Boundaries, Real and Imagined: Race, Class, and Environmental Privilege Along New York City’s Jamaica Bay

• In Event: 211 - Section on Environment and Technology Paper Session. Environmental Inequality

Abstract

On the outer-edges of New York City, at the margins of Brooklyn and Queens, the Jamaica Bay estuary contains diverse wetland ecosystems, teeming with wildlife, and miles of open water and marshes in this crescent-shaped Bay. Roughly one million people inhabit the Jamaica Bay watershed, and one of the world’s busiest airports, John F. Kennedy, extends into the Bay. For many of the people who live, work, play, and pray there, Jamaica Bay is a special place, and provides both proximity to the cultural amenities of New York, as well as an escape from the hustle-and-bustle of city-life. However, not everyone who uses, or wants to use, this space has the same access to Jamaica Bay, its tributaries and marshes. Rather, the legacy of residential segregation combined with the exclusionary propensity of place attachments restricts access to the waters of Jamaica Bay for some, while enhancing access for others, thereby (re)producing environmental privilege. This paper examines how environmental privilege is created and maintain

Author

• Kristen L. Van Hooreweghe, State University of New York-Potsdam