No justice, no streets: The complex task of evaluating environmental justice on open streets in three U.S. cities

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we study open street initiatives through a holistic definition of environmental justice, shedding light on three potential paradoxes of such initiatives: the engagement, hegemony, and displacement paradoxes. We use a mixed-methods approach integrating interviews and spatial analyses, focusing on three cities with permanent programs: Denver, Oakland, and Seattle. Our findings for the engagement paradox show that cities with existing equity planning relationships were better suited to address procedural justice tensions between the need to act swiftly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessity to adequately engage racially/ethnically minoritized communities in planning open streets. For the hegemony paradox, we find a tension between distributional and recognitional justice, wherein open streets might have been available in minoritized communities but such streets did not meet their needs. In the displacement paradox, respondents suggested that green gentrification concerns were a barrier to the equitable implementation of open streets.