Parting the Green Curtain: Tracing Environmental Inequality in Portland, Oregon

This thesis utilizes a lens of environmental justice to analyze the history of Portland, Oregon and the formation of the Albina neighborhood in North Portland to understand how this community became a space of environmental inequality. Portland has been a leader in sustainable development, and yet, even with its successes, the city either been unable or unwilling to address the disproportionate impacts of environmental hazardss on low-income and communities of color in Albina. Through an examination of Portland’s history of segregation, stigmatization of Albina and its residents, housing policies, and urban renewal as they relate to Albina, this thesis traces the processes of covert institutional racism that have resulted in Albina being targeted by environmental risks. The environmental inequality faced by the Albina community stems from a history rooted in segregation and the stigmatization of people and place, through blatant racism, conscious policy making, as well as more discrete and unacknowledged forms of racism that serves to perpetuate the social and environmental problems that confront the community. Furthermore, the city’s attempts to address these issues through urban renewal projects have led to the displacement and gentrification of Albina residents. To address these issues of environmental inequality, there must first be an understanding of the processes and institutions that formed and have perpetuated these inequalities

Beyond "causes of causes": Health, stigma and the settler colonial urban territory in the Negev\Naqab

This article critically analyses and theoretically conceptualises the links between settler colonialism, planning and health. Based on the case of the Bedouin community in the Negev\Naqab, we argue that the production of settler colonial space has a profound impact on health, and should therefore be referred to as a specific category for analysing health disparities, simultaneously entangling territorial control and biopolitics towards indigenous communities. Furthermore, we suggest that this relationship between space and health constructs stigma that justifies and facilitates – in turn – the ongoing territorial control over the indigenous Bedouin population in Israel. By reviewing existing data on health and planning, especially in relation to infrastructure and access to services, we contribute to the growing literature on the nexus of settler-colonialism\health with urban and regional planning. Importantly, throughout this paper we refer to the Bedouin localities as part of the production of urban territory, illuminating the urban as a multidimensional process of political struggle, including the metropolin informal fringes

Managing Diversity in a Glocalizing World

Our daily lives are governed by products and images originating from all over the world, through the process of globalization. At the same time, however, globalization creates favourable conditions for all forms of particularization, localization and even fragmentation. While individuals and groups acquire mul-tiple identities, the resulting plurality gives rise to conflicts, controversies and variations, but also to attempts to live peacefully together, to co-ordinate activities, and to balance interests. The paper thus suggests (1) a plea for compatibility – instead of commonality - with regard to cultural values and (2) a strong emphasis on the interaction model in decision making, i.e. a model which does not advocate uniformity, but the compatibility of views, and in particular, practices. It concerns the coordination and combination of the proper interests of the various actors who have to depend on one another for the satisfaction of their demands or the realization of their objectives.Managing diversity, globalization, localization, glocalization, compatibility, interaction model

Women Out Front: How Women of Color Lead the Environmental Justice Movement

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Environmentalism has incorrectly, historically been canonized as a primarily white, primarily male, led movement. This thesis argues that the history of the environmental movement has been whitewashed. Women of color have been the main arbiters of change as leaders in their community who organize against the environmental degradation that disproportionately affects communities of color. Change is implemented by these women through representation, grassroots organizing, and coalition but these strategies have been unrecognized and undervalued for decades. As the rate of environmental degradation rapidly increases, specifically affecting communities of color, the voices of women of color need to be recognized, elevated, and heeded in order to make an environmental movement that prioritizes justice and the importance of intersectional voice