Restorative Environmental Justice: Assessing Brownfield Initiatives, Revitalization, and Community Economic Development in St. Petersburg, Florida

Abstract

Since the 1970s businesses have been leaving urban areas in order to build on cheaper real estate and/or to cluster in industrial parks. Many of these companies were polluting industries and their departure from previous locations, many times, left behind structures containing pollutants and hazardous waste in storage or in the local soil and water. These abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial or commercial facilities are called “brownfields.” It is likely that residents and wildlife living in close proximity to these contaminated sites may have suffered adverse environmental impacts. Brownfield initiatives emerged from a movement seeking to reverse the tide of pollution production, inner city decay, and urban sprawl. Through brownfield redevelopment efforts across the nation, cities are being rejuvenated, and property owners are able to divest their environmentally impaired assets and reinvest in community economic development. Policies created by federal, state, and local governments are being implemented that clean up and recycle thousands of acres of contaminated property, leading to job creation, pollution prevention, and greenfield preservation. Restorative Environmental Justice (REJ) as a concept highlights the ethical value of widening the scope of corporate organizational culture to include residential stakeholders. Restorative environmental justice taps into the recovery and re-distributive components of brownfield redevelopment. The notion of restorative environmental justice provides opportunities for corporate decision-makers and public officials to rectify or ameliorate situations that disenfranchised or harmed particular communities in the past. Restoration of a community's economic and social viability and environmental quality is a form of reparation for previous systemic inequities. This article will assess the current status of brownfield initiatives, urban revitalization, environmental quality, social justice, collaborative decision making, and community economic development in St. Petersburg, Florida. Factors to be discussed include investments in enterprise zones, community redevelopment areas, job training, local housing, community advocacy, and collaborative efforts to raise the standard of living in disadvantaged neighborhoods and achieve some level of “restorative environmental justice.”