Racialized spaces: Exploring space as an explanatory variable in environmental justice analysis

It has been almost two decades since the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice (UCC) report concluded that there was a national pattern in the disproportionate siting of hazardous industry in, and around poor neighborhoods and communities of color. This pattern has come to be known as environmental racism and injustice. Despite the numerous empirical studies since the UCC report, the field of environmental justice research has stymied due to recurring methodological debates.; This dissertation expands upon the notion of space as not only a tool to measure disproportionality in environmental justice, but as the starting point in an explanation of environmental racism and injustice. The racialized space hypothesis and its theoretical framework seeks to explain the complex patterns of segregation, containment, and social control that may leave certain communities vulnerable to unwanted land uses.; In fact, space should be included as a social construct in the research model for environmental justice. This study seeks to examine the impact of space in the formation of environmental racism and injustice. Using a geographic dataset of facilities reporting to the 2002 Toxic Release Inventory, a model of exposure is estimated through the calculation of relative potential risk scores (RPRS). The RPRSd is an index variable of volume of chemical releases, their toxicity, and distance to the facility. Bivariate tests supported the claims of environmental justice and gave support to the tenets of the racialized spaces hypothesis. There were significant differences between geographic units that were within the 5-mile exposure zone and those who were not, especially in regards to race. All of the variables also were found to have some level of positive spatial autocorrelation. Relationships between RPRSd and select race and class variables were tested in both linear regression and spatial regression models to understand the impact of space. The spatial regression models were found to explain more of the variation in the relationship between exposure race and class. Furthermore, accounting for space resulted in more conservative estimates of the actual parameter estimates. Through the spatial and statistical tests, race remained a consistent and statistically significant in its relationship with increased exposure.