Urban environmental inequality and the rise of civil society: The case of Walnut Way neighborhood in Milwaukee

This dissertation explores the implications of neoliberal environmental governance for the present race and income-based green space inequality in Milwaukee. Through the case study of Walnut Way Conservation Corp. (WWCC), a gardening effort led by an African-American community in inner-city Milwaukee, it examines the potential of such civic greening initiatives under neoliberal capitalism towards reducing existing socio-environmental disparities.;This project uses an urban political ecology lens, which is appropriate for understanding the production of Milwaukee's unequal ecologies as a socio-natural hybrid process. Data collected through thirty-eight semi-structured in-depth interviews, two years of participant observation (2006-2008), and archival research is used in this project.;This dissertation is a compilation of three papers. The first paper provides an account of Milwaukee's green space production under neoliberal capitalism. It shows how the city's existing green space inequalities are deepened by state retrenchment and privatization in the realm of environmental management. At the same time it reveals how the increasing involvement of the community-based greening efforts partially ameliorates such inequalities.;The second paper focuses on WWCC gardening initiative and questions whether such an effort can empower a marginalized community that has been historically socio-environmentally deprived. This paper uncovers the complex ways in which the organizational and neighborhood characteristics of the WWCC effort simultaneously facilitate and problematize their ability to empower the Walnut Way community.;The third paper tells the story of a city versus community struggle over a neighborhood park space and its development into a housing project in the Walnut Way neighborhood. This paper reflects on the unequal playing field within which civic initiatives like the WWCC are forced to negotiate their demands vis-a-vis those of the entrepreneurial city.;Therefore, without denying that civic initiatives remain constrained within the present political-economy, the main purpose of this dissertation is to contest the hegemonic representation of inevitable and regressive neoliberalism. The significance of this work therefore lies in its attempt to look beyond neoliberalism. By emphasizing the potential role of the rising civil society within neoliberal governance this project attempts to direct attention to possible alternatives - alternatives that might be more socio-environmentally just.