The actual paper I answered in class. But since im not doing t.docx

The actual paper I answered in class. But since im not doing the
paper I rather have the writer do all the reflections as well
Sustainable Cities
Sustainable development history and terminology
8/29/19
· Sustainable development started post WW2 late 1960s, rising
living standards worldwide
· Concerns about overpopulation, “one earth”, suburban
expansion, limits natural resources, pesticides, nuclear weapons
· 1969 International Union for Conservation of Nature declared
environmental harm from economic development (but it is
possible to develop without harm to environment)
· 1972 create The Limits of Growth and Blueprint for Survival –
Weight in on planet and future, alarmist of industrial society
with predictions of global collapse
· 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment,
Stockholm – talk about society and the environment
· 1987 publication of Our Common Future, Development term
everyone uses (more familiar). Report talked about resource
distribution to poorer nations to encourage economic growth,
thought of future generations living in our world.
· Sustainable Development: The development that meets the
need of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs (pg. 8)
· 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio

“Earth Summit” agenda 21) Conference talked about
relationship of protecting environment and developing the
planet. Mainstreamed the call for sustainable development.
Agenda 21 was produced that improved human lives and
protected the environment.
· 2000 Millennium Summit of the UN New York. 8 millennium
development goals targeted Reduction of extreme poverty,
protect vulnerable populations (targeted developing countries)
· 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development – agreed
to reduce poverty, protect environment
· 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio) later
occurred 2015 UN Sustainable Development Conference and
later next one in 2030 goals (17 of them)
· Sustainability and sustainable development relationship
(Sustainability: A state, or set of conditions persisting over
time) (Sustainable development: the process by which
sustainability can be achieved. An action-oriented version of the
term “sustainability”)
9/2/19
· Early 19th century concerns about industrial cities:
· 1) Living conditions of working class (sanitation, sewers,
clean water)
· 2) Human-nature separation
· 3) Industrial impacts on the environment (de-forestation, air
pollution)
· 4) Suburban encroachment on natural areas
· When did we start talking about sustainable development and
urban settings?
· 1975: United Nations Habitat and Human Settlements
Foundation (Give money and technical foundation)
· 1976: United Nations Conference on Human Settlements,
Vancouver (“Habitat I” )
· 1977: United nations Commission of Human Settlements is
established; UN Centre for Human Settlements (“Habitat”)

· “Tangible yet timid” calls its own work tangible but timid
(because 2/3 of humanity were in rural settings – about
urbanization)
· Responsibility for sustainable urban development scaled down,
from UN and national gov. to local govs.
· 1990: International Council on Local Environmental
Initiatives (now called ICLEI) they help local governments
around the world develop sustainability programs
· 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (they talked about environment at the conference)
· Local Agenda 21: focus on cities, and authorities unfolding a
local plan of action for developing the city sustainability. Very
important for making cities around the world develop
sustainability initiatives.
· 1996 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements
(“Habitat II” “City Summit”)
· 2002: Habitat is elevated to program status: United Nations
Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat)
· 2015 UN Sustainable Development Conference: Sustainable
Development Goals for 2030 are approved (Make Cities and
human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable)
· 2016 United nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable
Urban Development “Habitat III” signed onto New Urban
Agenda to set a new global standard for developing new
sustainable cities (what they should look like) – economic
prosperity, cultural and social well-being (cities center of it),
protecting the environment
· Why plan for sustainable development at local scale, in cities?
· Global sustainability is the end goal “A sustainable city is
essentially one that contributes effectively to the global aims of
sustainable development”
· So why should planning for global sustainability occur at the
local scale, in cities? “The extent to which the 21st century
world will be ‘sustainable’ depends in large part on the
sustainability of cities”

· On planning for SD at the local scaled
· The subsidiarity principle: An organizing principle of
decentralization (idea where least centralized authority should
handle the issue) like Democracy where decisions are made
close as possible to citizen
· Local governments and citizens have the strongest potential to
do sustainable development well
· 1) Knowledge of local citizens, organizations, etc.
· 2) Judgment of local authorities
· 3) Local human-environment relations; responsiveness of local
authorities
· On planning for SD at the local scale
· Are there other reasons why it may be more effective for local
authorities, rather than national or international authorities, to
guide local/urban sustainability planning?
· 1) Specific ideas for specific areas, easier to get the message
out to your city and win them over when it takes long to go
through the nation, local people are more invested into their
environment.
9/5/19
· Planning sustainable development: the “Three E’s”triangle
· 1) Environment – What it is? What should we do to it?
Amazons, Yosemite, forests, soil, urban wildlife, parks and
greenspaces, ponds and oceans, air, work environment
(chemical composition of your walls like led in the paint…). |
Protection, conserve it, preserve it, environmental restoration of
depleted nature – ex Los Angeles river restoration by taking
away concrete they made so that it would flood before but now
so it looks natural and will serve wildlife and aesthetically
pleasing)
· 2) Economy – What should we do to it? Measure of success?
Scale? Economic growth, where industry can flourish, attract
residents, adding business, adding jobs. | How many jobs are in

your city, tax revenue... to measure economic success. Change
to apply necessities to everyone, alternative economies like
bartering… | Scale is like property values of a neighborhood/
· 3) Equity – Equity and justice (Equity- the notion of sharing
burdens and benefits) (Justice – the notion of righting a wrong)
Integrational equity (between different generations, people alive
in the future have same opportunity in the past to meet their
means) and Intergenerational equity (everyone alive right now)
4 categories of it: social equity / distributive justice (resources
and benefits are distributed to all groups, like clean air, or more
Greenland natural places like Yosemite… Negative ones are like
new industrial areas create more pollution and are their certain
social classes that experience it), geographic equity (does one
environment effect another? You should not grow at the expense
of others.. like china) procedural equity (how people and social
groups are treated during social transactions like transparency
through planning making and city decisions)/ corrective or
commutative justice, interspecies equity (placing the survival of
human specifies on par with plant or animals, all species have
the same right to existence, make sure we don’t make the
species go out of extinction) . Positive effects and negative
effects of economic growth effects everyone equally.
· 4th goal: A social dimension, or livability: “Livability
operates at the level of the everyday physical environment and
focuses on place making”
· Place: a geographic setting that is meaningful to you, because
of your experiences, interactions, and memories there
· The importance of an expanded conceptualization of livability
to sustainable development
· What are the qualities, attributes of a livable city? People
want to live there
Attributes of a livable city to you?
· Access to the ocean and a city that is always awake

9/10/19
Two visions of contemporary urban planning
· Sustainable Development: Seeks to reconcile the conflicts
among economic development, ecological preservation, and
equity
· Livable Communities: Livability operates at the level of the
everyday physical environment and focuses on place-making
(Godschalk)
· These give us four goals of urban sustainability planning: To
Protect /improve
Integration or holism
· “…Planners usually represent one particular goal… while
neglecting the other two. … the gap between the call for
integrative, sustainable development planning… and the current
fragmentation of professional practice (Campbell 1996:297)
· “when all values cannot be represented, sustainability cannot
be promoted by a plan.” (Berke 2002:31)
· It is imperative to integrate all four priorities into planning
practice if sustainable development is the end goal.
Newell et al. 2013
· Integration of sustainability goals in the context of green
infrastructure planning: urban alley greening programs.
· Green infrastructure is our nation’s nature life support system-
an interconnected network of waterways. Wetlands, wildlife
habitats and other natural areas; greenways, parks, and other
conservation lands; working farms, ranches and forests; and
wilderness and other open spaces that support native species,
maintain natural ecological processes, sustain air and water
resources and contribute to the health and quality of life for
America’s communities and people.” Green infrastructure work
group, quoted in benedict and Mcmahon 2002:12)
· Green infrastructure is a sustainable development tool’
Background on alleys in us cities

· Popularized as a design feature in us cities in the mid late
1800s
· Two primary historical functions of urban alleys: service,
housing (made alleys so it would be looking prettier, put trash
cans and service entrances to be located, put crates with lifts to
second floor, delivery stuff, all this stuff made out of public
view. Pretty sidewalks were the goal.)
· Alleys had alley housing from 1840-1950 where urban
immigration were housed (From Europe), laborers from rural
areas who went to industrialized cities to get jobs, free African
Americans came too and all lived there. (predominately black
people after WW2) Working class or working poor lived there.
17,000 people living in 230 alleys Washington D.C. 1897.
Profitability were from people who owned the houses and made
these alley homes for profit.
· Early-mid20th century, alleys fall out of favor as they are an
unnecessary feature, bad reputation (sanitation services
evolved). Now trash bins came and trash services came to pick
it up.
· “Crowd standing around the partially clad corpse of Edith
Bolt, found in an alley at 54th Street and Morgan” – Chicago
Daily News, 1926
· Culminates in exclusion of alleys from new developments and
in urban renewal strategies. (Role of Federal Housing
Administration; role of urban renewal policy) – they set out of a
set of standards, for new residential developments. Safer
investments, FHA determined what a good neighborhood looked
like,
Urban Alleys in the post WWII era
· Alleys qcquire more negative associations: Invasive to
residential privacy, further links to crime, …most existing
alleys in US cities are remnants of prep-1930s developments
(thought of alleys as prostitution, killing… nobody wants a
house there now)
· Revived interest in alleys’ roles in cities: New urbanism: build
sense of community | Sustainability planning: Repurpose

underused spaces (eva)
Environmental protection, economic and equity
9/17/19
Conflict minimization/management
· “…planners must reconcile… at least three conflicting
interests: to “grow” the economy, distribute this growth fairly,
and in the process not degrade the ecosystem.” (Campbell
1996:297)
· “The three points on the triangle represent divergent interests,
and therefore lead to three fundamental conflicts.” (Campbell
1996:298)
· “If the three corners of the triangle represent key goals in
planning, and three axes represent the three resulting conflicts,
then I will define the center of the triangle as representing
sustainable development: the balance of these three goals.”
(Campbell 1996:301)
· - For us, this concerns 4 corners, 4 axes, and the
“sustainability/livability prism” (Godschalk 2004)
Conflicts
· 1) Economy v Equity: the property conflicts (Examples:
conflicts over minimum wages; over property values)
· 2) Equity v Environment: The development conflict
· 3) Environment v Economy: The resource conflict
· 4) Equity v Livability: The gentrification conflict
· 5) Livability v Economy: The growth management conflict
· 6) Environment v livability: The green cities conflict
The property Conflict
· Economic growth can create new inequalities or exacerbate
existing inequalities between social groups
· Remedying an inequitable situation can impede economic
growth

· Beyond “property”
Economy v Equity
· Example 1: Proposal to raise the City of Los Angeles
minimum wage by $5
· What does equity mean in context of wages? (Wages increase -
> better access to basic resources)
· What does economic growth mean in the context of wage
(wage stability –> attractive to industry)
· How might enhancing equity negatively impact economic
growth in this scenario? (might scare away companies
· How might economic growth negatively impact equity in this
scenario? (if you keep wage stable you don’t close the wage
gap)
·
· Example 2: Boyle Heights
· Economic growth means values increase -> more property
taxes
· What does equity mean in the context of property values?
(Values or stable -> residential stability)
The gentrification conflicts
· Godschalk (2004) specifies that this conflict is the context of
older, lower-income urban neighborhoods that don’t
demonstrate livable design principles
· Livability improvements can result in lower-income social
groups being displaced prioritizing equity may mean avoiding
livability improvements
· Can be extrapolated to new communities too
Property taxes will increase if u do better for that environment
which can push them out for richer people to live there,
gentrification. So do you want to allow lower income
populations to live there or make the neighborhood “livable” by
redeveloping it and attracting people to pay the higher cost to
liver there now.

Livability v economy: the growth management conflict
Proioritizing economic growth can detract from livability
Prioritizing livability can hinder economic growth
09/19/19
· Gentrification: The process of “the gentry” moving into an
area (Property values increase in the area because of demand for
housing near amenity X)
· Displacement: The phenomenon of lower-income (relative to
the income of the gentrifies) populations being displaced from
the area
· Lower-income homeowners cannot afford to pay their rising
property taxes. Lower-income renters cannot afford to pay the
rising rents passed on to them by the property owner
Environmental gentrification
· The general environment gentrification process: environmental
improvements making a neighborhood more attractive, driving
up real estate prices, and thus displacing lower-income
populations
· Environmental improvements can take many forms, similar
terms are: green gentrification, ecological gentrification
gentrification
· Environmental gentrification: “The exclusion, marginalization,
and displacement of long-term residents associated with
sustainability planning or green developments and amenities,
such as smart growth, public park renovations, and healthy food
stores.” (Pearsall and Anguelovski 2016)
· Ecological gentrification: “The implementation of an
environmental planning agenda related to public green spaces
that leads to the displacement or exclusions of the most
economically vulnerable human population-homeless people –

while espousing an environmental ethic” (Dooling 2009)
· Environmental gentrification can be the outcome of poor
management of:
1) The development conflict (environmental
protection/restoration versus equity)
2) The gentrification conflict (livability versus equity)
3) The property conflict (economic development versus equity)
The Atlanta beltline
· A project that may be implicated in an environmental
gentrification process
· Which of the three equity related conflicts are at hand?
Economic development, made Atlanta shops around livability
stimulating local economy.
· Primary funding source: The Beltline tax allocation district
(TAD)… Increases in TAD property tax revenues are directed
towards Beltline project expenses, Rising property values are an
expectation and a funding necessity
· Property values rose in Atlanta from 2011-2015, 18-27%
increase of home values that were ½ mile away from Beltline.
· The question is if these people can now afford to pay their
property taxes? (Since they rose)
· Existing homeowners and renters were not helped or anything.
· So low-value property owners experience higher property tax,
renters have high property tax increases passed onto them in
rent, Little progress on new affordable housing
The Kendall Yards Project
Former railyard; West Central Adjacent. Two parts:
remediation, then redevelopment. Which of the three equity
related conflicts are at hand? All of them, Development,
grentrification, and property conflict with the economy
9/24/19

Environmental Gentrification
· The general process: Environmental improvements make a
neighborhood more attractive, driving up real estate prices, and
thus displacing lower income populations
· Environmental Gentrification can be the outcome of poor
management of: the development conflict (environmental
protection/restoration versus equity), the gentrification conflict,
the property conflict
Minimizing displacement stemming from environmental
gentrification
· Policy mechanisms are
1) Affordable housing production
2) Affordable housing preservation
3) Tenant protections and support
4) Neighborhood stabilization and wealth building
Conflict minimization
· Conflict management/minimization/mitigation is critical part
of planning for urabn sustainability
· Today: Managing environmental gentrification and
displacement that strem
Heading off the environmental gentrification process
· “Just green enough”: A potential strategy to head off the
environmental gentrification process set off by environmental
remediation and redevelopment
· Just green enough: In the most general sense, it means doing
just enough greening (remediation, or new parks or more
trees…) To help current residents, but not enough greening to
harm those residents.
09/26/19
Assessing urban sustainability
· Measuring progress towards sustainability

· Measuring commitment to sustainable development
· Sustainable indicator: measurable characteristic that
represents a sustainability goal or part of a sustainability goal
· As articulated in Santa Monica Sustainable City plan (2014) –
(Goal area – goal – indicator – target)
10/3/19
Early scholarly assessments of urban commitment to
sustainability
· Portney 2003/2013
· Sample (2013: The largest US cities)
· Index of Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously (38 indicators)
(you get points per sustainability act each is = 1) it is scoring
and rankings
Later scholarly assessments of urban commitment to
sustainability
· Saha and Paterson 2008
· 36 initiatives, equal number relating to environmental, equity,
economic initiatives
· environmental initiatives were most likely to be adopted,
equity was least likely to be adopted
· perceived incapability of local governments to address
social/equity issues
· had lack of funding for equity (instead economic development
had the funding)
· Finn and McCormick 2011 (Chicago, LA, NYC climate change
plans)
· Environmental protection, procedural equity (fairness in
public perceiving’s), geographical equity, social equity,
equitable economic development, green economic development,
traditional economic development
· Each plan demonstrated little to no attention either to 1+

equity category
Schrock et al. 2015
· What are their key findings regarding whether the 28 cities are
making equity a prominent them in their SAPs/CAPs?
· Only 36% of the cities scored a 2 or higher (making it a
prominent theme)
· They did not value procedural equity or geographic equity as
much, but instead mainly social equity
· If you’re late to drafting an equity plan, you have more
knowledge on it all vs people before
· Average equity rating is 1.30
· Capacity is the most important for which factor appeared to be
most important,
· Depends on local planning issues on race and ethnicity, to
engage community
Key takeaway from this research
· Equity is systematically deprioritized in urban sustainability
planning. This is a real and troubling phenomenon throughout
urban sustainability planning, not limited to a handful of cities
or cases
· Prioritizing other planning goals and/or failing to look out for
equity implications of those goals can exacerbate inequalities
and cause new injustices.
· “… a clear set of economic and environmental objectives
advanced under the premise of sustainability.”
· “social justice concerns are not merely under-addressed, but
have been repeatedly compromised by a dominant set of growth-
oriented sustainability interests…”
· Assuming that you hold equity to be a fundamental aspect of
urban sustainability, how could the “unjust sustainability
agenda” be addressed in city?
· Public education on sustainability, committees being bade…

Brought up more in city meetings
October 8, 2019
· We establish that equity is systematically deprioritized in
urban sustainability planning. This is a real and troubling
phenomenon throughout urban sustainability planning, not
limited to a handful of cities or cases
· This is a problem because, as we already knew, prioritizing
other planning goals and/or failing to look out for equity
implications of those goals can exacerbate inequities and cause
new injustices
· …Today: environmental and sustainability paradigms
Environmental and sustainability paradigms
· “A paradigm refers to a body of ideas, major assumptions,
concepts, propositions, values, and goals of a substantive area
that influences the way people view the world, conduct
scientific inquiry, and accept theoretical formulations” (Taylor
2000:528) this has changed the common view during the time
period.
· Exploitative Capitalist Paradigm (Industrial Revolution-era)
· Romantic Environmental Paradigm (late 19th/early 20th
centuries)
· New environmental Paradigm (emerged mid-20th century)
The NEP and urban sustainable development planning
· The New Environmental Paradigm has dominated US
environmental thought and activism since the mid-20th century
· Members of the US environmental movement have been very
influential in local/urban sustainable development work
· Therefore, the NEP has been highly influential in efforts at the
local scale in the US
· The NEP lacks a position on equity/justice
· (The same is true for the global sustainable development

conversation – the NEP has dominated Global Northern
environmental thought, and members of Global Northern
environmental movements have had a lot of say in international
sustainable development matters.)
The Just Sustainability Paradigm
· The JSP “prioritizes justice and equity but does not downplay
the environment-our life support system”
· The JSP is based in an alternate definition of sustainability:
“The need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into
the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within
the limits of supporting ecosystems.” (Agyeman et al. 2003)
· There are four essential conditions for just and sustainable
communities (Agyeman 2013)
· 1) Improving our quality of life and wellbeing
· 2) Meeting the needs of both present and future generations
· 3) Justice and equity in terms of recognition, process,
procedure, and outcome
· 4) Living within ecosystem limits
The importance of the JSP
· Unit two communities/movements in pursuit of (a more just)
sustainability
· People in environmental justice movement who should be way
more involved
· Has huge problem with mainstream environmental movement
that does not have a justice based critique with the environment
· JSP acknowledges the importance of protecting the
environment
· Human impacts on the environment effect races differently,
class differently...
·
Notes 9/3/19
When did we start talking about sustainable development and
urban settings

Precursors early 19th century concerns about industrial cities
-living conditions of the working class
-human –nature separation
-industrial impacts on the environment
-suburban encroachment on natural areas
-1975- united nations habitat and human settlements foundation
is established
- 1976 united nations conference on human settlements
Vancouver Ca Habitat
-1977 United nations commission of human settlements is
established united nations Centre for human settlements Habitat
is established
- Tangible yet timid
-Responsibility for sustainable urban development scales down,
from UN & national governments to local governments
-1990 International council on local environmental initiatives
(now called ICLEI- local governments for sustainability is
established
-1992 United Nations conference on environment and
development, Rio de Janeiro (Earth Summit
-Agenda 21, chapter 7 agenda 21 aka Los Angeles
--1996 united nations conference in human settlements, Istanbul
(Habit II City Summit
-The Habitat Agenda
-2002 Habitat is elevated to program status united nations
human settlements programmed UN- Habitat
-2015 UN sustainable development conference, New York
- Sustainable development goals for 2030 are approved
including SDG11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive
safe, resilient and sustainable.
- 2016 United Nations conference on housing and Sustainable
Urban development, Quito Habitat III
- New Urban Agenda

Why plan for sustainable development at the local scale in
cities?
-Global sustainability is the end goal
-A sustainable city is essentially one that contributes
effectively to the global aims of sustainable development
On planning for SD at the local scale
- The subsidiarity principle
-An organizing principle of decentralization l
-democracy
-Local governments and citizens have the strongest potential to
do sustainable development well
- knowledge of local citizens, organizations
-Judgement of local authorities
-local human environment relations, responsiveness of local
authorities.
-Are there other reasons why it may be more effective for local
authorities, rather than national or international authorities, to
guide local/unban sustainability planning?
Having someone from the local area will have more idea of the
place be involved more.
Sustainability Goals
Planning sustainable development: the “three Est”

Environment
· What is it?
· What should we do to it?
Equity
-equity justice
>Equity- the notion of sharing burdens and benefits equally
> Justice – the notion of righting a wrong
- Intergenerational equity
- Intergenerational equity
-Social equity/ distributive justice
- Geographic equity
- procedural equity/ corrective or commutative justice
- Interspecies equity
Economy
-what should we do to it?
- Measures of success
-scale
·
· A social dimension or livability
- Livability operates at level off the everyday physical
environment and focuses on place making.
- Place- a geographic setting that is meaningful to
you, because of your experiences, interactions, and memories
there
-the importance of an expanded conceptualization of livability
to sustainable development
· What are the qualities, attributes of a livable city?

9/17
the property conflict
-Economic growth can create new inequalities or exacerbate
existing inequalities between social groups
· Remedying an inequitable situation can impede economic
growth
Economy v Equity
Example 1: Proposal to raise the city of loss angels minimum
wage by $5
· What does equity mean in the context of wages?
· (wages Increases = better access to basic resources
-what does economic growth mean in the context of wages?
Wage stability = attractive to industry
How might enhancing equity negatively impact economic
growth in this scenario?
· How might economic growth negatively I’m pact in this
scenario
The gentrification conflict
-Gods chalk 2004 specifics that this conflicts are in the context
of older, lower- income urban neighborhoods that demonstrate
livable design principles

- Livability improvements can result in lower-income social
groups being displaced
· Prioritizing equity may mean avoiding livability improvements
· Can be extrapolated to new communities too
9/24/19
Environmental gentrification
· The general process: Environmental improvements make a
neighborhood more attractive
Conflict Minimization
· Conflict management/ minimization/ mitigation is a critical
part of planning for urban sustainability
· Today – managing environmental

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.
WHERE JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABILITY MEET
Julian Agyeman
Environment; Jul/Aug 2005; 47, 6; ABI/INFORM Global
pg. 10

Journal of Planning Education and Research
2015, Vol. 35(3) 282 –295
© The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0739456X15580022
jpe.sagepub.com
Symposium: Equity Planning Revisited
Introduction
For planners, the sustainable development paradigm has
offered the tantalizing hope that the competing imperatives
for economic development, environmental protection, and
social equity can be reconciled in a meaningful way
(Campbell 1996; Portney 2003). But in practice, most
observers have found that social equity goals usually get lost
relative to environmental and economic priorities (Agyeman
2005; Saha and Paterson 2008); even where sustainability
efforts have been taken seriously, they have tended to reflect
the priorities of white, upper-middle-class constituencies that
dominate the environmental movement, and arguably, plan-
ning more broadly. This has engendered skepticism among
planning scholars about the limits of sustainability as a vehi-
cle for social equity (Gunder 2006).
In the past decade, local planning for climate change has

represented a central front in the sustainability movement
(Bulkeley and Betsill 2003; Bassett and Shandas 2010;
Greve, Boswell, and Seale 2011). Faced with federal and
often state inaction, mayors and other city leaders have taken
the initiative to adopt strategies to promote reductions in
local greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and prepare their
communities for anticipated impacts of climate change.
Climate action plans (CAPs), while varying across places,
generally focus on enhancing energy efficiency, adopting
renewable energy sources, alternative transportation and
reductions in vehicle miles traveled, and expanding “green
infrastructure” such as trees. Some cities have moved beyond
climate plans toward more broad-based sustainability action
plans (SAPs), which emulate comprehensive plans in pursuit
of a more holistic approach to sustainable urban develop-
ment. Local officials have eagerly trumpeted the “co-bene-
fits” of local climate action, especially in terms of livability
and quality of life, household and public-sector energy sav-
ings, as well as job creation and opportunities for “green”
economic development (Fitzgerald 2010).
From an equity standpoint, local CAPs have the potential
to address both fundamental challenges and opportunities.
On one hand, there is considerable evidence suggesting that
the poorest and most vulnerable members of society will dis-
proportionately bear the negative impacts of global climate
change as it accelerates in this century (Morello-Frosch et al.
2009; Park 2009). But at the same time, local investments to
mitigate and adapt to climate change, if targeted correctly,
have the potential to serve as tools of social and racial justice
by tackling longstanding disparities and inequities within
580022 JPEXXX10.1177/0739456X15580022Journal of
Planning Education and ResearchSchrock et al.
research-article2015

Initial submission, January 2014; revised submissions, July and
October
2014; final acceptance, November 2014
1Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA
2University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Greg Schrock, Portland State University, PO Box 751-USP,
Portland, OR
97201-0751, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Pursuing Equity and Justice in a Changing
Climate: Assessing Equity in Local
Climate and Sustainability Plans in U.S.
Cities
Greg Schrock1, Ellen M. Bassett2, and Jamaal Green1
Abstract
Despite interest in the importance of social equity to
sustainability, there is concern that equity is often left behind in
practice
relative to environmental and economic imperatives. We
analyze recent climate and sustainability action plans from a
sample
of twenty-eight medium and large U.S. cities, finding that few
made social equity a prominent goal of their plans, although
there is a discernible trend in this direction. We present case
studies of three cities that incorporated social equity goals,
concluding that sustainability planning efforts provide strategic
opportunities to pursue equity goals, especially where capacity
exists among community-based actors to intervene and
participate.

Keywords
sustainability, equity planning, climate action planning,
participatory planning
Schrock et al. 283
cities, from “food deserts” to health disparities (e.g., asthma
rates) to unemployment and poverty rates.
But are cities taking advantage of these opportunities? In
this paper, we examine recently completed CAPs and SAPs
from a cross section of medium and large U.S. cities to assess
whether they are making equity a climate planning priority
or not. From there, we focus in on three cities with varying
levels of equity orientation to their plans and assess the fac-
tors that were influential in the presence of meaningful equity
components. Although the configuration of factors varied
from city to city, we find that integrating equity into local
climate and sustainability planning requires planners to build
capacity to analyze, think, and talk about equity, but fre-
quently, they are only prompted to do so where community-
based actors and coalitions have the capacity to intervene
and advocate for equity as a priority. While these factors are
not that different from the possibilities for equity planning in
general, we conclude that climate and sustainability initia-
tives offer equity advocates tactical opportunities to reframe
local strategies in the direction of social and racial equity.
Equity in Local Sustainability and
Climate Planning
To many, equity—especially social and racial equity—has
always been integral to sustainability and sustainable devel-
opment. This has been articulated in various ways in recent
years, from the “triple bottom line” framework (Elkington

1994) to the “3 E’s: environment, economy, equity”
(Campbell 1996). For planning scholars, the sustainability
concept offers the possibility to reframe perennial debates
about urban growth and change in ways that foreground not
just the environmentally problematic character of status quo
modes of urban development but also the distributional con-
sequences of that growth in terms of access to opportunity
within metropolitan regions (Wheeler 2000) and exposure to
environmental hazards. In this regard, planning scholars gen-
erally take for granted that social equity is an important nor-
mative dimension of sustainability, while recognizing that it
remains elusive in practice.
Yet as the sustainability paradigm has moved toward the
mainstream of planning education and practice, scholars
have begun to point to the concept itself as a reason for the
chronic failure to focus on equity. Gunder (2006), in particu-
lar, assails sustainability as a “fuzzy” and hegemonic concept
(see Markusen 2003) that, because of its sheer malleability,
often serves to reinforce existing agendas and power rela-
tions, and effectively ignores social equity and justice con-
cerns. Others have argued that when environmental
organizations and sustainability efforts do show an interest in
equity, it tends to be reflected in a greater concern for inter-
generational equity (i.e., the impact on future generations)
than on addressing contemporary disparities and inequities
(Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003). Indeed, Saha and
Patterson (2008), assessing local sustainability initiatives in
the United States, found that the “third E”—equity—is the
one most routinely left aside. One reason for this is the con-
flation of sustainability efforts with agendas for “livability”
and quality of life (Portney 2003), which are often geared
toward making cities more attractive to educated, upper-mid-
dle-class households, rather than tackling difficult issues of
social and racial inequity.

Cities and Climate Action Planning
One area of particular focus in urban sustainability has been
the movement on the part of cities to develop CAPs. CAPs
identify strategic steps that municipal officials and (often)
private residents and businesses can take to mitigate local
contributions to climate change (i.e., their “carbon foot-
print”), but also prepare for, and adapt to, the likely impacts
that climate change will have on weather patterns and resul-
tant infrastructure needs. In the United States, a small num-
ber of cities began developing “CO
2
reduction strategies” as
early as 1990, but the emergence of transnational network
organizations—most notably the International Council on
Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and its “Cities for
Climate Protection” program—has accelerated the practice
of local climate action planning in recent years through the
provision of technical assistance and peer networking oppor-
tunities, but also by the access to financial and political
resources for local governments (Bulkeley and Betsill 2003).
Spurred by the Bush Administration’s inaction on climate
change, the U.S. Conference of Mayors initiated in 2005 a
Climate Protection Agreement with 141 initial signatories—
a figure that has now risen to over one thousand cities—
pledging to meet or exceed the Kyoto targets for GHG
reductions.1 According to Greve, Boswell, and Seale (2011),
more than 120 cities and counties, 36 states, and nearly 400
colleges and universities had developed CAPs as of 2011.
The literature on CAPs has become quite voluminous in
recent years, and has assessed the trend from a number of
different angles, including the common elements of CAPs,
the plan-making process and impacts on local governance

(Wheeler 2008; Bassett and Shandas 2010; Boswell, Greve,
and Seale 2010), and the factors associated with the adoption
of climate plans across cities (Zahran et al. 2008; Pitt 2010;
Sharp, Daley, and Lynch 2011). Others have questioned
whether climate planning efforts actually matter for achiev-
ing results. Millard-Ball (2013), examining the efforts of
three California cities, argues that it was their preexisting
sustainability initiatives and local preferences, rather than
the planning process itself, that was responsible for resulting
improvements in climate-related outcomes.
In recent years, a number of cities have developed SAPs,
which move beyond a narrow focus on climate change/GHG
mitigation and adaptation and toward a broader integration
of sustainability principles into local planning and develop-
ment. Whereas CAPs—especially those developed with the
assistance of ICLEI—have a relatively standard set of
284 Journal of Planning Education and Research 35(3)
components, such as a local GHG inventory (Bassett and
Shandas 2010), SAPs are less standardized. New York City’s
PlaNYC is an important example; although it recognizes cli-
mate change as a fundamental challenge underpinning the
plan’s actions, its broader goal is for a “greener, greater New
York” along a variety of dimensions not directly related to
GHG mitigation or adaptation, such as construction of more
housing units within the city (City of New York 2007). In
some cases, cities have connected sustainability directly to
their comprehensive plans, such as Minneapolis’s 2009 “Plan
for Sustainable Growth.” In most cities, however, sustain-
ability initiatives are managed by offices focused specifi-
cally on environmental sustainability concerns, rather than
those dealing with land use and other planning issues.

Bringing Equity into Local Climate and
Sustainability Initiatives
To date, relatively little work has been done to examine the
connection between equity and local climate and sustainabil-
ity planning efforts. One exception is Finn and McCormick
(2011), which examined recently completed climate action/
sustainability plans for New York City, Chicago, and Los
Angeles, and concluded that substantive engagement on the
equity issue “beyond the level of rhetoric remains rare”
(412). On one hand, this is not surprising, given that at least
two of these cities (New York City and Chicago) had been
governed by strong growth-oriented mayoral regimes for
many years. But as global cities, each has experienced a sig-
nificant amount of economic restructuring and polarization
over the years (Abu-Lughod 1999), and at different points,
have been generative of community organizing and activism
around social equity issues.
The social and racial equity implications of climate
change are substantial. The burdens of climate change are
projected to fall disproportionally on low-income and com-
munities of color, with impacts ranging from health impacts
due to urban heat island effect and air pollution to negative
impacts on industry sectors employing workers of color
(Morello-Frosch et al. 2009; Park 2009). At the same time,
low-income populations have fewer resources to adapt to cli-
mate change, rendering them more vulnerable to the impacts.
For this reason, efforts to target green infrastructure and
other amenities toward low-income neighborhoods and com-
munities have significant potential to address the inequitable
burdens associated with climate change, but also long-stand-
ing forms of environmental and health disparities, such as
pollution exposure and lack of access to greenspace.
Additionally, considerable attention has focused on the

potential to use climate and sustainability initiatives to
address entrenched racial disparities in poverty and eco-
nomic opportunity, through the creation of “green collar
jobs”—jobs directly enhancing environmental quality while
promoting economic mobility and self-sufficiency—through
local initiatives to promote energy efficiency, renewable
energy, green infrastructure, and so forth (Jones 2008; White
and Walsh 2008; Fitzgerald 2010). Especially when con-
nected with efforts to target employment opportunities
toward marginalized populations such as the formerly incar-
cerated and improve environmental quality in low-income
communities, green-collar job initiatives represent a good
example of what Agyeman (2005) calls “just sustainability.”
CAPs and SAPs offer differential opportunities and barri-
ers to addressing equity concerns. Early generations of CAPs
focused almost exclusively on GHG mitigation strategies;
even as more cities have begun to acknowledge and address
the challenges of climate adaptation, many CAPs remain
largely oriented toward seeking cost-effective ways of reduc-
ing local emissions. SAPs, by virtue of their broad focus on
sustainability, would seem to offer more openings to address
equity concerns and goals. On the other hand, the breadth
and diversity of SAPs may be a barrier in itself, as equity
concerns could get subordinated to other local agendas, such
as for “livability” or economic vitality, which may or may
not correspond to an equity agenda. Under what circum-
stances might local climate and sustainability initiatives
incorporate strong social equity and justice components?
Literature from urban politics and planning suggests that
three sets of factors are likely to be at work: disparities,
capacity, and opportunities.
Disparities. Simply put, local actors are most likely to address
equity when the conditions on the ground are most compel-

ling, that is, when inequities are most apparent. Yet in a con-
text where local officials are dependent on private capital
investment to create jobs and generate the tax revenue to
support public services, local officials in places with the
greatest need—for example, where poverty rates are highest,
or income levels are lowest—are least well positioned to pur-
sue equity-oriented development strategies that may be con-
sidered anti-business (Peterson 1981; Savitch and Kantor
2002). By contrast, places with relatively higher incomes
and a stronger economy, but also high levels of economic
inequality and disparity, may be more responsive to calls for
redistributional policies.
Similarly, equity arguments may achieve greater attention
in cities where racial minorities represent a larger share of
the local population and electorate. In the context of “green”
initiatives, cities with large nonwhite populations may be
more likely to focus those initiatives toward the needs and
concerns of communities of color, rather than the white, mid-
dle-class constituency to which they have been traditionally
oriented.
Capacity. Since equity is rarely a natural concern for urban
officials, local capacity to bring equity issues into the politi-
cal and policy debate is a key factor. This operates on a polit-
ical level, as well as a policy level. At a political level, it
requires the ability of grassroots organizations, especially
within communities of color but also in equity-oriented
Schrock et al. 285
stakeholders like organized labor, academics, and faith-based
communities, to mobilize successfully around particular leg-
islative issues or political campaigns (Pastor, Benner, and

Matsuoka 2009). For example, local living wage campaigns
have been most successful in places where community–labor
coalitions, organized around groups like ACORN and public
employee unions, have been able to generate political pres-
sure on elected officials.
The literature on equity planning has emphasized the need
for public-sector planning professionals to internalize equity
goals and propose equity-oriented alternatives (Krumholz
and Forester 1990; Fainstein 2010). Others, such as Clavel
(1986, 2010), have emphasized the importance of nongov-
ernmental capacity to work with planners, agency, and
elected officials to demonstrate both the importance and the
viability of equity-oriented approaches. Such community
capacity can emerge through a combination of factors,
including past organizing, entrepreneurial efforts of commu-
nity-based organizations, as well as explicit efforts on the
part of local governments to redistribute decision-making
power to community actors. Although researchers have
found that local political participation and engagement are
correlated with local sustainability efforts (Portney and Berry
2010), we suspect this is likely to be distinct from local
capacity for social equity, which depends less on overall
rates of participation than on engagement and organizational
resources within low-income communities and communities
of color. While capacity can be assessed quantitatively in
terms of budgets or staffing levels for environmental agen-
cies or nonprofits, or number of local sustainability measures
adopted (Portney 2003), it is an inherently qualitative feature
that is arguably best understood in the context of specific
cases where capacity enables actors to act and affect change.
Only in places with relatively high capacity for either sus-
tainability or equity—and especially both—are likely to see
the two issues brought together in a meaningful way.
Opportunity. Even where the needs are apparent and capacity

exists to bring equity into the sustainability conversation (and
the broader local policy debate), a catalytic event or opening
may be necessary to activate that capacity. Pierre Clavel’s
work on progressive cities (Clavel 1986, 2010) emphasizes
the role of mayoral campaigns, such as the campaign of Har-
old Washington in Chicago or Ray Flynn in Boston, in help-
ing neighborhood activists coalesce around a progressive
policy agenda. In other cases, the availability of resources,
such as from the federal government or a foundation, may
create a space for “positive sum” coalitions around equity,
where the resources allow—or even compel—local actors to
transcend barriers to equity-oriented policies. Finally, other
kinds of contingent events—such as the onset of the Great
Recession, or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans—may
reshuffle local politics in favor of social equity.
In this article, we examine whether cities are making
equity a prominent theme of their CAPs and SAPs. What
factors are associated with a more equity-oriented approach?
In the next section, we provide cross-sectional evidence from
a sample of recently completed CAPs and SAPs. From there,
we present case studies of three cities—Portland, Philadelphia
and Boston—that have, to a comparatively high degree,
incorporated social equity in their local sustainability efforts,
assessing the similarities and differences in the factors
enabling and hindering an equity focus. We conclude by
reflecting on the broader implications for sustainability and
equity planning, arguing that while there are considerable
barriers to linking the two, it is possible through strategic
efforts on the part of equity-oriented coalitions to intervene
and reframe local planning debates in ways that cast light on
existing injustices and disparities.
Analyzing Equity in Recent Climate and
Sustainability Plans

To what extent are cities incorporating equity into their cli-
mate and sustainability plans? What kinds of cities and plans
are focusing on equity? Is there a trend toward a greater focus
on equity in the context of climate action and sustainability?
We examine these questions through a review of recent
CAPs and SAPs developed by medium and large U.S. cities.
Although such plans have been completed by cities large and
small, we focus on plans completed by the one hundred larg-
est cities as of the 2010 Census.2 We focus on larger cities
because they are more likely to have diverse populations—
demographically, politically, and socioeconomically—and
experience challenges of poverty and inequality that climate
and sustainability plans might target.
Compiling a list of cities with plans was a remarkably
challenging task. We used a variety of strategies to identify
cities with plans, including a review of websites of ICLEI-
USA3 and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,4 and
web searches of individual cities. Based on our review, fifty-
six of the hundred largest U.S. cities had plans that were pub-
licly available as of summer 2012. We excluded cities that
had sustainability programs or initiatives but no formal cli-
mate action or sustainability plan document that could be
publicly accessed. We included cities whose plans focused
primarily or exclusively on municipal operations. Several
cities in our sample had produced multiple (or updated) plans
in the past decade; in cases where the plans were comple-
mentary to one another (e.g., one plan focusing on GHG
mitigation strategies, another focusing on adaptation strate-
gies), we reviewed both, while in cases where the plans
updated or superseded the earlier plans, we reviewed the
most recent plan. In cities that had both CAPs and SAPs, we
reviewed the most recent plan that we could find.
From this list, we created a sample of twenty-eight cit-

ies—exactly one-half—that was designed to be broadly rep-
resentative in terms of population, city type (central city/
suburb), region, year completed, and socioeconomic (e.g.,
poverty rate) and demographic (e.g., nonwhite population
share) characteristics (Table 1).5 A list of cities in our review
sample along with their plan information is provided in the
appendix. The oldest plan in our sample (San Diego) was
completed in 2005; three plans (Sacramento, Tulsa and
Pittsburgh) were completed in 2012. The plans varied greatly
in length, from fewer than 20 pages to more than 250 pages.
We employed a qualitative coding scheme (Miles and
Huberman 1994) to assess whether and to what degree the
cities in our review sample discussed equity in their plans.
Using a scale ranging from 0 to 3, we read each plan for the
specificity and prominence of equity themes.6 Each rater
coded passages that reflected equity as a problem, goal/
objective, or an action of the plan (see Table 2 for examples
from the plans reviewed); each then assigned the plan a sum-
mary score based upon his or her assessment of both the
quantity and quality of the plan’s discussion of the issue.7
This assessment was based on the degree of specificity
within the plan about the inequities and disparities to be
addressed by the plan, in terms of its goals, actions and met-
rics. We also analyzed the plans for which aspects of equity
they focus on. In particular, we looked at the three types of
equity discussed by Bullard (1994)—procedural equity (i.e.,
fairness in public proceedings and decision-making), geo-
graphic equity (i.e., equity across neighborhoods and com-
munities) and social equity (i.e., equity across race, ethnicity,

class, etc.). For reliability, each plan was reviewed by at least
two raters, and where significant discrepancy existed
between raters, the scores were reconciled through an addi-
tional round of analysis, or adjudicated by a third reviewer.8
Rater scores were then averaged to reach the final summary
rating.
Findings
We find that only a minority of cities in our sample made
equity a prominent theme in their climate and sustainability
plans. While nearly 90 percent of the plans reviewed had at
least some discussion of equity—either as a goal, as a prob-
lem to be addressed, or in terms of specific action items (e.g.,
targeting weatherization assistance toward low-income
households)—only 36 percent (ten of twenty-eight) received
a rating of two or higher, meaning that the issue received at
least some prominence as a cobenefit of the plan and/or spe-
cific objectives and action items with an equity orientation.
Within the overall sample, the average equity rating was 1.3
(Table 3).
How were cities discussing equity in the context of their
plans? Of the three types of equity discussed by Bullard
(1994), social equity was most prominent, with nearly all cit-
ies addressing social equity concerns in some way, and
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics, Largest U.S. Cities and Review
Sample.
Characteristic 100 Largest Cities Cities with CAP/SAP Review
Sample
Number of cities 100 56 28
Population (average), 2010 597,558 775,393 885,539
≥1 million 9 (9%) 8 (14%) 5 (18%)
500,000–999,999 24 (24%) 16 (29%) 7 (25%)

300,000–499,999 27 (27%) 18 (32%) 11 (39%)
<300,000 40 (40%) 14 (25%) 5 (18%)
By Census region
Northeast 8 (8%) 5 (9%) 4 (14%)
Midwest 17 (17%) 9 (16%) 4 (14%)
South 39 (39%) 23 (41%) 11 (39%)
West 36 (36%) 19 (34%) 9 (32%)
City type
Central city 79 (79%) 52 (93%) 26 (93%)
Suburb 21 (21%) 4 (7%) 2 (7%)
% nonwhite population
(average), 2010
55.0% 55.5% 57.8%
≥75% 12 (12%) 5 (9%) 3 (11%)
50%–74% 51 (51%) 33 (59%) 18 (64%)
25%–49% 33 (33%) 16 (29%) 7 (25%)
<25% 4 (4%) 2 (4%) 0 (0%)
Poverty rate (average),
2008–2010
18.8% 19.8% 20.4%
≥25% 18 (18%) 9 (16%) 6 (21%)
20–24% 18 (18%) 14 (25%) 4 (14%)
15–19% 41 (41%) 27 (48%) 16 (57%)
<15% 23 (23%) 6 (11%) 2 (7%)
Schrock et al. 287
nearly one-third (eight of twenty-eight) making it a promi-
nent theme (rating of 2 or higher). By contrast, geographic
equity was a less common theme, with only a small share (4,

or 14%) making it a prominent theme. And procedural equity
was even less prominent, with none of the plans making it a
prominent theme.9
However, there is clear evidence that cities are making
equity a growing priority. In plans completed in 2008 or ear-
lier (n = 10), only one (New Orleans) made equity a promi-
nent theme, and as a group, the cities achieved an average
score of less than one (0.7)—meaning that the typical pre-
2009 plan gave equity hardly more than a passing mention.
In plans since 2009, though, the average rating increased to
1.7, and of plans completed since 2010, six of eleven made
equity a prominent theme.
There does not appear to be a clear relationship between
city characteristics and their degree of equity focus. There
appears to be a moderate positive relationship with city size,
poverty rate, and income inequality, although in the latter
cases not strong enough to pass standard thresholds for sta-
tistical significance. Even weaker statistical relationships
existed between equity and a city’s share of populations of
color and median household income level, although in the
former case, cities with above-average nonwhite population
shares represented the bulk of cities making equity a promi-
nent theme. Taken together, they suggest that the relationship
between local conditions and its equity orientation is com-
plex in nature, and does not automatically correspond to city
characteristics.10 Unfortunately, we were unable to develop a
good operational measure of local environmental and social
equity capacity for the twenty-eight cities in our sample;11
this is an area where future research would be helpful.
The factor that appears to be most clearly associated with
an equity orientation is whether the plan was the city’s first
effort or not. Cities that were completing climate/sustainabil-

ity plan “updates” or revisions—which represented one-
fourth of the sample—had an average equity rating of 2.0,
while cities whose plans were their first had an average rat-
ing of 1.1; they represented half of the plans where equity
was a prominent theme.12 This is likely a reflection of a deep-
ening of local sustainability capacity over time, which may
be permitting a broader array of organizations and interest
groups to participate and shape the agenda in pro-equity
ways. Also, plans that were identified as sustainability plans
were somewhat more likely than climate plans to focus on
equity. While this could reflect the broader, holistic focus of
sustainability plans, it could also be that the recent growth of
sustainability plans has simply coincided with the trend
toward a greater equity focus in climate and sustainability
planning. As more cities complete and update CAPs and
SAPs over time, it will likely become easier to disentangle
statistically the effects of plan type and city experience from
Table 2. Equity Problems, Goals and Actions in CAPs/SAPs
Reviewed.
Category Description Examples from Plans Reviewed
Problems Documented environmental and/or
social disparities likely exacerbated by
climate change, and/or with potential
to be mitigated by climate action and
sustainability efforts
- “Low-income residents typically pay a larger percentage of
their
income towards heating and cooling needs.” (Washington, DC,
p. 45)
- “The lowest income families are the most negatively impacted
by high

transportation costs, with the average low-to-medium income
family
in Cleveland spending an average of $10,023 a year on
transportation,
more than education or food. Without access to public
transportation, bike paths and walking paths, certain
demographic
sectors are marginalized and disenfranchised leading to higher
poverty levels and exclusion, eventually undermining a
productive and
sustainable Cleveland economy.” (Cleveland, p. 91)
Goals/
objectives
Goals or objectives for linking climate/
sustainability and equity
- “Efforts to reduce GHG emissions from the transportation
sector
also pose the opportunity to create a more equitable,
sustainable,
affordable and healthy Oakland by addressing the
interconnection
between land use and transportation.” (Oakland, p. 23)
- “While the benefits almost always outweigh the costs in the
long-run,
one of the city’s goals should be to assist New Orleanians,
especially
poorer citizens, to overcome the initial cost associated with
greening
houses so that they may enjoy the affordability that energy
efficiency
imparts.” (New Orleans, p. 4)

Actions Specific action items likely to yield meaningful
equity co-benefits and/or further equity
goals.
- “The (energy) audits should identify deficiencies and provide
homeowners with cost-effective energy improvement
recommendations.
Priority consideration for participation in the program should be
given
to low and moderate income residents.” (Memphis, p. 97)
- “Reexamine parking permit fees for residential areas:
Potential
impacts on lower-income residents could be addressed by using
the proceeds to fund alternative transportation or by allowing
fee
reductions or waivers for low-income residents.” (Boston, p. 31)
broader secular trends with regard to equity orientation in
planning.
Linking Sustainability and Equity: Three
Cities’ Experiences
Our analysis found that relatively few U.S. cities were mak-
ing social equity goals an important component of their cli-
mate and sustainability plans. But what can we learn from
those few cities that are? In this section, we dig deeper into
the experience of three U.S. cities—Boston, Philadelphia,
and Portland (Oregon)—all of which produced climate or
sustainability plans that made equity a prominent issue, scor-
ing higher than 2.0 in our analysis. We completed these case
studies through supplemental analysis of primary and sec-

ondary materials (e.g., media reports) related to those plans,
as well as semistructured interviews with a total of fifteen
individuals (approximately five for each city) involved in the
development and implementation of those plans, including
stakeholders specifically oriented toward social and racial
equity issues and goals. We briefly summarize each of these
three plans, and conclude with a set of observations about
key commonalities and differences across the three cities.
While our research design is limited by the fact that we are
examining three “positive cases,” we will show that even
within these “successful” cities, there was considerable vari-
ation in terms of the quality and specificity of their plans’
equity focus.
A Climate of Progress: City of Boston Climate
Action Plan Update (2011)
Boston, as with the broader New England region, has shown
a long historical concern with environmental conservation
and sustainability. At the same time, it is a city that has a
long, fraught history of racial division and inequity, which
has helped to fuel grassroots organizing within low-income
communities and communities of color, especially around
housing issues and environmental justice (Medoff and Sklar
1994; Agyeman 2005; Clavel 2010). Although long-time
Mayor Thomas Menino did not naturally gravitate toward
environmental issues, under his leadership Boston was active
in the Cities for Climate Protection campaign, producing its
first Climate Action Plan in 2007.
Table 3. Equity and Climate/Sustainability Plans.
Plan/City Characteristic
Average Rating
(0-3)

% of Cities as Prominent
Theme (score>=2)
Equity as plan co-benefit (overall) 1.30 36
Types of equity (Bullard)
Procedural equity 0.40 0
Geographic equity 0.80 14
Social equity 1.50 29
Overall equity rating by plan/city characteristic
2008 or earlier (n = 10) 0.70** 10
2009 or later (n = 18) 1.70** 56
First plan (n = 21) 1.10* 29
Updated/revised plan (n = 7) 2.00* 71
Climate action plan (n = 17) 1.20 29
Sustainability plan (n = 11) 1.50 55
City population ≥500,000 (n = 12) 1.60 50
City population <500,000 (n = 16) 1.10 25
Bivariate correlation (Kendall’s tau, 1-tailed) with city size
0.25*
City nonwhite population share > sample mean 58% (n = 15)
1.50 53
City nonwhite population share < 58% (n = 13) 1.10 15
Bivariate correlation (one-tailed) with nonwhite population
0.12
City poverty rate ≥ sample mean 20% (n = 10) 1.60 50
City poverty rate < 20% (n = 18) 1.20 28
Bivariate correlation (one-tailed) with poverty rate 0.23
City income inequality (Gini ratio) >= sample mean 0.5 (n =
14) 1.70 57
City income inequality < 0.5 1.00 21
Bivariate correlation (one-tailed) with inequality 0.16
City MHI % of U.S. > sample mean 88% (n = 15) 1.40 40
City MHI % of U.S. < 88% (n = 13) 1.20 31
Bivariate correlation (two-tailed) with MHI % of U.S. 0.05

Note: MHI = median household income.
**p < .01, *p < .05.
Schrock et al. 289
In March 2009, less than two years after implementing its
first CAP, the Menino Administration formed two commit-
tees—the Boston Climate Action Leadership Committee
(CALC) and the Community Advisory Committee (CAC)—
with the purpose of helping the City develop the “next set of
goals, policies and programs” to address both the risks and
opportunities presented by climate change (City of Boston
2010, 10). While the CALC was a fairly typical “green rib-
bon” committee, with twenty-two representatives of estab-
lished private-sector, public-sector, community-based, and
academic institutions and organizations, the CAC was a
broader group of 39 individuals with representation from
each of Boston’s neighborhoods. In putting the CAC
together, City officials sought a more inclusive process that
would result in greater diversity.13 Working together, the
committees produced a report in April 2010, “Sparking
Boston’s Climate Revolution,” with detailed recommenda-
tions for the planned 2011 update to the city’s CAP. Local
foundations, especially the Barr Foundation, played a criti-
cal role in this process by providing financial support for the
committees’ work, with Barr also helping to launch Renew
Boston, the City’s energy efficiency program, in 2009.
One year later, in April 2011, the City released its CAP
update report, titled “A Climate of Progress” (City of Boston
2011). Echoing the committees’ recommendations, the report
made equity a central priority, saying that “concern for the
most vulnerable—those most likely to be affected by climate
change and those with the fewest resources for taking action—

is one of the basic starting points” and that the plan’s imple-
mentation “should not exacerbate existing social and economic
inequalities, and wherever possible, contribute to reducing
those inequalities” (p. 8). Several people interviewed attrib-
uted the plan’s equity orientation directly to the CAC, which
continually pushed City officials and planners to consider the
climate mitigation—and especially adaption—issues raised
through a justice lens. The Renew Boston program represented
the most tangible area of focus for equity in Boston’s CAP—
both in terms of providing services, but also targeting the eco-
nomic benefits of job creation within underrepresented
communities. The Renew Boston program targets energy effi-
ciency services to households between 60 and 120 percent of
the area median household income through a set of commu-
nity-based partners who conduct outreach and engagement,
with special attention to low-income and communities of
color. At the same time, the plan emphasizes the importance of
the City’s Resident Jobs Policy14 as a tool for ensuring that
green investments yield tangible benefits to, and address his-
torical disparities faced by, communities of color (p. 42).
Greenworks Philadelphia (2009)
In the mid-2000s, Philadelphia experienced a new wave of
interest and community action around planning and sustain-
ability issues. Spurred in part by renewed housing and com-
mercial development in a city that had experienced decades of
disinvestment and population decline, a variety of civic, com-
munity, private- and public-sector stakeholders began to talk
about becoming America’s “Next Great City” through efforts
to revitalize the city’s derelict riverfront, remediate the
environ-
mental degradation of the city’s industrial legacy, and build a
new, more sustainable economy (McGovern 2013). This atten-
tion became focused on the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral race,
when a coalition called the Next Great City (NGC), led by the

statewide environmental nonprofit Penn Futures, successfully
organized 130 organizations from throughout the city, releasing
a ten-point plan for livability and sustainability in January 2007
(Black 2007). Michael Nutter, an African-American City
Council member from West Philadelphia, eagerly embraced
the NGC agenda as part of a broader reformist platform, which
he rode to decisive victories in April’s Democratic primary and
November’s general election.
Upon taking office, Mayor Nutter created the Mayor’s
Office of Sustainability and tasked it with the creation of a
sustainability plan for Philadelphia. In spring 2009, the
Nutter Administration released the Greenworks Philadelphia
plan, which set a broad vision to “reposition and repurpose
Philadelphia as a city of the future” (City of Philadelphia
2009, 1). The plan was heavily influenced by the NGC plat-
form on one hand but also by New York City’s PlaNYC for
its comprehensive focus on urban sustainability issues.15 The
Greenworks plan was organized around five “E’s”: Energy,
Environment, Equity, Economy, and Engagement. The spe-
cific recognition of equity as a focus area reflected both the
reality of Philadelphia’s history of racial segregation, con-
centrated poverty and disinvestment, but at the same time, a
basis for differentiating the Greenworks plan, and the city’s
approach to sustainability in general, from other cities.16 The
plan’s equity chapter focused primarily on disparities in the
physical and natural attributes of the city’s neighborhoods
that perpetuate disparate levels of health and livability; for
example, adequate stormwater management infrastructure,
parks and recreational amenities, trees and natural canopy to
address urban heat island problems, and access to healthy
food. For many of these issues, the Greenworks plan estab-
lished metrics and quantitative goals to be achieved by 2015,
for example, increasing the share of residents living within a
ten-minute radius of a park from 58 to 75 percent.

City officials have produced annual reports documenting
progress toward those goals, which has been somewhat
uneven to date. Areas like food access and urban agriculture
have shown the most progress, reflecting the fact that the
Nutter Administration’s initiatives have built upon the lon-
ger-term efforts of a wider set of stakeholders in the
Philadelphia region (Vitiello and Wolf-Powers 2014). Other
areas like stormwater management have witnessed slower
progress but considerable promise, with the Philadelphia
Water Department pioneering new approaches to the devel-
opment of green infrastructure, such as the “big green block”
initiative in the low-income Lower Kensington neighbor-
hood of Northeast Philadelphia.
Portland/Multnomah County Climate Action Plan
(2009)
Portland, Oregon, has a relatively long track record in the
area of climate and sustainability planning. The City’s 1993
Carbon Dioxide Reduction Strategy was the first municipal-
level strategy in the United States to address the topic of cli-
mate change through local actions. A second plan, the Local
Action Plan on Global Warming, was promulgated in 2001 in
partnership with Multnomah County, and was more sophisti-
cated in its energy analysis and prescriptive and comprehen-
sive in its action steps—for both the municipal government
itself and for residents and local businesses. Portland’s prog-
ress in sustainability is evidenced by the fact that it managed
to achieve significant GHG emissions reductions over the
2000s, and by 2008 had even dipped below the 1990 bench-
mark, over which emissions had increased 14 percent nation-
ally (City of Portland and Multnomah County 2009, 7).

As work began on updating Portland’s CAP in 2007, City
officials conceived of it as a largely technical exercise, led
by a Steering Committee supported by technical working
groups. However, the election of Sam Adams as mayor in
2008 changed its course. At Mayor Adams’ behest, the draft
plan was subjected to considerable public scrutiny in 2009
through eight town hall meetings, as well as web-based dis-
semination with an online survey for community feedback.
Although the public feedback did not greatly alter the sub-
stance of the plan (i.e., the objectives and actions), it created
an opportunity for advocacy groups to raise equity as a
broader concern that was largely absent from the plan.
Consequently, the resulting CAP document, released in late
2009, identifies social equity as a core objective of the plan,
saying, “Disparities among our residents can be reduced by
ensuring that the communities most vulnerable to climate
change are given priority for green jobs, healthy local food,
energy-efficient homes and affordable, efficient transporta-
tion” (p. 8). But specific actions and metrics for measuring
progress toward social equity were weak in the plan. As a
staffer at Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability
lamented: “the greater question of who wins, who loses,
where is this occurring was never really asked. [It was] a
series of lost opportunities. So when we say ‘let’s plant
thousands of trees or garden plots’ we didn’t really weigh
where those trees should go or who should be given
priority.”17 Although Portland had very high levels of envi-
ronmental sustainability capacity, both within the public and
nongovernmental sectors, they drew on primarily white,
upper-middle-class constituencies, and few nongovernmen-
tal organizations working directly with communities of
color had active sustainability agendas.
Since 2009, planners and community advocates have
made considerable efforts to keep equity on the public
agenda, both for sustainability efforts and planning gener-

ally. In 2010 and 2011, the city engaged in a strategic plan-
ning process called the “Portland Plan,” in which equity and
disparities—especially by race and ethnicity—were elevated
to a defining theme within the plan, and a city-level Office of
Equity and Human Rights was created. Inspired by similar
efforts in Seattle, Multnomah County developed an “Equity
and Empowerment Lens” as a tool for planners and policy
makers to critically assess the extent to which planning pro-
cesses, and the substance of those planning efforts, work
affirmatively to address current and historical disparities,
and affect the empowerment of marginalized populations.
These efforts have been very influential as Portland under-
took an update to its CAP over the course of 2013.
Comparing the Cases
In this section, we assess the relative contribution of the three
factors identified earlier—disparities, capacity, and opportu-
nity—in motivating Boston, Philadelphia, and Portland to
prioritize equity in their plans and planning processes. While
there are many similarities across the cities, we find that
there are significant differences in their respective pathways
toward equity, especially relating to the role of local
capacity.
Disparities. In each of the cities, recognition on the part of
planners and sustainability officials of persistent environ-
mental disparities and inequities facing communities of color
and other marginalized populations played a role in getting
equity onto the agenda. For the most part, this was reflected
in an emphasis on geographical disparities in natural and
environmental amenities such as tree canopy and park space,
which were viewed as both impediments to neighborhood
livability but also factors exacerbating the vulnerability of
populations living in those neighborhoods to the impacts of
climate change. The racial dimension of these neighborhood

disparities was often left implicit, embedded within local
imaginaries of areas like North Philadelphia, Roxbury, and
East Portland. But importantly, it was often left to activists
and other outside groups to raise awareness of equity con-
cerns. In both Boston and Portland, equity-oriented groups
successfully called attention to the ongoing processes of gen-
trification and displacement experienced in those cities, as a
corrective to the prevailing discourse about urban vitality
and livability. In Boston this took place directly through the
CAC, whereas in Portland this occurred through the public
comment process, since there was no direct involvement of
such groups in the plan-making process. Although local dis-
parities were important because they provided community
activists with tangible concerns to be addressed, we conclude
that it was unlikely to be a sufficient condition to compel cit-
ies toward an equity orientation.
Capacity. We found that local capacity—both within govern-
ment and especially communities—to facilitate dialogue and
action about the equity dimensions of climate and sustainabil-
ity planning was an important factor in making equity goals
Schrock et al. 291
real and tangible, rather than vague and aspirational. Of the
three cities, Boston’s overall capacity around urban sustain-
ability issues was not the highest, but the capacity of commu-
nity-based organizations within the city—built over time
through foundations and other local funders—to elevate and
advocate for equity concerns was quite significant and instru-
mental, especially in terms of implementation. For example,
the Boston Green Justice Coalition had become a powerful
network of community, labor, and environmental organiza-
tions who were highly successful in influencing the develop-

ment and implementation of the Renew Boston program in
ways that both targeted lower-income populations but also
ensured for strong language on inclusive hiring and contract-
ing. By contrast, Portland’s environmental sustainability
capacity was the highest of the three, but for the most part, the
city lacked strong community voices who could lend clarity
and specificity to the 2009 CAP’s broad emphasis on equity,
or the kind of high-profile philanthropic partners to build
community capacity that existed in Boston. In both Boston
and Portland, however, public-sector capacity around climate
change and social equity was less prevalent within planning
and sustainability departments than within local public health
departments, where a growing national dialogue around
health disparities was working its way into the conversation
about climate adaptation. Philadelphia fell somewhere in
between, with uneven capacity both inside and outside of
local government. Although it lacked a unified sustainability
office until the Nutter Administration’s arrival in 2008, cer-
tain city agencies like the Philadelphia Water Department
were successfully building capacity around sustainability
concerns; at the same time, certain CDCs were recognizing
and taking advantage of opportunities to link neighborhood-
level initiatives to broader sustainability agendas pursued by
local, federal, and philanthropic partners. One CDC official
there put it bluntly as follows:
Nobody (cares) about what the carbon footprint is in many of
our communities; they care about whether they can put food
on the table. And if we can call it “sustainability” to a funder
so we can help them learn how to plant vegetables in their
backyard to feed their family, those are two different
conversations we’re having at two different levels.18
What capacity brought in the cases of Boston and
Philadelphia was the ability to translate social equity goals
from broad, aspirational language into a more focused dis-

cussion of specific disparities to be addressed, and specific
mechanisms for addressing them. The lack of this commu-
nity capacity in Portland resulted in a CAP that talked in
lofty terms about equity but had preciously little to opera-
tionalize those goals.
This final point speaks to the capacity of planners and
other public-sector actors to analyze disparities and inequi-
ties in relation to climate and sustainability efforts.
Philadelphia’s use of quantitative metrics and goals for
reducing disparities in neighborhood greenspace and other
amenities has served as a powerful organizing device for
public investments in areas like green infrastructure. In
Portland, on the other hand, efforts by Multnomah County
Health Department analysts to map health disparities rela-
tive to environmental hazards and injustices were under-
way in the late 2000s, but the connections with local climate
planning efforts did not make their way into the 2009 CAP.
The lack of established “climate equity” metrics—espe-
cially in relation to (more easily available) environmental
(e.g., GHG reduction) and economic (e.g., job growth) met-
rics—made it harder for planners to pursue equity in ways
that were clear and operational in nature.
Opportunity. Even where disparities and local capacity ren-
der the ground fertile for discussion of equity within sus-
tainability planning efforts, contingent events are often
necessary to activate that capacity. This was most evident
in the case of Philadelphia, where the 2007 mayoral race
served as a catalyst for a wide range of local organizations
to coalesce around the Next Great City agenda. The arrival
of the Nutter Administration created a window of opportu-
nity for sustainability-minded actors and organizations to
pursue their agenda, but also for community organizations
to link long-standing concerns about neighborhood dispari-

ties to the Mayor’s sustainability focus. Portland’s experi-
ence with the Portland Plan and its equity focus is indicative
of the potential for planning efforts in one arena to spill
over into others.
The role of the Great Recession as a contingent factor was
complex and worked in countervailing directions. On one
hand, the dramatic, widespread increase in unemployment
and economic distress caused mayors to focus more on the
broader economic benefits of local investments rather than
the need to target specific communities and populations. But
on the other hand, the significant influx of federal funding
through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) created an opportunity for local officials to make
new investments in energy efficiency programs, green infra-
structure and other areas, and under the right conditions,
allowing local coalitions to shape those investments in pro-
gressive ways. In both Boston and Portland, community-
labor coalitions helped push local officials to incorporate
strong equity provisions within their ARRA-funded energy
efficiency initiatives.19
Although we have emphasized external contingencies
such as mayoral changes, the initiation of a climate or sus-
tainability planning process can create a window of oppor-
tunity in itself, especially where nongovernmental actors
are well organized and have well-placed allies to influence
the process in pro-equity ways. This was most evident in
Boston, where community, labor, and environmental justice
groups, and their philanthropic allies, were well positioned
when Mayor Menino initiated the CAP update process in

2009. This underscores the long-understood point that plan-
ning processes, in general, tend to favor the stakeholders
and interests that are best organized and resourced.
Conclusion: Toward More Equitable
Sustainability Planning?
Can local climate and sustainability planning represent a
renewed front for equity planning efforts? Or rather, as crit-
ics like Gunder (2006) suggest, has the sustainability para-
digm simply offered local powers-that-be a new frame to
pursue models of urban growth and development that are, at
best, indifferent to the persistent disparities that exist by
race and class within those communities? Our findings pro-
vide support for both these optimistic and pessimistic views.
On one hand, our analysis shows that many U.S. cities
continue to ignore equity goals as part of their climate and
sustainability plans, or at least treat them as secondary or ter-
tiary goals relative to environmental and economic goals.
Even in the three cities we studied (Boston, Philadelphia, and
Portland, OR) where equity did make it onto the agenda in a
meaningful way, advocates for equity and environmental jus-
tice generally represented a small constituency relative to
mainstream environmental advocates and experts, and down-
town business and economic development constituencies. In
the case of CAPs in particular, the objective focus on GHG
emissions reductions tended to lead officials toward strategies
such as commercial and institutional energy efficiency pro-
grams rather than programs likely to yield tangible benefits to
impoverished communities. Even where strategies like tree
planting were proposed, planners routinely failed to make the
obvious connections between those investments and the
neighborhoods where those investments would yield the
greatest social impact. While SAPs seem to offer clearer
openings to speak to equity and justice concerns, our analysis

suggests that they are only somewhat more likely to do so,
and that agendas for livability and economic development
may obscure an equity orientation. While political economy
explanations about the role of money and financial interests
in driving these oversights make sense, more mundane forms
of institutional blindness are also certainly to blame.
Yet we argue that under the right conditions, local sus-
tainability initiatives can provide strategic openings for
planners and equity advocates to make the pursuit of
equity goals, and social and racial equity in particular, a
priority. While there is evidence of growing interest
among local sustainability officials throughout North
America in articulating and actualizing equity goals,20 we
strongly suspect that the factors enabling—or hindering—
an equity focus will remain mostly local in nature. In each
of three cities we examined, actors organized around social,
racial, and spatial disparities that were particular to their
community and took advantage of localized contingencies,
such as elections, to participate in, and at times reframe, the
climate and sustainability planning process. But most
importantly, the presence of local capacity on the part of
planners and other public officials, community organiza-
tions, and civic actors such as foundations to advocate for
and analyze equity goals was critical in enabling equity-
oriented climate and sustainability plans. In some respects,
the ambiguous nature of “sustainability” was a strategic
asset, in that actors were successful in reframing the con-
cept as one in which equity was an integral component of,
and not subsidiary to, environmental goals. While it is
possible that equity-oriented policies could have been
implemented without the impetus of a CAP or SAP, the
initiation of a visible, public planning process can serve as
an important organizing tool for elevating equity con-
cerns, if voices exist, and can be mobilized to elevate

those concerns.
While we are optimistic that the experience of Boston,
Philadelphia, Portland, and others will inspire more cities
to build equity into their climate and sustainability efforts,
we anticipate that such a development will hinge espe-
cially on local capacity. In particular, it will depend on the
capacity of community-based actors, especially from
within communities of color and other marginalized popu-
lations, to engage and participate actively in local sustain-
ability planning efforts. But equally importantly, it will
depend on the capacity of local planning officials to think
more intentionally about—and analyze—the distributional
outcomes of planning efforts and resulting public invest-
ments, especially in terms of race and ethnicity, and to
recommit themselves to deeper forms of community
engagement, creating space, and helping to empower mar-
ginalized populations in the process. Such investments in
community capacity, if they can be sustained, are likely to
have long-term benefits for the pursuit of equity planning
goals across a variety of domains, not just climate and
sustainability.
Our findings have very clear implications for planning
education in helping to break down institutional blindness
to equity concerns, not just in climate and sustainability
planning. It is not enough to simply train planners to
become more “culturally competent” and work more effec-
tively across class and racial divides, although this is
highly important; it is not enough to remind planning stu-
dents of the field’s normative commitment to, in the words
of Norm Krumholz, “provide more choices to those with
few, if any, choices”; we must also train them to develop
and deploy policy-analytical tools that allow them—and
the institutions in which they work—to measure disparities
and inequities in new and powerful ways, which our cases

show were important in supporting the advocacy and pur-
suit of equity goals. After all, the measurement and depic-
tion of social and racial disparity is an important source of
power that planners hold and the only way that we will
Schrock et al. 293
ever know if we achieve progress toward the goal that
planners share of creating more just and equitable
communities.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Pierre Clavel, Marc Doussard, Laura
Wolf-Powers, and Stephen McGovern and three anonymous
reviewers for helpful feedback on earlier drafts, and the
Portland
State University Faculty Enhancement Grant program for
financial
support of this research.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
Portland State University Faculty Enhancement Grant program,
received by Greg Schrock in 2011. FEG is an internal research
grant
program, the funds of which were used to hire a graduate

student
(Jamaal Green) and pay for interview transcription costs.
Notes
1. U.S. Conference of Mayors, Climate Protection Agreement,
http://www.usmayors.org/climateprotection/agreement.htm
2. The smallest city in this group (Prescott, AZ) had a
population
of just over 200,000.
3. http://www.icleiusa.org/.
4. http://www.epa.gov/statelocalclimate/local/local-examples/
action-plans.html.
5. Specifically, we used a form of stratified sampling in which
we
created a matrix along these various dimensions, and selected
cities so that each cell (e.g., cities greater than 1 million
popula-
tion, 500-999,000, less than 500,000) was represented in
roughly
equal proportion to its share of the fifty-six cities with climate
action plans (CAP) and sustainability action plans (SAPs).
Appendix
Plans Reviewed
City Plan Name Year Plan Type
Albuquerque, NM City of Albuquerque Climate Action Plan
2009 CAP
Atlanta, GA Our Path to Sustainability 2009 Sustainability
Aurora, CO Aurora’s Sustainability Plan 2009 Sustainability

Boston, MA A Climate of Progress: City of Boston Climate
Action Plan Update
2011
2011 CAP
Chicago, IL Chicago Climate Action Plan: Our City. Our
Future. 2008 CAP
Chula Vista, CA Climate Change Working Group Measures
Implementation Plans
(2008: mitigation plan, 2011: adaptation plan)
2008/2011 CAP
Cincinnati, OH Climate Protection Action Plan: The Green
Cincinnati Plan 2008 CAP
Cleveland, OH Sustainable Cleveland 2019 2009 Sustainability
Corpus Christi, TX Corpus Christi Integrated Community
Sustainability Plan 2011 Sustainability
Denver, CO Greenprint: City of Denver Climate Action Plan
2007 CAP
Durham, NC City of Durham and Durham County: Greenhouse
Gas and Criteria
Air Pollutant Emissions Inventory and Local Action Plan for
Emission Reductions
2007 CAP
Greensboro, NC Sustainability Action Plan 2011 Sustainability
Kansas City, MO Climate Protection Plan: City of Kansas City,
Missouri 2008 CAP
Lexington-Fayette, KY Empower Lexington: A Plan for a
Resilient Community 2012 CAP
Memphis, TN Sustainable Shelby: A Future of Choice Not
Chance 2011 Sustainability

Miami, FL MiPlan: City of Miami Climate Action Plan 2008
CAP
New Orleans, LA GreeNOLA: A Strategy for a Sustainable New
Orleans 2008 Sustainability
New York City, NY PlanNYC (2011 update) 2011 Sustainability
Oakland, CA City of Oakland Draft Energy and Climate Action
Plan 2010 CAP
Philadelphia, PA Greenworks Philadelphia 2009 Sustainability
Pittsburgh, PA Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan (Version 2.0)
2012 CAP
Portland, OR City of Portland and Multnomah County Climate
Action Plan 2009 2009 CAP
Sacramento, CA Sacramento Climate Action Plan 2012 CAP
San Antonio, TX Mission Verde: Building a 21st Century
Economy 2009 Sustainability
San Diego, CA City of San Diego Climate Protection Action
Plan 2005 CAP
Seattle, WA Seattle, a Climate of Change: Meeting the Kyoto
Challenge 2006 CAP
Tulsa, OK City of Tulsa Sustainability Plan 2012 Sustainability
Washington, DC Climate of Opportunity 2010 CAP
6. Our coding approach is similar to Agyeman (2005, p. 108) in
the use of a 0–3 scale based on prominence of equity themes.
Plans were coded as 0 if they had no mention of equity; 1 if
they had mentions of equity concerns or themes with little
depth or specificity, or prominence as a plan goal; 2 if they
were more prominent but with less depth or specificity, or
specific but not a prominent goal; and 3 if they were both
prominent and specific themes. Also following Agyeman, we
analyzed the extent to which the plans emphasized intragen-
erational, intergenerational, and/or interspecies equity, and

principles of environmental justice; for sake of space, we do
not present those detailed findings here. We also rated plans
for a series of other cobenefits, such as economic develop-
ment, improved local environmental quality, public health
benefits, livability/quality of life, reduced energy costs, and
reduced government costs. For the sake of focus, we only
report on the equity themes.
7. Because of the varying length of the documents and the
poten-
tial for redundancy, we opted not to count the number of
equity-related passages in the plans.
8. For nineteen of the twenty-eight plans (68%), reviewers
agreed
in their initial rating; for six of the remaining nine, the review-
ers were within one category and their scores subsequently
averaged; in only three cases was reconciliation needed among
reviewer scores.
9. Our scores for social, geographic, and procedural equity
were
developed independently from the overall equity score and are
not directly related to the overall score (e.g., the sum or aver-
age of the three types). In most of the cases, however, the over-
all score was equivalent to the highest score among the three
types.
10. Because of the small sample size involved, it was not
feasible
to analyze the statistical relationships in a multivariate context.
An analysis using larger sample sizes would likely yield more
robust statistical results.
11. Existing measures of environmental program adoption (e.g.,
Portney’s Sustainable Cities index), or social capital or

engagement, do not align perfectly with twenty-eight cities in
our sample, limiting their potential value for our analysis.
12. Although there is some overlap between the post-2009 and
revised/updated plans in terms of equity, they are not perfectly
correlated. Some equity-oriented, post-2009 plans were initial
efforts by cities (e.g., Oakland), while some revised plans had
low equity scores (e.g., Pittsburgh).
13. Carl Spector, Boston climate planning director, interview
with
authors.
14. Boston’s Resident Jobs Policy requires city-funded building
projects to employ at least 50 percent city residents, 25 percent
racial minorities, and 10 precent women.
15. Philadelphia had completed a CAP in April 2007 under
outgo-
ing Mayor John Street.
16. Mark Alan Hughes, former Nutter Administration official,
interview with authors.
17. City of Portland BPS official, interview with authors.
18. Development director, Philadelphia Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), interview with authors.
19. Although the 1994 federal Executive Order 12898 requires
consideration of Environmental Justice issues as a require-
ment of federal funding, we found little evidence in our case
studies that this was a significant factor motivating a focus on
equity. Rather, we found that the influx of the 2009 American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding tended to

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