The Geography of Despair: Environmental Racism and the Making of South Phoenix, Arizona, USA

This paper discusses the historical geographical construction of a contaminated community in the heart of one of the largest and fastest growing Sunbelt cities in the US. Our focus is on how racial categories and attendant social relations were constructed by Whites, in late 19th and early 20th cent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human ecology review 2005-01, Vol.12 (2), p.156-168
Main Authors: Bolin, Bob, Grineski, Sara, Collins, Timothy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arizona
Censuses
Central Cities
Cities
Environmental Degradation
Environmental justice
Environmental racism
Ethnic Relations
Geographic Regions
Hispanics
Housing
Human Ecology
Land use
Marginality
Neighborhoods
Racism
Research and Theory in Human Ecology
Whites
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Summary:This paper discusses the historical geographical construction of a contaminated community in the heart of one of the largest and fastest growing Sunbelt cities in the US. Our focus is on how racial categories and attendant social relations were constructed by Whites, in late 19th and early 20th century Phoenix, Arizona, to produce a stigmatized zone of racial exclusion and economic marginality in South Phoenix, a district adjacent to the central city. We consider how representations of race were historically deployed to segregate people of color, both residentially and economically in the early city. By the 1920s race and place were discursively and materially woven together in a mutually reinforcing process of social stigmatizationa and environmental degradation in South Phoenix. This process constructed a durable zone of mixed minority residential and industrial land uses that survives into the present day. 'Sunbelt apartheid' has worked to segregate undesirable land uses and minorities from 'Anglo' Phoenix. Class and racial privilege has been built in a wide range of planning and investment decisions that continue to shape the human ecology of the city today.
ISSN:1074-4827
2204-0919