Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Over the last decade there has been a surge in academic and scientific inquiry into disparities in environmental hazards among diverse communities. Much of the evidence points to a general pattern of disproportionate exposures to toxics among communities of color and the poor, with racial differences often persisting across economic strata. Although results have implications for the politics of environmental decisionmaking, most of these analyses are limited to illustrating how inequities in exposures and health risks are spread across the landscape, while shedding little light on their origins or the reasons for their persistence. Previous attempts to theorize the causes of environmental inequality have focused on procedural justice in the regulatory arena, emphasizing civil rights jurisprudence and social theories on individual and institutional discrimination. Although these approaches offer insights into the epistemology of environmental inequality, they fail adequately to account for the political economy of discrimination relating to industrial location behavior and racialized labor markets. By integrating relevant social and legal theories with a spatialized economic critique, this paper formulates a more supple theory of environmental discrimination. How the political economy of place shapes distributions of people and pollution and ultimately gives rise to environmental inequality are revealed by exploring the following factors: historical patterns of industrial development and racialized labor markets; suburbanization and segregation; and economic restructuring. This multidisciplinary approach to theorizing the dynamic of environmental discrimination provides a new framework for future policymaking and community organizing to address environmental and economic justice. Implications of this broader framework for policy and politics are discussed in the conclusion.

This paper explores the links between housing and other welfare policies, low income, and culture among Pacific peoples within Auckland, New Zealand. These migrant peoples occupy an ambiguous social space within Auckland: they represent the visible face of the world's largest Polynesian city, yet are occupants of some of the city's poorest and least health-promoting housing. Through considering the balance between choice and constraint, we examine how housing costs, poverty, and cultural practices converge to influence household expenditure decisions. Specifically, we are interested in the ways health-promoting behaviours (for example, obtaining fresh food) and utilising health care services are ‘discounted’ (that is, postponed or substituted with cheaper alternatives) because of costs associated with structural changes in housing and the broader policy context. We draw on narratives gathered from in-depth interviews conducted with seventeen Samoan and Cook Island families undertaken in the South Auckland suburb of Otara in mid-2000. Our findings illustrate a lack of ‘fit’ between state housing stock and its occupants. We conclude that, although a recent return to a policy of income-related rents may alleviate these conditions, further longitudinal and community-supported research is required to monitor whether health inequalities are in fact lessened through income-related interventions alone.

An important issue for the geography of health in urban areas concerns how urban change arising from renewal of inner-city areas relates to health of urban populations. In this paper we examine ways in which urban regeneration schemes in Britain are attempting to incorporate consideration of health impact into their planning and development. It concentrates especially on diverse ways that different stakeholders perceive the outcomes of these schemes and the significance for health. The paper is based on two case studies of urban development projects, focusing on housing improvement and training for unemployed people, in a London borough where levels of deprivation are high and various forms of social exclusion affect large numbers of people. The methods used aimed to represent the views of different types of stakeholders, by means of interviews and focus groups with a range of stakeholders in these schemes. Health impact assessment needs to be evidence based. We discuss the evidence for potential health impact of regeneration projects through effects on housing and employment as determinants of health. We focus especially on the ways in which this evidence can be viewed and used by different stakeholders, and how far their perceptions seemed to match with research findings from public health. We consider the potential and the limitations for health improvement associated with urban regeneration in view of the case studies presented here.

The choice of the legal basis for a given measure can influence the procedure by which legislation is adopted, and thereby the scope and content of EU policy. The ambiguity surrounding the choice of legal basis for environmental acts based in Articles 130s and 100a opened the way for a ‘legal-basis game’, where EU institutions chose the legal basis partly on the basis of political considerations. In the period 1987–93, the two most important legal bases for environmental acts (Articles 130s and 100a) were subject to very different procedures for adoption (unanimity and qualified majority voting, respectively). From 1993 onwards, both articles were subject to qualified majority voting. After a general discussion of the choice of legal basis and its significance for policy, this paper examines the choice of legal basis for environmental legislation during the period 1987–99. I conclude that, although the legal-basis game is played out with respect to certain acts, there is little evidence that it is a regular and systematic feature of the policy process in the EU.

The National Assembly for Wales is engaged in the preparation of a national spatial planning framework to provide a context for sustainable development and environmental quality. This paper reports on research undertaken for the Assembly on the preparation of the spatial planning framework and identifies the initial stages in that process. The research itself draws upon a study of policy documents relevant to Wales, a comparative review of strategic spatial planning practices in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, and the identification of the expectations of stakeholders for the framework. The paper illustrates how the concept of ‘spatial planning’ is being addressed and defined in the process of preparing the framework. The material provides an interesting insight into the emergent practice of spatial planning in the United Kingdom through a case study of Wales with wider relevance for spatial planning activity in Europe.

In this paper we explain why the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) is embarking upon a substantial programme of management reform to outsource the management and maintenance of 600 000 units of public rental housing. An international management-reform analytical framework is developed which classifies reforms under the headings of finance, management, ownership, and performance. The application of this framework to reform at the HKHA indicates that the emphasis is upon market-led approaches. The management-reform framework is able to explain aspects of the HKHA approach in relation to searches for reduced costs, downsizing, clearer standards, higher quality, and more customer-responsive services. Alone, however, it is unable to explain fully the reform programme. The housing-policy reforms and the government's aim to increase levels of home-ownership are shown to be major contributory factors to the direction adopted by the HKHA. These case-study findings assert the importance of policy processes for the explanation of management reforms and have implications for the analysis of management reforms in many settings.

This paper is grounded in VALSE (VALuation for Sustainable Environment) methodology, which seeks to understand the ways that concerned people express the ‘values’ of environment. In our research we aim to assess the importance of maintaining these values, and to test the integration of the valuation statements within a real decisionmaking process. The study of the combination of institutional analysis and democratic perspective in land-use conflict in the Canary Islands was used for such assessment and testing. An institutional analysis was carried out in order to account for recent changes in the notion of landownership (through the introduction of environmental and landscape values) and corresponding changes in the institutional framework. A democratic perspective was applied in order to include public expression, debate, and deliberation as valid ways of generating and exchanging knowledge, and as a means of reaching a satisfactory environmental decision. The problem of land use associated with the environmental valuation issue can be adequately understood by studying the social processes responsible for the different land uses. To think in terms of social processes for environmental valuation of the landscape implies concern over a process of collective understanding: the ways values and interests are formed and the way the conflict gives rise to different notions and rules of the game, and to different manners of conceiving and implementing decisionmaking processes and solutions to environmental problems.

We analyse the main barriers limiting the employability of long-term unemployed job seekers within a local labour market characterised by generally high levels of demand. We use four key elements of employability (employability assets, the deployment of assets, the presentation of assets, and context) as an analytical framework in order to analyse the manner in which job seekers' personal characteristics, social and family circumstances, and perceptions of the labour market affect their ability to pursue employment opportunities. The results of interviews carried out with 115 long-term unemployed job seekers show that individual and family circumstances and attitudes towards work and job seeking are likely to be increasingly important barriers given the context of a relative lack of demand-side problems and the availability of lower-skilled jobs in expanding industries. In particular, many long-term unemployed job seekers were reluctant to seek jobs in the expanding service sectors of the local economy. Although the concept of employability provides a useful theoretical and policy framework for analysing long-term unemployment issues, models based upon an employability framework should be expanded to incorporate the role of employers and so integrate supply-side and demand-side perspectives.