The Environmental Injustice Problem and Its Links to Gentrification and Displacement: Literature Review

Racial and ethnic minorities in the US have suffered both from having little access to amenities, and from living close to disamenities. Much evidence on disproportional exposure to environmental disamenities has been accumulated, and evidence is emerging that there is also disproportionality regarding access to environmental amenities such as parks and greenspace. These are environmental justice problems. However, attempts to reduce environmental injustice are not provided in isolation, but are embedded in cities’ and communities’ efforts to renovate and revitalize polluted, segregated, and low-income neighborhoods—and are also embedded in local power dynamics and urban growth-machine politics. Trying to tackle environmental injustice without understanding neighborhood changes that result from pollution remediation and/or the addition of amenities can lead to unintended consequences that aggravate social injustice more broadly. Here we briefly overview issues of environmental injustice, gentrification and displacement, and how these issues are related. As part of this we review the just-green-enough literature.