Environmental Dimensions of Urban Change: Uncovering Relict Industrial Waste Sites and Subsequent Land Use Conversions in Portland and New Orleans

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Contemporary urbanization has brought well-documented shifts in the social and economic foundations of U.S. cities through deindustrialization, gentrification, and residential segregation. To these widely recognized shifts, we add historical–environmental changes associated with “relict industrial waste” that accumulates and becomes hidden as cities change over time. This study advances a new analytical framework and data collection strategy for uncovering these relict industrial waste sites and the processes that influence their location, frequency, and conversion. Results affirm that hundreds of potentially hazardous sites exist in older cities and that the vast majority of these sites have converted to other uses, hiding potential relict waste from public, scholarly, and regulatory view. Results also indicate that the types of neighborhood settings in which these sites are found and likelihood of subsequent land-use conversion vary significantly by the city in question. Implications for future research and broader conceptualizations of urbanization are discussed.