Race And The Greening Of Atlanta

Race and the Greening of Atlanta turns an environmental lens on Atlanta’s ascent to thriving capital of the Sunbelt over the twentieth century. Uniquely wide ranging in scale, from the city’s variegated neighborhoods up to its place in regional and national political economies, this book reinterprets the fall of Jim Crow as a democratization born of two metropolitan movements: a well-known one for civil rights and a lesser known one on behalf of “the environment.” Arising out of Atlanta’s Black and white middle classes respectively, both movements owed much to New Deal capitalism’s undermining of concentrated wealth and power, if not racial segregation, in the Jim Crow South. Placing these two movements on the same historical page, Christopher C. Sellers spotlights those environmental inequities, ideals, and provocations that catalyzed their divergent political projects. He then follows the intermittent, sometimes vital alliances they struck as civil rights activists tackled poverty, as a new environmental state arose, and as Black politicians began winning elections. Into the 1980s, as a wealth-concentrating style of capitalism returned to the city and Atlanta became a national “poster child” for sprawl, the seedbeds spread both for a national environmental justice movement and for an influential new style of antistatism. Sellers contends that this new conservativism, sweeping the South with an antienvironmentalism and budding white nationalism that echoed the region’s Jim Crow past, once again challenged the democracy Atlantans had achieved.

The Green City and Social Injustice examines the recent urban environmental trajectory of 21 cities in Europe and North America over a 20-year period. It analyses the circumstances under which greening interventions can create a new set of inequalities for socially vulnerable residents while also failing to eliminate other environmental risks and impacts. Based on fieldwork in ten countries and on the analysis of core planning, policy and activist documents and data, the book offers a critical view of the growing green planning orthodoxy in the Global North. It highlights the entanglements of this tenet with neoliberal municipal policies including budget cuts for community initiatives, long-term green spaces and housing for the most fragile residents; and the focus on large-scale urban redevelopment and high-end real estate investment. It also discusses hopeful experiences from cities where urban greening has long been accompanied by social equity policies or managed by community groups organizing around environmental justice goals and strategies. The book examines how displacement and gentrification in the context of greening are not only physical but also socio-cultural, creating new forms of social erasure and trauma for vulnerable residents. Its breadth and diversity allow students, scholars and researchers to debunk the often-depoliticized branding and selling of green cities and reinsert core equity and justice issues into green city planning—a much-needed perspective. Building from this critical view, the book also shows how cities that prioritize equity in green access, in secure housing and in bold social policies can achieve both environmental and social gains for all.

Green Gentrification looks at the social consequences of urban "greening" from an environmental justice and sustainable development perspective. Through a comparative examination of five cases of urban greening in Brooklyn, New York, it demonstrates that such initiatives, while positive for the environment, tend to increase inequality and thus undermine the social pillar of sustainable development. Although greening is ostensibly intended to improve environmental conditions in neighborhoods, it generates green gentrification that pushes out the working-class, and people of color, and attracts white, wealthier in-migrants. Simply put, urban greening "richens and whitens," remaking the city for the sustainability class. Without equity-oriented public policy intervention, urban greening is negatively redistributive in global cities. This book argues that environmental injustice outcomes are not inevitable. Early public policy interventions aimed at neighborhood stabilization can create more just sustainability outcomes. It highlights the negative social consequences of green growth coalition efforts to green the global city, and suggests policy choices to address them. The book applies the lessons learned from green gentrification in Brooklyn to urban greening initiatives globally. It offers comparison with other greening global cities. This is a timely and original book for all those studying environmental justice, urban planning, environmental sociology, and sustainable development as well as urban environmental activists, city planners and policy makers interested in issues of urban greening and gentrification.

"A serious but often overlooked impact of the random, unplanned growth commonly known as sprawl is its effect on economic and racial polarization. Atlanta, Georgia, one of the fastest growing areas in the country, offers a striking example of sprawl-induced stratification." "Sprawl City uses a multidisciplinary approach to analyze and critique the emerging crisis resulting from urban sprawl in the ten-county Atlanta metropolitan region. Local experts including sociologists, lawyers, urban planners, economists, educators, and health care professionals consider sprawl-related concerns as core environmental justice and civil rights issues."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

It is difficult to turn on the television or read a news story today without learning about how green and sustainable practices are being implemented throughout society. Libraries are not exempt from these broader trends. In some cases, libraries and librarians have been at the forefront of these efforts. Greening Libraries provides library professionals with a collection of articles and papers that serve as a portal to understanding a wide range of green and sustainable practices within libraries and the library profession. The book's articles come from a variety of perspectives on a wide range of topics related to green practices, sustainability and the library profession. Greening Libraries offers an overview of important aspects of the growing green library movement, including, but not limited to, green buildings, alternative energy resources, conservation, green library services and practices, operations, programming, and outreach.

Over the last decade research exploring green infrastructure planning has burgeoned. Transferable green infrastructure messages between locations though are less well established and there remains a visible gap between the conceptual understanding of green infrastructure and its application in practice. Drawing together evaluations of green infrastructure policy-making and practice from across the world Global Green Infrastructure illustrates where successful practices can be identified. Examples from major green infrastructure development areas in the UK, Europe and the USA highlight the variety of investment options that can deliver socio-economic benefits. There is also a growing awareness of the added value of landscape planning in the rapidly developing cities of India and China. Reflecting on ten international case studies Global Green Infrastructure highlights the ways that ecology and engineered solutions can deliver successful urban development. Based on in situ research with the growing community of green infrastructure researchers and practitioners Global Green Infrastructure looks at the contradictions, consensus, and expanding evidence base of successful investments. This book also presents an in-depth commentary on the contemporary approaches to investment in urban greening and green infrastructure, and draws on the lessons we have learnt from a decade of experimentation, delivery and reflection.

The Greening of Protestant Thought traces the increasing influence of environmentalism on American Protestantism since the first Earth Day, which took place in 1970. Robert Booth Fowler explores the extent to which ecological concerns permeate Protestant thought and examines contemporary controversies within and between mainline and fundamentalist Protestantism over the Bible's teachings about the environment. Fowler explores the historical roots of environmentalism in Protestant thought, including debates over God's relationship to nature and the significance of the current environmental crisis for the history of Christianity. Although he argues that mainline Protestantism is becoming increasingly 'green,' he also examines the theological basis for many fundamentalists' hostility toward the environmental movement. In addition, Fowler considers Protestantism's policy agendas for environmental change, as well as the impact on mainline Protestant thinking of modern eco-theologies, process and creation theologies, and ecofeminism.

Making Healthy Places surveys the many intersections between health and the built environment, from the scale of buildings to the scale of metro areas, and across a range of outcomes, from cardiovascular health and infectious disease to social connectedness and happiness. This new edition is significantly updated, with a special emphasis on equity and sustainability, and takes a global perspective. It provides current evidence not only on how poorly designed places may threaten well-being, but also on solutions that have been found to be effective. Making Healthy Places is a must-read for students, academics, and professionals in health, architecture, urban planning, civil engineering, parks and recreation, and related fields.