Assessing environmental justice and opportunities for community change: Brownfields redevelopment in Milwaukee's inner-city neighborhoods

This dissertation investigates the process of advancing social and environmental justice through brownlields redevelopment in two projects in Milwaukee's inner-city. the Menomonee Valley and the 30th Street Industrial Corridor. Despite the areas' many social, economic and physical commonalities, the formation and inclusion of social equity redevelopment objectives has been substantially different at the two projects. This dissertation explores what accounted for this distinct local variation and its implications for influencing urban change.;This project builds on the politics of urban planning and redevelopment, and contemporary grassroots strategies for social change by (i) offering insights into the potential and influence of communities in urban governance configurations; and (ii) demonstrating how local differentiations at the neighborhood scale produce uneven and unpredictable socio-spatial effects of redevelopment agendas. Data was collected through forty-live interviews, archival research and observation of forty-five public events.;This dissertation is a compilation of three papers. The first paper compares the different redevelopment partnerships that emerged in the two projects. It demonstrates how, unlike in the Corridor, community engagement in the Valley significantly influenced the partnership-building process and enabled the inclusion of equity objectives in redevelopment agendas, which accounted for major differentiation of the two initiatives.;The second paper explores specific ways in which public participation is constrained in Milwaukee's brownfields agendas. It shows that impediments to participation are (re)produced by the organizational culture and missions of government agencies and their local partners, and the embeddedness of brownfields redevelopment in the exclusionary, professionalized contemporary planning practice.;The third paper focuses on the Corridor project and investigates how local groups managed to represent the interests of disadvantaged residents. It shows that local groups enacted equity objectives in the project's redevelopment agenda through a distinctive set of spatial strategies. including forging extra- and intra-local alliances, reclaiming spaces for public participation and expanding the scale of their efforts.;In sum, this project demonstrates that, in spite of multiple impediments, disadvantaged communities found ways to participate meaningfully and secure a place in redevelopment agendas for social and environmental goals, but not without having to negotiate substantial limitations. constraints and resistance by local government agencies.