Learning on a Dump: A Case Study into Environmental Inequality and Urban Growth Dynamics

• In Event: 1483 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 11. Ecological Crisis and Environmental Justice

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically develop and analyze the ways in which mid-term rebuilding and recovery rhetoric is used post-disaster to promote growth machine initiatives, even those that bring significant risks to end-users. In particular, I focus on the proposal to rebuild a public school in New Orleans that is highly contested due to environmental assessments that confirm worrisome concentrations of highly toxic and carcinogenic elements and the associated health risks conferred to the minority children who will attend. Long-term rebuilding in the wake of disasters stimulates not only the local economy but also determines where people will live, work, and go to school, and by extension what resources will be available to them. It is important to ascertain the social and environmental mechanisms that shape the rebuilding process and subsequent landscape 10 years after the disaster. To do this, I conduct a case study of the rebuilding process of Booker T. Washington High School in the heart of New Orleans. I find that in the wake of disaster, even after 10 years, it is a political untenable position to be against pro-growth agenda even in the face of environmental hazards.

Author

• Clare Cannon, University of California-Davis