created separate black spaces historically underserved with parks. These mechanisms ultimately fueled middle-class flight and suburbanization and black inheritance of much of Baltimores space, including its parks. If justice demands just distribution justly achieved, the present-day pattern of parks in Baltimore should be interpreted as environmental injustice.

Beyond Urban Legends: An Emerging Framework of Urban Ecology, as Illustrated by the Baltimore Ecosystem Study

ABSTRACT The emerging discipline of urban ecology is shifting focus from ecological processes embedded within cities to integrative studies of large urban areas as biophysical-social complexes. Yet this discipline lacks a theory. Results from the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, part of the Long Term Ecological Research Network, expose new assumptions and test existing assumptions about urban ecosystems. The findings suggest a broader range of structural and functional relationships than is often assumed for urban ecological systems. We address the relationships between social status and awareness of environmental problems, and between race and environmental hazard. We present patterns of species diversity, riparian function, and stream nitrate loading. In addition, we probe the suitability of land-use models, the diversity of soils, and the potential for urban carbon sequestration. Finally, we illustrate lags between social patterns and vegetation, the biogeochemistry of lawns, ecosystem nutrient retention, and social-biophysical feedbacks. These results suggest a framework for a theory of urban ecosystems.

Data and Methods Comparing Social Structure and Vegetation Structure of Urban Neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland

ABSTRACT Recent advances in remote sensing and the adoption of geographic information systems (GIS) have greatly increased the availability of high-resolution spatial and attribute data for examining the relationship between social and vegetation structure in urban areas. There are several motivations for understanding this relationship. First, the United States has experienced a significant increase in the extent of urbanized land. Second, urban foresters increasingly recognize their need for data about urban forestry types, owners and property regimes, and associated social goods, benefits, and services. Third, previous research has focused primarily on the distribution of vegetation cover or diversity. However, little is known about (1) whether vegetation structure varies among urban neighborhoods and (2) whether the motivations, pathways, and capacities for vegetation management vary among households and communities. In this article, we describe novel data and methods from Baltimore, MD, and the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) to address these two questions.

Landscape, vegetation characteristics, and group identity in an urban and suburban watershed: why the 60s matter

As highly managed ecosystems, urban areas should reflect the social characteristics of their managers, who are primarily residents. Since landscape features develop over time, we hypothesize that present-day vegetation should also reflect social characteristics of past residents. Using an urban-to-suburban watershed in the Baltimore Metropolitan Region, this paper examines the relationship between demographics, housing characteristics, and lifestyle clusters from 1960 and 2000 with areas of high woody and herbaceous vegetation cover in 1999. We find that 1960 demographics and age of housing are better predictors of high woody or tree coverage in 1999 than demographics and housing characteristics from 2000. Key variables from 1960 are percent in professional occupations (+), percent of pre-WWI housing (−), percent of post-WWII housing (+), and population density (−). Past and present demographic and housing variables are poor predictors of high herbaceous cover in 1999. Lifestyle clusters for 2000 are very good predictors of high herbaceous coverage in 1999, but lifestyle clusters from 1960 and 2000 are poor predictors of high woody vegetation coverage. These findings suggest that herbaceous or grassy areas, typically lawns, are good reflections of contemporary lifestyle characteristics of residents while neighborhoods with heavy tree canopies have largely inherited the preferred landscapes of past residents and communities. Biological growth time scales of trees and woody vegetation means that such vegetation may outlast the original inhabitants who designed, purchased, and planted them. The landscapes we see today are therefore legacies of past consumption patterns.

Trees grow on money: Urban tree canopy cover and environmental justice

This study examines the distributional equity of urban tree canopy (UTC) cover for Baltimore, MD, Los Angeles, CA, New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Raleigh, NC, Sacramento, CA, and Washington, D.C. using high spatial resolution land cover data and census data. Data are analyzed at the Census Block Group levels using Spearman’s correlation, ordinary least squares regression (OLS), and a spatial autoregressive model (SAR). Across all cities there is a strong positive correlation between UTC cover and median household income. Negative correlations between race and UTC cover exist in bivariate models for some cities, but they are generally not observed using multivariate regressions that include additional variables on income, education, and housing age. SAR models result in higher r-square values compared to the OLS models across all cities, suggesting that spatial autocorrelation is an important feature of our data. Similarities among cities can be found based on shared characteristics of climate, race/ethnicity, and size. Our findings suggest that a suite of variables, including income, contribute to the distribution of UTC cover. These findings can help target simultaneous strategies for UTC goals and environmental justice concerns.

An Assessment and Explanation of Environmental Inequity in Baltimore

In Baltimore, census tracts made up of White, working-class people are more likely to contain a Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) facility than primarily Black census tracts. Differences in race characteristics decrease with larger units of analysis and with the use of half-mile buffers around TRI sites. At the census-tract level, race is the most significant population characteristic, followed by income and education. A long history of residential and occupational segregation may explain the proximity of toxic-release sites to working-class White neighborhoods.

Land fragmentation under rapid urbanization: A cross-site analysis of Southwestern cities

Explosive population growth and increasing demand for rural homes and lifestyles fueled exurbanization and urbanization in the western USA over the past decades. Using National Land Cover Data we analyzed land fragmentation trends from 1992 to 2001 in five southwestern cities associated with Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. We observed two general fragmentation trends: expansion of the urbanized area leading to fragmentation in the exurban and peri-urban regions and decreased fragmentation associated with infill in the previously developed urban areas. We identified three fragmentation patterns, riparian, polycentric, and monocentric, that reflect the recent western experience with growth and urbanization. From the literature and local expert opinion, we identified five relevant drivers – water provisioning, population dynamics, transportation, topography, and institutions – that shape land use decision-making and fragmentation in the southwest. In order to assess the relative importance of each driver on urbanization, we linked historical site-specific driver information obtained through literature reviews and archival analyses to the observed fragmentation patterns. Our work highlights the importance of understanding land use decision-making drivers in concert and throughout time, as historic decisions leave legacies on landscapes that continue to affect land form and function, a process often forgotten in a region and era of blinding change.

Viewing the Urban Socio-ecological System Through a Sustainability Lens: Lessons and Prospects from the Central Arizona–Phoenix LTER Programme

Cities are complex socio-ecological systems (SES). They are focal points of human population, production, and consumption, including the generation of waste and most of the critical emissions to the atmosphere. But they also are centres of human creative activities, and in that capacity may provide platforms for the transition to a more sustainable world. Urban sustainability will require understanding grounded in a theory that incorporates reciprocal, dynamic interactions between societal and ecological components, external driving forces and their impacts, and a multiscalar perspective. In this chapter, we use research from the Central Arizona–Phoenix LTER programme to illustrate how such a conceptual framework can enrich our understanding and lead to surprising conclusions that might not have been reached without the integration inherent in the SES approach. By reviewing research in the broad areas of urban land change, climate, water, biogeochemistry, biodiversity, and organismal interactions, we explore the dynamics of coupled human and ecological systems within an urban SES in arid North America, and discuss what these interactions imply about sustainability.

Ethnic and Class Clustering through the Ages: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Urban Neighbourhood Social Patterns

This paper presents initial findings from longer-term transdisciplinary research concerning the social dynamics of urban neighbourhoods. It examines the spatial clustering of ethnicity and class in neighbourhoods over urban history, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to contemporary cities. Fourteen distinct drivers of social clustering are identified, grouped under the headers of macro-structural forces, the state, local regimes and institutions, and bottom–up processes. The operation of these processes is examined through three historical and three archaeological case studies of clustering. It is concluded that: clustering is a common, but not universal, attribute of cities; there is much variation in clustering patterns, both within and between cities and urban traditions; and, consideration of a wide variety of drivers is required to understand historical and modern residential dynamics.