Urban landscape as mirror of ethnicity: trees of the South Plains |
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Authors: | Cynthia L. Sorrensen Perry L. Carter Jack Phelps |
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Affiliation: | 1. Geosciences Department, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USAcynthia.sorrensen@ttu.edu;3. Geosciences Department, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA |
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Abstract: | The literatures on urban forestry, environmental justice, and Marxist urban political ecology are considered through empirical attention to the localized racial and ethnic politics which spatially differentiate urban socio-natural landscapes. In the American Southwest, urban landscapes reflect a history in which Anglo Whites were able to distance themselves from spaces of production while gaining access to superior residences and environmental amenities in spaces of reproduction; ethnoracially marginalized Others were treated as necessary yet disfavored populations, thus constituting a segregated mode of production. In this study, we investigate the association between tree canopy cover and the location of urban ethnic minority populations with a focus on the arid Southern High Plains city of Lubbock, Texas. Using data from color infrared aerial photography and block-group demographic indicators from the 2010 US Census, we analyze the city’s arboreal landscape with a mix of methods—hierarchical regression, archival research, and field observation. Results confirm that a lack of tree cover in minority neighborhoods is a symptom of broader environmental inequalities in which contemporary segregation patterns reflect a history of residential and land-use zoning with the socio-natural relations of planting and sustaining urban trees. |
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Keywords: | urban forestry environmental justice racial segregation |
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