{"id":11563,"date":"2015-10-23T08:10:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T12:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=11563"},"modified":"2015-10-22T18:49:54","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T22:49:54","slug":"justice-from-the-ground-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2015\/10\/23\/justice-from-the-ground-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice from the Ground Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"12.Soil contamination is a baseline condition for most of the sites I\u2019ve worked on over the past two decades. The toxic imprint derives from industry\u2014steel production, shipbuilding, fabrication of automobile and machine parts, to name just a few\u2014in both urban and rural settings. But it also comes from lead-containing gasoline and paint, banned long ago but still quietly wreaking havoc. It\u2019s a byproduct of the human pursuit of greater material wealth and a more convenient and comfortable life. In other words, it\u2019s the legacy of progress, for better or worse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Landscape design and social justice are inseparable\u2014an extension of Olmsted\u2019s ideal: that city dwellers deserve the physical and mental health benefits provided by open access to nourishing environments, regardless of their social or economic status.<\/blockquote><\/figure>As a landscape designer with expertise in toxic remediation and the regeneration of fallow land, the \u201cbetter or worse\u201d part is vitally important to me. I can say that with certainty, thanks to hindsight and 30 years of academic and professional experience. I didn\u2019t grow up with the term \u201cenvironmental justice,\u201d which came into use in the 1980s to describe, in part, the unequal distribution of the benefits and burdens of progress. But I now know what a growing body of research shows: in the United States there\u2019s a disturbing overlap between the maps showing where poor people and ethnic minorities live, and where contaminated soils exist.<\/span><\/p>\n

You might use a stronger word than \u201cdisturbing\u201d if you or a loved one were to develop a learning disability, cancer, or liver damage, which are just three of the many proven ill-effects of poisoning by lead, arsenic, and other pernicious elements found in soil. As I write this essay, residents of Vernon, California, in East Los Angeles, a low-income and largely Latino community, were celebrating a bittersweet victory, after forcing the closure of a battery recycling plant owned by New Jersey\u2013based Exide Technologies. The sickening part of the story, pun intended, is that the plant operated for two decades<\/i> after its environmental violations were first reported to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). Both the cleanup efforts (just 150 of 10,000 contaminated properties were reported to have undergone soil remediation as of early October) and the official response have been weak. \u201cAll of us could have acted sooner to develop a more complete picture of what the operations of that facility meant to the health of the residents around it,\u201d DTSC director Barbara A. Lee said. She hastened to add that \u201cthe department had tried to shut down the facility in the past but the courts blocked the effort,\u201d according to one published report.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I read that I chuckled sadly to myself. It reminded me of an exchange I had a few years ago with a high-ranking city official with oversight of a new development for low-income residents I was working on. The developers were eager to start construction, to show \u201cprogress,\u201d so they broke ground before testing the soil. Sure enough, the dirt was hot. I had joined the project late, when the momentum to build the inaugural prototype house was unstoppable. But when I learned the test results, remediation was still possible, and regardless, I was bound to report them. I still get a pit in my stomach when I think of the official\u2019s response, which went something like this: The city has enough problems that are plain to see, so let\u2019s not add to them by disclosing a difficult truth, especially one that\u2019s invisible. To my disappointment, the project team elected not to address the contamination, and I was politely excused from the job.<\/span><\/p>\n

To me, it\u2019s common sense to start every project with the assumption of site pollution. So the natural thing to do\u2014the right<\/i> thing to do\u2014is to determine the type and extent of toxicity, and incorporate that information into your design strategy and development plans. That\u2019s my vision of the landscape designer\u2019s role in creating a just city: Scrutinize the site right down to the molecular level, identify who\u2019s in harm\u2019s way and of what, and push decision makers to take active steps to remediate the bad stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n

That simple idea\u2014the opposite of the prevailing \u201cdon\u2019t dig, don\u2019t tell\u201d mentality\u2014was the driving principle of one of my most significant collaborations. Big Mud was D.I.R.T. Studio\u2019s contribution to Operation Paydirt, the brainchild of the ingenious conceptual artist Mel Chin. Like many of Chin\u2019s initiatives, Paydirt\u2014which launched in 2006 and continues to this day\u2014focuses on social justice. D.I.R.T. participated in the project from 2007 to 2009, helping to devise an implementation strategy to address the high lead content in New Orleans\u2019 soil\u2014in other words, a social recipe for just ground.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I wrote in the anthology Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design<\/i>, Big Mud proposed a landscape-recovery strategy that takes into account the many physical and social scales within which New Orleans, like all cities, functions. Working with local lead soil expert Dr. Howard Mielke, we helped reveal the \u201cgeography of lead.\u201d Our team then concocted a way to treat leaded soil, by amending it with phosphates and adding clean fill. The phosphates bond with lead to form pyromorphite, which is insoluble in water, neutralizing the toxicity. Clean river sediment abounds in New Orleans from alluvial deposits piled on shore during flooding. Put a layer of that rich Mississippi mud over the phosphate-treated soil, plant trees, et voila\u2014a healthy landscape. Implementation called for the training and employment of community members to collect, stockpile, and deliver the ingredients from a network of holding sites that range in size from extra large distribution hubs we called Mud Depots to smaller Mud Markets, like a neighborhood garden center.<\/span><\/p>\n

This implementation strategy has yet to be realized. But Paydirt and Big Mud were, and still are, hugely important to me. They crystallized my core belief that landscape design and social justice are inseparable. This notion is actually an extension of Frederick Law Olmsted\u2019s ideal: that city dwellers deserve the physical and mental health benefits provided by open access to nourishing environments, regardless of their social or economic status.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today I aspire to a similar social imperative but face a different urban landscape, one where poor people and poor soils often go together. To address this inequity\u2014which weakens families and communities through higher instances of illness and learning disabilities, as well as nervous and emotional disorders\u2014I offer a simple proposal. Always test the soil before you create places where people will live, work, and play. If it\u2019s toxic, address it. As Mel Chin said of post-Katrina New Orleans, we have the opportunity to rebuild \u201cfrom below the ground up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Social justice\u2014and soil remediation\u2014must be built into the foundation of a just city. It\u2019s a solution that\u2019s as simple as dirt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Julie Bargmann
\n<\/span><\/strong>Charlottesville<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Just City Essays<\/i> is a joint project of The J. Max Bond Center, Next City and The Nature of Cities. \u00a9 2015 All rights are reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soil contamination is a baseline condition for most of the sites I\u2019ve worked on over the past two decades. The toxic imprint derives from industry\u2014steel production, shipbuilding, fabrication of automobile and machine parts, to name just a few\u2014in both urban and rural settings. But it also comes from lead-containing gasoline and paint, banned long ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":11564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[299,297,524],"tags":[96,57,392,84,89,558,62],"coauthors":[568],"class_list":["post-11563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-place-and-design","category-essay-science-and-tools","category-justcity","tag-ecosystem-services","tag-health","tag-justice","tag-livability","tag-pollution","tag-soil","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11563"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}