Environmental justice provides a framework for understanding uneven environmental consequences for social groups, with a particular focus on disadvantaged populations. Distributive environmental justice analyzes the distribution of environmental goods and services, often using spatial techniques, to see if such distributions are uneven and unfair. Procedural environmental justice examines the processes of decision-making as both an explanation of outcomes and as a test of fairness itself. Highly segregated cities are likely candidates for environmental injustice because of they are inherently heterogeneous and likely to have uneven outcomes for residents. This paper examines environmental justice outcomes and processes in the very segregated city of Baltimore, Maryland. It asks two questions: 1. Are the distributions of environmental goods (parks and green space) and environmental bads (toxic polluting facilities) uneven and inequitable? Are the processes that created current and past conditions fair and just?
Results/Conclusions
Spatial analyses of the distribution of environmental goods and bads in Baltimore produce unexpected results. Toxic polluting facilities are more likely to occur in white rather than black neighborhoods. Park access is higher in African-American neighborhood than white neighborhoods, although white neighborhoods tend to have access to more park acreage per person. Both unexpected results are the product of a long history of segregation in Baltimore that was inherently unjust. This paper highlights the need to move beyond single time slices in environmental justice analyses and to use historical methods to uncover the dynamics of environmental injustice.