Abstract
Across the United States, development, gentrification, and water quality degradation have altered our access to the coasts, redistributing the benefits from those spaces. Building on prior coastal and green space access research, we examined different populations' relative travel distances to all public coastal access and to public marine swimming beaches across the state of Rhode Island, by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomics. Next, we assessed relative travel distances to high quality public coastal amenities, i.e., sites with no history of water quality impairment. We used three state-level policy attributes to identify sites with the best water quality: Clean Water Act Section 303(d) impaired waters, shellfishing restrictions, and bacterial beach closure histories. Our analysis revealed statewide disparities in access to Rhode Island's public coastal amenities. With robust socioeconomic and geographic controls, race and ethnicity remained strongly correlated to travel distance. Higher proportions of Black and Latinx populations in census block groups were associated with longer travel distances to public access, in particular to public coastal sites with better water quality and to public swimming beaches. This translates to added costs on each trip for areas with higher Black and Latinx populations.
Highlights
Coastal areas are highly valued but are not always equitably accessible
We present a policy-oriented analytical approach focused on producing clear metrics to support efforts to improve racial equity around coastal resources
The most highly specified regression (Regression 5, Table 3) indicates that the percent of the population identifying as non-Latinx white remained a significant factor when controlling for other variables that, together, accounted for 77 percent of the variance in travel distance to the nearest beach
Summary
Coastal areas are highly valued but are not always equitably accessible. Coastal and near-coastal residents and visitors receive a variety of physical, psychological, health, and social benefits (Ashbullby et al, 2013; White et al, 2014; Nutsford et al, 2016; de Bell et al, 2017). People are more likely to visit salt and fresh waters that are closer to their residence (Giles-Corti and Donovan, 2002; Cox et al, 2006; Haeffner et al, 2017). Site quality such as litter, vandalism, and perceived water conditions impact visitor preferences (Cox et al, 2006; Lyon et al, 2018). Shoreline armoring, and privatization of coastal access may physically or logistically
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