TY - JOUR
T1 - Urban landscape as mirror of ethnicity
T2 - Trees of the South Plains
AU - Sorrensen, Cynthia L.
AU - Carter, Perry L.
AU - Phelps, Jack
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor and Francis.
PY - 2015/10/3
Y1 - 2015/10/3
N2 - The literatures on urban forestry, environmental justice, and Marxist urban political ecology are considered through empirical attention to the localized racial and ethnic politics which spatially differentiate urban socio-natural landscapes. In the American Southwest, urban landscapes reflect a history in which Anglo Whites were able to distance themselves from spaces of production while gaining access to superior residences and environmental amenities in spaces of reproduction; ethnoracially marginalized Others were treated as necessary yet disfavored populations, thus constituting a segregated mode of production. In this study, we investigate the association between tree canopy cover and the location of urban ethnic minority populations with a focus on the arid Southern High Plains city of Lubbock, Texas. Using data from color infrared aerial photography and block-group demographic indicators from the 2010 US Census, we analyze the citys arboreal landscape with a mix of methods-hierarchical regression, archival research, and field observation. Results confirm that a lack of tree cover in minority neighborhoods is a symptom of broader environmental inequalities in which contemporary segregation patterns reflect a history of residential and land-use zoning with the socio-natural relations of planting and sustaining urban trees.
AB - The literatures on urban forestry, environmental justice, and Marxist urban political ecology are considered through empirical attention to the localized racial and ethnic politics which spatially differentiate urban socio-natural landscapes. In the American Southwest, urban landscapes reflect a history in which Anglo Whites were able to distance themselves from spaces of production while gaining access to superior residences and environmental amenities in spaces of reproduction; ethnoracially marginalized Others were treated as necessary yet disfavored populations, thus constituting a segregated mode of production. In this study, we investigate the association between tree canopy cover and the location of urban ethnic minority populations with a focus on the arid Southern High Plains city of Lubbock, Texas. Using data from color infrared aerial photography and block-group demographic indicators from the 2010 US Census, we analyze the citys arboreal landscape with a mix of methods-hierarchical regression, archival research, and field observation. Results confirm that a lack of tree cover in minority neighborhoods is a symptom of broader environmental inequalities in which contemporary segregation patterns reflect a history of residential and land-use zoning with the socio-natural relations of planting and sustaining urban trees.
KW - environmental justice
KW - racial segregation
KW - urban forestry
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84945445116&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02723638.2015.1039397
DO - 10.1080/02723638.2015.1039397
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945445116
SN - 0272-3638
VL - 36
SP - 1042
EP - 1063
JO - Urban Geography
JF - Urban Geography
IS - 7
ER -